I find myself a misfortunate observer in my life. In my day, there are many things I ought to be doing, but their obligating power comes from the external, not from within. School to me has always been a great (has in large, tedious) exercise in patience. A good analogy would be learning how to study the cracks on a wall. I derive absolutely zero pleasure from these obligations, but I must do them to receive my degree. Since I go only out of obligation and not out of desire, I find myself antsy to leave class as soon as I arrive; I apply minimal effort to my coursework.
I'll be going to my French Literature I class in about half an hour. It's boring, frankly. We go around in circles, reading from the anthalogy. The professor constantly interrupts the reading to explain a point or define a vocabulary word, obliterating any kind of comprehension. I only even understand the piece by reading it again later on my own. These pieces of literature interest me zero to begin with. We spent the last few weeks reading The Song of Roland. We then had to write a five-page essay essay on it. It was torture! I found myself just pulling quotes out of the poem and placing them in a semi-coherent fashion just to get the assignment out of the way, yet it still took hours upon hours upon hours. Research and analytical writing always take me extremely long to do. It's not helped that I frequently took breaks from writing that were longer than the writing itself, but I could not sustain writing on such a dull topic. I managed to turn out almost four pages of the required five, but then I had to move on to another assignment: a two-page essay that was the take-home part of a test in my world literature class (in English for that); luckily, that writing was easier because I got to choose the topic to write about, and it wasn't so restrictive or lengthy. I actually found the frequent mentions of forebears in ancient literature boring, and I began to wonder why, and that struck my interest: Lineage is much less important in our times! So I did a comparison (actually, mostly contrast).
Most of my classes are like this. Right now in ethics, we are discussing deontology with Immanuel Kant being the prime example (with his categorical and practical imperatives). I am again frustrated by a vast difference in outlook and preferences. Duty is the weakest link in the moral chain for me. Kant reasoned that a proper sense of duty was the stamp of moral reasoning. He even went so far as to say that actions taken out of a sense of compassion or some other positive emotion, while laudable, were not explicitly moral acts (not as in immoral, but outside the domain of moral reasoning). Acting solely on a reasoned sense of duty was the mark of morality, according to Kant. In my opinion, a sense of duty is one of the last and weakest links in the chain of moral reasoning (the last chain is, is it legal/in accord with convention?). It is human nature (or at least my nature; I am too presumptuous declaring what follows for me follows for all) to orient themselves towards what gives them pleasure. In a psychically healthy, mature person, kindness, compassion, and generosity (in short, altruism) bring them pleasure; the need for a sense of duty is not found here. However, when fatigue and other stresses wrest contentment from a person's mind, that is when the need for duty comes into play—as a fallback for when the feelings aren't at their best. The rejection of one's pleasure orientation for a detached sense of duty is a condemnation to misery. I would actually be afraid of someone who only does what is moral out of a sense of duty; they are in an atrophied and profoundly disoriented state of mind.
Anyway, when all the pieces of my day come from duty rather than desire; I feel no sense of happiness or pleasure. I did not seek to take French Literature I because I enjoy reading and analyzing French literature; I took it to fulfill my degree requirements for a B.A. in French.
I feel, more than before, my environment is running against the grain of who I am such that I am stuck in obligated mode rather than enjoyment mode. The be-all-and-end-all of scholastics here at my new university seems to be one thing: careful analysis and the retreading of steps. Originality is not welcome; creativity is a second-class citizen. In your college education, you will not soar amazing intellectual heights: You will read some bland Medieval poem and apply an algorithm to solve the traveling salesperson problem; you will be expected to give correct results. Such is containment, such is imprisonment.
I do feel like telling my French professor that claimed my essay wasn't finished Tuesday in class and to e-mail him the "finished" copy to just f*** off. I did enough for me He can take off a few points; I don't mind. I get absolutely zero by analyzing the character of Ganelon, so it's all too much like writing a five-page essay on the cracks in a wall to me.
06 Oct 2005, 4:15 pm
