So, I pretty much hate my class that I just got back from which is called *ahem* Making a Difference: Global, Organizational, and Individual Perspective on Social Change. Now, you may imagine that I hate this class cause it just sounds stupid. But that's not precisely why. The name is actually a misnomer. What it should be called is *ahem* Intro to The New School Ideology: An Indoctrination of Our Postmodern Believes. Now, there is nothing inherently wrong with postmodernism. I am a fairly a postmodern girl myself, being unable to help it as I was born in 1986 and all. What is wrong with my partaking in this stupid stupid class is that I have BEEN at the New School for 3.5 years. I already KNOW their postmodern mumbo jumbo. The fact that everyone experiences things based on their own positionality may or may not have seemed ground breaking to me three and a half years ago. (I'm gonna guess that it didn't because I was born in the postmodern era.) But it most definitely is not something I need to hear 3.5 years AFTER I entered the new school. The problem is that this class is supposed to be for first year students at Milano, The New School for Management and Urban Policy. Maybe these newcomers need to be indoctrinated, but I don't. I'm sick of it because I have heard it all before. So I have moved past the discovery of critical thinking and flat out use it without thinking about using it.
Well, here's the other issue. I was asking Tabby the other day, what other kind of thinking is there? How is there a kind of thinking that is not critical? Wouldn't that just be memorization, and repetition of facts and studies. How is there thinking without the critical part? Ok, so my point for this part of the post is that I have always thought critically. It is one advantage of being born in the postmodern era. I question everything. So, I gave up meat at the age of four without prompting from anyone. It was because I did not inherently accept the dominant ideology that meat is a necessary source of nutrients. I thought about killing animals for what it actually is, and just stopped eating them. It's not hard. Another example: In class, when we were discussing the dissemination of dominant ideology onto the masses (get it yet? Why this is so dumb?) someone mentioned the idea of a wedding. How little girls are trained to dream about their wedding day, and they plan it out as soon as they can speak, and when that day comes they are told it is the happiest day of their lives. Someone needs to correct me if I'm wrong, cause I don't have that good a memory about my "formative" years, but I don't remember ever wanting a wedding. I certainly do not want one now and I certainly did not want one during high school. As long as I can remember, they grossed me out. Why are you going to make this intimate, personal vow to spend your life with someone in front of a group of gawking relatives, friends, acquaintances and strangers? (You are not likely to know all of your spouses distant relatives who flew across the country to attend this horrendous display of overexaggerated bliss.) Much to the same point (the point of specified gender roles and household expectancies), know what pisses me off? People's views on adoption. I have always wanted to adopt children. I remember when I was a child I said so to my mom. She said, "you'll change your mind when you get older." Well, turns out I haven't. In fact I am much more strongly convicted that you are pretty much an asshole if you purposefully plan a pregnancy, what with the overpopulation and the hundreds of thousands of children WITHIN THE UNTIED STATES awaiting adoption. So, I am about to get to the part that pisses me off. When I say I want to adopt, people respond, "you don't want to have your own children?" SINCE WHEN DID THE DEFINITION OF "YOUR OWN" CORRELATE WITH A BIRTHING PROSSESS? I did not birth the jeans I am wearing, and yet they are my own. Imagine the idea that one could feel a child is theirs (as much as a child can be "own"ed by anyone in the first place. . . but that's a totally different discussion that pretty much falls to semantics and the limitations of human communication in my opinion.) without sharing DNA. My boyfriend is mine (hence the word "my" in the phrase "my boyfriend") and yet we do not have the same DNA. But seriously, I have even heard other people who plan on adopting say things like "I don't want to have my own kids." EWWW. It makes me want to puke all over the place. I always correct people and respond with "I will have my own children. They won't be biological if that's what you meant." But here's my overarching point: Because I was born in 1986 I have been analyzing the world critically since I was a child, and I have just offered three examples of how I was able to question dominant societal views without taking this dumbass class on social change.
