After laboring over a thoughtfully, and surgically constructed essay response to Mr.Wallace's address for a pleasant pair of Monday evening hours, only to have it, in one bewildering millisecond of mechanical deviousness, whisked away into the e-oblivion of some remote cyber DoomCave, I can tell you the importance of wielding the proper perspective.
I hesitate to embellish this response too personally, yet for the sake of my point, my hand is forced.
No sooner had I typed the sentence "The minor, pesky disruptions in life must be handled with judicious patience, and perpsecti-" than my entire responses flittered away like so many dry leaves in the internet winds.
I was positively thunderstruck, then filled with frustration.
Irony?
Double of shot irony?
A molten irony asteroid smashing into Planet Irony, creating a vast cosmic irony dust? Maybe that's enough.
Mr. Wallace has, from some unknown corner of the Earth, “told me so.” These things happen. His address was occasionally foreboding. Touches of dread were felt in the telling of Charles Dickens-ish drudgery of white collar American labor. He is, though, quiet right. The most effective weapon one can wield in the “day to day trenches of adult existence” is perspective.
He does not treat the audience as dolts, or lazy do-nothings, who never bother to jostle their perspective into a position that allows for a beautiful August afternoon watching Aunt Heraldine’s eight cats to be a pleasant, rewarding experience in family cooperation and animal nurturing. Instead, he acknowledges the nuts and bolts of the perspective game.
No, he submits, no one is idling in afternoon traffic thinking “Zippity-do-dah-day! Gee, what a wonderful bonus time to admire everyone else’s taste in automobiles…and reflect on life! Boy, howdee!”
He also spares us the carting out of any tired, retirement aged maxim such as “Stop griping about gas prices, your grandfather and I rode elderly pterodactyls to a one-room school house on a volcano!”
Most folks are familiar with that stuff. The real challenge lies in believing the perspective, in allowing it to work its therapeutic powers. He handily dispenses with the cumbersome questions of life. He spoke to the thin membrane of Western Society, which contains and barely obscures from view the universal woe/awe of this human life gig.
The craggy coastline of continent Youth is, overtime, eroded into the few basic truths of Mr. Wallace's speech. Perspective can carry the weight of sadness away, if you let it. It can scare away even the seasoned, career boogey-men of impatience, regret and frustration.
I am reminded of a chant uttered in unison at the conclusion of Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. Perspective, like AA, "works if you work it."
Just to clarify, for purposes of checking off completion of this assignment, I am Alex Simmons. The BathRobedAvenger was a blogspot account I made a while ago.
Samantha Hoeltge On Life and Work: Response (blog)
A few things came to mind reading this article. For one, I honestly couldn't stand it. That's not to say that his speech wasn't conventional, everything he was saying had some truth to it. But I just couldn't stand how he made a future as a college graduate seem like such a poor idea. What I understood from the article was that we were going to end up in these jobs where everything is the same every day and that after enough time we were just going to start hating our lives. I don't know if that was Wallace's intention when he wrote this speech and I almost wonder if seeing it being spoken in person, like being there the actual moment he spoke this speech if it would make a difference. Something’s are just meant to be heard versus read. I will agree with Wallace about the selfish qualities of humans. I almost wonder if maybe its just part of human nature, almost like it’s a part of our biological make-up and that there is no way to avoid it, we will always think of ourselves first. Isn't that what our existence has all been about? Survival of the fittest, if you want to survive you need to consider your needs and yours alone. Or in today’s world be the best you can be, than you need to put your self and all of your needs before others. I hate how that sounds it just makes the thought of being human sound so cold, making me think, why would I want to be this species. Out of everything Wallace talked about the only thing I liked in his speech was that, we as people need to control what we think about, and how we think about things. Otherwise were going to be miserable because we can’t see anything in a positive light.
The problem with his speech is that it was 7 pages of about 2 pages worth of valuable insight. I was reading the stories about Eskimos and grocery shopping and all that, expecting some kind of worthwhile intellect. I kept on reading, ready for some kind of point and there just…wasn’t. The real thing to take away from this is his opinion of religion. I found his take on worship and arrogance spot on with my opinion of very religious or very atheistic people. They can be so certain they are right when so very wrong in the eyes of someone else. The way he put it “a blind certainty, a closed- mindedness that amounts to an imprisonment so total that the prisoner doesn’t even know he’s locked up.” If he dedicated his speech to statements like this, and not rambling about how bad life can be, it would be much more credible. I absolutely agree that people imprison themselves in their own self-righteousness, from Glenn Beck to the Westboro Baptist Church, and even groups like Al-Qaeda. All of these people are, on various levels, what is wrong with the “real world.” They are so certain with themselves; they don’t see how wrong they really are. If the world was anything like their depiction, I wouldn’t want to live in it. He also goes into the concept that “everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship.” I also find this an agreeable concept because if you look through the eyes of the average person, they always worship something. Whether it is their job, power, money, or their religion, everyone has something they hold above anything else. Worship power, and you will feel weak, worship intellect and you will feel stupid. This is such a memorable concept because it criticizes something that so many people hold on to. Wallace should have focused the speech on this; It would have made it much more insightful.
