Beyond the City

If we think of academia as a big city, then for many years I lived near the center of the city. During that time I often loved the city. But at other times I also felt stifled in the city. I longed to break free. Then four years ago I decided to do it, and started my journey out of the city. At first I thought just because I was no longer an academic I was out of the city. But this wasn't the case. I was moving away from the center of the city, on my way out of it. But for the past couple of years I have still been within the broader realm of the city, just now on its outskirts, which is the philosophy blogosphere.

And for the past six months I have had this blog, which has been mainly addressed to the philosophy profession. Most of my traffic has probably been academic philosophers who got to my blog through other philosophy blogs. So in these past months I have been like a person who got on a soap-box at the edge of the city talking about some of the problems with the city. I have had some great conversations with some people who, for various reasons, are themselves on, or feel as if they are on, the outskirts of the city. A few times a lot of people came to listen to me, mainly because I was saying what seemed to be personal things about some people at the center of the city. But as I stopped saying such things, the crowd dwindled again as they went back to their busy lives within the city.

As I realize that while writing this blog I am on the outskirts of the city, and so within a space which is still oriented towards the city, I feel again the pull to explore new lands beyond the city. The pull which started my movement out of the city four years ago. Out there is where my future, and this has been a stop along the way.

Why has it been so hard for me to leave the city? Why have I not gotten beyond the outskirts even in these past few years? I realize now it is partly because of my anxiety as an immigrant. I took shelter in the city because I was afraid of the wars happening outside the city: the fighting, the distrust, the anger of race relations, religion and reason, the clash of cultures. The city seemed to be a safe haven from such fighting, and that was its initial and greatest appeal to me. But now the fighting has entered the city itself, and it is no longer a safe haven. The fighting outside the city is starting to happen inside the city, and it will happen until it will be the same fighting inside and outside the city. That was what I have been trying to say from my soap-box on the outskirts of the city: Behold, those within the city, you are no longer immune, the fighting has entered the city gates and no one will be spared; clinging to the illusion of peace will only make it more painful when the illusion breaks, as it will for certain at some point in the coming future. Of course, I don't have to say this, as it is already evident to many within the city. I said it nonetheless for myself, so that I could hear it.

We live at a time when our lands are ravaged by internal war. Even the city which seemed immune is getting more and more caught up in that fighting. Can peace be found in such a time? Where can it be found? Each person has to find the peace within themselves, which can contribute to the peace outside. I venture beyond the city and its outskirts as I follow the voice of peace as it speaks to me.

The Value of Sharing Experiences

In my previous post I state how from now on I won't name people when writing of my experiences. Of course, this issue would be moot if I didn't write about my experiences at all. One might say, "Why talk about your experiences? What is the point? Do philosophy. Talk about the ideas. Be strong, and move beyond your particular experiences." I think this is implausible both personally and philosophically.

Personally, sharing experiences is a way of building community, highlighting commonalities, engaging in practices of cathartic release, and often shining light on aspects which might otherwise remain hidden and buried. To share experiences is to articulate them, and to articulate them is to gain power over them, rather than to feel stuck in having the experience passively.

Philosophically, I think if people don't share their experiences and feel that that they are being heard, then that affects how intellectual discussion itself happen. One way to make progress is to start with sharing experiences, and then working towards broader intellectual issues in the course of trying to understand and engage with each other. If one doesn't in a vulnerable way share one's pain, that pain doesn't magically disappear. It gets articulated into whatever modes of communication are available, and if the only modes of available communication are intellectual debate (such as colloquia or seminar discussions), then the pain will get channeled into the way those debate happens. 

I believe this is why often academic philosophy debates can seem harsh, pointed. It is not because there is something warrior like about rational conversation. It is because academic philosophy doesn't have many institutional structures for sharing the various kinds of pain one might have in academic contexts, and so they get channeled into the way one asks questions, responds to objections or puts down opposing views, etc. In this way, pain that hasn't had a chance to be processed or expressed in other contexts contorts the ways in which intellectual conversations themselves take place. Human interactions are human interactions. Whether they take place in conferences, offices or living rooms. If family members doesn't have a way to express and process their pains, they will take it out at the dinner table or on family trips. If colleagues don't have a way to express and process their pains, they will take it out, in subtle and not so subtle ways, in classrooms, faculty meetings and blog exchanges.