OK, but there's still more to it. (More to why the class is hard for me to sit through.) I am not as postmodern as I could be given my position in life. (haha. That's a joke, get it?) I figure I must be too Christian to be postmodern. Not that some Christians aren't postmodern. Those emerging church people are. . . and I don't like them. Probably because they're too postmodern. But, ya see, I believe in objectivity hardcore. Maybe I view a certain situation as unjust because of the fact that I am a woman. Maybe a man would not question that same situation. Our realities might seem different. . . However, the situation is either just or it is not. One of us is wrong. Our difference in positionality does not automatically validate both of our experiences as true. What I'm getting at, and that was an awful example because I didn't actually give an example, is that not everything is subjective. The reason I figured maybe I'm not postmodern because I'm Christian is because so much of my faith hinges on things happening for real. I can't just accept that maybe the resurrection was spiritual instead of physical or that the incarnation did not truly happen but Christ was adopted by God or that Christ's performed miracles were mere illusions. And people can try to pass off the resurrection as a spiritual occurrence saying that the experience would be different for different people because it has to do with spirituality. . . but that's just bullshit. And also kind of postmodern.
Oh, here's the other thing that's wrong and stupid about The New School. . . shhh. . . it's a secret. I'm not convinced they teach people how to think critically. Some people, such as myself, were drawn to The New School because we already thought critically and so we were drawn to a university that flourished on seminar style instead of lecture and processed regurgitation.
My school is dumb. The people in it are dumb at least. (Not all of them, some of them came to the school already not dumb.) I cannot precisely express to you what is wrong with all the people who surround me. . . but I can try. They are selfish. I think that is the base of it. They like to pretend that they are liberal, but really they are just mean. I figured this out because they have these weird ideas about spirituality, and finding oneself, and doing what it takes to make yourself happy, and never looking at the outside world for advice (I damn sure hope you're never a rocket scientist!!) because all you need is you typa-attitudes. That wasn't a well argued (or well thought out!) explanation. So. . . Let's try this. I'm liberal. I don't think we would deny this. (I'm vegan, my apartment is powered with green electricity, I voted for Dennis Kucinich in the primaries, I think the war on terror and the war on drugs are both wastes of money, I think the "free-market" was an awful idea as I don't believe it was ever free, I am not homophobic, not racist, not sexist, not sex-negative, I believe the education system needs a complete overhaul, etc. etc. need I continue? You get the point.) So. I am of a liberal political persuasion, I think it is safe to say. Now, the reason WHY? Because I believe it can better society far more easily than a conservative political platform. It is not because I will benefit from a reform in elementary schools and it is not because I personally intend on marrying a woman. Additionally, I am not the one being abused and ultimately slaughtered in industry-factory farms. What I finally figured out is the people at my school are mostly liberal for strikingly different reasons. There are a few possibilities: #1, they are rebelling against their conservative Catholic upbringing and couldn't think of a more creative way than by voting for a pro-choice candidate. #2 They were raised around liberal people and are simply regurgitating. #3 They are selfish. They feel that a liberal agenda will give them more freedom to do what they want, no matter what that want may be. So, well I am against the war on drugs because of depressing sentencing discrepancies, the fact that drug offenders are not rehabilitated but imprisoned, the fact that common policing methods are inherently classist, and the fact that the money could be way better spent fixing our broken infrastructure and failing public schools, a lot of people at my school are against the war on drugs because they want to smoke pot. See the difference? They are not progressive, simply liberal. And there is, I am discovering through my critical reasoning skills, a difference.
In other, ENTIRELY unrelated news, I think my hyena must make me approachable. People are always asking me questions when I am wearing it like, "where's Broadway?" and "is this way north?" (the island is on a tilt, so I think that confuses people. What we call North is really northeast so people like looking towards the sun for directions or something have no idea what's going on.) SO, pretty much I must look irresistably cute in my hyena hat and look like someone with authority. I dunno, I maybe am crazy. But seriously, they always ask me.
Galactica fans are pretty weird about the show still. But I don't feel like explaining it. They must not know how to reason.
Love, Calla and her kitties
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