IIt's crunchtime once again. I feel like my schoolwork is slipping through my fingers. For one thing, I still need to pass in an overdue paper for one class, then I have to write two ten-page papers for two other classes. Gah. Though for the ten-pagers I have some good topics going (one is on the religious aspects of psychedelic drug use and the other is an expansion on my past paper about guilt vs. shame cultures with all sorts of shit about punishing criminals and prison abolition added in). On top of it, I still need to study my ass off for logic and really, really brush up on Greek. After all, I need to be nearly-fluent (or at least as "fluent" as one may be with a dead tongue) in the language by the time I graduate next fall.
I was talking to Dr. Leahy today about next semester and all the things we plan on doing. Basically, she wants me to be researching anarchism and its movements for the whole semester, most likely with a large paper thrown in the mix during the end. In our conversation we were going on and off about how little radical political thought (not just anarchism but also marxist movements and the like) are barely touched upon in academia, not just because their "philosophies from below" but also because they challenge the current status quo (the state-captialist system and all that grows from it). Anyone who has ever taken or taught a courses in political science will know how much the field is pumped full of bullshit. All those questions we should be asking - What is the state? Why does it exist? How did it come into existence? Why did it come into existence? - are never brought up, and the legitimacy of hierarchical political institutions is just "assumed" as if it's some universal truth that has always and will always be unchanged from the beginning to the end of history.
Dr. Leahy often tells me about her time as a college student, when she was once that young radical who read Adbusters while attending punk rock shows in the DC underground. Based on everything she says, it's obvious to me that she misses those days. What a contrast from the world of academia which demands conformity.
This idea hits me every now and then, especially when I think about my own future and what I want to pursue for the rest of my life. I'm looking into graduate schools for comparative literature or anthropology and in the short-term I have a goal, but then everything ends. Right there. So, assuming I play my cards right, I graduate and then what? But that's not the point I'm trying to get to. I know a few comrades who are in graduate school doing PhD work right now. They've decided that their radical worldviews would be best educating college students. I'm not against this obviously, but it raises the question as to whether or not one would be able to go into such a field where deviance from mainstream thought is almost always unacceptable and keep their values. I mean, if you're lucky enough to get a job as a college professor (which is an extremely hard job to get in the first place) you can't exactly teach whatever you want. You usually have to abide by certain standards which require you to "tone down" your views. I wonder how often it is that this obligation to de-radicalize your views in academia leads you to de-radicalizing your social/political/philosophical views all together. How many college professors do you know who started off as anarchists or marxists or other radicals ended up becoming mainstream liberals soon after they got a tenure-track position? That's why I worry (for lack of a better term) about comrades who are desiring to get their PhDs and go into academic fields. I mean yeah, you have the Chomskys, Zinns, Graebers, and Leahys so it's obviously not impossible to keep your values, but there's always that underlying fear that being exposed to such pressure and on top of it being exposed to tons and tons of elite propaganda could cause you to gradually backslide and do away with everything you once valued. That's the reason why I don't think I could ever do what those comrades I know are doing and see if I could put up with the pressure.
But thinking about this shit always leads into a deeper question that I've wondered about. It's not political at all, just something I've been questioning: as our consciousnesses and values seem to progress as we get older and learn and experience more, is there ever the possibility that we can go back? Once we're at the "religious" stage of our existence is it possible that we could flip back to the "aesthetic" stage? What about our moral development - could it also break down? And if it were possible (and I'm sure it could very well be) what would it take for that to happen? Fuck, I'm asking all sorts of complex questions right now to avoid doing my schoolwork and it's digging me into a messy hole. This will have to wait until later. See you.
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