The Memory Of A Dusty Thought
What you see in a man becomes a way of exploring visibility beyond appearances, if you are aware of the depths that define his being.
About a week ago, completely by chance, I saw one of my professors from college again. Gray hair, brushed, about 20 kg more than the average of common sense, walking with heavy steps, with cheerful eyes, but which betrayed a certain doubt, as if the man was aware of his own injustices, but tried to he hides with a carefree smile. I look at him, examine him with my eyes, and notice that he has many medical problems, especially knowing that he suffered two strokes. So the head is definitely not good.
Good, but what does his restless look say, well hidden behind a delicate, amiable smile, a smile that often arises from savory humor and ends in a lamentable apotheosis? Read on!
I told him that the time of university professors is over. Artificial intelligence like ChatGPT or BARD are absolutely necessary tools to learn by yourself, about anything, without going to college. High school students already prefer to learn by themselves with the help of the CK-12 Flexi plugin from the ChatGPT4 version, than to pay for exorbitant, intense and not enlightening meditations. Students don't even go to classes anymore, they learn everything by themselves with ChatGPT. Quite simply, the explanations and way of organizing learning offered by Artificial Intelligence are far superior to any traditional school or university system.
Shaken, stunned, almost with tears in his eyes, the professor knows very well that his generation, the last of teachers, is in decline. However, he answers me, with his head slightly bowed, as if he wanted to hide the reality: "AI doesn't really help you, you still have to think." And you know how he said it? With a tone of that pride, worthy of the war hero's cry, which lets us understand that, in one sense, he is a great thinker and great connoisseur.
Have you ever had an experience where an image, seemingly without content, became clear evidence of the existence of a work from which no response is expected?
I was particularly struck by the words "you must think", as if they were said by a genius, something closely related to the accomplishment of a great deed, culminating in some achievement beyond all expectations. Just for this reason, out of curiosity, I googled the professor's name, maybe I'll find something interesting. And what did I find? Well, the first 3 results show the professor's CV. So, it would be said that the CV is the most important thing that stands out about the professor. Then, the next few results show the titles of some outdated books, but, mind you, not their contents.
Here, then, is a thinker without content.
Reading the great CV of the professor, on the Google webcache, where nothing is deleted, we learn that he holds a doctorate. But, Hocus Pocus, where's the doctorate? The Internet knows nothing about the work of the great thinker, work that nevertheless elevated him to office, offering him so many benefits over time. Practically, the existence of this work is put under the sign of doubt.
And do you know what the lack of proof of the existence of this doctoral thesis looks like? It's like passing the baccalaureate exam, without appearing for the exam. In other words, the great dottore should account for at least one colossal fraud, a plagiarism or a worthless thesis, perhaps even a non-existent one, of which other professors are also guilty, who have not published their works anywhere.
Does the image you have built become clear evidence of a creation that evokes deep feeling but does not stimulate awareness of your virtues?
Attention: this is the model teacher who says words like "you have to think", but who has absolutely nothing to show for it! But in order to become a great thinker, you must follow the advice of Goethe, who declared to a friend of his: "To become a composer, you must have studied harmony and counterpoint for 11 years, and you end up subjecting the inventive spirit to the rules, when imagination and feeling are needed. "
I would give you a grade of 1, professor, with indulgence, if you had published the "miracle" of your mind on the Internet, so I would score you just for your presence. But because you are ashamed of your deed, and you have been hiding it for so long, then you are a repeat student. Yes, you're just a worthless repeater in the world, as insipid and unknown as your work, just like almost all other university professors who haven't published their doctorates. There are too many swindlers and profane in Romanian universities.
Can you capture in a single image, through the visual aspect, the emotions of the man caught in the vulnerability that accompanies an overestimated Ego?
Now, continuing his words and trying to argue something, he seemed to feel the need for a justification for this resumption of opinion, as if making an effort to remember something, at least a little, of his achievements. His memory had not betrayed him, how many events did he experience during this time, what facts, what experiences, what realities were superimposed on the deep images, hiding them in his soul?
