Hillbilly Bona Fides, Exile from Eden, and Wittgenstein’s Rhino (or elephant if you prefer)
Here we go again. Yes, another essay on hillbillies and my unrepentant aggravation when they cross my path. Try as I might, I cannot insulate myself from their nonsensical wrath, nor can I just forget and move on.
I have often written about my hillbilly background. My mom was a coal miner’s daughter, and my dad was the first person on either side of the family to attend high school. The previous generations went to sixth grade or so, if they bothered to go at all. Using the remarkable power of the hillbilly, a couple of my uncles managed to drink themselves to death in their 40s. As you might imagine, not much generational wealth was being passed down.
I have lots of relatives who still believe that the moon landing was faked. There is no way to convince them otherwise. Any conspiracy theory is treated as if it came from a book of The Bible. As for Sasquatch? Depends on the person and their particular mood at the time.
My big problem (one of them, at least) was that I was surrounded by lots of hillbillies as I grew up, and they weren’t all relatives. One of my math teachers told me that studying statistics was a waste of time because he couldn’t think of one job I could get with such a degree. I believed him because he was a teacher and I was a kid; for some reason, I always respected my teachers. I now know he was a hillbilly whose life was spent teaching hillbilly children the proper way to live as a hillbilly.
The thing I needed more than anything else when I was a kid was the 50-year-old version of me. Such a person could have set me straight and nudged me toward what I was genuinely passionate about. The problem is people such as the 50-year-old version of me are virtually nonexistent in Hillbilly Land. The people who evolve beyond the hilljack stage take their newfound knowledge to heart. They tend to run as fast as possible in any direction away from their roots. Can you blame them?
That 50-year-old version of me could have set the younger me on a completely different path. Maybe I would have had a Ph.D. in statistics as a teenager. Perhaps I would have arrived at Harvard or another great school as an undergrad. Maybe things would have gone off the rails, and I would have been hit by a bus. Who knows? My point is that hillbillies don’t have access to such mentors. Their mentors are other hillbillies, with the occasional hilljack thrown in just for fun.
I saw an interview with a hilljack the other day on TV. I know he is a hilljack because he consented to be on television. Lots of hillbillies run at the sight of a camera. The topic? Trump, of course. He explained that Trump was the most selfless person he had ever heard of. Trump, he said, cares nothing about himself. His only concern is the welfare of the American people. Between us, I can not have an intelligent interaction with such a person. There are fundamental differences in our makeup. On what common ground do we stand? I can’t think of anything.
Tara Westover of Educated fame is working on such issues now. She is studying the differences between the educated, highly educated, hillbillies, hilljacks, and Hillbillies Deluxe. She is looking for common ground, something that binds more than separates. I admire Westover; I think her story is extraordinary. I think she will fail miserably. Lots more separates than binds. The trajectories are undeniable. Maybe it is time we just give up.
Now that I have talked a little about my hillbilly bona fides (I could add more, but you get the idea), we can move on to more pressing matters. Perhaps a few words about my exile from Harvard are appropriate.
Exile from Eden. Yes, that is what some call it when Harvard tells you it is time to leave and go out into the world. We are tasked with creating a better world and making our communities better in any way we can. It is not a suggestion; we are mandated to do such. The contribution should match the abilities that you have. Not everyone is expected to earn a Nobel Prize or have a statue erected in our town squares.
I would comment on where I am in my “contribution journey,” but I know no one cares. I know exactly where I am and how much more work I have in front of me. It is not on the back burner; I think about it daily. Trust me, I am working on it.
One of the reasons Harvard is compared to Eden is the absence of Hillbillies. The people there are extraordinary. They are all intelligent and work much harder than the people you know. They work lots harder than any hillbilly out there. Those people consistently lose sleep so they can work. Holidays? What are those? One Christmas Eve, I was strolling through campus late at night and saw every light in a big biology lab building was on. I could see all the figures in the windows, working away, oblivious to the time or the date. I’ll leave it to you to decide why I was there.
I was saying just the other day that the primary job of philosophers is to argue over the meaning of words. A world-class philosopher once told me that, and I never forgot it. Of course, as I have aged, I understand more completely what she meant. For her, let’s have a conversation about hillbillies.
I have decided on a more nuanced approach to my analysis of hillbillies in general and one anonymous hillbilly in particular. I am going to utilize my world-class education to put hillbillies on blast. Let’s begin…
There are levels of hillbilly. Some mind their own business and live their lives out the best they can. Those lives are not extraordinary; they just are. Nothing to see here; let’s move along.
