Why is this so?  Surely you would know if you had stopped thinking, wouldn’t you?  Well, as it turns out, “No.”

Recently I’ve been introduced to AOL’s Instant Messenger (“IM”), which is all the rage with the kids these days.  They sit for hours with four or five of these IM windows opened, bouncing from person to person in one conversation after anothert.  LOL; BRB; HAHAHA; and other such notations are commonplace with a dozen or more such abbreviations that convey thoughts to the person on the other end of the IM screen.  All instantly.

My daughter recently introduced me to one of her fellow IM’ers, who sent me the message, “I’m brd.”  I wrote back, “Do you mean ‘board?’”  “Or is that ‘bored?’”  The IM’er said, “I don’t know.”  Of course, all spelling is thrown out the window in this environment, but I won’t duplicate that here since it would only serve to drive you insane . . .

I supplied my conversationalist with a dictionary definition of 'bored,' and the response was, “Yes, that’s it.  But, I really don’t know how to spell.”  I ventured, “Well, now you know how to spell the word bore,”  to which the reply was, “Yea, I will always think of you when I type it.”  I wrote back, “I would hope you wouldn’t think of me when you type the word bored.”  Response:  “What do you mean?”

This was very reminiscent of the quizzing of Leon at the beginning of Blade Runner, where Leon says, “Tortoise?  What’s a tortoise?”  “Know what a turtle is, Leon? . . . same thing.”

Leon replies, “I never seen a turtle, but I know what you mean.”

You're pretty sure Leon doesn’t know what a turtle is.  And that’s how I felt when the message came back, “What do you mean?”  I explained myself and the final message I received was, “HAHAHA.”  But it was certainly an odd semblance of a conversation.

My daughter later reported that this exchange had been reported to her with the comment, “I don’t think your Dad gets IM.”  Evidently, this little IM’er thought that I was confused and not the other way around.  The experience fits into this week’s readings so well, I had to report it.

It seems to me that we view everything through a giant lens that bends all facts and circumstances around one glaring assumption.  That assumption is, “I know what’s going on.”  The IM’er bent our entire exchange around that assumption and came to the only possible explanation, “This guy’s confused.”  Pretty amazing.  I can hear all of you saying to yourselves, “Oh, well, I never do that.”  Well, of course you do: What do you think that statement is other than bending my little story through your own lens – your own assumption that YOU know what’s going on. . .

Even my view of this lens is part of my own assumption that I know what’s going on.  And so forth and so on.

So it is with Harry’s presentation this week in Vin.70.  People will never think that they have stopped thinking.  Why?  Because how could you tell them the fact that it was so and be believed?  The power of "I know" lens is immense; it will bend and twist everything it comes in contact with into invincible shields against criticism.  The Boomer Bible is itself an attempt to demonstrate to us the ways in which we have created illusionary shields that allow us to stop thinking.

Consider Pnot.31.  Now, before you look at the text that is attached to that page which references the original, I pose this question: How many of you can tell us where to find the original?  And, if you can’t do that, can you give us a better description of the story itself.  And if you can clear all those hurdles, can you offer a meaningful interpretation of that story?  Psom.58 serves to make the same point.  Everything’s foggy, including the stuff we tend to think we know about.

But, that doesn’t stop any of us from having a pretty strong opinions.  Or from having, what our reading this week in Mawr.10 calls “incredibly odd and rigid notions about things (Mawr.10.5).”  I'm reminded of a former student who claimed he had “an awareness of the [U.S.] Constitution.”  But an awareness and a notion are really not what thinking is about.

That’s how Harry is able to simultaneously flatter and ridicule his various audiences. Their 'awareness' of his references is too amorphous to permit understanding of the nastiest bits, and his cordial manner lays a comforting veneer of unity and belonging over the multitudinous cracks and chasms in their perception of everything, including Harry himself. Otherwise, they might have a question or two about how they can accept the "way of not thinking about anything at all" without realizing that it actually consists of not thinking about anything at all.
 

So there.