Foucault's Revenge?

When undergoing the process of education, we are often confronted with new concepts that undermine our creativity. Instead of being asked, at this point, what direction we wish to go, we are again guided by the fatherly hand of the educational system. While there is nothing inherently wrong with assistance – one would imagine as the student reaches the maturing age of 18, they may be capable of some form of autonomy. That is – can’t we begin to make our own choices? Can we begin to be taken seriously?

And to elaborate, I wish to make a difference between two fundamentally different points of view. I am not saying: Let us do what we want! Why? Because we can! I am saying, we are able now to make independent, rational decisions. After our k-12 education, what have we learned? What are we informed about? If this is a step toward some form of maturity, should we not be able to follow our own passion? Our own talent? And secondly, do these institutions in which we trust to impart knowledge to us on livelihood, actually live up to their end of the bargain? If they do not help us gain some form of independence and creativity- or even self knowledge, what on earth are we learning?

There is a major flaw in our schools today. They are not inherently wrong, nor are they necessarily failing to understand how to impart knowledge and discipline. That is, at a particular level. What the educational system may be lacking is the ability to identify diversity of intelligence. I may be book smart, but am I socially inept? What are my strengths and weaknesses? Am I creative, logical, or both? Which is my strongest point, and which passion will drive me to succeed happily in my given field?

When we absorb ourselves in knowledge, I think it is very important not to forget the very nature of what we are doing. The accumulation of information, like a computer or database, or library of any sort – does not necessarily bring understanding or even self-knowledge. Our schools, it seems, appear to be very skilled in downloading large amounts of data into our minds, teaching us how to apply these crafts in tests. We become a kind of automaton. The more we open ourselves to the crafters, the more we resonate with their preferred attitudes, beliefs and knowledge. All the while, we believe are inheriting some form of individuality.

Yet, such an action, when it comes down to what is really going on, can be likened to a game of collectors. Everyone is given as much “stuff” as they can fit into their heads – piling it all up as uniquely and cleverly as possible. And the institution encourages this behavior, so when you’ve got quite a lot of “stuff” and have piled it as efficiently as the professor can judge, you are rewarded! In other words, you say, “My stuff is piled the best!” And argue your point.

Yet, if anyone asked: “That’s all well and good ‘stuff,’ but show me YOU.”

I’m afraid that the pile would only come crumbling down – and what would you be left with? The “student,” is itself just a label, another piece of “stuff” that the rest of the pile is tagged with. So, when someone asks you: Who are you? Are you going to give them another title, another bit of ‘stuff,’ or will you be able to answer them dynamically and authentically?

The answer of course, would be no, we are not asked to discover who we are. We are expected to decide what we wish to become. Instead, like some sort of magnet, we are expected to roll around in the bountiful knowledge they have given us and form some kind of coherent picture. There is a reason for this, and it is embedded deep in our culture: We feel the need to achieve, to gain, to become. We are not satisfied with leaving things as they are. It is considered immoral, lazy and inept. Yet, we must ask ourselves: Is this what we truly believe? Or is this all we know? Maybe there is a completely different way to grow as a human being.

Essentially, our schools work for “becoming,” but reject “being,” when in fact both are necessary parts of our existence.

The Yin-Yang symbol in America has become an icon for alternative thought. But I wonder, do we understand this symbol in its entirety, or have we ever compared its meaning to our own symbology? In eastern philosophy, yin-yang is an inseparable dynamic of both doing and being, day and night, action and passivity. It is the contraction and expansion of the cosmos in their entirety, swirling together in one dynamic whole. What our culture seems to be enchanted with is one half of the circle, seeing the world in a very specific way.

We might find it surprising to realize that the very action of “becoming,” has made a mess of our civilization. We wonder why our suicide rate is so high in the U.S., why we have a failing educational system and continuously fragmented political system. We have yet to, for a moment, sit back and observe things as they are. The tags have never been left on the table for a moment while we take in the whole picture. The importance of listening has all but been forgotten, an in its place we are shouting, quite loudly, through the process of analytical thinking and rationalization, idealization. We see through a world of labels, forgetting that all such terms are in fact created. We need them to communicate and navigate, but equally we need the value of silence – in order to listen and connect. The yang must be balanced with the yin. It is in humanity’s best interest that it learns one of the most important skills of all – silence.

