Very touching to read that now, with hindsight. Eerie. I like what he says about worship. We all worship something. I think that's true. This would be a good essay to have students read and analyze. Very compelling.
Yes, very eerie considering his recent suicide: "It is not the least bit coincidental that adults who commit suicide with firearms almost always shoot themselves in: the head. They shoot the terrible master. And the truth is that most of these suicides are actually dead long before they pull the trigger."
I appreciate the deconstruction of the commencement speech and his idea of the self-centered default setting we all most necessarily have but must work against.
But I'm not sure we all "worship" something even though I probably have said that myself at some point. Certainly the atheist or the believer or the whatever *can* worship, but I hope we can decide not to worship. Of course I wouldn't take that argument to its extreme by suggesting we can somehow lift ourselves out of and above discourse, social construction etc.
I think he's saying--and here I am pretty sure I agree--that we are built to worship, just like we are built to have language, and that we struggle to construct the self within the constraints of these built-ins. I think people can deconstruct all the day long, and we are still stuck with the linguistic order's binary imperative and the imperative to create hierarchies of value.
Very touching to read that now, with hindsight. Eerie.
ReplyDeleteI like what he says about worship. We all worship something. I think that's true.
This would be a good essay to have students read and analyze. Very compelling.
Yes, very eerie considering his recent suicide: "It is not the least bit coincidental that adults who commit suicide with firearms almost always shoot themselves in: the head. They shoot the terrible master. And the truth is that most of these suicides are actually dead long before they pull the trigger."
ReplyDeleteI appreciate the deconstruction of the commencement speech and his idea of the self-centered default setting we all most necessarily have but must work against.
But I'm not sure we all "worship" something even though I probably have said that myself at some point. Certainly the atheist or the believer or the whatever *can* worship, but I hope we can decide not to worship. Of course I wouldn't take that argument to its extreme by suggesting we can somehow lift ourselves out of and above discourse, social construction etc.
I think he's saying--and here I am pretty sure I agree--that we are built to worship, just like we are built to have language, and that we struggle to construct the self within the constraints of these built-ins. I think people can deconstruct all the day long, and we are still stuck with the linguistic order's binary imperative and the imperative to create hierarchies of value.
ReplyDelete