There was a psychological test administered in my Stage Management class, a class that I regret taking. The test was comprised of a story that depicted the tragic failure of a young woman to meet her ambitions. It was of course entirely set in the context of the academic establishment that had produced it, fictionalized to serve the purposes of the writer, retaining its realism in that the woman was studying to be a psychologist. Her plans were thwarted by the people closest to her, those near and dear friends and spouses according to whom we assess our human value with any thing close to objectivity, for the alternative would be a criminal subordination to an impersonal system.
The woman was a victim. Yet the test obscures the facts but subtly manipulating them to look like opinions. And it does so by the Socratic method: asking a question. The question, inviting to the impersonal and bureaucratic mind, was for the reader to rank the characters in order of blame.
My professor blamed the protagonist primarily. And that was the last class I ever took with that professor.
Amidst his excuses was that the test exposes gender biases. I could not deny it; I had ranked the women as having the least blame and the men as having the most. Yet this did not reflect my own biases so much as the writer’s; was it MY fault that the writer had decided to make the OBVIOUS VICTIMS women and the OBVIOUS oppressors men? If I sound ironic or unreliable as a narrator, I assure you I am not. The burden rests upon YOU to prove that I have no reason to either condemn women nor to praise men, and then the burden still rests upon you to prove that I would choose the obverse bias over that one. If I am not inclined to choose the former, why would I choose the latter? It would be equally biased of me.
The fact is that morality is not something relatively subjective. It is factual. There is a study of ethics. There is a PSYCHOLOGY of ethics. And there are Universal Principles that GOVERN Ethics and that would ideally GOVERN Human Behaviour at all times in all places. If this thought does not get you off, what will?
The protagonist had been OBJECTIVELY the victim of abusers. And this was not of her own device; she had simply performed her duty by ACCOMODATING them, for that is every person’s constant duty, and most of all this is the duty of the psychologist, who has to deliver the degenerate to civility. The moment that the psychologist has sold out, tempted by self-interest, psychology has lost its dignity. No one wants a therapist who lords not morality but amorality over the patient. And I for one would never put up with ANY BITCH that would prioritize the preservation of an abstract Grade over the very CONCRETE suffering of her fellows. She must be obligated to make that sacrifice even at personal risk, for no one can judge with objectivity the Goodness of a person in need until AFTER the deed of Generosity has been performed; prior to the performance, the individual has no Goodness from which to judge the Goodness of the Other! (For obviously all good deeds are fleeting and a track record amounts to nearly nothing. Such is the way of Nature, and the Grade System is a gross violation of that that should to this day inspire hatred in the hearts of millions of students.)
In turn, we are obligated to accommodate HER. If she reports her good intent, her Availability to Others, and the betrayal of her trust, then she should NEVER be condemned but REWARDED. Without Availability there can be no psychology, and let us not forget (as my professor apparently did) that she is not studying to be a Manager, but a PSYCHOLOGIST. There is simply no point to even USE an abstract Grading System if its core purpose is missed: that of COMMUNICATING THE VALUE OF THE INDIVIDUAL IN QUESTION. Of course, that value draws its value NOT from the PURSUIT of Individuality, but from something GREATER.
I tire of hearing these self-entitled adolescents complain about the instructor’s lack of adherence to the “grading system”. WAKE UP CLASS. There was a teacher I knew in high school named Mr. Rowan. This man I first met because he led a student-run discussion group in my Freshman Year called the Non-Violence Club. His presence was the first to so impress itself upon me that it triggered my childhood mystical inclinations, all most breaking me out of the bureaucratic conditionings of the grade school system. He was the first man whom I had ever called “Spiritual”, for better or for worse.
There was a certain class of students that hated him. By “class” I mean neither that he had them for one period (and by “period” I mean not just an extended stretch of time, but specifically a regular segment of the day), nor that they HAD class. I mean rather that I looked down upon them, for obvious reasons that they had in their adolescent, sociopathic arrogance brought upon themselves:
Mr. Rowan did not have a traditional grade book. He did not adhere to a traditional curriculum. He taught spontaneously. He did not value college. He would sooner value the “Daily Zen” quotes on his wall. All the academia was strictly for show. He lived moment by moment. He was old enough to do so, he was TENURED enough to do so, and his youth had not been wasted, a child of the American Counter-Culture.
So you can imagine. His gradebook was full of smiley faces and frowny faces.
And this classless class of sociopaths HATED him for that. Why? All because they WANTED THE GRADE, they had WORKED FOR THE GRADE, and they therefore FELT ENTITLED TO SUCCESS. One of these self-righteous critics was of course Steven Kamen, who was the first Republican I had ever met to admit to being a Republican. I could never convert him, because there is no cure for stupidity and little one can do about ignorance bred in complacent privilege.
