Think for a Change (19): The Other Ethical Problem with the Penn State Sex Abuse Scandal

In light of the Penn State scandal that has struck Happy Valley and gained news coverage across the nation, I think it is important to remember that there are multiple issues at stake. Not just Penn State's reputation; not the jobs of a few men; not simply that a number of young boys were abused and victimized. It is important to recognize that all of these elements were combined in such a way that led to moral failures on behalf of university administration and leaders who protected the image of an institutional at the expense of the interests of individual victims. The prevalence of sexual abuse must be addressed at large, but this reveals the dangers of sexual abuse when it is mixed with institutional power. Figuring out how to encourage a greater ability to locate moral accountability and cultivate moral sensibility, along with fostering the capacity to do right actions, should be a major task that is highlighted by this very sad and disturbing situation.

Writing with Feeling

You know what's been lacking in my life as of late?
A little bit of writing that resonates.
All the while I've been writing about writing but failing to find those words that sound right in my body.
I've been distanced from feeling like syllables carry meaning and forgetting that my first love for words occurred when I wasn't buried in constructing sentences
but surprised
by what the words did to my heart rate before they registered in my head.
A couple of words
carefully connected can reveal new insights that change your life.
That's what she said
when she spoke of horizons swallowing up the earth with a kiss
how the ocean is so much bigger than this
view
from nowhere
I sense that you have to learn something true to spell it out like that.
And I guess that's how experience translates into painting and poetry.
We replicate what is otherwise hard to communicate
and its frustrating if our words fail to demonstrate
that which we want to share and celebrate
with others about
our insights about
how we love what has come to be without
regretting everything it took to get there,
that sometimes nothing is more trustworthy than how it simply appears.
And so we conclude by saying,
I guess you had to be there.
To get it right
you gotta know what it feels like
cuz without raw experience you can't project beyond what you already fear.
Thus, this language seems limiting.

But there's also a chance that the most gifted with speech might pen
into the present a space to be free
to think more clearly about how what we say affects you and me
with consequence on levels more deeply
than what we merely can see.
Metaphorically speaking, the power of words to foster new imaginings is probably frightening
for those who don't want to admit
of a world where painting and poetry can deliver a hit
like a bag of bricks.
Potency and brevity are catalysts for a chain reaction of resistance.
Put them together and you get a message that sticks.

Like "I am the 99%"

So as I continue to write
I wanna show thanks to those who have reminded me that my philifesophy could never be framed in terms of a mind over a body.
At the same time
I can't privilege philosophy over poetry.
The latter gives sense to sentences which otherwise fall short of a love of wisdom.
Like jazz and poetry, philosophy should emphasize the spaces in between.
The silence where one encounters genuine creativity.

Think for a Change (18): Being a Good Straight, White Man

Think for a Change (17): It's Okay to Be Gay!

In light of National Coming Out Day, I discuss arguments for gaining legal protection for LGBT people which target subjective moral judgments, such as the belief that homosexuality is wrong. Rather than arguing in apologetic terms for mere acceptance and tolerance, I suggest that recognizing the role of choice in sexuality does not inhibit making simultaneous demands for LGBT rights.

Public Philosophy and Me

 

Over the weekend I attended the Advancing Publicly Engaged Philosophy Conference in Washington, D.C. Thanks to my involvement with the Rock Ethics Institute and the Public Philosophy Network over the past year, I have already met a number of people who have been helpful and supportive of my interests in philosophy. This weekend, however, came with many very pleasant and very unexpected surprises.

The two weeks leading up to the conference left me feeling reluctant to go anywhere and do anything at all related to philosophy. I was feeling exceptionally overwhelmed, very emotional, and like a breakdown could happen at any minute. After a death in my family and feeling far, far away from my loved ones, forgetting my phone charger in another city, the breaking of my laptop screen without a replacement in stock anywhere across the country, and realizing (yet again) that whatever progress I thought I had made on my prospectus was not really progress at all...avenues for communication and connection were not working. The last thing I felt prepared to do was drive myself to another city, attend sessions and present my own at a conference, talk with lots of other philosophers, be engaged and thoughtful at all times, and stay positive about the current relationship I was having with my work. So when I set out to DC on Thursday afternoon and the barista at Starbucks made me the wrong drink that cost nearly $6, I sort of started to tear up over it. I knew it was ridiculous, but I was just that emotionally spent.

It didn't end there. Once I made it through DC traffic and finally collapsed on my bed in the hotel, I read an email from my advisor about our need to set up a meeting to re-frame my dissertation topic. Feeling like I am already pushing my time limit and that this turn in the project (although very necessary) is already months too late...I broke. I cried. I panicked. And, unfortunately, that crack was enough to sufficiently prime me for the rest of the night. An hour later, when I went to the first plenary session of the conference and gave my initial "hello, good to see you again!"s and people asked, "How are you doing?" I couldn't hold the tears back anymore. They had gained their own momentum, so I would say, "I'm doing okay" and try to leave the conversation before any more questions were asked. Yes, to answer any doubt, it was very awkward. I was extremely embarrassed and uncomfortable.

I wasn't so much uncomfortable with the fact that I was emotional though, because I knew multiple reasons as to why I was especially sensitive that day (I was stressed, but it also had a lot do with the abruptly increased levels of synthetic hormone that were coursing through my body). I think I was also uncomfortable because over the previous two weeks the worrying that I have done for years about what to do after grad school dramatically increased. After my second year of grad school I tried to keep the worrying at bay by simply deciding to only focus on one short term goal: get the PhD. But now, as that gets closer and closer, I have started to freak out about the next step. Do I go on the job market next year? What if I'm not sure about how I fit into academia (it's been painfully evident for so long that if I fit into it, I do so very unconventionally at best)? What other options are there? I don't know!!! And what about other important things in life, like nurturing relationships and pursuing other passions. What if I don't want to do a long-distance relationship for years on end and what if I really enjoy talking to people while cutting their hair all day long?! But at the present moment in DC, an equally pressing lurking concern was probably that of  "What if they're on to me?"

My session with Chris Long on Philosophy and the Digital Public

The amazing thing about this conference though is that it is perhaps one of the most appropriate places for me to have a break down of this sort. One of the main theoretical themes of the conference was to ask, "What is publicly engaged philosophy?", and while perhaps the majority of people there would answer in terms of forming public policy, there were also a handful who share my values in doing philosophy more publicly. If there were to be a place where academic philosophers would be sympathetic to wanting to make philosophy accessible and relevant for people outside of the academy, this was probably as good as it could get. Fortunately, that meant that when I would start feeling really frustrated because people started to talk about philosophy in ways that made it sound like either an exclusive club for only the most arrogant of experts or a mere luxury that we do simply for our enjoyment, there was probably another person in the room who shared my sentiments.

Thank goodness I found them.

I was encouraged to hear comments from people whose departments automatically begin with questions of social justice and where one can equally identify as an academic AND an activist. I appreciated the questions from tenured faculty members who willingly challenged a defensiveness about maintaining certain "standards" for scholarship if/when that defensiveness stems from an unwillingness to change with the social climate. And I was intrigued to hear about academics who are planning on leaving academia, even after getting tenure and becoming chairs of their departments.

Dinner with Rock Ethics Institute and Public Philosophy Network folks

In addition to meeting plenty of new, sympathetic, and supportive folks, I was relieved to actually have honest conversations about my academic and professional queries with the people with whom I work most closely. Rather than hiding the fact that I am curious about what other options really are out there for people with PhD's in philosophy, I noted my concerns and was met with great support. Of course people are still pushing me towards taking an academic position when that time comes, and that is greatly appreciated because I am certainly not opposed to the idea of being in academia. What I am concerned about, however, is how to be in academia and still be able to do the kind of work that I want to do, how I want to do it.  To that, the best response I got over the weekend was, "We'll do what we have to do, even if that means putting together a resume for you instead of a CV." Okay. Wonderful. Thank you.

What I could not have anticipated is the terrifically positive, understanding, and warm response I got from people at this conference. I didn't know that I would leave feeling so encouraged, but thanks to the conversations and the connections that I actually did end up having, that was exactly how I felt when I left DC. I felt excited, relieved, and motivated. This wasn't the sort of conference experience that was all about networking and rubbing elbows (though I always resist doing that in these situations anyway), instead it was an opportunity to openly and genuinely discuss questions about philosophy and what it means to be a philosopher today. And it felt good to passionately talk to people about the things that I am passionate about. It also was very rewarding to think that I actually have a voice that can contribute to those conversations in meaningful ways.

