Student life and other contradictions
An inquiry into the value of modern education.
By Gavin Gee-Clough
Introduction
LIFE is the continual exploration of the relationship between
the individual and the world. Institutional schooling inverts
this process. Our education system progressively alienates the
individual from her-Self.
Education begins as playful adventure, but this is just a
confidence trick. Creativity and curiosity soon falter under the
increasing weight given to obedient imitation and the spirit of
competition. By the time the child reaches high school education
has already become a chore.
Obedience and imitation require nothing original from the child
- nothing that originates from her-Self. By definition they
require the exact opposite: the docile appropriation of others’
ideas and behaviour. The quasi-penal atmosphere of the classroom
belies the primary purpose of schooling: submission and
indoctrination. Education is how the status stays quo.
This gradual removal of the child from consideration of what is
best for them is simply the gradual removal of the child from
her-Self. The more time spent in educational institutions the
more advanced this process of separation becomes; a process that
finds its logical conclusion in the automaton. And so it is that
our schools, colleges and universities transform the originally
inquisitive and exuberant child into an apathetic, joyless
functionary – another cog in the economic machinery.
Modern education literally sucks the LIFE out of the student.
1. learning nothing
Reared on a diet of junk knowledge that becomes even less
nutritious as she enters university, the student is mentally
weak. Atrophied critical faculties and a profound historical
naivete leave her disorientated, unable to critique or
contextualise the information she is force-fed. An
ever-expanding mass of technical information is presented to the
student as serious knowledge, together with the understanding
that academic success is defined as the general acceptance (by
academia, not the public naturally) of the student’s own
esoteric ruminations. Hence to succeed is primarily to imitate.
And to imitate is to add to the mountain of (largely irrelevant)
technical information that, being abstract, literally draws the
student out of direct connection with the world.
The aesthetic sense operates only in direct connection with
life. Although this fact is obvious to anyone who has ever seen
a pretty girl, the academic world - lost in its
subjective/objective universe - is still trying to work out why
beauty and value seem impossible to grasp intellectually. It is
obvious that beauty isn’t measurable, like size, shape or colour
- it is not objective - so only one category seems to remain:
beauty and value, we are told, must be ‘subjective’, which is
another way of saying ‘relative’ or simply ‘not real’. But
aesthetic experience is as REAL as it gets.
Beauty and value are not objective yet they are real, more real
than both subjects and objects. Aesthetic experience takes you
out of yourself (eg losing yourself when dancing); it provides
an intuitive knowledge – Quality – that is obscured upon
self-consciousness. The ego occupies awareness at the expense,
or at least the dilution of direct experience. Then it proclaims
what it obscures to be imaginary – replacing aesthetic reality
with its own static conceptual projections , the first and major
division being ‘me’ and ‘world’. Egoless experience is neither
conceptual nor logical; it just is, for without an ego there is
no one to do the reflecting. But we are told that if something
isn’t logical it isn’t real. Even though logic – being an
abstract concept - isn’t real itself! Distanced from direct
experience in her conceptual cocoon the student drifts into
squareness and, in time, nihilism.
Squareness and gullibility are the hallmarks of the student.
Being a mediocre exponent of Reason, the student’s relationship
to rational knowledge is based on faith - the university as
Church of Reason. Ever naive, the student dismisses the
possibility of engaging with the world in any manner other than
that of compulsive and lousy analyst. Consequently she becomes
more and more cut-off from her own desires and passions, more
and more cut-off from LIFE. The Chinese say, “to know and not to
do is not to know”; therefore it can be reasonably assumed that
most students and nearly all academics know nothing.
2. expert knowledge
The academic is a creature of self-conflict. Clinging to a
vestigial self-importance that stems from a time when university
was a prep school for the ruling class, they cannot escape the
fact that they now manage only an assembly line. Testament to
this contradiction is the false modesty with which most
academics carry their meaningless titles. When most doctors of
philosophy couldn’t tell you what the word means, it becomes
very difficult to take this hollow honorific seriously. The
technician usurped the intellectual a long time ago.
With the continuing proliferation of technical knowledge comes
the continuing creation of new expert disciplines and, of
course, new expert academics to fill them. As the pie gets
bigger each academic’s share becomes proportionally smaller,
until none of them seem able to say (or at least agree on) what
type of pie they are dealing with, or why. Isolated from other
disciplines and the public with their jargon, academics run
together in gangs dependent on field; and within these fields
they run in 'sub-gangs'. Perpetually partisan, the academic
somehow remains convinced of his own impartiality. He is an
example of false consciousness par excellence.