Everything suddenly became more alive again, clear and hazy, like a distant memory, among which the sun appears, miraculously like a hope. I myself, trying to live what the teacher was reliving in his mind, among memories and life stories, I was gripped by the strange fever of the inability to know, to equate, to understand everything, because this is how the foray into a world begins enigmatic. With the question: "Who am I really?"
People often speak from memory, debugging experiences and reflections, so that they don't repeat the mistakes, or maybe to absolve themselves, to justify themselves, to find an excuse, to mask their mistakes along the line of a strategic retreat. By repeating it together, they learn to believe in the saving words, which somehow excuse them, do not betray their lack of understanding. And when their memory fails them, and it often does at an age, in moments of uncertainty, then they compose comforting images of the victors.
Have you ever experienced a deep feeling in front of an image that highlights the cause-effect relationships of actions that are not in favor of developing personal qualities?
Most university professors have no idea what science actually is, or why it could become an act of thinking. Because the first step to understanding knowledge is to save it. The second step is to make it known. Then use it wisely, in accordance with what you have learned from others, equally with what you have learned from your experiences.
And expressions like "you have to think" are a bit hasty, because for those who are really knowledgeable, they represent long roads, marches made in the rain or on trojan paths and haunted by blizzards. Only brains tamed in the direction of an overestimated Ego do not know how to distinguish between truth and doubt.
While he spoke to me, with such fervor, something in me registered a kind of enigma. And yet, I had no idea about all these things, I recorded them, I was impressed for a few seconds, but...oh! it's impossible, I can't stay permanently impressed.
A part of the memory had betrayed the professor, a part of his thinking shrugged, unhindered and as if he wanted to bypass a wall difficult to cross. For this reason, there is no point in looking for any survivor of the battle between knowledge and ignorance, between truth and illusion.
The world has as many thinkers as it has flies that attract everything that means misery. Unknown heroes among the thousands of martyrs who are now dust. Heroes who did not understand the struggle, who had no idea what that war was, because all they undertook were only fragments of insincere interest, an appearance, lacking any genuine content or a deep understanding of what a war really involves. Everything I have written here is a criticism of the shallowness or falseness of their commitment.
Can the creation you bring to life live in the shadows without revealing its true essence?
From the desire to be as authentic as possible, the professor, the great philosopher, ended up becoming his own director, performer and unique spectator. He spoke like a know-it-all, offering no evidence of his own expertise. After all, knowledge is an adventure turned pious duty, a kind of sacred journey that reveals the hidden secrets of deep understanding. And then, that strange, painful sensation of reconstructing a piece of truth, even if it is fragile. In order to understand something, you have to have participated in a war, to really hear the booming of cannons, the hiss of bullets, all the inferno of noise, smoke, fire, horror and death.
This is what the professor lacked all his life: the courage to truly go through fire and sword. However, when I saw him again, he seemed haunted by Napoleonic obsessions, mentally crippled by the tendency to greatness, dominated by the desire to appear more than he really is. Deceitful, deceptive, intriguing, his thinking did not allow him to realize that in the grand equation of the world he is as small and insignificant, totally unknown as his own doctoral thesis, a creation of which no one knows anything.
For so many years, the survivor of a hallucinatory consciousness carries with him, day by day, the shadow of an obsession: the memory of a high self-esteem, which I tried too hard to shake. Yes, I remembered here the encounter with Cervantes' hero in the fight with the windmills, and I am not sorry that the windmills remained only simple illusions. And knowing some is still a big illusion, just like their existence.
At this very moment I am trying to draw a conclusion, a kind of philosophy supported by good knowledge, which I am making known to the world:
"I knock on the door of a house and no one answers. I call, I press the doorbell, the door is not locked, does that mean someone is home ? Or is it just an empty house, abandoned, abandoned in her world I am small and passing ? What does she have so interesting to tell me ? I didn't think it was worth telling me anything specific, so I moved on..."
A creation that does not reveal itself hides the false essence of its creator, often hiding due to plagiarism or fraud. Rather, a creator who hides his creation is the saboteur of an image that might reveal the truth of his own uselessness and worthlessness.
The memory of a dusty thought leaves behind forgotten, ignored memories that never return. It belongs to the man who is empty inside, devoid of content, but with pretensions of a great connoisseur and thinker, who failed to animate his own achievements with "a life without death".
