Myths Graduate School Has Dispelled

People talk about the indoctrination of higher education. Theorists love to talk about it, as if that isn't exactly what they're doing at the same time. The only theorist (that I've read so far) totally aware of his own hypocrisy was Bourdieu, and it turned him into a reclusive little tortoise.

My strongly-held beliefs have gone through some serious editing in my graduate years, but not in the way you think they might (or should, if you're an evangelistic politically liberal atheist). I still believe in God, in my birth-religion, in miracles. The myths that I have rejected are social.

I no longer believe in post-modernism. I think it has been misnamed, and should be "late modernism" because we are still grappling with the same issues, and expressing ourselves in the same modes we were in the "modern" era. We have not yet changed enough, but we're getting closer. I think that the world wars prematurely triggered the apocalyptic and defeatist attitudes that typically mark the end of an era, but in this case do not.
If you think I have been deluded, you can blame Fredric Jameson for a "postmodern" assessment of what was essentially Modern - Brecht.

I no longer believe in children's literature. At least, I don't think that literature we feed to children (with the possible exception of anything too stupid to live) is exclusively for that purpose, and several so-called "children's" authors feel the same. Such classifications are for the purposes of marketing only, and apply to genre-fiction categories as well. Literature in a style to appeal to a hypothetically "young" audience is written "for" the adult authors who wish to express something didactic to a tabula rasa. It's a trap. It's very complicated, but this is a blog.

I no longer believe in a "safe place." Psychologists and counselors of various kinds, also pedagogues and those educated in such fields, tout their creation of a "safe" place, where an inhabitant may express a "true" self without fear of judgment or reprisal as they learn to navigate their own ego and society. The assumption is that these inhabitants fear something or someone outside of the place of safety, and run to this place when they need sanctuary. Whether they fear violence for breaking social custom, judgment for behaviors that do not match an established identity, or criminal prosecution, they can appear in all their idiosyncratic individuality without social risk. Calling something a "safe" place allows that person to reveal the part of themselves which causes shame. It's a necessary process for mental and social health, but it only works on that level, and only if the subject can imitate those attitudes.

Human beings all need a place to make mistakes and receive feedback for the purpose of behavior or cognitive modification: it's what this world was created for. But even knowing that part of the purpose is mistake-making does not prevent reprisals, because they are a necessary form of feedback. "Safety" is not carte blanche, and what we do will always have consequences on one plane or another.

Safe places can never be safe when what you fear is inside yourself, when you are your harshest critic. I like to escape social judgment. I feel its pressure constantly against one part of my persona or another, even in my private rooms, and I learn all too slowly that it is of no value.

Mine is the problem of a man locking himself in a panic room, only to find the only person who wants to torture and kill him was already there. I am my own worst enemy, and I cannot escape myself. I will always make the wrong kinds of mistakes, and someone else will always bear the consequences. There is no place I can be that is safe for the people I care about.

I should have been a psychopath. I can't make my own head a safe place for me, when other people hurt.