Despite my shift in emotional valence, I know that nothing has really changed after the conference. While I have been assigned a new research project for my work on the Public Philosophy Network, which is finding out what people have done outside of academia after earning PhD's in philosophy, I'm still a graduate student with a terribly uncooperative prospectus to write. I still have no clear direction for what happens after graduation, and in many ways I have very little control over that in the near future. People still expect for philosophy to be done in a certain way in order to "pay one's dues." I get it. I know. And the people who are wonderfully supportive of me are speaking from their tenured positions with job security and good salaries. They know that I know that, too. So, my position still feels tenuously underdetermined and overdetermined at the same time. But at least I was able to do one thing. At least I was able to be honest.

Being pretty blunt and upfront is my M.O.  Most importantly, though, I was reminded again of why it's important to be forthcoming: so that you give others the opportunity to respond to you. They may not like what you show them or they might surprise you and become one of your biggest advocates. People might disappoint or pleasantly surprise you. But you have to give them the fair chance at doing one or the other...or something completely unexpected.

I know that my future does not depend solely on me and my actions. I can be a good, diligent, passionate, and honest hard worker, but others are and always have been involved in terms of blazing paths, opening doors, and presenting me with new opportunities. For those people in my life, I am grateful. And I'm thankful for things like academic professional philosophy conferences that are part of the whole process. :)




You can listen to an engaging and wonderfully supportive conversation that I had with Christopher Long, Mark Fisher, Ronald Sundstrom, Jessica Harper, and Vance Ricks on Chris's Digital Dialogue podcast here:
http://www.personal.psu.edu/cpl2/blogs/digitaldialogue/2011/10/digital-dialogue-51-digital-public.html

You can see a picture of it here.

Notes from Noelle McAfee's blog: http://gonepublic.wordpress.com/2011/10/17/notes-from-advancing-publicly-engaged-philosophy-conference/

Chris and I also had a previous conversation last year about the Public Philosophy Network, which you can find here: http://www.personal.psu.edu/cpl2/blogs/digitaldialogue/2011/04/digital-dialogue-46-public-philosophy.html

Being Affected by Nietzsche

[I tried to write something to introduce myself to the idea of writing an introduction for my prospectus. And this happened...]

You know those times when you meet someone new and pick up a certain kind of vibe from them? Sometimes, even if your encounter with them is brief and superficial, you might get the sense that you could really get along well together or that they are someone who you don't particularly need or want to get to know any further. In some cases, you might get a weird read from them that leaves you somewhat unsettled, or maybe there is just something about them that makes you feel better, lighter, more relaxed, or even happier. It may be that you don't even know precisely what it is about the other that resonates with you, but for whatever reason, you just have a hunch about them. Call it sheer intrigue or an insight from intuition, these experiences reflect the idea that there is something there. Even if this "I don't know quite what" can't be described, it sometimes suffices to say, "It's just a feeling."

These types of experiences have been described by the late feminist philosopher Teresa Brennan in terms of the transmission of affect. For Brennan, the felt dimension of another person's presence, how they can lift you up or bring you down, is a phenomenon that reveals something about our ontology as social subjects. More specifically, such phenomena exemplify how affects are literally transmitted among individuals and within groups. More than just sensations and "feelings," Brennan explains that affects are themselves material. Gesturing to the role of things like pheromones, Brennan notes that they are literally "in the air." Furthermore, affects can be understood in terms of the material, physiological, and biological changes that they engender in our bodies, which means that the affective dimension of our embodiment and such experiences of being energized or depleted by the presence of another are not just psychological in character, but biochemical. According to Brennan, there is also a cognitive dimension to affective experiences since affects are not mere sensations but rather occur at the moment of a (perhaps mostly unconscious) judgment. So even if you don't know what it is that makes you feel a certain way, people like Brennan want to say that an affect does, in a sense, "know" on its own. The affect indicates a judgment about whether one takes in and incorporates the affects of another or rejects and deflects them.

Brennan's analysis presents a number of important implications. Perhaps most importantly, the transmission of affect reveals that our social interactions with others affect, alter, and shape our biological bodies, for better or worse depending on if the transmitted affects are positive ones like love or negative, as in the case of anger. This is a provocative inversion of the more typical view that our social interactions are mostly guided by our biological constitution, as if one is more nurturing or aggressive because of one's biological sex (and all that this is presumed to entail in terms of hormones and "natural tendencies") rather than the affective atmospheres within which one engages with others. Already, then, the transmission of affect blurs the boundaries between what is social and what naturally biological and if one can actually be thought before the other.

A second implication arises in light of Brennan's suggestion that affects are judgments, which gestures to the epistemological importance of affects. There are various and contradictory views espoused across and within numerous disciplines regarding affective embodiment and cognition, and although there is little agreement on the precise nature of the relation between cognition and affect, the sheer volume of attention dedicated to the topic is noteworthy in that, if nothing else, it reflects the social, political, and epistemological value that is already attached to what people can "know" by virtue of their affects. This is especially evident with respect to heavily value-laden social and political issues such as discrimination and oppression or the evaluation of morally right or wrong actions. In such instances, an epistemological link is often tacitly acknowledged in appeals to things like "gut instincts" about what is right or wrong, what sort of actions are viewed as disgusting or attractive, or which groups of people evoke fear, distaste, or aversion in others.

Finally, the transmission of affect and subsequent biochemical changes in one's self that occur in light of this blur the borders between self and other. The notion of a self-contained, independent individual disintegrates. At the fundamental level of our ontology, we come to be recognized as thoroughly intersubjective beings. I (and my affects) affect you while you (and your affects) affect me. So much so that we can literally feel it when we encounter one another.

While each of these issues regarding the transmission of affect merit further analysis, I will not yet pursue them here. At this moment, I bring up Brennan's emphasis on the transmission of affect to shed light on a specific and peculiar kind of hunch that I've had in the past that is different from Brennan's analysis of the transmission of affect but that certainly shares a kind of resonance.  My hunch was about a man, but I didn't ever meet him in person. I only read his books. But it was more than that. As I read, I was deeply affected by his words. I felt charged, giddy, and much like one on a high from a new crush, this excitement would often materialize in outbursts of laughter. Sometimes his words would make me feel uncomfortable. Not just uncomfortable because I couldn't understand what he was saying, but really, physically, or better yet, physiologically uncomfortable insofar as considering the implications of his arguments would put my stomach on edge in ways that he often anticipated throughout his own writing. At other times, I would fall silent or even cry because his writing is just so poignant. So beautiful. It possesses such resonance. This man, of course, is Friedrich Nietzsche.

My first introduction to Nietzsche was in the fall of my junior year in college when I took a phenomenal class with an amazing professor entitled "Meaning and Truth in Religion."  Though I really didn't understand much about the theology we were reading, I was exposed to a different kind of philosophy, or a different way of doing philosophy; different questions, different problems, different understandings. I have since realized that this was my first exposure to what is frequently referred to as "Continental philosophy." Although I found Nietzsche's critical thoughts on metaphysics and ontology interesting then, I wasn't quite yet grabbed by him. In fact, from what I had gathered in the short time that we focused on Nietzsche in class, I was more interested in making him politically palatable--the will to power seemed to be too frequently interpreted (by myself, too, at the time) in violent and forceful ways that didn't sit well with me. I gather now that my initial desire to make him more "acceptable" reflects a good deal about my philosophical sensibilities then, but it probably also indicates that  I didn't really "get" Nietzsche yet.

We can fast forward a couple of years ahead when I found myself in graduate school in a predominantly Continental philosophy program surrounded by other philosophers and enthusiastic new graduate students. As is probably the case in most academic disciplines, whenever philosophers meet for the first time, one of the first questions people raise to break the ice asks about what kind of philosophy you are interested in and who you study.  Having declared my major rather later in my undergraduate career, I was still relatively new to philosophy, and given that I had a mostly analytic background, I wasn't even able to make sense of most of the names and topics with which others would align themselves and their projects. Heidegger and phenomenology were pretty empty signifiers for me then. But I do recall the moment when I started to align myself with two particular thinkers. It was within the first couple of weeks of my first semester in graduate school when I said to an older graduate student, "I don't know for sure what I am going to do in philosophy, but I have a hunch that I will become quite involved with two figures: Nietzsche and Foucault."

