As with the previous post, this one too is not a memory per se, at least not in terms of a recollected story. Rather I’m writing down the awareness of having changed, of really -seeing- the world in a different way. Any state of mind at a certain moment in time could be considered a memory; since that’s what memory is: stored experience.
So today I write about the memory of being a staunch anti-intellectualist. A sentiment fed into by years of unhappiness in education. I remember almost vowing to myself that one day, if given the means, I would plead and fight for childrens’ freedom. From a young age they were taken away from their parents, from their home, from safety and all that is good in life. It may sound overcharged, but this is literally how I experienced the first day of school, and many mornings after it. As if being put on a daily train to Auswitz for day-camp (back when it wasn’t yet a tourist attraction, of course). The teachers were cruel sadists, venting their frustrations and lust for power on children who only wanted to be children. Children that like play, explore the world and retain their innocence. Instead, you were cornered between a pack of 30 other little wolves (children are indeed savages to one another) on the one side, and parental/educational pressure perform on the other side; made to counter-intuively think and cram al sorts of facts into your mind. The result of which was a hampering in respectively moral development and mental stability.
Then came university with its pretentions. I saw pretentious professors who placed their self-esteem in the study and reverance of other, dead intellectuals. Pretentious students, having gained the right to study by forsaking their childhood, ready to find a guru, embrace a philsophy and look down . This is the problem with intellectuals; they condemned themselves to an unnatural life, hunched over in chairs, skulking in libraries, destroying their eyesight. And what do they do? They praise and other iuntellectuals, who similarly gave up their life, or had none in the first place (being perhaps debilitated or just plain anti-social). A vicious circle of people who dare not bite the hand that feeds them.
Needless to say, anti-intellectualism is not a very popular view among intellectuals. I felt priviliged to be the lone ranger that saw through this facade.
Okay, so to come to the point of this story. Irony has it that am now a teacher, ‘the enemy’ so to speak. And yes, I yearn for quiet classrooms with dicplined students who shut up, listen and do their homework. I get terribly annoyed with Thai kids with their smiles and gleaming eyes, jumping on tables, screaming, laughing and basicly enjoying themselves. This is the Thai mentality: don’t exert yourself too much, don’t take education too seriously if you don’t want to. And I loathe them for it. I find them stupid, like a little pack of happy monkeys, unable to control their own destiny. A country full of ignorance, waiting to go morally astray or be taken advantage of. That and they make my life difficult.
Instead of wrapping up with a lesson learned, I’ll have to end here on a short note. This is where I am now, torn between the memories of old and my current experience. Which is more valuable? The one where a moral person is less, or more educated? I don’t know.
David van Ofwegen
Other posts by David van Ofwegen
In Act I of Shakespeare’s Macbeth Banquo says:
If you can look into the seeds of time
And say which grain will grow and which will not,
Speak then to me…
Innocence is not necessarily an attribute of anti-illectualism, as we were tought to beleive. We don’t even have to look further into Socrats, Descartes or even Voltair’s utopias and their offsprings to prove the case.
Let’s try a different approach.
If we can reasonably apply quantum paradoxes to the subject, it is like Schroedinger’s cat problem in a way, with the cat dead and alive the same time.
So, why do we always tend to make judgements? Is life always a choice between determinism and uncertainty?
Those questions are rooted rather in methodology based on our educational mindframe and background then on common sense. Tolerance should come first, not education.
So I would say, Socrates AND pig instead of Socrates OR pig, which means: let Socrates leave the pig alone.
A pig doesn’t care much about Socrates, so why Socrates should?