pinkfloydpsw's Blog

I have a theory, I often do, that each thing a person wishes to be or do involves a process where other persons get to use their power to either restrict or enable them, in doing or becoming. If I was to give this a name I would say “gatekeeping”. The ‘gatekeepers’ are they that make decisions, they that are empowered to judge whether you are free to move forward or otherwise. I will study and I will be judged before I am enabled to practice, that is a structural reality. I have a problem with this mechanism however, in that it has an inherent false nature at its source.

I have no intention of deriding the process of learning, or the noble pursuit of tutoring, some of the best people I have known are academics. The education industry I do have issue with, primarily because it issues the credential to become, or be allowed to be, based on the ability to adhere, and that is the opposite of creating or changing or challenging. You go to school to learn what is accepted as valid, that’s not problematic in the sciences or mathematics because they are measurable disciplines and relatively unchanging, it’s not a problem for geography because the world is becoming more measurable, it’s not so much a problem for history because that is what is written rather than what is exact, yet it is a problem for the arts and everything else that isn’t measurable other than by those that get chosen to measure it.

Who says Shakespeare is high art, or in any way superior to Rowling, that Dali/Turner/Constable was a great artist? Gatekeepers do! And how do they decide, what is the criteria for judging valid beauty? The why is not easily explainable, it is opined and repeated as truth so that others may opine it when it is their turn. So that some candidates can opine it at the right time to gain a certificate from a body of people who agree that these things are the “correct” summation. This structural affect repeats until the initial reasoning of it has faded, but the effect continues, original justifications are forgotten. I studied philosophy, most of it was not that useful, a lot of it was downright confusing, but some of it changed me and the way I think about the world. What it was not, was of a quantifiable nature. A person can learn, from any text, what the writer stated, but that is just a memory exercise. If you benefit from the learning it is in how the ideas spark your creative thought processes, how new paths are opened up for your progression as a person, not for being good at remembering that Blah said Blah in concern of Blah. The Blah should influence and inspire you to think unless the Blah is a known scientific fact that your next move is reliant on.

The student first studies Socrates and Plato, neither of which had certificates to say they were philosophers (Socrates likely just a character), they may then study the writings of Abrahamic philosophers, Augustine, Aquinas, Anselm etc, none of which had a certificate to say they were philosophers. Then they may get to enlightenment thinkers who have influenced politics and economics, Marx, Smith, Voltaire, although highly educated, these guys also had no specific philosophy credentials as far as I know. Then they could look to the east, to Tzu, Confucius, Mozi etc, writers of great intellect who also maybe had no accreditation to philosophy. What these guys had was ideas that were so compelling, and so radical, that they inspired actions. Those ideas were read by people, and their work gained influence and power when it was validated and used by people who the ability to implement a version of their understanding of it.

This is the power of the better argument, not the power of the certification. It would be in error to attribute the output of Marx to what then became Communism, Marx did not write the manuscript for Stalin or Mao, and even the readers of his work that produced their own work could not agree on what way to structure the world he imagined. Just as it would be wrong to attribute modern capitalism to Adam Smith, his warnings against where the trajectory would lead are rarely as quoted as his work on how to think about what serves the individual best. It would be wrong to think that J S Mill intended to inspire modern Liberalism, he would not have enjoyed the poverty that has manifested for it. The point I am making is that these writers are thematically followed in the interpretation of them by those that express the power to create realities by using them, this is not like utilising a device that someone else has built using the scientific method, where the inch marker on the ruler is the same for each person who measures an inch. A fundamental difference exists in the evaluation of the value of disciplines. What you draw from what you read concerning arts is unique to you, and should be.

Power has manifested itself here in a negative way, your power to produce, committing thought to writing that which can be called philosophy, can be negated by the lack of a piece of paper issued to you by a governance that gets to decide whether your output is worthy, and sets those conditions prior to your production of it. In face of the fact that what you study to get to where you want to be was originally produced by persons who themselves did not require certification to produce it, and in most cases if you are studying them then their perspective was likely at odds with the norms of their day. I would maybe say the same of psychology, of learning the facet of it that is counselling. What part of this process can be codified I wonder? What part guides the knowledge of saying the correct thing at the correct time? Surely the words would have to be tailored to the recipient, since all people are different?

It seems somewhat wrong that human thought can be marked, but it can, that’s what education attempts to do. I studied at degree level and was marked for my submitted work, some of which I stand by, even though it did not gain great returns (though some did). Now I could take the Derrida approach and say I wasn’t understood, but I won’t because I try to write so that others can understand, I wouldn’t see the point otherwise. I could take the class analysis approach and say that I am not the sort of person they want, but that would be silly since this is the OU and I am exactly the right sort. I could contend that my tutor was a wanker, but that would be facetious. I will however contend one thing….

Philosophy should be an active pursuit, one where the mind is lead by absorbing the thoughts of others as a guide toward formulating new theories and arguing against the old ones. If you agree 100% with the entirety of a philosopher or writers output, then you have missed the point of reading them because, and this is just my take, they have not intended you to do that. Philosophers wish you to think, not just remember what they said, each one of them knew that they were formulating an argument against the accepted cannons of knowledge, else they would not have written anything down (save for the religious ones, they are mostly trying to further convince you of something that is just conditioning, something I assume you naturally suspect is bullshit). If a line of thinking tangents from the norm, but is solid, then that is philosophy. What philosophy is not is a mere memory exercise where the student learns then rehashes so as to be marked as well as they have been accurate without copying.

Paul S Wilson

From a conversation with David J Watts, a tutor.