Statement
of Intent
As I sit in front of my
computer, the cursor on my WordPerfect New Document screen slowly beating out a
demand for the company of other symbols, and try to think of a way to answer
the three implied questions posed by requirement that I submit a Statement of
Intent, two thoughts spring to my mind, simultaneously and as interwoven as the
symbols Yin and Yang.
One is a Quotation from
Ecclesiastes and another, I believe, an old Chinese Proverb. But the first, the
Cursor, was the silent demand placed upon me by an innovation of the
revolutionary age in which I live.
Having succumbed to the
demand of the cursor, I realize that there is now, in fact, another trinity,
and that it is somehow fitting.
You will, no doubt, receive my transcripts, which will show that I have been a superior student, but rather than in Philosophy and I have graduated as an English Major with a concentration in Creative Writing. You will, no doubt, receive my, G.R.E.s and discover that despite that major my strength lies in analysis. But those facts will not tell you who I am.
My father says that he is a
Child of the Sixties, a time in which fundamental institutions were both
challenged and met by young people willing to sacrifice themselves for their
beliefs, while I am a Child of the Information Age, a bloodless revolution, in
which individuals have so many choices that they are unable to intensely commit
themselves to anything. Regardless of how accurate his other assertions may be,
he is in error at least on one count: the Information Revolution has not been
without its victims, for I may have been among its first.
I grew up with computers,
the way children of previous ages grew up with cars or horses. Knowing how to
program them, build them, and use them comes as second nature. Before ‘The
Internet' became a household word, I had programmed and operated a Bulletin
Board. Long before‘ Globalization' had become an economic watchword, I was
conversing with peers as far away as Australia. But when I entered college
expecting to devote my life to computers, I quickly discovered that it was
people who were the object of my fascination. Why do they do what they do? Why
do their words so often mean something other than what they said?
My academic endeavors, my
readings and my travels have involved a search for the answers to those
questions. Most recently, I have wandered the length and breath of this
Country. We live in interesting times.
We live in a time in which
the ancient wisdom of the East has begun to invade the thought processes of
both the Arts and the Sciences. In our country, juxtaposed against the
materialistic, individual-centered American approach to life, where that which
is new means that which is good, we increasingly hear the relativistic,
community-oriented Eastern approach to life, where that which is traditional
means that which is good. At the same time as the East makes inroads into this
bastion of Western Philosophy, we conquer the East with the manifestations of
our Western Philosophy, that machines and men are both material things to be
fashioned, used and discarded efficiently.
Set against quantum theory,
which views realty as an interplay of matter (in however diminished form) we
have the Dance of Energy, infinite and timeless. And now, to a substantial
extent the product of the my Age, we have the blessings of Chaos which promises
to provide a Super-Set inclusive of both, if it doesn't prove to be another
Tarot providing startling prognostications because of the words chosen for
association with its symbols.
And we see these clashes of
ideas taking place not with quite reason and reflection, but with the speed of
E-mail and cell-phones.
Only once before have men
lived in such interesting times. It was shortly after Alexander had conquered
the known world and brought within one domain not merely a body of rulers imbued
with egos great enough to challenge the gods and a love of learning for its own
right, but a populace comprised of many cultures, speaking many languages,
worshiping many different gods, and approaching the problems of human existence
from many different perspectives. It was within that milieu that Philosophy
itself was born.
I am a Child of the Information Age. It is my desire to use my talents to lessen the sorrow which will follow. {Name of school} should grant my application because I am more than a passionless analyst.