Who am I, this person engaging with sociological, philosophical research? I cant seem to get a hold on myself.
Sometimes I feel like a blank receptor to all the wonderful perspectives I am exposed to, unable to react meaningfully to anything (of course much of this is because of being severally backward on reading). I cannot form even a temporary opinion. On what grounds does one find one approach/thinker more valid then the other? When there are no grounds for truth, except the truth of lived reality perhaps, then all we can do is read a lot and broaden the field. But then as the mind opens to more and more things, its seems to loose ground. All and none seems valid.
And so in my life in general I find there are too many of me to reconcile! And perhaps the more I broaden my education and interests, the more lost i seem to feel? Yet another split inside me? I want academics to fulfill a part of me and when that increases I want to watch trash TV. when that overcomes me I want a spree of fitness and walking and then perhaps some indulgences to relax all those frayed nerves. Within ideas i want poetry and rationality, science and speculation. On a tangent, what does this mean for the practice of life and of research. Are we perhaps only acting out the temporary 'drives' that awaken in phases of our lives? Is there anything like a well rounded personality? Or only a more and more fragmented one...
The suspending of mental thought, is yes somewhat relieving in a pub, but especially so in non intellectual work - cleaning, cooking, drawing, even singing loudly. And yet i find funnily that it is only after the mental engagement, that my songs have the depth i like, the intuition in my drawing is layered and emotive, because without that, what would my expression express? Having said that, after a point of mental engagement, there seems an adventure in the very movement into deep manual work - craft, gardening, singing. Perhaps what the mind sees, after a point it needs eventually to act out - else I find that it re-forms into something odd, something restless.
The ground-lessness of the mind can be celebrated as its release from all prior assumptions. True. A freedom from the known, to steal only the term from Krishnamurti. But then it is like standing on the path, not knowing where to turn, how to act. Even temporary grounds needs to be built to act, but then one seems to know that one is playing a game with oneself, a masquerade, an act for the time being.
Another strand. Our personalities shift as we do research. Experiences of the 'field' open certain doors for us. Experiences that can only be expressed as affect, as revelations. True we must problematize them in our research, question our romanticisms. Break their sacredity. Can I do that? Must I do that? I feel almost that I close the path to a journey when I choose to academize it. Is an academics that allows for the affect possible, even valid, when it is almost a deliberate a-politic? Well, perhaps then, silly Me(s), do your academics while you can, and when not, flee to life!
Sometimes I feel like a blank receptor to all the wonderful perspectives I am exposed to, unable to react meaningfully to anything (of course much of this is because of being severally backward on reading). I cannot form even a temporary opinion. On what grounds does one find one approach/thinker more valid then the other? When there are no grounds for truth, except the truth of lived reality perhaps, then all we can do is read a lot and broaden the field. But then as the mind opens to more and more things, its seems to loose ground. All and none seems valid.
And so in my life in general I find there are too many of me to reconcile! And perhaps the more I broaden my education and interests, the more lost i seem to feel? Yet another split inside me? I want academics to fulfill a part of me and when that increases I want to watch trash TV. when that overcomes me I want a spree of fitness and walking and then perhaps some indulgences to relax all those frayed nerves. Within ideas i want poetry and rationality, science and speculation. On a tangent, what does this mean for the practice of life and of research. Are we perhaps only acting out the temporary 'drives' that awaken in phases of our lives? Is there anything like a well rounded personality? Or only a more and more fragmented one...
The suspending of mental thought, is yes somewhat relieving in a pub, but especially so in non intellectual work - cleaning, cooking, drawing, even singing loudly. And yet i find funnily that it is only after the mental engagement, that my songs have the depth i like, the intuition in my drawing is layered and emotive, because without that, what would my expression express? Having said that, after a point of mental engagement, there seems an adventure in the very movement into deep manual work - craft, gardening, singing. Perhaps what the mind sees, after a point it needs eventually to act out - else I find that it re-forms into something odd, something restless.
The ground-lessness of the mind can be celebrated as its release from all prior assumptions. True. A freedom from the known, to steal only the term from Krishnamurti. But then it is like standing on the path, not knowing where to turn, how to act. Even temporary grounds needs to be built to act, but then one seems to know that one is playing a game with oneself, a masquerade, an act for the time being.
Another strand. Our personalities shift as we do research. Experiences of the 'field' open certain doors for us. Experiences that can only be expressed as affect, as revelations. True we must problematize them in our research, question our romanticisms. Break their sacredity. Can I do that? Must I do that? I feel almost that I close the path to a journey when I choose to academize it. Is an academics that allows for the affect possible, even valid, when it is almost a deliberate a-politic? Well, perhaps then, silly Me(s), do your academics while you can, and when not, flee to life!