DID IT NOT OCCUR TO THEM that one should be PUNISHED for WANTING? That in ACTUAL LIFE it is sometimes one’s very AGGRESSION, one’s very ZEALOUSNESS, one’s very ARROGANT TENDENCY TO PUT ONE’S SELF FIRST that would result DIRECTLY in the very LOSS of that which is so desired?!
I must have been the exception. Only because I actually READ AND RETAINED what we were studying, regardless of the outcome. I could not STAND the looming spectre of the grading system; it literally drove me into depression and eventually a psychotic break. It had robbed me of all spontaneity, intruding upon my privacy as a reader, which in adulthood I have come to value more highly than even any text its self. (Without a Background there can be no Figure.)
And what did I find upon reading Thoreau, Marx, Nietzsche, Bradbury, and then later (in college) Foucault, Camus, Dick, Plath (whom I re-read after my first and incomplete reading in Senior Year of High School, since she scared me) and all the others?
They all ways had this one unifying theme:
Fuck the system.
This was no mere adolescent rebellion. These works grow MORE shocking with age!!
The system all ways blames the victim. The human being accommodates the victim.
And I shall not be punished for accommodating some one who takes advantage of me. For then the agent of punishment is LIKEWISE taking advantage of me and allowing my adversaries (who would otherwise have been my friends) to take advantage of me as well. And did I not accommodate them too? If they did not need me to, did they not take advantage of someone ELSE in order to reach that lofty peak of independency? Were they not, simply by refusing to accommodate their neighbours, putting their neighbours at a disadvantage, and for their own benefit?? If it seems silly. It is only because it is silly that I should have even to point out something so elementary, essential and obvious.
Grades are meaningless beyond their capacity to communicate the value of Individual students, which is in turn measured by those students’ loyalty and contribution to the Ideals put forth by the Curriculum. Yet these ideals are ARBITRARY the very moment that they come at the EXPENSE of the student’s loyalty and contribution to her fellows.
So the pompous narcissist alone thinks to ask: Well. If they don’t MEAN ANY THING TO YOU, why don’t you give them up? The question leads to the obverse: If you AGREE WITH ME that they are meaningless, why don’t we give them ALL UP? And while we are at it, let’s cut out your tongue for slandering me and the system all at ONCE! Perhaps we should cut MY tongue out as well, just so as to make it FAIR?
Obviously we are not going to do any of these dreadful things, only because Communication is Important (and Dismemberment is painful, demeaning, and fundamentally irreversible). But the point shines forth ever more brightly: that without the basic human COMPASSION upon which education is founded, grades BECOME meaningless. Without a Human Heart the Academic Institution becomes Soulless (and thereby Pointless and Meaningless) Machinery, and naught else, nothing more. So if the protagonist of the story has to sacrifice her grade for a group of narcissists, all for the “mistake” of showing basic human sympathy, then we should make that sacrifice as well! But it is comforting to keep a machine around to do the work. Let us therefore make sure that it is serving our purposes and that we are not serving ITS.
Education should be teaching us VALUES which are UNIVERSAL. These are all so principles of psychology, supplementing the FACTS of Human Nature with GOALS for our ability to transcend it. UNIVERSALLY speaking, the protagonist did every thing right, and every one else MESSED UP. And the worst offender was her professor. She was not at FAULT for what she did because of its outcome to her. Nor does she BECOME at-fault for it by complaining about it. That is Kafkaesque and absurd. Her means justified the ends, but insofar as those ends are not rewarding of her means they ought to be changed by those who have the privilege of that sort of power. That privilege becomes tyranny when the values she upheld are compromised and her sacrifice punished (as though the betrayal of her OWN FELLOWS was not betrayal enough!).
A narcissistic debater I knew once accused me of undervaluing the Debate Team because I had chosen to “put school first”. Of course, this choice was not arbitrary upon my part. Our coach, a revered member of the Debate Community, had specifically and repeatedly (even repetitively) instructed us to Put School First. My appeal to his authority was no mere fallacious attempt to escape responsibility for a personal choice, self-contained and devoid of external meaning. When we choose, we do not do so from the locus of “what will benefit me” or “what will define me”. We are burdened with the responsibility of CHOOSING WHAT IS RIGHT. The risk of choosing WRONGLY is the sum of moral anguish. And I chose rightly. Without Education there could BE no Debate; I was not choosing one of EITHER the Curriculum or the Extracurricular activity, but rather I was choosing BOTH, the only alternate being the choice of the latter exclusively. But a man without loyalty to a Cause cannot see that. And Education should correct him before it allows him any advantage in any sort of economy or competition.
