MEMORIES OF BEING PART OF AN INTELLECTUAL COMMUNITY

I received at letter yesterday, from the Development Office of the law school where I had been a student, thanking me for my gift to the annual law school fund.  I found myself a bit saddened, not by the letter but by the memory of loss. Law school was the last time I was part of a fiercely intellectual community, a community committed to the value and the importance of ideas--some of those ideas, I admit, misguided. Law school was hard work, some times physically, mentally and emotionally exhausting, yet more frequently intellectually exhilarating. I miss those law-student days. I miss the younger me that was a part of such a community. I wonder why I have never been able to find such a community again. Was it real, or just a dream? Are the memories true, or am I only deceiving myself into thinking things were better back then? To a large extent, that is what this blog is about: my trying to find or create an intellectual community for myself. I have not been able to find one for myself, an intellectual community where I have actual contact with people. [Oftentimes, when I go to workshops or lectures, I find the speakers and the audiences more concerned with self-promotion and less concerned with ideas, and almost never concerned with seeking truth. The result is a very non-intellectual encounter; or, if intellectual, not a very intellectually honest encounter.] So, I have attempted to create it for myself through intensive reading. Engaging myself with the ideas offered by the numerous and varied authors whose writings appear on the posts and pages of this blog. It is not as satisfying as being a member of an actual intellectual community, but it is the best I can do for myself these days. I have not yet given up the belief that ideas really matter.