So many things to say, so many uncanny points of synchronicity and semiotic delight in this. I’ll just leave you with 2, 20 year old esque college anecdotes:
1) I finally was able to take a neuroscience course in my 5th semester of college. At the time I thought my goal was to become a neuroscientist. I had thought about various questions of mind and meaning and thought that if I grasped the materialist tools of analytics deeply enough, I could uncover the source of meaning in the entire universe: the brain.
I was talking with my neuroscience professor towards the end of this course and remarked to him, “The really vexatious problem is consciousness. That’s what I’m interested in.”
He looked at me for a moment then said, “vexatious, now there’s a word you don’t hear too often.”
2) The end of my college “career” older than my fellow about to be graduates, after taking a leave of absence to backpack in Europe and then live and work in China. The head of our small biology department at our small elite liberal arts science school was doing exit interviews. There were 3 of us in the room with him. He asked us what we could do differently as a college or a department in the future. I said something about teaching students not just to amass knowledge but how to think and be good people, and recognize the impact of science on society, which was after all, ostensibly part of the mission of our school, but rarely explicitly put into place, I felt.
He stared at me for a moment then said, “so you think we should emphasize wisdom over knowledge,” or something to that effect.
Later I learned he left the college a couple years later, apparently to leapfrog to a larger and more esteemed role at another university. So, so much for continuity of meaning and impact on society.
Sounds like you were not going to get to the root of consciousness with that guy. Haha. I studied philosophy for a similar reason, to no avail. Your anecdotes kind of remind me that it might be for the best in the long run that I'm not in academia. Careerism + Scientism = Death.
Same—though I’m an outlier—the vast majority of my classmates are either engineers or professors of some kind. Reflecting on the past week, the American mythos of progress enabled by tech for its own sake, coupled with high inequality, increasing corruption, and record power and manipulation, has absolutely largely abandoned any sense of supposed moral, communal, or cognitive enlightenment that such things were supposed to bring us all closer to (as the self-reinforcing propaganda I was hit with told me), which only reminds me why I aborted going down that path too far in the first place. I think 20 year old me already could see the hypocrisies of where it was all headed.
Dude, I'm reading this post-election, be careful, my friend, which euthanasia method you choose. I've heard some of those are hoaxes, and they just strangulate their clients, out of view of media sources
So many things to say, so many uncanny points of synchronicity and semiotic delight in this. I’ll just leave you with 2, 20 year old esque college anecdotes:
1) I finally was able to take a neuroscience course in my 5th semester of college. At the time I thought my goal was to become a neuroscientist. I had thought about various questions of mind and meaning and thought that if I grasped the materialist tools of analytics deeply enough, I could uncover the source of meaning in the entire universe: the brain.
I was talking with my neuroscience professor towards the end of this course and remarked to him, “The really vexatious problem is consciousness. That’s what I’m interested in.”
He looked at me for a moment then said, “vexatious, now there’s a word you don’t hear too often.”
2) The end of my college “career” older than my fellow about to be graduates, after taking a leave of absence to backpack in Europe and then live and work in China. The head of our small biology department at our small elite liberal arts science school was doing exit interviews. There were 3 of us in the room with him. He asked us what we could do differently as a college or a department in the future. I said something about teaching students not just to amass knowledge but how to think and be good people, and recognize the impact of science on society, which was after all, ostensibly part of the mission of our school, but rarely explicitly put into place, I felt.
He stared at me for a moment then said, “so you think we should emphasize wisdom over knowledge,” or something to that effect.
Later I learned he left the college a couple years later, apparently to leapfrog to a larger and more esteemed role at another university. So, so much for continuity of meaning and impact on society.
Sounds like you were not going to get to the root of consciousness with that guy. Haha. I studied philosophy for a similar reason, to no avail. Your anecdotes kind of remind me that it might be for the best in the long run that I'm not in academia. Careerism + Scientism = Death.
Same—though I’m an outlier—the vast majority of my classmates are either engineers or professors of some kind. Reflecting on the past week, the American mythos of progress enabled by tech for its own sake, coupled with high inequality, increasing corruption, and record power and manipulation, has absolutely largely abandoned any sense of supposed moral, communal, or cognitive enlightenment that such things were supposed to bring us all closer to (as the self-reinforcing propaganda I was hit with told me), which only reminds me why I aborted going down that path too far in the first place. I think 20 year old me already could see the hypocrisies of where it was all headed.
Dude, I'm reading this post-election, be careful, my friend, which euthanasia method you choose. I've heard some of those are hoaxes, and they just strangulate their clients, out of view of media sources
😊👍
Erewhon!
(the code word)
Haha. That might have worked too