At that point, I still had a hunch, but it was only a hunch. I guess it was significant enough to act on though since, despite the fact that I still hadn't ever read a single book by Nietzsche or Foucault, but thanks to the convenience of online shopping and the impulsiveness of my spending, I actually already owned a number of them. My guess is that my theological glimpse at Nietzsche and the references to Foucault made by feminist philosophers I read during the last two years of my undergraduate studies planted some seeds in my mind, and from those seeds, my own little library had already started to sprout even before moving to graduate school. I was probably able to anticipate my trajectory just from the things that I had gathered about them through what other people had written. But even once I recognized that I had this hunch about the two who would eventually be adoringly referred to as "my philosophical homeboys," I didn't want to force things. Like with any healthy love relationship, I was willing to let it develop organically on its own. Instead of making it a point to test my feelings by immediately diving into their books, I chose to let it sit as it was for however long it needed to. I trusted that there would be a time when their relevance would make itself known, and I suspected that it would be at a time when I was ready for it.

It wasn't until the second semester of my first year in graduate school (Spring 2009) when I took a seminar on 19th Century Continental philosophy that I became fully involved in what became known to myself and others as my semester long love affair with Nietzsche. For those fifteen weeks, I truly was in love and everyone around me knew it. It even became the topic of my seminar paper. Here's the shameless introduction:

Upon my first close reading of some of Nietzsche’s work I felt myself being wrapped up in what was to be light-heartedly referred to for the rest of the semester as a love affair.  Whether I was reading in my bed at home or at a coffee shop surrounded by other people, Nietzsche made me toss my head back in laughter and throw my hands up in awe.  Literally, there were times when I read something that would make me exclaim, “Yes, Nietzsche!”  At other parts of his texts, those that proved more difficult to swallow, I noticed my discomfort rise. And there were even times in Thus Spoke Zarathustra that made me cry.  How could I explain to my friends and colleagues the experience of my semester-long fling with Nietzsche—the way his words would resonate with me, or rather, the way they would sing? This little love affair of mine might have been aptly named at the beginning, for it had quickly turned into an impassioned exploration of Nietzsche’s pages and of my own relationship to them. I am grateful that I can continue to carry around The Gay Science even after the semester is over, yet I have been left sheepishly wondering, “Could this really be love?”

While affects are certainly at play in how and when  I read Nietzsche, their presence and operation differs in important ways from the kind of transmission that Brennan discusses. Rather than being transmitted via biochemical pheromones and olfactory cues that happen when people physically encounter one another in the same time and space, my affective experiences occurred in the presence of books. Beyond mere books, however, I want to suggest that my affective experiences while reading Nietzsche indicate at least one possible way in which affects can be produced through philosophy; more specifically, through the reading of certain philosophical texts of a particular character which reach intended audiences through specialized aims.

It is because reading Nietzsche's books has so profoundly affected me on personal, physiological, and certainly philosophical levels that I will argue that the nature of philosophy itself can be understood as an embodied practice that can, at the level of our physiological constitution, affect us in ways that produce greater health, well-being, and vitality. This claim is found in the content of Nietzsche's own work (and it harkens back to more classic conceptions of philosophy among Hellenistic thinkers. This is something I will pick up at a later time). One of my aims is to show how an appreciation for Nietzsche's philosophical emphasis on health and physiology, along with the distinctive style of his writing, reveals an underestimated, and so far under-explored, connection between affect and philosophy. By no means does this mean that Nietzsche is the only philosopher to have this effect on others, but I will refer to my own affective experiences while reading his work as a kind of case-study for this connection, which involves other issues around pedagogy, rhetoric, and the "ends" of philosophy. I think it may even implicate a revision of what is characteristically understood to count as "philosophy."

This means that there are at least two distinct approaches for unpacking the relationship between affect and philosophy that I will discuss in turn. Not only are there interesting insights to be understood with respect to the philosophy of affect, that is, in terms of how we are to understand the ontological and cognitive (or not) dimensions of affect, but a greater sensitivity to the potential for affects of (or within) philosophy reveals exciting new possibilities for how we might understand, and undertake, philosophy as a transformative, even therapeutic, practice. Numerous issues surface when philosophy is undertaken as a kind of therapeutic practice that can produce such transformations, including questions about the connections between mind and body, and psyche and soma.  Metaphilosophical questions about the nature and aims of philosophy itself also become relevant. For instance, new lines can be drawn that reinterpret the classic analogy between medicine and philosophy as perhaps more than just an analogy. Furthermore, the relationships among truth, philosophy, and pedagogy can be reevaluated in terms that echo, once more, a view of philosophy as a practice, as an art of life.

Exploring the connections between affect and philosophy in both directions and raising such questions invites a dialogue of different voices and views from apparently disparate disciplines including philosophy, psychology, physiology, and neuroscience. As disparate as these fields might initially appear, on issues related to affect, emotion, and embodiment they have already been brought together in ways that reveal exciting new possibilities for health and healing. Furthermore, understanding the particular methods by which affects are cultivated, produced, evoked, or transmitted is valuable in order to better appreciate the role of affect with respect to personal well-being and political oppression or resistance. This is because, as was mentioned above, I want to suggest that not only are affects philosophically significant, but they also already operate in politically charged ways. While much of what I will explore deals with the two pronged approach to the philosophical significance of affect (that is, the philosophy of affect and affect of philosophy), this investigation is motivated by a sensitivity to the already political dimension of many affective experiences and their role in perpetuating and justifying discriminatory attitudes.

[After writing this, I went to an empty classroom with two chalkboards and sketched out a rough outline of what I think will shape up to be my dissertation.]

PART I.

PART II.

"Oh, Philosophy. So what do you want to do with that?"

"Do you want to teach?"

Yes.

In fact, before I even knew what philosophy was I wanted to teach, at least in some capacity. I didn't know what I wanted to teach, but I knew that I have always felt comfortable in the role of an educator, leader, and mentor.

"So do you want to become a professor?"

Well, I don't know.

I only ended up here--in academia, in graduate school pursuing a dual PhD in Philosophy and Women's Studies--thanks to a unexpected and, yes, lucky turn of events. The tale of my path includes the moment when I decided to not drop out of college after my second year and then when I declared a major in philosophy, not because I loved it so much, but because it was pretty much the only thing I could do and still graduate in four years. There was one justifiable benefit of becoming a philosophy major though. As one of my not-so-warm-and-fuzzy professors at the time told me, at least it would teach me how to read, write, and think, which are helpful skills no matter what you end up doing. So, I stayed in school and studied philosophy. 

I could not have anticipated how my life would change so quickly after that.

In the fall of my junior year I took an amazing, mind-opening, totally inspiring class with a brilliant and enthusiastic young professor who has since retained his position as easily one of the most influential people in my life (Shout out goes to David Deane!). And with that class, as I heard about new ideas that I had never even considered before and was introduced to concepts that seemed already familiar because they made sense of my experience but that I couldn't have articulated on my own, I knew that something big was happening.

I felt the metaphorical path beneath my feet twisting in new directions, leading me, a naive, but excited twenty-year-old, to board planes to Syracuse, NY on my own and attend a conference for no other reason than to just go and listen to some of the people whose work I had started to read, such as Judith Butler and Helene Cixous. Being that this was my first conference and I was so new to everything in the world of philosophy, I didn't really care enough to heed the advice of my professor to make connections and make myself known (to people who, for example, are now vice-presidents of the American Philosophical Association..and my facebook friends! Ha!). Motivations for networking were out of the question, but I was so moved by Cixous's keynote paper, "Promised Belief," and again, so unaware of professional etiquette, that I did follow her around and pester her until I was able to tell her about the amazing experience I had during her reading of her paper and ask about feminine writing. The funny thing was that I was actually disappointed when she responded to my question. She stated, "I am a philosophical poet. Derrida is poetic philosopher. But I never intend to "demonstrate" anything with my writing. I just write to write." At the time, I didn't really even know who Derrida was, let alone appreciate how awesome it was that she followed this deflating comment by saying, "That is not my project. But it could be yours!" Despite how incredible it is to me now that one of the most significant figures in feminist theorizing and writing passed a torch on to me (a torch that I guess was never really her's but perhaps was already my own), at the time I was more intimidated by my young professor's comment during one of our coffee-fueled conversations when he said, "Of course you will go on to graduate school, and you will write a book, and you will become a professor. And you will be superb." A BOOK?!? Now that was unfathomable.

