Philosophy

Shoot, yeah, ending another quarter teaching at another college, here in WA state, and, whew, of course the Chomsky’s and Giroux’s and Hedges of the world DO NOT get it.
Think of faculty in the trenches, working with youth, in my case, a whole load of high school students in a community college swap program called Running Start. We take juniors and seniors out of their high schools, they take college courses, and they get high school credit AND college credit.

I look upon some of the recent scandals in American academic philosophy programs with great intrigue (I used to study philosophy at the graduate level) because these scandals provide case studies of what ails that discipline in particular, and what makes the humanities disciplines in general a laughingstock to the public and those concerned about the role the university should have in society.

[W]ith the weight of Magna Carta, the [British Film Institute] proclaimed Hitchcock’s 46th feature the greatest film ever made, displacing Citizen Kane’s 50-year reign at the top.
– The Guardian, August 2012

“I have an appointment with death this evening,” I explained, smiling to friends upon leaving them. Their startled faces revealed feelings such as fear and a lack of understanding.

Recently I have rediscovered the Stone page of the New York Times editorial section where guests philosophers are invited to write on important issues of our time. That a philosopher’s opinion today would actually have importance for the public at large is somewhat of a mystery, largely because the role of the philosopher as cultural critic or “public intellectual” has largely been usurped by the technological class: individuals whose inventions have largely transformed the way in which we interact as social beings.

“Are Adjunct Professors the Fast-Food Workers of the Academic World?” Is this provocative, evocative, adversarial, or emblematic of an age of casino capitalism, corrupted Admin Class, and a see/ hear/speak no evil compliant groups of people who are in the 20 percent?

What I am noticing, increasingly, on social media, Facebook in particular, I guess, is the that people too lazy to think, or take the time to write out two or three sentences, will resort to posting “memes”. This seems to be a cottage industry now. The second part of the meme phenomenon has to do with moral relativism, and psychic disconnect. Erasure of empathy, really.

Nobody can think globally, anymore than one can seriously imagine one’s own death. And so when Fukushima exploded three years ago and as our skies and oceans became laced with toxicity, none of it seemed as real as the trivialities of my life.

“I’m telling you, this place is the most racist place I’ve ever been to. September 10, it was Latinos and Blacks. And then September 11 came, and it’s Muslims. It’s a list. I top the list.” That’s Vera, student in the USA, in the film, If These Halls Could Talk.

It’s been a bit of a gap week or two, since pining in with this sort of catharsis,  but some of us schmucks have to make some really lousy money and attend to some really rotten job hunting in a time of pure delusion, all the while that white noise buzzing, the white static noise of the mush of NPR and mainstream mindlessness and the BS of labor stats and economists who deserve what the SEALs and Obama said what happened to Osama (right, US punk prez, directs US amped-up murder incorporated to shoot to kill, ask no questions later, I don’t need no stinking badge, and then burial at sea, hea