What the academic as technical expert illustrates most clearly
is the fragmentation of knowledge. Unaware of the need to
reassemble these fragments into a coherent whole, the academic
instead concentrates his attention on a single splinter, until
it becomes the whole world to him. And so the splinters multiply
and so the need for their integration grows, and from this
situation a tragic irony ensues. The child’s natural bent
towards this integration, towards a truly philosophical
understanding, is stymied in favour of specialisation. When even
philosophy (the study that should link all others) succumbs to
this overly reductionist approach we are left completely adrift,
unable to find a base, an anchor, from which we can begin
constructing a good ‘map of reality’. A good” map being one that
helps us find a better life.
Viewed as a whole the authoritative declarations and
counter-declarations of the academic body are reminiscent of the
Blind Men and the Elephant. Absorbed in the analysis of these
discrete little parcels of information, each technician is
certain that his is the one that contains the Truth. Yes,
academia is a farce - a tragicomic farce. The hilarity implicit
in the elevation of the technical and trivial is offset by
frustration over such wasted potential. This pretentious
technical myopia is piss funny yes, but when is the joke going
to end?
3. reasonable desires
It is a rare student that knows himself. Academic success -
requiring obedience, imitation and abstraction - comes at the
price of personal desire and Self-knowledge. The student doesn’t
know what he wants; only what he thinks he wants , which is
usually based on what he thinks others want. How else do we
account for why students study what they do? It certainly seems
to have less to do with subject matter than with career
pragmatism. And what is career pragmatism but trading immediate
enjoyment for the future reward of a job (if you’re lucky) based
on what you had to force yourself to endure in the first place.
Career pragmatism is the logic of the masochist.
You say, in all honesty, that you want to be successful, rich,
and powerful; but these are just the wants of social status and
sexual desire. Status, celebrity, wealth and sex are desirable
alright - they are desirable for all. They are
innate/instinctive drives. Biology and Society are a part of us
all and, relied on exclusively, they homogenise and automate us.
We can escape the limits of these forces through Reason:
recognising these compulsions and checking them when we feel
they are not a good idea. But Reason is a faculty that needs to
be developed. We are not born rational animals. Our intellectual
capacity develops in parallel with our language skills and
relies on a careful observation of the world. Reason is, at
bottom, an understanding of cause and effect.
Science is Reason’s most gifted child. Science seeks to
formulate principles or laws that account for the operations of
the natural world. The scientific method is simple:
1. Observe phenomena
2. Formulate a hypothesis to explain the observed phenomena
3. Test the hypothesis
This simple schema allows us to see exactly where Science and
Reason fit together with Art. The formulation of a hypothesis is
an entirely creative and intuitive act; it is Art. In other
words Reason, if not grounded in Art, does not work.
This simple point – a truism to any good scientist[1] - has some
obvious repercussions for our beleaguered student. If Science is
not grounded in Art it loses its direction – the source of new
hypotheses. Art is the domain of the Self; it is direct
intuitive knowledge. Separated from his-Self the student is a
stranger to Art, intuition, creativity and authentic desire. In
other words, Reason divorced from an intuitive connection with
the world serves only the goals of biology and society. Reason
becomes a tool for justifying the status quo rather than a means
of challenging it. Without Quality, Reason cannot escape
relativity and leads only to nihilism. This partial Reason
separates the student from his-Self and joins him with the
structures that stunt his intellectual and aesthetic
development, replacing his unique desires with the ubiquitous
fame, wealth and sex routine.
Authentic desire is not an instinctive drive, nor does it
reinforce the sense of separate self. Instead it arises in those
moments when there is no sense of separate self - the ‘I’
recedes and there is only experience of what is. Rather than
being a property or intention of the individual, authentic
desire contains the individual. This is why, when referring to
the highest desire, we say I am in love” - it is not so much me
that loves, rather it is through losing the sense of me that
love arises.
Many scientists would dismiss love as merely an emotional state
- an epiphenomenon associated with the biological imperative.
Many philosophers would hold that love is illusory because we
cannot truly know another. In both instances the terminal
rationality of these poor folk separates them from the
‘immersive’ experience that comes through loss of separate self
and is the only path to love. This is why ecstasy can be such an
important drug for the student and academic. Ecstasy[3] melts
the ego and immerses the individual in the experience. Ecstasy
relieves the anxiety that arises from self-consciousness and
curbs the analytic reflex that distances the individual from the
present. Of course being a potent chemical substance it needs to
be used cautiously. First it giveth then it taketh away, as the
queens of the stone age might say.
