Thinking about my academic future, it occurred to me that there is a good chance that my teaching opportunities will be limited to teaching community college once I graduate. This really upset me, and then it occurred to me... I initially decided to go into higher education because I wanted to teach in CEGEP, which is community college in Quebec.
You always read about this stuff happening, but when you do get what you want and lament your life anyway, it's a pretty big shock.
At this point, I don't really know why I want to do what I think I want to do. I was very disturbed when I realized that a big part of my inner dialogue revolved around needing to take a certain career path due to prestige or spite. Sure, being in academia means not walking an extremely beaten path, but the thought that I am desperately trying to follow the "best" academic path at the cost of doing what I feel is most fulfilling really disturbs me. Things have been better as of late, but it's still a big shake-up in the ego department.
Sunday, October 5, 2008
Saturday, October 4, 2008
What I miss
The easy answer to "What do I miss most about Montreal" is family and friends. In this case, however, it would also be the false answer. Most (not all) of my close friends were either moving or planning to do so, and after roughly 26 years of living in the same place as my family or parts of my family, it's actually nice to be on my own.
What I miss most is living in the Village and having so many friends that were either gay, bi, or transgendered. I don't want to imply that I enjoyed their friendship because of their belonging to one or more of these groups; they were / are friends on the basis of us getting along with each other. It does not change the fact that the flavor of my lifestyle was much more intricate. I am not gay, so in an important sense I was an outsider in the Village, but I also did integrate a good amount. I used to think that it was mere integration that I would be after when I came to Chicago, but I was wrong. People here are very nice, but in the hetero world, there are lines that are not supposed to be crossed. The funny thing is that I don't necessarily want to cross these lines, but they look so stark to me that they hurt my eyes.
Come to think of it, maybe I do miss "friends and family" the most, but it connects to the preceding paragraph. To reformulate: maybe what I miss the most is the feeling of friendship with those who would, just by being themselves and interacting with me, cross those lines, take me by the hand, and go for a walk with me across different conceptions of self and sexuality.
Many of my friends have done so much in terms of intellectually and emotionally exploring their identity and how it relates to their sexuality... So much more than me, and I say that with the awareness that I've done so much more than many of my friends. The analytic part of my mind says that I was free-riding, letting others take the initiative in this regard, and that it's time to "cross those boundaries" on my own, or at least on my own initiative. I don't even know what it means, though. Conjecture: maybe the person with whom I am "walking" is critical with respect to this boundary-crossing project. The Montreal friends that I am thinking of were very inviting partners, enough so to give me not only the confidence, but the desire to allow for emotional growth and vulnerability. I have made some fantastic friends here, but things are still problematic regarding this facet of my personal development. It is not merely a case of lack of courage; it's just that everyone seems so comfortable in their role that it makes the particular kind of emotional connection that I'm speaking of unappealing.
Maybe this is something that lends itself to incremental, tit-for-tat increases in vulnerability...
What I miss most is living in the Village and having so many friends that were either gay, bi, or transgendered. I don't want to imply that I enjoyed their friendship because of their belonging to one or more of these groups; they were / are friends on the basis of us getting along with each other. It does not change the fact that the flavor of my lifestyle was much more intricate. I am not gay, so in an important sense I was an outsider in the Village, but I also did integrate a good amount. I used to think that it was mere integration that I would be after when I came to Chicago, but I was wrong. People here are very nice, but in the hetero world, there are lines that are not supposed to be crossed. The funny thing is that I don't necessarily want to cross these lines, but they look so stark to me that they hurt my eyes.
Come to think of it, maybe I do miss "friends and family" the most, but it connects to the preceding paragraph. To reformulate: maybe what I miss the most is the feeling of friendship with those who would, just by being themselves and interacting with me, cross those lines, take me by the hand, and go for a walk with me across different conceptions of self and sexuality.