But he was right and my path was obviously heading in that direction. I got more involved in philosophy, went to a week-long summer nerd camp for aspiring young philosophers at Penn State before my senior year, returned with even more passion and energy for doing philosophy in new ways, and when I returned to Colorado, I used that newly found perspective and confidence to become more outspoken in the many philosophy classes and graduate seminars that I took during my senior year to complete my bachelor's degree. And in the course of those two years between nearly dropping out and being admitted to graduate school, I totally fell in love with philosophy. More importantly, though, I developed my own voice.

The unpleasant truth about graduate school, though, is that no matter how much you love what you do--the research, the learning, the intellectual stimulation--and no matter how passionately your pursue it for noble causes like greater justice, equality, and positive social changes, it doesn't take long for doubt and disillusion to set in. Even (or perhaps especially) those who are most passionately motivated for all the right reasons come to the conclusion that academia is just not for them, that they can't actually bring about the changes that are most important to them, that theory and practice don't really intersect in sufficient ways. So people burn out. And a lot of people leave. And at some point, many of those who remain do so only because they've already gotten so deep and dedicated so much time that there don't really seem to be any other viable options.

For the first two years of my graduate career I was constantly tempted by the thought of quitting, especially when the end of the semester rolled in and paper-writing season consumed every hope for sanity and a healthy, balanced life. I would have emotional break downs and cry. I would be in physical pain from typing for so long and cry. I would think about a lifetime ahead of me of doing this all the time for my career--reading things that other people wrote that nobody else ever read or cared about except for a few people like me, who were trapped in the depths of hell forcing themselves to write papers that nobody else would ever read or care about. And then I would sometimes cry some more.  Much like when other people find themselves in an unhappy marriage and have a mid-life crisis, for graduate students it is during those times when papers have to be produced and turned in that everything else seems to lose its meaning and you really question your life choices. However, even when my now best friend (whom I met when we both started the philosophy PhD program together) left before Thanksgiving break of our first semester, I decided to wait it out at least a year before making any drastic decisions.

With time my perspective shifted, but only a little. During my second year, most of the graduate students I knew in my own program and in other disciplines had gotten quite comfortably blunt about their dissatisfaction of being in graduate school. My own discomfort manifested itself in explicit questions that I directed to my advisors, professors, academic superiors, and even "philosophical role models." I asked many of them, "Do you have any regrets?," meaning, would they have gone a different route in life if they could do it over again? Some actually had the nerve to forsake any kind of consolation for why I would ask such a question and said yes. Others gave a very qualified no. Only one person could say, "Absolutely not. I love what I do." (This person was Ladelle McWhorter, another of the most influential philosophers in my life, and definitely one of the handful of people who have encouraged me in ways that have actually kept me in philosophy. I am hugely grateful for her, and my style and approach to philosophy are significantly indebted to her example.)

Despite the lack of overly-encouraging hindsight from my superiors, it was at the end of my second year when I was finally able to come to my own decision about whether or not I would stay in graduate school and finish my doctorate degree. And the decision was made because during my fourth semester I was able to teach my very own classes for the first time. I was able to craft one syllabus on my very own, and I taught it to two classes, about 65 students. And I loved it. It wasn't easy, especially since I was taking four graduate classes of my own, but I did it. As part of all of the experiences that we had in those rooms together, I learned an awful lot. I learned about philosophy. I learned about my students. I learned about myself, as a person and as an educator. By the end of it, I was very aware of how cool it was to be able to say that at the age of 23 I was actually able to do exactly what I've always wanted to do. I was getting to teach material that I wanted to teach, how I wanted to teach it, and we were all learning as a result of that. Given that finishing my degree would mean that I would continue teaching for at least three more years, I had come to better appreciate that I was in a pretty cool situation. Not only do I get to do what I have wanted to do for so long even before I finish my twenties, but at the end of it, I will also have a couple of degrees. Sweet deal. So I stayed in it.

That justification worked out well throughout my third year of graduate school. I was able to put the pressure and anxiety aside about "what I would do" with a PhD in philosophy, not worry so much about working hard to look super impressive for my impending run on the job-market gauntlet, and focus more on simply doing what I love to do. It's worked out well. So far I'm one of only two people in my cohort to actually be on track in terms of our program's timeline. I even heard through the grapevine that when a somewhat skeptical, and very befuddled, professor in the department questioned how it was possible for me to be getting through the program as I am, he surmised for others that it was because I said, "Screw the expectations of everyone else! I'm doing it my way! Why? Because I want to." In  a sense, he's right. But moreover, it's not that I am doing my work as I am just to be a rebel, but rather because I actually enjoy and love the work more when I do it in my own way. In fact, I think it is the only way for me to be able to produce or teach anything at all.

But now, as I prepare to enter my fourth year (and yeah.....I am still working on putting together my dissertation prospectus), I have entered a new stage in my graduate career, one that makes evident that I am steadily approaching the end of this journey. I still have a couple more years to go, but there's really only one more thing to do. Write the dissertation. And then what? Well, I guess go on the job market and try to get a one of those very rare, tenure-track jobs.

But for all the same reasons that I worried during those first two years about what it means to live a life in academia, I have some reservations about my future and to where this current path is leading. Is that all that is available for someone who has reached the end of formal training in reading, writing, and thinking? I realize that all of the people around me who have doctorate degrees in philosophy are professors, but aren't there people who have also earned their degrees and gone on to do other things? What do they do? What other options are out there? Without a very clear or bountiful set of answers to these questions, I have spent a good amount of time imagining what other things I could do with my life after graduate school. This morning (though there was nothing particularly unique about this morning, it just came up in conversation over breakfast) I allowed myself to say a couple of things that I have always tried hard to recognize and appreciate:

I love to teach and I want to keep teaching. But I don't know if that has to happen in a university, or if I really want to deal with all of the other (less pleasant stuff) that comes with that kind of job. If I could do absolutely anything, I think I would really love to teach philosophy in a more community-based setting and within a greater demographic range. Sure, I like college students. And it would be fun to go with a older-than-college-kids crowd and do philosophy with grown adults, but my real passion for philosophy compels me to go the other direction--to work with younger kids. Like kid kids, middle schoolers, and high school kids. Those years are some of the most formative times that I can remember, when your peers are more influential than your parents, and they can also be some of the most difficult of times. Especially for those who are going through a lot at those ages, who have to deal with a lot of "grown up" issues and face "real life" experiences but probably lack sufficient tools to help them make sense of their experiences, I think that philosophy can be a very rich resource for those tools.

The greatest value for me in practicing philosophy has been found in the confidence, strength, and empowerment that it has cultivated within me. As I have gained new insights on how to understand myself, others, and the world around me, I have also developed a voice that has enabled me to articulate my thoughts and describe my experiences. So I would love to teach philosophy in a way that encourages the development of minds, bodies, and voices of those who need to know, and embody, their own sense of strength, value, and significance. I want to help cultivate the skills that have so drastically shaped me in those whose voices need to be heard.

In short, practicing philosophy has literally changed my life. And I have changed as a result of that. Thanks to the texts written by innumerable others before me, and the guidance, conversations, and examples from my professors and peers around me, I have become who I am today, and I continue to grow and change. Philosophy has the capacity to make significant changes and powerful transformations. In those moments when I begin to question the importance of doing philosophy, I only have to remember that I am a testament to the powerful affect that philosophical practice can have on our lives and how we live them.

So when I finish my degree, yeah, I want to use it to teach.

On a side note about how people accidentally get into philosophy and what it's about for some contemporary intellectuals, here's the title sequence to a film by Phillip McReynolds (Penn State). 



AND. I really like this part of the film. If you're into it, go watch other clips from his film.

