Department Of Dilettante Research, Part 3: The Dilettantists

[koganbot]

Last week Mark made yet another Department Of Dilettante Research post on poptimists. And here are some additional thoughts of my own.

A crucial component (the centering component, perhaps) of the Department Of Dilettante Research is conversations among several people - surrounded by kibitzers, onlookers, revelers, brawlers, etc. - where no one leaves the conversation until everyone is satisfied that the others understand him or her. Different conversations may have different central characters (though my guess is that the same characters will keep turning up time and time again), and "central" might just mean "central to me"; that is, there may be other conversations with as many or more participants and onlookers than the ones I'm calling "central." But the conversations I'm calling "central" will be the ones where no one leaves the conversation until everyone is satisfied that the others understand him or her. Without those conversations, there's no department.

I want these conversations to occur in a fundamentally open space, hence the revelers, kibitzers, etc. (how open will be a matter for experience to teach us). This is to lessen the chance of our becoming social retards.

I will have trouble finding people able to take a central role. Most people who show up are going to bring their tastes, their perceptions, their particular insights and accumulation of knowledge, their special enthusiasms, their sociability. But few of them will have the desire to get into someone else's head, the willingness to work to make their ideas comprehensible to others, the drive to face the tensions and inadequacies of their own ideas, or the desire to test those ideas. Way fewer. The conversation a couple of threads ago between me and cis about "normal" and "abnormal" discourse is a case in point. I said that Rorty's definition of normal discourse was inexplicably retarded because it demanded something that's actually absent from most normal discourse: near unanimity as to what is considered relevant and what counts as answering a question. cis disagreed, but to my mind didn't understand why I thought such consensus was so rare. I elaborated. cis disappeared into the night. And it's always this way. Of course, people have their priorities, and not everyone is going to try and finish every thought; but what's causes conversations to abort in ilX and poptimists comes from some deeper problem: a mental block of some sort, or an inner fire that's missing. (Too early for me to tell if cis has the fire or not.)

To repeat something I posted on Mark's poptimists thread, there's a tension in the word "dilettante." It is pulled between two meanings:

1st meaning: A dilettante flits from subject to subject and project to project, alighting on one, taking shallow sips, and then heading for the next, without really concentrating his efforts on anything. (Most crucial defect: the dilettante leaves off from an inquiry before the subject matter can work any changes on him. In fact, his being this sort of dilettante may be due to his aversion to being changed.)

2nd meaning: A dilettante is someone who is endlessly curious and follows questions and connections wherever they lead. ("Dilettante" derives from the Latin verb that means "to delight.")

The second meaning describes a very ambitious dilettantism, since I'm including in it my idea that we won't allow ourselves to break off a conversation until each is convinced that the others understand him or her; it is suggesting that in one's journeys one tries to master other people's ideas.

But the flitters may themselves play a crucial role in keeping the department open to the world, given that you don't know what interesting place they might land or whom they'll meet and whom they'll introduce the more "central" characters to. They can provide a broader view of the landscape. Even if the view is terribly inaccurate, it's better than no view.

Also, there may be people, flitters or not, who can't analyze their way out of a bathtub but who are skilled at getting to know the character of someone or something.

Comments

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

Hmm. I would love to be able to bibble on about stuff all day and take part in the DDR approach, however there are a few problems that will stop me doing this:

1. On a practical level: the obvious problem most of us have, ie actually having to hold down a day job.

2. On a personal level: I have a very short attention span, in the sense that I find it really quite difficult to concentrate on *anything* for more than 5 minutes at a time. Even the post above that I am commenting on. Thankfully the nature of my job means this isn't usually a problem professionally, but when I have to read a long article or comment that introduces new ideas or language I lack the mental rigidity required to really focus and end up skipping bits. I might even end up flicking to another website halfway through and have return to the article later, or just sit and stare into space thinking about something completely different. This can be useful for linking ideas across different subjects (dilettante 1) but scuppers any chance of indepth research or pursuing an idea to completion (dilettante 2).

3. Following on from 2, I have a bad short term memory and tend to forget conversations/obligations/ideas very quickly unless reminded (thank christ for lj comment notifications).

To steal Lex's words from his Bjork review, I feel I could be a good lightning rod for ideas - however I worry they will just get earthed out straight away without ever giving rise to Frankenstein's Monster.