apathy in the obama era

for the past few weeks ive been feeling more depressed than usual

not sure if its depression or just laziness or both

everything feels like it is too hard

going to work seems to hard

sitting in my room doing nothing even seems too hard

i try to read a lot to keep my mind off of the nothingness

working on a longer prose piece, havent been too productive lately

been thinking about apathy in the obama era

specifically political apathy

and all apathy

when bush was president i was bitching about something all eight years

even after he won in 2004 i was bitching and reading up on world events and bitching some more

in the runup to the 2008 election i was looking at political and world news sites almost nonstop

ever since obama won i just dont really care

the economy still sucks

the war on terrorism is still going on

but i just dont really care that much

ill think "im sure obama will fix everything eventually"

then ill think "no, nothing will be fixed everythings going down the shithole"

when i graduate college i wont be able to get a job or do anything

and i just dont care

should i be more into existentialism or postmodernism/poststructuralism

(oh my god i am so glad you dont exist
because if you did then i could blame everything on you)

i dont know if should be more into existentialism or postmodernism (specifically, poststructuralism)

i feel like i am a lot more familiar with existentialism so i would prefer just to stay with it

ive read foucault and some of the other postmodernists

there seems to be a lot of society conditioning/discipling/constructing the individual

(feel like this post is trying to be like hipsterrunoff but take itself way more seriously)

existentialism admits there is limits to freedom

postmodernism seems to define some of these and list some more

kierkegaard talks about "disintegration"

marx (in his earlier works) talks about "alientation"

feel like these are kind of the same somehow

existentialism has a lot of humanism

postmodernism has a lot of antihumanism

sartre is a humanist because he believes that human life can possibly have meaning, and that humans have the ability to make "real" choices, and that human thoughts and choices have value in and of themselves

"a typical postmodernist" an antihumanist because he believes that human life can possibly have meaning, but that that meaning is constantly defined by society, and that ultimately human thoughts and choices have value only in their historical moment

the problem i find with humanism is that it places more value on human existence than other forms of living existence

the problem i find with antihumanism it minimizes the value of human existence, but im not quite sure what it does place value on, but it must place value on something because it spends a lot of time explaining stuff

i feel like postmodernism brings me back to the same place i was earlier when i was just blaming all my problems or putting all my expectations in the hands of god

if i can just blame everything on conditioning, then i might as well be an asshole and work for a fortune 500 company

i havent yet discovered a place in foucault where he urges me to break out of the conditioning, or how to do it (i do find this in the existentialists)

perhaps i havent read enough of foucault (and other postmodernists/poststructuralists)

any advice on postmodern philosophy/literature that might answer the question of revolting against conditioning?

i feel like foucault would say that if at a certain point i revolt against my conditioning and try to reconstitute myself, then i will fall prey to my previous conditioning/disciplining heavily influencing my reconstituted self

dont know if this would be bad or not

feel like existentialism is a philosophy of hope (although there is despair involved)

feel like postmodernism is a philosophy of despair (there doesnt seem to be hope)

feel like being an antihumanist leaves room for mass murder and terrible things

existentialism is the child of nietzsche and dostoevsky

postmodernism is the child of marx (and his disciples) and freud (and his disciples)

i like how nietzsche and dostoevsky dont have disciples

feel like marx and freud and all their followers are fun to read because they show how little control we have over our existence

feel like nietzsche and dostoevsky are fun to read because they show all the fucked up things we can do with that little control that we have over our existence

feel like its all fun to read

and ill continue reading

Why I like Kafka

I've been trying to write a defense of Kafka on this blog for the past week or so, because people were ripping on him a few posts ago. But it seems that I am having trouble getting past the idea stage and into the writing stage. So now I am going to start the writing stage.

First I should tell you what I've read by Kafka: (in order from favorite to least favorite)

the trial
the metamorphisis
in the penal colony
a hunger artist
amerika

I'll focus mostly on the first two, because they are the ones I have read or reread most recently.

This is split into three parts: Form, Characters, and Themes





Form: (You can disregard this entire part if you want, i dont think i make any sense)

Kafka wrote in long paragraphs and also fairly long sentences, which may make him possibly more difficult to read for the twenty-first century reader, who is more used to reading literature written in the increasing trend towards shorter sentences and paragraphs.

But I find neither approach to be inherently more appealing, if either I would say I like the more recent trends in form to that of Kafka.

You may get to the end of a three page paragraph in The Trial and wonder what was so fucking important in the paragraph.

But you probably don't have the same reaction when you read three pages of Bukowski or Hemmingway or Tao Lin or Noah Cicero because they have anywhere from five to fifty paragraphs in the span on three pages.

But if you analayze the average paragraph from one of those writers against the average paragraph of Kafka. But there isn't a lot of one sentence statements that you can write an entire essay about.

In the end, all of this has nothing to do with Kafka, but I'm trying to understand why people DONT like Kafka.

In a previous entry a couple of weeks ago, someone said something like "The Metamorphisis is about a guy who turns into a bug. What's the point?"

And in my previous entry someone gave me what was basically a Wikipedia abstract of The Trial.

But would you take Catcher in the Rye, and say: "It's about a kid who is growing up and rebelling against his family and society. What's the point?"

Or take On The Road and say: "It's about a guy who hitch hikes around the country. What's the point?"

(I just used those novels because I figured they are ones that everyone knows/likes)

To take a story by Kafka and reduce it to a one sentence summary and say that thats all there is and whats the point is to not give it proper respect as literature.

I don't really care about respecting literature,.

But I think Kafka is worth respecting.

I seem to be rambling.






Characters:

I like what Kafka does with his characters.

