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Hold the groundless questioning by Trevor Griffey |
Freshmen and transfer students are bombarded with all sorts of workshops, information sessions, mandatory meetings and general advice in their first few days at school. In that sense, then, Disorientation is just another aspect of the official Orientation--except, unlike almost all of the activities planned before classes begin, this is actually the product of student initiative.
And what have been the official messages of Orientation so far? "This is how things work, you are in a special place because you are obviously brilliant for getting here (all Wesleyan students are brilliant, you know), and we command you to do two things with yourself now that you’re here: question yourself, and take advantage of the opportunities being offered here."
Well, I want to be the first one to tell you, if you haven’t figured it out already: questioning yourself may be one of the worst things you can do at this school or anywhere else.
College, seen as a questioning process, can be quite a sick place. Everyone and everything can become obsessed with giving an answer to the question "why?" Your classes will be seen as big exercises in the question why. History: why did certain events happen at certain times? Sociology: why are we biased? English: why did such and such author write such and such book at the time he/she did? Philosophy: why? The sciences: why do these results not correspond with our theories?
And the number of times you measure different answers to the question why, comparing, evaluating, searching always for the abstract, logical, single resolution to the question will be in accordance with your inability to say or do anything at all. To be more specific, you’ll become increasingly aware that the exercise is meant to teach you this response: "I don’t know, I can’t ever know fully and absolutely, but I’m going to keep asking anyway."
Ha ha! Trick question! There is no simple because. Aren’t you glad you did that? But it’s not over yet. Instead of merely dwelling on futile exercises seeking absolute truth and finding it’s nowhere to be had, you can continue to ask the question why blindly and have new and fascinating incomplete and stifling answers. You can take classes in which you talk about and study-ie ask-why no one can answer the question why absolutely. Being another why question, this new course of study will create much controversy and many schools of thought which are of course all equally compelling and unlikely at the same time. These courses, studying the nature of discourse and calling it fundamental to what we actually say, rapidly become abstract to a point at which you may become quite concerned that you are not studying anything at all. And what’s more, you won’t be alone.
For this why questioning can easily be applied to everyone and thoughtful people who continually ask it of other people will one day ask it of themselves. Question yourself, you are told. Challenge yourself. Ask yourself the hard questions. Some people do, with similar results: I don’t know, but this is a problem, so I will keep questioning. So underslept, poorly fed, with little attention paid to your body, making yourself broke in the process, you may just find yourself, though many people do not, in an odd dream world in which you talk of yourself in terms of your socially constructed hang ups and refer to others in much the same way. You won’t have a goddamned clue as to why you’re at school, why you’re studying what you’re studying, or why you’re even alive. You’ll perceive this as "problematic," and your own existence at school will undermine any attempt to say anything more than: I’m here to get a job and I’m studying what I’m studying because it’s interesting.
At this point, you may feel mad at yourself, blame your problems on advanced capitalism and your bourgeois and or traumatic family life, and feel yourself a logic machine- able to find more than two sides to anything but never finding any side compelling.
Rather than advocating that you question yourself, then, the administration might be much better off if it suggested that all new students eat one bar of incredibly good chocolate on the first day of orientation. Bite. Chew. Savor. Smell. Swallow. Isn’t it incredible? Now ask yourself: Why? If this question at all appeals to you, I suggest you seek help.
You see, we might be much better off if people questioned themselves a little less and felt a good deal more. Before you hate me for this seemingly fascist conclusion, I ask you to notice that, contrary to what you’ve probably not been told most of your life, you’re alive. You’re going to die, but for now, you have an incredible capacity for sensation- conceptually and bodily. And this is quite a gift. It is an even greater gift that you probably have four years here with which to play with and learn about being. Questioning is essential to learning and even playing, but only if the questions stem from more than words built upon words-only if they stem from true love, curiosity, or longing had through incredible awareness of all.
If people here pursued their being as if every step, every encounter with a friend, every insight, even every question, were itself as divine as biting into chocolate-or if you don’t like that example, running naked, dreaming, or sitting still-we would surely belong to a college worthy of admiration, regardless of what US News and World Reports says, regardless of alumnae donations, regardless of anything else. We would surely be learning, or relearning, something.
For if people loved life truly, daily, they would care deeply about their studies. Boring, passionless teachers would be hated. Money-grubbing administrators would not be tolerated. Conversations and parties would not be shallow but ever-creative worlds of exploration. And, here’s where Disorientation hopefully comes in: injustice-the devaluing of life through castes and privilege and the toleration of unnecessary suffering-would be despised. It would be rightly associated with all that makes us forget that we’re alive or makes our living miserable. It would be fought against with such conviction that the bland who occupy our televisions and our radios and our congress and our schools and our minds could no longer rely on our insecurities and fears of others. People would seek to educate themselves and others about the world they inhabit-its beauties and it tragedies-and defend themselves from the uneducated attacks of intolerance, ignorance, privilege, and apathy toward life.
So yeah, take advantage of Wesleyan and all that. Question yourself too. But these actions will probably mean nothing to you unless you also seek out a sense of beauty while you’re here, in every part of your life-there really is a lot here if your eyes are open to it. Expect it of others, but more importantly, expect it of yourself. This is the challenge. And as you open your eyes, or try to keep them open if you opened them years ago, you’ll probably notice that a lot of things here are pretty screwed up too. Hopefully, Disorientation can provide you with a beginning sense of these issues you have inherited, and maybe start you on your way, if you’re so inclined, toward addressing them in a meaningful way.