Philosophy and Being Educated

I took an Intro to Philosophy class with Prof. Frank Lubarski in 1991. Frank was a lovely guy, but I would not call him the most dynamic or entertaining instructor. Nevertheless, I very quickly decided: “I’m going to major in this.” Gregory had found his thing.

Twenty-two years later, I began teaching that subject and have been for 13 years. Funny old world.

In Karl Marx’s work, Theses on Feuerbach, he says, “the philosophers have only interpreted the world, the point is to change it.” I believe this wholeheartedly. I decided three things day-one of teaching: (1) I would not swear in the classroom, (2) I would be myself and not go into professor mode, and (3) I would make educating my students the first priority.

Thirteen years later, I have never wavered from my three principles. (I do say “damn” and “hell” occasionally.) But I take the third point the most seriously. I want my students better educated after 16 weeks than they were at the beginning of the semester.

One of my inspirations is Socrates, as presented in Plato’s Apology. Socrates was committed to rousing his fellow Athenians from their doze. He wanted to wake them up, educate them, get them to think more analytically. And for his trouble, the “gadfly” was arrested and put to death. I suspect I’ll meet a similar fate at some point.

My approach to philosophy in general is to learn something. I find thinkers like Husserl and Heidegger intellectually fascinating, but they don’t tell me much about the world or the human condition. My focus is political theory. It’s Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Hume, and Adam Smith on my end. That’s my crowd. When I read those thinkers, I learn something. And I go back to them again and again.

There are some people in my field for whom philosophy is a set of intellectual puzzles. They love fussing and problematizing. Essentially, they’re nerds. That’s all philosophy is for them. They read their Heidegger, and their Derrida, and their beloved “theory,” and have zero interest in the model set forth by Socrates. They are quite likely good liberals, listen to NPR, and don’t move a millimeter to the left of the New York Times.

This is largely why I despise the intellectual culture in this country. Its cravenness and cowardice are appalling and finds expression in how they approach their own subject matter.

In my classes, we cover a lot of material. In the Introduction to Philosophy classes, for example, we cover the main branches of the field. The students learn about Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Locke, Hume, and Kant. They learn about free will, qualia, some philosophy of the mind, some philosophy of religion, innatism, some very basic linguistic theory, and a bit of art philosophy. We pack it in.

But I’m talking to people—young ones. They need to take inventory of their opinions, worldviews, and prejudices. Where’d you get all that stuff? Did you author those views? Or did you pick them up from the ambient culture like mud on your shoes? Or did you get them from your father?

• What is racism?

• What is race for that matter?
• If you grow up in a racist society, are you a racist?
• Where is the liberal center?
• Is liberalism at the center?
• When you talk to someone who is dying, what’s on their mind?
• What’s not on their mind?
• Why are you here—like this college classroom?
• Why are you majoring in your chosen subject?
• Are you trying to win your father’s respect?
• If you don’t have it now, you never will.
• What’s culture?
• Not what is an example of culture, but what is culture technically?
• Can one thing be better than another?
• Are all opinions of equal value?
• Is it okay to like bad things and dislike good things?
• You say you hate modern art, but do you know what modern art is?
• Is the population responsible for the state of things?
• If the government is a national disgrace, is that our fault?
• Gen Z has a lot going for it, but where does it fall down?
• So, your sister is smart and therefore you’re dumb? Huh.
• Why do you worry about what people think of you when you cannot ever know what people think of you? Seems silly, no?

So, yes, I think it’s important to be familiar with Descartes’s contributions. Absolutely. But when are students going to have these conversations? In their biology classes? In their computer science classes? In their marketing classes? Nope. So, when would be a good time? These young adults are starving for discussion and understanding of these topics. And professors who present philosophy as some abstract intellectual exercise—which it is for them—then I feel they’re cheating their students.

Now, for sure, some students do not like this approach. They do not like being told what they don’t want to hear. Nor did they come to college to learn and have fun. Go ahead. Read all about it on RateMyProfessor.com. It’s comical.

