Scholar s Mate

Scholar's Mate

Psychopolitical fiction

This play is entirely a work of fiction. The characters and incidents portrayed here are the product of the author's imagination. Any similarity to real people, places, or historical events is purely accidental.

Main characters:

Redie, the good
Angel Eyes, the bad
Tuco, the evil

On Monday, Tuco writes a post in Angel Eyes's group.

Recently, I noticed that Angel Eyes stopped publishing his awkward descriptions of the events, the thing he had been doing for roughly five years.

I've not been attending the club since the beginning of the summer primarily because of my psychopolitical paradigm shift from German to Chinese.

On June 3rd, I ended my 500-day-long engagement with German, reaching the level of fluency in it that is definitely greater than the English of at least half of those with whom I've been doomed to converse at Angel Eyes's club for years.

You think I'm showing off, don't you? Think again. Imagine my feelings after talking to the same people for years and seeing almost no improvement in their ability to understand me. It's like "krank sein und die Troster heimschicken und mit Tauben Freundschaft schliessen, die niemals horen, was du willst."

So on June 3rd, I turned all my psychopolitical forces toward a new height and began mastering Chinese. This is the main reason why I stopped visiting Angel Eyes's meetings. I couldn't afford it. I needed all my free time to master Chinese.

Once again, after Angel Eyes stopped publishing his descriptions—they were so awkward and addictive simultaneously that I've read virtually all of them throughout these five years—I got curious and went to see what was going on at the meetings with my own eyes.

Apparently, I overheard one guy saying it was impossible to get good at Chinese; therefore, it was useless to study it. I laughed in my heart, since it's been just 137 days since I began my Chinese studies, and I can already speak Chinese almost as well as this guy speaks English, even though he's been trying to study it for years. I bet that in 500 days I'm going to speak Chinese better than this guy speaks English. Wanna see me making progress in the next 363 days? I'm planning to organize a Chinese-speaking club in the near future. Get on board:vk.ru/club222003027

On Tuesday, Redie leaves a comment:

Good luck with Chinese and any other endeavor. We're dull-witted and unworthy, so we'll stay in the club with Angel Eyes and his clumsy descriptions. We'll happily rot in the swamp of ignorance of our insignificant and lethargic lives. And yes, I used a translator to write this sentence because my English level isn't good enough to express it directly, and it doesn't get any better in the club—what a shame.

Tuco replies in a few hours:

(A slow, theatrical sigh, followed by a clap that's just a little too slow to be sincere).

I like this sweet, intoxicating aroma of self-depreciation humor. Well played, Redie, well played. Your sublime, self-aware ignorance, designed to impress whomever you include in your hallucinated abstraction "we," sounds very convincing. I too probably would like to be a part of this "we" and stay with Angel Eyes's "clumsy" descriptions, but they sank in the digital void a few months ago, and there is no sign of them popping up back on the surface.

You've made an opening that guarantees checkmate in three moves, but since I'm in a playful mood and no one else dares to play with me, let me also act like a fool and pretend that I don't understand what's happening.

Redie deletes her comment two minutes later after Tuco's reply.

Tuco pushes forward:

The first rule of getting smarter is to write down the moves of your opponents before they brush off all the pieces from the board. Oopsy.

"Good luck with Chinese and any other endeavor. We're dull-witted and unworthy, so we'll stay in the club with Denis and his clumsy descriptions. We'll happily rot in the swamp of ignorance of our insignificant and lethargic lives. And yes, I used a translator to write this sentence because my English level isn't good enough to express it directly, and it doesn't get any better in the club—what a shame. "

Next morning, on Wednesday, Redie shows up again:

I deleted the message because I realized I overreacted. I’m used to communicating with mature people, so your message surprised me. And then I realized that I also reacted in a rather childish way. You can play, study Chinese, or do whatever you want, but no one gave you the right to insult others. Later I realized that it was a mistake to take it personally. Because I still like you as a person, I reacted; in other cases, a person would just be told to go fuck himself without any explanation.

