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Commentary week 7

31 March 2009

So What!

 

I guess at some point during the semester, I must put an article down and exclaim, “so what!” Well, this semester, the article causing me to wish I had not wasted my time is “The Loss of the Creature” by Walker Percy.

I will admit, he makes some points (to most of which I rolled my eyes). “The sightseer measures his degree of satisfaction by the degree to which the canyon conforms to the preformed complex” (47). The sightseer is a human being controlled by strong psychological tendencies. Humans have wants and desires. They have the ability to interpret and expect. So, if the Grand Canyon measures up to the sightseers “preformed complex,” how is this any less of a genuine experience than the experience of one who stumbles upon the canyon with no prior knowledge of its existence? Percy fails to explain this. He also fails to truly prove that these two experiences are indeed different.

Percy moves on to a vacation couple in Mexico. This couple wishes a friend were with them as they experienced the village. Percy believes that the couple wants their friend along “not to share their experience, but o certify their experience as genuine” (53). I have examined Percy’s idea in light of my own thoughts and experience. I too on occasion have wished a friend were present to share in my experience. I analyzed my motives and asked myself this question, “Did I too just want validation of my experience?” The answer was “no.” I came up with two motives for my behavior. One is quite selfish. I believe that having he friend present would have enhanced my experience. The other motive is that I simply believe my friend would enjoy the experience. I know that I was not attempting to certify my experience as genuine since there have been occasions when my friend and I did not share the same experience. This did not change the genuineness of my own experience.

I don’t believe that Percy gives human beings enough credit. He believes that it is only the strong student who can “wrest control of it (a sonnet or a dogfish) from the educator” (60). He believes that we “recognize the priority of title of the expert” (54), and do not even realize we are impoverished. Yet, Percy offers no proof for his claim. I have only to open my morning newspaper to see the fallacy in his idea. I can read page after page in which experts and educators are challenged. We have not “surrendered the title” (54).

Although there are many more examples, I would like to discuss one more which left me befuddled. Percy believes once the archeologist relinquishes his find to the museum, no one nut the archeologist can see it. Everyone’s view of the find is now the curator’s. Percy believes the archeologist would have been better to keep the item “in his pocket and show it now and then to strangers” (62). By Percy’s own admission, the strangers will not be able to see it either. Yet, if we asked these strangers, I believe they would state that they “saw” the find.

So although Percy makes some intriguing points in his article, he offers not proof. He has not included a single interview with the sightseer, the stumbler, the vacationing couple, nor the archeologist. He only offers his own theory. And according to his own theory, it is not a genuine experience.