Apologies

I really need to do this. As incoherent as it may be, as inadequate as it may be, as unstructured and bland as it may be. I dont have the time to make an umbrella thought, I just have these points in my head.

Geological timeline, we are no stewards of earth, but citizens of a brief period of its time. maybe the moment the european decided to dominate and exploit his surroundings was when all things 'natural' needed to be sophisticated by the rational european mind. It is the same approach as was taken to slavery, to cultures of different coloured people, even towards women; all closer to nature, all needing the guidance of the only rational races on earth, who were at the time competing in the battle of who could appear more wondrous.

so inside this mere instant, we are sentient beings knowing of ourselves, with a language to express ourselves, sophisticating but limiting as it is. everything we do will likey end up as dust or ornaments in a museum of the next species which develops curiosity. And oddly enough, they may just find fossils of people whose noses and features were artificially worn down. What will be the explanation? how can we possibly explain ourselves now, a being of massive creativity for destruction? always with a hunger for eternity, but always destroying the future generations possibilities.

Im tired of this place im tired of this town. I saw an ad for one of those spring break deals where you spend a thousand dollars to visit an artificial paradise. And I started thinking of the average university student experience; classes, homework, weekend binging, socialite-ism, and to escape these pressures, each who ends up at these paradises must justify to themselves and perhaps to their wealthy parents why they need a break from this benign bovine existence. oh its simply too much, this apathetic lifestyle, i simply must spend an armload of cash on myself to feeeel better. Same people I talk to in the streets for some NGO or another, same girl with the luis vutton bag telling me 'i simply dont have any extra money right now'... same north american schema in their heads, an endless appetite for needs created by wealthy individuals steering our self-images through popular magazines on how to hate ourselves further.

im more excited to get off of this continent and teach english to forgive my life-sentence-sized debt than go into more debt, going further in institutions which for 3 years now have been downgrading the quality of education because class sizes are too big. It would be far more responsible of the professor to suggest the government or administration has let you down, and so I will let you down, because each of my classes around your year level are bigger than normal. but instead, the onus is placed on our interests; there are too many of you in ethics this year so instead of writing anything you might be interested in I will have two midterms and a final. the first midterm was worth 30% of our grade, and we were given 400 words to discuss the ethics of Aristotle, Kant, and Mill, outlining points of departure between them and different types of ethical justifications. That's about 100 words per philosopher, given any kind of introduction and conclusion. I got a 70%, not for lack of having more to say about each ethical system, or the interesting nuances, but for lack of having more alloted words to fill. And while I am being obtuse in my phrasing in this rant, I thought my midterm was succinct if not too short from structural limitations. But, I figured, it was a 2nd year class. I wrote in the space provided the meat of what was needed.

So I might end up in a second year ethics class with a 70, a barebones B. Not necessarily because I havent learned more, or been willing to apply myself further, just from structural limitations imposed by a professor who percieves an average sized class to be too large, and only deserving of 400 perfect words to express complex notions of philosophers long gone.

and Im panicking. If i dont love the institutions which i aspire to work within, If i see their futures in the hands of private contracts and monopolies and business-as-usual ethics on campus-- then I can't believe in the career I thought I might have acquired inside those walls. All i know how to do, and not even do very well, is read, think, argue, nuance, pull it apart, and put it together anew. Even in training, the idea is not to learn how to do those perfectly, but to figure out how the professor likes to see his material come out of your fingertips. No wonder people panic at the masters level; so far nobody has asked me to put together my own research project of my own designs. Well, one professor, he has offered the option of figuring out what to talk about amongst an assortment of authors, and he is the one exception to the rule.

i think thats all i can afford myself to rant on today. i have to read something