The following classification of hillbilly that deserves our attention is the hilljack. These people took a couple classes at a community college and think they are better than all the other hillbillies. These are the people who use toilet paper (yes, that is a thing) but know better than to flush it. A true hilljack knows that a septic system does not like toilet paper, so this more sophisticated version of a hillbilly wraps the paper up, puts it in a paper or plastic bag, and then throws it out the window. It is also possible that this brand of hillbilly collects all the paper in an abandoned fridge somewhere on their property. The fridge will usually be found next to the collection of old tires and the obligatory broken tractor.
Hilljacks are perhaps the most dangerous of all hillbillies. They think they know much more than they do and can let their opinions fly. Many hillbillies know when to remain silent, but the hilljack has ideas and wants their wisdom to spread.
Hillbilly Deluxe is capitalized because these people are special. They are truly ignorant, but that is not by any particular design. They were born to hillbillies and have a sense of obligation and responsibility to their families. Education, while viewed with extreme suspicion, is sometimes allowed for the younger set.
In each instance, escape is problematic. The tug of hillbilly culture is strong, and there tends not to be any role models for the youngsters to look up to. Usually, the kids are not presented with any other lifestyle choices. The options are hillbliiy, hilljack, or maybe even Hillbilly Deluxe. The inertia radiating out from hillbilly culture is real.
Having concluded an in-depth philosophical discussion of various versions of people who are sons and daughters of the soil, we can move on to a bona fide philosopher, Ludwig Wittgenstein.
For those of you sitting on the edge of your seats, wondering if I have a Wittgenstein story, you can relax. Of course, I have a Wittgenstein story. The first thesis I wrote at Harvard had a draft that featured a discussion of Wittgenstein and his famous duck-rabbit. I say a draft version because when I got that draft back from my adviser, he had taken a red marker and placed a big X through all 30 pages of the introductory chapter. He didn’t care that I had spent as much time on Chapter One as I had the rest of the thesis. Oh well…
While the duck-rabbit is well known, I am interested today in his rhino (it may have been an elephant or a hippo, Bertrand Russel changed his story a few times). Wittgenstein’s Rhino is a curious beast full of intrigue and mystery. The story goes like this.
Wittgenstein went to Cambridge to study with Russell. It is important to note that we are talking about two intellectual giants of the last century. Oh, to be a fly on the wall or a rhino in the corner. The stories such a creature could tell if such a creature existed. And that is what this tale is about; Russell could not get Wittgenstein to admit that he was sure there was no rhino in the room with them. His reasoning had to do with “asserted propositions” and is well beyond the stuff I tackle in this blog. Wittgenstein made a serious philosophical point that Russell was not initially impressed with.
As the story goes, Russell didn’t think much of Wittgenstein when he first met him but quickly realized that the young man was a genius. Wittgenstein, as complex a character you will ever come across, went on to make significant contributions to his field. His story is a fascinating one.
This is the point in the post where I tell anyone interested to search Wittgenstein’s Rhino. You will not be disappointed. It is also reasonable to assume that this essay has some overarching point. It does, and it involves the elephant version of Wittgenstein’s point about “asserted propositions.” There is a figurative elephant in a theoretical room. I have been dancing around it since an anonymous hillbilly, er hilljack, er Hillbilly Deluxe, decided to insult me because they were too stupid to understand a post I wrote a while ago. Have you figured it out?
I was talking to a friend of mine the other day, a man I went to school with. And yes, he knew Scott, the old friend of mine that recently passed away. As I told him the tale of the essays I wrote and the comment I received, he noted that it was probable that the hillbilly didn’t understand what a metaphor was. I found that interesting. He might just be right. If this hillbilly is too ignorant to understand the meanings of the words I type, that might explain a few things. Maybe…
So, an elephant is in the room, and I have been dancing around it. It is over there in the corner; unlike Wittgenstein, I know it exists. From now on, whenever I think of Scott, I will not remember the times we had growing up together. I will only be thinking of sons and daughters of the soil and the problems they can create when the electric bill is paid. I will think of one ignorant anonymous hillbilly with the apparent cranial capacity of a juvenile Australopithecus and the deftness of a run-of-the-mill gastropod. And that, for many reasons, is a great shame.
