December 23, 2004
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topic: brainwashed by ignorance
In the past few months, I’ve learned a few things. There’s still much for me to learn. Before I learn too much, I want to remember my ignorance as I see it begin to wash away. Due to various factors in my first 22 years, here’s how I viewed the world at the time I graduated college (note…only a few of these beliefs have changed, give me a year and i’ll have read a bit more and won’t be such an ignoramous).
US = good, policeman of the world, fights evil, brings aid to those in need
Palestinians, Saddam Hussein, North Korea, Cuba, = back countries with bad leaders
Communism = bad, evil, opposite of democracy
Socialism = the opposite of capitalism
Capitalism = the economic system we have
Vietnam = a beautiful country I’d like to visit, and a country we fought for some reason in the ’60′s and everyone protested against it because peace is good, war is bad
China and Russia = communist at some point, but we have no problems with them today
India and Pakistan = hate each other, trying to nuke each other
Canada = hockey, Gretzky, Molson beer, not as cool as America
National debt = ???
Social Security = a type of tax, and the money you get when you’re older
South Africa – I knew a bit about it because I’d met South Africans, but at a party last weekend I had a girl ask me, “is that a country, or do you mean you went to the southern part of Africa?”
I told my internship supervisor today I wasn’t enjoying my experience, or at least, wasn’t getting too much from it. It’s been a month now, we spoke for maybe 45min., the longest we’ve talked ever. He still hasn’t read through my book, which doesn’t upset me so much as it prevents him from understanding me. He critiqued my article I submitted about higher ed. and democracy. “This thing is hardly readable, definately not publishable.” I’ll admit, i’m not the strongest writer, and obviously if he didn’t get the point, my writing wasn’t clear. But…as I explained it, I realized he still wasn’t getting the point, because he sees the problem differently than me. He’s a very reasonable person, and we had a good conversation. My article discussed those students who slip through the cracks, who suffered in K-12, are unmotivated, and suffer through college, by the same system of boring classes, irrelevant assignments, and the only motivation being grades. My supervisor said, “I know many motivated students,” and I had already countered this in my article, by saying there are many who do well, and then returning to my argument that we need to help those who aren’t. I realized then, first of all, that I need to work for a movement that already believes my views rather than trying to convince others. I also realized that I had made my point again, that people in higher ed. talk about college in this abstract way, without realizing that there’s pleanty of students out there as ignorant as me, who need something drastic, not just a random program here or there.
It was a disappointing moment, but a clarifying one. I now feel little obligation to this internship, and now I have two months to just focus on learning and reading, and I’m excited for that. I’ll still show up maybe 2 times a week, because I believe my supervisor can still help me focus my ideas. He did put some support behind my desire to combine Outward Bound with efforts to get people more interested in civic activities, so, my only real project is to develop a model that I can propose to Outward Bound when I start working in March, and in the process to educate myself about what “civic skills,” can be taught.
I also began talking about my goal of being a school critic in the future. I asked if there were Alfie Kohn’s, Jonathan Kozol’s, or other K-12 type critics doing the same thing in higher ed. My supervisor couldn’t think of any. I said, “that’s my dream. To be one of those people, recognized for my criticisms of higher ed.” The response I got was that I would be best served by having experience with the system and where it doesn’t work. “I went to college for 4 years, I know why it doesn’t work.” I plan on reading more, and may eventually get a masters in Experiential Education, because it would give me credibility, connections, and further focus my thinking (plus, as an experiential program, i wouldn’t be confined to a classroom and could essentially get a masters for working for Outward Bound and contemplating what’s wrong w/ higher ed., as I’m doing already). I also said, “it’s not all about credentials. You can’t tell me Michael Moore hasn’t been successful simply through his own knowledge, experience, and passion.” That’s the angle I’m going for, in fact, I think the layman approach is needed. Just because you have reserach, doesn’t make something true for someone else. What generally convinces someone that something is true, is there own common sense. Research doesn’t hurt, but as I tried to argue that gap years are a great way to help students see the world and mature before going to college, I was told, “is that your opinion? where’s the research?” It’s true because I’ve spoken to those who have experienced it…so it’s their opinion. I’m sure there’s research, but I don’t plan to spend a lifetime running tests to prove that if you get an opportunity to go abroad and then go to college, you’ll have a greater understanding of the world than if you didn’t.
peace,
-dan
Comments (3)
appears you are discovering many truths as I have…
That is a whole lot of stuff you’ve dropped on my comment box. I’ll try to get to all of that really soon, but I’ve not got time at this moment.
But of course, interest in Maoism is something I don’t want to ignore, and I’ll definitely address what you said very soon.
In the meanwhile, I’ll point you to a few other essays in Mao’s writings that may help to answer some of your questions about On the Correct Handling of Contradictions before I can get around to addressing them personally:
On Contradiction (Mao’s major work on dialectics), Combat Liberalism, On New Democracy (one of Mao’s most important works in political philosophy), Talk on Questions of Philosophy (important for a clearer understanding of Mao’s dialectical materialism), and On the Ten Major Relationships (a look at applied dialectics). For specific economic questions, I would refer you to Mao’s Critique of Soviet Economics, and The Shanghai Textbook on Political Economy (a Red Guard text from the Cultural Revolution not available online, but published in english as Maoist Economics).
As for your question about China’s continuance of Mao’s policies: After Mao died in 1976 it was only a short time before Deng Xiaoping (cf. his works), who was purged as one of the main party figures taking the capitalist road during the Cultural Revolution, took power and instituted his own policy. He was a major figure of Chinese “pragmatist” economics, which staunchly opposed leftist economic policy, fought for the NEP in the backlash of the Great Leap Forward (during which millions starved because of natural disaster and the total withdrawl of aid from the USSR). After seizing power, he purged the “Gang of Four” (the party leaders of the Cultural Revolution), though when this is discussed, often five fingers are held up to denote that Mao too was posthumously purged by Dengist policy (for more on this, see the book, And Mao Makes 5). He changed policy drastically, instituting a policy of “one country, two systems” in opposition to Maoism’s focus on “two-line struggle.” The differences here may appear subtle, but actually run to the core of the difference between Maoism and what is offically called “Marxism-Leninism Mao Zedong Thought and Deng Xiaoping Theory” in China. The difference is as important as the “class struggle in philosophy” between the interpretation of dialectics as “one divides into two” as is the radical Maoist line of struggle, and “two fuse into one” which is the liberal conservative line. It amounts to a stifling of the ”continuous revolution” in order to preserve the status quo. China has sense gone from being one the most democratic countries in the world to being one of the most exploitative. Now they have become staunch trade partners with the United States (a process that Mao began as part of a strategy to unite with one barbaric enemy, the USA, to oppose another, the USSR), joined the WTO, and oppose revolutionary movements all over the globe – particularly Maoist movements. They have become no less “social imperialist” than the USSR did during the Kruschev era and after (cf. the book The Restoration of Capitalism in the USSR by the Martin Nicolaus). Currently there are an unusual number of riots taking place in China under “Market Socialism,” reflecting the intensification of class struggle there that would correspond with the sort of anguished crisis one may expect from contradictions between the entrenched pragmatist bureaucracy headed by Hu Jintao and the masses.