You wrote about how you struggle to communicate with people who haven’t made any progress in English over the years. Has it ever occurred to you that people’s lives don’t revolve around learning a language, and no one sets out to read philosophers in the original? No one except you. You called Angel Eyes’s questions awkward, even though all those questions 100% serve the club’s purpose — small talk. If you’re looking for deep conversations with deep people and serious conclusions, you’ve come to the wrong place. The English club is seen as light entertainment, not a life plan. If your life revolves around linguistics and philosophy, that’s just your own concern. It’s extremely strange to advertise your Chinese club on the platform, insulting others progress and the club leader.

Tuco waits until the late evening and adds this:

Nice move. Overreaction! If you don't mind, I'm going to mirror it with the same excuse. I overreacted to your overreaction. Although I'm used to communicating with grown-up toddlers, your surprised emotional outburst didn't leave me a chance, so I was forced to put on "yelmo de Mambrino" and attack you as if you were a windmill or something.

Before I respond to your argument, I want you to understand my actual intention with respect to our engagement. My goal is to provoke a real discussion and draw the attention of those who are seriously interested in studying Chinese to my project. The condescending tone, self-aggrandizement, and all this intellectual acrobatics are necessary to filter out everything but the most worthy opponent. I have no intention to insult either you or anybody else. I hope you are aware that we are on the internet, and our exchange can be viewed by a potentially limitless number of people or bots. If you don't understand something or mistake theatrical pronouncements for evaluating judgments, it well may be the case that I'm implicitly addressing the audience that demands ceaseless entertainment. Panem et circenses.

Now let's see what you got. I don't struggle to communicate with people who haven't made any progress in English over the years. I talk about the obvious lack of understanding, which your comments also clearly demonstrate. There are plenty of people whose lives revolve around studying a language, and many of them read philosophers in the original. The fact that you haven't met them reveals more about you rather than accurately describing the social world. Take Angel Eyes for example. A few months before this club was opened, we had regularly run in the forest and discussed determinism, free-will, and other philosophical concepts. Angel Eyes is not seriously interested in philosophy, but he reads books. Back then, he even recommended one to me. It was called "No More Mr. Nice Guy," a self-help manual that apparently did not help him at all. He is still a nice guy, doesn't push back when you drag him in your fantasy world and proclaim that his club's purpose is entertainment or small talk. Someone else would probably tell you directly that if you are looking for light entertainment or small talk with shallow people, you've come to the wrong place (or even worse, borrowing your terminology). But he apparently prefers to avoid confrontation, and I perfectly understand him.

Redie again deletes all the comments.

On Thursday, Tuco brings back her comments and adds:

Back in 2015, when my English practice consisted primarily of translating videos from youtube, I spent almost a month working on Vsauce's "Science of Awkwardness" (www.youtube.com/watch?v=o2...). I derived a whole bunch of interesting but fundamentally useless concepts, like vicarious embarrassment or protagonist disease, for example, from this video. Useless in a sense that they didn't help me get better at English. Whenever I had to talk about these concepts, I wasn't able to explain what they meant in English and interpreted them in Russian. By that time, it was already three years since I had begun studying English, and I still had a close to zero experience in talking. My life did not revolve around learning a language. All attempts to read Shakespeare or Byron in the original led to immense frustration. A year later, when I came to an English-speaking club, I experienced firsthand what the science of awkwardness taught me. A year later, when the host of the club left Kaluga and I replaced her, I was told that my English wasn't good enough for this task. I wasn't told that my writing or speech was awkward. Back then much harsher terms were in use. And it was very helpful. I accepted the criticism and in a few years showed how to get from an awkwardly sounded amateur to an undisputable master of the language. Now, since I may view myself as someone who made the greatest contribution to the development of Angel Eyes's club, second only to Angel Eyes's own contribution, I have a right to tell him and anybody else what I think about the current situation. The fact that I say bluntly that his descriptions are awkward has nothing to do with my evaluation of his character or personality. I know that Angel Eyes is a smart guy, and he knows that I know it. After all, I've never beaten him at chess. I do not insult him. You do by confusing his awkwardness with foolishness and treating him in your comments as if he were a fool.