Quick anecdote: I had a student years ago at a community junior college I teach at. He was a superb student. We talked about RateMyProfessor.com and were laughing, and he said that he read all the negative reviews of me and thought to himself, “This guy’s gotta be good.” Hilarity ensued.

All my students are now warned on the first day of class: I get off topic. We will go down side streets. I teach beyond the syllabus. And if this sounds like it will not be a good fit, just tell me, and I will personally help you find another section of this course.

What do I mean by educated? I mean you can locate yourself in culture and history. You’ll need to know what culture is, and you’ll need to know something about history. The goal is to see your present context and hopefully achieve some critical distance so you can inspect what you’re soaking in. This is what it means to be educated.

Expertise don’t count. Acquired work knowledge doesn’t count. Those will make you proficient in your line of work, yes, but they will not make you educated.

My friend Leah (always with this Leah character!) recently asked me for a reading list. She is a beast of a reader—and annoyingly probably reads twice as fast as I do. So, I gave her the list and she replied, “In what order?” [sigh] … I therefore ordered the list. (She can be very demanding.) I thought I would include the list here if folks were looking for such a thing:

• Noam Chomsky, How the World Works
• Frans de Waal, The Bonobo and the Atheist
• Christopher Boehm, Moral Origins
• Jonathan Haidt, The Righteous Mind
• Gregory Harms, No Politics, No Religion?
• Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States
• Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson, Winner-Take-All Politics
• Stephen Kinzer, Overthrow
• Steven Pinker, The Language Instinct
• Jon Lee Anderson, Che Guevara

Godspeed. If you have a thought: gharms@gmail.com

My Friend Leah—update 3

So, I called Leah on FaceTime sometime last week, and she was sitting next to her pal Kaiden (not real name). I got the feeling something was off, and “Leah” was smiling in a strange way. I suspected a switch.

I therefore said to Kaiden, “Kaiden, could you maybe give us a minute?” Then Kaiden gestured toward “Leah” and said, “This is Bailee.” I said, “Um … okay … never mind.” So, Bailee has “gone public” and was chatting with everyone. This filled me with delight. This is a major step forward.

We kept chatting, and I said to Bailee, “I do not mean to embarrass you in front of Kaiden, and I have not told you this today, but I love you.” Bailee then yelled, “Hey, Kaiden, come here!” I said, “Wait, I thought he was sitting right there.” Kaiden then came over and Bailee asked me to repeat what I had said. I then repeated the “I love you” part. Then there’s a long strange pause, and Kaiden says, “… Me??” We exploded with laughter.

Leah is coming home, finally. Her stay was cut a bit short because her team here felt it was time. Why is this? Because as nice as the facility is, they are ill-equipped to provide Leah the care she needs. She does not need coping strategies for Christ’s sake. There were other indications that the facility has advertised services they could not deliver.

The counselor—who studied acting—at an “alumni night” brought attention to Leah’s DID in a group. He turned her into the bearded lady and made her disorder into a party trick. Others joined in. This deeply saddened Leah and seriously angered me. This is why I am protective of Leah. She is not an oddity or curiosity. This counselor has only dealt with two DID patients. Two?? I know more about DID than he does.

There was also the instance of coercing her into taking medication to inhibit switching—by the same person. This ignored the treatment plan that was put together by other qualified staff—the whole reason why she was there. Inhibiting switching is not the point at all. Leah will always have the parts that she has. The goal is to get them to coordinate and balance the ”system”

Despite saying daily that she wanted to come home, she is sad to leave. She feels on some level that it is her fault. It is not. And I have explained this to her on a number of occasions. There were some good things that took place there. But the minus column won out. Leah must say goodbye to her goats and pigs.

But it will be a joy to have her home. I have Christmas gifts for her. She says she knows what they are. “No you don’t!” “Yes, I do!” “Do not!” (You know the routine.)

