WVP: World View Prejudice

I was marking my first paper at 11pm last night. I was somewhat excited about it. I wonder what would they write in their first essay? The assignment stated:

Using the concept of a 'world view', identify some of the beliefs and attitudes, particularly to education and learning, that you bring to your learning now. Reflect critically on how your world view has been shaped by factors such as your gender, age or community.

It sounded like a fabulous topic, one in which a student was able to express the cultural and social context of their lives in relation to education and learning.

A 'world view' is at once ideological and subversive. This phrase demanded self-reflexivity and narrative verisimilitude. It taps onto a person's struggle with texts and ideas, theories and epistemologies to create a coherence to how one views one's everyday life. I knew that a world view exposed naturalised meanings of texts but I was not prepared for the shock I received from the first essay.

The text continued and she was struggling to connect both her life's context to education and learning. Each paragraph stood on its own without a single tether to the assignment criteria. But lo and behold, one paragraph stood stark and ominous above the rest.

The individual stated that according to her experience and knowledge, most 'people from middle eastern backgrounds' were violent and that her Christian upbringing taught her that such actions by such 'people' were wrong. She further justified that the Muslim religion believed that violence was not ethically or morally wrong; rather, Muslims believed that violence such as Jihad was a heroic act that would bathe the perpetrators in heavenly glory.

I gripped my couch and breathed in real slowly. My neck was sweating and my eyes were covered with a gossamer of exasperation.

How am I suppose to mark this?! There isn't a bloody criteria on the marking sheet or FAQ section in WebCT that deals with this! This is fucked! I'm fucked!

Disheartening doesn't come close to how I felt last night. How was I suppose to mark this paper? Where in the rule book did they say "here's how you deal with racial discrimination". I sat there for 20 minutes. I re-read the entire paper 3 times, looking for every single opportunity to discredit the essay. And I came to a conclusion.

I passed her.

Many years ago my supervisor said this to me: "Sweetheart, you're going to get one of those students sometime in your careeer. When you do, remember this: Mark the argument." I pondered her advice and I have always brushed it behind my naivity - until now. We mark the argument because we are not ideological gatekeepers of the community. But as teachers we are ideologically constructed even if our knowledge is antithetical to naturalised meanings of life. No one escapes from discourse. How do I mark the argument without being ethically challenged? How did I pass her in the face of inimicalism?

I marked the argument but with a pinch of my own discursive spite. I marked the argument but reminded myself that the words on paper were subject to misinterpretation. Her ignorance was in part her own ontological disavowal of cultural differences and that may only change through education. Finally I marked the argument knowing that people can change, people do change, even the most prejudicial of eidolons.

And so today another moment - so brief - has passed through my experience as a teacher. We are perhaps the gatekeepers of academia. But gatekeepers of what I am still uncertain.

Your Guide to Practising Independent Learning

Good evening ladies and gentlemen and welcome to the tutorial of Introduction to University Learning. Unfortunately, there are no actual classrooms for this session and you don't need to know my name.

What?

Funny you should ask. They said you are external students and there's not enough space for you in the university and also you're rich enough and don't care enough to attend classes. So, I welcome all of you again to Introduction to University Learning and I hope you would enjoy this one time only tutorial speech - if you bother reading and if Desperate Housewives is not showing on TV.

Today, I would like to briefly address the Guide to Practising Independent Reading. I hope all of you have read Marshall's Learning Companion. If you haven't, oh well... don't worry about it. No one would know anyway. But you could check out the WebCT for more information. There's a video that came with your package. Alternatively, you could download it from the web. I apologise that we don't move much on the video because the camera is stationary and also it's a bit monotonous. But you could always have chips, chilli sauce and sour cream while watching the video. Also, you can forward or just slide the bar on your Windows Media Player if you think we're boring the crap out of you.

What?

I'm sorry. You need Internet connection for this class. Legs are not required.

Where was I? Oh yes. Guide to Practising Independent Learning. The first point you should note on your Notepad is...

I'm sorry, what?

Oh. Just press Start on the lower left of your screen and then press on the "All Programs" button and then click on "Accessories" and then click on Notepad.

I'm sorry. Yes, the first point you should note is that Independent Learning does not require you to attend those drafty and, occasionally musky, classrooms anymore. Taken to the logical conclusion to the word "independent", you obviously don't need a tutor either. Independent learning requires you to read the 146 pages of Study Guide, 212 pages of Reader, 344 pages of that fabulous Learning Companion, and also another 293 pages of A Guide to Learning Independently. I know, I know. It's a lot of reading for 1st years but you'll get used to it. And yes, the last book sounds very much like the Learning Companion but you can always email your complaints to the coordinator. I'm not sure when she will reply but no harm trying love.

What?

