Running

There is a sort of magic, an opening up, when it comes to running. Recently I've taken to running at night through the little city nestled at the base of the mountains in which I'm attending school. The city uses a grid system, which is liberating. While you're running, walking when you're tired, you just go. There's no direction, no reason, just a completely free and purposeless wandering through the night. I imagine it's what we felt like back in our High School days (not so far distant), hanging it with friends just to be there, to be somewhere new. You run and run until you feel you've gone where you need to go. You don't have to think about where you're going, no need to pay attention as you twist and turn haphazardly through the drizzling rain. Tonight I found myself right at the foot of the mountains staring up into the dark. It was just light enough, or perhaps it was just the glow of the city at my back, that let me just barely make out the snow-covered slopes through the mist of the low-slung clouds. At that moment, having already run a good three or four miles, I was possessed completely by the desire, the urge even, to strap on a pack with climbing gear and climb up through the rain to the snow-covered peaks. As I turned around and looked over the city I felt I was in some half-way place, some connected spot between nature and civilization, that I had touched the wild again. As I ran back, past my university and through parking lots and apartment complexes I felt myself mentally telling everyone I passed “you have no idea where I've been tonight, I've been somewhere you wouldn't think.” It's the same feeling I get when I travel, when I wandered through the beautiful green hills of Wales when I climbed a stunning, mist and forest covered Glacier in New Zealand and hiked in the wonderful forests of Upstate New York. It was the feeling of going and doing something special, of coming back into contact with Nature. It was the feeling that of exhilaration so great you can't experience it fully until you can go tell someone just how great it was.

Postmodernism and the Humanities

Postmodernism: The Death of the Humanities

The central tenet of Postmodernist thought is that there is no such thing as overarching truth, or as Gertrude Himmelfarb has it in “Falling Into Theory” it is a “denial that there is any such thing as knowledge, truth, reason, or objectivity, and a refusal even to aspire to such ideals, on the ground that they are not only unattainable but undesirable—that they are indeed authoritarian and repressive” (86). Or as one of the professors in my English Department has it, “All you have is texts—everything else is just you talking.”

This model has been made popular recently, particularly with the fairly recent Stanley Fish era at Duke University, and though we've seen postmodernism before, it is “the first time that it has been done so with the approval of so many professors in so many disciplines—and not in the name of truth but in a show of disdain for the very idea of truth” (86).

What does this mean for the average humanities students, they who haven't been exposed to the ideological ramifications? To start with, a laugh. If there are no right answers, they don't have to worry about the answers they give, and celebrate with the class, which makes the professor feel good about themselves and their teaching style now that they're “reaching” the students and helping them to get “engaged.” Then, of course, the trap springs. The first exam comes and grades are posted. The theoretical stance of complete freedom of ideas runs into the hard wall of the practical university where, in the words of Alan Purves, “It's not supposed to be fun; it's supposed to be a mental discipline” (Falling Into Theory 214). The students then find themselves enmeshed in the absurd system where while there are no right answers, there are plenty of wrong ones. It dawns on the student that if every answer were “truly” equally ambiguous in terms of truth, there would be no point to the class, so the teachers have created this bizarre system of grading from Completely False on the low end to Acceptably Semi-True as the ideal.

The objective of the class quite naturally switches from finding true answers for the reward it introduces to their lives (the old, if unattainable, ideal) to finding the answer which pleases the professor for the only possible reward of the class (the higher grade). Which is to say nothing of the loss of credibility both the professor and department suffer. The end then, for the student, is that a degree becomes a marker of the success they've had at learning how to cynically manipulate the system, a kind of achievement through endurance, as opposed to a declaration by the University of the knowledge and skills (at least the officially promoted ones) gained by the student.

