On The Insurmountability of All Human Knowledge -- and The Importance of Writers (and All of Us) To Have a 'Flair For The Dramatically Existential'...

The deeper you get into philosophy -- and the harder you strive to overcome it, to master it -- the more you become humbled by the insurmountability of the task. 'Hegel's Hotel' will undoubtedly be left unfinished. I do not have enough years in my life, enough energy in my system, enough time in my week, to finish everything I want to write about in Hegel's Hotel. And even if I did/do have the time and energy, that in itself would be an act of 'existential extremism' because it would remain basically becoming a 'philosophical hermit' for the rest of my life. And as much as I love writing, I do not consider writing to be the same as living. It can be a very meaningful part of living -- a sharing of both our self-experiences and our various levels of abstracted knowledge, values and ethics...Still, writing is not all there is to living. Nor is chasing down this author or that author, this book or that book...Again, this can be a meaningful part of living, and make us a better writer...
But in the end, writing requires that we have some meaninful and interesting to write about -- to have a flair for the 'dramatically existential'.

And that my friends, doesn't usually happen sitting in front of a computer or a television. There is an element of the dramatically existential in all of us. We just have to find it.

-- dgb, Sept. 27th, 2008.