Go to Trade School, You're Fucking Everything Up

Academia is simultaneously stimulating and stifling. Like a beautiful young thing rubbing against you, and then suddenly realizing some impropriety. Much of this may be attributable to the second- or third-tier nature of my institution. Last night we were discussing elements of post-modernity and analyzing Beckett's 'Ping'.
First, 'Ping':
The majority of the class declared frustration bordering on ridicule because this piece has no overt "meaning". A student even asking if Beckett had ever declared the definitive meaning of the work in an interview. I can understand someone not enjoying the piece, or having a difficult time understanding the purpose or subtext to it (I admit I don't fully understand it, that's not the point). However, as a humanities student, and reading this as a part of a lecture that emphasized the notion that "postmodern literature is often not laden with 'meaning' in the way that art that came before". There is no Truth, and no pretension that we can find it". People got mad at it because it didn't do what it expected. For that, Bravo Beckett. What was most interesting about this, from a pedagogical perspective, is that this is the first time the class has become conceptually difficult. This is the first time we're delving into genuine philosophy and everyone is reeling. These people, for the most part, hate to actually have to think. Just give them the answers so they can write their essays in peace.

This leads into the much more interesting occurrence, the one where I really learned something. In discussing the cultural context that we live in now, and which houses and engenders our art we naturally came to the subject of technology and how the dynamism of communication technology in particular affects us. EVERYone nodded along to the assumption that being connected via cellphone and internet is a traumatically negative and alienating experience. That having a cellphone, and listening to an ipod and spending time on the internet somehow degrades our humanity.

At first, it seems like "yes" of course these things separate us and compartmentalize society into a bunch of apathetic individuals. The problem is that it's not wholly true. First of all, all of these people agreeing that somehow society has degraded due to communication technology are not old enough to understand a time when it wasn't around. We're talking about 20-26 year olds. Their entire adulthood occurred in the time of the internet. They're nostalgic for a time they never experienced firsthand and likely never existed. The anecdotal claim that before cellphones people nodded to each other on the street is nonsense, and we don't have anyway to know that this is true. The only place I've been to where people said hello to me on the street was in the 'hood. This is not what you'd expect. Also, belabored was the boogeyman that 'so many' people simply sit at their homes on the internet and don't participate in the real world. Two problems with this: Give me an example (I don't think this figure really exists), and do you really think your immersion in the internet has crippled your ability to communicate with other humans? If anything it makes us better at it. Makes us value the warmth of humanity even more.

A woman said that she thinks people with ipods plugged in all the time as they walk around campus are missing 'things'. I asked her to define "things", which she found impossible. I also asked how experiencing a piece of art during what is essentially a cookie-cutter day (the five minute walk to class is always virtually identical, except for the jams rocking in my earphones) devalues my experience.

Technology, computers, the internet. These are some of the most valuable things in my life. This post is an elucidation of the most pressing thoughts in my mind right now, and I'm able to not only share them, but share them across all geography. I have talked to friends on three continents via instant messenger. Untold numbers of conversations have been enhanced by the ability to quickly reference the factual truth. My exposure to a diversity of art has increased exponentially via the internet.

Technology is not bad inherently. People are weak and afraid of change. The perceived conception of 'normal' comes under attack and we fret and fall over ourselves trying to explain how the grass used to be greener. But also what I learned, again, from this is that undergraduate academia is not a place that fosters and cultivates critical thought. The prof moved on as soon as I started to undermine the conventions. I guess real discourse is still reserved for my basement and the bar and the INTERNET. Everyone simply wants to be told what to think, and academia more or less complies.

And yes, I've made some enemies in class. Hopefully I've made those same people think for two seconds.