physics

Tragedy of 21st century science is - everything we can not explain in Universe, we believe are physics problems!!

Pedagogy of lateral meaning making

According to established norms of academic pedagogy there is a measurable hierarchy of information, hierarchy of analytical capacity, hierarchy of process, hierarchy of understanding, hierarchy of perception, hierarchy of knowledge, hierarchy of thinking, hierarchy of imagination, hierarchy of language and visual, hierarchy of priority and hierarchy of evidence exit in every individual as student. It assumes a structural ascend in this framework of efficiency of efficacy. 

Tragically in this era of lateral meaning making from information overflow, hierarchy of comprehension and knowledge build up in an individual does not remain a measurable ascend curve anymore, rather it is operationalised as a cloud of flux where everything is put together, one that can be recollected at the press of an imaginary button; a button driven by passive interest (passive interest because one is confident that the relevant information, knowledge, skill set are there located somewhere that one can retrieve whenever required through a menu driven structure) and strong aspirations. 

Today’s students are good knowledge managers than the embodiments of knowledge itself. The one who is familiar with the menu driven tools and techniques of knowledge extraction, manipulation and application are the one who is better equipped to be “successful” in our capacity driven economy and its society than as compared to the embodiments of knowledge or the perceived ‘master’ that academics envisage. 

Unfortunately this ambiguous learning curve of flux is what pedagogues across the world are still trying to assess through their linear or structural measurements! 

(I am not getting into the discussion of whether it is right or correct that a selected few becoming the absolute owners of knowledge resources like Internet platforms and the "master" intellectuals while the other large section end up only as end user operators. But none other than the academics themselves have created this complication by linking societal needs as capacity benchmarks to knowledge accumulation, so this would require a lengthy paper to understand the scenario).

The problem is not the resistance to change, but the issue is that we haven't moved forward from the 15th century European humanist idea of knowledge delivery and its methodologies in academics. We as academics are yet to grapple with the transition of theory dependant knowledge (hierarchy) to process dependant knowledge as 21st century's institutional knowledge.

In arts this dichotomy becomes much larger as the process of imagination often are the translation of individual experience. The time span with which this transformation of human knowledge taken place from embodiment to operation is yet to be fully understood by human mind (as discussed above -the post seventy technology accentuated knowledge positioning in human life) so that a body of experiences can be measured from expressions.

In Twenty first century a word can not bypass its visual impression as it can not be from its semantics, sign and signifier. It is loaded with historical baggage, social construct and "narrative" associated with it . The difference is the boundary understood from inside and outside.
I wonder what one would have done, if one were to be the boundary of freedom or liberation??

religion

the moment one says "your God..." the humanity (spiritualism) ends and religion begins. Religion survives on the concept of penance and fear whereas humanity (spirituality) survives on the hope of liberation from fear. So let us not confuse about religion. Even great radical mind like Gandhi believed religion as an individual privilege not something coerced upon our will. The fact is being religious is a stockholm syndrome, a psychological disorder where captive develops empathy and sympathy with the captor.

Art as culpable and artist as accused.

In 1934, Bertold Brecht wrote “ the courage to write truth , although it is being suppressed; the intelligence to recognize it, although it is being covered up; the judgment to choose those in whose hands it becomes effective; the cunning to spread it among them” as an essential responsibility of artist in his socially conscious aesthetical argument. 

Nearly 82 years after these words, interestingly it still remains valid and resonate among the cold corners of human life, where socio-cultural integrity of artist as an individual is now becoming more and more a complex paranoia of a social elitism and its aesthetic manifestations. 

Historically in western art, post war Dada artists onwards, the rebel individuality as an artist remained a complicated negotiation of individual aspiration among social hierarchy and its appropriation. Even as many pretended to be carried the expressions of reactionary or revolt in terms of form, media and exploration against social conventions and structures, unfortunately all these expressions were historically resulted in creating more and more structures and hierarchy by way of negating the socio-cultural egalitarianism, something these movements were envisaging. Elaborately speaking these isms have only resulted in creating more heroes, more powerful and more discriminatory structures through opportunistic appropriation of aesthetical construct of society by individuals to advance his or her aspirations for elite social mobility. Here art was not even a medium but was a handy method. 

The scenario was not different in India as well. Except for progressive art group, most of the modern art movements in India were originated or sustained within institutional establishments and its socio-political priorities including academic interest. The loosely formulated Radical art group of Baroda though had it's strains rooted in an anti- establishment idealism, the way it was operationalised unfortunately turned out to be a copy of DADA mode of practice, something in the west by then it was an established pop culture - a moderated and theoretically contextualised historical individual that an average urban elitist considered as an ideal ' cool rebel'. Progressive art group also got dissipated as fast as it was formulated, as most of the artist from that group got into their own streams of establishments. An important point to be highlighted about this group is, even at the thick and thin of art and market turmoils, they were successful in maintain their aesthetical integrity till today.

