The, Um, Aesthetic of Essays

The thing I like most about the theories I read is the way they form a logical argument I can understand and open up assumptions behind assumptions in order to get at a complex picture that is closer to the truth. They are really aiming at being a world in themselves and bulletproof. Even this is an insight on my part. I feel like a lot of theorists are saying "Oh, you didn't know you do this, but look, I just uncovered this truth about you." I like how a theory makes sense insofar as you can understand it to be true. It doesn't aim to confuse you, but to make things clearer. To synthesize and separate to form the truest pattern. I tend to split hairs because I was taught to question and define my terms at every step. Therefore my writing is clunky. Theories tell me about what's most important on various levels. This is classed as a value judgment, I know. They show me what is most basic and fundamental. They don't want to cherrypick, though. They want to be the most cohesive and all encompassing. They want to say the most, but even in this I'm cherrypicking. They grasp at totality. This is something I'm assuming that I have to legitimate. And explain the concept of totality as opposed to difference. People bitch about imposed dualities but are splitting hairs more. They want to be right. Somehow they express things on various levels much clearer than I do. This is what makes their writing beautiful, the clarity, the amount of insights, the correctness, and the cohesiveness. I get overwhelmed and think splitting hairs to such an extent points to meaninglessness or my own lack of knowledge. I got to a whole new can of worms with mentioning unpleasant and pleasant, pleasure and pain. Academics want to be most right in debate. I always wonder if the complicated questions they explore and don't answer fully plague them in their daily lives. Thinking about these questions drives me to desperation. It's like a tragic play where as Aristotle argues one has to detach from a character at some point because you can't keep up the intensity of empathy and the character dies. I assume that being more emotionally calm the next day and going back to the daily grind means what I'm doing then is most fundamental. How do academics feed their kids? I can't help but be affected emotionally by the intellectual pursuit of knowledge, asking a question and hoping for an answer because meaning is tied up with value. If it's humorous or laughed at (as Mike P. said that Plato thought philosophy a big joke), if the knot is left tangled, isn't meaning or something necessary that I want on multiple levels lost? Can a construction worker live without considering these things or scoff at my emotional discomfort because I do? Even Zen monks are looking for the truth, even postmodernists who say it's manifold. They want to be faithful to the truth in saying that language is inadequate, so they find another truth to get to it. I think people are trying to find the roots of the present situation of all these complicated thoughts and feelings we have and interpret it "spacially" or in the present moment too. So history is useful because it is the study of everything in the past. Lots of things tangle my tongue. And make me flustered. Like the fact that I have to keep mentioning space and time or abstract and concrete if I want to make a general statement. Because people won't let me go or will disprove my argument without my providing context. Because they bitch that the Enlightenment invented basic abstract concepts. That are somehow inadequate. I'll feel better tomorrow. I always do.