He considered himself an empirical philosopher. He’d taken a number of college level philosophy courses but almost always dropped out before final exams having found his instructors unbearably opinionated and unfair in their grading schemes. He was not always wrong about that. The times were, in fact, sort of “a’changing”, although perhaps not in the manner Bob Dylan had expected. On the other hand, perhaps he was wrong about that. But anyway, he considered himself a philosopher. After all, innovative philosophers frequently went unrecognized. And innovative philosophies were not built upon the structures and beliefs expressed in prior philosophies. There was a great deal to be said for “thinking outside the box”. And he enjoyed pondering abstract notions and arguing about them with others, especially with others who were less informed than he was, especially when their rhetorical abilities were less developed than his.
On this particular day (it was morning, very early morning, although it seemed like very late at night and sleep had eluded him), he was considering something he’d found written on a discarded, or perhaps lost, notebook. Handwritten. What a novelty. Who wrote anymore he’d thought when he first opened it, when computers and the Internet so easily facilitated cutting and pasting! And when with multiple-stage-translation-programs, intralingual rather than interlingual, it wasn’t that hard to disguise the origins of materials borrowed from uncited sources.
The “notes” in the notebook dealt with a comparison of the similarities between the sociopolitical and economic concepts of globalization and localization, and the social beliefs of followers of “identity politics” who referred to themselves as the “woke. At least that’s how it was titled.
The author claimed to recall when “globalization” made sense, but then, according to the author, in a Marxian sort of dialectic, up had popped “localization”. Which to the author made sense as well, although the concepts were diametrically opposed. The first had seemed to the author a sort of Alexandrian concept in the sense that Alexander of Macedon was among the first to publicly insist that all men were equal, while the second, seemed a profoundly libertarian sociological interpretation which insisted on the collective right to be communally special, communally different, with an innate right to preserve independent cultures. “The difference between the homogenous and the heterogeneous” the author had written.
“The ‘woke’ would homogenize us all (if they could) into a society perhaps ruled by a version of Kurt Vonnegut’s ‘handicapper general’: all races comingled into one and, if possible all genders as well.”
Interesting perspective he thought. He’d read that book by Vonnegut. “Harrison” something or other. It was in a class that dealt with comparative dystopian literature. He remembered that, for some reason, he’d confused it with a book about strange firemen whose job it was to burn books, and that he’d dropped that class when the class had found his mistake amusing. Way too amusing. The other students obviously couldn’t grasp dystopian subtleties, and anyway, none of the girls in the class paid any attention to him.
The author had continued (in handwriting that seemed too perfect to be a man’s), writing that: “of course, until real equality was attained” (according to the “woke” with which the author was in contact, evidently the notebook involved some sort of research project was involved), “all races, genders, nationalities, religions (at least their secular versions), sexual proclivities, etc., had to be represented in everything public, and to the extent possible, everything private as well. No one’s feelings could be hurt under threat of dire legal sanctions and civil penalties.”
“A delight to trial lawyers everywhere” the author had noted, underlining the phrase for some reason. The notes continued, now in sort of a narrative fashion, as though meant to be read somewhere, perhaps to a class:
The “woke” envision a “globalized” version of social interaction at every level. Pretty much today’s version of the world as portrayed by Hollywood. Unfortunately, a clash among “woke” constituencies erupted when the “Trans” (males who insisted they be treated as females, sort of like full time cross dressers as they used to be called, although the difference between trans and gay men seems sort of subtle, at least to me) insisted on competing on an equal basis in female sporting events, and feminists realized that the despised patriarchy, albeit in drag, was once again depriving women of competitive rights to equality in everything.
“Ironic” the author had noted. Apparently wondering how that scenario would play out, a sort of “unstoppable force facing an immovable barrier”. At least that was the metaphor the author had used.
Then the author had added a “note”:
Note: what happens if a Trans person also identifies as a lesbian? Seems as though that would be a man who identifies and dresses like a woman but still prefers intimate relations with women. Interesting.
The author had then continued, slightly changing focus:
Traditionalists, at least of the antithetically anti-woke variety on the dialectic scale, those who insist that biological diversity is a reality and that there are only two genders and are thus, according to the “woke”, automatically racist misogynists, anti-Semites, fascist warmongers and patrons of genocide if they refuse to accept alternative views on gender (even if they clung to pacifism, internationally and domestically), have sort of sprung up in a reaction against the “woke”, albeit in a sort of anarchic fashion, apparently tending to be libertarian.
