Several commentators to this blog have observed that I
frequently mention my age, which is true.
That is unusual for a blogger, I gather.
Let me take a little time to explain why I do so.
First, let me observe, as I have before, that blogging [and
posting on Twitter or SnapChat, etc.] is a very odd mode of communication. I cannot see the people I am communicating with,
and they cannot see me. The vast
majority of people who visit this blog never comment at all, and many of those
who do are anonymous. Even though I
rather uncharacteristically have posted multi-part essays stretching over
several weeks, it remains the case that my posts are for the most part
momentary, ephemeral, replaced almost immediately by new posts. All of this is completely contrary to the
forms of communication that have obtained between humans for the past 200,000
years or so.
The norm, at least until the invention of writing some six
millennia ago or so, was face-to-face communication between speakers and
relatively small groups of interlocutors.
In those exchanges, the identity of the participants was known, as were
their age, gender, and relationships to one another. The young publicly deferred to the old while
mocking them behind their backs. The old
pontificated to the young and secretly envied them their youth, their virility,
and their optimism, all the while agreeing among themselves that the young really
did not have a clue about life. Writing changed
this, of course, but not nearly as much as one might imagine.
I chose a career – university teaching – that enshrined this
older form of communication. For fifty
years, I stood in front of groups of young people and spoke with them face to
face. As time passed, inevitably this relationship
changed. At first, I was little older than
my students, if indeed at all. [I think
of the famous philosopher Thomas Nagel as “young Tom,” even though he is now
82, because he was a student in my Kant course in 1959.] But time passed, and in the natural course of
things, I grew older [while my students did not – that is the really odd thing
about a teaching career.]
As I grew older, I changed. At first I was eager, precocious, ambitious. After my sons were born, I went from being a
rebellious son, hot to challenge authority wherever I encountered it, to being
a generative father, supportive of my sons and also of my students, interposing
myself between them and a sometimes distant or even punitive university
administration. There is of course
nothing unusual in this evolution. It is
the eternal playing out of what Erik Erikson described in Childhood and Society as the Life Cycle. It would be as absurd for me now to act as
though I were a young man just launching myself into the public forum as it
would have been then for me to act like Brad Pitt in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.
I am now near the end of my particular life cycle [although,
not, I hope, too near just yet.] I am as
conscious of my age now as I was of my youth sixty years ago, and I speak of it
often because it as important an element in my understanding of my world as my
youth was then. My sons, who have been a
principal focus of my thoughts for half a century, are now mature, successful
men in their fifties, full of energy and purpose and the fulfillment of their
promise.
I enjoy blogging, and I hope that I can continue for some
time to come, but quite often I wish I could gather you all in a room and speak
with you face to face!
17 comments:
I don't find it strange that you often mention your age, perhaps because I do it myself frequently.
First of all, most of the people one "meets" online are younger than we are, often younger than both of my living sons, one 41 and the other 51. I don't normally socialize with people younger than my sons are. I don't have any close friends from generations younger than theirs.
Second, it's strange to be so old (I'm almost 74). I never expected to get so old and as a young person, I had absolutely no idea of what it is like to be old. Obviously, I knew old people, for example, my grandparents, but I had absolutely no ability to put myself in their place or to understand what went on with them. From what I observe, the young have very little capacity to put themselves in the place of elderly while the elderly, having been young once themselves, have all too much capacity to put themselves in the place of the young, which leads to a certain asymmetry in their relationships with one another and a certain resentment towards the young on the part of the old.
All in all, while it seemed natural to be young, it seems weird to be old.
My guess is that we're all pretty ugly. Spare yourself the wish to gather us one and all together---face to face-wise. Such a riot of discord perhaps even the inter-net wouldn't allow.
I've outlived my parents,grandparents,and aunts and uncles. I'm amazed at times at how old I am. I don't always feel that old mentally, but my body keeps me informed about it all the time. My friends too are all old--apart from children children, but they're a different story. I've found aging to be a process of giving up things that require much physical input. I exercise regularly, but can't walk more than a block or two without having to sit down and rest my back. Balance is a problem.
"As I age and blank on names
As my uncertainty on stairs
Is more and more the lightheadedness
Of a cabin boy's first time in the rigging,
As the memorable bottoms out
Into the irretrievable,
Its not that I can't imagine still
That slight untoward rupture and world-tilt
As a wind freshened and the anchor weighed."
--Seamus Heaney
The wish to gather us all together is a very nice sentiment but the admissions dept. and the universities you teach at remind us that a face to face dissemination of knowledge comes at a price and at exclusivity. Us little people feed of the scraps of what we can get our hands on and appreciate the fullness of your knowledge. This has given you the luxury of raising your children with the benefit of enough money to help facilitate success. Much gratitude for the words and knowledge, but as you mentioned recently, Kumbayya platitudes do not reflect the real world.
I did not have in mind a university classroom. More like a picnic or an evening in a pub. But I take your point, with which I agree.
Hmn- it sounds like you want to get me in a room to give me a good scolding or some kind of lecturing to. Doesn't seem like all that much fun to me...
I guess it is a weird way to communicate though- this blog posting stuff and the occasional comment hasn't been around most of my life either. But I think it is wonderful for the most part and the chances that I would ever have the opportunity to interact at all with someone like Robert Wolff would have been very slim.
