Holding things in reverence. That's the problem. Or rather perhaps holding the wrong things in reverence. Before I didn't know enough about academia to begin to reverence it in any real fashion, but coming on the end of college, I have to say it feels as though college has primed me to do it. I've been fairly trusting of the institution and have allowed it to shape me as it would, and this I think was unwise. Reverence has made me timid, afraid that I don't have the right to speak, maybe even the right to think. And so I've done it less. I've been slow to speak, and quick to listen. I've tried not to have the wrong opinion or to espous "uneducated" views, and I think this has been to my detriment. As I've felt less of a right to think for myself, I've found my muscle for doing so has atrophied. This, perhaps, is what comes of worshipping the wrong thing.
"Let knowledge grow from more to more and so be human life enriched." So goes our saying. But institutional knowledge is so incredibly different from ammassing knowledge as a person. In order for institutional knowledge to grow, the voices of experts are given a platform, and everyone else stands down. Deference is shown to expertice. Common sense gives way to specialization. The individual is not the locus of interest. It is not, "let my knowledge grow from more to more and so be my life enriched." It is from Knowledge to Human Life. An abstracted, generalized concept to an abstracted, generalized concept.
There's a small philosophical* problem with the abstracted and the generalized. What exactly constitutes as "human life" and what exactly constitutes as humanity's corpus of "knowledge" is fuzzy to say the least. It seems like such definitions would either have to include a lot of fluff to the point where they don't really mean anything at all or would have to exclude swaths of people who don't fit a neat conceptually based definition. Outliers begone. And which outliers do we exclude?
Don't get me wrong, I love abstraction. It's fun to push around ideas and see which ones stick together, which premises make sense, which lead to contradictions. It's a nice diversion, and plus it makes ya look clever which isn't the worst thing in the world. But what I don't quite get is that bit where the concrete meets the conceptual. Because in that area, suddenly the abstract becomes uncertain or the concrete becomes quite flat. That flatness is the power of abstraction: in choosing a particular kind of blindness, one begins to see patterns that weren't visible before.
Patterns between what and what, though? Between concrete things. Between one stuff and another stuff. And once one sees the pattern? How does one unblind themself? How does one oscilate between so many kinds of seeing? I suppose academia's answer is that you don't. You specialize. Everyone remains blind so that humanity can progress. Humanity moves forward. Humanity learns. The blind lead the blind. Not so different from an organized religion, if we're being uncheritable.
Worship is a matter of praxis. One worships more deeply by taking classes, attending lectures, writing papers, and reading works. Worship changes the way one thinks. The way one thinks further changes one's behavior. So what is it? An ivory tower or an ivory steeple? Abstraction is only a tool, and just as the artist doesn't blame the tool, neither does she worship it. She uses it to accomplish a task to which she sets her hand.
I have yet to finish reading In Memoriam A.H.H.** But I know that it's a reflection on death, and perhaps death is just the thing to bring us down from heady abstractions. It is, after all, where the fact of our concreteness and finitude win out. We certainly can't abstract that away. Let Tennyson remind us to pray:
Our little systems have their day;
They have their day and cease to be:
They are but broken lights of thee,
And thou, O Lord, art more than they.
We have but faith: we cannot know;
For knowledge is of things we see
And yet we trust it comes from thee,
A beam in darkness: let it grow.
Let knowledge grow from more to more,
But more of reverence in us dwell;
That mind and soul, according well,
May make one music as before,
But vaster. We are fools and slight;
We mock thee when we do not fear:
But help thy foolish ones to bear;
Help thy vain worlds to bear thy light.
Knowledge, abstraction, the Academy. Tools to what end? Perhaps their right purpose is as tools to further reverence for God rather than for things created by the minds of man.
* (if I, the untrained, am allowed to use the term philosophical)
** (In Memoriam AHHHH! but maybe I shouldn't make jokes about such a heavy poem)
Returned to: 1/31/2020