{"id":58,"date":"2018-10-08T15:24:24","date_gmt":"2018-10-08T15:24:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/engage.augsburg.edu\/frame\/?p=58"},"modified":"2018-10-09T17:53:27","modified_gmt":"2018-10-09T17:53:27","slug":"developing-a-self-to-contend-with-the-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/engage.augsburg.edu\/frame\/2018\/10\/08\/developing-a-self-to-contend-with-the-world\/","title":{"rendered":"Developing a Self to Contend with the World"},"content":{"rendered":"

Part Six of the essay Professor Without Portfolio.<\/a><\/p>\n

During the frequent station stops along the way from Ohio State through Hawaii to Kenyon, I learned that finding a job is a lot easier\u2014and far less satisfying\u2014than finding one\u2019s place in the world. In fact, I now think that one\u2019s place in the world does not even exist until one\u2019s Self has developed enough perspicacity to recognize it. Known as \u201cdiscernment\u201d in the parlance of Vocation, such perspicacity seems to sharpen in deep reflection upon the events of one\u2019s life\u2014as though reflection was the stone, discernment the knife, and life the foot upon the pedal or the hand upon the wheel. And the life force rises and falls respectively during episodes of good or ill \u201cfit\u201d, good or regrettable work. (After the farm, my best fit (and worst work?) was practicing Journalism at Ohio State\u2014and it entailed a distinctly maturing dose of suffering. Until the Augsburg presidency, my best \u201cgood work\u201d (and least comfortable fit?) was professing Political Philosophy at Kenyon\u2014and it revealed the dependency of good teaching on episodic learning (which disorients you just as you were becoming comfortable with the last course correction). \u00a0Although good work and good fit came closer together for me at Augsburg than at any other time in my life so far, my best \u201cgood work\u201d has never\u2014and will never–escape the strictures of duty.)<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Although the kind of dialectic under discussion here may seem a tautology\u2014or at least a paradox\u2014it is neither. Self takes shape through interaction with the world, and its role in subsequent such interactions is made larger thereby. Eventually, the Self becomes strong enough\u2014independent enough\u2014to actually contend with the world, even-Steven (but never better than that while we are in<\/span> the world).<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

My particular Self certainly lacked the capacity to contend with the world\u2014especially the world of the conspiracy cabals of the late \u201850\u2019s at Ohio State and, in the \u201860\u2019s and ever since, of the exclusive partisan clubs among faculty at every college and university in the land\u2014until I was well into my professoriate at Kenyon. The thing that effected its eventual invigoration was the recognition that the dialectic of world and self couldn\u2019t advance vocationally without a third element\u2014a teleological element made accessible by education and close acquaintanceship with admirable persons who could draw the Self upward (rather than relying on lower forces to propel it in that direction from below). The Ancients called that element \u201cthe good\u201d and thought it rooted in Nature; many of the \u201cmoderns\u201d who acknowledge it \u00a0think it a product of wishful thinking and believe it rooted, if anywhere, in History. Some very few call it \u201cdestiny\u201d and think it a gift of the Divine. Whatever it is and whence ever it comes, it leavens the dialectic and enables it to rise\u2014morally and consciously.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Only a couple of years earlier, with the confusion and self-consciousness of adolescence hard upon me, I encountered a sudden, stultifying fear for which this dialectic offered a balm. Triggered perhaps by the failure of my first venture in romance (she was Catholic, and both of us \u201cknew\u201d that any such inter-sectarian relationship had no future whatsoever), the fear was of the prospect of being profoundly and permanently alone. I reacted ambiguously\u2014by casting about for ways to ingratiate myself with any nearby and popular group, on the one hand, and by seeking a radical independence of all groups, on the other (i.e., solitude in the place of alone-ness). In the long run, the stronger of these was the latter\u2014because it entailed freedom, both \u201cfrom\u201d the prevailing biases of the groups, and \u201cto\u201d a life chosen by my lights and \u201cbelonging\u201d to me (as one\u2019s place in the world should seem). Of the two, I preferred independence. My experience suggested it as \u201crealistic\u201d; even when he was around, my father\u2019s disappointment in me constituted an abandonment. His death was the ultimate abandonment\u2014and it sent me rather more in search of an independent (rather than servile) inclusion, and a proud (rather than lonely) solitude.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The first \u201cindependent inclusion\u201d I sought was of my peers. By that time, I had become acceptable to my mother and the portion of polite life in that part of the country that was governed by females, and secondarily by my father and his farmer friends. I was heir apparent to the 160-acre Appalachian farm he had acquired at the very end of the war. As the inheritor of his bass voice\u2014and blessed by my mother\u2019s subjection of me to piano and choral lessons\u2014I was regularly asked to read Biblical texts in church or sing solo there or at the Grange, Farm Bureau, and other farmer meetings in the region.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

