Another exploration of opposites.
in education, there's a constant buzz over the choice to teach either content or skills (namely the ability to Think Critically) in primary schooling. Remember briefly, those Critical Thinking(!) sections in every literature, science, and math textbook you encountered -- those are the products of this discussion. Pedagogues are unsure whether students are better equipped, for example, with vast exposure to volumes of esteemed authors OR extensive practice in analyzing said texts for purpose, influence, and import (with, necessarily, less time dedicated to sheer exposure). To be sure, many educators believe that both are necessary and teachers should simultaneously present material to their students and guide them in the process of analysis. This convergence of option is widely regarded as The Answer. Simple.
But who do we respect (read:lust for)? Movie Stars mostly. Sometimes the selfless, the suffering-- those seemingly dedicated to higher life purposes. Though, if placed in a weak analogy, the latter would certainly be the Y factor in category of idolized celebrity vowels.
And let's, appropriately, break down those categories.
I feel that celebrities have chosen a life direction involving pursuit and acquisition of human desires...fame, money, general pleasure. They have chosen the warmth and are letting their animal bodies love. Interestingly, I think most of the Unknowns fit into this category, as well. The hundreds of thousands of people that cannot hope, in the least, for a vague recognition and subsequent look-up on IMDB, resulting in assurance that she just *knew* I'd seen him in something, I couldn't remember it was Jurassic Park III.
Take a moment and imagine the earth from space. Watch the unpoliticized United States with spaceman perspective; you see? there's some cloud cover over the Pacific northwest. Now, zoom slowly down, into the atmosphere. As the Appalachian Mountains solidify, you lose sight of the arching plains of the midwest. Flying down into the green, it's difficult to keep your eyelids open against the wind -- a few strands of hair are whipped into your mouth and caught in saliva. Sorry, your hair is short? Perhaps a traveling companion has forgotten to secure hers. As the ground come closer, it's apparent that your destination is not a city or town. Rather, you're headed to a sparsely populated tract of farm and orchard fields in western Pennsylvania. Trees are suddenly large again as you descend, you graceful spaceman. You land on some uneven grass growing next to a well-worn gravel driveway that leads calmly, playfully away from an old, paint-chipped victorian farmhouse and toward a cinderblock garage, or perhaps it's a hobbyshop, you're not sure. Just as you note that a garage would, by definition, house some sort of automotive contraption, and there's just no room for a car in there, what with the chaos of fishing poles and white five gallon buckets-- an older man carrying a section of 16" X 8" silver, soldered sheet metal which has been curved into a replacement part for a wood stove pipe, appears from the hobby shop (by now, you've decided) and walks with slow deliberation toward the house. Neither he, nor his wife, nor the hundreds of people they know will Be Known. But I say this aging couple are in the same category as Lindsey Lohan, not for similarities, but because neither has said I Am an Explorer of Ideas, A Critical Thinker, A Figurer Outer. They are not searching or teaching. If they serve an educational purpose, it would be at the clawing hands of the Figurer Outers, needing to figure and needing to know and again asking all those interrogatives.
Speaking of which -- who are the Figurer Outers? And more importantly, why adopt such a juvenile name for a group purporting to know or soon find answers to big questions? I'm with you on that one, actually.
They--you should know-- are those who perhaps received high marks in those Critical Thinking (!) sections of old, or are just naturally inclined toward a consideration and theorization of the world and its component parts: natural, spiritual, manmade, and otherwise. (pause for consideration of contemporary philosophy and the necessity of peer-review). These people develop. They hold patents and more often -- conferences. They do figure shit out. They do. They have good ideas. They refine ideas, only to have them criticized and negated. They redefine Circadia, preferring to wake with their own genius and sink into a bed of goals unachieved. They are aroused by the promise of a significant contribution to society, but they are wholly inflamed by the self-imposed delay of climax. They spend the last twenty years of their lives searching for the unified field theory and die thinking themselves failures. They sometimes spend Tuesday nights--while they're friends are drinking twoforone pints downtown--at the library working harder than necessary on a project that classmates will turn in under the claim "I started this last night at 8 and just finished!" as they saunter in, 30 minutes late to class.
I was sitting on the porch this evening thinking about a (nother) class I took this semester. I didn't try very hard. But I cared. Some people didn't care at all. Some people faked it. Momentarily, I considered whether I think too much and too complexly. I considered whether I should have spent more time socializing with my peers-- an infrequent behavior of which I've been recently admonished. Then I thought -- Emma, that's crazy. Under no circumstances can you let simpletons cloud your vision and your intellect and your enjoyment of ideas.
