Information Overload

I can't decide if time is now flying or crawling... in the midst of all this revision it seems sometimes that time crawls to a halt while i'm poring over the words on my stacks of photocopied notes which sometimes merge to create the illusion of ants crawling over my page. And yet sometimes i look up at the clock and am alarmed at what seems to be an enormous lapse of time which i had been oblivious to. I make it sound like i'm hard at work, but i'm not really...haha. it can be so much better...

Still, i have been reading loads of stuff and it's bordering on such an information overload that i'm unsure if i'm experiencing one of my intellectual orgasms from the assemblage of intelligent academic discourse that i attempt to immerse myself with everyday, or it's just my brain having spasms from all the shit i try to take in and my pretending to believe i really do remember all of it.

A lot of what i seem to read has been on the state of disillusionment of the world, particularly America. My Hollywood exam I studied the 70s and it seems like all about it was the downbeat pessimism and disillusionment of society towards a country reeking of rampant capitalism. And then now moving on to 19th century American literature, (my next exam one week from today) it seemed like what the 70s experienced, they already experienced it during the 19th century when America was rapidly developing and evident social divisions emerged from the young and unstable country which could not handle the emerging crises. Then I look at the world now... and i realise it's not very different, is it. Just that instead of applying only to America, that disillusionment seems to have expanded congruent to globalisation.

I had just been reading an article on Margaret Fuller, widely considered to be the most intelligent woman in antebellum New England. Her transcendentalist philosophies (which I hadn't read only till now because i have no choice and an exam) seemed to appeal to me today...

She was acutely alive to the tragic irony that the whites, in order to justify their own inevitable rapacity and destructiveness, were determed to destroy the Indian's sole remaining possession, his self-respect. Woman in the Nineteenth Century revealed that she saw male-female relations as another version of the same dynamic...whether Indian or woman: you merited no better.

Should we consider ourselves fortunate that we now live in an age where women have progressed past the age of oppression? Do we even realise that this so-called 'gender liberation' has only progressed in certain states? How many other parts of the world, especially in third world countries, do these oppressions still exist for women?!

Then i think about the feminist movement (Fuller can unsurprisingly said to be one of the pioneers for the movement)... and i sometimes wonder if we don't go too far in proclaiming equality; that in some modern contexts, males are becoming the ones victimized by a whole population of women that sometimes go way over the top with their myths and ideologies.

That discrepancy between myth and reality... how hard it is to define. how hard it is a truth for society to accept.
I think about the transcendentalists, the socialists... attempting to create a utopia on Brook Farm. I think of these intellects, writing The Dial, holding elite 'Conversations'... how i would have loved to be part of that. What it must be like to believe so firmly in one belief, have that one pursuit in life, to seek that truth... I read that Fuller and her eventual Italian husband connected by their shared political sympathies.. that they even risked the life of their child because of their over-riding commitment to the destinies of the political ends they uphold. That's when it struck me. Would you ever risk your child's life for an ideology? I know it may sound twisted, but I am thorougly fascinated. That these people would risk lives for a passion they uphold... I somehow wish that someday I could experience the same thing.

Suddenly, I didn't feel like I should be sitting in my library pathetically reading about someone's actions, when i could be doing something instead. But then I recall, Fuller had to go to school too, she studied in Harvard. So I content myself by settling into my chair once more... my time will come... I think to myself. When I am liberated from the chains of process, my time will come when I will be able to do what I want, pursue what I believe in, and hopefully... write or do something that would be a 'piece of life'....something that time would not be able to erase.

Once nested back in my chair, i think about the Communists... Mao's consortium of followers... the French students, taking part in a Revolution, marching with a red book in hand, written by a Chinese man when they can't even begin to speak or understand the language... how easy it is, also, for passion to blind reason. I think about Mario Bellocchio's new recently acclaimed film,
Good Morning, Night (Boungiorno, Notte) and how the Red Brigade kidnapped and murdered Italy's prime minister in the name of ideology... and I am amazed, once again, at that thin line that separates myth from reality.

It is not a black and white distinction - to the definition of that line - perhaps the scary thing is it is a grey area. And how dangerously can one be treading on this grey area before wandering blindly into misguided conviction before it is too late for rectification.
Still, I believe there will always be a need for ideologies. I don't want to be sitting for stupid exams that can't measure your intelligence in the pathetic span of a one-hour essay duration. I want to be out there making it happen...