S5 EP 11 - The Gravity of Teaching (and its overcoming)

(upbeat music) - You're gonna feast on this one. - Conceptuality is something other than itself. There's been a change in the image of thought. - That's what it is, that's what it is. - The internal structure of, but as soon as an utter enslip from the mouth, it's divorced from the subject. - Subjecting with thinking with thinking with thinking. - Let's go back through and sort of explain the situation. - First of all, do your intro, the thing Daniel. - Oh, we're starting with the intro. - We're starting. - Wow, that's the first time we've ever done that. - Crazy. - Wow. - Hey everyone, welcome back to Thinking With, a rhetorical theory podcast. This is Nathaniel Street, Nate DeProspo, and John Mockelbauer, and we're doing Nietzsche's gay science. I think this is the 11th episode we've done on the gay science, and we're starting in on the last book, book five. This is the one he writes this one after the spake, "Zerthustra." - Right, he published the gay science, the first four books, and then went and wrote "Zerthustra" and then came back and added book five to the gay science as a result. - And when I was reading book five too, there was this one of the earlier aphorisms was about how no one had done a history of morality or sort of genealogy of morality, and he was frustrated with all these English ones, but at least they were trying. It's like no one's even tried this before. And then I was like, wait a second, let me look at these dates here a little bit. And so this was, he publishes on genealogy of morality in the same year. So I'm wondering how much of that work had been done. If he wrote that aphorism, I was just like, all right, I've got a project for myself. (laughs) (upbeat music) But before we get into Nietzsche, poor John is facing an ethical dilemma that I'm looking for help from you guys, because as a teacher, we face the versions of this literally every semester. So this is a situation. I've ended up teaching this asynchronous, two asynchronous online classes of semester of 250 students total. And as the set up, the pedagogical philosophy behind the class was pretty straightforward, which is you've got to watch a movie, read a short story, read a news thing that I set up. It's a science fiction class. And you do that every week. And every week you have to post three discussion posts in your group, I put them in groups. So they have discussion posts with their groups. And then after that, every week they have to write 500 words on their own. So every week they are posting multiple discussion posts and every week they are producing a paper. The same assignment every single week, every single week. Right, different material obviously. Like, each week the material changes, but the assignments are the same. Every week, same deadlines, same, everything, every single week. And then you get to the point of the end of the semester where there's a bunch of people who just didn't do a lot of them, right? And you get the emails a week before the end of the semester. And by the way, I'm definitely putting something in my syllabus about emails that I get in the last two weeks of the semester. Like, I'm going to be really hardcore. I'm just going to say, if you email me in the last two weeks of semester asking for an accommodation, I will simply ignore you. Period. Right? Because I'm perfectly willing all during the semester to accommodate them. And let me also say plenty of people did. Plenty of people sent me things and had issues and I gave them extensions or gave them whatever. But you get, right? As I was telling these guys, there's probably about 15 people who failed the class out of 250, right? They're also probably like 100 A's in the class. It's not like it was super hard. But then these 15 people are, of course, the ones that you hear from. And within the last couple of weeks, and they all have stories and their real life stories that are like, you know, you don't know if they're true or not. But let's just assume for a moment that they're at least partially true. And there's situations of like, I was diagnosed with epilepsy and had to learn how to deal with that. Or I had major depressive disorder, or I've won student to my father killed him. So, you know, like real harsh stuff where you're like, I kind of get that you didn't send me an email in September when this happened. I get why that's hard for you. And I get why you disappear from the class. Like I have to be like a reasonable human response. It's a level, you know. At the same time, I'm faced with a situation of, what do I do? Right? What do I do? And one particular student who I've been gone back and forth on email with, in general, my response has been to say, if you would contact me earlier, we would have created an accommodation. But given that you're contacting me at the last minute, there's nothing that can be done because the point of the class was to regularly produce work and produce habits rather than just get it all done, you know, at time A or time B. But there's one particular student that I've gone back and forth and I said like, hey, you could do a semester withdrawal. There are things through academic support. And I'll sign anything that you need to. I'm not trying to punish you, you know. But this particular student is also a teacher who her teaching job is predicated on graduating this semester and she will lose her job. So she will not only not graduate, but she will also lose her job. She does not have the funding. Everything has been, you know, she has been financed whatever by loans. So she doesn't have the funding to even get