He put down the notebook, wondering what kind of person the author was, sort of hoping it was a woman, a pretty one, preferably slender.
He thought of getting up and rummaging around his refrigerator for a beer, he was pretty sure there was at least one left. He kept different kinds of beer in his refrigerator, mainly for effect. Cheap beer for when he was alone and dark beer for when he had company he wanted to impress. Lowenbrau dark, he loved how old and European the brewery was, apparently it was still brewed in Mucich. The cheap beer he drank straight from the can but the dark beer he liked to serve in frozen beer mugs he kept in the freezer section. He had a similar formula for wines and tequila, although he didn’t drink those straight from the bottle. He had fancy wine and shot glasses for special guests, sometimes professors but usually coeds, and plain old glasses when he drank alone, … which was not all that often. He had to hoard his money wisely.
It was late (and very early concurrently, as we noted earlier) so he just put the notebook down, and shuffled off to his bed, still unmade but the sheets were relatively clean. He always changed them when he hoped one of his female guests would consider spending the night. That was not all that often but he’d gotten sort of lucky a few nights before.
The next morning he went off to a class he was auditing, well, auditing without the professor’s or the university’s knowledge, the class where he’d found the notebook, It was a big class in an auditorium style room and, even though roll was called on occasion, no one noticed that his name was not included. It wasn’t as if he was fascinated by the subject, but it was a good place to meet sort of interesting people, some of whom were attractive women who under normal circumstances would not pay much attention to him.
After the class he walked to a sort of down and out, twenty-four hour, seven days a week diner whose prices (if not necessarily the food), appealed to him and had the soup and sandwich special, a BLT and French Onion soup, then headed towards Central Park. He liked to walk along Central Park West and imagine that he had an apartment in one of the buildings that adjoined “the” Park. He liked to go by the Dakotas where John Lennon had once lived and where he’d died.
He wondered what Yoko Ono was really like. His friend Bill hated her and called her Yucky-Oh-No, blaming her for the Beatle’s separation. But he didn`t care, he was a Stone’s man himself.
He sort of drifted into the heart of Park and watched a softball game being played next to an impromptu touch football game. The players kept getting mixed up and the softball guys became annoyed when the touch football guys drifted onto the space the softball players had claimed as their own, after all, it was set up for softball. But the Park was everyone’s. Some middle-aged women were playing soccer on the opposite side. After a while though it started to drizzle so he headed back to his garden apartment.
“Garden apartment” he mumbled, “right, it’s more like a subterranean cave”. But it was what he could afford, and after all, he was playing the role of an undergraduate student. Cement block and wood plank bookshelves and all, decorated with multicolored candle residue set in old bottles of Chianti. It was a studio apartment but the bathroom wasn’t bad, and it wasn’t really all that tiny. “Less to cleanup” he thought to himself.
When he walked in his door he spotted the notebook on the floor by his bed, picked it up and placed it on the table that doubled as a desk and dining space. “Got to clean this up a bit” he thought, hoping someone interesting would drop by. Oddly enough, that happened sometimes. So he made his bed, without changing the sheets, and even washed the dirty dishes in the sink that served both the kitchen and the bathroom. It was never a good idea to leave dirty dishes there if someone ever showed up and needed to use the John. He wondered what “John” had to do with bathroom functions, but for some reason it did. He decided he’d Google the question after he was through cleaning up and decided what to do with his evening.
In the meantime, the drizzle morphed into a driving rain which sort of decided his evening plans for him. A pleasant evening at home, or it might have been if his aparta-studio had been a bit larger and had had a fireplace, one with real logs and a warm fire burning. And if he had some brandy, but for the moment, his tequila would do. So he got his salt shaker out, cut up a lime and half-filled a water glass with the amber liquid he liked best. Dinner and drink combined he thought, as he opened a bag of nachos, humming Margaritaville to himself and imagining he was in Key West
After his sort of dinner he picked up the notebook again, speculating on who the owner might be, imagining that it belonged to one of the more attractive women in the class he was sort of auditing. There were a few, and he wondered if he could use it as an excuse to meet one or more of them in a gallant sort of way, certainly a reasonable ice breaker. But he wanted to read it first, not because he was all that interested in its contents, but he wanted to be able to pretend that he had been just in case the owner seemed worthwhile. He could develop and rehearse a few lines first, just in case.
