Philosophy Teachers

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« on: June 02, 2013, 12:50:09 am »
Quote from: Madness
I'm digging through my writing folders as I mine my old documents for some novel attempts at synthesis and I discovered some essays that grew out a living symposium I experienced living with some of the smartest people alive  - and I sincerely mean that.

This, and another I'll post, were partially finished attempts at turning the notes I took in those conversations in an artifact.

I posted them here rather than philosophy & science because of the informal and unfinished nature of each piece. But feel free to engage as a piece of writing to be or an argument to be tuned and tweaked:

Quote from: Madness
Academic Philosophy

The education of our children, or the next generations, is something of minefield. To be a human child in a twenty-first century education system is to receive some historical-class psychological and physical indoctrination. It begins with our culture-wide disinformation of key terms; teacher, provider, and care-giver.

Rather than a natural separation of these archetypal caricatures in the twenty-first society, Teacher essential embodies all three cultural structures. Teachers should provide the best, most useful knowledge, instilling attention and awareness, and inspiration. Instead, teachers serve as the conduit for social indoctrination through the medium of education, being largely responsible for how we humans behave and interact psychologically and physically.

A child enters the North American education system at a young social age. Regardless of individual intelligence, for which exists flawed mandatory testing, the predominant social training a young human receives is the exposure to a pressured, constrained environment of the classroom. The current cultural conception of the family structure provides the other predominant social training and even it’s success is impinged by social doctrine itself, mostly breeding a low statistic of open-minded, rationally intelligent, emotionally developed parents which the social mechanism ejects at random.

As for the propagated ideal of  imparting actual useful knowledge for the use of revision and expansion of our current knowledge base, our education system scrapes by with a passing mark just like the majority of our students, achieving the bare minimums in social requirements. The social requirements themselves are representative of the cultural and social conceptual structures, which the majority of Elementary and Secondary students fill like little moulds.

There is rare respite in our current system of education; that of the exposure to truisms and mystery, through much viable raw data to which students have access, the exposure to other young minds and humans, and tools of conscious expansion and introspection. In this young North American circumstance there is a random circumstance allowing for true potential for growth.

Aside from the current scattered gems of knowledge held by teachers and institutions worldwide, there is nowhere which exhibits potential for growth like the post-secondary education systems of the Western Empire. Likewise, nowhere which showcases the skeletal structure for social indoctrination. Education not for the revision and expansion of knowledge at the benefit of humanity but for the economic and social gratification of our cultural heritage, capitalistic materialism, at the benefit of the few.

At the very least, the spark for growth should remain a beacon for truth in the academic discipline of philosophy. All I know is that I know nothing, of the first building blocks of western intellectualism. In this age, philosophers must be re-imagined, reemployed. In the past philosophers have occupied a space between, riding the edge of subjectivity towards objectivity, seers into our great mysteries, death, the afterlife, the unknown; persons whom imagined makers and reasons. In our relevant context, philosophers by their own opinion have changed little, only the field of study. Humans who submit to philosophy must be looked to, to grasp possibilities and frames of reference beyond the scope of our imagination and learn to accept humanity’s possible place within them.

The journey of a post-modern philosophy in our twenty-first century is mired by it’s contradiction. The disillusionment of the individual philosopher takes place in their personal indoctrination into the neutered social and cultural structure of the Philosophic Academia.

The exposure to certain historical minds can be a riveting opening into an awareness of human potential. Aside from innate psychological mechanisms and description, humans owe their rights and privileges to some philosophic facet. The ability to understand and embody a developed moral subjectivity owes it’s entire conceptions to philosophy. However, these truly awesome conceptions are glossed over by heavy research and juxtaposition. In post-modern society there are new ideas only described in those that randomly arise from the contrast of old, unrevised, opinion. Art for the sake of Art.

