Some Further Thoughts

 I hardly ever do two discussions in a week here, but the subject of the last discussion got me thinking some more about who I am, where I come from, and where I am now.  A lot of feelings came up during the thought processes that prompted all this, and I felt best to share more detail on them.

As many people go through life and they reach personal milestones, a danger is evident in that some do forget where they came from.  Pride is a lack of one's own self-awareness, and in place of that a person creates a persona that has little to do with their real experiences or actual facts of their lives.  We saw this play out the past several weeks in the selection of two Vice Presidential candidates - one is a self-made guy who came from nothing and really achieved some admirable things, which he fortunately wrote in a memoir, while the other likes to embellish and falsify his record to make himself look approachable to the average voter.  One has a proven track record of his policies that is overall good, the other is a trainwreck.  The two individuals I am speaking of are Ohio Senator J.D. Vance and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz.  In the case of the latter, the term "stolen valor" has for the first time ever become a newsworthy topic, as Walz is notorious for claiming things he did not do.  That is one aspect of this discussion I wanted to focus on now, as it is very important to understand.

Every person on the planet throughout history has their share of positives and negatives - we have to be realistic about that.  To the degree those are shared with the wider world is up to the individual, but an important aspect of sharing anything personal is honesty.  It can be nuanced, or it can be very open, but as long as it is honest it will garner respect.  In the field of Personalist philosophy, this process is known as subjectivity, and according to Dr. John F. Crosby in his book The Selfhood of the Human Person (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1996), it entails several things.  Here is an abbreviated list of what he notes on pages 82-96:

1. Self-presence - this means encountering oneself subjectively rather than objectively.

2. Inwardness - the interiority of a personal being anchors the outward thrust of an intentional action.

3. Self-determination - in simplest terms, this entails personal goals that benefit the individual and are not explicitly expressed outwardly. 

While Crosby's text actually goes into greater detail about all this, I want to simplify it here.  To summarize, knowing oneself is both motivational as well as predetermining one's actions based on the inner determination.  It entails deep self-assessment, and then being realistic about one's limitations as well as one's potential.  An added dimension to this is the "desire to aspire" - this is critical in that the actions one takes after assessing one's own strengths and weaknesses are contingent upon self-awareness of one's capabilities and limitations.  External factors of one's particular environment also play a role in this too, in that oftentimes one's self-determination can be in direct conflict with environmental restraints - for instance, you know you can do something, but factors such as limited finances, travel, and other things make it practically impossible without some other determinant which can overcome those limitations.  Or it could be a learning disability - dyslexia is such an example, because the person who is diagnosed with it may actually be a brilliant individual with a high IQ, but they learn things differently.  The person may be good at math for instance, but when trying to focus on a problem the person encounters things like transposed numbers or blurriness (the script is dancing on the page and is hard for the person to comprehend).  Society tends to be very judgmental of people limited by circumstances, and often a lot of valuable resources in talent are wasted because the person who has the limitations is judged or maligned for them and no one can see past that.  The good news for such people though is that first, God cares - he doesn't create garbage.  Secondly, God will send those people into your life that will see beyond the limitations, and they may be able to help that person to overcome them in creative ways.  I have made no secret that I really enjoy those Dhar Mann videos - they tend to get across powerful messages about fundamental issues people face.  There is a recent one that just hit YouTube which encapsulates the example I noted here, so let me give a thumbnail abstract of that.

The video has as its protagonist a poor Asian-American kid who gets into a private school.  However, he is bullied by rich kids, and even a crassly judgmental teacher gives him issues and berates him.  Although the kid has a proclivity for math, he also has a learning disorder that causes the numbers to dance around so he cannot solve an equation because essentially he is unable to see it.  No one understands this, and they berate the poor boy as being stupid and a "welfare case." However, after an unfortunate event causes him to lose his dormitory space for a week, a Chinese security guard takes an interest in the boy and offers to help.  What is interesting about this security guard is that he is a Chinese national who had to flee his country because he objected on moral grounds to research he conducted being used for destructive weapons - it turns out the humble security guard is a genius in his own right.  He also struggled with a similar disability, and the way he overcame it was by playing a piano - by treating the math equation like a musical score, he was able to train himself to utilize that to solve very complex equations.  It helps the boy, and he wins a seat on a math competition team for the school and later actually becomes successful in life.  Like many of these Dhar Mann videos, this one has a good message and it illustrates that perhaps instead of looking at one's limitations, we should look at their potential.  As an educator myself, I appreciate this because it often does help when you can have an observant eye for those that one instructs. And it reaps rich rewards - I have seen that in students I have personally mentored, but I have also been the benefactor of the same over the years.  I never had a learning disability, but I do know what it is like to be economically disadvantaged and coming from a broken home.  Having people who believe in you even when your parents take little interest in who you are makes a hell of a lot of difference, believe me.  If you read J.D. Vance's Hillbilly Elegy, he expresses the same sentiments.  However, it goes much further than that as there is another aspect to it, and that is what I wanted to talk about now.

