The search continues
This entry was originally posted on 3 December 2002 at 1:21 p.m.
Lately i've been having these days where i want to surf the Web, but i can't think of anything offhand that interests me and that would have a good chance of turning up a viable hit or two on a search engine. Look up something like "truth," "reality," or "existence" on MSN or Google, and, chances are, the first fifty sites that appear won't be the philosophical treatises you had hoped you'd find.
I find this problematic, given that the Web is such a great source of potential for these kinds of things. The real problem, however, is that i am, once again, Looking For Something.
See, occasionally, i find it necessary to embark on a quest for the undefinable, intangible, Something. It lurks around the corner of every click, of every Borgesian path in the Garden of Forking Websites, of every path not taken, of every broken link. It waits patiently for someone to find it, comfortable and secure in its importance. It is some cosmic truth, some hitherto unknown connection between disparate facts, some idea (remember eidos) whose originality is both undeniable and utterly profound. It is a newly-formed kabbalah, a ray of light shining on the hidden spirituality of the electronic cosmos. It is greatness itself.
It doesn't exist.
But i go looking for it anyway, typing the names of random artifacts, principles, or historical people into search engines, hoping that one of these hits will lead to the Ultimate Something (or if not the Ultimate Something, then at least the Penultimate Something). It never does, no matter how many times i look for it, and while by now i might have given up on other searches, my hope is yet to be depleted by this one. I click away aimlessly at link after link, knowing that enlightenment is not something so easily attainable--and if it is, it shouldn't be.
After a while i usually become too bored or frustrated to continue, so i head home. But even then, i still feel as though something is missing, incomplete, waiting. It is out there and it wants to be discovered, but it has hidden itself in an electronic library as convoluted as the one at Babel that our dear Borges described (i'm beginning to realize that on days like today, it always comes back to Borges).
Perhaps the answer comes not from asking the question, but from the search itself, i think. I play a game of Freecell and ponder this for a while. Eventually, i'll toss the entire project...but deep down, i know it will come back around. And i'll be somehow fulfilled to see it again.
What is this madness?
Lately i've been having these days where i want to surf the Web, but i can't think of anything offhand that interests me and that would have a good chance of turning up a viable hit or two on a search engine. Look up something like "truth," "reality," or "existence" on MSN or Google, and, chances are, the first fifty sites that appear won't be the philosophical treatises you had hoped you'd find.
I find this problematic, given that the Web is such a great source of potential for these kinds of things. The real problem, however, is that i am, once again, Looking For Something.
See, occasionally, i find it necessary to embark on a quest for the undefinable, intangible, Something. It lurks around the corner of every click, of every Borgesian path in the Garden of Forking Websites, of every path not taken, of every broken link. It waits patiently for someone to find it, comfortable and secure in its importance. It is some cosmic truth, some hitherto unknown connection between disparate facts, some idea (remember eidos) whose originality is both undeniable and utterly profound. It is a newly-formed kabbalah, a ray of light shining on the hidden spirituality of the electronic cosmos. It is greatness itself.
It doesn't exist.
But i go looking for it anyway, typing the names of random artifacts, principles, or historical people into search engines, hoping that one of these hits will lead to the Ultimate Something (or if not the Ultimate Something, then at least the Penultimate Something). It never does, no matter how many times i look for it, and while by now i might have given up on other searches, my hope is yet to be depleted by this one. I click away aimlessly at link after link, knowing that enlightenment is not something so easily attainable--and if it is, it shouldn't be.
After a while i usually become too bored or frustrated to continue, so i head home. But even then, i still feel as though something is missing, incomplete, waiting. It is out there and it wants to be discovered, but it has hidden itself in an electronic library as convoluted as the one at Babel that our dear Borges described (i'm beginning to realize that on days like today, it always comes back to Borges).
Perhaps the answer comes not from asking the question, but from the search itself, i think. I play a game of Freecell and ponder this for a while. Eventually, i'll toss the entire project...but deep down, i know it will come back around. And i'll be somehow fulfilled to see it again.
What is this madness?
posted by Circus at 3:03 PM
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