Oh dear. Please refer that question to the FAQ section in WebCT. Tutors are not required to know any spontaneous questions that you might have due to the highly accessible and comprehensive FAQ section. If you are still unsure, you can email your queries to the coordinator of the unit. Again, please give at least two days for a reply to your answer as we get many emails a day.

The second point I would like to address in independent learning is that as external students you should realise that the word "communication" does not require face-to-face interaction. You may MSN me if you would like but...

What is it again?

Please download MSN on MSN.com and follow the instructions. The rest of it is in the "help" section of the website. If you are still unsure, ask your 12-year-old neighbour.

Er... oh yes. You may communicate with me via MSN but I am not online 24/7. That's because I have a life and it would be serendipitous when we meet online. Alternatively, you may email me. Remember - two days.

Now, communication is a funny concept. One in which you should not bother too much with. Remember that the only tools you need in communication are: home PC or laptop, keyboard, mouse, fingers, eyes, and occasionally your ears. I repeat that communication for external students do not require legs as your parents or your partner could wheel you to the computer. Also, you are not required to have any other physical properties of your body to work while on the desktop or laptop. Breathing, however, is a necessity.

One could communicate via blogs as well. This rather handy invention by computer nerds allows you to type in a post and have friends and/or strangers reply. But unfortunately, the computer master in our university has yet to finish World of Warcraft and is unable to set-up the blog function in WebCT. Please check our website for future...

Yes?

World of Warcraft is a computer game under the genre called MMORPG. Please don't ask the "what" question again because I have been sitting here for one hour and I would very much like to have a smoke soon.

And finally ladies and gentlemen - or whatever you are out there - I would just like to take your attention to the assessments of your unit. There are 5 components and all of them are outlined in detail in your study guide. Please do not email me questions pertaining to your assignment questions. My Inbox is 97% full and I can only take short messages. Again, I would refer you to the FAQ section of WebCT. Also, please be aware that you may send your assignments to me by email or fax or post. It is much more convenient than the old method of assignment boxes in university. Of course, the downside is that if your data is lost or corrupted, or if the mailperson has an epileptic fit during the course of your parcel's journey, we might require you to send it again - that's if we bother emailing you. Remember, you are adults and these are your responsibilities. Please read our legal policies in WebCT.

My dear students, it has been my utmost pleasure typing this to you. I hope you would have an enjoyable, intellectual journey in this unit. Please do not hessitate to ask any questions that you might have although we are not required to answer those questions in full.

Have a good day, or evening, or whatever.

:)

Your Tutor.

Blind Faith and Religion

Philosophy has no end in view save truth; faith looks for nothing but obedience and piety.

Baruch Spinoza, Tractatus Theologico-Politicus (1670)

I went to the Riverside Church at 6pm and was greeted by the most expensive and theatrical performance of religious rite. I am not a Christian and I have never been. I do not like religion and I am antagonistic to the structuring of faith. I loathe the dictation of morality and ethics under the pantheon of God's spirit and power. The hypocriticisms and contradictions are enough to make one vomit. But hear me - I have been challenged.

I left the church feeling somewhat confused. I did not agree with most of the things Phillip (the pastor) said on stage. He spoke about hope and he spoke about trust in God; he expounded on the errors of humanism - against existentialism - and the virtues of faith. I allowed his words to course through my heated mind - except for his belief in the absolutism of faith. According to Phillip, faith in God is also the affirmation to Absolutism between good and evil, right and wrong. The fundamental binaries within morality enables us to separate between the right-thing-to-do and the sinful wrong-things-to-do. If only he knew the prejudice and inimicalism of ideologies. By positing the Christian faith as knowing the right-thing-to-do, all other faiths must be doing wrongfulness. By valorising the spirit of goodness in Christianity, he siphoned other religions and philosophies into the sewage of wrongful-doers. But perhaps the greatest error in the Absolutism of Christianity rests in the ignorance of ideological murders. The apartheid of racial discrimination entrenched the ideologies of Whiteness and Blackness into the veins of African politics and social discourses. Dichotomous ideologies of colonialism became the heart of darkness that sapped at the poverty and desperateness of the East so as to fuel Ford cars of the Industrial West. The Absolutism of God's faith in which Phillip expounded was and still is the mantra of death for so many crouched in the shadow of Christian righteousness.

But as much as I disagreed with his sermon, I saw a desperateness in the audience of this Pentacostal faith. They wanted to believe and they wanted to swallow all that was offered as spiritual guidance to their lives. I saw arms waiving in the air, affirming their need to know, to believe, to have faith in that which they called God. And to reach God's grace, Phillip stood as the guardian of Its heaven, the interpretor of Its words, and the usher of Its might. For me, this night was a questioning and exposition to the form of 'blind faith'.