Dm.A.A.
The woman was a victim. Yet the test obscures the facts but subtly manipulating them to look like opinions. And it does so by the Socratic method: asking a question. The question, inviting to the impersonal and bureaucratic mind, was for the reader to rank the characters in order of blame.
My professor blamed the protagonist primarily. And that was the last class I ever took with that professor.
Amidst his excuses was that the test exposes gender biases. I could not deny it; I had ranked the women as having the least blame and the men as having the most. Yet this did not reflect my own biases so much as the writer’s; was it MY fault that the writer had decided to make the OBVIOUS VICTIMS women and the OBVIOUS oppressors men? If I sound ironic or unreliable as a narrator, I assure you I am not. The burden rests upon YOU to prove that I have no reason to either condemn women nor to praise men, and then the burden still rests upon you to prove that I would choose the obverse bias over that one. If I am not inclined to choose the former, why would I choose the latter? It would be equally biased of me.
The fact is that morality is not something relatively subjective. It is factual. There is a study of ethics. There is a PSYCHOLOGY of ethics. And there are Universal Principles that GOVERN Ethics and that would ideally GOVERN Human Behaviour at all times in all places. If this thought does not get you off, what will?
The protagonist had been OBJECTIVELY the victim of abusers. And this was not of her own device; she had simply performed her duty by ACCOMODATING them, for that is every person’s constant duty, and most of all this is the duty of the psychologist, who has to deliver the degenerate to civility. The moment that the psychologist has sold out, tempted by self-interest, psychology has lost its dignity. No one wants a therapist who lords not morality but amorality over the patient. And I for one would never put up with ANY BITCH that would prioritize the preservation of an abstract Grade over the very CONCRETE suffering of her fellows. She must be obligated to make that sacrifice even at personal risk, for no one can judge with objectivity the Goodness of a person in need until AFTER the deed of Generosity has been performed; prior to the performance, the individual has no Goodness from which to judge the Goodness of the Other! (For obviously all good deeds are fleeting and a track record amounts to nearly nothing. Such is the way of Nature, and the Grade System is a gross violation of that that should to this day inspire hatred in the hearts of millions of students.)
In turn, we are obligated to accommodate HER. If she reports her good intent, her Availability to Others, and the betrayal of her trust, then she should NEVER be condemned but REWARDED. Without Availability there can be no psychology, and let us not forget (as my professor apparently did) that she is not studying to be a Manager, but a PSYCHOLOGIST. There is simply no point to even USE an abstract Grading System if its core purpose is missed: that of COMMUNICATING THE VALUE OF THE INDIVIDUAL IN QUESTION. Of course, that value draws its value NOT from the PURSUIT of Individuality, but from something GREATER.
I tire of hearing these self-entitled adolescents complain about the instructor’s lack of adherence to the “grading system”. WAKE UP CLASS. There was a teacher I knew in high school named Mr. Rowan. This man I first met because he led a student-run discussion group in my Freshman Year called the Non-Violence Club. His presence was the first to so impress itself upon me that it triggered my childhood mystical inclinations, all most breaking me out of the bureaucratic conditionings of the grade school system. He was the first man whom I had ever called “Spiritual”, for better or for worse.
There was a certain class of students that hated him. By “class” I mean neither that he had them for one period (and by “period” I mean not just an extended stretch of time, but specifically a regular segment of the day), nor that they HAD class. I mean rather that I looked down upon them, for obvious reasons that they had in their adolescent, sociopathic arrogance brought upon themselves:
Mr. Rowan did not have a traditional grade book. He did not adhere to a traditional curriculum. He taught spontaneously. He did not value college. He would sooner value the “Daily Zen” quotes on his wall. All the academia was strictly for show. He lived moment by moment. He was old enough to do so, he was TENURED enough to do so, and his youth had not been wasted, a child of the American Counter-Culture.
So you can imagine. His gradebook was full of smiley faces and frowny faces.
And this classless class of sociopaths HATED him for that. Why? All because they WANTED THE GRADE, they had WORKED FOR THE GRADE, and they therefore FELT ENTITLED TO SUCCESS. One of these self-righteous critics was of course Steven Kamen, who was the first Republican I had ever met to admit to being a Republican. I could never convert him, because there is no cure for stupidity and little one can do about ignorance bred in complacent privilege.
