WHAT ABOUT BOB?

Author: Bob Wainwright

Perhaps the one truly sad aspect of going abroad to Australia is the fact that once you leave, the country seems to go away as well. The reason for this is that Australia is a very self-contained place. Case in point: it's the only country to ever lose a prime minister. The man (Harold Holt was his name) simply vanished one day while walking his dog along the beach.

This happened in 1967, and it was days before then-President Johnson was informed of who Holt actually was, much less of the fact that the man had disappeared.

Basically, very little of what goes on in Australia makes its way across the ocean to us. It definitely exists, but here in America we seem content with that notion alone. Anything else is simply extraneous.

It's a sad thought that already I can feel so distant from the country where I learned to surf, play rugby and nurse infant marsupials born to kangaroos with substance abuse problems back to health.

But I can't help feeling that it wouldn't be as big a problem if I hadn't decided to choose philosophy as one of my three classes last fall. So, in an effort to relive a little of my meager Australian education as well as my first column, let's get philosophical.

After taking philosophy at Sydney University, I was left knowing only one thing for sure: in philosophy, you learn just enough to mess you up for the rest of your life.

Perhaps Australian philosophers are different, but as far as I can tell, philosophers don't give the answers to questions such as "What is the meaning of life?" Instead, they give various possibilities, and then they leave you with about 25 questions to the one you came in with.

You see, in philosophy, first you learn about a smart guy — take Confucius for example — who told everyone that human nature is good. So you figure, "That's great, I'm not so bad after all." But then you learn about a really smart guy like Freud who brings you back down to earth by explaining that you're only motivated by sex. As a college student, I have to hand it to Freud on that one.

Still, after that initial confusion, things only get worse. You then learn about the existentialists, namely Sartre and Camus. These guys were so intelligent that they didn't even write what they had to say in English. They wrote it in French, which is amazing because it took me eight years just to learn, "May I go to the bathroom, Madame?" with the proper accent.

Yet, in order to understand philosophy, they tell you, you must understand existentialism.

You're also told that existentialism is a very hard concept, and that you would do well to enlist some help.

So you decide to pray. But once you're done, they introduce you to a German named Nietzsche who emphasizes that the prayer you just finished is moot, seeing as how God is dead.

What to do? Well, Sartre clarifies the entire situation with his deduction that existence precedes essence. None of us came here with a purpose at all. We just happened to happen.

The best analogy I can come up with is the short-lived music career of Hanson. One day they're hmmm bopping, the next day they're gone, and nobody really talks much about them anymore.

In order to make his existentialist theory clear, Sartre wrote a long work called "Being and Nothingness," which was number one on the best-seller list in 1943, just barely beating out "Let's All Just All Be Ignorant and Happy" by a few copies.

At this point, you've come to the conclusion that any purpose you have on earth is up to you and your own consciousness.

Yet you are driven by your desire for sex, and unfortunately God is not there to help because he passed away a few years before Nietzsche.

Unfortunately, that's just about where my Australian philosophy class left off. I wouldn't know for sure, as I missed the last week in an effort to save money on bus fares. But I'm telling you, I haven't been the same since.

Take last week for example. From Wednesday to Friday, I felt famous because I had my picture in The Campus next to my look-alike. And there's a part of me that's thinking, "This is so cool." But then I remember studying Sartre and I think, "It's all meaningless and ephemeral, and I'm not even the best-looking kid that looks like me."

In the end, philosophy left me with two things: a bad grade and a lot of questions I could do without.

I suppose the only logical thing is to follow Freud's advice and devote my life to pursuing sex.