When she gets back we’re also going to White Fence Farm to eat. This is one of my happy places. I love WFF. Sure, the fried chicken is superb, but it’s the “relishes”: the cottage cheese, pickled beets, bean salad, coleslaw (made with vinegar), and their legendary corn fritters. So, we’re headed there. And they have goats and alpacas! Sadly, no pigs.

And for Christmas I have a couple nights reserved at the Peninsula hotel. I had reservations at the Ritz-Carlton, but the Peninsula is more my scene. (Once a year, I must stay in a luxury hotel; I just have to scratch that itch; some people go to Florida or the Wisconsin Dells, I go to five-star hotels.) Leah’s family is going to come up and swim. I don’t look forward to much anymore (awww!), but I am looking forward to that. It’s gonna be a gas.

But mostly, I’m just eager to see Leah. I miss her. She has become such a central figure in my life. The universe usually has a middle finger in my face, but it did me a solid when it arranged my collision with Leah. Thanks, universe.

I told her, if she did guess my presents, to just act surprised. I’ll know, but I’ll appreciate it.

[Photo by Leah]

Dissociative Disorder

Given my friendship with Leah, dissociative identity disorder has become part of my life. Like my other preoccupations (e.g., the Middle East), the ignorance on the subject is shocking and ubiquitous. Please watch this video, and pay particular attention to the vocabulary.

I really like the lead interviewee, Amanda. And the warmth and humanity of this video is a joy to watch.

Just wonderful.

Intelligence

I tell my students: “I don’t care how smart I am, so it’s safe to say I don’t care how smart you are.” And I don’t. I could not care less.

I also tell them the best students in the university—as a cohort—are the nursing majors. Now, is this because nursing majors are the smartest people on campus? There is no reason to conclude that.

It’s because nursing majors—again, as a cohort—work the hardest. They come to class prepared, the PDF is printed out and highlighted in three colors, they take reams of notes, they ask questions, they’re engaged.

I have had students with stratospheric IQs who couldn’t think their way out of a cardboard box—if it was open. Sure, they can do marvelous things in the physics department, but give some of them an excerpt from Plato’s Republic, and they have nothing to say.

What matters is hard work and a sense of curiosity.

IQ is a thin segment on the intelligence spectrum. It means you’re good at math, probably chess, and you do well on standardized tests. And that’s about it. It does not mean you’ll master the violin quickly and well; it does not mean you’ll become a good painter or artist. Maybe it will help with language acquisition.

However, I know a retired professor who can barely do simple math. If you asked him to add a small list of single-digit numbers in his head, he would likely begin sweating. But he taught himself Greek so he could read Plato in the original; and he also taught himself Russian so he could read Dostoevsky in the original. He also knows French and Italian. So, he’s not smart because he can’t do math? You try learning Russian to the point that you can read The Brothers Karamazov in the original, and then send me an email telling me how long it took you.

Intelligence is a spectrum that allows for myriad abilities. I know a gent who, in a thirty-minute conversation on the phone will five times get me to think, “Holy shit,” because he just combined Aristotle with a potato chip commercial and created a novel insight into the human condition. He’s lousy at chess, by the way.

For that matter, so am I. My strengths do not lie in math, or chess, or standardized tests. I know my strengths, and I play to them. I don’t much care about what I suck at—which is a very long list of things. My IQ is probably not very interesting.

And this used to bother me. Why did it bother me? Because in this culture, IQ = smart. If you crush the ACT or SAT, congratulations, you’re smart. It’s official. And as a young man, this really ate me up. It wasn’t until much later that I realized the difference and how my strengths lie elsewhere on the spectrum. Now I’m relaxed and do not care about intelligence at all.

It doesn’t enter into my thinking. Sure, what geniuses can do is really interesting—and again, this includes an array of abilities. Michael Jordan was a genius. Simone Biles? Genius. Are they geniuses the same way Isaac Newton was? No. Or Noam Chomsky? Or Bobby Fisher, for that matter?