the, to get the extra course even if she were to take it again next semester. So she'll lose her job. She won't finish college. So I'm in this position right now of feeling like I get all of the arguments, which is the student created the situation they could have done the work. It's evident that other people were able to do the work. At the same time, I am put in this position, I feel like, of having to make a decision about another person's life. That I don't want to have to make, but I feel as if I have to make it. Like, that's the actual decision. So do I create an accommodation and say, "Hey, you can make up three weeks worth of work "which would bump you into the sea range?" Right? And do I then have to go back to every other person in these classes and say, the same would apply for all of you is you can make up three weeks worth of work to bump you into the sea range to not get an F. Like, do I need to do that? Do I need to be fair and do that across the board? Or could I make the exception for one student in this extreme circumstance simply because I know her story? Simply because I know her story and she has reached out to me and rather than just settle with, 'cause other people are sent an email saying, like I said, like, I would have accommodated you, but I can't accommodate you now. And they've just been like, no harm, no foul. I get it, right? And they just sort of take the F and they're dealing with it probably because the consequences aren't as severe as they are. There's one other student I think that the consequence is not graduating. And I haven't heard back from that student, but this student is not graduating, losing her job, not being able to continue college. And I don't know how to think about this because at the end of the day, I am faced with this decision, right? It is about what I, which box I check. I mean, before we started recording, you brought up Daredal in the question of the decision. And like the decision thing would be, is to pretend like there isn't a decision. To pretend there is not a decision. That's right. That's just to apply the calculus. There's a calculus, there's a mechanism here, and it's obvious and that way you can just go to bed and feel okay about it because it wasn't really your decision or it shouldn't be your decision. That's right. That is a product of a policy and I am following the policy. Yeah, yeah. But I live it and experience it like I would love to not be the deridium in this case. But I live it and experience it as all of these things being true. She could have done better, they could have done their work, they could have done, there's multiple things that could have happened along the way. Nevertheless, I'm still at a moment right now where I click button, you know, I click the F button where I click the C button. Is it possible to talk to her advisor? Well, she is apparently already spoken to her advisor this evening and that's another email that I got. And her advisor has said there's just nothing that can be done here. Like you just need to, or apparently she said you just need to go back to the professor, he needs to create an accommodation for you or offer an incomplete, right? I was just, yeah. I was just before you do make any accommodations, I would at least maybe reach out to her advisor and be like, did she do this in any of the other classes? Like is this the only one? Okay. That's the thing that I do, that her advisor said to her, 'cause I recommended a semester withdrawal given the circumstances in her life. And her advisor said, you can't get a semester withdrawal for just one course. And I know that that's true. So what I know then is that this is the only class. It's just this one. Okay. But was it, now is this her only asynchronous class? That I have no idea. I don't know anything about the remainder of her schedule. I don't know anything about anything. Okay. I'm just curious, just because like, part of me is a little sympathetic, just because at least pre-COVID, an online class to me was a blow off. Like at least in my mind at Penn State, I was like, and I didn't do well in those classes. So like, I didn't get any kind of preferential treatment, but I wasn't possible for me to negotiate both in person and online class. That may well be the case with the student at that time. But I mean, like you're saying, it's everything's contextual. Like what's on the syllabus? Does it say you can't turn things in late? Clearly it's saying there's a specific, yeah, okay. Well, then there's a report. - But this is the whole issue, is that like all of the calculus is up and up in the field. - The policy is clear. - There's no whistle room. - Right. - There's nothing, by simply applying the policy, I'm not doing anything wrong, right? I'm like, I said really clearly, no late work. Will not accept any late work, you cannot make anything up. But then if you do make the exception, like you said, you're gonna have to probably do that for everybody and that's putting so much more work. - Well, that's the best way to work. - I don't know if I buy that either. - That's part of the question. - We're just gonna be up to it. - Yeah, yeah. - Another calculus. - Right, that would just be the one. - Right, that's right. - So instead of the policy is my calculus, now something more like, - Inception is my calculus. - Inception is my calculus. And either way it seems like the desire, the anxiety is the making of the decision, right? And then either way the desire is to forego having to make the decision. - But you just precisely did question. - If you did give the exception, you would feel the pressure to then go and email the