Anyways- I wasn't trying to make fun of your age or anything. I was just asking if you had any insights about the reported age related variance in support for that other old guy Sanders because I don't really understand it and I thought you might. But I enjoyed this post also and probably learned some more about the human condition while doing so. And I am 52 years old if that makes any difference. Just so you know a little more about me.
Thank you Professor Wolff.
Jerry.
Bernie is a well meaning authentic socialist who has adopted the Democratic party to help defeat Trump in the upcoming election. He is garnering votes and momentum through his platform for the party and the corporate capitalist wing as well as others in the party are spurning him. The democrats are treating him terrible just like last election and he keeps plugging away. Clearly the democratic party is no different than the republican party and this election and especially the democrats are illuminating the fact socialism is not part of the human make up- kind of like world peace. If I were Bernie I would switch parties as the republicans give him more respect and he could do more for his constiuency as they are the lesser of two evils. I'm surprised Bernie took this abuse last election and this one as well. Even Hilary recently said no one likes Bernie. Embrace your destiny Bernie and endorse Trump.
I wish we could gather too.
NP
An occasion for poetry:
https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/you-are-old-father-william/
Professor Wolff:
a) You may have been physically old for a while, biologically if not in the social system
b) you are still productive to a point though in old age
c) you are doing well with the central conflict: ego integrity v despair, though given the state of the world, it is hard
d) the fruits of old age are wisdom- which your blog allows you to share
Keep it up
We are never too old for knowledge, wisdom, and courage. I hope you can keep up the good fight for many years to come.
So here someone I respect has a bit of an answer about why maybe the older people are not so enthusiastic about Bernie Sanders-
"I would not blame Sanders supporters, who do care, for getting exasperated with this oblivious “opposition”, people who see the senile, casually corrupt Biden as an “anti-Trump”. (eye-roll)
The one hypothesis that I can come up with that makes sense is that many people intuitively sense that practically anything done to address fundamental problems will induce some large degree of structural collapse. “Revolutions” involve a lot of demolition and the older you are and the more vested you are in the system as it is the more you instinctively fear that reform-induced collapse. Any change is likely to be change for the worse in the short-term for people who are fully vested in the system, however corrupt and decrepit that system may have become. This is where Bush II and Obama’s extend-and-pretend, combined with the financial system’s reckless neoliberal strategy of broad-based disinvestment (to generate upward flows of cash and globalized paper wealth), has gotten us: a tower of papier mâché jenga ready to crash down on chicken little’s head, and everyone a chicken little."
So I'm going with that as the best explanation I have heard so far. And I will thank Bruce Wilder for it.
One of my favorite essays from antiquity is Marcus Cicero's On Old Age. I agree with Montaigne that that particular essay gives readers a craving for aging old & being old. As to the virtues of being old, I think it was King Agememnon who wanted ten men like Nestor (his older counselor) instead of ten (special fighting men) like Ajax: then, he said, the great city of Priam would be doomed in no time. It was the great Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. who said something to the effect that he wished to grow old since longevity has its rewards & virtues.
I first came across your name three years ago in a legal philosophy class. I read all of On Anarchism, rather than my reading list's narrow stipulation of Chapter 1. In the introduction to the edition I got hold of you referred to the apparently common practice of spending a week or so 'bashing' the book during political theory courses. I realised that was exactly what we were being invited to do. I apologise if this is trite or cliché or condescending (or a mix of all three), but I feel like I learnt a great deal from your book. And more than I learnt elsewhere: it taught me things that I 'took home' from classes, things that made me reevaluate my behaviour. Joseph Raz did not do that to me.
University has been tricky for me - at Oxford, the process of 'rusticating' for ill health is aggravatingly bureaucratic. I spent a miserable year studying in Paris and last year suspended my studies during exams. The summer was a miserable time. I felt like I was academically spent and that anything I had ever achieved was undeserved and fraudulent. The environment at Oxford is monstrous for that sort of thing. Any passion I had for learning had been dissolved in comparison, comparison, comparison.
But when I was at home - and bored and depressed out of my mind - I found your series on the Critique of Pure Reason. It was absolutely fantastic. Following your course reinvigorated my passion for learning. Somehow the clarity of your thought and the warmness of your approach reminded me of all that I had lost in the meantime. It made me feel more prepared to get back into the swing of studying. I am now preparing to write a paper on biomedical ethics. Kant's moral philosophy is often mentioned, and I find myself returning to the connection to the metaphysical (and the theory's ultimate failure in your view, if I recall correctly).
I am less concerned by my performance now. I am now concerned to have actually learnt something. Your teaching/academic style is coherent with your credo (which I think is a remarkable statement of intent, and something I have come to cherish in times of ambivalence and pessimism), which I think is embodied by your comment about placing yourself between students and 'a distant or even punitive university administration'. This struck me quite deep; I don't think I ever had a teacher who ever did that for me.
This day and age bandies the concept of 'teacher' around quite a lot. I think it used to mean something different to what it means now. Anyway, despite the strange parasocial nature of it all, I consider you one of the best teachers I have had.
Adam, I thank you from the bottom of my heart for that lovely comment. I wish this strange form of communication permitted me to thank you in person.
Post a Comment