Hey all,
Recent college grad here who is feeling adrift in the world. I come from a bourgeois background but please don't hold it against me; my heart is with the people.
I majored in classical studies and philosophy but steadily found myself becoming disillusioned with both by the end of my time in undergrad. While I still find myself enamored with the aesthetics of classical literature, the discipline of philology as a whole seems increasingly moribund. The drive to specialize, to carve a nook for yourself in the crag of academe, is oppressive; it comes at the cost of real learning and real teaching. I can’t research arcana for the rest of my life and fool myself into thinking that I’m making a difference while doing it. Philosophy is hardly better. In the Anglophone world, philosophical inquiry has been substituted for a peculiar sort of bourgeois pursuit, that is examining “profound” questions for the sake of profundity. What sort of use might a human being- someone with wants, needs, desires, aspirations, psychic, and somatic pain- derive from study of something like Tarski’s deflationary theory of truth (snow is white if and only if snow is white) or Kripke’s causal theory of reference (the act of naming a thing gives the thing a posteriori necessity). To blithely presuppose that these sorts of questions are worthy of asking masks a frighteningly more insidious reality: what passes for a philosophical question in the 21st century, questions which in my estimation are little more than intellectual calisthenics, serves the purpose of keeping the shambolic bulk of the academic-industrial complex moving towards a collapse into complete irrelevance. The sorts of topics asked in professional philosophy departments do not concern questions like, “what is my place in the world?”, “what is my project?”, “how can I understand myself qua self in relation to society at large?”, “does my personal story have meaning? Why or why not?” In other words, authentic inquiry that has the capacity to make a difference in others' lives. Philosophy is neutered, abstracted into meaninglessness.
I was eventually able to find employment as a Latin teacher in a Catholic school in Central Pennsylvania. This was the wrong environment for me. I was completely on my own. There was no mentor, no help from the department head, no oversight, no other Latin teachers to call upon, nothing besides semi-regular calls to my aunt who has a background in education and was able to give me advice on formulating effective lessons. Worse than the lack of professional support was the general anomie of the place. Behind a thin veil of religiosity were people, if you could even call them that, who believed in literally nothing. Many of my fellow teachers took no pride in their work. If they did it was certainly misplaced hubris because there were only two or three people at that school who I’m willing to call effective mentors. That’s to say nothing of the students. Many of the older students, particularly those who I would consider “high achieving” were so thoroughly bombarded with meaningless drudgery, they could take no joy from anything other than a positive grade. Even worse, they could see no reason why they should learn for their own sake. The students I considered the smartest, those who followed the eternal dictate of Delphi to γνῶθι σαυτόν, were those lacking in traditional academic rigor, the C students. I admired these students’ curiosity but that curiosity was garbled by a kind of strange anti-intellectualism; I consider these people potentially smart, self-reflective thinkers who refused to rise to the academic challenges I set before them. The problem may have lain with me. I don’t think I was an effective teacher to those students with a nascent curiosity that needed to be coaxed along. In any case, I don’t think this problem is specific to the school I was in. Talking with my younger sister it’s clear that many of her classmates are the same way. I spent much of my free time reading this past year, trying to make sense of these phenomena. Please tell me if you all have come to similar conclusions: generalized commodity production reduces once authentic social relations to simple commodity relations. The alienation one feels from their work, research, and friends is a result of the reification of the human psyche. All the psychically harmful effects of modernity (the exponential increase in information, the reduction of lived experience to biological processes, the instrumentalization of reason, the hollowness of culture production, the demystification of the world, the rise of fascism, etc.) are symptoms of a most pernicious affliction: that of the dictatorship of capital. At the beginning of the 21st century, we stand at the death of humanity as the term has been previously understood.
I’ve tried my best to be an autodidact, even while at school. This past year as a teacher has been no different. I’ve consumed a large amount of theory. I don’t want to bore you with a list of what I’ve read and make this post longer than it already is, so I’ll just say that there have been four thinkers I would consider myself heavily influenced by: Marx, Marcuse, Adorno, and Debord. I’m currently still reading as I complete a post-bacc in classics at Penn, the expectation being that I apply to grad schools. As I said earlier, I am loath to specialize so PhD programs are not something that sounds appealing to me. I would like to continue teaching because I was pretty good at it, despite being way in over my head, and I think that I have some sort of wisdom to pass on. I just don’t know if teaching Latin is for me anymore. While I still enjoy reading Latin and Greek on my own time, the problems that I care about and the topics that could make a real impact on students’ lives are not related to so banal a topic as grammar. My most effective moment as a teacher last year was when I chucked out the text book and took several weeks at the end of the year to dialectically approach topics of my students’ interest. These included mental illness, drugs (legal and illegal), freedom as a concept, nationalism, corporate power, and biological essentialism. Both my students and myself got a lot out of this sort of class which was part lecture/part socratic dialogue. After the dust settled on the school year I was able to look back and see that I was at my best when I wasn’t teaching Latin.
So here I stand on the cusp of making a very big decision and I can't help but feel like I would be settling if I didn't make an effort to understand the breadth of options available for me. My fascination with the life of the traveler has brought me here. So I'll be around, lurking and trying to learn a little more about what that sort of life entails before I give up the comfort of a steady job and home to truly live. Looking forward to talking with you all and hopefully meeting some of you if you happen to be around Philly.
