As I have mentioned, I did not start my serious education until I was almost 20. When I was a junior in college at 23 (took time out to join the natinal guard to avoid the war) I was walking by the dorms at college and had a true epiphany.
I remember the day exactly (lazy Winnie the Pooh day with pretty white clouds against a blue sky - like you get in the Bay area) and the epiphany was very specific.
I realized the depth of my ignorance. I remember saying to myself: "I have no idea why Socrates is an important person. I had no understanding at all about what he was talking about, or any of the other great thinkers".
I had an easy life and lots of time managing an apartment building for my rent and playing poker for my money.
So I started my quest to understand why Socrates was important and find out what he was talking about. I had no idea where to start. So I started at the beginning e.g. Steinbeck, Hemingway, Faulkner, F Scott Fitgerald (best of the bunch).
Didn't seem like there was much there (in retrospect there wasn't. Pretty much they are just story tellers). Then I stumbled on Catcher in the Rye and knew it was important, but didn't really understand him. But I read everything he wrote (not much).
Then I graduated to Huxly! (a favorite of mine as well, Russell, whitehead, Hesse, Mann, Goethe, Nietzsche, Dostoevsky, Andre Malraux, and lots of the ancient Greeks, etc and found substance.
I even read the esoteric guys like Watts, Ospensky and Gurdjieff and a bunch of others.
My ex who was smarter than I, but less curious, used to ask me: "why do you read those guys"?-lol
But it was Sartre and Camus who showed me who I was and what I was looking for.
I have since left most of that stuff behind and now and concentrate almost solely on the mystery of the quantum universe which I believe holds the big mystery of what we are experiencing.
I will get your book by Goldberg. Thanks. |
