Do you ever get the feeling that you want to drop out of school and become a mason? Or a cryptozoologist? Or a Zen calligrapher? I do.
On a whim, I went to see An Inconvenient Truth instead of eating dinner tonight. Perhaps it was my low blood-sugar level, but I was actually moved to tears by that big, monotonous mandroid and his moral commitment to his environmental stance. It made me wonder whether I have any moral stances worth speaking of. Any grand, sweeping moral gestures that could even be on the same scale as that of preserving the chunk of rock that is the determining and constitutive foundation (currently) of any possibility of such gestures or stances or postures. I guess it just hit me that when I toy with doubts in the form of playful rhetorical questions like the above (yes, yes, I know you all secretly want to be zombie disposal technicians, or orchid farmers, or bootleggers, or brewmasters, or vintners, or neuro-genetic bio-mechanicists--but, let's face it, we just can't let go of a certain deep connection to culture) those doubts do not serve the function of somehow reaffirming my choice of lifestyle. I guess I realized tonight that every time I think, "I could just go make serious money doing something, anything else...naaah," I am really underscoring a commitment that is certainly politically and, ultimately, morally important in a way that I, perhaps naively, never considered before. I don't want to be a teacher, but I do think that teaching is one of the most important functions that can be. Don't get me wrong. It is not that I am morally committed to teaching because I believe somehow that I will single-handedly transmit that last cultural puzzle piece that will change the world. No, it's rather that my commitment has a particularly cynical flavor. If I am not teaching, then someone else is. And, to be quite honest, I don't trust anyone that much.
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I have already dismissed the idea that there is some purpose that I should work towards. Or at least that I'll ever find one. I think having a moral reason to choose what you do would be neat. Wanting to do something because you know you'd be better at it than other people (your teaching example) would also be neat.
It would also be neat to have something else that you could go make serious money doing.
Sorry, I have just been thinking too hard about how much thesis work I have not been doing and I feel completely useless right now, which is like 10% more useless than I usually feel.
sometimes it's a matter of perception.
for instance, I have decided that whatever I do-- my career/vocation --needs to be helpful to others. as in, I'm not going to work for an oil company unless it's in alternative fuel. though I currently hate my job, I like it that my company's motto is "improving the human condition" and that they seem to mean it. and I like working on ways to improve energy.
i guess that sometimes morality doesn't have to be as blatant.
and if you don't trust others to teach you risk being a very, very difficult teacher, as you'll try and make them learn it all in one fell swoop. I'm not comparing you, but perhaps that explains Kertzman and Benson.
PS: odd. the word I have to type this time to verify that I'm a human being is legibly--but without the vowels. anyhoo.
Huh. Never thought of Kertzman and Benson as teachers so much as a coach and a counselor.
Did you hear that Mrs. Benson retired this year?
The Kertzman and Benson thing--BULLSHIT. Maybe he doesn't trust other people to teach because they'll be exactly like that.
possibly.
possibly not.
guess you'd have to ask Kertzman and Benson why they are how they are. and have suffered in their classes.
personally, I was hoping he didn't trust other people to teach because of teachers like Dudley and Giddens. which would be TOTALLY reasonable, 'cause they were horrid, mostly.
Benson became a counselor our senior year, we were her last english class...but I liked her better as a counselor.
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