DO NOT MISTAKE ME FOR SOMEONE ELSE!

(Having finished that last batch of Philosophy, we are once again entering the shallow, self-serving waters of the Mirror section…)

Complaining about unfair treatment by the media is one of the more customary causes of grouchy whining on the part of those who qualify for media attention. Having no desire to join the chorus of such whiners, I will reduce my own private comment to the fact that I have been habitually misrepresented in this country (the United States, of course), ever since the first news reports of March 1981, and the situation was getting either a little better or much worse, as the years progressed, until, finally, my aggregate media persona has become so inconsistent and so strangely incomprehensible that, had I been suffering from a case of amnesia, somewhere along the line, I would not have been able to recognize myself, or any person, for that matter, in the media-based composite sketch of me, which has by now been formed.

As a word of warning to my potential well-wishers, or persons trying to reconstruct my personality from an unfathomably conflicting trail of public record, please, disregard what you see and find about me in others’ reports and “established facts” and concentrate only on what I have left in my own writing. Nietzsche says it best in Ecce Homo, Preface (1), and I do not need to look for a better expression of what I want to say now on this subject:

“Seeing that before long, I must confront humanity with the most difficult demand ever made of it, it seems necessary to me to say who I am. Really, one should know it, for I have not left myself without a testimony. But the disproportion between the greatness of my task and the smallness of my contemporaries has found expression in the fact that one has neither heard nor even seen me. Under the circumstances, I have a duty, against which my habits, and even more the pride of my instincts, revolt at bottom, which is to say: ‘Hear me! For I am such and such person. Above all, do not mistake me for someone else.’”

This is an incredibly powerful and actual statement for me personally. Because, sometimes, looking back at what I was and what I am, I feel a revolt rising inside me, particularly, against the stupid lies about me,--- in print and on the Internet,--- which are worse than anything that could have happened to me as a real person, because my public image is an obscene impostor assuming my identity for posterity, at least for those future inquirers who may want, for any reason, to find out something about me, and may only find misleading and grotesque garbage… (Looking at the bright side, with enough diligence and attention on their part, they will quickly recognize it for what it is!)

What is it about Nietzsche that makes me feel so personal to the point of completely disregarding my own internal red flag about whining? But then, here is Dèscartes, who will straighten me up and help me to put across a more or less objective point under the auspices of the title of this entry:

“…Although I have often explained some of my opinions to persons of much acuteness, who, whilst I was speaking, appeared to understand them very distinctly, yet, when they repeated them, I observed that they almost always changed them to such an extent that I could no longer recognize them as mine. I am glad, by the way, to take this opportunity of requesting posterity never to believe on hearsay that anything (!!!) has proceeded from me which has not been published by myself; and I am not astonished at the extravagances attributed to those ancient philosophers whose own writings we do not possess; whose thoughts however I do not on that account suppose to have been so absurd, but only that these have been falsely represented to us.” (From Dèscartes’ Method Part VI.)

Comparing this to Nietzsche’s appeal: "Do not mistake me for somebody else!,” there is a whole avalanche of objective comment to be unleashed here, that I should undertake without rushing, or plunging headlong into it. In a nutshell, it centers around the key word context. We must not be taken out of our own context, and this happens all the time, for these two main reasons:

One, that the interpreters of our wisdom are not sufficiently acquainted with our thinking, but only assume that they are.

And the other, and perhaps, more compelling reason for such travesty, is that our interpreters have a well-formed mindset of their own, and want to use us for their own self-promotion, meaning either their person or the cause, which they espouse, but in both cases, they are bound to misinterpret what we say as much to themselves as to others. Ironically, I see nothing wrong in this, as long as my words click up ideas of their own. But my most vehement objection would, of course, be if they commit the crime of false identification, that is, if they start ascribing to me their own thoughts by twisting my words around and… improving upon them with their own added meaning.

As you see, I have, so far, disregarded a third reason for gross misrepresentation, which is purely political, and, obviously, applies the most to my case. Perhaps, I ought to finish up this entry with it. The third reason is a deliberate falsification of facts, events, and circumstances, for the purpose of character assassination of such person or persons whose views have been found unacceptable, but whose influence is feared due to an irresistible power of their argument, should the latter be allowed to stand on its own merit.