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Applied Platonism; Or, What Work Isn't
- University of Michigan Press
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119 Applied Platonism; Or, What Work Isn’t I had been before to Warehouse 9. Situated on a cul- de- sac near the margin of the Army Corps of Engineers facility where I was then working, it was a large but unprepossessing building: sheet metal quonset- hut style, like an airplane hangar— probably it was in fact a recycled or otherwise diverted airplane hangar— large enough to contain, perhaps, a football field. When I had looked inside Warehouse 9 before, it was empty except for a large expanse of dust- filtered sun angling down from skylights. This day, therefore, I walked up a short flight of wooden stairs onto a loading dock and opened a door, expecting nothing. What I saw instead was an ocean. To be more precise, what I saw was a model ocean, a working replica of an ocean. But when I opened the door, I did not yet know that. All I knew was that the place was full of water, to a depth just below the level of the loading dock where I was standing, a sheet of water that extended virtually the length and breadth of the building. I stood for a moment bewildered; there was something here, I had been told, that I was supposed to see, but beyond the water, it was hard to tell what that might be or what I was to do. As my eyes adjusted to the light, I noticed a narrow platform in front of me, that led to a narrow walkway built of planks that led to the wall and then down the length of the building. I followed it, not knowing what else to do, and then saw that at the far end of the warehouse there was— what? something, and a couple of people moving in the dusky light. ❧ 120 It was many years ago, in a universe far away. I had a job. 1972, a year when people were still considering dropping out as a viable lifestyle: always behind the curve, I was dropping in. I was twenty- two. I had completed a master’s degree in literature and creative writing all except the thesis; struggling to finish the thesis, I convinced myself that the whole academic enterprise was a mistake for me. On a whim, I took the civil service exam. I have always been good at taking standardized tests; I realized the first time I took one, when I was in junior high, that such tests are not about knowledge (I certainly didn’t know anything); they are about the people who design the tests. If you possess a certain kind of imagination, you can channel the test makers, and so doing, you can think three or four moves ahead of them. This served me well on the Stanford- Binet IQ test, on the PSAT, the SAT, the ACT, and the GRE, among other unpronounceable horrors. It served me especially well on the civil service exam, which struck me as the easiest test I had ever taken. Whoever designed this test, I thought, was simple- minded beyond belief. The test was so dull that I took it on a Saturday afternoon and promptly forgot all about it. When, on the following Saturday, I received a letter from the government, it came as a complete surprise. I won’t pretend to remember the precise language of the letter, though I wish I could; the government’s language is always entertaining in a perverse way, but unfortunately it is rarely memorable. The spirit of it I remember perfectly, and it was this: Dear Mr. Hummer: Your score on our absurd test is absurdly good. Though we don’t want to, because we suspect you are not one of us, we are forced to place you very high on our waiting list for civil service jobs. We cannot put you in the very top group, because that stratum is reserved for veterans of our armed forces; we are in the middle of a vitally important and highly illegal war on foreign soil, and your non- participation in that war perforce makes you ineligible from being ranked number one, number two, or number three on our list (we have that many veterans in your city who want to work for us), but the unquestionably high score you received on the test makes it impossible for us to ignore you, or even to rank you lower than 4th on the list, [44.192.75.131] Project...