All Things Out of Exuberance

In one of my most recent posts, while writing in the wee hours of the night into the birds' songs of the dawn, I reflected on my hesitations around writing my dissertation prospectus and concluded that I had not been fully preparing myself in ways that I knew were necessary for my own process. I spent those hours acknowledging that there was an unusual amount of fear and insecurity present in me, and I decided to allow myself a couple of more days to do whatever it was that I needed to do to get to a better, more productive place.

The next night, with philosophy books pulled off of my shelf and scattered about my bedroom floor, I ended up reading back through some of my old journals that were stored next to some of my most relevant philosophy texts. I flipped through the past two years worth of random thoughts, reminders, sketches, and poems about my relationships and the most growth-inducing experiences, as well as the tidbits of notes from philosophy talks and other paper ideas that were distributed throughout those now-filled journal pages. As I put down one journal to pick up the next, the next relationship, the next saga, the next series of challenges and reflections, their tan covers were soon intermingling with the books on my floor about feminism, phenomenology, Nietzsche, and Foucault. Of course. Of course it would all come together like that.

With the arrangement of thoughts and feelings and memories and ideas and arguments and personalities surrounding me, I picked up my current journal and began writing. Much like the texts and the books and my experiences throughout the past month of May, what I wrote reflected the near seamlessness of my philifesophy (that may be one of the first time that I have actually used the word in a sentence and meant it as such). I wrote about where I was at in that moment: After a month of dedicating my attention to my own patterns and personal relationships, I needed to create some space for myself and in my head and in my heart to let those realizations breathe a bit on their own. I need to shift gears into work, and let philosophy be the area that teaches me about my experiences. I wrote about the basic questions that will be guiding my dissertation. How is it that philosophy can change a person? How might this effect change how we understand philosophy itself? And as I elaborated upon those questions, without really intending to, I slipped back into addressing relationships (in very transcendental terms no less!): "...we work on cultivating the conditions for the possibility of the relationship..." And with that last twist in my writing, it became evident that what I needed to do was think my personal thoughts (which usually center on relationships) and my philosophical thoughts (which usually center on meta-philosophical questions) together.

No kidding, right?

I was already aware of my hesitations around philosophy. I was being held back by something, and I don't think it was just a matter of being preoccupied with all of this self-understanding that I had been engaging in for so long. It wasn't just that I needed to redirect some mental energy to the work; it was that I needed to approach my work from a different place. One that wasn't riddled with fear, anxiety, and insecurity from imposter complexes, and a place that wasn't defensive. I don't want to prove that I am right and others are wrong. I needed to get ready to do philosophy in the only way that I healthfully and happily can--by being fully engaged, creative, curious, and fully open to being transformed by it. I needed to put myself into the project with all of the passion and enthusiasm and glee that I feel whenever I read Nietzsche.

And what I soon realized was that I was also starting to do a weird thing in my personal relationships. These past few months have been really unusual: after ending my last long-term relationship in March, I've been surrounded by lots of new people and doing lots of new things. And in the process, I've met someone who I actually have started to like quite a bit. It's been rather unexpected, but wonderfully fun and exciting at the same time. Nevertheless, on that night, I realized that I was going through a pretty common thing that happens when someone starts to develop feelings for another person. It's the case with me, and I know others who have been through it too, that the precise moment when you start to like someone else is when worries begin to blossom: What if they don't like me? What if I do something stupid? What if...?

But just as quickly as those feelings were acknowledged, I let them go, because the thing is, none of that matters. Those questions and worries are misleading, if not completely misdirected already on their own. At this point in time, and it may be that this is always the case, I don't have to impress anyone. There are no stakes on making sure that someone likes me back. I can't convince someone to fall for me, and even if I could manipulate someone's heart into heavy infatuation, I wouldn't want to! To ask, "What if...?" and to approach someone (about whom you are interested in and excited about) from that place is to allow your feelings and actions to be rooted in insecurity and doubt. There is a degree of clinging that wants to bring someone into your life and hold on to them, hence the fear of rejection, but that is not a healthy source out of which one should develop any kind of relationship.

It reminded my again of why I love Nietzsche's the Gay Science: When we approach work, love, and life out of a type of need, clinging, resentment, or insecurity, this affects the nature of what follows suit. Rather than being wholly reactionary, what if we strove to take on projects, start new friendships and relationships, write philosophy, and live in general from a place of overflowing generosity? Not because of a need to hold on to something or someone or to protect ourselves, but rather because we need to express the enthusiasm, joy, creativity, passion, and love that begs to be given. How would that change our philosophy? How would it change our relationships?

After reminding myself of all of this, I went down to the kitchen and wrote myself a note:

I also used the dictionary to help me put all of this into very dry, concrete terms:

exuberance: the quality or state of being exuberant
exuberant: 1. extreme or excessive in degree, size, or extent 2. joyously unrestrained and enthusiastic, unrestrained or elaborate, especially in style: FLAMBOYANT 3: produced in extreme abundance: PLENTIFUL
exuberate: to have something in abundance: OVERFLOW

Since that night, I've been doing more work. I've had peaks of motivation and productivity, and I've felt a greater sense of relaxation and release in both my work and my interactions with those around me. All of that has, of course, still occurred in between my fair share of summer fun--karaoke, dancing, late nights of hanging out, and cooking lots of farm fresh meals. I also decided to follow up on a suggestion from a friend and read this book with my breakfasts over the past couple of days:

Go here to take a peek inside the book.

It was a good, quick, and easy read, and one that spoke to me on many levels. In fact, I wanted to write about play and how it brings me back to Nietzsche, affect, and philosophy here today, but since I got carried away with these other things, I'll save that for next time...

:)

The Pleasure of Not Smoking

I'm thinking of quitting smoking...no small task. But instead of quitting out of some sense of guilt or shame, like because smoking is bad or because others negatively judge those who do it, I want to apply some ideas that I have come across through podcasts and philosophy to make this a pleasurable process. That is, instead of using pain and punishment as a mode of discipline, I want to discipline myself to quit smoking through the use of pleasure. If and when I want a cigarette, I will ask myself, "What would I enjoy even more than a cigarette right now?" and then do that.

You can listen to the podcast I mention here.

(By the way, Radiolab is one of my favorite podcasts! The shows are definitely worth a listen.)

You can also go back to my previous blog post about the Creation, Intensification and Multiplication of Pleasures.

Trouble for Old, Dead, White Guys (Video)

Think for a Change (13):




A viewer on Youtube asked about a forum for longer comments. I guess this will do for now...Please feel free to post your thoughts below.

Cheers!

The Latest:Think for a Change Videos

I've been doing more videos! But I haven't posted them here...until now.

"Think for a Change (10): What We Don't Know About Ignorance"
This one is especially important to me. Charles Mills' concept of an epistemology of ignorance flipped my world when I first read about it in 2007. It's stayed in the back of my mind ever since when I learn and read and think about new things...



"Think for a Change (11): Freedom to Think Differently, or At All"

This is why I do philosophy.



"Think for a Change (12): Re: Trans Woman Attacked at McDonald's"

Unfortunately, there have been some recent events that led to recent videos and I just had to say something about this.



Thanks for reading and watching!

Whole-Hearted Vulnerability

If there is one theme that I have followed in my personal and professional and philosophical life, it is that of vulnerability. Being open and willing to be imperfect, to be dependent on and affected by others, to recognize that we are shaped by our experiences and that we close ourselves off to those experiences when we seek to control everything, especially in the effort to avert "difficult," "hard," or even painful emotions--this is the stuff of life.

For the past few months, I have been reading philosophical texts on embodiment, phenomenology, and affect. I am studying notions of intercorporeal existence, authentic love and radical generosity in the face of alterity, and psychosomatic examples of aphasia as not just a refusal to speak, but a more existential refusal of the ontological relations we have with others and the world. In other words, we are not independent, autonomous, isolated beings who can be characterized as pure minds or mechanistic machine-bodies. Rather, we exist--in body, mind, psyche, and even biochemically--in relation to others, history, culture, nature, and the world. When the conversation turns to ethics, many philosophers suggest that this leads us to notions of freedom, responsibility, and forgiveness.

All of this reminds me of my thought process during the summer before coming to graduate school. As I was familiarizing myself with theories in feminist philosophy and more "Continental" thinkers like the existentialists, there was a distinct moment when I thought, "Hasn't all of this stuff on interrelationality already been said, like thousands of years ago?" I was pretty sure that it had been, at least by one person (Seriously, though, I know there are many more).