Today, as art is considered as an investment - it’s validity is yet to be established as a sustainable economic model, the artist as a manufacturer or designer of aesthetics certainly has reached an unethically enormous dilemma. Considering the tectonic shifts that are shaping up public morality and ethics across the world-something a contextual negotiation of individual priorities and needs; today if one can discard the notions of public acceptance as a socially relevant individual, one needs not remain part of the established idea of rebel or socially conscious artist like those post war DADA moment artists.

Since aesthetics can not be a monopoly of a particular socio-economic strata or political argument considering its universal relevance and human priority, every strata of society has the right to demand their idea of aesthetics in a democratic society. Considering it is a human necessity to be aesthetically relevant and conscious to be a functional individuality in a complex social order and citizenship, there has to be artists of every jeunere from embellishments to protagonists being relevant in society. 

But unfortunately, the socio-cultural and historical baggage that art practices carry today is way more than a mere aesthetic need than one could overlook or disengage . That is the reason, inspite of the wishful thinking of artists and its patrons are becoming louder and louder to the scale of shriek, the post seventy investment driven economy of aesthetical market today stand failed and remain desperate. Their push for dislocating the basics of human location and cultural identity from art under the garb of a larger emancipated global sensibility and market capitalisation, art today stands traumatic under the present global scenario of socio-political chaos and economic decline. 

Interestingly keeping in line with 20th century artistic movements and engagements, even if they had the inherited structures of hierarchy, today art should have responded and resurrected humanity like in those difficult days human tragedy. 

But art today is not a messiah but it stands accused as culpable and artist the perpetrator

continued

We have no one else to blame for this tragedy except ourselves- the so called academic 'educators'

In this world of information bombardment, there are no dearth of tools, techniques, protocols and methods to process these information for an intended outcome. There is also no dearth of questions as most of these automated tools and techniques have those embedded questions that are sufficient enough to find a probable answer. As a matter of fact in our surveys, surveillance and ERPs that is what we do: generate more and more information to find the appropriate question for a probable answer. 

Tragically we live in a world where we are told that our liberty is our ability to ask question and not the wisdom to understand the answer, because the big business of information knows very well that their survival depend on generating more and more questions to make these mindlessly generated garish information relevant than answers that could be a point of departure. Life of this servitude could be better understood when we look at the way selfies and opinions without substance are promoted and archived (information collated) as an expression of individuality by self-assurance in social network sites. 

On a larger scale we find this information business, otherwise the academics believes as their forte is becoming irrelevant than ever before as the fine line that divided academic process of wisdom (read nature of scientific temperament with intuitive axioms) from pure intelligence (read cognitive capabilities),today stand as almost evaporated much faster than anyone’s imagination. Most of the academic engagements across the world largely have become a reductionist application of cognitive abilities- read usage of protocols and methods as analytical tool- to process information and its tactical appropriation. 

This statistical approach to knowledge – a concept of globalization or neo-liberal idea of targeted profiteering by academic intelligentsia have already started showing its effect in our nature, ecology and habitat in a big way. The demarcations are completely stand blurred between the community and commerce in academia as more and more funded projects are developed across universities than study of its objectivity. Other day one Vice chancellor of an important University brought up an incident during one of our friendly meeting. He was referring to an interview committee that he was part of to hire an associate professor for their new department. The candidate while presenting his candidature it seems to have told the committee that he has three ready projects in his hand with business and international agency funding, so he may not be available for teaching, but university doesn’t have to worry about it since these agencies will ‘buy his time’ from university! The story is self explanatory. 

One should not forget the age of anthropocene has not arrived as an accident, it is the result of our academic community as the custodian of intelligentsia and their presentation of statistical information of ephemeral contexts as critical knowledge without the enquiry of its critical objectivity, the mandated social responsibility of the agency of knowledge transfer from one generation to another- the teacher as a conscious subject. 

It is high time to question the validity of our academic process and its practices as a socially relevant system for our generation next. Today it stands failed in all its objectivity, process and practice. If one remove the earning potential of university “certification” in employment market from education, there will be a near collapse of this system called - education. That is the tragedy, our civilization stand today. Although at this point of time based on this academic certification, individual may still be relevant to business and industry to produce statistical inference even if the industry has the automated tools and protocols for statistical analysis. But the day is not too far when technology replace that necessity with automated process of targeted discern of information, making entire education system of the day irrelevant and the human race in turn. 

We have no one else to blame for this tragedy except ourselves- the so called academic 'educators'