Feb 06, 2007 12:57
I’ve been thinking over the past few days (a dangerous proposition, is the standard quip) and I’ve realized what my greatest fear is. It’s actually been a fear of mine for some time but now, I think it’s actually begun to be realized.
I’m afraid that I’ve stopped being clever.
Several things have occurred (or in some cases, have been noted to not occur) which have made this worry seem to be true. The first was a conversation I had with my friend Geoff a few days ago. We were talking about books and I mentioned that I prefer to buy my own books, as opposed to having others buy books for me. He replied, “Do you actually read anything that doesn’t have pictures in it?”
And the frightening answer is no, I don’t. I have spent all of my time reading manga and comic books, so much so that I haven’t read a proper book in a rather long time. The Baroque Cycle and Son of a Witch sit unfinished in my room while trade paperbacks and CLAMP novels get read immediately. While comics can be quite intelligent (especially anything by Neil Gaiman or Alan Moore), they still don’t promote a broad range of discourse as much as something by Dawkins or Dickens.
Even at work, I haven’t done anything clever in quite some time. I may be a chemist but at this point, most of my work doesn’t require a chemistry degree. It is all simple tasks based upon clever work that I did years ago. While evidence of my being clever does exist, from my work, it is obvious that I have not been clever in quite some time.
I haven’t even had a decent intellectual argument or even a conversation in quite some time. That isn’t to say that I haven’t had conversations but the vast majority have been on topics such as videogames or comic books and not so much on science, politics or philosophy. And when I do have a rare science conversation, it just involves my regurgitating something I had been taught earlier. That is not being clever myself, it’s just a parroting of someone else’s cleverness.
I must take steps to rectify this. Certainly, going to law school will help, as that will force me to perform heavy thinking once more but I can’t wait until September. I have to start reading more now, start contemplating more NOW.
But I probably won’t.
But if you do feel like engaging me in a conversation that requires deep thinking, I would greatly appreciate it.