Posts Tagged ‘Philosophy’

Sage Advice

Posted: May 27, 2014 in Uncategorized
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by Tricia Lunt, English Faculty

It’s graduation season. I’ll be fulfilling one aspect of my duties as faculty by attending RMU’s commencement ceremony on June 6, 2014. GraduationRMU

I find commencement speeches utterly fascinating and ceaselessly inspiring, so too do the people at NPR, who recently published a list of 300 speeches going all the way back to 1774 under the auspicious title The Best Commencement Speeches, Ever, and I tend to believe them. I’ll be listening with rapt attention to many on this list.

My list is less ambitious: JK Rowling at Harvard in 2008; Steve Jobs at Stanford in 2005; David Foster Wallace at Kenyon in 2005, and I am certain (without even looking) that my favorite commencement addresses are considered among the ones designated by NPR as “Best, Ever.”

One of the best ways to annoy my students is require them to invite them to listen to a commencement address; they are not as fond of the form as I am. Fortunately, I enjoy tormenting my students with a relentless onslaught of profound ideas.

I share these speeches with my students with the ideal outcome of a rousing discussion about the implications of the advice shared and the insights offered. As is true of so many things, this lesson is more successful in theory than in practice. Nevertheless, I persevere. Perhaps they’ll thank me someday, perhaps not.

JK Rowling’s terrific address overflows with her lovely, self-effacing, dry British humor, but the heart-wrenching sadness at the core of the imaginative process is the true revelation.

“Imagination is not only the uniquely human capacity to envision that which is not, and therefore the fount of all invention and innovation. In its arguably most transformative and revelatory capacity, it is the power that enables us to empathize with humans whose experiences we have never shared.”

Steve Jobs offers a poignant discussion of his own experiences as a college drop out. His decision to audit classes just because he wanted to learn helps students understand that learning is a lifelong process, and while learning can be formal, it is just as often not.

“The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn’t interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting. . . Because I had dropped out and didn’t have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class. . . It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can’t capture, and I found it fascinating.”

EinsteinThe joys and rewards of disinterested learning are made evident though Jobs’ tireless dive to produce technology innovation that is useful and beautiful.

David Foster Wallace’s “This Is Water” overflows with brilliance, thanks to his intellectual virtuosity. He analyzes and dissects and constructs and destructs ideas like a hyper-cerebral Bruce Lee. His speech provides an unflinching description of the effort involved in “living a compassionate life,”

“The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day.”

Negotiating life is an arduous journey, slowed by frequent stumbling.

Simon Peres, The President of Israel, was the commencement speaker at my undergraduate graduation from The Ohio State University; I can’t remember a single word. I’m sure he said extraordinary things, but I was not yet ready to listen.

When I attended my friend Michele’s graduation ceremony at Ohio State in 2001 (she graduated six years after I did), Bill Cosby was the featured speaker. Cosby’s address was funny and wise, and I remember it quite well.

He told the story of his first visit home after starting college. Like every other college freshman, he was flush with the special (and fleeting) pride of being the burgeoning intellectual, eager to display his prowess. He told his grandmother he had been studying philosophy.

two-glasses

He explained, “Depending on perception, meaning fluctuates, resulting in profound uncertainty. For example, is that glass half empty or half full?”

Cosby’s grandmother dismissed his nonsense with an absolutely perfect retort, “Why, it depends if you are drinking or pouring.”

There are lessons to be learned in each moment, which is why wisdom can increase with age; we learn over time just how little we know.

Thus, we must resist the temptation to dazzled by our own intelligence or fooled by a seductive illusion, hoping, at best, we can make good choices, and that our mistakes will be forgiven.

 

 

 

 

 

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The Philosophy of Shoveling

Posted: May 20, 2013 in Uncategorized
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By Michael Stelzer Jocks, History Faculty. 

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This year it was mulch.

It’s that time of year again.  The time when my wife orders a huge pile of compost and dirt, has it delivered to our front yard and then decides where this fresh earth is needed most.  Of course, all three cubic yards of this will be moved into the ever-expanding vegetable and fruit garden she is constructing.  It began a couple years ago with one raised-bed in our backyard, and now takes up our entire property.  Granted, we live in NE Oak Park, so it is not like we have a huge yard, but covering even such a moderate area in fresh compost/dirt can be quite a chore using only a shovel and a red children’s wagon (we don’t have a wheel-barrel).  It is a physical job; your hands get dirty, your fingers get calloused and your arms and back ache.  Though this doesn’t sound like an enjoyable task, it actually is quite fulfilling.

I think many people love the ‘good’ muscle pain of a hard day’s work. To me however, this job is enjoyable for another reason.  The question I have been asking myself the last week is why?  Why do I enjoy this seemingly mindless chore?  Well, I think I may have a reason.  It’s the ‘natural’ way to work.

In his brilliant 1967 essay “Work, Time-Discipline, and Industrial Capitalism”, the English historian E.P. Thompson illustrated how pre-industrial, agricultural work was ‘task oriented’. This was very different from our modern way of working, in which any down time is usually thought to be ‘wasted’.  The modern notion of time really began with the industrial factory where time was to be ‘spent’ specifically and exclusively for production.  Any time ‘spent’ otherwise was time that was lost, and hence, profits. This was new. It was not called the Industrial Revolution for nothing. 

Obviously, most Americans don’t work in factories, but our modern style of labor still is based upon this industrialized ethic.  I learned this at 19 when I worked at a certain, infamous fast-food chain. It was constantly reiterated in that job if you had “time to lean, you had time to clean.” In other words, don’t rest (or think), just work.

As Thompson pointed out, this type of labor was “unnatural” in the sense that humans had never worked in such a structured manner.  Instead, people had always worked based upon ‘task orientation’, which had three major differences to the industrialized method: “First, there (was) a sense in which it (was) more humanly comprehensible than timed labor. The peasant or laborer appear(ed) to attend upon what was an observed necessity. Second, a community in which task-orientation (was) common appear(ed) to show least demarcation between “work” and “life”. Social intercourse and labor (were) intermingled – the working day lengthens or contracts according to the task – and there (was) no great sense of conflict between labor and “passing the time of day”. Third, to men accustomed to labor timed by the clock, this attitude to labor appears to be wasteful and lacking in urgency.”

It must be stated, I am a college professor, and am very lucky in the sense that I am one of the few who still work based largely upon this “task orientation”.  But still, I often don’t have that strangely ecstatic feeling of completing a manual task.  I rarely get the sensation that Stephen Duck wrote about in the eighteenth century:

At length in Rows stands up the well-dry’d Corn,
A grateful Scene, and ready for the Barn.
Our well-pleas’d Master views the Sight with joy,
And we for carrying all our Force employ.
Confusion soon o’er all the Field appears,
And stunning Clamours fill the Workmens Ears;
The Bells, and clashing Whips, alternate sound,
And rattling Waggons thunder o’er the Ground.
The Wheat got in, the Pease, and other Grain,
Share the same Fate, and soon leave bare the Plain:
In noisy Triumph the last Load moves on,
And loud Huzza’s proclaim the Harvest done.

My labor of moving dirt from one place to another in my small yard is of this nature.  I feel Imagelike proclaiming a “loud Huzza” as I finish this task. 

All this being said, let’s not get too romantic.  The thought of moving dirt from one place to another everyday instead of preparing for my history classes is not very appealing.  But, without such physical tasks I believe I would be missing something intensely human. Even in our labors, the immortal and wise words of the Oracle of Delphi ring true: “In all things moderation.”