Wittgenstein was different, all right. He was a genius. I am also different. Many people have told me that they have not met anybody quite like me. Yes, I am different but I am not a genius, not like Wittgenstein. I don't have a striking, original thought or framework of thinking to share with the world. My interests are scattered and far-ranging, maybe more than those of Wittgenstein's. I have diluted myself, but that's okay. I know my place in this world. I am proud of who I am. I am ethically better and more intellectually honest than most, far more sensitive than a majority of monkeys and chimps who have human appearance, and I have creativity with words. I can write with impact and originality of expressions. I am no fraud. Wittgenstein was accused by many of his detractors as frauds, maybe out of jealousy or failure of understanding. Peter Gray-Lucas, a talented linguist, fluent in German, played his part in WWII at the top secret decoding center at Bletchley Park, where so much of the Nazis' fighting strategy was undone, here said something about Wittgenstein.
"(He was) a charlatan....He missed his vocation: he should have been a stand-up comedian. In his funny Austrian accent he could do all sorts of mimicry of accents, styles of talking...I remember one evening he got up from his chair, talking in this funny voice, and said something like, "What do we say if I walk through this wall?" And I remember realizing that my knuckles were going white gripping my chair. And I really thought he was going through the wall and that the roof was going to fall in. That must have been part of his spell: that he could conjure up almost anything." (Edmonds, p. 24)
Several stupid women have accused me of being a fraud, after being dumped by me because I found them---belatedly, of course---cheap, selfish, vicious, and boring. They could not take rejections. But what do they know? They are just unaccomplished, untalented little peons, short in stature and abilities, but big in fantasies of themselves so they can live for another day. They have not accomplished a single damn thing comparable to what I have done. They have not read a serious book from cover to cover. They cannot write a poem, a short story, or an essay. In fact, they cannot write a paragraph without making at least five errors either in spelling or grammar or both. They cannot express themselves coherently. All they could do was to have sex and then got pregnant and had babies, just like a little sow in the pigsty or a wandering, roaming mongrel bitch on the streets does. And yet they stupidly fancied they were my equal. They wanted me to give them proofs and evidence that I was superior to them! One of them gave me a long list of reasons as to why she thought I was a nobody. I rolled on the floor laughing. Here was a woman who had a lousy scholastic record, was rejected by men and close relations and society at large, and lived in isolation, and yet entertained delusions about herself. Nobody knows about her. She has made no name for herself, no splash, because she could not do it. She is an absolute nobody. And now she goes around thinking I am a nobody like her. Stupid people, as my Hindu friend in India whom I met during my visit there told me, do stupid things and I should laugh at them and at their stupidities, instead of getting mad at them. "Why should you get annoyed at skunks for exuding foul odor when their sense of being, their self-conception, is threatened? Just stay away from skunks. Don't associate yourself with skunks. Avoid them."
But let's us hear from Wittgenstein himself on what it means being a philosopher. To me, what he said below contain echoes of Nietzsche and there are awareness of pushing the limits, and maybe going beyond of reason and sanity, expressed in the aphoristic manner like that of Nietzsche. What we take as truths, after spending our lifetime reflecting on them, we don't bother to supply with long supporting arguments. We express them in pithy, concise, oracular, muscular statements. Like-minded kinsmen would understand us right away when we pronounce them. Others would not understand or agree with us anyway even if we write long books to explain what we mean. Truth is like Poetry. You must be ready for it and have a capacity for it.
-When you are philosophizing you have to descend into primeval chaos and feel at home there.
-A philosopher is a man who has to cure many intellectual diseases in himself before he can arrive at the notions of common sense.
-Working in philosophy---like work in architecture in many aspects---is really more a working on oneself. On one's own interpretation. On one's way of seeing things. (And what one expects of them.)
(Rorty p.422)
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