"...there is an internal ethical urge that demands that each of us serve justice as much as he or she can. But beyond the immediate attention that he rightly pays hungry mouths, child soldiers, or raped civilians, there are more complex and more widespread problems: serious problems of governance, of infrastructure, of democracy, and of law and order. These problems are neither simple in themselves nor are they reducible to slogans. Such problems are both intricate and intensely local..." - Teju Cole
Turns out a degree - even one limited to 'real world' topics (like, supposedly, economics) - isn't a skill. Isn't really much to do with much. This is galling, because I have lots of coiled action in me, but no hydraulics to steer that moral fluid.
No; maybe that's too reductive. University sucks for hard skills only. I'm talking about narrow technical skills. To gain these is to instrumentalise oneself, for economically & socially production. Or, more often, unfortunately, one has to go get credentials that say you are productive.
Was at a conference the other day where people were banging on the Frankfurt way about instrumentalisation. I do sympathise with the theory - which attributes modern atrocity and mental illness to the reign of scientism and the cult of practicality - but not in the uncritical, airless, superstitious way it gets invoked. Academic leftists seem to find useful things abhorrent. Through Horkheimer, Cultural studies tends to have an awful watery Kantian attitude. In discussing the 'white saviour complex', one speaker implied that objectifying someone you are trying to help is such an evil process that it negates any good your action might cause. (Teju Cole gives a more righteous treatment: "From the colonial project to Out of Africa to The Constant Gardener and Kony 2012, Africa has provided a space onto which white egos can conveniently be projected ... The banality of evil transmutes into the banality of sentimentality. 'The world is nothing but a problem to be solved by enthusiasm'.")
This leads to a disgusting passivity. (Note: I don't know how often it does.) Because they have (rightly) probed mixed motives and identified unconscious power structures in do-gooders, they can be satisfied in their holy inaction. Too often this is the state of the 'New' Left; reading is not only political, but political enough. The only labour you owe to the disadvantaged is your intellectual labour.
Fuck that. There is little wrong with objectification and instrumentalisation as long as it is chosen, and if it is not the only thing you get to be. The trick is to retain a radical disposition while having a prosaic exterior (Africa is chronically short of Quantity Surveyors). Let's go make ourselves useful:
- TEFL qualification (takes 2 weeks if you're in a rush; £270)
- Knots (1 week; £minimal)
- First aid (1 month; £minimal)
- GRE score, 150+ (1 month; £120)
- Driving (4 months; £400)
- A book! A Scottish Arts Council grant for my book (6 months; -£2000)
- Databasing. (a month or so; £2000)
- MA African Studies in Nairobi or Makerere (1 year; £1000)
- MSc Maths, Open University (takes 2 years part-time; £2500)
- MSc Water Resources, Heriot-Watt (2 years pt; £4000)
- SVQ Mechanicking (just motorbikes, probably; 2 years pt; £1000)
- ACA Chartered Accountant (for NGOs, ICAEW, 2 years pt; -£)
- Chinese (3 years in-country - cf. TEFL; -£2000)
2025, maybe:
- PhD Econophysics, University of Houston (5 years; £20000)
