Month: May 2010

“Education either functions as an instrument which is used to facilitate integration of the younger generation into the logic of the present system and bring about conformity or it becomes the practice of freedom, the means by which men and women deal critically and creatively with reality and discover how to participate in the transformation of their world.”
— Paulo Freire (Pedagogy of the Oppressed)

Interesting word.

Main Entry: pru·ri·ent
Pronunciation: \-ənt\
Function: adjective

Etymology: Latin prurient-, pruriens, present participle of prurire to itch, crave; akin to Latin pruna glowing coal, Sanskrit ploṣati he singes, and probably to Latin pruina hoarfrost — more at freeze
Date: 1592

: marked by or arousing an immoderate or unwholesome interest or desire; especially : marked by, arousing, or appealing to sexual desire

Finale done.

And summer has begun. I just finished sending my last four essays. Total relief to be done.

Finals week is always so taxing. It’s incredible how much pressure you experience your last two weeks of school. The culmination of a semesters worth of effort is hinged on your last week of performance.

I have an atrocious amount of laundry that needs to get done. That’s priority number one. Followed by a thorough cleaning of my room. This involves vacuuming, a good dusting, and organizing all the course materials strewn about everywhere. If I didn’t live here, I’d be pretty appalled by my standards.

This semester… geeze. It’s probably… no, definitely, my most disappointing semester in college. Instead of focusing on academics I let myself get carried away with ephemeral indulgences. I failed to practice the discipline and self control that characterized my studies the past two and a half years. Why? Well.. no excuses really. I decided to get more social, something I knew would jeopardize my focus and, in turn, my studies. I did though. Am I better because of it? Not to my standards. Do I feel any better about myself? Not at all. So why? Eh..

I let myself buy into the idea that social life provides life with a richness. And it does, in the moment. And thats what I don’t like. These social investments are temporary ‘feel good’ exposures. From prior experience, I know they aren’t lasting. I think this is something that I really need to focus on absorbing. My whole life I’ve watched as I’ve poured myself into relationships, deep and wide, and ultimately watch them fade away as I moved on in life both literally and figuratively. In the end I come back to realizing that my energies could have been more wisely allocated in academics, thoughtful reflection, writing, reading, planning, hobbies, or other pursuits of personal development.

But I also recognize that a social life is necessary. The distinction between the social life I’m inclined to partake in and the social life I should partake in has to do with the type of socializing I do. Destructive or mindless activities such as heavy drinking, promiscuous encounters, or superficial antics to gain approval should have no place in a life with a purpose- assuming that purpose doesn’t entail the aforementioned. The kind of social activities and friends I should be entertaining should directly support the means to my ends. This means quality people involving quality conversations partaking in quality activities. These activities should have purpose and direction towards a higher chief aim.

I suppose this goes back to the maxim that if you value your self, then you value your time, and when you value your time, only then do you make the best use of it. Seeking self affirmation from others through mindless social interactions is an indication that your entire self worth isn’t fully recognized by you. As a result, we seek it from other people. Shame on us.

I love people, I truly do. They are my passion. Or actually, my passion is exploring life with people, engaging in critical debates and adventures that yield invaluable lessons and insights and experiences. Anyway…

Hm… what to do.

I guess I don’t have much else on my mind at the moment. I should start cleaning.

Pretty Poems

The Sonnets to Orpheus, Part Two: XIV
Rainer Maria Rilke
Translated by Stephen Mitchell

Look at the flowers, so faithful to what is earthly,
to whom we lend fate from the very border of fate.
And if they are sad about how they must wither and die,
perhaps it is our vocation to be their regret.

All Things want to fly. Only we are weighed down by desire
caught in ourselves and enthralled with our heaviness.
Oh what consuming, negative teachers we are
for them, while eternal childhood fills them with grace.

If someone were to fall into intimate slumber, and slept
deeply with Things-:how easily he would come
to a different day, out of the mutual depth.

Or perhaps he would stay there; and they would blossom and praise
their newest convert, who now is like one of them,
all those silent companions in the wind of the meadows.