The seamless union - or interpenetration - of individual and
world is the Self. The Self is the present. As Pirsig says in
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance:
“The present is the only reality: the future exists only in our
plans, the past only in our memories”[4]
The Self is real; the separate self (the classical 'subject') is
a projected idea. The Self is undivided experience. It is that
state in which there is no distinction between what is
experienced and who is experiencing it - no division between
subject and object.
Descartes’ 'I think therefore I am' only reinforces the
conceptual nature of the subject. Intellect produces the subject
(I) - the separate self. This is what intellect does. By
differentiating ourselves from the world we are able to analyse
it objectively - et voila, science! But are we always so
engaged? Are we always self-conscious? Does everything think?
No, of course not. The subject/object split underlies the
operation of the intellect, but it is not the ultimate nature of
reality. The absurdity of this continuing assumption goes
unchecked only because the great majority of those that pursue
questions of a philosophical bent think too much. Their
ever-present self-consciousness convinces them that 'they' are
permanent and fundamental, when 'they' are really an
abstraction.
Undivided experience is fundamental. Before any abstractions
based on sense data and metaphysical assumptions are made there
is only the flow of perceptions.
The dissenter asks “But who has these perceptions? -Who can have
them but me?”
This is where the stumbling block is.
Remembering that the present is the only reality what can we say
about it? The present is simply a continual flow of perceptions:
sights, sounds, smells etc. ‘I’ only begin to exist when
intellect is applied to these perceptions - this is when
consciousness becomes self-consciousness. ‘Me’ and my senses are
ideas that come after experience, as all ideas do. Experience is
immediately apprehended (phenomenal); my senses and ‘me’ are
postulated (conceptual). The phenomenal is beyond doubt; the
conceptual is abstract and provisional.
This is not easy to grasp straight away. If you doubt that ‘you’
– the separately existing self - are actually a creation of
intellect think back to the first 18 months of your life. Why
can’t you remember? Because experience – the flow of perceptions
– had not yet been organised. As we develop we start to register
recurring patterns in the flow of experience. Probably emotions
(hunger, pain etc) at first, then maybe ‘mum’ or ‘dad’ and
pretty soon we learn to attach words to these patterns. After a
while we learn more words that refer not to concrete objects or
emotions but to abstract ideas, one of which is ‘me’ - the
self-conscious separately existing subject – the ego. This is
the beginning of intellect. It is at this point that ‘I’ start
to exist.
So if the subject/object division is not the nature of reality
what is? Well first and foremost it is ultimately ineffable –
beyond intellectualisation. The logic of this conclusion is
simple: If reality is experience in the present, and ideas are
concepts applied retrospectively upon this experience, then
ideas always refer to what has past and are therefore
essentially unreal. Or to quote Pirsig: “you can’t be aware that
you have seen a tree until after you have seen the tree”[5].
So we – as classical subjects – are unreal. Strange as this
sounds, this is precisely what Buddhists have known for
thousands of years. From here the Buddhist concept of maya (veil
of illusion) - the way we self-consciously experience of the
world disguises its true unity – follows logically. As does the
problem of ‘self’. Clinging to the notion of self as an
autonomous, separately existing entity is the primary cause of
dukkha (Buddhist term for suffering/being out of kilter). It is
more accurate to see ourselves – according to Buddhism, physics,
psychology, ecology, phenomenology and Pirsig’s Metaphysics of
Quality – as “sentient elements of a connected Dynamic
reality”[6]. Dynamic because reality is not static: reality is
dynamic and continuous; ideas are static and discrete. Ideas can
never capture reality.
It is this dynamic reality, ‘this cutting edge of experience’,
that is the domain of aesthetic and moral value, which is why
they are dismissed by the exclusively analytical. They convince
themselves that these values don’t really exist even though they
use them everyday. What other ‘reason’ is there to do anything,
to believe anything, other than that is has value. It is this
sense that directs our lives and when ignored or overridden
leaves us miserable and frustrated. The awareness of value - of
Quality - gives rise to (a proportionate degree of) desire.
This primary apprehension of value can be lost or obscured
through the intellectualisation of experience. Trying to
understand value with reason is to put the cart before the
horse: Reason (truth) is a subspecies of value (good). ‘Truth’
is a term we use to describe statements or explanations of very
high Quality. The reflective path is too often the beginning of
the movement away from value and desire, towards rationalisation
and confusion.