DID IT NOT OCCUR TO THEM that one should be PUNISHED for WANTING? That in ACTUAL LIFE it is sometimes one’s very AGGRESSION, one’s very ZEALOUSNESS, one’s very ARROGANT TENDENCY TO PUT ONE’S SELF FIRST that would result DIRECTLY in the very LOSS of that which is so desired?!
I must have been the exception. Only because I actually READ AND RETAINED what we were studying, regardless of the outcome. I could not STAND the looming spectre of the grading system; it literally drove me into depression and eventually a psychotic break. It had robbed me of all spontaneity, intruding upon my privacy as a reader, which in adulthood I have come to value more highly than even any text its self. (Without a Background there can be no Figure.)
And what did I find upon reading Thoreau, Marx, Nietzsche, Bradbury, and then later (in college) Foucault, Camus, Dick, Plath (whom I re-read after my first and incomplete reading in Senior Year of High School, since she scared me) and all the others?
They all ways had this one unifying theme:
Fuck the system.
This was no mere adolescent rebellion. These works grow MORE shocking with age!!
The system all ways blames the victim. The human being accommodates the victim.
And I shall not be punished for accommodating some one who takes advantage of me. For then the agent of punishment is LIKEWISE taking advantage of me and allowing my adversaries (who would otherwise have been my friends) to take advantage of me as well. And did I not accommodate them too? If they did not need me to, did they not take advantage of someone ELSE in order to reach that lofty peak of independency? Were they not, simply by refusing to accommodate their neighbours, putting their neighbours at a disadvantage, and for their own benefit?? If it seems silly. It is only because it is silly that I should have even to point out something so elementary, essential and obvious.
Grades are meaningless beyond their capacity to communicate the value of Individual students, which is in turn measured by those students’ loyalty and contribution to the Ideals put forth by the Curriculum. Yet these ideals are ARBITRARY the very moment that they come at the EXPENSE of the student’s loyalty and contribution to her fellows.
So the pompous narcissist alone thinks to ask: Well. If they don’t MEAN ANY THING TO YOU, why don’t you give them up? The question leads to the obverse: If you AGREE WITH ME that they are meaningless, why don’t we give them ALL UP? And while we are at it, let’s cut out your tongue for slandering me and the system all at ONCE! Perhaps we should cut MY tongue out as well, just so as to make it FAIR?
Obviously we are not going to do any of these dreadful things, only because Communication is Important (and Dismemberment is painful, demeaning, and fundamentally irreversible). But the point shines forth ever more brightly: that without the basic human COMPASSION upon which education is founded, grades BECOME meaningless. Without a Human Heart the Academic Institution becomes Soulless (and thereby Pointless and Meaningless) Machinery, and naught else, nothing more. So if the protagonist of the story has to sacrifice her grade for a group of narcissists, all for the “mistake” of showing basic human sympathy, then we should make that sacrifice as well! But it is comforting to keep a machine around to do the work. Let us therefore make sure that it is serving our purposes and that we are not serving ITS.
Education should be teaching us VALUES which are UNIVERSAL. These are all so principles of psychology, supplementing the FACTS of Human Nature with GOALS for our ability to transcend it. UNIVERSALLY speaking, the protagonist did every thing right, and every one else MESSED UP. And the worst offender was her professor. She was not at FAULT for what she did because of its outcome to her. Nor does she BECOME at-fault for it by complaining about it. That is Kafkaesque and absurd. Her means justified the ends, but insofar as those ends are not rewarding of her means they ought to be changed by those who have the privilege of that sort of power. That privilege becomes tyranny when the values she upheld are compromised and her sacrifice punished (as though the betrayal of her OWN FELLOWS was not betrayal enough!).
A narcissistic debater I knew once accused me of undervaluing the Debate Team because I had chosen to “put school first”. Of course, this choice was not arbitrary upon my part. Our coach, a revered member of the Debate Community, had specifically and repeatedly (even repetitively) instructed us to Put School First. My appeal to his authority was no mere fallacious attempt to escape responsibility for a personal choice, self-contained and devoid of external meaning. When we choose, we do not do so from the locus of “what will benefit me” or “what will define me”. We are burdened with the responsibility of CHOOSING WHAT IS RIGHT. The risk of choosing WRONGLY is the sum of moral anguish. And I chose rightly. Without Education there could BE no Debate; I was not choosing one of EITHER the Curriculum or the Extracurricular activity, but rather I was choosing BOTH, the only alternate being the choice of the latter exclusively. But a man without loyalty to a Cause cannot see that. And Education should correct him before it allows him any advantage in any sort of economy or competition.
Dm.A.A.
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