“Mutability”
by Percy Shelley

We are as clouds that veil the midnight moon;
How restlessly they speed, and gleam, and quiver,
Streaking the darkness radiantly!–yet soon
Night closes round, and they are lost for ever:

Or like forgotten lyres, whose dissonant strings
Give various response to each varying blast,
To whose frail frame no second motion brings
One mood or modulation like the last.

We rest.–A dream has power to poison sleep;
We rise.–One wandering thought pollutes the day;
We feel, conceive or reason, laugh or weep;
Embrace fond woe, or cast our cares away:

It is the same!–For, be it joy or sorrow,
The path of its departure still is free:
Man’s yesterday may ne’er be like his morrow;
Nought may endure but Mutability.

“Modern schools and universities push students into habits of depersonalized learning, alienation from nature and sexuality,obedience to hierarchy, fear of authority, self objectification, and chilling competitiveness. These character traits are the essence of the twisted personality-type of modern industrialism.They are precisely the character traits needed to maintain a social system that is utterly out of touch with nature, sexuality, and real human needs.”

–Arthur Evans

Education

Every human possesses the ability to exercise their critical consciousness, to reflect and act on the world, in order to transform it to meet their approximate dilemmas. This is their labor. They are ends in themselves.

In contrast to animals which merely live in the context appropriate to it, and do not transcend contexts and communicate about it, human activity is characterized by reflection and action, theory and practice. This is how knowledge is garnered. Knowledge is simply the product of reflection and action.

Continue reading “Education”

Structures

Continuing with my last post:

Family structures reflect societal structures, or influential cultural structures. If this is the case with our current society, then most family structures are characterized by authority in the home, usually a dominating patriarch. In my own life, I found that I could not escape the oppression at home, or in school. When I attended school, or church, I was met with the same authoritative structure that dictated foreign demands and expectations. Teachers would lecture in front of the classroom and I was expected to engage in rote memorization, as if I were an empty receptacle to be filled with someone else’s cognitions of the world. In school, students are not given the opportunity, nor are they encouraged, to engage the world’s contradictions and coin relevant meaning. Instead, students are expected to passively consume someone else’s lifeless narrative of how things are. These structures suppress the critical consciousness, the curiosity for life and the world, by delegitimized our own ‘word’ and experience with the world. This oppression turns into listless, depression or rebellion against authority. This depression is simply an ‘oppression’. Rebellion is a revolt against this authority.
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Wisdom: to taste

Wisdom. Upon hearing this word, one immediately recognizes the reverence for such divine insight. But where did this word originate?

The modern semantics of the word ‘wise’ translate as being judicial, discerning, prudent, or having scholarly knowledge or learning. But how does one gain these insightful qualities?

Fascinatingly enough, the etymology of wisdom relates to tasting from the latin word sapere, in both ‘sage’ and ‘wise’. To be sapient is to be ‘wise’ or ‘to have taste’. This is also where the world homosapien is derived, meaning ‘wise man’. But why taste?
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Dark City.

I just finished watching the movie Dark City. I found it remarkable how my current investigations and insights coincided with the movie’s theme. The movie is a giant metaphor for reality.

Don’t read the following if you plan on seeing the movie. I’d recommend watching it:
In short, the movie is about a society that lives in darkness, literally and figuratively. They are preoccupied with their lives, the happenings and circumstances that unfold around them every day, although they can never really explain the causes of these happenings. A few people begin to seriously question their origins and certain contradictions that seem to be occurring. Eventually some minds transcend and break free of the mindless routine.

Thoughts on Freire

Exploring and confronting reality need to occur for knowledge to be acquired. Freire calls the critical consciousness as responsible for this task. However, he believes that we all operate in generative themes that are framed by real consciousness that contains limited perceptions. He sees that a critical consciousness using praxis of reflection and action takes one beyond real consciousness into the potential consciousness where new themes can be generated. A supposition of this confrontation of reality is that there is an objective reality that exists independently from the consciousness. This allows for the exploration. However, he believes that our understanding and knowledge is limited by the generative themes, the perceptions of this reality, which are historically and culturally rooted. Knowledge is a living and active relative cultural construct. Since all humans exist independently of reality and are integrally experiencing reality, he believes that communal discourse allows for reality to be communally explored co-intentionally. In turn, this synthesis of generative themes, or experiences, yields a much more comprehensive understanding of objective reality.

Continue reading “Thoughts on Freire”