After laboring over a thoughtfully, and surgically constructed essay response to Mr.Wallace's address for a pleasant pair of Monday evening hours, only to have it, in one bewildering millisecond of mechanical deviousness, whisked away into the e-oblivion of some remote cyber DoomCave, I can tell you the importance of wielding the proper perspective.
ReplyDeleteI hesitate to embellish this response too personally, yet for the sake of my point, my hand is forced.
No sooner had I typed the sentence "The minor, pesky disruptions in life must be handled with judicious patience, and perpsecti-" than my entire responses flittered away like so many dry leaves in the internet winds.
I was positively thunderstruck, then filled with frustration.
Irony?
Double of shot irony?
A molten irony asteroid smashing into Planet Irony, creating a vast cosmic irony dust? Maybe that's enough.
Mr. Wallace has, from some unknown corner of the Earth, “told me so.” These things happen. His address was occasionally foreboding. Touches of dread were felt in the telling of Charles Dickens-ish drudgery of white collar American labor. He is, though, quiet right. The most effective weapon one can wield in the “day to day trenches of adult existence” is perspective.
He does not treat the audience as dolts, or lazy do-nothings, who never bother to jostle their perspective into a position that allows for a beautiful August afternoon watching Aunt Heraldine’s eight cats to be a pleasant, rewarding experience in family cooperation and animal nurturing. Instead, he acknowledges the nuts and bolts of the perspective game.
No, he submits, no one is idling in afternoon traffic thinking “Zippity-do-dah-day! Gee, what a wonderful bonus time to admire everyone else’s taste in automobiles…and reflect on life! Boy, howdee!”
He also spares us the carting out of any tired, retirement aged maxim such as “Stop griping about gas prices, your grandfather and I rode elderly pterodactyls to a one-room school house on a volcano!”
Most folks are familiar with that stuff. The real challenge lies in believing the perspective, in allowing it to work its therapeutic powers. He handily dispenses with the cumbersome questions of life. He spoke to the thin membrane of Western Society, which contains and barely obscures from view the universal woe/awe of this human life gig.
The craggy coastline of continent Youth is, overtime, eroded into the few basic truths of Mr. Wallace's speech. Perspective can carry the weight of sadness away, if you let it. It can scare away even the seasoned, career boogey-men of impatience, regret and frustration.
I am reminded of a chant uttered in unison at the conclusion of Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. Perspective, like AA, "works if you work it."
Just to clarify, for purposes of checking off completion of this assignment, I am Alex Simmons. The BathRobedAvenger was a blogspot account I made a while ago.
ReplyDeleteSamantha Hoeltge
ReplyDeleteOn Life and Work: Response (blog)
A few things came to mind reading this article. For one, I honestly couldn't stand it. That's not to say that his speech wasn't conventional, everything he was saying had some truth to it. But I just couldn't stand how he made a future as a college graduate seem like such a poor idea. What I understood from the article was that we were going to end up in these jobs where everything is the same every day and that after enough time we were just going to start hating our lives. I don't know if that was Wallace's intention when he wrote this speech and I almost wonder if seeing it being spoken in person, like being there the actual moment he spoke this speech if it would make a difference. Something’s are just meant to be heard versus read.
I will agree with Wallace about the selfish qualities of humans. I almost wonder if maybe its just part of human nature, almost like it’s a part of our biological make-up and that there is no way to avoid it, we will always think of ourselves first. Isn't that what our existence has all been about? Survival of the fittest, if you want to survive you need to consider your needs and yours alone. Or in today’s world be the best you can be, than you need to put your self and all of your needs before others. I hate how that sounds it just makes the thought of being human sound so cold, making me think, why would I want to be this species.
Out of everything Wallace talked about the only thing I liked in his speech was that, we as people need to control what we think about, and how we think about things. Otherwise were going to be miserable because we can’t see anything in a positive light.
Alex,
ReplyDeleteThat was a great response. we'll use what you said to talk through genre conventions and audience awareness today.
Connor Sullivan
ReplyDeleteThe problem with his speech is that it was 7 pages of about 2 pages worth of valuable insight. I was reading the stories about Eskimos and grocery shopping and all that, expecting some kind of worthwhile intellect. I kept on reading, ready for some kind of point and there just…wasn’t. The real thing to take away from this is his opinion of religion. I found his take on worship and arrogance spot on with my opinion of very religious or very atheistic people. They can be so certain they are right when so very wrong in the eyes of someone else. The way he put it “a blind certainty, a closed- mindedness that amounts to an imprisonment so total that the prisoner doesn’t even know he’s locked up.” If he dedicated his speech to statements like this, and not rambling about how bad life can be, it would be much more credible. I absolutely agree that people imprison themselves in their own self-righteousness, from Glenn Beck to the Westboro Baptist Church, and even groups like Al-Qaeda. All of these people are, on various levels, what is wrong with the “real world.” They are so certain with themselves; they don’t see how wrong they really are. If the world was anything like their depiction, I wouldn’t want to live in it.
He also goes into the concept that “everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship.” I also find this an agreeable concept because if you look through the eyes of the average person, they always worship something. Whether it is their job, power, money, or their religion, everyone has something they hold above anything else. Worship power, and you will feel weak, worship intellect and you will feel stupid. This is such a memorable concept because it criticizes something that so many people hold on to. Wallace should have focused the speech on this; It would have made it much more insightful.