This intuitive sense of value and the desire it causes to spring
are the guides to a happy life. This presents a challenge for
the student because the majority of his education, especially at
high school and university, is of low value. It is only his
‘talent’ for rationalisation, and the fear that grows out of
self-consciousness, that prevent him from walking out of class,
mocking the teacher as he does so. This dismissal of value is
practised so regularly during a young life that the student puts
himself in danger of forgetting how to desire altogether. He
develops a perpetual inner monologue that makes it hard for him
to separate thought from feeling. And so he continues letting
others tell him what to do and what to want, mistaking the voice
of ‘Cultural Reason’ for that of his own desire.
But the Self, no matter how diligently we repress it, is
indomitable. From time to time it fights its way up through our
inner monologue into consciousness. Sometimes subtle, sometimes
visceral, it is that sudden feeling that dwarfs the authority of
any logical conclusion, though it often seems like the essence
of logic itself. It is the song that makes the hair on your neck
stand up; the person whose mere presence in the room changes
your psyche more poignantly than any drug; the wave of fury that
washes over you when you witness injustice. Have you not noticed
these moments? - These guideposts to excellence, beauty and
happiness. Ignore them at your peril.
Your desire, which springs from the Self, is your connection
with the sublime - a spark from the divine fire. It is the
source of the highest knowledge or gnosis as the Greeks used to
say. It is the reason why the consummation of pure desire in the
act of sexual intercourse is referred to as ‘knowing another’ in
the Bible. Self-knowledge is prior to rational knowledge - it is
the ground from which rational knowledge emerges. This is why
rational knowledge is useless, irrelevant, if it doesn’t remain
grounded in Self-knowledge. ‘Ungrounded’ knowledge is the stuff
of scholasticism and trivia; it is the stuff of university.
4. benign violence
The student is a masochist but doesn’t know it. Unable to be
himself because he doesn’t know how, he asserts what he thinks
is his individuality but is in fact an amalgam of those
behaviours and images he is surrounded by. Unquestioning, he
swallows and internalizes the dictates of authority, unaware
that he hamstrings his own authenticity. The student’s lack of
control over his own life; his disconnection from his desires
and passions; and his oblivious acceptance of his emasculation
as natural, make him a caricature: the supercilious slave. He
becomes someone who knows himself only through what others think
of him - all form and no content. This was the genius of Bret
Easton Ellis in American Psycho: to show that ‘success’ in the
Eighties (and not much has changed) was to sever all connection
with the Self - to imitate perfectly and consistently until
there is no real you left, just a shell. The violence of this
separation - this evisceration - is mirrored in the main
character’s greed, disgust and, ultimately, his propensity for
sadism, murder and mutilation. Violence begets violence, and
violence has many forms.
It is difficult for us to recognise the violence that has been
effected upon us from an early age. Just as the crab doesn’t
realise what’s happening as the water in the pot slowly heats
up, so the child’s gradual slide away from desire and fun and
LIFE is near imperceptible, except when viewed retrospectively
as a whole. You have been taught to disregard your own feelings,
desires and judgement, letting parents, teachers, police and
politicians ‘guide’ you instead. And guide you to what? The
Promised Land of boredom, anxiety, fear, drug addiction,
environmental, physical and spiritual decay - woo hooo! Do you
really want to be like your parents? Like Tony Blair? Like every
living-dead, suit-wearing tosser whose only pleasure seems to
lie in taking you down with them? You are a product of an
intrinsically violent society - you are intrinsically violent -
and the only way to stop it getting worse is to get off the
train now and try a different track - your own track.
5. serious fun
The economic organization of everyday life is the organization
of a living death. Not content with the systematic drudgery that
is work and school, remnant areas of autonomous and spontaneous
activity are gradually infected with the spirit of seriousness
that permeates and sustains the commodity-spectacle.
What was traditionally the bastion of working class camaraderie
- football - is now part of the machinery that long ago crushed
it. Sport is now serious business. Just look at all the money
that corporations pour into football teams, or the seriousness
parents devote to their kids’ weekend sporting endeavours.
Vicariously competitive, they too often alienate the child from
his-Self, his parents and the fun of the game. My uncle used to
say that football was working man’s ballet, and he was right:
Sport can be an Art and often still is. But
ultra-competitiveness and the spirit of seriousness are
antithetical to Art - to the game. They are the stuff of anxiety
and stress, not creativity and play.
Any activity can be an Art, but it is things that are art. The
stuff of passive consumption is ‘art’ - just another commodity
produced for the commodity-spectacle. An ‘Art’ on the other hand
isn’t a ‘thing’ at all; it’s an interrelationship - a symbiosis
between the individual and the world. It is that state in which
the individual is relaxed and focussed and part of what they are
doing.