In my sweet, short 53 years, I have met one—one—genius. I had the privilege to sit with Noam Chomsky in his office at MIT. He is not normal. Intellectually, he could bury me a hundred feet deep. He can read faster than I do. He’s got a better memory than I do. He’s analytically sharper than I am. He’s analytically faster than I am. All down the line. He has both intellectual intelligence and a high IQ. He’s got both and lots of each. Like I said, he’s not normal.

But what makes him fascinating is his work ethic and his moral precision. His sense of justice is nothing short of inspiring. One could say his moral intelligence is as high as his other ones.

This is not to say “Everybody’s smart!” There’s a spectrum, so just pick where you are on it, and hurray, you’re smart! Nope. This is next door to the book smart/street smart distinction. This is also another case of “Everybody gets a trophy!” You just pick your flavor of smart, and Bob’s your uncle. No, sadly some folks are just intellectually unremarkable. Some folks are strong, some are not. Some are really good looking, some are not. God doesn’t deal with both hands. So, if you are intellectually less than vibrant, maybe you’re really handy at something else. You are. Everyone’s good at something. And I believe that to my bones.

But what I do not buy is that IQ is the measure of a human being. This is utter nonsense. “Mensa takes no stand on politics, religion or social issues,” they proudly trumpet on their website. Wow. Curious that an organization built on self-congratulation announces to the world their cowardice and low moral intelligence.

If we attend to the writings of antiquity—Plato, Aristotle, Seneca, Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, Confucius, et al.—we learn again and again that what matters is what kind of person you are and how you live your life. One might also consult the teachings of Jesus, the early Jewish scholars, the Muslim hadith, and the founding gurus of Sikhism. They all say the same thing: live an upright life, show compassion, and care for your fellow human beings.

As to how smart you are? I categorically don’t care.

Is Ignorance Bliss?

I got into a very good discussion with a student about the ignorance-is-bliss assertion. I then got into another discussion of it (sort of) with my friend Leah and her friend (and my friend) Kaiden (which I forgot to mention is not his real name). They asked me one night to explain my analysis, but I was lazy and enjoying just hanging out on FaceTime; I did not feel like going into professor mode. “I’m the laziest devil to ever stand in shoe leather.” —Sherlock Homes

So, is ignorance bliss? My initial response is to say no, that ignorance is ignorance. There’s nothing particularly blissful about it. But then folks will point out that not being ignorant brings with it a certain set of woes. If I am aware of all the bad in the world, it’s going to have a depressing effect. I suppose that is partly true.

But I would suggest that we take a closer look at the word “bliss.” The question is then: Are the people unburdened by the harder things in life happier? Does bliss = happiness? And if it does, what kind of happiness are we talking about?

There is having fun at a party happiness. This happiness, I would argue—as would Plato and Aristotle—that this happiness is pleasurable. It’s thin. It’s here today, gone tomorrow. In a sense, it’s cheap. Laughing your head off at the party is surely enjoyable. But it lacks depth. It does not enrich your life.

The happiness I would say that has greater depth, one that does indeed offer enrichment, is the happiness the Greeks called eudaimonia. This is a deep, contemplative, abiding happiness. It is a long-term investment.

This is what philosopher John Stuart Mill is talking about in his essay on utilitarianism when he says that it is better to be Socrates unsatisfied than a pig or a fool satisfied. Mill is pointing out that it is easy to satisfy a pig or a fool. It takes almost nothing. But for Socrates, it’s three steps forward, two steps back: he wrestles with intellectual problems, things weigh on him. It’s not cheap and easy happiness. Yet, is the fool happier? Sitting on his barstool, getting high while playing video games all day?

I would say the fool is less alive, that he or she is doing something less than living. They are, in a sense, hiding from the world. They fear being connected to the world. They, like the fool, are children—just tall ones. Becoming educated and informed is to march toward eudaimonia. It connects you to the world. Furthermore, it accentuates your responsibility as a person living in the world, as someone embedded in a society. Adults confront their responsibility; cowards and fools and children evade it.

So, is ignorance bliss? I would say ignorance is weakness. Would we prefer weakness over strength? Because when we say ignorance is bliss, that is what we are saying. We are saying ignorance is pleasurable and preferred. We are saying it’s better to be a child than an adult. It’s better to hide from responsibility; it’s better to be disconnected; it’s better to be a coward.

