Classroom Talk
Fall 2001 Archive
Re: Where's the Big Kahuna???? Posted by Douglas on November 20, 2001 at 19:28:48:
In Reply to: Where's the Big Kahuna???? posted by Bruce on November 20, 2001 at 17:25:46:
From the Research Building:
Being “persona non gratia”, I hardly feel compelled to comply with the unwritten, though implicit rules of the Awareness game,
“stingers” and such being the current theme.
Violate Sally, Bruce, and you are in serious jeopardy and you have just committed such violence.
A modern fable with an observation for all that care to hear — prick up your ears John.
Bad Faith:
Let us consider this waiter in the café. His movement is quick and forward, a little too precise, a little too rapid. He comes toward
the patrons with a step a little too quick. He bends forward a little too eagerly; his voice, his eyes express an interest a little too
solicitous for the order of the customer. Finally there he returns, trying to imitate in his walk the inflexible stiffness of some
kind of automaton while carrying his tray with the recklessness of a tight-rope walker by putting it perpetually unstable,
perpetually broken equilibrium which he perpetually re-establishes by a light movement of arm and hand. All his behaviour seems to
us a game. He applies himself to chaining his movements as if they were mechanisms, the one regulating the other; his gestures and
even his voice seem to be mechanisms; he gives himself the quickness and rapidity of things. He is playing; he is amusing himself.
But what is he playing? We need not watch long before we can explain it: he is playing at being a waiter in a café.
Jean-Paul; Sartré. Being and Nothingness
Or as Holden Caulfield might have said: “Phony”.
Douglas
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