On anti-intellectualism

I have this problem. I think of it as my Savonarola side, named for the fifteenth-century monk who called for the bonfire of the Renaissance vanities and made famous the phrase "Vanitas vanitatum," which I kind of want tattooed somewhere on my body (Irony Win). The Savonarola side of me often kicks in late at night, after I've had a few drinks and have managed to extract myself, whether physically or mentally, from whatever social entanglement has come my way -- dinner with friends, rollicking house party, or even quiet evening alone with the husband. Suddenly, an internal switch flips, and all I can think is how incredibly repetitive and futile are all the conversations that human beings tend to take up: politics, religion, art, life. Everything becomes a tasteless gray mush of words, chewed and rechewed till stripped of all vital juices. And this ruminant cud gets passed from one mouth to the next with such revoltingly gleeful self-importance that I just want to drop out of the human project entirely, go live in a cave or a newspaper lined trash-bag cocoon somewhere far from the madness. I know how trite and childish it sounds, but, unfortunately, I also know some very un-trite and decidedly un-childish folks who had the same idea. Diogenes, among others.

The funny thing is, my religion-obsessed father has expressed an eerily similar sentiment. During a drunken rant at last summer's family gathering, he said he was glad to know there were acetic monks living in caves somewhere, because their piety was probably keeping the world from going straight to apocalyptic hell. When pressed on the matter ("If you like them so much, why don't you become one?"), he said he wished he could, but was just too weak -- read: too enmeshed in the meager pleasures of the bourgeois lifestyle, the regular paycheck and modest house and nuclear family. Well, minus the fundamentalist religious streak, I tend to feel the same way. If I had an ounce more testicular courage, I'd give the finger to my secure career path and go herd sheep in Argentina, because, at heart, I don't have much more faith in the purity of the organized intellectual pursuit than I do in corporate law or investment banking. Unfortunately, the play-it-safe bourgeois in me always seems to win, and it's only in dark moments of self-flagellation that I let Savonarola come out and put a match to my personal stacks of crepe and tissue tchotchkes, the pretty intellectual idols I've accumulated and used to decorate my inner chambers.

It's not that I hate intellectual endeavors, or the people who pursue them. I have massive respect for those few brave souls who manage to combine intellectual proclivities with an equally strong capacity for enthusiasm and love toward their arbitrary field of choice. Those are, hands down, my favorite kind of people. The problem is, in spite of everything, I've never felt like one of them. I can't quite get myself to see the forest for the trees, and the one big tree of knowledge is that we're all going to fucking turn to worm food one fine day, so why even bother. Vanitas vanitatum, omnia vanitas.

In other news, Happy New Year!