Only strength can lead us to eudaimonia. Ignorance is not bliss. It’s the opposite.

My Friend Leah—update 2

As you can see, I have included a photo of Leah with her two friends. I thought it might be a good image to obscure her identity and post with the next update. Leah came up with the butterfly stratagem.

Leah is approaching week two at her residential facility. It’s been a mixed experience. The facility itself is beautiful; one couldn’t ask for nicer accommodations. But Leah’s situation is, to say the least, unique. We were skeptical if the staff there could meet her needs. However, that seems to be improving.

We had an interesting evening earlier in the week. I received a phone call at around 7 or 8 pm from a number I did not recognize. Upon answering, the woman on the other end said, “Is Craigory there?” I replied, “Who’s speaking?” But I was thinking, “Did she just call me Craigory??” Leah calls me Craigory as a nickname (long story), and that is how I appear in her phone. I said it was me, and she put me on the phone with the … EMT.

“Hi, this is Jessie, and I’m from the fire department.” I tersely replied, “Why is the fire department there?” Jessie said the staff found Leah on the floor, that she’d had a panic attack, and called 911. Jessie asked me, “Does Leah have any medical issues we should be aware of?” I said that there were too many to condense into a quick chat.

After requesting I be left on speaker phone to listen in, Jessie began asking Leah the usual questions: “Leah, do you know what day it is? How many quarters are there in a dollar?” I could tell the way Leah was mumbling that something was wrong. I said, “Jessie, um, she has dissociative identity disorder, and you might not be talking to Leah.” Jessie replied, “Good to know.”

Her vitals were fine, and I spoke with Leah shortly thereafter. She had indeed switched. Jessie was not talking to Leah.

Leah recently entered a new phase of “twilight,” as I call it. Sometimes people with dementia can get worse when the sun goes down. Leah has been having such difficulties, despite not having dementia. After 3 pm, she can bottom out, start having suicidal thoughts—called “suicidal ideation”—and switch; it’s up for grabs. Sometimes she’s fine. It just depends.

Last night was fair to middling. She was taking her frustrations out on a floor-mounted punching bag. It looks like a speed bag that wobbles on a thin stand. Leah wasn’t wearing full boxing gloves, but smaller training gloves. I was really proud of her. She looked kinda bad ass, and I could see that it was doing her a lot of good.

She had not eaten much that day, so I was on her case (as I usually am) about getting at least a small amount of food in her. There was much discussion over a pear—too much any one pear deserves.

So, she made her way to the kitchen. There she bumped into one of her buddies, Kaiden. He is a younger fellow, quite funny, and irritatingly has fabulous hair. He is very sharp.

At one point he was telling me something and used the phrase “with regular frequency.” He then corrected himself and said “Those two words are the same, never mind.” Later I said, “Kaiden, I don’t mean to be obnoxious, but can I tell you something?” He said, “Sure.” I pointed out that regular and frequency are not synonymous. He very quickly said, “Ah yes, regular is consistency and frequency is speed of consistency.” I became the proud professor.

I really like Kaiden. But his hair I’ll just have to learn to tolerate.

On balance, Leah is doing well. She wants to come home. Being gone is hard for her. I try to be supportive, but sometimes I just offer platitudes and become tiresome instead of reassuring.

When she leaves, she’s going to sorely miss her new four-legged friends.

Oh, I have a nickname for Leah, as well: it’s Cuckoo Bird. She did not love it at first, but now she does. At least I’m 78 percent certain.

Leah the Auteur

 My friend Leah sent me this video she made today. She put a very lovely song over it, and I must say it had me almost emotional. Maybe it’s the song, maybe it’s my connection to Leah. But I found it meditative and sweet. I just wanted to share it.

Curious there’s a fence, because usually Leah is right in the mix with the animals. But there it is.

I hope you enjoy the video.

Blogger is not processing the video. See my Instagram profile.