"Anyway, in this brief final analysis, let us once again set aside the introduction that wounds us so. Like every proper Turkish youth — that is, like every decent, weary-of-life citizen whose relationship to sport has never gone beyond watching a match — you too may take part in this game without paying a separate admission fee. I myself, like many of my fellow citizens, being deprived of the power of abstraction, and especially being unable to conceive of the concept of time in the abstract — that is, as an intangible notion — can only take part in duration as the motion of a body between two points. I am aware that this explanation is too abstract, not only for my listeners, but even for myself. Perhaps if we — that is, we various sorts of worthies this soil has raised — had not realized so quickly that we were starting to think in abstractions, and had not been so quickly seized by fear of it, great mathematicians might have grown up among us too, and their lithographed portraits might have turned up in encyclopedias. Let us pass over this pitiful state of affairs at once, without grieving too much, and content ourselves with concrete examples."

Oğuz Atay, Tutunamayanlar, pp. 41 - 42

In the previous piece, I glossed the first essay, dwelling above all on the concept of "urgency," arguing that the phenomenon of urgency leads to shoddy production and a shoddy everyday-life experience, and noting that another consequence of this phenomenon is that it renders long-range undertakings and goals meaningless and unworkable.

Taking the previous discussion as my stepping stone, I want to examine the condition I touched on in that piece: the "lack of any deepened interest." To my mind, this lack of deepened interests is itself a sign of mediocrity. Because mediocrity means becoming everyone, becoming average. What sets us apart from other people is, above all, our particular interests and abilities. In a mediocrity where our most sports-minded goes to halı saha once a week, where the less interested watches their team's match once a week, where a basketball hoop gets planted in a corner of some provincial high school's cobblestone courtyard — how is it even possible to go deep, or to speak of depth at all?

You'll remember the art-class scenes in Nuri Bilge's About Dry Grasses. Is the way to make a student love drawing, or to teach it to them, really to lay out theories of perspective on the blackboard? We took art classes for all those years, and I still can't draw anything beyond a Cin Ali stick figure. Is that my incompetence?

We took music classes for all those years, and I still can't tell Beethoven from Mozart when I hear them. Is that my tin ear?

We are a society of millions who have never held any instrument in their hands besides a melodica and a recorder, whose ears have never had any notes played into them besides the saz and the guitar. Can you really get angry at a society like that for loving cabaret dancing?

Let's pause here. We'll open the subject of getting angry at the system and tearing down and rebuilding the state some other time. They say three Turks are enough to found a state. This is a single-author blog. For now, let's look at the side of the matter that touches us — or rather, the side that arises from us. Yes, there was nothing in our schools but recorders and basketball hoops, but did we ourselves harbor any yearning for something beyond that? Are we going to treat the whole of society as some poor, naive village girl who's fallen into a cabaret?* (*inspired by Murat hoca)

During the pandemic, we spent a full two years shut up at home. With YouTube alone, one could have learned one or two languages, picked up a few manual skills, experienced things we'd never experienced before. How many of us learned even half a language? How many of us picked up any manual skill at all? Who among us even carries the desire to say, "I ought to learn this"? Let me set down my own dreams:

  • I want to learn bookbinding
  • I want to learn woodworking
  • I want to learn to play the qanun
  • I want to learn English, Arabic, and German

I am 28 years old. Where have I been for 28 years? In which field, over 28 years, have I gone deep enough to say, "I know how to do this"? Look, I'm not talking about picking up the qanun and going on a national tour, racing from concert to concert. It would be enough if I knew it well enough to set it on my lap and play at home when I'm bored, or at a family gathering, or among friends. A little further would be being one more voice at a school event. I have no intention of going beyond that.

As for bookbinding, I have no intention of getting a job at the Manuscript Hospital. It's enough if I can nurse the weary books I buy from secondhand booksellers back to health. It's enough if I can make new notebooks out of the pages I salvage from old ones.

As for woodworking, I have no intention of opening a carpentry shop. It's enough if I can make myself a pen-holder, help friends and family out when they're building a bookshelf, repair my own broken chair, or rescue the old wooden cabinets in my grandparents' house from being thrown out.

Let's not get hung up on the examples, and let's just confess. Barring a lucky (?) minority, none of us has, beyond our professional occupation, a deepened interest pursued purely for the sake of the thing itself. The knowledge and skills we acquire are aimed only at getting through the day, the moment, the everyday. This is also why the supposedly clever kids in schools ask, "sir, what use is this going to be to us in real life?" Everyday life sets the horizon of their thinking, and they can't conceive that there might be some other world, some other life, beyond and around it. It's also why parents pluck out and toss aside the little sprouts of their children's interests with the excuse of "study for your exam first." "Are they going to ask you about Beethoven on the exam?" "Son, since you're going to be a carpenter anyway, why don't we just apprentice you to old so-and-so?" No, father, I am not going to be a carpenter — I'm doing this purely and simply because I want to do it. This act of mine has no purpose beyond itself, and the very fact that the act has become its own purpose could even be called a most exalted purpose — one that, of course, can never be prescribed, and can only ever come from within.

"Good work, father-in-law, good amendments. I shall now merely drink my milk."

Oğuz Atay, Tutunamayanlar, p. 572

Back when I dreamed of studying at a university abroad, I used to be baffled by the admissions requirements at American universities. One of the most important things that boosted your chances of admission was athletic activity. So much so that some universities would even give top athletes a full, 100% scholarship through the athletic quota. I couldn't make sense of it. Recently, while looking into foreign equivalency, I came across something similar. Some fellow finishes dental school in his own country, spends a few years in the profession, and applies to the US for equivalency or a doctorate — and even there, they ask about hobbies like sports activities; apparently it matters. I'm not surprised anymore. Here's how I read the situation: these people don't want a mediocre man.

Because, as I touched on in the previous piece, having any deepened interest at all doesn't just mean you have that interest — it also signals a great deal about your relationship to your own impulses, your patience, and your capacity to carry out and manage long-range work. The old refusal to marry off a daughter to a man who hasn't done his military service probably comes from something similar :) As is well known, sending young men off to the army to make "men" of them used to be a common practice.

Let's end the piece here. In the next piece, let's start from the "1%" and carry on from there with our work ethic, our slum mentality, and our lack of manners.

M. Batuhan Şahin

January 21, 2024