You don't get many personal statements.

But his characters (especially the protagonists) seem to be of Kafka's persona, but he doesn't indulge in too much (if any) first person rambling (with the exception of Metamorphisis, which is almost all first person rambling.

He detaches himself from the characters.

Which allows the characters to act.

And we get to see their actions, judge their actions, and envision how we would act in similar situations.

Because in the end, a writer could have a page of internal monologue and it would probably never be able to explain existence as well as a character walking into a hallway and encountering someone knew, or if a character has sex with someone, or kills someone, or kills themselves. Our existence is given essence through actions and not through thought.

The scenes he creates forces the characters to act. In The Trial, Joseph K. is condemned and at any point can either give up or keep fighting, and he does both at various points. In The Metamorphisis, Gregor Samsa can either try to deal with his existence as a bug or kill himself, and in the end he kills himself. In both stories, the importance is placed on the protagonists ability to freely act in the midst of an absurd world.

And the scenes he create also take on their own uncanny existence. They are uncanny because they seem so strange and absurd, and yet when one considers it, that is how the world is: strange and absurd.

I think this is what has come to be known as Kafkaesque. I dont know. I dont use the term.

I know one person who commented on the post a couple of weeks ago said they didnt like Kafka's writing but they did like Brautigan's writing. This didnt make sense to me. My favorite piece by him is In Watermelon Sugar and it seems to be rather "kafkaesque" if we are even going to use the term.







Themes:

His writings get at the core of existentialist themes such as absurdity, alienation, bad faith, despair, existence precedes essence, freedom, living an active existence, etc. These are all abstraction so I'll elaborate on a few them.

Obviously if you have big issues with existentialism then it would make sense that you wouldn't like Kafka, but I assume that most of the people who read this don't mind existentialism.

The story "Before The Law" (From the collection A Country Doctor and used in Trial) instantly struck me as touching on almost all of these themes. In it, a man wants to enter a place known as the Law. But the gatekeeper tells him that he, the gatekeeper, will not grant him admission to the Law at that moment. The man ends up waiting for the rest of his life, during which he tries various methods such as bribery to gain admission to the Law. But the doorkeeper refuses. That is to say he refuses in words, but he does not physically place himself between the protagonist and the Law. He also does not physically restrain the protagonist, although one could argue that he doesn't have to, because the protagonist makes no forward move towards the Law. He then begins to die, and the gatekeeper tells him that he the door was made for the man to enter, only he could enter, and now his time is past and the door will be closed. Then the man dies.

Now going back to go back to the existentialist themes:

absurdity: fairly self explanatory

alienation: the main character does not feel on an equal level with the gatekeeper. he feels inferior and detached. he is alienated in all directions. behind him is the society which he for some reason cannot relate to, because he wants to enter the Law. On the other hand there is the Law, which he is constantly reaching for and discovering to be unreachable.

bad faith: he allows his existence to be defined by a most likely powerless doorkeeper. similarly, he longs to enter the Law, but he gives no good rational reason why he wants to enter the Law so much. the doorkeeper will not give him permission to enter the Law, so he passively accepts his categorization as someone not yet ready to enter the Law.

despair: He allows himself to be defined as someone who wants to enter the Law and is refused admission. When he finds out at the end that perhaps he had the ability to enter all along, he despairs. Despair is tied to wasted time or lost opportunities.

existence precedes essence: goes along with what I've said so far.

freedom: one can't help feeling that he has the freedom all along to enter the Law. Further, even if he can't enter the Law, he rejects his freedom to do an infinite number of other things, instead remaining in a state of paralysis.

living an active existence: he doesn't do this.




I hate writing conclusions.

I like Kafka.




For another view on Kafka go here: http://heheheheheheheeheheheehehe.com/2008/04/reading-tonight.html



Or pick up Albert Camus' Myth of Sisyphus. (at the end he talks about Kafka for a chapter )

i read the brandon book crisis and reread the human war this weekend. then i went to border's and bought a philip roth book because i never read him but i don't like him so far too much.

i thought the brandon book crisis was pretty good, although halfway through i started jumping over the parts which talked about fonts and file types and stuff. but it was fun to read i guess. makes me in awe of all it takes to publish a book.

i liked the human war about as much as did the first time i read it a few years ago. it is still my favorite book by noah cicero. i was still really interested in the way in which he was able to take everyday anxiety and depression and expand to anxieties about political/global issues. and the part where jimmy is in the mental ward is still an accurate and amusing description of what it is actually like to be in a mental ward, although obviously it is stylized somewhat i guess. one of my favorite quotes in the book is when mark the narrator says:

"as we get older we are slowly learning. that we can never control our environment. that we are powerless. that no matter how hard we try. nothing will ever get accomplished. but we're like all humans, and we keep on trying. it's compulsive. it's human to be human. we are like all artists and we think that if we create the perfect piece of art, that suffering will stop, that the human war will end. but it won't."

this statement seems to sum up the point/thesis of the book as a whole. but it also isn't quite an existentialist statement (i think). it seems to be more the kind of statement that you might read from foucault or even marx (gathering from what ive read by each of them), in that we cannot "control our environment" and yet we are conditioned to continuously attempt to change it. maybe it could be existentialist though, you could say that yes, you cant control your environment, but you can choose how you are going to live your life in that environment. i guess it doesn't really matter if its existentialist or not, because it is still my prbly my favorite piece of internal dialogue from the story.

after i finished reading that i went to border's and bought portnoy's complaint by philip roth. supposedly it is his best book. so far it seems like a darker version of american pie, but im guessing it might get better once the protagonist gets older.

after that i am going to read the trial by kafka, because i have never read the whole thing.