Post Conscious

I am back to pushing weights here in London which was way overdue. My confidence is a result of some complex equation which include my utterances, the last seminar in memory, my physical well being, today’s food as well as tomorrow’s shit, things that go inside my lungs as well as brain .. and the condition of the pitch during the weekends.

Aah gym. Perhaps one of the few seemingly superficial things that I will ever take very seriously.

The tensions were pretty clear in the classroom. Many were still basking around the glory days of progressivist education … the nature oriented and child-centered ‘freedom’ of education in schools. Liberal education and traditionalist views were introduced today as reactions to progressivism. Everyone gets it that we need to put bullet points in things in life and to tick boxes wherever we can – it gives us a sense of direction and purpose (in the present sense). But many were sympathetic or perhaps attracted to the idea of freedom the progessivist had wanted … so existential … inner looking … with less scientistic rational. So much so that we often forget the repercussions that would mean in a social, political and economic context. Which sucks because, ultimately being and ‘existing’ in our world today is so much reliant on things that are external to us.

This is too big and broad to discuss here. But by bringing this up I wonder if this might have at least tugged and the strings of the universal puppetry.

My intellectual grappling with liberal political theory in my first year of undergrad seems like a distant memory. Four years later, names like Rousseau, Mills or Rawls are almost alien now. Which is good because the stuff I should be facing in the coming year should come across as fresh or at least refreshingly reminiscent instead of dull regurgitation.

Ironic that I started off on someone else’s weird footing. The first research seminar I attended dealt with the relevance of philosophy of education in an age concerned with objectivity and concrete (academic) findings. It posed dilemma of a struggling academic niche, neither here nor there. The person presenting actually gave some good phrases and analogy for it: ‘phenomenal research’ and ghosts were amongst the term he aptly deployed.

I felt apprehensive at first until I attended my first real taught class. I will always remember this and it will engrave itself in my memory. I had asked what progressive movements in education were influenced by other than Rousseau and Dewey (which seemed as distant to me as we were dealing with something more recent and European) … to which the lecturer said …

“Some concepts we are dealing here can related to a particular movement or strand of philosophy and that is existentialism … so a figure you might read into would probably be Sartre …”

I have a funny feeling I belong here … and a rather sneaky suspicion that I will breeze through this one.