Over 2,500 years ago, the Buddha's key insights were that nothing is permanent and all things are interdependent. This means that there is a transitory nature to reality and everything that *is* comes out of a conditional, dependent arising. There is nothing eternal, independent, or separate--no soul, no essence, no simple "I" to be found. Once again, I will say that I am grateful that I was assigned to teach "Asian Philosophies" this semester, in part because I am able to have conversations with my students about what these insights mean for us in terms of our daily lives. We've talked about reframing our values, our participation in global economic markets, and even our conceptions of mental health by way of non-attachment, compassionate understanding, "seeing more clearly" the nature of things, and bearing witness to the parts of life that often lead us into dis-ease, anxiety, fear, and unhappiness--the hard facts like sickness, old age, and death. We talk about alleviating "dukkha," which is very roughly translated as "suffering," through compassion, wisdom, and non-attachment. Through practicing a bit of mindfulness and meditation, we have tried to recognize when we are motivated out of fear, aversion, confusion, or craving, even as students who need good grades to get good jobs, or boyfriends and girlfriends who might get cheated on, or (like me) food lovers who have to face that the key-lime gelato simply can't last forever. It's been a good class. I've learned a lot.

And now, I finally had time to watch this video. Some of my more "whole-hearted" friends and family members were passing it around a couple of months ago, but the delay in my viewing is not important. The message is still a good one. She's not a Continentalist philosopher who speaks with impenetrable language, and she's probably not enlightened like the Buddha, but I do think that she, as a social worker, is touching on something very fundamental about our human experiences. Turns out there may be many paths to some basics of life.

As Dr. Brene Brown notes, we live best when we feel loved, worthy, and connected to others. And yet, this is hard because it requires that we also make ourselves vulnerable. In fact, we have to face that vulnerability with an honest, courageous authenticity. And when our vulnerability enables us to feel gratitude, joy, and love in life, it also means that we must risk feeling other emotions as well, including disappointment, rejection, and being misunderstood.

Maybe there is some comfort in knowing that almost all of the people who think on this theme seem to agree on one thing: Ironically enough, it is by making oneself vulnerable that one finds the strength to deal with more difficult experiences. And more ironic still, if one's strength stems from vulnerability, one might actually be met with even greater love, belonging, and connection with others, which in turn might make even the most difficult experiences in life more manageable, or less difficult.

As great as this is, I wonder how much the less "whole-hearted" get it? Especially after trying to talk to a room of thirty 19-21 year olds for the past thirteen weeks about these ideas and frequently having to myself admit that I have hit some brick pedagogical walls when they admit that they just don't get it, these insights seem less like the kind of stuff that can be taught. We can talk about it, but that does not mean that it will be heard and understood, although I wish it would. I have the sense that these sort of things have to be figured out and experienced for oneself. And that might take some time. Probably more than a semester. Perhaps even a lifetime.

So, here's to the practice and the journey!

The End of the World: Undertaking Whatever is Hardest

This reflection was written in response to a paper by Ladelle McWhorter, which she presented at Penn State last week for a conference that honored the work of Charles Scott.

Reflecting on Charles Scott’s role as one of her most influential teachers, Ladelle McWhorter focused her paper, “Whatever is Hardest,” on the ethical question of teaching. Looking back on her own experiences in Scott’s classes, McWhorter described Scott’s practice of philosophy as one that enacts an experience and creates a philosophical event. It is a practice that opens up possibilities for seeing, feeling, and thinking. While describing her experiences of sitting through his lectures, McWhorter reflected that “something philosophical had happened to me.” This, she explains, is because Scott’s practice of philosophy is a kind of undertaking that requires a willingness to turn toward that which we do not know and what we fear that we will never understand. It is a willingness to turn toward and stand with the excess, with whatever is hardest.

Teaching undergraduate students is hard. It may even be one of the hardest things to do because, as McWhorter noted, one of the central goals of teaching is to make students aware of their intellectual and ethical freedom, that is, to make thinking in general and thinking on particular questions possible again. Nearly any teacher can attest to just how challenging it can be to get students thinking, and thinking freely. To make things even harder still, McWhorter discussed her recent experiences of teaching environmental ethics to her students. The difficulty of this task does not stem from the controversy of intrinsic value or anthropocentrism, but rather from the fact that if one pays attention to the consequences of human production and consumption and the state of our planet’s water, ground, and atmosphere, one has to face the gravity of our environmental crisis. The thousands of poisonous toxins in our ecosystems and bodies, the increase in cancer rates, sea-level rise, thawing permafrost, gigatons of carbon dioxide being released into the atmosphere, and the utter necessity of petroleum to power anything and everything in our current lifestyles, all of this leads to what was frequently referred to as “impending catastrophes of epic proportions.” Acknowledging these statistics and likelihoods while taking on the responsibility to teach young minds and answer their questions of “What do we do?” in the face of Armageddon, doomsday, the end of life as we know it—this is hard, perhaps one of the hardest things to do.

Before I continue on with the rest of McWhorter’s paper, it is worth noting what was coming up for me as I listened. While sitting through her descriptions of the very sad and scary state of affairs in which we live, it was hard not to feel at least a little bit overwhelmed, if not completely panicked. Thanks to her diligent research, McWhorter was able to paint a detailed picture with facts and numbers (often too large in size and effect to really comprehend) that illustrated the interrelated risks which threaten our lives and the planet. It must have been about forty-five minutes of relentless evidence explaining how we are hopelessly doomed because even if we deal with poison in the water, we still have to worry about rising temperatures, and so on... The magnitude of our problems, the level of crisis facing our planet, is so large and so great that describing these “impending catastrophes of epic proportions” as “the end of the world” would be no exaggeration. I can imagine how the sheer act of sitting through her paper could easily have been enough to put some people over the edge.

But as I started to shift around in my seat and feel my palms sweat, exchanging nervous glances with those next to me, I couldn’t help but notice that it was really hard to sit through McWhorter’s paper. It was hard because her descriptions put us face to face with the most difficult realities, the most terrifying statistics, and the most uncertain of futures. Much like her descriptions of Scott’s lectures, McWhorter’s paper gave me the distinct sense that “something philosophical” was happening to us. And as if this one-hour paper paralleled the experiences of her class on environmental ethics, I found myself echoing her students and wanting to ask, “What do we do? What can we do? What should we do?” When McWhorter described her answers to her students, it seemed that now they were also appropriately directed to us, those in the audience who evidenced a willingness to turn toward these difficult realities and a future full of frightful uncertainties. She said, “I don’t know.”

It was at this point when McWhorter returned to the ethical question of teaching. When the future of the world is not going to be the same for her students as it was for previous generations, different even from their parents’ and professors’ generations, what might teaching be at this juncture? McWhorter even wonders if it is wrong to lead her students in the environmental ethics class to the end of this road, where they stand together and look out onto a future without being able to see how it looks, perhaps if it is even there.

These questions are interesting for me because as McWhorter described a type of “border” relationship that separates her from her undergraduate students—they belong to the future in a different way than she does—I immediately recognized myself as living on the border. I am part of this generation that is growing up in the face of what is yet to come, but I also have my own students to whom I feel responsible to equip for the future. With the double weight of student and teacher on my shoulders, I listened closely to what McWhorter said next.

McWhorter offered her students (and me, and perhaps even my students through me) this much: You will have to live and face the unimaginable. We can’t prepare you for the challenges and problems that you will have to meet and try to overcome. Don’t let your parents and your teachers dictate your choices. In short, you’re free.

With a moment to let the words sink in, I felt something. Better? Not really. But I did feel something. Something philosophical? There was a moment, I guess, and in that moment I had the increased sense that teaching at the turn of the 21st century is an especially unique task. But there was something more. I know that I am not only teaching, but I am also a student. I am also learning. And the freedom involved in teaching and learning in this moment is a freedom of release, of openness, of possibility. It’s not just a freedom to vote or a power to choose to live green, but a different kind of freedom, grounded in contingency, and with that, not-knowing.

