New Mythologies

I wonder what the latest spew of videos on the loving and non-violent behavior of animals towards humans and towards animals of other species mean?

Since some time on Whatsapp, facebook, youtube, there are videos of dogs and cats being friends, dogs teaching puppies to climb stairs, a pigeon passing titbits to a dog, a bear saving a crow and a dolphin rescuing a dog from a shark! Oddly, the camera is always already present in these wonderfully serendipitous discoveries.
Are they simply cleverly crafted videos? If so, why are we crafting these videos in this age? As humans display increasing violence in their own lives and natural tragedies, sometimes driven by human activity, pile up in daily news, is this our final refuge? To see animals doing unexpected acts of kindness, even against their own nature? Or are we actually forming new mythologies to recover modes of non-violence that can overcome difference - if a bear can rescue a crow, overcoming his 'nature' surely two religious communities can overcome their 'culture' and find common ground... Of course it is not as literal, but is there actually an exploration of a more fundamental common ground for togetherness in these 'real' myths? Are we remaking quietly, and in the most mundane way of sms and whatsapp forwards, a new sensibility?

If these videos are really real... then were they always real? and that with new technology we simply have learned and found means to capture them? in that case, how do we successfully find them and record them? In the video age, we seem to have an odd expectation and future driven life is it not? Where one is already thinking two steps ahead- I have the camera ready before my child does his first walk, or before my dog runs to nuzzle my cat! In its charismatically enigmatic way is life simply giving us the vision we have projected? In a more direct way, if these videos are real, then it means that the world was always a 'better' place than what our 'survival of the fittest' pop sociology indicated and that even humans could think of other models to design political and social life. Or can we actually even hazard the view that with humans going nuts, animals have decided to undergo a shift in consciousness?

All these are perhaps crazy ruminations, but the surreal-ness of these multiple videos leaves one willing to imagine the remotest possible. Perhaps my reading the news about the NASA's new successes with non-fuel satellite propellers is also pushing such wild theories! 

Whither

who are you
and who are we
do i read you right
and can u see thru me

i want to be close
but run back when i am
do i fear you
too near to you
or i cant remove my skin for you?

or do i really see
that this cant be
and this closeness i feel
cannot thus reveal

if that is so
again, who are we
can i come so close
and remain unchanged

How natural will be a return to nature?

Can we really live among nature, and yet remain exactly the modern, free thinking and liberal people that we as those who live in cities. This is not to say that there are not already a lot of people living with nature - either because they traditionally do or because they choose to.
Even so, I wonder at the sutble changes such  shift of venue will bring and even demand.

There must be a reason for instance why civilisations spread in the plains and why the mountains, world-over remain ways of escaping civilisation for a while. And why further, that those mountain dwellers who get exposed to the life of the plains, are transmuted forever, unable perhaps then to share the same vibrations with their hills that they hitherto did.

The plains then, seem to be the site of the establisment of cities. Cities, primarily, are spaces of visual sensousness. it can be argued that man, who seeks sensous pleasure in varied forms, finds the city to be one such place that leaves him secure, satisfied and yet safely seeking more, thus making cities the ever burgeouning grounds of opulence or or enterprise. This may explain further why the metro or the mall are conducive to the city. It may explain why, when i escape the city and begin to miss it after a while, I find solace in the mall.

If by going back to nature, man must forgo these means of directing his desireful energy, then will these mean that man will need to mutate into a different kind of being. No more will such a life give out a flaneur or art critic. The sense of distance from one's object of pleasure, seems to be central to city life. Wit such closeness to the land, how does man maintain the individualistic and free sense of humanness?

We may recognise what violence lies in this sensousness of city life and we may thus proceed to discover different ways of living and being. But, if we really sincerely take these step ahead, do we really know what mutations we are going to undergo?