This nouveau strange, the limping philosophical mechanism, cannot produce an original thought. It’s students leave philosophy  in it’s cupboard, on it’s pedestal until it’s inane schizophrenic argument resumes endlessly. There is no relation to the individual, a self, whose philosophy has effect on daily life. The creativity of journey is squelched and in it’s place academics itself, the mindless regurgitation of writing papers; research, adhere, deadline.

The elders, those responsible in this indoctrination process, all seem aware of the contradiction of their immediate circumstance. However, philosophy’s contradiction is taboo; to speak of it risks exposure, exclusion, and, perhaps the livelihood of it’s teachers. Comments otherwise made by the indoctrinated youth are quickly and quietly derailed and buried. Questioning, the root of their academia, appears quite unwarranted in the post-modern circumstance.

The bones of indoctrination appear again in the sphere of tradition. Here, pride preserves our elders of knowledge. In this cramped world there is no room for new original attempts at Philosophy. Individually, today, we seem fallible. There is a stigma which our teachers hide behind and it is best to leave the conceptual footwork to historical precedence.

The world is progressing. The warped conception that there can be no growth eliminates the conceptual possibility of growing negatively. However, without our organized conscious effort, negative growth seems to be the predominant outcome of random progression.

Teachers, persons themselves, no longer stand out. There is a competition for voice, to be unique. In our current circumstance, lives are arranged as jobs. Pride and delusion seduce our knowledge export and in order to contribute, knowledge must conform to academic consensus. Philosophy is carved and sacrificed so it’s students may occupy the system in a comfortable fashion.

Those whom remain true to their philosophic ideals seem to care about the current state of academic affairs. However, by their circumstances these individuals are themselves challenged by their own ego within the system. The statistic of those excommunicated from the academic agenda grows steadily. There is little success with much challenge for those whom might better our lives.

The individuals whom occupy the spectrum of Teacher, all across their span, are burdened in some fashion by their knowledge. While we extravagantly label our youth “Our Future”, as a society and culture we do little to affect a better future. We have in place an educational mechanism, constructed from cultural and societal conceptual construction materials, which produces more cogs for the current description of Clockwork Earth. Education is not meant to challenge those in it’s grasp but those past it’s thresholds. It’s current embodiment, however, does little to challenge the existent status quo, to revise and expand the foundational variables of our awareness. Those who have the power to enlighten, choose to induce slavery instead.

What Came Before

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« Reply #1 on: June 02, 2013, 12:50:22 am »
Quote from: Callan S.
I'll pitch what turns out a devils advocate:

I don't know if you have children, but from my observation they are quite happy to work their parents like a vending machine. The least effort of mumbled words for the greatest chance of food or goods from their parents.

It strikes me sometimes where I see really quite nice parents, and really quite bratty, horrible children. I suspect the parents were shaped quite a bit as a child, then they took that to be how children just are and you don't have to do that to a child. So they do nothing towards their children and their children are little nihilists. No, that's an affront to nihilists - nihilists follow the rules of poker. These things will whine at rules and fidget around at the practice and more (or to be exact: and less)

So, when one thinks of the kids challenging the system, is one coming from a history of conditioning into a certain status quo? One which empowered thou to reach for more than something that's a meanness and anti social objectification for self gratification?

How does one talk about that? Are the first lessons to a child of how to condition a child? Or will they swollow that into more social objectification - making vending machines of all they come into contact with?

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« Reply #2 on: June 02, 2013, 12:50:30 am »
Quote from: Madness
Well, I'm not a parent but a couple things that go into the manifestation of this piece; it being written by me specifically, but generated by a bunch of young 20ish guys.

As a child, I know for a fact in communicating with my parents that the lessons they thought they were rationally teaching me didn't translate to my conduct as an adult. I know as a student and a child corroboratively, that children learn by example.

Secondly, if and when, I hope, I have children, I will recognize that I plan on dooming my children to lives, as harsh, if not harsher, than my own - especially, in terms of social ostracization, assuming we don't change the world first.