Many of my friends have done so much in terms of intellectually and emotionally exploring their identity and how it relates to their sexuality... So much more than me, and I say that with the awareness that I've done so much more than many of my friends. The analytic part of my mind says that I was free-riding, letting others take the initiative in this regard, and that it's time to "cross those boundaries" on my own, or at least on my own initiative. I don't even know what it means, though. Conjecture: maybe the person with whom I am "walking" is critical with respect to this boundary-crossing project. The Montreal friends that I am thinking of were very inviting partners, enough so to give me not only the confidence, but the desire to allow for emotional growth and vulnerability. I have made some fantastic friends here, but things are still problematic regarding this facet of my personal development. It is not merely a case of lack of courage; it's just that everyone seems so comfortable in their role that it makes the particular kind of emotional connection that I'm speaking of unappealing.
Maybe this is something that lends itself to incremental, tit-for-tat increases in vulnerability...
Saturday, September 27, 2008
Why did I get into this?
Why did I get into this political theory nonsense to begin with? I really love giving feedback to my students and I really love working on higher-end projects.
Why the fuck aren't there 36 hours in a day?!
Why the fuck aren't there 36 hours in a day?!
Sunday, September 14, 2008
Rejection of authority just a reorganization of coercion?
I'm sleepy.
I wonder if many would-be anarchists or anti-authoritarians (politically and personally) have at their practical roots a desire to reject anyone imposing an authority-laden relationship on them. In other words, stemming from a "I don't want to be a beta" combined with a lack of interest in trying to dominate others.
If it impossible for (a)narchist to be dominated, but what if (a) said something to the effect of "I will refuse to enter into relationships in which I need to subordinate myself to others; if anyone chooses to enter into relationships with me, that is their prerogative"? In such a case, (a) would accept a provisional alpha role in a hierarchical relationship, but would do nothing to cement or promote it. "You can come and go as you please". The ideal scenario from (a)'s perspective could be one in which everyone becomes like (a) and refuses to subordinate themselves to anyone else.
I'll think about this more later. It's not my most clever thought, but it's one that may have some personal significance.
I wonder if many would-be anarchists or anti-authoritarians (politically and personally) have at their practical roots a desire to reject anyone imposing an authority-laden relationship on them. In other words, stemming from a "I don't want to be a beta" combined with a lack of interest in trying to dominate others.
If it impossible for (a)narchist to be dominated, but what if (a) said something to the effect of "I will refuse to enter into relationships in which I need to subordinate myself to others; if anyone chooses to enter into relationships with me, that is their prerogative"? In such a case, (a) would accept a provisional alpha role in a hierarchical relationship, but would do nothing to cement or promote it. "You can come and go as you please". The ideal scenario from (a)'s perspective could be one in which everyone becomes like (a) and refuses to subordinate themselves to anyone else.
I'll think about this more later. It's not my most clever thought, but it's one that may have some personal significance.
Apollo
The more I think about it, the more I realize that the Apollonian archetype does not really fit me well at all. Who knew! Everyone else, apparently. But the more I read and thought about it, the more I realized how not me that is. I was just fooled because it's the aspect of my personality that I have most explored and allowed to be dominant over the past year.
With realization comes change; I wonder who will be next! Can Zeus be anarchistic...?
With realization comes change; I wonder who will be next! Can Zeus be anarchistic...?
Monday, September 1, 2008
There is a severe massage trade imbalance going on here. You'd think that stockpiling massage favors would be a good thing, but it is not. As time goes on, people severely discount the amount that they think they owe. This also applies to moving. If you help someone move and ask them for help moving in a couple of days, they'll do it wholeheartedly and figure that "It's the least I can do". Ask them in a few months, and they might help, but they'll actually think that they're doing you the favor.
So I'm going to collect on these massages ASAP.
So I'm going to collect on these massages ASAP.
Friday, August 22, 2008
Oh God I'm cheesy
I think that there is little that advances the anarchist cause more than effective teaching, and effective teaching is intimately tied to loving and emancipation. In a teaching scenario, there is a provisional hierarchical relationship, and the best teachers are those who do everything in their power to end this relationship as quickly as possible by helping the student achieve a level of autonomy such that the student and teacher are on an equal playing field.
In other words, the point of education is, to me, to help people develop the confidence and skillset necessary to develop their personality (on their own terms), as well as their intellectual and creative ability (again, on their own terms). People learn in their own weird way, and this means that they will develop their abilities in a very particularistic way in order to meet the challenge of learning. Once they do that, they've developed problem-solving (and problem-creating!) skills that are their own and that they can apply to other fields and other problems of their lives. It is in this way that their autonomy develops. The more autonomous they become, the less need for a protective hierarchical structure, and the more society becomes slightly more anarchic as these former students rightly reject the authority of others.
By the way, creativity is to a large extent a function of applying stolen or previously worked out techniques in creative ways. Like I said earlier, when you teach a student, the student develops ways to deal with the problems put forth by the material. Upon demonstrating these problem-solving techniques, the student also adds to / reinforces the techniques in the repertoire of anyone bothering to pay attention. Good teaching is by definition pretty involved, at least in order to ensure that the student really did deal with the problem. Consequently, good teaching also exposes the teacher to the techniques the student is using. The teacher also learns from the student, or is at least reinforcing his/her own techniques. The teacher also gains in autonomy.
There's a trade-off to be made. Teaching means not only giving up domination games at the precise moment when the person teaching is on top, but also actively trying to destroy the hierarchical nature of the relationship. In return, they get the benefits outlined above.
It ties into what we think of as autonomy. Hierarchical relationships seem to presuppose that autonomy is achieved to the extent that you are in a social position. It is zero-sum, as it were. The desire to dismantle hierarchical relationships is (sometimes) the result of viewing autonomy as a positive-sum game. We can all be slaves to one another [c.f.: "No Exit"], or we can help one another overcome the very insecurities that help establish and reinforce hierarchical relationships. I see no reason to take a zero-sum approach to the game for any number of reasons, including but not limited to the fact that doing so precludes you from establishing genuine loving relationships with those around you.
We're all going to die pretty soon.
In other words, the point of education is, to me, to help people develop the confidence and skillset necessary to develop their personality (on their own terms), as well as their intellectual and creative ability (again, on their own terms). People learn in their own weird way, and this means that they will develop their abilities in a very particularistic way in order to meet the challenge of learning. Once they do that, they've developed problem-solving (and problem-creating!) skills that are their own and that they can apply to other fields and other problems of their lives. It is in this way that their autonomy develops. The more autonomous they become, the less need for a protective hierarchical structure, and the more society becomes slightly more anarchic as these former students rightly reject the authority of others.
By the way, creativity is to a large extent a function of applying stolen or previously worked out techniques in creative ways. Like I said earlier, when you teach a student, the student develops ways to deal with the problems put forth by the material. Upon demonstrating these problem-solving techniques, the student also adds to / reinforces the techniques in the repertoire of anyone bothering to pay attention. Good teaching is by definition pretty involved, at least in order to ensure that the student really did deal with the problem. Consequently, good teaching also exposes the teacher to the techniques the student is using. The teacher also learns from the student, or is at least reinforcing his/her own techniques. The teacher also gains in autonomy.
There's a trade-off to be made. Teaching means not only giving up domination games at the precise moment when the person teaching is on top, but also actively trying to destroy the hierarchical nature of the relationship. In return, they get the benefits outlined above.
It ties into what we think of as autonomy. Hierarchical relationships seem to presuppose that autonomy is achieved to the extent that you are in a social position. It is zero-sum, as it were. The desire to dismantle hierarchical relationships is (sometimes) the result of viewing autonomy as a positive-sum game. We can all be slaves to one another [c.f.: "No Exit"], or we can help one another overcome the very insecurities that help establish and reinforce hierarchical relationships. I see no reason to take a zero-sum approach to the game for any number of reasons, including but not limited to the fact that doing so precludes you from establishing genuine loving relationships with those around you.
We're all going to die pretty soon.
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