The Situationists[7] aimed for the ‘realization and suppression
of art’, by which they meant the realization of LIFE as an Art,
and the suppression of culture (art) as a centrally organized
and/or passively consumed commodity. Their name was derived from
their aim: to create open-ended participatory situations, the
unitary perspective of the situation being primary. Instead of
subjects spectating upon objects, we have an undivided situation
of which the individual is an integral, integrated part. Feeling
part of an experience, being immersed in it, simply defines
those things we like to do. Sex, sport, surfing, dancing,
motorbike riding, knitting - it doesn’t matter. The immersion
and immediacy, the Quality and loss of self-consciousness - this
is why we do them. Art is spectacular, An Art is participative;
art is a thing, An Art is an interrelationship; art is serious,
An Art is fun.
Fun is the only revolutionary weapon. Fun destroys the
hierarchical society that seeks to control (ie destroy) it. Fun
ridicules the ‘dogmantras’ of bureaucratic
pseudo-revolutionaries who are preoccupied with the serious
business of being boring. Fun emanates from the Self, connecting
the individual with others and the world. Fun is the stuff of
creativity and spontaneity; it is the enemy of the spirit of
seriousness. The rallying cry of the liberated student will
simply be: “if it isn’t fun why do it?”
Ignoring anyone and anything that doesn’t help satisfy your
desires or engage your interest is the revolution. All these
square ‘leftists’ and ‘rightists’ are missing the point - all
-isms are wasms. Ideology is the screen that separates us from
our-Selves. Refusing the boredom, frustration and alienation
implicit in spectacular life is the daily revolutionary act from
which all others will issue. Joie de vivre! - Living as well as
possible is the only point to life.
Conclusion
The secret to fulfilment, happiness and a better world is there
is no secret. After wrestling with the enormous absurdity and
frustration of modern life you eventually say: “Fuck it! This
deep thought is depressing me too much. I just want to enjoy
myself”, and ironically you solve your dilemma. You rediscover
what you already knew as a child - that happiness is your
purpose - and realise that, as an adult, doing what makes you
happy is the most revolutionary act imaginable. Oh, and for
those solemn souls who think such selfish anarchic pleasure will
destroy the world, haven’t you ever noticed that happiness is
something that only grows when it is shared?
Someone quite famous - Nietzsche probably - reckoned you had to
go through nihilism and come out the other end to understand
life. Seems the mad bastard may have been right. Rejecting every
value, belief and direction that doesn’t emanate from within
your-Self is necessary to ‘clear the decks’, so the speak. With
this reversal of perspective education becomes a matter of using
that which resonates with that within you and ignoring the rest.
That is, education becomes part of the Art of living - it
becomes part of LIFE.
“And what is good, Phaedrus, and what is not good - need we ask
anyone to tell us these things?”[8]
Robert Pirsig
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
Gavin Gee-Clough
Part-time navel gazer.
gavgc@hotmail.com
References:
Camus, A, 2000. The Fall (Penguin, London)
Lennon, P. 1994. Paris in the Sixties (Picador, London)
Pirsig RM. 1991. Lila (Corgi, London)
Pirsig, RM. 1989. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
(Vintage, London)
Vaneigem, R. 1966. The Revolution of Everyday of Life. Online at
www.scenewash.org/lobbies/chainthinker/situationist/vaneigem/rel/roel.html
Vaniegem, R. 1995. A Warning to Students of All Ages. Online at
http://www.moq.org/forum/GavinGeeClough/www.notbored.org/avertissement.html
U.N.E.F Strasbourg. 1966. On the Poverty of Student Life. Online
at http://library.nothingness.org/articles/SI/en/display/4
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[1] ‘The supreme task is to arrive at those universal elementary
laws from which the cosmos can be built up from pure deduction.
There is no logical path to these laws; only intuition resting
on sympathetic understanding of experience can reach them.’
Albert Einstein quoted in Pirsig 1974 p117
[2] Pirsig, 1991, p209
[3] The word ‘ecstasy’ comes from the Greek ekstasis, - ‘to
stand outside oneself’.
[4] Pirsig, 1989, p250
[5] Pirsig 1989 p249
[6] Letter from Ant McWatt.
[7] Radical group of philosophers and artists active mostly in
France during the 50s and 60s. Instrumental in the student
revolt of May 1968 that led to a general strike across France.
[8] Pirsig, 1989, p8
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