Intellectual Masturbation? A useful past-time?

I was directed here today and a nice uplifting post it was, especially in the current climate. We lag behind the US in many respects and, at the moment at least, we seem to be far less into whatever recession, depression, is on the horizon, or staring us down the throat, than our erstwhile colonists, although it will undoubtedly be with us here all too quickly.

A tale of resurgent hope is only too gratifying when faced with adversity but what does it really mean? The tale, of a man losing everything in the dot com bubble, building himself up again is, true, reassuring but he built himself up the first time; is it not to be expected that he can do it again? Is that not what 'achievers' do? Is that not why, after every recession, economies 'bounce back'? If you were prepared to risk all, work tirelessly to forge something for yourself the first time, then only a little hope is required for you to engage a second time or a third. After all the risks are no greater, are they? And what do you have to lose? Nothing! That is, after all, all you have. As a result, I didn't quite have the tear in my eye that other 'commentators' seemed to have on reading that post.

I sit in a room typing this, surrounded by words. Books, myriads of books, that go back to my adolescence. Books that I bought long years ago and still buy. Faded, yellowed by sunlight and nicotine. Am I any the less if these are gone? Yes, but they can be replaced. The words exist in other forms. True, their physical absence will diminish me, in many ways. No longer will I be able to 'pull' 'Charley Barley' from the shelf and marvel at a painter's skill I can never match. No more will Bertrand Russell on Leibnitz or Dick on QED enlighten my life. But the memories of the words, the images, will remain as long as I live this life, nothing else is as important. No? The material 'book' is immaterial, no?

And the music? I thought that life would not, could not, be of any value without the music. The sound. And yet, even without the physical sound, the music was in my head. While I covet my hi- fi with all my heart, the Wagner, Vivaldi, Bach, Black Sabbath, Nils Lofgren, John Coltrane can survive not being played. I can just hear them in my head!

And so where does that leave us? Material 'things' are just that! Physical manifestations of a desire to interact. (Here I leave aside the 'Walk in refrigerator', the 62" plasma screen on the wall for the rugby, the sports car that does 0-60mph in as much time as it takes to soil your underwear, and all that ilk)

You see, all this material possession is just another route to interacting with people. Often long dead people, but people nonetheless. And that is all that is ever required to sustain you through crises such as these. A distant smile from a kindly soul, a kind word in adversity, an arm around your shoulder when the world has collapsed and the light has been extinguished from the end of the tunnel and all that beckons is oblivion. We shrink from the contact (me more than most :) but it is, in the end, all there is. Everything else is, in the words of the Elven Princess, "intellectual masturbation".