Tuesday, October 5, 2010

It's fun, for example, to read Camus's diaries.

I can't remember what precisely led me to it, but I decided I wanted to rewatch that clip from Ukraine's Got Talent I first saw and referenced around this time last year.

I decided I wanted to write a response to it, more than I had before. As I started drafting this blogpost, I remembered that I was thinking about World War II in Russia around this time last year, and checked; oddly enough, the entry dating precisely to this date, one year ago, is the one I recalled.

What's more, I am still wondering the same questions. From that earlier post:
Why do those things that seem to be “the best” at evoking an emotional response, those that are winning competitions (like Ukraine’s Got Talent) and are lauded as the exhibits to see around town (like this) all return to the question of war, to total war, to the undeniable presentiment that everything is going to be destroyed?

...What is keeping the threat of imminent and total destruction so present in creative Russians’ minds? Why has total war and total victimization trumped all other mode of artistic expression? Is it possible to tell a narrative without returning to that war? How can one move past it?
What's scary to me, now, what seems more important to me, now, what I can't stop thinking about, now, is not the question Why is the memory of the war so important and moving for them? Rather, it's become Why am I incapable of feeling what I would like to consider an appropriate level of empathy towards them?

First world problems.

More precisely, I'm having trouble justifying to myself those inquiries I used to find so fascinating and important. I can contemplate reading any of the same sources, pondering the same problems, but I can't bring myself to feel excited about elucidating their historical importance, their role in the grand teleological schemes of man, their role in maintaining or destroying the status quo. I only want to read them insofar as they're important to my personal thought processes, emotional evolutions.

First world problems.

There, I've said it and had done with.

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