So he opened the notebook and continued reading:
There is a confusing sort of middle ground”, the author had written. “The ‘woke” insist on the right to personalization in matters of style, of dress, tattoos, interpersonal intimate groupings, but certainly not in matters of political opinions where only those whose opinions are ‘correct’ ought to be ‘allowed’ to share and express them. To the “woke”, effective censorship is the hallmark of a free society. On the other hand, ‘traditionalists’, at least younger traditionalists, don’t seem to give much of a damn what they wear, as long as it’s fairly clean. At least that’s been my experience with those I know and classify that way.
“I wonder if that means anything” the author had written, “If it provides any psychological or sociological insights?” There was a telephone number circled in red with a date about a week ahead. “Hmmm” he wondered, “should I call and try and find out to whom the notebook belongs?” Or perhaps, he thought, he could pin a note in the classroom where he’d found it with his own name and phone number asking the owner to contact him, but then he decided that might put his surreptitious attendance at risk. “Drats!” he mumbled to himself, putting off deciding what to do, … if anything. The notebook had some sketches, not bad, and some geometric drawings whose meaning was utterly unclear.
Then he sort of decided it was time to sleep, or rather, he just fell asleep with his night lamp still on and dreamt of riots and chaos and rats and roaches. In his dreams that evening, after the episode with the non-human vermin, somewhere outside of time and space, the shade of Maximilien François Marie Isidore de Robespierre smiled, chuckled, … perhaps even laughed uproariously, albeit maniacally, … he just couldn’t seem to stop.
He woke late with a foul taste somewhat inexplicably in his mouth and a throbbing ache behind his eyes, as if he’d spent the night drinking, which he most assuredly had not. So, first things first, he went to the multipurpose sink and brushed his teeth, then took a few aspirin, or ibuprofen, or, well, something to exorcise whatever was playing in his head and making it pound. Then he took a hot shower and changed into not quite clean, definitely grubby clothing, … stay at home clothing, no shoes or socks necessary.
He’d pretty much finished the notebook and was wondering what to do with, or about it, which led him to reflect on its context in an introspective manner. He liked introspection. He was an empirical philosopher after all.
We wondered where on the personality spectrum dealt with in the notes he fell, or whether he had a place there at all. Too much of his personality was reflective, depending on who he was with and what he hoped to accomplish with respect to them. Did he hope to impress them with his erudition or merely induce them to like him, or to at least consider him tolerable? Or did he want to make them feel insecure and inferior? Or was he merely hoping for a one night stand free of subsequent mental, emotional or medical entanglements?
To “wake” or not to “wake” he thought to himself, “that is the question. Whether it is better in the ….” But he couldn’t recall the rest of the quote he wanted to play with. His head was still not quite right. Of course, he realized that his attitude towards being or not being among the “woke” would in all likelihood depend on whether the author of the notebook was male or female (he voted for female), and if female, whether she was attractive or not, and if attractive, whether or not there were any possibilities for any kind of relationship with her, whether ephemeral or meaningful. An awful lot of variables and all centered, assuming the best, on what her position was with respect to the “woke”.
And that was not quite clear to him, although it seemed she (assuming it was a she) found them superficial. Then again, the author seemed to find both groups superficial.
Well, at least for the nonce, perhaps his habitual boredom would not be at the fore.
He wondered if it might not be wise to actually register for the class he was purportedly auditing.
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© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2023; all rights reserved. Please feel free to share with appropriate attribution.
Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen). Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales. He is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review, available at Substack.com, a commentator on Radio Guasca FM, and an occasional contributor to the regional magazine, el Observador. He has academic degrees in political science (the Citadel), law (St. John’s University), international legal studies (New York University) and translation and linguistic studies (the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies). However, he is also fascinated by mythology, religion, physics, astronomy and mathematics, especially with matters related to quanta and cosmogony. He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.
Guillermo Calvo Mahé 