-Gaius
Recent college grad here who is feeling adrift in the world. I come from a bourgeois background but please don't hold it against me; my heart is with the people.
I majored in classical studies and philosophy but steadily found myself becoming disillusioned with both by the end of my time in undergrad. While I still find myself enamored with the aesthetics of classical literature, the discipline of philology as a whole seems increasingly moribund. The drive to specialize, to carve a nook for yourself in the crag of academe, is oppressive; it comes at the cost of real learning and real teaching. I can’t research arcana for the rest of my life and fool myself into thinking that I’m making a difference while doing it. Philosophy is hardly better. In the Anglophone world, philosophical inquiry has been substituted for a peculiar sort of bourgeois pursuit, that is examining “profound” questions for the sake of profundity. What sort of use might a human being- someone with wants, needs, desires, aspirations, psychic, and somatic pain- derive from study of something like Tarski’s deflationary theory of truth (snow is white if and only if snow is white) or Kripke’s causal theory of reference (the act of naming a thing gives the thing a posteriori necessity). To blithely presuppose that these sorts of questions are worthy of asking masks a frighteningly more insidious reality: what passes for a philosophical question in the 21st century, questions which in my estimation are little more than intellectual calisthenics, serves the purpose of keeping the shambolic bulk of the academic-industrial complex moving towards a collapse into complete irrelevance. The sorts of topics asked in professional philosophy departments do not concern questions like, “what is my place in the world?”, “what is my project?”, “how can I understand myself qua self in relation to society at large?”, “does my personal story have meaning? Why or why not?” In other words, authentic inquiry that has the capacity to make a difference in others' lives. Philosophy is neutered, abstracted into meaninglessness.
I was eventually able to find employment as a Latin teacher in a Catholic school in Central Pennsylvania. This was the wrong environment for me. I was completely on my own. There was no mentor, no help from the department head, no oversight, no other Latin teachers to call upon, nothing besides semi-regular calls to my aunt who has a background in education and was able to give me advice on formulating effective lessons. Worse than the lack of professional support was the general anomie of the place. Behind a thin veil of religiosity were people, if you could even call them that, who believed in literally nothing. Many of my fellow teachers took no pride in their work. If they did it was certainly misplaced hubris because there were only two or three people at that school who I’m willing to call effective mentors. That’s to say nothing of the students. Many of the older students, particularly those who I would consider “high achieving” were so thoroughly bombarded with meaningless drudgery, they could take no joy from anything other than a positive grade. Even worse, they could see no reason why they should learn for their own sake. The students I considered the smartest, those who followed the eternal dictate of Delphi to γνῶθι σαυτόν, were those lacking in traditional academic rigor, the C students. I admired these students’ curiosity but that curiosity was garbled by a kind of strange anti-intellectualism; I consider these people potentially smart, self-reflective thinkers who refused to rise to the academic challenges I set before them. The problem may have lain with me. I don’t think I was an effective teacher to those students with a nascent curiosity that needed to be coaxed along. In any case, I don’t think this problem is specific to the school I was in. Talking with my younger sister it’s clear that many of her classmates are the same way. I spent much of my free time reading this past year, trying to make sense of these phenomena. Please tell me if you all have come to similar conclusions: generalized commodity production reduces once authentic social relations to simple commodity relations. The alienation one feels from their work, research, and friends is a result of the reification of the human psyche. All the psychically harmful effects of modernity (the exponential increase in information, the reduction of lived experience to biological processes, the instrumentalization of reason, the hollowness of culture production, the demystification of the world, the rise of fascism, etc.) are symptoms of a most pernicious affliction: that of the dictatorship of capital. At the beginning of the 21st century, we stand at the death of humanity as the term has been previously understood.
I’ve tried my best to be an autodidact, even while at school. This past year as a teacher has been no different. I’ve consumed a large amount of theory. I don’t want to bore you with a list of what I’ve read and make this post longer than it already is, so I’ll just say that there have been four thinkers I would consider myself heavily influenced by: Marx, Marcuse, Adorno, and Debord. I’m currently still reading as I complete a post-bacc in classics at Penn, the expectation being that I apply to grad schools. As I said earlier, I am loath to specialize so PhD programs are not something that sounds appealing to me. I would like to continue teaching because I was pretty good at it, despite being way in over my head, and I think that I have some sort of wisdom to pass on. I just don’t know if teaching Latin is for me anymore. While I still enjoy reading Latin and Greek on my own time, the problems that I care about and the topics that could make a real impact on students’ lives are not related to so banal a topic as grammar. My most effective moment as a teacher last year was when I chucked out the text book and took several weeks at the end of the year to dialectically approach topics of my students’ interest. These included mental illness, drugs (legal and illegal), freedom as a concept, nationalism, corporate power, and biological essentialism. Both my students and myself got a lot out of this sort of class which was part lecture/part socratic dialogue. After the dust settled on the school year I was able to look back and see that I was at my best when I wasn’t teaching Latin.
So here I stand on the cusp of making a very big decision and I can't help but feel like I would be settling if I didn't make an effort to understand the breadth of options available for me. My fascination with the life of the traveler has brought me here. So I'll be around, lurking and trying to learn a little more about what that sort of life entails before I give up the comfort of a steady job and home to truly live. Looking forward to talking with you all and hopefully meeting some of you if you happen to be around Philly.
-Gaius