For Heidegger, faith is 'absolutely the mortal enemy' of philosophy. Heidegger saw faith as the asphyxiation of epistemic and phenomenological challenges that formed one's existential Being. Faith is a dirty word in the field of philosophy; 'blind faith' is a cancer to the freedom of questioning. According to Heidegger, Christianity and faith is somewhat of a contradiction. Christian theology is a positive science because theology employs conceptual interpretative tools to make sense of God and metaphysics. As such, a methodology of meaning-construction places Christianity within the sciences which tries to understand what and why God is. Christianity and faith is anti-thetical for the science of theology is grounded in questions. Faith does not need to know what or why God is because faith only needs to know faith. In other words, the expression 'blind faith' signals to the death of the senses and turns faith into the only sense that is needed to hear and see God. This re-construction of the physical to metaphysical sensory power effectively eludes any questioning of faith's fallibility. One cannot be attacked for a 'wrong' faith or erroneous faith when faith itself is an unquestionably private experience - a perception.

Spinoza said that faith 'looks for nothing but obedience and piety'. I wish to argue that faith does not look for obedience and piety even if it does enable the act of looking. Faith is a sense - it is a faculty, a perception, a stimulus to sensation and desire. Faith acts as a purposeful organ to seek but needs no other extraneous organs or senses to clout its view. To have faith is to rely on a perceptual acuity that knows God exists; that God is within, near or outside the individual. Such faith is blinding; it turns off our eyes, ears, nose, tongue and skin. Blind-faith destroys all other senses and in turn makes itself the only perceptual sense that could seek this metaphysical Being.

Through this understanding, religion has no hold on faith; that both faith and religion are incompatible even if they may be somewhat interrelated. Religion manoeuvres a structured and ideological pathway for people to understand faith. Religion hopes to direct and temper with the blinding force of faith. People who believe in religion has no faith but only the false belief in the security of boundaries. People with faith need not believe for they already perceive with the senses of faith.

Faith to me has no Absolutism. To state that faith produces the knowledge of 'right' and 'wrong' is to fall into a trap of immiscible contradiction. Remember that faith is not structured by ideologies or discourses of a religious institution. Faith is a perception, a faculty - a sense. That is the power of faith in which no amount of talking on the pulpit may justify.

At the end of the day, I was asked what faith do I have? And faith in what? I answered simply: "I have faith in a journey with no ends." It was perhaps the only certainty that I could mobilise in my life for it is not the goal at the end of the horizon that matters. It is only in the journey that faith and truth are found.

Happy New Year

It's the New Year and one is expected to give a resolution. I'm feeling rather Schopenhauer-ish about the new year. It's the same isn't it? Every year the same struggles for a job, a life, a blow-job from the common denominators of club-addicts. It's the New Year and I'm rising to it half-mast.

You see, I'm an optimist. I am. I see life in hues of briliance, occasionally marred by the texture of depression. But I am an optimist.

Who the fuck am I kidding? I'm a bloody pessimist. It's coming out of the closet all over again. "I can't help that feeling, you know, pessimist feeling..." I hear the re-written song in my head. How depressing.

I don't bother with resolutions anymore. I remember when I was in high school and I made the resolution that I would get first in class and get to the best express level. Well... life has a sense of humour. I went straight to the last express class. It's like one of those trains which calls each cabin an express cabin but the one you're in smells like the refuge for deseased animals. What could get worst? Again... life has humour. I am physiologically forced to breathe and mature and to witness the cackling cacophony of life's comic genius. It's disgusting.

Don't pray for me Australiana. Evita has intruded suddenly. I never go to church. I don't even know what the bread tastes like. Don't even ask about the wine. I'm too unholy for such blessings. A resolution perhaps to be more spiritual? Pah! I can't meditate without thinking about the cute bulge on the waiter in Norfolk and I sure as hell can't spend 2 hours of my life chanting without having an Oedipal complex with my cigarette. Nope. Spirituality is out of the damn question.

So - the resolution seems kinda stuck. The mundane possibilities of success in any resolution lies in the fact that it has to be so simple a task that one has to be almost completely stupid not to be able to fulfil. Breathing does not count. There are those however who scale up the probabilities of their resolutions to nigh impossibility. For example, masochists who intend to quit smoking or vegans who are hell bent on trying cow testicals. I don't make resolutions for this reason. It's either too simple a task that would scream pathetic or it's too difficult and painstaking. Take the middle-ground you say? Ask any fence-sitter how many concussions they've suffered in their lifetime and you'll know why the middle ground sucks. So - to hell with the resolutions.

Happy New Year? Yes, yes... there is that possibility - when I have my first orgy, with a hard-on that lasts for more than 10 minutes. No, I don't need Viagra. I need a dedicated mouth. Happy new Year? Of course. I'll take it with some salt, vinegar, English mustard and Thai chilli. I'm burning with ecstasy. Happy New Year fellas. If you have one, grab it by the balls and squeeze real hard. You never know when the next one arrives.

Happy New Year! :)