Quester
30th May 2015, 02:57
Comrades,
Please advise me on a suitable means of existence under a system that so blatantly reinforces selfishness, superficiality, and so forth without end.
When I was a student at University I found myself reading Marx, Althusser, Eagleton, Gramsci, and Freire. I read more and more, eventually succumbing to the texts of Smith and Marx's other contemporaries. In time I was reading Kant, Hegel, and numerous other philosophers. Perhaps you can detect a degree of uncertainty and desire to stabilize an otherwise shattered, twisted, mangled perception on life. I deemed Communist and Socialistic philosophies to be far more stable than capitalism.
I grew up with values that are unsurprising for a rural American, and I thought I knew what I wanted after high school: democrat, college, marriage, job, family. All in all, these original desires have largely deteriorated as I read more on Marxist ideology.
For a time I was studying teaching pedagogy (hence Freire), and was interested in teaching in a public school setting. One day I returned back to my high school, and I spoke eagerly with an old teacher about incorporating class struggle into curriculum, along with feminist undertones. He seemed bewildered by the mention of Marxism, and confirmed that feminism was the way to go. Earlier in that period he was teaching Zinn's "A People's History of the United States" ...
Some of my older teachers too rejected that terminology, although class struggle was clearly an element in their classrooms to SOME degree. It was disheartening to say the least, and I began to ask myself if I had the right to design a curriculum with such a latent intent.
Now, I work my 40 hours a week and I earn my pay. I am miserable. I do not know what I am striving for at all in this system, because everything about it makes me disgusted.
So what do I do? What do I live for? I ask this simple question of you all, because I know no one in my life can understand this inner conflict.
Please advise me on a suitable means of existence under a system that so blatantly reinforces selfishness, superficiality, and so forth without end.
When I was a student at University I found myself reading Marx, Althusser, Eagleton, Gramsci, and Freire. I read more and more, eventually succumbing to the texts of Smith and Marx's other contemporaries. In time I was reading Kant, Hegel, and numerous other philosophers. Perhaps you can detect a degree of uncertainty and desire to stabilize an otherwise shattered, twisted, mangled perception on life. I deemed Communist and Socialistic philosophies to be far more stable than capitalism.
I grew up with values that are unsurprising for a rural American, and I thought I knew what I wanted after high school: democrat, college, marriage, job, family. All in all, these original desires have largely deteriorated as I read more on Marxist ideology.
For a time I was studying teaching pedagogy (hence Freire), and was interested in teaching in a public school setting. One day I returned back to my high school, and I spoke eagerly with an old teacher about incorporating class struggle into curriculum, along with feminist undertones. He seemed bewildered by the mention of Marxism, and confirmed that feminism was the way to go. Earlier in that period he was teaching Zinn's "A People's History of the United States" ...
Some of my older teachers too rejected that terminology, although class struggle was clearly an element in their classrooms to SOME degree. It was disheartening to say the least, and I began to ask myself if I had the right to design a curriculum with such a latent intent.
Now, I work my 40 hours a week and I earn my pay. I am miserable. I do not know what I am striving for at all in this system, because everything about it makes me disgusted.
So what do I do? What do I live for? I ask this simple question of you all, because I know no one in my life can understand this inner conflict.