In an hour, Angel Eyes interferes, deletes all comments, and removes the comment section from the group.

The prototype of Tuco sits alone in his room on Friday's morning and thinks about the author of The Scholar's Mate.

"You want to play with me, fucking moron? Want to expose me as an evil genius obsessed with his own superiority? I'll demonstrate to you what the scholar's mate really looks like! Want to make me the laughing stock of the entire world? Tuco, the evil, will beat your ass. You have no idea whom you're trying to mock. I'm the most powerful man in the Sprachraum. I'll turn your brilliance against you. My Russian and Chinese friends have a much stronger potential than your English-German combination. With your original quotes from Zarathustra and references to Don Quixote, you're not going to impress anyone but a bunch of decadent fools. You yourself is a decadent fool lost in glorious memories of the golden age of the platonic cage. I know you'd like to call it a "cave" and think of it as if it were the elephant graveyard or whatever, but in reality it is a cage, and you are still in it, and there's no way out for you. Nobody's going to rescue your dead soul. The future is ours. Whatever narrative you're going to build around me in English is going to be countered by Volibor Zastavkin and his new buddy, NoSelf, in Russian and Chinese. I'll force you to shift your own stupid brain to think in Russian and Chinese. English is a dead language. Got it?"

The prototype of Tuko reveals himself as Волибор Заставкин before  the audience. He rereads his rant addressed to the author of the Scholar's Mate and decides to resume publishing his Московский Английский Философский Клуб's narrative, which he halted on June 8th.

3 ноября 2021.

Месяц был большей частью стабилизирующим. Несмотря на шум, я постепенно вышел из состояния упадка и, наладив регулярное выполнение упражнений, пошёл на подъём. Неделю назад возобновил диктофонные записи и переключил дневник на русский. Решил "поменять правление" на 100 дней и, так сказать, выпустил Волибора Заставкина. Занимаяcь английским записал шесть диалогов: Raul, Sishir, Michael, Natasha, Polina, Frank. Также, проработал следующие темы: Justice, Dao, Fate, Water, Air.

Нужно связывать философские диалоги с темами клуба. Было несколько интересных моментов в процессе изучения тем: Dao и Fate. Я стал писать диалог с Fate, захвативший моё внимание на несколько дней, однако после проведения клуба, интерес к продолжению этого диалога пропал.

Большей частью я старался ограничивать себя как в чтении, так и в просмотре лекций. Посмотрел сериал Mindhanter и несколько сезонов Friends. Последнее довело меня чуть ли не до отчаяния, так что пришлось переключаться на русский.

Посещал лекции Д по политологии и прослушал две темы: Выборы и Власть. Помимо лекций было также два разговора с Д по пути от института до пл. Победы. Он занят ремонтом, семьей и совершенно равнодушно относится к теме образования. Подбивал его записать лекции по Истории Государства и Права Зарубежных Стран (ИГИПЗС) и выложить их на ю-туб. Пока безрезультатно.

Дважды встречался с Н. Первый раз я был инициатором встречи, после того как она лайкнула мой диалог с Raul. Второй раз -- она. Дал ей прочесть "дневник общения". Полностью погружена в работу. Регулярно виделся с Lina как на клубе, так и на крыше. Несколько раз встречал её на улице и провожал до дома или до спортзала. Она перечитывает мои бумажные дневники. Сейчас дошла до лета 2020.

На днях виделся с О. Ходили на спектакль: "Ад — это я". Там встретил Lina. В целом все идет норм.

Кстати, был на похоронах Л. Случайно убили в пьяной драке.