"Alas, drudgery."

While on the D train to Brooklyn, I was reading One Taste. Lately I've found myself bogged down by academia, and my taste for literature has slowly diminished to a trickle, squandered by the sheer boredom and density of essay language. Bless their cognitive intelligence, bless their rational minds, but their writing is so dry and incomprehensible you wonder if they have any communicative intelligence. Coincidentally, Wilber writes,

Wednesday, August 20th

"... I've now gone through around five hundred books, with as many more to go- on anthropology, ecology, feminism, postmodernism, cultural studies, post-colonial studies- and the vast majority of them are, alas, drudgery. To add insult to the injury, the style is ponderously indecipherable; you can read entire chapters possessing not a single understandable sentence; the prose suffocates you with insignificance. The best it gets up to is a type of rancid torpor, where the prose drags its belly across the gray page, always on the verge of a near-life experience."

I just grinned and looked out the window.

Wolves and Angels; An Integral Reflection

The following piece was inspired by a class I am taking at Fordham University. Our assignment for the semester is to critically analyze any modern social movement. And, without any exaggeration on my part, 2/3rds of the class are writing about civil rights, pluralism, and sensitivity. The remaining classmates, including myself, are writing about consciousness, suicide and evangelism. For those of you who are familiar with Integral lingo, I suppose this class would be gravitating heavily toward the "green" meme, or pluralism/sensitivity.

And that's fine.

Two weeks ago, we had to present our topics. Unfortunately, when students that dared utter terms like: development, levels, lines, integral, unified diversity, map of consciousness, hierarchy of meaning,

They were on me like white on rice.

I was instantly given looks, raised eyebrows, questions with a mildly condescending tone.

"How can this be applied on a practical level?" I was asked by someone, with nods of agreement from other classmates.

"What are they doing to help people?" Another suggested.

I can understand where they are coming from, for sure. Our school is relatively progressive, heavily focused on the arts, liberal sciences, sensitivity, cultural awareness, etc. Yet, when the mention of unified diversity hit the air, they were wary and skeptical. This was disconcerting to me, as I was hoping to gain a spark of interest from the class (Integral is a rare topic in the university). My ego was smushed.

So the irony here began to set in. They had no problem being intolerant to the evangelical movement, agreeing whole heartedly that it was oppressive and backwards, shaking their heads at the in-class film, Jesus Camp. Yet, when something that is authentically unified comes along, like the mention of integral theory, they attack it! Strange, no?

And without further delay (Sorry for the ramble folks), here it is:

Wolves and Angels; An Integral Reflection

And we had it all. Upstairs in the student hall at least a hundred fliers, with a dozen different things to do. The world was at our fingertips, right there in our classrooms, and it was in very bad shape they'd tell us, very bad shape.

You could travel to Africa with foreign aid projects, discuss gender and race with the sensitivity club, and taste fine exotic foods in MultiCulture club. And this was all very progressive, so they would tell us. I had begun to have my doubts.

We sit in classrooms and discuss the same theme: Oppressive, hungry, needing world. Woe to you and we, the more fortunate, should extend our efforts. Sensitivity. Awareness. Effort. Assistance. The students are rallied up, in a very subtle way, to help. Yet I noticed, as each took their turn discussing one strife or another, that there was a level of enjoyment in it! Yes, hidden there, in the words of liberty, sensitivity, multiculture, there was an escape. Dare I say, it? No, I needn't, shouldn't. The escape was simple: If we all could immerse ourselves in these ideas, this diversity, we would be safe, we could make a meaning out of our lives and wish the demons away. These students were not actively wishing anything but their own security. The ultimate narcissism, it seems for us here in school, is through ideals. And this, if I were to say it aloud, would have them at me like a pack of wolves, who had just forgotten they were supposed to be angels.