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Wednesday, April 18, 2012

Searching before it was Mainstream.

I'm quite enjoying Percy's moviegoer so far. I regret to inform that I'm not quite done yet, however, it should be knocked out by tomorrow. Anywho... the one concept that has me the most infatuated is "the search". Binx is trying to find himself, and this search is all about escaping the monotony of the every day. He says, "What is the nature of the search? you ask. Really it is very simple; at least for a fellow like me. So simple that it is easily overlooked. The search is what anyone would undertake if he were not sunk in the everydayness of his own life." I love this concept because it so plays into our (forgive the pun) every day lives. I find that the goal for the modern person is to achieve the American Dream. The American Dream is the ideal for most people. They want a spouse with children, a house, one or two vehicles, and steady jobs to support their lifestyles. However, this lifestyle is so monotonous. Binx calls for spontaneity. He plays big into the Hipster movement. This searching for an end to malaise fits in perfectly with the concept of escaping the mainstream. These concepts call to take into question what everyone else accepts. They escape from the monotony of every day life. Another story that comes to my mind is the myth of Sisyphus. It tells a story of a king punished for eternity by rolling a massive boulder up a hill which only rolls back down once he gets to the top. We do this constantly. We wake up, eat, go to school, eat, more school, study, eat, sleep and repeat. It makes me realize the truth in Ecclesiastes 1:9-11. These verses say,

" What has been will be again,
what has been done will be done again;
there is nothing new under the sun.
Is there anything of which one can say,
'Look! This is something new'?
It was here already, long ago;
it was here before our time.
No one remembers the former generations,
and even those yet to come
will not be remembered
by those who follow them."

We go through the same everydayness through our lifestyles and unless we force ourselves to escape this malaise and monotony, we will stay in our dreariness.

commented on Danielle's "What Mitchell Said."

7 comments:

  1. >>We go through the same everydayness through our lifestyles and unless we force ourselves to escape this malaise and monotony, we will stay in our dreariness.

    I don't think so. I like my shallow "everydayness." I like waking up in the morning, eating hot meals, and going to school and work. There's nothing dreary about it unless we make it that way. For this reason, I find Binx Bolling very immature.

    You quote Ecclesiastes 1, but don't stop there. Move on to Chapter 3:

    "I perceived that there is nothing better for them than to be joyful and to do good as long as they live; also that everyone should eat and drink and take pleasure in all his toil- this is God's gift to man."

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  2. I see what you mean by using Ecclesiastes Chapter 3. But look back at Chapter 2. "So I hated life, because the work that is done under the sun was grievous to me. All of it is meaningless, a chasing after the wind."

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  3. and I know that the routines we develop for ourselves are appealing but does doing the same thing over and over accomplish anything meaningful?

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  5. and furthermore, I haven't finished the Moviegoer quite yet, so I cannot give an accurate opinion of Binx just yet.

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  6. >>I know that the routines we develop for ourselves are appealing but does doing the same thing over and over accomplish anything meaningful?

    Everything we're doing here has been done before by greater men and greater minds than us. The Plato-s and Aquinas-es have written volumes on these things, while we lowly college students struggle to write a coherent blog post. In that way, yes, everything we do here is "meaningless, a chasing after the wind."

    Therefore we'd better learn to enjoy it, or we're in for a long fifty years of "malaise and dreariness."

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  7. Dang it, Goldman, you beat me to it. But I digress.

    Mr. Spell, I have to disagree with you here. I create no daily routine for myself. I make it up as I go along. That being said, I still regularly attend class, but college is my hobby. My real passion is coming up with crazy ideas, designs, and/or theories, and building or testing them. it's something that I want to be remembered for, not for being a good, punctual person. Nobody remembers Da Vinci's assistants who probably were on time every morning and worked hard for Leonardo. We only remember the man who defied the daily routine and pursued what his heart desired.

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