That which we are and that which we are to become too often represents disparate persectives. Driven by what we deem valuable, we strive to mold our perception of life into something which is neat and tidy altogether failing to understand that order in life is seldom achieved. Life is a frayed edge, a knot unravelled, yet we spend countless days trying to maintain and promote what is that we wish our lives to be.
Our will, often impotent against the tides that brought us where we are, struggles--always trying to make right what we perceive as wrong. Only the "I" is there--but what does this mean? A satisfying of some injustice? But what is justice but expediency and easy thoughts.
Tuesday, September 8, 2009
Sunday, September 6, 2009
Musings: The naming of things
So often with a feeling we want to name what it is that we are feeling while failing to understand that what is best about a feeling must remain unnamed. To corner a feeling with words sets it on edge and it shall lash out or cower.
A feeling "well named" means a feeling rendered impotent, speared by our overzealous tendency to render a name to everything even when that "thing" shall suffer terribly from a label.
A feeling "well named" means a feeling rendered impotent, speared by our overzealous tendency to render a name to everything even when that "thing" shall suffer terribly from a label.
Musings: The BIG questions
The constant that we are faced with is that we always seek understanding and the means by which to understand. A lingering doubt remains--namely, are we even capable of phrasing the questions correctly?
The human curse--to want to understand fully but not posess the means to do so.
The human curse--to want to understand fully but not posess the means to do so.
Education/Miseducation?
Having at least a minor part to play in the educative process within America, I can't help but wonder what the process of educating our youth actually entails. Not meant to be an overtly politically charged statement this, but rather an exploration of the socio/political underpinnings of how education shapes our culture's youth.
What happens to a youth's mind when it enters the brick and mortar of our nation's school? How is it that a child so quickly loses her desire to learn? The innate curiosity present in every human being can risk being suppressed in an environment that idolizes data. "These are the standards our children are to meet," says many a public official involved in educational policy decision making. Whose children? There is a wide chasm that exists between a child and "children." The great leveling. The mob screams for that which is mediocre and easy. Easy to measure, easy to understand.
The school system today is largely based upon models of schooling established during the industrial age. Not all schools operate this way of course, but many of the principles put in place fifty or more years ago fuel larger policy choices among numerous schools. I fear that the information age/postmodern age has promoted a culture that has become more fragmentary, meaning that the cultural unity that many think existed within nations fifty to one hundred years ago is largely non-existent. The exchange of information and ideas not only within but across nations has created access to a climate of ideas, ideologies, and personal identity constructs that the current educative model is struggling to accommodate.
I wonder what our schools will become twenty, fifty, and 100 years from now. For those who adhere to the idea that a fundamental paradigmatic shift is occurring (or has occurred), namely postmodernism, the public school systems will need to radically rethink their role(s) within the forthcoming years.
What happens to a youth's mind when it enters the brick and mortar of our nation's school? How is it that a child so quickly loses her desire to learn? The innate curiosity present in every human being can risk being suppressed in an environment that idolizes data. "These are the standards our children are to meet," says many a public official involved in educational policy decision making. Whose children? There is a wide chasm that exists between a child and "children." The great leveling. The mob screams for that which is mediocre and easy. Easy to measure, easy to understand.
The school system today is largely based upon models of schooling established during the industrial age. Not all schools operate this way of course, but many of the principles put in place fifty or more years ago fuel larger policy choices among numerous schools. I fear that the information age/postmodern age has promoted a culture that has become more fragmentary, meaning that the cultural unity that many think existed within nations fifty to one hundred years ago is largely non-existent. The exchange of information and ideas not only within but across nations has created access to a climate of ideas, ideologies, and personal identity constructs that the current educative model is struggling to accommodate.
I wonder what our schools will become twenty, fifty, and 100 years from now. For those who adhere to the idea that a fundamental paradigmatic shift is occurring (or has occurred), namely postmodernism, the public school systems will need to radically rethink their role(s) within the forthcoming years.
Word vomit
Symbols and mystery. Two things that stir the soul. Subtle and elusive yet alluring for the patient and quiet heart. We drown out symbol and mystery all too readily in favor of a din that all but annihilates what is most beautiful in humanity.
Truth be told, we are little more than what we can dream, meaning that what is best in us--our drive, our potential--is guided by the most intangible of qualites. What a strange thought. A reality founded upon the most nebulous of entities. From theses phantasms proceeds all that we are and all that we are to become.
The marriage of dream and action. Who knows this sturm und drang better than the artist? For, after all, she is accustomed to congealing her thoughts into a tangible form that is more or less satisfactorily in accordance with her will. Those who sleep through life never pausing to consider how they can, for a moment at least, know what it feels like to exercise a passion that is akin to the divine. The artifice--that which is created. That which navigates the hollows of the darkest labyrinths of the soul only to emerge into the shining sun. Do not be content to sleep in the shadows. Instead, enkindle within you all that longs to be enflamed. Even if your light but flickers--still, for a moment, there is that much less darkness within this world.
Truth be told, we are little more than what we can dream, meaning that what is best in us--our drive, our potential--is guided by the most intangible of qualites. What a strange thought. A reality founded upon the most nebulous of entities. From theses phantasms proceeds all that we are and all that we are to become.
The marriage of dream and action. Who knows this sturm und drang better than the artist? For, after all, she is accustomed to congealing her thoughts into a tangible form that is more or less satisfactorily in accordance with her will. Those who sleep through life never pausing to consider how they can, for a moment at least, know what it feels like to exercise a passion that is akin to the divine. The artifice--that which is created. That which navigates the hollows of the darkest labyrinths of the soul only to emerge into the shining sun. Do not be content to sleep in the shadows. Instead, enkindle within you all that longs to be enflamed. Even if your light but flickers--still, for a moment, there is that much less darkness within this world.
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