Reading List

When I was coming of age the books that my contemporaries were carrying around were Hesse's "Siddhartha," "The Fountainhead" by Ayn Rand, and the really smart ones were packing "Being and Nothingness" by Sartre. I could never quite find the energy to work hard enough to understand existentialism, and what I knew of the self-justifying philosophy of Ms. Rand woke up my cynic. Why is it that high priests and priestesses almost always seem to have a philosophy or theology that justifies their oh so human pecadillos?

I was reading "The Alexandria Quartet" and "The Last Temptation of Christ." Something a little orthogonal as usual.

I understand Ms. Rand's rational egoism is back in vogue. Can we expect a reissue of "None Dare Call It Treason" anytime soon? Ooops. Sorry. I did say I was going to stay off of politics.

Sometimes it seemed like there were a limited number of stances toward the world:

• There's no hope anyway so let's all go get stoned.
• We know who the enemy is and we will destroy whoever we need to to root him out.
• Why can't we all just love each other and get along.
• No point in cooperation, life is just a game of FYB and I aim to end up on top.

There were more, of course, but the tension always seemed to be between the collectivist and individualist ones. I was on the collectivist side of things. Funny place for an introverted loner to be. I never could just suck up what I thought I believed in to be a joiner, but I thought that the only way out of things was with the help of others.

Now I'm looking at the shorter part of the journey in front of me. Despite having worked to finally have a meet companion to complete the journey with, more and more what I realize is that this is a journey I will finish alone. No mantras, no formulas, no social arrangements will change that. And there is a nagging thought that absolutely none of it matters.