“In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts; they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson Years ago, I had the opportunity to teach a philosophy class. While my tenure as a philosophy professor only ran one semester, to date, the class remains amongst my favorite teaching memories. I had taken a few philosophy courses during a short stint as a graduate student in political science. The truth is my knowledge base was admittedly shy of expert. I spent the summer reading a big, fat introduction to philosophy book, digging out old class notes and outlining my lectures. Nervous to face my audience, I fervently hoped I could talk long enough to limit time for discussion or questions. Week after long…
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Does Constant Interaction Add to Stress?
A meditation on interaction that needs to be watched over and over again to capture its rich, resonant beauty. Produced by Aj Jackson & Narrated by Molly Beauregard
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Community is Shared
I am a sociologist by training. I love to think about culture, people, interactions, identity issues and patterns. Emile Durkheim, the famous French father of all things sociological, argued that one must treat ‘social facts as things’. These “facts” become the subject of study for sociologists. Further, Durkheim believed that collective phenomenon is not merely reducible to the individual actor. Society, he believed, is more than the sum of its many parts. It is a system formed by the association of individuals that come together to constitute a reality with its own distinctive characteristics. Let me think of an example: how about language? Language pre-exists our birth and it continues after our death. Perhaps some of us will have the honor of inventing some new recognizable slang (LOL, duh),…
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Magic in the World
“The most beautiful emotion we can experience is the mysterious. It is the power of all true art and science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead.” Albert Einstein Several years ago while on vacation in Amsterdam, my husband bought me a ring. It was a thin ring encrusted with seed diamonds to be worn stacked with my engagement ring and wedding band. One day shortly after he gave it to me, it accidentally slipped off my finger. After spending several days retracing my steps, cleaning out my car and calling all the spots I had visited, I accepted the fact that it was probably gone for good. About a week later, I had the oddest dream. In fact, it was…
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The Empowerment Plan
“Don’t be satisfied with stories, how things have gone with others. Unfold your own myth.” ― Rumi, The Essential Rumi If there is one thing that I am a stickler on, it is class attendance. A few years ago, a former student, signed up to take a second class with me. When she missed the first two weeks, I was surprised. A good student, Veronika, knew about my “skipping class” pet peeve. Toward the end of the second week of the semester, I received a rather breathless apology email from a very obviously busy young woman. Veronika, it seems, had been otherwise occupied. She had been invited to speak at the UN regarding her burgeoning non-profit “The Empowerment Plan”. The Empowerment Plan is a Detroit based organization dedicated to serving…
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The Label Lecture
It ain’t what they call you, it’s what you answer to.” W.C. Fields Each semester in my “Consciousness, Creativity and Identity” class, we spend one week exploring “labeling theory”. Labeling theory is a sociological method for understanding deviant and criminal behavior. The idea essentially is that to understand the nature of deviance itself, we must first understand why some people are labeled deviant and others are not. Theorists working in this field are interested in how labels affect long term behavior. One consequence of labeling is that labels often stick, marking an individual as inadequate for life. One of the frustrations of giving the “label” lecture and the discussion that typically follows is that it leaves all of us feeling pretty low. The associated literature paints a picture of a…
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Getting Off My Notes
“Approved attributes and their relation to face make every man his own jailer; this is a fundamental social constraint even though each man may like his cell.” Erving Goffman Chelsea promises there will be a blooper section at the end of the Tuning the Student Mind movie dedicated to my constant whine regarding “my notes”. Listen, I come by my hatred of notes quite honestly. My first teaching assignment at College for Creative Studies was a required Humanities course. I was issued a mandated text book that outlined in some detail every important cultural/historical event of the 20th century. Oh, the responsibility! Each week I would set myself up at my kitchen table surrounded by books, notes, pens and paper. Scribbling furiously, committed to covering everything, I was intent on…
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Figuring It Out
When I first read the following quote, it really stuck with me. Mahatma Gandhi said, “A man is the sum of his actions, of what he has done, of what he can do, nothing else.” I think why this impacted me is because of how relatable it is to the way people’s lives are looked at sometimes: a series of actions or experiences and expectations. Interestingly, through Molly Beauregards Consciousness, Creativity and Identity class and making sense of my own feelings about it, I feel Gandhi might have been wrong. I have been told for a long time that people are who they are because of the situations they have gone through in their lives. I heard over and over variations of Gandhi’s words. And I believed this too. It made enough sense. I could rationalize…
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How do we escape it?
How do we escape it? Bad things keep happening to us. An automatic payment went through and our checking account was overdrawn, allowing the bank to dole out any number of fees. Someone cut us off in traffic, so we slammed on the brakes and spilled our coffee. The babysitter cancelled, so we’re stuck at home with the kids. We took on a huge project and it blew up in our face. We were bullied when we were little. We didn’t get enough attention growing up. Men are only interested in having sex with us. Women are only interested in controlling us. Our boss is only interested in paying us the least, while demanding the most. And so on, and so on. There are so many situations in which we are the victim.…
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Ceremony for Self
My “ceremony for self” is a daily practice that evolves and changes over time but, at its core, is exactly what I need in the morning to get grounded in my day. I find that if I have a consistent ceremony for self, I have more capacity to give myself fully to what is “outside”, to other people, to the environment. My days are full and productive. I’ll be sharing my morning ritual here but invite your own practice to present itself to you. You may want to spin around in your desk chair 3 times before you open your computer. Your morning ritual could be staring into your dogs eyes for 10 minutes. Whatever works for you! But whatever it may be, invite change. I like to meditate for…
