askandanswer | (no subject)

[ It's not a light question, and one that bears thinking about before answering, but Gisela is not generally shy with her beliefs, or when it comes to more thoughtful content. Her hands stay at her sides when she speaks, not fidgeting with the conscious steadiness of someone who is inclined to gesticulate in conversation, but has been trained out of it. ]

An abbreviated version of one I like says: "To be sentient is to suffer. As an objective sentient being man is therefore a suffering being, and since he feels his suffering, he is a passionate being. Passion is man’s essential capacity energetically bent on its object."

[ Fabian observes her with an outward seeming serenity. Out of habit, he watches her body language and allows his eyes to move up from where she had come into his sight to her eyes. He longs for engaged conversation, not at all interested in the small talk that now reigns supreme among common folk these days.

The man leans back and unfolds a hand in gesture of invitation to his table. ] and do you find yourself swept into passions, my fine stranger?

[ Gisela's head tilts to the side just slightly, like she might ask something (but won't), instead choosing simply to join him at the table. There follows another thinking pause, much shorter this time. ]

I don't know about that, honestly. [ She does not sweep well, these days. ] But it's a good reminder to be cautious of rationalism as a hiding place, and maybe to be judicious with intellectual detachment.

[ Ah, too often does it seem that people seek the opposite. An eradication of the weakness known as emotion. Ambition and green taking presidence over altruism and passion and the acceptance of mortal flaw. More than that- she mentions rationalism as a hiding place and he could not agree more.

He leans forward with a smile, true and genuine. ] I agree, the registration of emotion is often squelched by rationalism. This 'intellectual' pursuit praised as strength cripples the ability to function as a human being.

I think that falling in to this mask of armor is not an intellectual pursuit. Emotions are misinterpreted as weakness. Very opposite, I'd say. A man who feels deeply, acknowledges, and knows it well [ a soft inhale ] what an exquisite person he must be.

[ a beat ] or she- drink?

Oh — no, thank you. I would, but I've got work in the morning, and they don't like junior doctors even slightly off their game. [ Her faint surprise is momentary. While listening, she forgot the liquor was even there. It's a little gratifying to hear some of her own thoughts put in someone else's words, and she inclines her head in a nod, smile broadening. ]

I understand what you mean, though. There is a certain serenity in someone who is willing to make themselves fully part of humanity, with all the emotional and even sentimental hills one has to climb to get there. I wish more people believed that intellectual detachment doesn't make anyone superior; it's a futile attempt at being separate.

And it's probably asking for fate to knock them over. Hubris.

Edited (word repetition) 2014-09-30 06:19 (UTC)

A doctor [ the tone, even keeled and calm, speaks a certain amount of interest. Long ago, the practice was very different. While medicine grew and evolved, he lost his interest. Although you could say many of his practices still fall beneath medicinal. Alternative, they'd say. Hoax others might claim. ]

Now these words you speak [ His hand gestures are fluid, loose, flowing. They follow his overall demeanor of calm and graceful. ] True wisdom if ever I did hear it.

It seems so... [ He breaks, and starts again. It's not that his English is poor but sometimes when engaged in conversation it's a little more difficult to put it together than in his native tongue. ] Youth as of late, I find, cannot even begin to sort their emotional field.

[ there's a short laugh ] Not as if that is uncommon to youth of all generations, but more is the reaction of adults to this phenomenon. Either black or white- you're special and hidden from emotional pain - which inspires growth or you're weak for being emotional and told to hide it which inevitably does the same thing.

What kind of people are we building when the root of what a human is, is abandoned?

Edited 2014-09-30 13:51 (UTC)

Trying to be, anyway. [ She doesn't plan to flunk out or anything, but one thing she has learned: medicine, particularly when you want to be an actual brain surgeon, is competitive. Gisela is ambitious, but she doesn't like to be presumptuous.

She sits back in her chair while she listens, hands folded on her crossed knees. ]

Confused ones, I guess. Ones that aren't satisfied by anything they seem to find. Which is normal, but the means feel new, don't they? [ She's 22. Probably her perspective on this is not quite what it would be if she were even a decade older, but Gisela is, at least, attuned to the desensitization she sees in people who came up in secure middle to upper-class homes. And it bewilders her that they can seem more jaded and bored with life than the ones who grew up in war zones. ]

I think young people are aware of that paradox, too, which frustrates them. They feel like they've inherited something they can't fix. My fifteen-year-old sister is in that group.

There's another author I like — so this is another philosophy, sort of — and he wrote that irony and cynicism were necessary in the 1950s, but now cynicism, 'cynical transcendence of sentiment', he said, is some kind of fear of being human. So then I consider that maybe people are just more afraid.