Last Class

 Get it? It's a metaphor

“[Spiders] were my introduction to the spirits, to the magic afoot in the land. It was from them that I first learned of the intelligence that lurks in nonhuman nature, the ability that an alien form of sentience has to echo one’s own, to instill a reverberation in oneself that temporarily shatters habitual ways of seeing and feeling, leaving one open to a world all alive, awake, and aware…The precise and minuscule craft of the spiders had so honed and focused my awareness that the very webwork of the universe, of which my own flesh was a part, seemed to be being spun by their arcane art” (Abram, p. 19).

I feel like this is the space for an epic conclusion, summing up everything we have learned in our IDS, maybe everything we have learned at Guilford.

This has been a special experience. I feel incredibly fortunate to have spent the last four years at Guilford, and even more so to have spent the last semester in such a mind-opening, eye-opening, wholesome, engaged, entertaining, enjoyable, and inspiring class. I feel that one of the troubles of growing up and perusing a discipline is that one's way of seeing and feeling becomes intertwined with one's focus. I have learned to see the world from a Psychology and Peace & Conflict Studies lens where I tend to "objectively" analyze my emotions, thoughts, and behaviors, as well as others', while not fully living them, and also am more prone to see conflict, violence, and injustice. There are benefits to these lenses, we all need someone to give us an objective opinion or to be able to pick out structural violence so as to create a better world, but sometimes these lenses keep us from experiencing the world as fully as if we were a child. We disconnect ourselves from the world when we study a discipline with so much vigor. Abram says on page 255:

"As we grow into a particular culture or language, we implicitly begin to structure our sensory contact with the earth around us in a particular manner, paying attention to certain phenomena while ignoring others, differentiating textures, tastes, and tones in accordance with the verbal contrasts contained in language."

We have talked about the importance of understanding other disciplines in class, how important it is not to dismiss science or whatever, becasue when we only understand the language of, say, psychology, we only see the motivations behind emotions, thoughts, and behaviors instead of the actual emotion, thought, or behavior. Instead of fully feeling upset about my last PECS class, my last IDS class, my last whatever, I think, "Wow, it makes sense that I feel this way because..." Creativity, Vocation, and Success is an interdisciplinary class, meaning it is inclusive of all perspectives. What we have learned this semester is to see the world, ourselves, and others as fully, or close to, as we did as children... to see that all of this is alive, unique, and dynamic.

Trip to Tom Risser

Beach Vacation and a Cowboy

 

I'll comment on Sam and our beach vacation later tonight...

The Inner Child hasn't Grown Up

some smiles

This says it all

On Being Children

I’m having difficulty translating the significance of last class’s trip to the edible schoolyard into words. It’s always difficult to translate a meaningful experience into words; words can only do so much. I am not trying to convey the whole experience but merely those 5 minutes we were given to be children again. That was a gift. It was a gift to feel like a child for a moment, to see everyone else uncover their inner child without reservation. That was a genuine five minutes. Look back on pictures, you’ll find that no one is forcing a smile, or even giving a half smile; we’re all wearing genuine smiles of absolute bliss. It’s nice to know that the inner child hasn’t grown up, it’s comforting especially when I feel more and more like an adult as we get closer to graduation. I’m astonished that a direction as simple as “go play” had such a significant impact on everyone. I went up in the plane at one point and found Dave and Amy ( I think) pressing buttons, flicking switching, pretending to fly the thing. I hopped in the fire truck (A real fire truck!) and Jason and I were suddenly firemen. And then I found myself drawn to the play construction house and went down into the block pit with Ellee and Riley and starting building like I was in first grade. Why don’t we have play time anymore?! There’s so much pressure to be adults in the “real world.” We have our gender roles to fulfill, our masks to wear, our inner child to protect. It’s sad, really. Imagine if we brought two opposing parties to the children’s museum and told them to “go play.” We could put an end to war, we could resolve conflicts. Fuck mediation, I’d put two parties in the block pit. Put two leaders of countries at war in a ball pit and we’d have world peace. It’s impossible not to see the human in one another when you’re in a situation where it is safe to 

let the inner child come out.

The Dilemma of the PECS Major

Kat said a few things that resonated with me.  At one point she was describing how helpful it was to have Guilford people around after graduation because when people at work say things that aren’t as culturally sensitive or perpetuate inequality it’s nice to have someone at home to vent to. It resonated with me to see her get so worked up as she described her internal reaction, “Do you realize how fucked up what you’re saying is?” in response to another.  I know what that passion feels like. A reaction that isn’t limited to PECS majors but fairly common (I think) among Guilford students, that frustration is incredibly familiar to me given my discipline, and I felt right at home to hear another PECS major express it.  It is a constant struggle in our discipline to promote peace. Violence is relentless in its efforts and as people that feel passionately about the betterment of human life, we are constantly burdened by structures that perpetuate violence like inequality gaps, racism, cultural insensitivity, dehumanization, etc…Kat expressed that frustration beautifully.