Being free, thinking free, theorising free

Is sociology an inherently conservative discipline? Nisbet argues how its very inception is flavoured by the nostalgia for community and sacredity. Ranciere's book i am reading indicates that the new sociology emerges in France after the setbacks faced by the left. In this backdrop, argues Ranciere, does Bourdieu's work emerge - presenting to us a cynical explanation of inequality, leaving us almost trapped in its very existence. Of course, both these kinds of conservatisms are quite different, but perhaps share a common spirit.
I wonder (and this may appear cynical too, but i hope does not remain so) whether most grand theories and perspectives in the discipline are marked by a kind of conservatism. Rather, i think this word is insufficient, even misleading. I want to indicate a seeking of comfort in theories, categories that give us as intellectuals a means to explain the world around us. It makes us believe that we have access to a more exalted, a more secret understanding of the world. In this sense, is sociology, psychologically wanting? Is it driven less often by the higher emotions of wonder, humility and openness and more often by judgement and a missionary zeal? What do we know after all about non-sociological ways of explaining the world? What place can we give them? Are we not often in the business of indoctrination? What for instance does a term like 'patriarchy' do for us? Have we perhaps got stuck with the category, and not moved further on the paths of inquiry? Have we shaped our world on the basis of the very categories we formulated to explain it?
The attempt to explain the word around us, is a profound need for us. Most of our knowledges, our sciences, natural or social are attempts to do so. While, they could perhaps be empowering, they seem to be double edged. You never know when they begin to offer comforts, illusions. Taking us away from the real questions, leaving us fighting with misleading shadows...

A humble allowing...

Can a teacher teach? Can anything be taught? Is there anything to teach?

These are genuine questions. Even so I cannot think that this would lead us to a 'let us not teach' stand. And thus arises the question, what then is a position one can place oneself in, while being in an educative process? Of course, all this is perhaps only, theoretical dreaming, because the challenge of the classroom completely throws you open and leaves you vulnerable. That is perhaps one reason that teachers choose the strict posture. Vulnerability can be difficult to maintain and at times also counter productive. There are only few people I have read about who can be so, and mostly they seem to be people who are also very self-assured personalities and clear about their tasks for instance K or DH. Can we all be so? Ironically, these kind of people are sometimes quite stuck in their own ways.

Mostly those who are in doubt seem to be more open. And this perhaps gives us a pathway of a possible stand. That one not be very certain of one's certainties. For instance, don't we all know about patriarchy, about religious regressiveness versus modern ideas. About proper behaviour etc. Now I recall that in a school i spent time in, gender or ideas about gender issues in society were never taught. Of course, gender differentiation was minimal and the educative content was from a liberal standpoint. The school and the teachers however, never explicitly inculcated it and in fact true to the spirit of the school, questioned a simple activist kind of position - not to question it as such, but to ask students to understand what drove them to it. Even so, a girl, who saw very gendered behaviour among her neighbours was aware and disturbed by it and raised a question in a conversation at school. Now a teacher in this context can immediately tell her about how some families are not broad minded, well educated, modern or plain silly. Or the teacher can say, beta have an open mind, maybe we are judging her too harshly. Or perhaps the 'teacher' can simply stay with the student on that inquiry, share her wonder and ask questions with her... to open up the question in a way that assumptions and expectations within it, if any, reveal themselves automatically, and the student can see the situation as closely to the truth of its entirety. in that situation, the student may choose to judge, deride or sympathize with that girl - and who are we to know what is correct. Is it a correct conclusion that she dismisses her behaviour as resulting from patriarchy? Do we know that for sure! And even if it is the right answer - must she arrive at it by the teacher's intervention. Need she arrive at it at all? If we truly believe that minds must be free, we cannot have the hidden rider that only liberal minds are truly free.Can we then live comfortably with our 'regressive' students or even friends? I think more than in school education, this is a challenge in higher education, esp. the social sciences. Can the social sciences move beyond being instructors of modernity? How do we all pas out of premier social science institutes all speaking the same language? Yet we think we are more 'open minded' than say technically educated students. Is that really so? s

And yet, such a teaching is all well to talk about. Can we have the required energy to sustain it.