One of my friends once told me a story about going to a party, getting quite un-sober, and (as one tends to do at social gatherings) picking up a copy of Sartre's Being and Nothingness . "Suddenly," she said, "I thought, wait, why IS there something rather than nothing? My mind was blown for at least the next ten minutes."
Over the last several months, I have come to realize that there is something so that there can be nothing. And I came to this realization without going to India, or even to a weekend yoga retreat. I simply asked myself why I no longer felt like writing out the witterings of my mind on the wall of the Internet. It was clearly because I no longer had something I wanted to avoid doing, something pressing that I could ignore in order to do nothing. It turns out that in order to want to do nothing--in order to enjoy, however furtively, wasting time writing blog posts--there needs to be something you should be doing, but are not. Once I no longer had something to do, I didn't want to do nothing, either.
Finally, some Serious Somethings have caught up with me at last, so I am sure that I will now feel a deep need to respond to a Salon article about wingnuts, or a NYT article about Williamsburg.
(In truth, I can never read past the second paragraph of any article in the NYT about Brooklyn, because I inevitably break out in Hipster Hives--a symptom of my tragic allergy to hipster-hood. Also, 85% of the articles are about Hipsters Having Children ("My, What Big Strollers You Have!") and the thought of all the chunky-glassed, tattooed, Pendleton-wearing locavores wheeling their Concept Children around makes me wish I still enjoyed drinking, because chewing on my desk is so hard on the teeth.)
1 comment:
You're not doing nothing, you're doing something. Somebody reads these, you know.
A great portion (ok, practically all) of my collegiate education was devoted to metaphysical theory in the discipline of elevator signage.
This was prompted by a sign, that, if I were a Christian historian, would have been my Shroud of Turin:
In case of fire, do not use elevators, if they exist.
The layperson would have never noticed the sign. Or, bored and waiting (naturally in the time before smartphones), would have skimmed it and left with the take-away: if the building is on fire, don't use the elevators.
But I was different. I was special.
If there is a fire, I reasoned, I am free to use a nonexistent elevator. Well, at least there's no sign warning against their use. But how does one enter an elevator that does not exist? How does one find the button, and what kind of wait am I looking at, especially with this fire going on? Are they just referring to an actual case of fire, as in, I'm encased in fire? No, that's just silly. But this nonexistent elevator situation... This was a bona fide puzzle that required further pondering.
If one were able to step into a nonexistent elevator, what would happen? Would there be muzak? Would nonexistent muzak still be horrible? Could it be that whenever I get some vague sense of dread, for no apparent reason, in a public place, that it's because they're piping in nonexistent muzak? And how do you record that stuff? I was suspicious of supernatural involvement. Perhaps Cthulhu himself was behind why I don't like most shopping malls. (Prove me wrong!)
The most fertile ground for my questioning came when I focused on the act of boarding the nonexistent elevator. As a being who, I must presuppose, exists, would my very presence in the threshold of the elevator destroy it? Once a thing that exists touches a nonexistent thing, surely the nonexistent thing ceases to not be. Of course, since I am quite biased, having lived on the side of things that exist for so long, I could be mistaken. As a scientist, I must concede that. Nonexistent beings would surely reach a vastly different conclusion, and would likely yell "Asshole!" at me, if yelling and words and such didn't exist. Which makes an argument between existentially-diverse beings seem one-sided.. But only from the side that you're on.
But therein lies my greatest breakthrough: A nonexistent elevator can't exist. Or, can't not exist. English, like physics, tends to break down when dealing with such complex, heady matters.
The point is, the whole reason for an elevator to exist is to transport things from one place to another. And if a thing can move, it is doing something. If you can do something, what you do can be measured or seen or felt. Anything that can be measured, seen, or felt must exist. Therefore, the very act of being an elevator would cause it to cease to not exist.
That would make for a very interesting dilemma at the nonexistent elevator factory. How do you track production? Seems like you'd have a very pissed-off bunch of nonexistent customers. Either your product would simply disappear into existence the moment you got it working, or you'd have to sell nothing but broken nonexistent elevators.
I'm only joking. By my logic, the factory couldn't exist either. Which means nonexistent folks would be forced to take the stairs, if that were possible. (It's not.)
So, in conclusion, if there is a fire, and you are somehow able to call a nonexistent elevator, don't use that either.
The moment you try to use it, it will exist, which violates the Law of The Sign. If it remains nonexistent when you get in, it's broken anyway.
Just use the stairs.
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