Purpose

It’s all happened again. There is nothing new to add. The Democrats belatedly engaged in a re-run of the 2016 campaign strategy to bring about the same result: Trump wins. But the re-emergence of Trumpism in has caused a crisis for anyone not caught up in in the frenzy. Is this what happens when postmodernism takes hold? Is this ‘late capitalism’? A post-truth/post-literate world? The collapse of civilisation? Or collective brain rot? Has fascism emerged once more? Can humanity survive rapid climate change? Many other questions come to mind.

My main motivation as a researcher has been to remediate my lack of knowledge; a deficiency first exposed to me during a brief career in politics. One would have thought the expensive schooling and undergraduate studies I had accrued would have prepared me for practical politics, but no. At some point, scientific management (Taylorism) took hold of universities so that education became fragmented and directed at training undergraduates for particular occupations or otherwise providing them with skills. As a result, many academics are overly specialised in their knowledge to the point they are unable to interpret the complex world around them. Not that this stops many an expert waxing lyrical in the manner Socrates once observed: the more expert one becomes, the more one erroneously feels their expertise applies broadly. I have found the humanities to be ignorant of the sciences and vice versa; often, the same can be said within the same field or even sub-field. In the case of undergraduate students, knowledge lasts until the close of examinations. We all partake in what Peter Ackroyd calls intellectual bulimia, purging ourselves of context to face the world innocently each time.

So, I’m embarking on a years-long journey through human history to discover for myself the modern paideia (ideal education). I want to approach the world with coherent understanding, not a curious mix of helplessness and ignorance. The purpose of this blog is to share a catalogue of what I’ve been learning through this autodidactic re-education. I’m sure no one will read it, which provides its own comfort. But if someone ever did read it – perhaps, late one night, being pervy or doomsurfing the internet – and found themself wanting to make suggestions, then I hope they would feel free to provide comment.