Alpha to Omega

I re-read The Catcher In the Rye today. It’s about my sixth time I’d say. The thing about good art that I love is every time you go back to it, there’s always something you didn’t see, hear, realise or remember the time before. I like that the way you're thinking or feeling that day, whatever state you're in, is mirrored by what becomes most memorable. In this particular instance, I found a passage towards the end of the book about education.

“ ‘I’m not trying to tell you that only educated and scholarly men are able to contribute something valuable to the world. It’s not so. But I do say that educated and scholarly men, if they’re brilliant and creative to begin with – which, unfortunately, is rarely the case – tend to leave infinitely more valuable records behind them than men do who are merely brilliant and creative. They tend to express themselves more clearly, and they usually have a passion for following their thoughts through to the end. And – most important – nine times out of ten they have more humility than the unscholarly thinker.’ “

In my irritating need to classify, I ended up assuming that if this was true (and I think it is), there would be four different types of people, (without taking into account the grey, shady types and exception-to-the-rules, of course). The first are the “educated and scholarly”, the “brilliant and creative, educated and scholarly”, the “merely brilliant and creative”, and finally, the uneducated and uncreative.

I’ve encountered a few people who were educated and scholarly, but unfortunately not very creative or brilliant. Salinger didn't quite touch on how absurd these bastards are; these are the pompous idiots who quote dead guys and drone on about other people's ideas. It is most depressing to encounter people whose entire minds are paid for and for whom it is only chance that separates them from the uneducated and uncreative, i.e. the simpletons. There is a certain innocence and charm to a simpleton, whereas someone who is merely educated tends to be uninspiring, galling and monotonous. It wouldn’t be so terrible if they had some humility about themselves, though usually this isn’t the case; I suppose it does take a certain level of haughtiness to consider education indicative of intelligence.

I used to be the kind of person who rejected the idea of education as some kind of mass production of thought. To some degree, I’ve retained some of this jaded ideal. However, in the past few years, mostly with the onset of protestors and war and Bush and Michael Moore, I’ve begun to notice that the lack of it, often the outright rejection of it, leads to a pitiful state of affairs. I have no idea if the people I encountered were intelligent or creative; their absolute illiteracy prevented me from knowing so. This was my major gripe with the protestors. There were many who began speaking and had great things to say, but were completely drowned out by the jackasses who were there because somebody told them Bush was a bad guy. There was also the “I wanna be a hippie” thing, but that’s not for this space and time. To summarize, I’m a little tired of people needing to be entertained in order to open their eyes.

The real issue here is of course, humility, not education or brilliance. Considering my opinion of those without it, I should probably be learning how to do it.