Oh, to be great in my own mind

CONCEPTUALIZING THE WOGGIE – BLOW AFFAIR: AN EXISTENTIAL EXPERIMENT IN THE THEATRE OF THE ABSURD

” But that is not the question. Why are we here, that is the question. And we are blessed in this, that we happen to know the answer. Yes, in this immense confusion one thing alone is clear. We are waiting for Godot to come.”

Samuel Beckett – “Waiting for Godot”

“The question before us, of course, is whether the present thread can carry the weight of such philosophical and psychological freight.”

Montrealman (12/10, 5:00PM)

As predicted, unless the level of communication were to be raised, this thread would not be able to carry the weight of the philosophical and psychological freight placed upon it. The dialogical encounter between Woggie and Blow on the one hand and the commenters on the other was foredoomed to incoherence and failure for the same reasons as the two participants in Beckett’s “Waiting For Godot.” They did not know who Godot was and, if he did appear, would not recognize him. But Godot never came. In the same way the commenters would not recognize a solution to the Woggie-Blow Affair since, given their terms of reference, there was (and is) no solution. It will never come. But what does all this mean and what is its connection to the Woggie-Blow affair?

What it means is that, first of all, Woggie and Blow must be applauded for conducting their existential experiment in the theatre of the absurd. In that context the part of Godot is taken by the real identities of Woggie and Blow. However, given the same level of communication as Woggie and Blow the commenters are fated to suffer that “immense confusion” of which Beckett speaks, one consisting of the play’s subtext. What is that subtext? It is that of the meaninglessness and absurdity of life. So we must salute Woggie and Blow for an excellent job but, at the same time, we must ask whether there is any egress from such an aporia, such a dead-end of meaningful communication. I believe there is.

What must be done is to raise the level of communication to the second-order, that of philosophy.The adversarial stance of the commenters must be abandoned. The Woggie-Blow Affair must be conceptualized. It must be intellectualized. It must be philosophized. For the commenters to simply respond at the same adversarial level will never resolve the question because – and this is important – because they have become PARTICIPANTS in the experiment and there are no “winners” when the experiment consists of the existential meaninglessness and absurdity of life. Rather, one must become a SPECTATOR, one having a degree of conceptual distance from the Affair itself. One must, in a words, engage in philosophy.

To do this requires that one must recognize the underlying existential absurdity of the Woggie-Blow Affair and engage it at that level, i.e., the necessary aporia of their philosophical position, that dead-end of meaningful dialogue. You ask of what does such a philosophical or spectatorial perspective consist? I answer, “You’re looking at it now.”

A pleasure as always.

Cheerio!

RSVP

: Wogdog (12/13, 11;22AM)

Thank you Woggie. Yes, it was good wasn’t it.

In “layman’s terms” I suppose you could say that there are two main points in my “Conceptualizing the Woggie-Blow Affair,” to wit (1) there is no substantive meaning to the Affair as such which might be resolved in any conventional manner, and (2) given (1), those commenters seeking to engage you both must re-conceptualize their adversarial stance.

(1) The Woggie-Blow Affair, at least to me, bears a strong resemblance to Beckett’s “Waiting For Godot,” his masterpiece of the theatre of the absurd. There is no denotative extra-linguistic referent to Godot. He has no reality but consists rather of a figment of the imagination of the two protagonists which nonetheless dominates their respective consciousnesses. In effect, the play has no meaning, no message, beyond the fact that life doesn’t either and so falls necessarily to the level of the absurd.

(2) Given (1) it is futile for the commenters to engage in argumentative discourse. Quite simply, there is nothing to argue about. If headway is to be achieved their adversarial stance must be abandoned since they, the commenters, then become little more than participants, additional players in the the Woggie-Blow Affair, a drama in the theatre of the absurd. They have become co-opted.
What must be done is to re-conceptualize the Woggie-Blow Affair as just that, a drama in the theatre of the absurd. The commenters must seek out its underlying philosophical rationale. But what is that rationale?

To maintain that life is absurd, an exercise without meaning, is to subscribe to the position of philosophical nihilism (“nihil” – Latin for “nothing”). The problem, of course, is it possible to really – I mean really – adhere to a philosophical position of utter nihilism? Certainly Beckett didn’t since he wrote his masterpiece as a bleak parody of the nihilistic position. He wasn’t a cheerleader for nihilism, quite the reverse. The question then becomes, a fortiori (that’s Latin for “even stronger”), whether the Woggie-Blow Affair may be said to be nihilistic or, on the contrary, is there a positive subtext, a covert celebration of existence to be detected? I leave that question for others to pursue.

Yes, Woggie, all my posts contain strains of humour – sometimes explicit, sometimes tacit, sometimes dominant, sometimes muted – and this one is no exception. In a word, my posts are, without exception, layered and textured. As you might suspect, my enjoyment comes from imagining the contorted faces of the lower levels of the Halifax Underclass as they attempt to decode what the hell I’m talking about.

I hope that my re-wording of “Conceptualizing the Woggie-Blow Affair” in “layman’s terms” has met with your approval.

A pleasure as always.

Cheerio!