Critic is my being

Critic is my Being

It is nice to be back in the blogging verse. There is something enjoyable about reading others thoughts and imagining that others read yours. I must admit though that this journal might not be incredibly enjoyable to read right now. I am going through a period of extreme neurosis. I am suffering from an insatiable hunger for I know not. Each day I feel increasingly discontent. The season is a contributing factor. Each winter as the snowy months drag on I become anxious, irritable, dissatisfied. I feel like a tiger pacing in a cage, a force too strong and too wild to be contained, with no greater desire than to break free of all constraints. During periods like this I become more critical, if this is possible.

My Tuesday and Thursday classes are only aggravating my dissatisfaction. Both Epistemology and Postmodernism have become torturous. I cannot make myself care about Epistemology. I have no interest in the “branch of philosophy that investigates the origin, nature, methods, and limits of human knowledge.” I am sure there is value in this discipline I just do not care about it. Possibly there is too much of the Existentialist in me, “It does not matter how we know that the table is a table, what matters is that there is a table. Let us go from there.” I realize that is very reductionist but I hope you catch my meaning. In a way this is like studying Grammar for me, I know it is valuable but there are some things which one does so instinctively that attempting to be more conscious and precise about it is irritating. Engaging with the texts or the class about this subject is impossible for me. The text only compounds in problem for me.

Postmodernism is also devastating in its own way. Thankfully, texts are much more interested - though one is rather elementary - but the dialogue in class is horrible. Chaos often rules and as one of my peers, Beky Noogle, pointed out no one seems to listen to each other or the professor. Seth Horton’s comment that too many people are competing to teach is at times also accurate. Overall, the dialogue is disjointed, ridiculously tangential, entirely aimless or irritatingly Biblical.

In class, I keep thinking about how much I’d rather be studying the world religions. Since my freshman year in college, when I was taking both Introduction to Philosophy and World Religions, I have felt that religion is superior to the disciple of philosophy because it is more holistic. It seeks to answer all of the questions that humans ask themselves instead of just a few. Within its stories it contain both philosophy and theology.

Having friends in World Religions only aggravates this. Though their class sounds positively dreadful it has made me nostalgic about when I took it. Thankfully it was taught by an adjunct professor instead of the sleepy Prof. Railsback and overall it did not have an incredibly missional bent, though it was taught by a missionary home on sabbatical.

The professor brought in some meaningful speakers such as a Zen Buddhist Monk and Islamic Imam. Two missionaries also came to speak with us about their experience with other religions. One man told us about his encounter with Taoism in Taiwan and the other presented about the “appealing and appalling” side of Hinduism. While I enjoyed hearing more from the Monk and Imam, the missionaries’ presentations were valuable in their own way as they offered an outsiders view of the religions.

Even the assignments from the class were worthwhile. We read Huston Smith’s The World Religions (which I absolutely enjoyed) and at least 50 pages from four religious texts. I read from the Koran, the Bhagavad-Gita, the Tao Te Ching and the Buddhist Scriptures. Since I had horrible scholastic discipline, I did not read beyond the 50 pages limited though I wanted to.

That year I was torn between being a Religion Major and a Philosophy Major. I decided on Philosophy because the Religion department at this university has too much of a missional bent. Though I cannot say that I regret my decision, since the Religion department would have been miserable, I am incredibly discontent. These classes bore and irritate me. I wish…

“if wishes were horses…”