But among my contemporaries, my standing was shaky.\u00a0 I was too skinny\u2014even with sharp elbows I couldn\u2019t block out rival rebounders; too Eastern\u2014older of two offspring of a college-educated Philadelphia mother who became a demanding teacher in the Southeastern Ohio school district she helped found; too musical and literary\u2014no locker-room tales of romantic dalliances, too few of risky adventures with comrades, and nowhere near enough badinage skills to qualify as the kind of raconteur that was admired in those parts in those times.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Obtaining full acceptance by the trend setters among my contemporaries without becoming the group wise-guy or comedian was best done by handsome fellows with first-team varsity ability in sport.\u00a0 I was a good pitcher of softball, but that was after-school church stuff\u2014not enough physical combat to rival the standing of football. (I came close to measuring up when I inadvertently fractured a batter\u2019s ankle with a fastball.)<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

So\u2014I chose \u201cthinking\u201d as my strategy. I had learned something of the art from my mother. She made good use of it in constructing the speeches that her education, accommodating disposition, civility and clever turns-of-phrase qualified her to make to school, church and farm audiences all over the region. Her father had been a Methodist minister known best for his graceful homilies. My father\u2019s curse-laced speech and sharp wit was widely admired among his compatriots. So, thinking and fluent rhetoric had a good reputation in the family. Hence, I have always equated them, and have become a devotee of forensic rhetoric\u2014of clear, fascinating and instructive expression in the classroom, from the podium, and on paper. (And a preference, in private, for \u201crich\u201d speech, though free of obscenities.)<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

At the time, thinking seemed a distinctive strategy. It was non-confrontational. It didn\u2019t require an assertion of \u201crights\u201d or \u201cdue to\u2019s\u201d. It needed but a certain persistence, a constantly furrowed brow, and a self-effacing interest in the remarks of interlocutors who thought themselves particularly smart or learned. It played out in rhetorical gambits with which I could acceptably interrupt and enter the conversation of the moment: \u201cBut what about\u2026.?\u201d Or \u201cDon\u2019t you think\u2026.?\u201d Or \u201cDidn\u2019t I just read \u2026.\u201d?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Although I didn\u2019t realize it until greater maturity came to me, thinking had the added advantage of going straight to ideas. It didn\u2019t pause over feelings. Whether the idea of the moment was \u201cgood\u201d or \u201cbad\u201d didn\u2019t matter half as much as whether it was \u201csound\u201d. Thinking allowed for conversation with charlatans as well as angels, with people I secretly wanted to punch\u2014or embrace. It allowed for a relational life outwardly devoid of love or alienation.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Although the strategy didn\u2019t work so well for my immediate purposes\u2014it didn\u2019t lift me directly into the local \u201cin\u201d crowd\u2014it did foster a peculiar form of reflectiveness useful for breaking free of the tyranny of popular opinion. (The other day I found notes of a week\u2019s worth of \u201call nighters\u201d in my 19th<\/sup> year to elect \u201cqualified\u201d judges\u2014one or two only of good and knowing friends who approved of \u00a0me and my character\u2014and to deny to casual critics such as store clerks to whom I had given too little or too much cash for my purchase or drivers irritated by the abruptness or hesitation of my left turns the power to flay my tender soul with a sharp word or obscene gesture.)<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Beyond that election of those possessing the exclusive right to judge me, perhaps the earliest and most elementary realization of my search for independence and a place of my own was that writing is less a vocation than a modus-operandi.<\/em> That turns out to be true, also, of academic fields-of-study. Political Philosophy, for example, is a profession\u2014defined by a code of conduct among practitioners rather than by their dedication to justice, civility or neighborliness. Only when one consciously choses the aim of one\u2019s political philosophy as well as a realistic strategy for effecting it, does one have a love-thy-neighbor vocation\u2014either political, non-political or anti-political.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Part Six of the essay Professor Without Portfolio. During the frequent station stops along the way from Ohio State through Hawaii to Kenyon, I learned that finding a job is a lot easier\u2014and far less satisfying\u2014than finding one\u2019s place in the world. In fact, I now think that one\u2019s place in the world does not […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":268,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6],"tags":[8,9,11,10,17],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/engage.augsburg.edu\/frame\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/engage.augsburg.edu\/frame\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/engage.augsburg.edu\/frame\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/engage.augsburg.edu\/frame\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/268"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/engage.augsburg.edu\/frame\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=58"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/engage.augsburg.edu\/frame\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":98,"href":"https:\/\/engage.augsburg.edu\/frame\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58\/revisions\/98"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/engage.augsburg.edu\/frame\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=58"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/engage.augsburg.edu\/frame\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=58"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/engage.augsburg.edu\/frame\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=58"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}