I can’t help but agree that one of the most important goals of teaching is to make students aware of their intellectual and ethical freedom, to make thinking possible again. This was one of the most significant reminders that I gained from listening to McWhorter’s paper, in part because it reminded me that my own thinking is also free. But I can’t forget that the paper was written and presented to honor the work of her own teacher, Charles Scott, especially in celebration of his practice of philosophy, a practice that pursues whatever is hardest. So maybe, after all of this, I actually was feeling a bit better. I was feeling better because for that hour I was put back in a place of acknowledging that I am also a part of a "lineage" of sorts of people who seek to embrace how studying and teaching philosophy as a transformative practice can open up new ways of seeing, thinking, and feeling. Approached in this way, philosophy is already an ethical undertaking. And there is something important contained within that attitude and approach. Part of me was relieved to know that I am shaped by and following in the footsteps of others, that despite the hugeness of it all, there is a way to move in the world. So, in addition to freedom and a bit of philosophical company, one might also find there a small sense of hope.

The Gay Science for Life

Now you might appreciate my very clever shirt.

By no means am I an expert on Nietzsche. His thought is so original, so complex, and so completely counter-intuitive at times that I have to assume that I can only grasp glimpses of his work's brilliance. And I think he would agree.

Nevertheless, as I have continued with my (re-)reading of his books, I have felt a distinct shift in the degree of my appreciation for his work. Nietzsche himself noted that his books must be peculiarly read. Some will get it. Most others are bound to misunderstand him, and quite possibly in very dangerous ways. And one can't simply pick and choose among his aphorisms. One must read patiently and slowly, ruminate like cows graze, and get a sense for his tone. And one must not be too serious in the matter. Indeed, this is a key point that is highlighted by the title of my favorite of Nietzsche's books, The Gay Science. Rather than being stale, stuffy, and "academic," our wisdom and knowledge should embolden a sense of lightness, laughter, dancing, and a robust affirmation of life.


This leads to an important point in Nietzsche's philosophy, which is also an important point that I am trying to keep in mind for myself as I continue reading and living my day to day life: When we act in the world and with others, when we place value on certain ideas or experiences, when we relate back to ourselves, Nietzsche explains that, if we are strong and healthy free spirits, we will do so out of an overabundance of life, passion, enthusiasm, and gratitude. Not from fear or pity or shame, and not from a duty or obligation, but from the celebratory joyfulness and childlike brightness that comes from being able to cast off inhibiting social values, metaphysical comforts, and by renouncing the seriousness of the error that we call "Truth." Once we come to see life for what it is--the will to power, that is, the will to discharge energy, to grow, to expand, to become more, to go higher, to become new--we will be able to live more vibrantly, more healthily. As Nietzsche explains in Section 4 of the Preface to The Gay Science, "one returns newborn, having shed one's skin, more ticklish and malicious, with a more delicate taste for joy, with a tenderer tongue for all good things, with merrier senses, with a second dangerous innocence in joy, more childlike and yet a hundred times subtler than one has ever been before." Emerging out of the depths of life with this fresh skin is likened to finding "happiness in being for once like a flying fish, playing on the peaks of waves" (Section 256). Can't you just feel the tickle from dancing along the surface of things with such lightness and sensitivity to these feelings?

As wonderfully exuberant as this all sounds, it is immensely difficult for us to live and act with such levity because, according to Nietzsche, we are bogged down and made literally unhealthy, literally depressed, by our values which reflect seriousness, gravity, and the negation of life. Pity orients much of our actions and beliefs in debilitating ways. Equally heavy are feelings of revenge. Or to sum it up, Nietzsche explains that weakness leads us to act out of ressentiment. The French usage is important because it captures the sense with which these negative feelings are felt over and over, again and again. The English equivalent, resentment, is similar in meaning, so long as it still carries the quality of feeling feelings and being unable to let them go. If we are healthy and act out of our own abundance of energy, power, gratitude, and liveliness, we will be able to fully experience certain passions, emotions, and events, let this discharge and expel our energy, and then carry on. Even, or especially, when another tries to harm or injure us. We can take the blow. Nietzsche's descriptions of digestion help make the point. One with healthy digestion will consume, incorporate, metabolize, and then expel food, and it will be a nourishing process. Otherwise, if you internalize and hold on to your food (like, hold it in and do away with nothing), you will become constipated, nauseous, and ill. That is ressentiment.

The difference, then, is in how one handles life with all of its pains and pleasures, hurts and joys, violence and passion. Do we roll with the punches (out of an affirmation for all of life--not just the "good stuff"), or hold on to them and continually outline our bruises? This difference contains implications for political life, personal life, and how one engages in philosophy.

People commonly misunderstand Nietzsche's notion of the will to power as being terrifyingly violent. They assume that he glorifies murder and pillage. But to think this way is to already mishear his words and get tangled in a web of values that he is trying to reveal. For Nietzsche, it is the case that all of life is the will to power, and this means that "Benefiting and hurting others are ways of exercising one's power over others; that is all one desires in such cases. One hurts those whom one wants to feel one's power, for pain is a much more efficient means to that end than pleasure" (Section 13). But he goes on to explain, "Certainly the state in which we hurt others is rarely as agreeable, in an unadulterated way, as that in which we benefit others; it is a sign that we are still lacking power, or it shows a sense of frustration in the face of this poverty; it is accompanied by new dangers and uncertainties for what power we do possess, and clouds our horizon with the prospect of revenge, scorn, punishment, and failure." If the will to life is the will to power, then what matters is "how one is accustomed to spice one's life." The main point is that, although others will hurt us and try to bring us down, if we want to be healthy, if we are already strong, we will not respond by hurting others, especially not those who are weaker than us. Instead, one shows control and power over oneself.

It is for this reason, then, that Nietzsche goes on to give a 'new caution,' which I think has clear connections to many aspects of our lives, including how we might deal with others, lovers, and ourselves. "Let us stop thinking so much about punishment, reproaching, and improving others! We rarely change an individual, and if we should succeed for once, something may also have been accomplished, unnoticed: we may have been changed by him. Let us rather see to it that our won influence on all that is yet to come balances and outweighs his influence. Let us not contend in a direct fight--and that is what all reproaching, punishing, and attempts to improve others amount to. Let us rather raise ourselves much higher. Let us color our own example ever more brilliantly. Let our brilliance make them look dark. No, let us not become darker ourselves on their account, like all those who punish others and feel dissatisfied. Let us sooner step aside. Let us look away" (Section 321).

This may seem like just another instance of "turning the other cheek," but one cannot be so quick to make these connections. In just the same way that Nietzsche reproaches the desire to punish, especially out of revenge, he is equally disdainful of a "Christian morality" that operates out of weakness and pity. Pity, for Nietzsche, is really a twisted form of vanity--it makes us feel better about ourselves to help others because it marks our superiority over them (again, harking back to the will to power, but it is a weak will).

So again, the main issue becomes one of identifying the underlying source of our actions. "Every art, every philosophy may be viewed as a remedy and an aid in the service of growing and struggling life; they always presuppose suffering and suffers. But there are two kinds of sufferers: first, those who suffer from an over-fullness of life [and thus they must find ways to discharge and empty themselves, like when one is so filled with gratitude that one creates a god to whom one can give their thanks]...and then those who suffer from the impoverishment of life and seek rest, stillness, calm seas [and thus take comfort in metaphysical errors, like that the good and evil in the world can be explained by the presence of a god who punishes and rewards us for our actions, which is a mark of one who "revenges himself on all things by forcing his own image, the image of his torture, on them, branding them with it"]" (Section 370). Depending on their source, our actions will carry a different effect...of health and vitality or of sickness and weakening.

If we think about our interactions with one another, whether we act out of gratitude and strength or resentment and an inability to expend our energies in productively healthful ways, we can check ourselves against this distinction by following Nietzsche when he asks, "'is it hunger or superabundance that has here become creative?' At first glance, another distinction may seem preferable--it is far more obvious--namely the question whether the desire to fix, to immortalize, the desire for being prompted creation, or the desire for destruction, for change, for future, for becoming (in case you are a bit lost, on the most superficial level, Nietzsche is pulling for the latter, but he notes that this can still be broken down even further since...) The desire for destruction, change, and becoming can be an expression of overflowing energy that is pregnant with future...: but it can also be the hatred of the ill-constituted, disinherited, and underprivileged, who destroy, must destroy, because what exists, indeed all existence, all being, outrages and provokes them."

