philosophy

Last month Karlo and Colin wrote a post following Netroots Nation that called for some reconciliation in the name of progress.

Millennials carry the spirit of the founding fathers, perhaps more closely than generations in recent times. We understand that quality interactions with our counterparts advocating in good faith are more important than building huge e-mail lists based upon tactics of fear and hate. We talk to others, on this blog, on Facebook, on Twitter, and we do it with civility - or at least we try. We interact this way because we know others are watching and that everything we do and say is on-the-record. This does not mean that we don't stick to our principles and our values and voice our opinions. What it does mean is that we know that we are having conversations with people, other than those that just agree with everything we say. We're not about burning bridges; we're about mending them and building them out into the future.

I agree with their vision as expressed here. I think the two predominant political camps in this country do spend too much time trying to find the most vulnerable aspects in the opposition's activities for their own short-term political advantage. While I would point out that not all Millennials carry the spirit Karlo and Colin describe, the prevailing view among youth today is that compromise is important. "Pragmatic idealism" is a descriptor I have seen used for the way we view politics. To engage in this approach, though, I believe we need to take a step back and rethink the way we view politics.

Obama was elected on a platform that had at its core the notion that we could disagree without being disagreeable. And I still believe that's one of the more redeeming qualities our president possesses, to be able to espouse that and enact it day to day. However, to our detriment, he does this while viewing politics as an episodic adventure, as a negative thing. I can't tell you how many times I have heard him accusing someone of "playing politics."

First, politics isn't something to be played. It's a reality. It happens all around us. My writing this blog is political. You reading it is political. You daring to think about it later today and telling someone about it (crossing fingers) is political. What I'm trying to convey is that politics is not a battle that can be joined and not joined.

In addition, politics is not inherently negative. Interestingly, in its original Greek form, the definition of politics is less loaded; with polis meaning "city state," politikos roughly translates to “of the citizen,” signaling a citizen-centered view of politics with a focus on those things concerning city or state affairs. Aristotle argues that politics consists of the interplay between people from different backgrounds and interests, holding different views, while aiming to complete a task. In other words, politics is a constant that citizens cannot ignore; in fact, acknowledging and embracing one's constant participation forms the heart of democracy.

Viewing politics this way, we can see why E.J. Dionne's column is so discerning in today's Post.

Obama's mistake is captured by that disdainful reference to "politicking." In a democracy, separating governing from "politicking" is impossible. "Politicking" is nothing less than the ongoing effort to convince free citizens of the merits of a set of ideas, policies and decisions. Voters feel better about politicians who put what they are doing in a compelling context. Citizens can endure setbacks as long as they believe the overall direction of the government's approach is right.

I suppose this is another take on the whole "Obama needs a narrative" meme that has been playing out. But I like this because I think the critique is more accurate. His attacking politics undercuts himself and what he is trying to do. This damage is then made worse by not giving any foundational rationale for what he is trying to do in the first place. Talk about giving special interests and "anything goes" politics a free pass...

Colin and Karlo were right: as long as we're fighting about character issues and other small-minded topics, we have already lost. When we are not talking about a set of ideas, policies, and decisions to be made in an honest way, we let special interests wreck everything (at which point Millennials may as well turn on some John Mayer).

It behooves all of us, including our president, to view politics as a constant, something we cannot ignore. The mixing of various views, backgrounds, and interests is always at work, and, especially now, there will always be a task to pursue. If the 2008 enthusiasm was genuine, if it meant something -- if Obama was serious about his call for citizens to step it up -- our president and all of us need to re-calibrate our views on politics. Pragmatic idealism just might have a shot then.

Promoted by Sarah

I've been doing some thinking on the role of a University. Our conception of what it should be is very different from what it is in reality. Professor Michael Wesch, a Cultural Anthropologist at Kansas State University put it very nicely a while ago:

Some time ago we started taking our walls too seriously – not just the walls of our classrooms, but also the metaphorical walls that we have constructed around our “subjects,” “disciplines,” and “courses.” McLuhan’s statement about the bewildered child confronting “the education establishment where information is scarce but ordered and structured by fragmented, classified patterns, subjects, and schedules” still holds true in most classrooms today. The walls have become so prominent that they are even reflected in our language, so that today there is something called “the real world” which is foreign and set apart from our schools. When somebody asks a question that seems irrelevant to this real world, we say that it is “merely academic.”

