Literary Discussions

There is a senior woman in my building who quite possibly has a Masters or PhD. I sometimes see her in the laundry room. I can tell that she sees learning as a path to academic credentials and the credentials as a means to employment earnings and administrative authority but she has no real love of knowledge or discourse and seems to feel genuine contempt for anyone who would initiate some conversation simply for the joy of discourse. The other day I saw her and mentioned that I was struggling to make all five computers, a Mac, some Windows XPs and a Linux connect to the new Roadrunner Wi-Fi. She looked at me scornfully and said "do you really NEED all those computers?"   I said... consider Pablo Casals the cellist who said "If I do not practice for one day, I notice the difference in my performance. If I do not practice for two days, my family notices. If I do not practice for three days the whole world notices."  Now, a cello is of no practical use since you cannot eat it, you cannot have intercourse with it, and you cannot slay someone with it. But the cello was Casal's life. Computers are my life. It is of value and interest to me to know the differences between Windows, Linux and Mac.  I feel sorry for that woman for it seems to me that she has passed through life without actually living it. Aristotle said "The unexamined life is not worth living." Psychiatrist Viscott turned that around and said "The unlived life is not worth examining."  But you know, there are OTHER people that I meet who are not academics but we begin to talk for hours about history, and they become engaged and say "you make it come alive; you must be a professor."   But I think an educator must be like Jesus, raising people from the dead and making them intellectually alive. I am reminded of the several times that Socrates said that misology or hatred of discourse is closely related to misanthropy.  When the good professor here says that he "loves his students" I imagine that it is a Platonic love (which we usually equate with non-sexual) but which could mean that divine love .... somewhere in the Old Testament "... do you think that I rejoice in the death of the sinner... I desire that all should turn from sin and live."  Well, in a way if our minds and curiosity are dead then we are no different from the other animals who eat, sleep, mate, fight, flight...  what makes us human is our delight in inquiry, imagination, speculation and sharing in discourse.