Seizing Opportunities

Another thing has to do with taking chances and being open to the world. Leo Buscaglia talks about in his book “Love: What Life is All About,” how a person that has learned to love fully is a person that is more willing to take chances because while the possible negative outcome to a situation is more apparent to the pessimistic person, the person who has learned to love can see that instead of thinking “what if they don’t want me to join them?” will see that he/she has an equal chance at, “What if they do want me to join them, what if they say yes?” I think pessimistic attitudes keep us from wonderful opportunities. Hey, I’m as guilty as the next person, and it’s too bad. One really has to learn and work on being optimistic, or being more loving. We talked about that in class, Kat could have said, “But I don’t know if I’m qualified for that job, but what if they reject me?” It took a little courage for her to walk in there and ask for a job, 

but it’s a good thing she did.

Vision Board

According to Wikipedia, “Synchronicity is the experience of two or more events, that are apparently causally unrelated or unlikely to occur together by chance, that are observed to occur together in a meaningful manner.” The day before, or maybe even that morning before we went to the edible schoolyard, I had a conversation with my mom and she told me to make a vision board because the astrology was right or whatever. Lo and behold, I find myself sitting in Nonni’s house and Kat tells us to make a vision board! Okay, sounds like a good idea. I can see well enough to pick out the meaning in that. So I thought about the future and thought up things like, “I want a job that gives me meaning. I want a job where I can make a difference in people’s lives, where I can actualize my potential as well as theirs. I want to be with people one-on-one. I also want flexibility…I want enough money to be comfortable and be able to travel… I want to be with people that I love everyday and be part of a community that is genuine…” 

You should make a vision board too.

How do you measure experience?

 

Talking about going towards “it”, at the lake we talked about teaching methods and how some work and some, like reading out of a text book, do not work. In our IDS we are participating in “experiential learning” which has something to do with moving towards “it”. Sitting in a lopsided circle next to the lake, I had trouble seeing how different our version of experiential learning was any different than sitting in a circle in a Guilford classroom. Yes, we’re moving in the right direction, but I feel that if we really want to move towards “it” there needs to be some movement, some stimulation. This is going to sound a little hippie dippy, but to explore the god in nature shown through magnificent creativity, how about sticking our hands in the mud, climbing a tree, or making a class sculpture out of materials in the woods? I know we have to be able to talk about the readings, but to go back to Rilke, I wish we had time to experience like we did as children where God “appear[ed] in [the world] everywhere.” I miss that. With all the bullshit we fill our time with there is no time to really see. What are we even doing? Why is this shit so important? Kauffman quotes Stephen Weinberg who said, “All the explanatory arrows point downward, from societies to people, to organs, to cells, to biochemistry, to chemistry, and ultimately to physics…The more we know of the universe, the more meaningless it appears.” So we study the pieces, the parts which we believe will help us understand rather than going out an experiencing it. I read about bipolar disorder in my psychology text books rather than experiencing a person who has it for myself. There is no meaning to the words in a text book, in the reducible version of life.

I talked to Nick last class about how psychology has trained me to reduce things, to see the parts and not the whole and how I hate that. Saying that out loud somehow freed me a little. Sitting across from Maia I saw her as a 3-D object, saw how she stood out from the background behind her. Looking at the tiles in the shower later that day I actually saw the tiles in the shower instead of the white box that I step into everyday. It’s like tripping but without drugs when you let go and have those moments where you can really see. We are trained in reduction, not to notice the whole picture, the glory surrounding.

If we were to adopt a holistic view where God is the creativity in the universe, as Kauffman talks about, there would be less bullshit. We wouldn’t produce shitty food, we wouldn’t be pumping hormones into our cows and treating them like shit, we wouldn’t be buying shit all the time to fill up the ever expanding void that our disconnection with nature has produced, we wouldn’t be shitty to one another, we wouldn’t be dropping bombs on other humans! In a more holistic world full of meaning and agency we would be able to see past our prejudices, our dehumanistic views of anyone that looks different or who’s perspective challenges our view. If we could realize the agency we have, the “god” within us if you want to get Quakerly, to self-actualize (psychology), the power we have on our world, on the people around us, on ourselves, whew, tomorrow would be different. If we could all see that maybe there isn’t a God controlling everything up above, somewhere in the clouds, and that maybe I, and we, are it.