Bleeding Fiction

one

I'm only taking two classes this term, but they're keeping me very busy during the week. It's probably going to be one of my busiest terms. I suspect this is because I'm actually doing all of the reading. I suspect the reason for that is that I'm required to take and turn in copious notes on everything I read. Bastard professors.

two

To be fair, I'm taking two cool classes this term, with interesting reading. They are "New Religions in East Asia" (aka "Japanese Cults") and "History, Culture and Conflict in Japan" (aka "Japanese Protest Movements"). These two courses are pretty much going to form the basic research of my Master's Thesis, whatever that ends up being about, so I figure it's a good idea to pay close attention.

three

In my readings I've gotten to "reacquaint" myself with some "old friends." Which is to say I get to read about the writings of anthropologist and religious types that I read as an undergrad. Guys like Weber and Durkheim and Geertz and Marx. Also Foucault, who (to grossly stereotype, as is my wont) is one of the only cool French people. Ever.

four

There's a weird cycle of secondary vs. primary sources going on here. As an underclassman, I read secondary sources (i.e. Scholars writing about shit they had read or observed). As an upperclassman, I read mostly primary sources (i.e. Writings that were actually from a given time period in history, actual religious scripture, etc. Usually in translation.). Now I've gone back to reading secondary sources. Some folks have some interesting ideas (see above), but it's sort of frustrating.

five

There's a girl in my Culture & Conflict class who looks a lot like Ann. It's sort of creepy.

six

I watch the Daily Show every night. They have journalists on a lot, who write books. They write books about the government, but also a lot about what's going on in the world today. Which is, I guess, what journalists do. Academics do the same thing. Hunter S. Thompson, he went to ride around with the Hell's Angels for a while and then published a book on them. That's journalist, sure, but it's also anthropology. I mean, exactly the same thing. So, what's the difference?

The differences are speed and depth. The most recent stuff I get to read in class was published maybe five years ago, and was probably in research for two years and then peer review for another year after that. Which means I'm reading about phenomenon that are eight years old. That makes it tough to dealing with contemporary culture, which is what I'm trying to do. How do you make predictions when the movement you want to make predictions for is already gone? At the same time, a scholarly work is (in theory) deeper, more critical and more accurate for having taken so long and been so carefully looked at.

But I wonder if this carefulness doesn't make scholars too slow. How can scholarship stay relevent when it's continually out of date? I wonder if there maybe isn't a way to speed scholarship up a little, to reach some comprimise between depth and speed. I think maybe not publishing more or less exclusively through academic presses is a good place to start; being, instead, like journalists and publishing through the mainstream media.

I wonder if this is actually a good idea, or just seems like one at nearly two in the morning...

seven

Part of course readings early in the term, even for graduate courses, is what I call "getting on the same page." You read a brief run of introductory philosophy stuff, the sort of stuff I was talking about under three, and you frame the terms of the debate for the rest of the class. It feels like reinventing the wheel a lot of the time, but all in all it isn't a horrible idea. So, we were trying to define "religion" the other day. This is particularly relevant for the New Religions in East Asia, 'cause a lot of them don't have much in common with what most people think of as religion.

But every approach, every thinker, has his flaws. Social Science theory's been stuck for a while with this very West-centric bias, these Enlightenment and Economic models that really don't effectively describe what we observe in the world. I mean that right now, the way people (and I mean politicians and lawyers and journalists - the people who ostensibly hold the power in our society - as well as the "common folk" like you and I) look at the world is rooted in theories that have their start in the Enlightenment and with Marx's conception of class struggle and Nietzsche and it's all wrong.

And thinking about that, I thought about some psychics theory that I was learning from Ogre this summer (clearly nothing involving actual math - just conceptual stuff), and I realized that what the social sciences need is the same break physics had. Physics went from Classical to Quantum mechanics. Someone needs to figure out a Quantum Theory for the social sciences. If someone can do it right, it'll spread and we will have a new way of looking at the world.

It'll take a while, of course. A generation, maybe two or three. But if someone figures out how, we can change the way people see the world for the better. This is the responsibility for social change that academics have - to change the way people think about the world, and to change it for the better.

Or, I dunno, maybe I just like the phrase "quantum social science theory."

eight

Quarters suck as compared to semesters. I've done both now, and I say this after careful observation. I am not covering a greater amount of material in class and I am not covering it in more depth with quarters than with semesters. I may, in fact, be covering less material; at the very least, I have less time to discuss the material (fewer actual in-class hours per class) with classmates and professors, so I may be covering it in less depth. But group-learning aside, with less time in which to process the same amount of material I am able to absorb less of it and think about it less critically before I'm forced to move on to something else, and I am therefore getting a poorer education.

I am covering the material in less time than under semesters, but I'm taking fewer classes at once, so the actual rate of education has not increased, either.