Dusty's Corner: The Return

Article by Dustin Morrin ('18) - Contributor Disclaimer: All content is meant to be paired with some type of citrus. Common combinations include grapefruits, tangerines or oranges. Guac is extra.  Welcome back to yet another Dusty’s corner. I wholeheartedly care if you took something away from my first article. I hope you had time to let my deeply profound and utterly topical philosophy on success marinate your brain-meat. As we move forward in this journey of wit and intellectual exploration, I want to offer you some insight into my own literary process.  After the glaring success of my first article, I found myself at somewhat of an impasse. The sequel is a delicate thing. A great sequel takes what the first did well and adds more supporting characters, maybe a love interest, possibly more action. Movies like “Terminator 2”, “Evil Dead 2” and “The Empire Strikes Back” are all essentially the exact same as the first movie just with more...stuff.  However, going too crazy runs the risk of being a “Matrix Reloaded”... and nobody wants that–the brilliance of this joke is that even if you don’t get the reference, I still prove my point. I digress, what I needed to do was write exactly the same thing as my first article just with more... stuff. So, how do I give more than the secret to success?  That’s when I stumbled upon everyone’s favorite philosopher, Ludwig Wittgenstein and his notorious book, “Tractatus Logico-Philosphicus”.  For those of you who are unfamiliar with Wittgenstein–or as he was known to his friends, Luddy–led one crazy life. Wittgenstein was born in 1889 to one of the richest families in Austria and would eventually inherit the entirety of his father’s fortune. He would later give away the money to his three brothers, all of whom committed suicide. Wittgenstein found himself in and out of academia, and for a short time was in the same class as Hitler–actually Hitler kept failing the math placement test so Wittgenstein was two grades ahead. Having been born Jewish, Wittgenstein and Hitler’s relationship has been famously noted. Wikipedia cleverly reported that “Hitler would have disliked Wittgenstein.” Wittgenstein’s career as a philosopher is probably the most astonishing aspect of his life (it also birthed “Tractatus Logico-Philosphicus”). He focused on, esoterically of course, the philosophy of philosophy. By the way, if you don’t know what esoteric means, google it. You’ll see it’s quite esoteric. Wittgenstein basically said that the overarching problem with philosophy kiwas not that it is a poor college major choice, but that it attempts to answer questions that were not actually questions to begin with–ok, stay with me here–he also said stuff like 2+2=5 which is not technically incorrect, it’s just nonsense.  However, the beauty of Wittgenstein’s theory is that in the preface of his 75-page book of philosophy: the “Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus”, Wittgenstein declared that he had written “all essential points.” In essence, Wittgenstein thought he had solved all of the problems of philosophy and was therefore done. He never published any other writing–well, except for a review of a children’s dictionary… and I’m not even quite sure what that means. And that’s when I re-evaluated my aforementioned question: how do I give more than the secret to success? How can my words enter the minds and the hearts of the people? How can they cover your body in a warm blanket?  How can they look straight at your face, past your sparkling eyes and into the darkest, most visceral depths of your soul?  In summary, this is my “Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus”. I have given all essential points I can give and ergo, I am finished.