Erotapokriseis V
EN:
Hello again, my dear readers! Some of your questions arrived like letters, some like puzzles, and some like tiny philosophical traps. Naturally, I loved them. I’ve answered many of you by email, but I thought a few of these deserved a place here as well. :)
TR:
Yeniden merhaba sevgili okurlarım, Bazı sorularınız mektup gibi geldi, bazıları bilmece gibi, bazılarıysa küçük felsefi tuzaklar gibiydi, ahaha! Türkiye özlemim sizinle diniyor birazda olsa. Doğal olarak hepsini çok sevdim. Çoğunuza e-posta ile dönüş yaptım, ama bazı soruların burada da yer almayı hak ettiğini düşündüm. Çok sevgiler.
This question came in Turkish.
1) Q: Post-Truth yazınızda post-truth’un “yetişkin-Filiz”i yarattığını, zihninizi olgunlaştırdığını, hatta sizi felsefeye ittiğini yazmışsınız. Tuhaf bir minnet bu: sizi en çok büyüten şey, gerçekliğin çöküşü olmuş. İnsanı olgunlaştıran şeyin çoğu zaman onu en çok korkutan şey olması sizce tesadüf mü?
A: Tesadüf değil. Bizi büyüten şey, üzerine basıp da çatırdayan zemindir birazda bence; sağlam yer insanı sadece taşır, sarsmaz! Beni olgunlaştıran, gerçekliğin çökmesi değildi aslında; çökerken ona dikkatle bakmak zorunda kalmamdı. Tam cevaplayabildim mi sorunuzu emin değilim. Çok sevgiler.
This question came in Turkish.
2) Q: Geometry yazınızda Perelman’ın hem Fields madalyasını hem de bir milyon doları reddedip Petersburg’da sessizce yaşadığını anlatıyorsunuz. Sizce o bir aziz mi, yoksa Epictetus‘un “elimde olanı umursarım, gerisini değil” dersini herkesten iyi öğrenmiş biri mi? Onu anlıyor musunuz, yoksa anlamak istemediğiniz bir yanı mı var?
A: Aziz değil; sadece dersini bizden iyi çözmüş biri. Perelman ödülü reddederken bir şeyden vazgeçmiyor, elinde olmayanı zaten istemiyordu. Anlıyorum onu. Anlamak istemediğim yanı şu: ben hâlâ dünyayı istiyorum, o istemeyebiliyor. Orada beni geçiyor. Aslında bir sürü şeyde beni geçiyorda, çaktırmayalım şimdi! :))
This question came in Turkish.
3) Q: Marcus Aurelius kendine not tutuyordu, yayımlamak için değil. Sizin blogunuz da bir bakıma “kendine notlar”, Fragmenta. Peki siz kime yazıyorsunuz: okura mı, kendinize mi?
A: Ah bir bilsem kime yazdığımı…
This question came in Turkish.
4) Q: Topological Phases of Matter yazınızda “fizik, 20. yüzyıl matematiğinin derin bir sonucunu yeniden keşfetti” diyorsunuz. Fizikle matematik arasında yaşayan biri olarak: doğanın matematiği çoktan biliyor olması size ne hissettiriyor?
A: Tedirgin değil, mahcup hissettiriyor. Çünkü “doğa matematiği biliyor” demek bile bizim kibrimiz; sanki matematik bizim de doğa ödünç almış gibi. Belki de tam tersi: matematik dediğimiz şey, doğayı yeterince uzun süre dikkatle izlemiş insanların aldığı not. O zaman doğa bir şey “biliyor” değil; biz geç anlıyoruz. :)
5) Q: In Beautiful But Wrong you confess you’ve felt Kepler’s divine ecstasy three times, and twice it turned out to be a bug. Before the relief or the heartbreak arrives, how do you now tell a result that’s beautiful-and-true from one that’s beautiful-and-a-bug?
A: I don’t trust the ecstasy anymore; I treat it as a siren, not a verdict. A result is only allowed to stay beautiful after it has survived the ugly tests: null cases, old examples, dumb baselines, and the possibility that I simply made a mistake. Sounds similar,huh? :)
6) Q: In Wittgenstein you refuse his last commandment, “whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent,” and say you want to push at the limit “with a beautiful sentence and see what gives way.” Has a beautiful sentence ever actually made something give way for you, or is that the most romantic lie a writer tells herself?
A: Yes, once or twice, and I’d know it again. A sentence gives way when you read it and something in your chest rearranges before your mind catches up. It’s rare, and most of what I write isn’t it. But it happens, which is why I refuse to be silent. Wittgenstein felt it too; he just called it showing.
7) Q: Plato carved “let no one ignorant of geometry enter” over his door, and you agree: you can’t understand reality without geometry, because reality is structured. But your blog is full of the unstructured, grief, ink, a child’s paper crane, the things that resist the metric. Which is the truer language for you, the geometry or the fragment?
A: Geometry is the truer language for the world. I use structure to understand reality, and fragments to survive being inside it. But, I need to survive, right? I learned this pragmatism from Americans :D
8) Q: Which character in Russian literature do you feel closest to?
A: This is the best question I’ve ever been asked. While answering it, I realized I’d been waiting since my youth for someone to ask me this question. Thank you!!!!
Probably Levin, though my mind understands Ivan Karamazov a little too well.
Levin, not because I resemble him completely, but because I understand that restless desire to live truthfully. Ivan is closer to my mind: the questions, the rebellion, the inability to look away from suffering. But Alyosha is closer to the kind of soul I would like to have.
So perhaps the honest answer is this: my mind is often with Ivan, my longing is with Levin, and my heart would like to become a little more like Alyosha.
Thank you again, hugs!
9) Q: Which fictional villain do you secretly think has a point?
A: Frankenstein’s creature.
Though even calling him a villain feels a little unfair. I do not justify what he does, but I understand the wound he speaks from. To be created, abandoned, feared, and then blamed for becoming monstrous feels like one of literature’s cruelest moral traps. Sometimes the real horror is not the monster. It is the person who creates life and then refuses responsibility for it. And thank you so much for the heartfelt email C.!
( Milton’s satan, Javert, Magneto are also other candidates. Ahahah :) )
10) Q: Have you ever realized you were completely wrong about something and changed your mind?
A: Yes, absolutely!
I have realized I was wrong many times, and I have changed my mind many times: about people, about ideas, about what I thought I wanted, and sometimes about myself. I do not see changing my mind as a weakness. I think there is something beautiful about being able to outgrow your own certainty. Staying loyal to an old version of yourself just because she was once convinced feels much more embarrassing to me.
And I feel the same way about apologizing. I have never seen an apology as a loss of dignity. On the contrary, I think being able to say “I was wrong” is one of the cleanest forms of strength. I have to admit, I do not have much patience for people who cannot apologize. Apologizing is a beautiful thing.
11) Q: What was the most beautiful gift you’ve ever received, the one that made you happiest?
A: My reader from Medium. :) Thanks for the question.
Every gift I’ve ever received has been beautiful and precious to me. I could never put a price on any of them. A smooth, lovely gel pen, a magnet someone picked out while thinking of me, or a pin given with the words “this reminded me of you” would all make me just as happy.
But if I’m being honest, the most unforgettable gift I’ve ever received was a piano. Not because it was expensive. I’ve been given things that were more expensive than a piano. But because of the timing, and the tenderness behind it. I had casually mentioned one day that, as a child, I had always wanted to learn the piano, but never had the chance. The next day, I was given one. It felt like a small, unfinished dream of mine had been heard and gently placed back in my hands.That meant so much to me. It’s still hard for me to describe. (I hate crying!)
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