Not surprisingly, our students struggle to find meaning and significance inside these walls. They tune out of class, and log on to Facebook.

A true University should embrace learning, not teaching. A true University should view knowledge as a journey, not a scarce parcel. A true University should build a culture of the possibly of discovery through discussion at all times of day and night.

Instead we fidget in our chairs for three hours a day, spend hours dumbly thumbing through books in the library, and spend the rest of our time in a whirlwind of activity, trying to keep up with mounting piles of work, but also plunging headfirst into the elaborate civil society we've created to bring meaning, purpose, wholesomeness to fill the emptiness in our lives that our classes carve out.

Mr. Arne Duncan, tear down this wall.

What is a University? What should it be? I'm not asking you to describe your own college or similar institutions. Instead, what are the aspirations, hopes, contradictions, negations, paradoxes, stereotypes and associations with this concept? A University is not a college, the beer-soaked playground of the idle bourgeois, one long sex romp for the future staid suits of tomorrow. (In reality, perhaps it is, but we have entered the land of myths and symbolism).

I close my eyes and let my mind wander. The word University evokes vague echoes of Plato's academy, no? A grass and marble oasis of idyll, with students, their features wavering between long-bearded be-toga'd elders and excitable, sandy-haired fast-talking youngsters. These students might be tweed-jacketed, their brows furrowed too deeply for those so young, opening tomes in a rich velvet tomb of a room. Perhaps two women are striding to some unknown destination, the Pakistani explaining her understanding of the intricacies of physics to her Kansas friend. A rich tableau of images bubble and dissolve in a warm bath of emotions in the mind. Timelessness, Pursuit of Knowledge, Camaraderie, Dedication, Wholesomeness. All these concepts rush past my mind and double back to make sure they left their mark.

And yet, something is missing, is it not? Where are the professors? Where are these Socratic guides in this journey of intellectual discovery? A holistic concept of the University is intricately tied with those modern-day sages. They could be sitting down in a circle on a lawn with their students, leading them on a nature hike, arranging tours to local institutions of interests. They could be narrating the story of how a train stays on its tracks, or the first time they took a girl to a dance, while sharing a barbecue'd kebab with their pupils.

A true University should embrace learning, not teaching. A true University should view knowledge as a journey, not a scarce parcel. A true University should build a culture of the possibly of discovery through discussion at all times of day and night.

The "modern" University observes an archaic ritual, barely changed since those times when books were scarce and princes and monks paid to have a scholar read one aloud for hours a day. Michael Wesch, cultural anthropologist, explains the classroom:

I arrived early, finding 493 empty numbered chairs sitting mindlessly fixated on the front of the room. A 600 square foot screen stared back at them. Hundreds of students would soon fill the chairs, but the carefully designed sound-absorbing walls and ceiling, along with state of the art embedded speakers, ensured that there would only be one person in this room to be heard. That person would be me, pacing around somewhere near stage-left, ducking intermittently behind a small podium housing a computer with a wireless gyromouse that will grant me control of some 786,432 points of light on that massive screen.

The room is nothing less than a state of the art information dump, a physical manifestation of the all too pervasive yet narrow and naïve assumption that to learn is simply to acquire information, built for teachers to effectively carry out the relatively simple task of conveying information. Its sheer size, layout, and technology are testaments to the efficiency and expediency with which we can now provide students with their required credit hours.

Professor Wesch had his students produce a video on their experiences in the classroom:

It is strange, it is not? This take on a University is very different than the collective assumptions, stereotypes, and aspirations we have for what it could be. Perhaps this dream of what a University could be, should be, is a lie. Perhaps we are nostalgically clinging to a past that never was. Perhaps. However, the present is untenable. A generation of students and a generation of teachers are bound by a love of learning, but everyone can sense that the current model of schooling deadens the spirit and slows the mind of teacher and student alike.

Crossposted (with edits) to InnermostParts.org