(But now I'm not so sure.) (Now, I think that maybe those CT(!) section writers were also fakers, and adopted an irresponsible teaching method, unknowingly corrupting previously happy humans with the ability to cut through the bullshit, so to speak, arming them with Conceptual forceps, whose use will not bring forth a gush of hot, red, flowing Truth, as intended, but rather a nothingnothing hush of blade through air, of unsatisfied bloodlust for a thinking, a think, to criticize.)
Here's to figuring it out.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
(blood lust? Really?)
But who do we respect (read:lust for)? Movie Stars mostly. Sometimes the selfless, the suffering-- those seemingly dedicated to higher life purposes. Though, if placed in a weak analogy, the latter would certainly be the Y factor in category of idolized celebrity vowels.
And let's, appropriately, break down those categories.
I feel that celebrities have chosen a life direction involving pursuit and acquisition of human desires...fame, money, general pleasure. They have chosen the warmth and are letting their animal bodies love. Interestingly, I think most of the Unknowns fit into this category, as well. The hundreds of thousands of people that cannot hope, in the least, for a vague recognition and subsequent look-up on IMDB, resulting in assurance that she just *knew* I'd seen him in something, I couldn't remember it was Jurassic Park III.
Take a moment and imagine the earth from space. Watch the unpoliticized United States with spaceman perspective; you see? there's some cloud cover over the Pacific northwest. Now, zoom slowly down, into the atmosphere. As the Appalachian Mountains solidify, you lose sight of the arching plains of the midwest. Flying down into the green, it's difficult to keep your eyelids open against the wind -- a few strands of hair are whipped into your mouth and caught in saliva. Sorry, your hair is short? Perhaps a traveling companion has forgotten to secure hers. As the ground come closer, it's apparent that your destination is not a city or town. Rather, you're headed to a sparsely populated tract of farm and orchard fields in western Pennsylvania. Trees are suddenly large again as you descend, you graceful spaceman. You land on some uneven grass growing next to a well-worn gravel driveway that leads calmly, playfully away from an old, paint-chipped victorian farmhouse and toward a cinderblock garage, or perhaps it's a hobbyshop, you're not sure. Just as you note that a garage would, by definition, house some sort of automotive contraption, and there's just no room for a car in there, what with the chaos of fishing poles and white five gallon buckets-- an older man carrying a section of 16" X 8" silver, soldered sheet metal which has been curved into a replacement part for a wood stove pipe, appears from the hobby shop (by now, you've decided) and walks with slow deliberation toward the house. Neither he, nor his wife, nor the hundreds of people they know will Be Known. But I say this aging couple are in the same category as Lindsey Lohan, not for similarities, but because neither has said I Am an Explorer of Ideas, A Critical Thinker, A Figurer Outer. They are not searching or teaching. If they serve an educational purpose, it would be at the clawing hands of the Figurer Outers, needing to figure and needing to know and again asking all those interrogatives.
Speaking of which -- who are the Figurer Outers? And more importantly, why adopt such a juvenile name for a group purporting to know or soon find answers to big questions? I'm with you on that one, actually.
They--you should know-- are those who perhaps received high marks in those Critical Thinking (!) sections of old, or are just naturally inclined toward a consideration and theorization of the world and its component parts: natural, spiritual, manmade, and otherwise. (pause for consideration of contemporary philosophy and the necessity of peer-review). These people develop. They hold patents and more often -- conferences. They do figure shit out. They do. They have good ideas. They refine ideas, only to have them criticized and negated. They redefine Circadia, preferring to wake with their own genius and sink into a bed of goals unachieved. They are aroused by the promise of a significant contribution to society, but they are wholly inflamed by the self-imposed delay of climax. They spend the last twenty years of their lives searching for the unified field theory and die thinking themselves failures. They sometimes spend Tuesday nights--while they're friends are drinking twoforone pints downtown--at the library working harder than necessary on a project that classmates will turn in under the claim "I started this last night at 8 and just finished!" as they saunter in, 30 minutes late to class.
I was sitting on the porch this evening thinking about a (nother) class I took this semester. I didn't try very hard. But I cared. Some people didn't care at all. Some people faked it. Momentarily, I considered whether I think too much and too complexly. I considered whether I should have spent more time socializing with my peers-- an infrequent behavior of which I've been recently admonished. Then I thought -- Emma, that's crazy. Under no circumstances can you let simpletons cloud your vision and your intellect and your enjoyment of ideas.
(But now I'm not so sure.) (Now, I think that maybe those CT(!) section writers were also fakers, and adopted an irresponsible teaching method, unknowingly corrupting previously happy humans with the ability to cut through the bullshit, so to speak, arming them with Conceptual forceps, whose use will not bring forth a gush of hot, red, flowing Truth, as intended, but rather a nothingnothing hush of blade through air, of unsatisfied bloodlust for a thinking, a think, to criticize.)
Here's to figuring it out.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
(blood lust? Really?)