My condolences! You have - accidentally, no doubt - stumbled into "Wille.blogspot.com." But before you fly off to other spots - quickly, no doubt - take a break. Take a breath. Take a sip (of whatever you are sipping) and contemplate for a moment the subtle poetic timbre of this word: "…blogspot.com." Could you ever imagine a lovelier sound? And what does it mean? It could mean, perhaps, that you are a blockhead for reading this (maybe even - God forbid - a "bookful blockhead, ignorantly read, with loads of learned lumber in your head"), but… well, it doesn’t. "Blog" is short for "weblog." A web will remind you of a spider-web, no doubt, and you are right, because you have been caught already. A log could be a log-book onboard a ship and soon we shall be shipwrecked in an ocean of unsolicited information. But before this is going to happen you might want to know who is the Wille in this horrible spot. Well, it is my secret name. My real one now is 魏樂富 - unfortunately - and if you want to read about him click here. But better don’t do that! Read this interesting excerpt from Milan Kundera’s Immortality instead:
"In our world, where there are more and more faces, more and more alike, it is difficult for an individual to reinforce the originality of the self and to become convinced of its inimitable uniqueness. There are two methods for cultivating the uniqueness of the self: the method of addition and the method of subtraction. Agnes subtracts from her self everything that is exterior and borrowed, in order to come closer to her sheer essence (even with the risk that zero lurks at the bottom of the subtraction). Laura’s method is precisely the opposite: in order to make her self more visible, perceivable, seizable, sizable, she keeps adding to it more and more attributes and she attempts to identify herself with them (with the risk that the essence of the self may be buried by the additional attributes)."
"The method of addition is quite charming if it involves adding to the self things as a cat, a dog, roast pork, love of the sea or of cold showers. But the matter becomes less idyllic if a person decides to add love for communism, for the homeland, for Mussolini, for Catholicism or atheism, for fascism or antifacism. In both cases the method remains exactly the same: a person stubbornly defending the superiority of cats over other animals is doing basically the same thing as one who maintains that Mussolini was the sole savior of Italy: he is proud of this attribute of the self and he tries to make this attribute (a cat or Mussolini) acknowledged and loved by everyone."
"Here is that strange paradox to which all people cultivating the self by way of the addition method are subject: they use addition in order to create a unique, inimitable self, yet because they automatically become propagandists for the added attributes, they are actually doing everything in their power to make as many others as possible similar to themselves; as a result, their uniqueness (so painfully gained) quickly begins to disappear."
Kundera (or the "I" in his novel) is implying that it may be cooler to subtract attributes from your self (even with the risk of getting zero). But I can feel that this does not satisfy your curiosity. So you may want to browse my writings:
