Mackey's personal essay
So I finally finished my personal essay for Mr. Mackey. As arujei can attest, this assignment has been the subject of serious ranting (on my part) and angst (on everyone's part). The idea, as Mackey explained, was to write about something deeply personal that you are really afraid of revealing to anyone because omfg you'll be ostracized and never have any friends again etc. The problem, of course, is that he's a teacher. I never had him before this year. Even people who had him before don't really count him in their inner circles.
What right has he to ask for this kind of personal revelation?
He had us do this exercise where we wrote for 45 minutes solid, no breaks at all, about our topic. (We didn't have to show anyone this exercise or turn it in or anything, thankfully.) I wrote about the most personal/frightening thing I could think of, which was some of my particular sexual perversions. (Yes, I have them. No, you don't need to know what they are.) It was wonderfully cathartic and therapeutic, but still not the kind of thing you want to show a guy who you met a week ago and you have to interact with for the rest of the school year, you know?
So I switched topics. I called it "Oscillations between the Woo-Woo and the Scientific". That topic is actually very personal in the sense that it's about my worldview/philosophy at a deep level. The "my sexual perversions" topic was really only personal in the sense of an intimate embarrassing secret - it wasn't about me. I have no idea how Mackey will react, but I don't think he has the right to assign an essay about your deep dark secrets - that's almost an abuse of power.
Here's the essay, if you care to read it. Warning: kind of long and possibly crappy.
Edit: I should have said this earlier, but just so you know, the beginning of the essay reiterates a good part of this post.
Kelly Drinkwater
English E block
Mr. Mackey
9/11/2006
Oscillations between the Woo-Woo and the Scientific
In karate practice last week, I was partnered with Blake Gilbert: alumnus, black belt, and (in Dr. Chandler’s words) “the most dangerous person ever to be in Karate Club”. We were doing a basic drill. I punched, he blocked and riposted. I lathered, he rinsed and repeated. It was a drill; it wasn’t hard. Naturally, I thought blocking-riposting would be just as easy.
But when we traded roles, Blake went into attack mode. This was not a howling-berserker rampage; it was more of a physical-power-combined-with-focus-strong-enough-to-knock-you-over technique. He undid me psychologically. I immediately began fucking up and making ineffectual little wimpy blocks with no ripostes. I was in tears from the double whammy of fear and frustration. Vicious-spiral mode was engaged, and the harder I tried to stop crying, the wetter my eyes became.
I managed to compose myself by a technique I’d read about but dismissed as ‘unscientific’: grounding and shielding. I pictured myself as contiguous with the earth, which was a vast reservoir of flowing white light. I drew some up into myself and projected it into a sort of shield between myself and Blake. I suddenly didn’t feel so threatened. The white light protected me and comforted me, and I finished out the drill without disgracing myself.
Why did this work for me? I’m a card-carrying skeptic, a secular humanist of the Nth order, married to the scientific method! Why would I even try a technique so close to the cliff of pseudoscience as energetics? Why did it work for me?
It’s not so hard to imagine grounding and shielding working for my fifth-grade self. She believed wholeheartedly in tarot cards and other pseudoscientific New-Agey stuff, blended with her own brand of magic, plus a dash of environmentalism taken to an extreme. Every little coincidence was a sign. Being outdoors fed her metaphysical energy. Trees would awake, walk, and talk if they had the volition. She would attempt to divine the first letter of her true love’s name by throwing down sticks and looking for patterns in the way they landed - conveniently, her sweetheart’s name began with an A, which was easy to see in any shape that vaguely resembled an upside-down V. She misinterpreted coincidences as significant. She believed in nature spirits. She read the horoscopes religiously. She believed in the spiritual powers of stones, feathers, and the like. She took a brief stint at moralistic vegetarianism. She ascribed spiritual significance to pentacles made of popsicle sticks. She blithely ignored all the “signs” that didn’t work, and made much of the ones that did. She never sought to falsify her beliefs.
In middle school, she read Innumeracy by John Allen Paulos, a scathing rebuke of pseudoscience and its influence on a too-credulous public. She realized what a dumbass she’d been, not to put too fine a point on it. She made a 180º about-face in her worldview, and I embraced skepticism and scientific rigor. It felt fantastic to have a way of proving, really proving, that I was right, instead of just knowing and justifying things to myself.
Over the next several years, I solidified my position as a skeptic. I was motivated partly by a desire to repudiate her for unrelated reasons, but mostly by the way scientific inquiry appealed to my idealistic side. However slow and painful it might be, rigor would at least asymptotically approach the truth. Without it, there was little hope of even an asymptotic approach.
I sold my soul to the scientific method. To neurosis about variables and control. To Occam’s Razor. To the primacy of data over fallible interpretation. To critical thinking. To truth on its own merit, not on its proponents’ clout. To mistrust of “doctrine”. To the active search for possibilities other than my own theory. To baring my data and methodology for criticism. To egolessness in pursuit of the greater good.
Recently, I’ve stepped back a little from my hardline skeptic attitude. I’ve become interested in “unscientific” subjects like the afterlife, empathy, and energetics. But I don’t just believe; I support active scientific inquiry into these areas, rather than just sighing and thinking, “Oh well, science hasn’t explained that yet.” Just because no one has figured out the scientific principles behind a phenomenon, doesn’t mean the phenomenon doesn’t occur. It’s perfectly understandable that scientists, being preoccupied with non-metaphysical problems like curing cancer, haven’t done much investigation in these areas - but they shouldn’t just be discarded. Grounding and shielding would never work for a really hardline skeptic, but I suppose they worked for me because I admit their possibility, even if I don’t believe in them without question.
