Hollow

Today in Ovid class (Latin 223), I came into class feeling that I had, for once, correctly interpreted the passages we had read, from the story of Io in the Metamorphoses (Bk. I.625-667). I was ready to expound on the cow-noises in the lines and on the appalling insensitivity and selfishness of Inachus, Io's father, when he discovers she has been transformed thus. After all, it seems like most of his speech is about himself: how he can't marry her off and get kids and grandkids and how it's so awful for him he wishes he could die (but can't since he is a god). 

However, I was wrong again. I always seem to misread everything in Ovid. I always misinterpret everything I read--I've been too gullible and naive most of the time, but this time I guess I was too cynical. But that's what we're supposed to be, right? It's "literary criticism"--doesn't that mean you have to view everyone as selfish and through a cynical lense? It's all about the "will to power" and desire for sex--nothing else. Thus spoke Foucault or some other blasted French scholar from the post-1950s period. But, no, apparently Inachus is for once a genuinely bereaved father. 

I was also wrong about the cow noises... because, though a final "M" in a word followed by a vowel normally elides with it, the two lines I was thinking of are, naturally, an exception. There has to be a hiatus between "miserum" and "exclamat" (l. 651) and between "miserum" and "ingeminat" (l. 653). 

But let's come to my point: I realized that I was trying to read this in the expected, 'right' way--which was, I thought, through cynicism. I was one of those people I used to hate: who study for the test rather than the content, who seek to agree with the professor in all things rather than thinking for themselves. I feel like a broken person. And I've been realizing more and more over the past year that I am a hollow person. My complete and total failure to acheive happiness and independence following my undergraduate graduation (May 2010) as all my friends did so quickly broke me somehow. 

I have become cynical because I repress my own opinions and thoughts. I have become used to feeling that my opinion is worth nothing and probably wrong. After all, every time I have opened my mouth about something, I have been shot down as wrong (even "evil") for thinking that--or simply ignored. Besides this I hate arguing about politics, philosophy or religion. But I fear I avoid these nasty fights (which usually leave me wanting to shoot myself) by backing down in all situations--to the point of never even standing up. I have come to deny that I even have opinions and thoughts--even to myself. 

So, washed over daily with philosophies and modes of thinking (either academic or endemic to modern society at large) which I do not agree with, but feeling it is futile to argue against what everyone else in the universe believes, I have kept silence. And in keeping silence I have become ignorant of my own opinions--they are so deeply supressed that I am not sure how to articulate them, though I have some subconscious, half-formed idea of what they are. I know that I have thoughts and opinions, but don't know what they are. 

I rarely give voice to my real opinions. Instead I sarcastically and cynically parrot the ideas and beliefs I am supposed to have--as dictated by contemporary society and by academia. And I also feel I have no time to express myself or form opinions of my own--I have to read other people's ideas all the time.

So, maybe I'm in the wrong place. Maybe at this time in my life I should be forming an identity of my own as I grow in independence and "maturity", I am instead in an environment which restricts individual thought: the University. Sure, there are opportunities for free speech in college, but only if you agree with prevailing attitudes or don't mind being lynched by your classmates. 

Ah! I am so repressed in my opinions that I don't even know if they are that controversial at all or if they'll upset people. I assume no one wants to hear what I think. No one wants to know me either--and I let them not know me. I let them make whatever assumptions and judgments they choose. I let them remain ignorant of the truth--because what is the truth worth anyway? Truth seems irrelevant in my cynical mindset. It is more important that people feel good, feel confident that their world-view is correct. I don't want to shake up anyone's assumptions about me because they might feel they were wrong to judge that way. And that would be wrong. 

And besides, I tell myself with a bitter satisfaction, leaving them to wallow in their own ignorance and preconceptions is the best revenge on them for having them. The best punishment for wilful ignorance or prejudice, I feel, is to leave the ignorant or prejudiced person in the darkness of those maladies. People who choose to be ignorant deserve their ignorance. This is what I say to myself when I choose to avoid social connection or interaction. 

Anyway, this is the situation I am in. I have repressed my opinions and deferred my own judgement for others' to such a degree that I no longer know what I feel or think. So, I cynically and sarcastically rail against the prevailing opinions and expected ideas in my mind because I feel trapped and unable to form an argument against them--or not permitted to. 

So, I'm starting a blog, because I needed to blab about these things. I eagerly await the smacking down I am soon to receive. But maybe I'll use this blog to explore and develop my own opinons and ideas. Anyway, maybe I will use it to share my real view of the world--not a sarcastic, facetious commentary on what I feel forced to believe. 

But, that's what I had to say. 

Benjamin F. Ossoff