September 18, 2020:
"Do you want to be in school right now?"
I don't know the answer.
He's a philosophy professor at the University, he's much smarter than his University faculty colleagues, I'm taking symbolic logic from him as an independent study, but I can't think why. What's its purpose, why should I care?
I came to university to learn to differentiate between sectarian currents who consider their programs "scientific". What is the nature of scientificity? Why is one discourse science while another is merely lore, even if both convey knowledges? Those are my questions, but I've learned I can't answer them here, where the resources are lacking.
I'm frustrated and angry that my school fails so egregiously to live its promises, where so much of the delta between promise and execution lies in the silly shallow ironic pose of the two professors who are in theory my main resources. I'm unclear what my next steps should be. Am I continuing on to grad school? Why? To become a professor who reads at one tenth the speed of his students?
And I'm hungry to get into the world. The Nicaraguan revolution has changed things, and the triumph of Neoliberalism has changed things, where now there's a new universe of evil in power which must be contested. I'm more active in CISPES than in school, where I've organized teach-ins on the Salvadoran death squads and why the Nicaraguan Contras are not the George Washingtons of their country, that perfect piece of Reagan-era newspeak. Those actions are more meaningful to me than symbolic logic, and there's an urgency to them, where real people's real lives are at risk of torture and rape and murder in the name of our country's principles.
I do know the answer. I do not want to be in school right now. I pack my books and my clothes and my two guitars and the amp I bought from my friend and migrate south to save the world. Remarkably, I now have confidence I know how to proceed.