To a certain extent, one does not choose the feelings that will arise in relation to one’s environment, because one does not choose the circumstances into which one is born, nor does one choose most of the defining events that the environment will produce over the course of a lifetime. Thus, affection and aversion, patriotism and anti-patriotism, a sense of belonging and alienation arise naturally. But all these feelings, if not understood, bear poor fruit. A conscious effort is needed to always relate them to the personal transformations one experiences, viewing them as the extremely important catalysts that they are. Such transformations sometimes run counter to the nature of that initial feeling; but they all teach something, and one must cultivate a positive attitude toward them all.
To Imagine That There Was a Carpeaux…
To imagine that there was a Carpeaux before the invention of the computer gives one pause. An active reader, over the course of a decade, produces thousands upon thousands of notes. Three or four decades of study, therefore, amount to a volume that no human mind is capable of comprehending, unless one engages in a constant process of rereading and reorganization, a process that never ends because there are always old notes to revisit, and there are always new ideas and new connections to be made through this revisitation. A computer, if used wisely, makes research tremendously easier: a task that might take an hour is sometimes reduced to minutes. Even so, it seems almost impossible to match the feat of those ancient scholars, whose notes were tucked away in their own thick tomes—something that, today, sends a shiver down one’s spine.
There Is No Point in Reading Unless…
There is no point in reading unless it is to make the material one’s own; and that is rarely achieved on a first reading. Therefore, assimilation requires rereading and returning to what first caught one’s attention. That is why the intellectual must spend a good deal of time planning and implementing his personal method of organization. Notes and highlighted passages must become a living part of one’s study routine: they must be at hand when needed, and always in plain sight to prevent them from falling into oblivion. It is a matter of rereading them methodically and seeing that, with this practice, they take root within oneself.
Someone Who Has Spent His Entire Life…
Someone who has spent his entire life in the city may not be able to leave it, except through a traumatic and uncomfortable process. Curiously, it is there that he feels safe; it is there that he experiences the sense of normalcy to which he has grown accustomed. If someone were to tell him, however, he would not believe it: one must experience firsthand the numbness to which his senses have been subjected over the years. And that is only possible in an environment far removed from his beloved city. It brings to mind those old chronicles of Europeans who, walking with indigenous people in the jungle, were amazed by their almost supernatural sense of smell—which, in truth, consisted of a much more refined attention to the senses, and which, through the senses, demonstrated to the European the truth of their intuition. This raises the question of just how far extend the consequences of this evident urban inattention.