The future…

This is a piece I wrote for my Classics class in University. It is a mild rant which is trying to find its solidity. I am only partially worried about the class actually. Selfishly I have taken it so it is gone already to me. What is important in the writing is an idea I am exploring in Critical Theory. The ideas are from Max Horkheimer and Theodore Adorno in their Dialectic of Enlightenment. I am concerned with the idea of thinking and what occurs when it becomes thought. This is especially so when others put forward the thoughts of others as their own thinking. Wayne Borody calls this person a Philodoxer instead of a Philosopher (The love of opinion instead as the love of wisdom). Here is the piece I wrote:

       I am disheartened that this class will not be offered again next year. The more I thought about it and possibly how it may relate to myth itself a greater theme of much interest to me. I am concerned with the correlation concerning value, commodity, and myth. I see the removal of this class from the University’s offering as being systematically linked to the use of the education system as a tool of a specific agenda. The agenda is capital. Capital has become more important that education itself. Capital is the arbiter of necessity in deciding much about the educational system. Look at Education Department at our university to see the disparity. Our educational system and culture in general selects what types of knowledge should be kept in the system. This decision is based mainly those disciplines that attract the most students, which in turn brings more money to the establishment, which fills more pockets with money overall. This skews the aims of education in its ends and means. It positions the University towards an end which bases the types of knowledge to be selected as choice which is selected as the best means towards the ends of capital. Knowledge becomes a calculation. Bear with me, how this relates to myth is coming. Calculation provides more opportunity in the work force, and therefore the opportunity of that dream life, the life of comfort. This good life, which is a myth unto itself, is a calculation in utility. This removes thinking as something which is good for its own sake for thought. Thought, which can hardly be called thinking is neatly packaged into tangible knowledge which can become commodified. It sells quite highly in the campus book store. Aside from my philosophical digression, what does this choice of knowledge/power say about thinking and myth itself? What have we done when we coerce myth from vast ideas for contemplation into a commodity, a thing, which has a defined and absolute meaning? It has been said by such thinkers as Joseph Campbell that we have much myth around us. In a way he is right, but this is not the type of myth I long for. For instance a look at Nike, Midas, Amazon, Ajaxlogos. Myth, which is of infinite interpretations, by infinite ones to interpret, remains a multifaceted thing to be experienced. The logos in the system is always second unless it is ones own. gives the images of shoes, mufflers, books, and cleaning supplies before the figures of which they are based on. The myths have likewise become coerced into a tool of capital. Myth’s today are not those story’s told wholly for the means of expression and catharsis, they are directed at the ends of capitalism. This is exactly what I see as happening at Nipissing and the educational systems abound who aim at the reduction of thinking as a tool as a means towards the ends of capital. The ones who subscribe to this belief, make choices based on this, or are apathetic about the arts and humanities are making a grave error. What is actually occurring is a homogenization of actual thinking into the replication of thinking as thinking which has been thought. You may have not even reached this point in my journal because in a sense it is really raw, it is like a wound. I only wish to describe, not proscribe. What could be the remedy for a thing which doesn’t believe its illness? This replication and consumption of thinking can hardly be accepted as one’s own thinking. Myth by definition is divided by this mind of measure, the mind of pure

If myth becomes a film, a product, a thing, it is then able to be consumed. This consumption momentarily satisfies the appetitive mind. This appetite grows hungry for more stimulation since the myth which was once aporetic is no longer infinite but is absolute. Only the consumer can change the more times they approach the myth. Eventually when the consumer does not change when apprehending the myth, the myth will become purposeless and forgotten. It has no duty. Is this the atrocity which education will commit by becoming stagnated and obsolete? If it is plausible now that the departments Philosophy, Classics, and Art could be downsized for lack of enrollment due to utility, then it is likely that they could be abolished altogether. If we reduce education to one dimensional utilitization we run the risk of being one-dimensionally utilized ourselves. We will be towards a goal which we may not want to be towards. In essence we become a tool. Myth has the ability of reeling in irrational reason masquerading as the purpose of education. Myth bleeds the light of tragedy which is often eclipsed by a system which barbarically wants to be comfortable. Do we want to become simpler? If we give up on the aporia of myth I believe we run the risk of becoming finished ourselves, the apodictic and complete. Thinking is incomplete as long as it is occurring, and is infinite because of this. Commodifying thinking as thought moulds ideas into plastic pieces of simplicity. By becoming concrete as capital, education itself is apt to become a piece an edifice which because of its lopsidedness teeters towards collapse. I hope that this is not the future of mythology and the humanities at Nipissing and abroad.