I have quoted Nietzsche at length in the hopes that his words will resonate with personal experiences. For myself, thinking of these important distinctions about the sources of my own actions and the actions of others helps me reconsider not only how I will act, and want to act, but how to respond to others who might lash out at me from their own sources of pain or constipated ressentiment. (Thus, this is a related note, and perhaps a follow up, to my previous post "Breathe Love.") And it also is generating in me questions about how I will continue to pursue philosophy.

Nietzsche lived with his ideas day in and day out, and he was the first to acknowledge the need to be personally involved in great problems because they require great love. And Nietzsche, too, was sick for much of his life. And he philosophized about health... Nietzsche notes, "For a psychologist there are few questions that are as attractive as that concerning the relation of health and philosophy, and if he should himself become ill, he will bring all of his scientific curiosity into his illness. For assuming that one is a person, one necessarily also has the philosophy that belongs to that person; but there is a big difference (AND HERE IT IS AGAIN, one last time, for my own purposes perhaps...). In some it is their deprivations that philosophize; in others, their riches and strengths. The former need their philosophy, whether it be as a prop, a sedative, medicine, redemption, elevation, or self-alienation. For the latter it is merely a beautiful luxury--in the best cases, the voluptuousness of a triumphant gratitude that eventually still has to inscribe itself in cosmic letters on the heaven of concepts." He concludes: "What was at stake in all philosophizing hitherto was not at all "truth" but something else--let us say, health, future, power, life" (Section 2).

I hope to keep a handle on these distinctions as I continue to expand my own philosophical thinking and work, especially because I know of the therapeutic dimension of philosophy. But am I seeking to heal (myself and others), as if with a palliative? Or am I seeking to grow, to become more, to be healthy? Can I? And of course, this is my hope as I continue to grow in and out of my relationships, my environments, and my self. I hope that I am, or if not yet, that I will be, strong enough to let go of certainty and faith and truth, and be able to swim joyfully across the crisp peaks of life's waves with a childlike levity.

Heroic Imaginings, and Reality Checks

Reading Nietzsche has been very slow going for me because he makes me think, and as in this case, I sometimes indulge in these thoughts by writing. When I read Nietzsche, it seems that he is speaking directly to me, to right where I am in this moment. How could it be that just as I am remembering one of the most significant people who has shaped me, and more specifically, the truly incredible amount of love, devotion, and commitment that this one human being has shown me, Nietzsche writes about heroes, delusion, and vanity? Lest that seems like too harsh of a connection, hold on. More on this in a bit...

As an example of Nietzsche's impeccable timing and insight, I just saw "The Adjustment Bureau," which has been praised for its philosophical musings on free will and determinism but which, thanks to the personally peculiar intersections of casting, plot, and script, actually raised bewildering questions in me like, "Is all of this, my feelings, my thoughts, and even me seeing this particular movie right now, some coincidence?? Is it fate?" Though this film may not be the most salient example of inspirational art, Nietzsche notes that the metaphysical need is so strong, even in free spirits, that "the highest effects of art easily produce a reverberation of a long-silenced, or even broken metaphysical string." As the strange "coincidences" of the movie shake me, so too does the timeliness of Nietzsche's words. Might even the fact that I have been reading Nietzsche be part of a great playing out of destiny?! Is this, perhaps, evidence of Nietzsche great skill for contradiction? Or does it mark his brilliance? Responding to my situation of wonder--or doubt--or longing--Nietzsche writes, "If he becomes aware of his condition [of the metaphysical need], he may feel a deep stab in his heart and sigh for the man who will lead back to him the lost beloved, be she called religion or metaphysics. In such moments, his intellectual character is being tested" (Section 153, Human, All Too Human). Am I, in identifying so strongly with a movie and considering my experiences and latest wonderings as perhaps a strange series of fated events, actually demonstrating Nietzsche's point? Is this an exposure of my metaphysical longing?

This situation is a very complicated. Let's go back to heroes, delusion, and vanity.

Some people are truly inspirational. They achieve miraculous things and seem to evidence superhuman capacities to give, to heal, to lead, to love. Many of their stories give life to history. (Name your hero, and note that they may equally turn out to be another's tyrant.) They are the people whose character traits provide resources for great myths and compelling movies. These are heroes who save lives or countries by virtue of their courage, their unbelievable physical and emotional strength. These are heroes who express inexhaustible depths of love and passion, who will do anything, especially sacrifice their own life, for the one they love. They are those who, in everyone's eyes, are simply larger than life, and because of this, they inspire awe, amazement, admiration. They might motivate others to live like them, to emulate their qualities. Or more often, they are praised out of another's vanity. In a sense, their incredible feats of love, strength, power inspire fear and inadequacy in others, so they are set apart as miraculous exceptions. We worship them out of our vanity, our self-love, because, as Nietzsche writes, "it does not hurt only if we think of it as very remote from ourselves, as a miracle (even Goethe, who was without envy, called Shakespeare his star of the farthest height, recalling to us that line, "Die Sterne, die begehrt man nicht"--one does not covet the stars)." I have known and been loved by one of these stars.

But while there are these heroes who have loved from the most devoted and unwavering depths, the source of their magical power is also in need of explanation. Are they really "super human," or, perhaps, are they themselves the most caught up in the fantastic stories of myths and movies? Perhaps they are borderline figures who simply believe themselves to be heroes. Borderline delusional. Borderline magical because they actually believe in themselves so much that they are, or become, just as incredible as they imagine themselves to be. Whereas one might be tempted to criticize such fantastic faith in oneself as a heroic figure, Nietzsche notes that such valuations, if they turn out to be criticisms, are likely misguided. This is because seeming can become being.

Nietzsche writes, "If someone wants to seem to be something, stubbornly and for a long time, he eventually finds it hard to be anything else. The profession of almost every man, even the artist, begins with hypocrisy, as he imitates from the outside, copies what is effective. The man who always wears the mask of a friendly countenance eventually has to gain power over benevolent moods without which the friendliness cannot be forced--and eventually then these moods gain power over him, and he is benevolent" (Section 51). Is it possible that in playing the part and going through the motions, one could act so compellingly that she actually convinces herself of the truth of the very idea that she aims to embody? Most importantly, could this go beyond mere "convincing" and enter into actual being? Can one cultivate these abilities? These feelings??

In the next section Nietzsche goes on to explain that "all great deceivers" undergo the same process where "the belief in themselves overcomes them." Without coming out of this condition of self deception, what some might call faith, these individuals can inspire others. In love as well as in religion, but one might also say sports, theater, politics, and sometimes even life in general, "Self-deception must be present, so that both kinds of deceivers can have a grand effect. For men will believe something is true, if it is evident that others believe in it firmly." The effect, then, is the most significant element. Not the cause, not the root of one's undying love, but rather the effect it has on oneself and another. Tragic lovers are inspirational not simply because they love so deeply, but because they themselves believe so firmly in their capacity to do so. And they inspire us to believe in them as well.

But despite the effects that such people might inspire, there is a risk to all of this as well insofar as "delusions often have the value of curatives, which are actually poisonous. Yet in the case of every 'genius' who believes in his divinity, the poison at last becomes apparent, to the degree that the 'genius' grows old" (Section 164). Though it is the belief in one's greatness that can actually lead one to such great heights that set him apart from all others, in some (Nietzsche gives Napoleon as an example, and some might point to Nietzsche himself as an example, as well) "this same belief turned into an almost mad fatalism, robbed him of his quick, penetrating eye, and became the cause of his downfall." Eventually, it seems, one's conviction can lead to their demise. One's passion is more thoroughly deflated when it is unrealized...or proves to be unrealizable. If one does not, or cannot, live up to one's own expectation, if faith does not beat "fate," then the ultimate disappointment unravels to reveal the greatest weakness. This is a problem for the heroic, self-deceptive believer. The hero is, after all, a very tragic figure.

But what about those who believed? What about those who felt so inspired and wanted to believe in these heroic figures? What happens when the heroic lover falters? What happens when the great leaders fall? At times, we might suffer from our own disillusionment about ourselves, but these heroic figures can also be parents, friends, teachers and lovers in whom we did believe, and perhaps still want to believe.

From all of this we can learn that there is some necessity in error, illusion, delusion. Sometimes, it is necessary for life. Always, it tests our character and strength.