THEORY TWO SUMMARY BLOG

-My relationship with the bitter drink

In an effort to avoid the Faustian split this short discourse is a theoretical (inner) response to a situation from real (outer) life and a demonstration of how Theory 2 has allowed me to begin to use theory or concepts from theory to analyse and understand life.

I talking to one of my uncles on Boxing Day this year and he said some things to me which have been bothering me very much since. He said...

‘Sarah; I can’t understand why you’ve chosen the route you have. I have always seen you as someone who would want to run their own business and I still think you will but I can’t see how studying architecture is going to get you there. There doesn’t seem to be any money in architecture; How do you intend to make your fortune? You need to have money in this world this is a capitalist society, you can’t do anything without money. Money makes you happy.’

To this I retorted, perhaps too quickly and without enough consideration, (with my sister chipping in, incidentally also an art student)…

‘Money does not make you happy. I love my job you have to love it to do it, I can’t think of anything worse than having a job that means that you don’t want to get up in the morning. It’s true that there is no money but that is partly to do with the recession. Things will improve. I can move to a smaller firm where there is more opportunity to be had but then I will not be able to work on the projects I enjoy such as public buildings as these are only built by large practices, so I have a choice to make. Yes money is important but it is not what makes you happy, money is the enabler that lets you do the things that make you happy’

His response was to ask why I assume that you cannot make money and have a job that you enjoy (more about that later).

This really conversation really niggled me and it bothers me that I am bothered. I strongly believe in most of what I said but the one thing I am questioning is the money/happiness thing. Don’t get me wrong I’ve had enough ‘liberal’ education to hate conspicuous consumption, celebrity and that comes with it (see blog entry for week 10), I get all that- I have no interest in designer clothes, 5 star hotels, flashy cars or wasteful habits of any sort. I do truly believe that the real pleasures in life do not cost a lot of money such as good company, good food, good drink, books, film and walking etc; the real life pleasures; the things that make you feel alive.

However maybe my uncle is onto something. While myself and my one ‘enlightened’ friend sit penniless and angry bad mouthing the system and mocking those who comply perhaps we’d be far better off exploiting it. We feel almost superior for holding out for all bohemian, eating home grown veg and wearing homemade clothes contrite in our discovery of theory and rejection of capitalism but perhaps that makes us just ass smug as our yuppie contemporaries with their BMWs and holidays in the Maldives. I’ve been ‘giving it to the man’ for years now and look where it’s got me. I’m a postgraduate student on minimum wage doing a job that I am repeatedly told to feel grateful to have but makes me feel trapped, burdened with the thousands of pounds worth of debt that were necessary to get me into this privileged position. I can only afford to buy food at the beginning of the month, I turn down invitations to go out with old school friends simply because I can’t afford to. I still go on holiday with my parents, which I enjoy, but it’s not out of choice. I will never be able to buy a property, which I actually have no interest in doing but know I need to do in order to live a semi-comfortable retirement; which is something I would like to do. These things do not contribute to my happiness and are directly contributable to a lack of means.

So is it possible for me to obtain more comfortable means without being a contributor to the negativity of the machine? I am already part of the machine but a lowly, but relatively free, cog at that with no dependents and a desire for enlightenment. Can one search for enlightenment and the intellectual revolution of the mind while also exploiting the benefits of modern economy, modern society and modern culture without hypocrisy? Are we even part of a larger body, a society or is it far more rational to believe, like Maggie that we are a society made up of only individuals accountable only to our own standards and beliefs.

I suppose what I am striving for and what this unit has made me realise is that I want to be able to be happy to be accountable for all my words and deeds. I want to be able to stand up and for myself and not feel beaten by ‘the man’? I dream of opening a deli. Is it time that I stop dreaming, stop being a complicit victim of the acts and deeds of numerous other individuals and start making my own fate?

I remember being asked what I wanted to be in my first religious education lesson at Grammar School and responding quite assuredly that I wanted to be prime minister -what has happened to the spirit of can do? Is it something I can rediscover? Right now I find studying theory to be most useful in examining my life and its context but am beginning to recognize that it should be consumed in moderation with a regular side order of the emotional freedom of human connection found in the real or outer world in order to avoid the path that can only lead to melancholy and self loathing.

I will continue to explore the theoretical concepts contained within this unit with a light heart and a critical mind while attempting to preserve some of my original joie de vivre.

Week 8 27.10.09

The literal story of Faust no longer valid in to today’s society as it relies on a feudal system no longer as pertinent as it was at the time Faust was written. However through Berman’s writing we can see that it is invaluable as a vehicle for the discussion of concepts and theories.

I have some issues with the second metamorphosis; The Lover. As far as I can tell the destruction described in this section is wholly attributable to the values and believes of the feudal society in which Gretchen and Faust both live in not that of Faust and Mephistopheles.
Faust’s actions are led by a free mind directed by self expansion. Gretchen is a complicit and conscious participant in Faust’s actions but is fated by the beliefs and morals that form the core of her character as a result of the society in which she lives. The old system with its roots in blind debasement and self virtue are at odds with the new ideas of freedom and self expansion. I see this as old thinking destroying new thinking. Therefore it should not be described as Goethe’s Gretchen tragedy but as Faust’s enlightenment tragedy as he suffers through the emotion of guilt which is a direct result of the non-enlightened and not a fault of the direction of his development.

Therefore it is not a cycle of new attacking old systems and bringing them down but old attacking new until they fight themselves free by the power of their truth. Modernity therefore may not be tragedy but a triumph of evolution of the mind.