What right has he to ask for this kind of personal revelation?
He had us do this exercise where we wrote for 45 minutes solid, no breaks at all, about our topic. (We didn't have to show anyone this exercise or turn it in or anything, thankfully.) I wrote about the most personal/frightening thing I could think of, which was some of my particular sexual perversions. (Yes, I have them. No, you don't need to know what they are.) It was wonderfully cathartic and therapeutic, but still not the kind of thing you want to show a guy who you met a week ago and you have to interact with for the rest of the school year, you know?
So I switched topics. I called it "Oscillations between the Woo-Woo and the Scientific". That topic is actually very personal in the sense that it's about my worldview/philosophy at a deep level. The "my sexual perversions" topic was really only personal in the sense of an intimate embarrassing secret - it wasn't about me. I have no idea how Mackey will react, but I don't think he has the right to assign an essay about your deep dark secrets - that's almost an abuse of power.
Here's the essay, if you care to read it. Warning: kind of long and possibly crappy.
Edit: I should have said this earlier, but just so you know, the beginning of the essay reiterates a good part of this post.
Kelly Drinkwater
English E block
Mr. Mackey
9/11/2006
Oscillations between the Woo-Woo and the Scientific
In karate practice last week, I was partnered with Blake Gilbert: alumnus, black belt, and (in Dr. Chandler’s words) “the most dangerous person ever to be in Karate Club”. We were doing a basic drill. I punched, he blocked and riposted. I lathered, he rinsed and repeated. It was a drill; it wasn’t hard. Naturally, I thought blocking-riposting would be just as easy.
But when we traded roles, Blake went into attack mode. This was not a howling-berserker rampage; it was more of a physical-power-combined-with-focus-strong-enough-to-knock-you-over technique. He undid me psychologically. I immediately began fucking up and making ineffectual little wimpy blocks with no ripostes. I was in tears from the double whammy of fear and frustration. Vicious-spiral mode was engaged, and the harder I tried to stop crying, the wetter my eyes became.
I managed to compose myself by a technique I’d read about but dismissed as ‘unscientific’: grounding and shielding. I pictured myself as contiguous with the earth, which was a vast reservoir of flowing white light. I drew some up into myself and projected it into a sort of shield between myself and Blake. I suddenly didn’t feel so threatened. The white light protected me and comforted me, and I finished out the drill without disgracing myself.
Why did this work for me? I’m a card-carrying skeptic, a secular humanist of the Nth order, married to the scientific method! Why would I even try a technique so close to the cliff of pseudoscience as energetics? Why did it work for me?
It’s not so hard to imagine grounding and shielding working for my fifth-grade self. She believed wholeheartedly in tarot cards and other pseudoscientific New-Agey stuff, blended with her own brand of magic, plus a dash of environmentalism taken to an extreme. Every little coincidence was a sign. Being outdoors fed her metaphysical energy. Trees would awake, walk, and talk if they had the volition. She would attempt to divine the first letter of her true love’s name by throwing down sticks and looking for patterns in the way they landed - conveniently, her sweetheart’s name began with an A, which was easy to see in any shape that vaguely resembled an upside-down V. She misinterpreted coincidences as significant. She believed in nature spirits. She read the horoscopes religiously. She believed in the spiritual powers of stones, feathers, and the like. She took a brief stint at moralistic vegetarianism. She ascribed spiritual significance to pentacles made of popsicle sticks. She blithely ignored all the “signs” that didn’t work, and made much of the ones that did. She never sought to falsify her beliefs.
In middle school, she read Innumeracy by John Allen Paulos, a scathing rebuke of pseudoscience and its influence on a too-credulous public. She realized what a dumbass she’d been, not to put too fine a point on it. She made a 180º about-face in her worldview, and I embraced skepticism and scientific rigor. It felt fantastic to have a way of proving, really proving, that I was right, instead of just knowing and justifying things to myself.
Over the next several years, I solidified my position as a skeptic. I was motivated partly by a desire to repudiate her for unrelated reasons, but mostly by the way scientific inquiry appealed to my idealistic side. However slow and painful it might be, rigor would at least asymptotically approach the truth. Without it, there was little hope of even an asymptotic approach.
I sold my soul to the scientific method. To neurosis about variables and control. To Occam’s Razor. To the primacy of data over fallible interpretation. To critical thinking. To truth on its own merit, not on its proponents’ clout. To mistrust of “doctrine”. To the active search for possibilities other than my own theory. To baring my data and methodology for criticism. To egolessness in pursuit of the greater good.
Recently, I’ve stepped back a little from my hardline skeptic attitude. I’ve become interested in “unscientific” subjects like the afterlife, empathy, and energetics. But I don’t just believe; I support active scientific inquiry into these areas, rather than just sighing and thinking, “Oh well, science hasn’t explained that yet.” Just because no one has figured out the scientific principles behind a phenomenon, doesn’t mean the phenomenon doesn’t occur. It’s perfectly understandable that scientists, being preoccupied with non-metaphysical problems like curing cancer, haven’t done much investigation in these areas - but they shouldn’t just be discarded. Grounding and shielding would never work for a really hardline skeptic, but I suppose they worked for me because I admit their possibility, even if I don’t believe in them without question.