20151022.0624

To continue on with the discussion from yesterday and the day before: As I was thinking, again in the shower, about the loss of nerdiness I have been discussing, the thought occurred to me that part of what I have lost in letting my...fixations...on various popular cultural constructions slip away is a certain selfishness that does not work well in family life--and certainly not as a parent. Spending time and resources on mastering minutiae is an inherently selfish act; that time and those resources could easily be put to the tasks of being with and helping others. Some such spending can be justified, perhaps. My own time spent writing in this webspace is not taken from my family--the Mrs. and Ms. 8 are asleep--and the resources spent are of minimal incidental cost. The time and resources my colleagues and I spend on research, whether in the humanities or elsewhere, serves to increase understanding of the world, so if they are selfish at one level, they at least strive to contribute in some measure.

The exercise of nerdiness is perhaps less easily justified. It serves no end but itself, in my experience as a nerd and around nerds, and its display is most often framed in terms of self-aggrandizing competition. Neither does much good. (I understand the competitiveness, though. When the only thing people see themselves as having is that they know things, that knowing and the certainty of that knowing becomes overridingly important. And that means knowing more and better than the rest.) And it is not the case that it does little or no harm; the display often turns to pettiness and backbiting, enabled to some extent by the anonymity of the online world but hardly original to it. Again, in my experience: I admit to its limitations, and the experiences of others may well give the lie to my assertions in this regard. But I still maintain that being a nerd is selfish, and not a selfish that lends itself to justification.

Being able to focus on the self in such a way as nerdiness allows is a luxury. It is an indulgence, and I was long able to avail myself of it. I cannot any longer; I have responsibilities to discharge, and they are fulfilling, but they do not much admit of putting myself first--as nerdiness does. It is not to be wondered at, though, that I feel a sense of loss; not many readily put aside pleasures found and enjoyed long. Many struggle mightily to quit smoking and drinking, and many fail, and both are far more damaging to the self than nerdiness. Both are missed by those who do manage to give them up, and both, again, are far more self-destructive than being a nerd is. (Drinking still tends to be more socially acceptable. Smoking may still be--I have yet to hear of a smoker getting a swirly or a wedgie for being a smoker as nerds still do for being nerds--but if it is, it is by an increasingly narrow margin.) And so there are things I lament about the lapse in my nerdiness--but I will not be working to get it back any time soon.