Apology

One of my aims when I started this blog three months ago was to think through my experiences in academia. In writing my experiences, I faced the question: should I name the philosophers who were part of those experiences? The few times I really thought about this question, I sensed in myself a defiant "why not?" I told myself: academics are public figures, and what I am talking about are events which happened in classes, office hours, or professional, social spaces, and if I felt pain in those moments which were due to deep structural features of my education, then nothing about those events should be hidden. I felt that I had hidden so much from myself and from others for so long, and I was intent that I would never hide anything ever again. I didn't want to act out of anger, but I also didn't want to self-censor myself.

Still, once in a while the thought would come to me, "I wonder how the people I name might feel if they read my posts?" Sensing the budding guilt of that question and intent on not feeling controlled by it, I told myself that perhaps they might feel bad, but that is the price to be paid for breaking through the silence in the profession. Sure they might feel pain, but is it any more than the pain I felt back then? I convinced myself that this wasn't me speaking from anger, but just me making an objective calculation how pain caused by my writing might be a necessity for the greater goal I was hoping to achieve.

The comments section of this post brought home to me that the above line of thinking was somewhat disingenuous. I have now come to think that so easily justifying causing others pain is itself a way of being anger. Seeing this a few days ago made me think about what I was doing on this blog. My hope has been to contribute to philosophical discourse in a way which helps to diffuse pain and anger, which enables differing sides to make progress and come to mutual respect. I believe such cathartic dialogue requires each side to not overlook their own impulses towards intellectual violence. As I realize the anger I let myself be guided by in some of my posts, I see I have let myself off the hook too easily.

I would like to apologize to the people I named on this blog who I knew personally from my time in academia. I realize it must have caused pain, and for that I am sorry. I say this not because I take back what I wrote of my experiences, nor because I think anyone expects me to take it back. I say this because I am sure it can feel like one is being attacked out of the blue, since I never told them I was going to mention our shared experiences in this way. I wrote about the experiences as if they were simply my experience. Because of my alienation and pain, and because I was still seeing them to some extent as my teachers who are impermeable, I didn't see that these experiences were not just my experiences, but our experiences, that there is another side to the story. I didn't mean to deny this reality. I am sorry if it came across as if I did.
 

I would like to apologize as well to people who personally know the people I named on this blog. As with most teacher-student relations, or interactions between senior and junior colleagues, my interactions with the people I named were a small part of their lives. Not small as in meaningless or without humanity and genuine care. But small as in I am one among many students, and teaching is one among many professional activities, and being a professional is one among many other activities in their lives. With each such expanding circle, obviously there are more and more people who share experiences with that person. Many of those people's experiences naturally capture better than my experience who the people I named are as people. What I experienced was one facet of one activity of the people I named. Certainly there are many more people who are better situated to see many more facets and many more activities of the people I named. I didn't mean to deny this fact. I am sorry for any pain I caused for suggesting otherwise.

Past Blog

I had a blog from April to November of 2002. It was my first blog. In it I was trying to make sense of my leaving academia, and in particular, to figure out what kind of a positive philosophy project I can have outside academia. Not that different from this blog.

 

Though at a certain point while writing that blog I came upon a familiar feeling: the sense that what I was doing was somehow problematic, that it is better if I didn't write this way, that maybe it is a form of self-indulgence. That I need to let go of it if I am to move forward. So I closed the blog. Made it private. Then deleted it. Nonetheless, luckily, I kept copies of the posts in my email.

 

Seeing again my old prospectus from a dozen years ago, I was reminded of my blog from two years ago. It made me wonder: why in my life have I had this inclination to keep deleting or throwing things away? Why do I at those moments have the feeling that if I am to grow I need to destroy any semblance of that past? Is this pathological? Or is there some other explanation?

 

One kind of explanation is that I am a perfectionist. But this doesn't ring true to me. I never had a problem letting others see what I was writing, even when they were in draft form. Nor did I have any worries that others would steal my ideas. It always seemed to me that ideas are communal property, and it doesn't matter who publishes what, or who gets where first. Sharing the ideas, acting on them, collaborating is what matters.

 

Another explanation, which seems more true to me, is that I have lived my life so far with a slew of schisms. American/Indian. Religious/Secular. Professional/non-professional. Eastern/Western. Schisms which have often felt so sharp and so deep that it seemed impossible to reconcile the divisions or to bring them together into a unified whole. Most of my intellectual life has been an attempt at trying to bridge these gaps, heal the schisms. Not primarily to help the world or to do good. But mainly, and firstly, to help myself. To heal myself from these schisms. To find a voice I can claim as my own, which can sound with the unity of my being, rather than just as an expression of this or that side of the divide.