This doesn't leave the professor unscathed, either. As Dr. Mark Taylor from the University of Arkansas-Beede has it, “if school is not fun and does not have apparent meaning and/or benefit, young people will not participate, or participate in full and authentic ways.” To translate, if there is no apparent meaning (truth value) then all there is left in the classroom to engage students is “fun,” or as Dr. Taylor tactfully puts it, “variable” teaching. He goes on by trying to place the problems postmodernist teaching creates, or teaching “on what they found personally interesting without feeling significant responsibility to cover the entire content of the class,” firmly in the past, something that postmodernist teaching will somehow overcome by having the teacher do the rather vague “whatever is necessary.” In essence, once the student has learned how to perform an analysis the professor loses all forms of authority besides blatant grade-driven coercion. They are reduced to providing entertainment in the classroom as the only real alternative to answers.

Let's take a look at the logical development of Postmodernism. If there is no truth, there is no finally correct answer. If there is no right answer, there is only opinion. What is it then that qualifies one person to be a professor over another? The quality of their opinions? That, then is what the Humanities professor has reduced him/herself too—an armchair commentator no more worthy of being in their privileged position than any other high-school educated person. If this is the case then University Humanities Departments across the country have degraded into a massive testament to the vanity of the academic, while conveying nothing of value to future generations.

This is not, however, a call back to Formalism, or the time when “rather than provide correct answers, they provide tried and proven procedures that serve” (Purves 214). A reliance on form as the center as opposed to the opinion in postmodernism doesn't move us past High-School. This is a call for going back even further, when the purpose of the Humanities was a study of the Human Being, when poems and novels, songs and plays were studied for the truth they revealed about human character. Without that truth, without that insight, all you have is a dead text; the rest is just you talking.

http://www.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/forum/spr05/mcliForumV9Sp05.pdf

Mass Effect

I'm a big fan of Mass Effect, a videogame recently developed by Bioware.  In the sequel, inventively named Mass Effect 2, there was a particular character who caught my attention.  Spoilers, if you haven't played the game (which was excellent).  Her name was Miranda Lawson.  For those not familiar with the character, she was genetically designed by her father to give her perfect features and a perfect mind.  She was raised mostly secluded, trained by private tutors, and trotted out at parties as the heir presumptive and beginning of a "dynasty."  Where her character became interesting to me, however, was in her personality.  She is blatantly sexualized, as is not surprising in a videogame these days, but was completely aware of it.  She intentionally accented it in order to manipulate others by wearing revealing clothing, and in a profound sense was emotionally disconnected from her body; it was not "her" in a real sense.  This, along with a sense of self-deprecation buried beneath raw ability and competence, gave the character some depth. 

What really got me, however, was a conversation between the player and Miranda involving the concept of worth.  Miranda argues that the player character, with his/her (conveniently selectable) history of defying-the-odds achievements as well as the achievements of the first game, is superior to herself on a scale of judgment based on achievements versus the degree of difficulty as weighted by personal advantages.  In this light her own achievements hardly qualify as her own, much less as commendable.  The player character can (as I did) respond with a counter proposal; that achievement and value is actually based on choosing a system of values and consistently staying with them.  In that light, Miranda does, indeed, have something to claim as her own.  She expresses gratitude, and it was a rare moment of real communication about an actual issue in a videogame.  Gasp.

Then Bioware, the developer, dropped the ball.  If the moment had been meaningful, as it attempted to portray itself, there would have been change.  Perhaps Miranda would have started to wear more concealing clothing, marking a visual progression in her feelings of self-worth, and more particularly, self-respect.  Yet she continues to inconsistently thank the player for helping her to come to terms with herself while still wearing that ridiculous outfit.  A great opportunity wasted.  Which is, perhaps, why I purchased the optional downloadable content which gives her a more concealing (and practical, as it's body armor) outfit, so I could carry out this little fantasy of true character development.  But it should have happened in the normal game.  So close, yet so far.

New Beginnings

So hello, anonymous viewer(s).  I'm going to be optimistic and decide that there are possibly going to be more than one of you.  This is going out on a bit of a limb for me, but I like writing and should do it more, so here I am!  This site will be dedicated to my random musings, reviews of books, and anything else I can think of.  This is mostly for me, almost a sort of journal, but I hope you enjoy it!