When one grows up with economic and social disadvantage, one is not necessarily isolated.  When I was growing up like that, I knew many kids in my neighborhood who were in similar (or worse) circumstances.  Like many kids, we had our rivalries, disagreements, shifting alliances with each other, and other intricacies like any kids in a given neighborhood do.  But, at the end of the day, we all shared a mutual respect among ourselves as a sort of unwritten code.  We may squabble at times among ourselves, but if an outside threat entered the picture, we were quick to put those minor issues aside to present a united front to stand against the threat.  As many of us grew older, we went our separate ways and all of us have different lives now.  Thanks to social media however, we all actually stay in touch and generally we are all friends today.  Some of our given group were successes in various areas of life, others fell on hard times and some are still struggling, but we all still respect each other despite our station in life.  For those of us who have done better in life, our former neighbors keep us humble as they know us best in many cases, and it is a reminder to never forget where one comes from.  You don't want to revert back to that, but you remember it because it keeps you on track to not get over-inflated ego issues.  I said all that to say this now, so bear with me as I am about to attack some elitist snobs in academia. 

I am part of the educated class - I have a Ph.D. myself and am very proud of my accomplishments.  However, I have not been shy about calling out the elitism one sees among academic professionals, and it is galling to me personally.  What really "chafes my chaps" is when a supposed "expert" with a doctorate in something has no clue about that which he or she is supposed to be an "expert" of.  This is particularly true when it comes to Appalachian Studies.  I was once enthusiastic about the fact that universities have these departments, but my optimism was shattered when I saw the people who were in charge of those departments and who were teaching in them.  There is no big mystery about the fact that much of academia is dominated by political and ideological leftists, and often they become more elitist/activist than they do academic.  True scholarship eludes them, and they cannot relate to real-life aspects of whatever discipline they claim to have superior knowledge in.  Appalachian Studies is not unique to this problem, as I also glaringly saw it demonstrated in the field of Theology as well.  At my alma mater, which is now one of the biggest Pentecostal universities in the country, there is a theological faculty that frankly scares me in regard to the reality that these individuals are helping to "educate" future pastors and church leaders in their denominational traditions.  I heard disparaging comments in classes regarding the local community this university is located in (one professor called everyone in that particular town "hicks") as well as denigrating the laypeople and clergy in their churches as somehow "inferior" to themselves.  If I were the leadership of that particular university, I would perhaps heed the warning to "not bite the hand that feeds you."  The "hicks" that the professor derisively labeled are the people who over the decades have provided a lot of community support to that university, and many of them are donors.  As for the "inferior" laypeople and pastors, the offerings from those churches often have a portion that is designated for that school, and these are also the people sending their sons and daughters to that university to get a quality education that reflects their denominational heritage.  For some stuck-up elitist academic to belittle those people is beyond comprehension - if I were the president of that university, I would be handing out pink slips to these stuck-up jackasses.  This same thing, unfortunately, plays out at many colleges and universities, and it is a serious problem.  It is one reason why a couple of pivotal issues facing our nation have come to the forefront, and I want to talk about those now. 

The first hot-button issue has really stirred debate, and that would be student loan forgiveness.  I am not exactly for or against this, because I understand the argument for both sides and I am also a recipient of student loans myself.  However, I think people need to be more nuanced about it in that a couple of things need to be looked at.  First, I think forgiveness should be an option, but perhaps the sweeping universal forgiveness proposed by some Democrats may be a bit much.  This should be evaluated more on a case-by-case basis, and criteria would need to be met on that for it to happen. There are a lot of details on this I could share but won't due to time constraints, but perhaps I will address it separately later.  

The second issue is the quality of education itself.  The problems with academia that I mentioned earlier are creating a class of idiots with diplomas - they are indoctrinated by activists masquerading as educators, and the result is our educational system is getting dumber.  Not only that, but more frightening is how toxic many universities are now - if you differ from the groupthink on some campuses, you could face violent repercussions both from students and faculty.  This is one reason why now many Conservatives are promoting trade schools and the old apprenticeship programs over formal education at a university - the student learns real skills and doesn't waste time on stupid "gender theory studies" classes and other useless garbage.  And, they learn skills that will benefit them later as productive members of society.  I don't think university education should be completely eliminated, but perhaps a different kind of university would be more practical - being an alumnus of Liberty University myself now, I honestly can say that I probably got a more well-rounded education there than many Ivy League students get. The government should get out of education altogether except for maybe some basic common-sense policies, and the university should be the domain of either the Church or private groups instead.  And as for the Ivy Leagues, their day has passed now, and their inferior standards have decayed their legacy.  Unless they can be revitalized, I would discourage people from enrolling in them. Any rate, those two things give a background to what I want to bring home now.

Despite having a Ph.D., I still remember where I come from.  It is what keeps me focused.  I feel that J.D. Vance echoes that sentiment, and we need more of his caliber in leadership.  As the educated class now, we who possess doctorates have the duty to recognize potential and dignity in those we have shared a history with, and we cannot think we are "too good" to associate with them any longer.  So, remember your old friends, keep in touch with them, and you may find that to be the biggest blessing of your life.  Thanks again for allowing me to share.