other people. Or no, you think you could just make it and then not to. - I think that I would feel obligated for me. - Can we think about it? - People, yeah, like for instance, she is at a point number where there are a number of the apps where it's just like they just never showed up for class. They just never did anything. - Yeah. - That is a different case. This is someone who was spotty. Like sometimes did it, sometimes didn't do it. - Right. - So she has a certain number of points during the semester. And I sort of do feel like I would feel obligated to go to those people and say, hey, you know, those of you who are at a score of a 50 in the class so far, here's what you can do to get yourself into a score of a 60. You know, or something like, you know what I mean? I think I would feel like-- - How many of those students are there, like maybe five? - I don't know, maybe three of roughly, maybe three. - Right. - That's not a reasonable number. - Yeah. - It seems if we're taking this as the question of the decision, though, the way that the search for the calculus has to be abandoned. It can't be what do I do in this genre? It has to be how do I, like each one is gonna have to be a decision. And it's gonna be an average decision. - So is it what's the more important decision? The impact on the individual person's life or the impact on fairness and the entire academic or the instantian. - The integrity of the class. - Yeah. - And you know, it's what we're asking, like look, if this, like should this person have a job as a teacher who if they can't like get their shit enough together? To, like if this is, you know, the one thing that I constantly think of this is that you're not the one reason she can't get this job. Is that there are, you know, if there are, you might be the straw that's breaking the camel's back. - That's right. No one class is doing this. - But I'll tell you, man, it's just like, I, seriously, like I haven't slept in a couple of days, like my chest hurts. - Just about this particular case. - About well about these cases. It's not this particular case, but about these cases, yes. And I kind of reached the decision. I spoke to a little bit earlier and she was super helpful just to sort of talk through it. Now she had his different approach to the class where her assignments, she's like, I didn't really care if they handed them in late. Like I didn't say she'd never said that, but she didn't really care. So the idea of giving an incomplete and handing in late work for her, and that was her advice. She was like, I would just say, give them an incomplete and let them hand it in late and who cares? And I'm like, given how you taught the class, it's a different pedagogical philosophy than how I taught the class. - Yeah. - Right, given that I was insistent about producing habits, regularity, the potential for the class. It's the point of the class. You can't do discussions as an incomplete. - Yeah. - Yeah. - How do you have discussions with other people if you took it incomplete? There's no other people to have discussions with. I can put all the F people together. Half the math, half the discussion. - Half the math. - Right. - Yeah. I mean, the way I've often treated that is stuff like that, you just can't, part like ephemeral stuff like that, you can't make up. The, you know, certain assignments, but again, it kind of depends on, like is it the repetition sort of thing? So, well, also you were saying earlier, and you're probably right in a thing, you know, that this is not the one instance that is making her fail, but you can't, I mean, what if it was though? I mean, it's not an impossibility. What if it was a random, just fucking, slipped her mind, the one asynchronous class, and it just, that would be fine, but then she would've had a normal set of grades and then a single F. - That's right, right. That's right. - She's still what a graduate is? - That's right. Almost certainly. - Oh, okay. - Oh, okay. Well, yeah, never mind then. (laughing) - Oh well. - Well, what if, what if, what if, what we're searching for? What we're searching for, and Boo Boo, like you're wonderful for doing this, and I wanna say this, like what you're searching for is a way to ease me, right? You're searching for a way to make me feel better. And that's what we do is teachers all the time. We're like, we're looking for like, how can I do this in a way that absolves me of the responsibility? And everything that we keep saying in response to you is we can't absolve ourselves of the responsibility. And you're like, but what about this way? What about this way? And we are, we're trying to absolve ourselves of the responsibility of the consequences for the decision. And again, they're all good, there are really good reasons for absolving oneself of the responsibility for the decision. It's not good. - It's a heavy burden to carry. Like, the number of things like this that I've, I've sweated over the years, like they still, like they're like, you know, they're years old. And I don't even remember the specific cases, but I can still feel their weight. I can feel like still. - I mean, there's still like, there's part of me that's just like, I don't want to be a teacher anymore because I don't want to deal with this. - Yeah. - Well, let me, let me give you one just brief one. I don't want to do all of it, but just 'cause it's kind of similar. I have an international student in Indian from the continent of India. Student who basically hasn't shown up to any classes, but throughout the semester has expressed anxiety about coming and also willingness to complete the assignments. - Yeah. - And so I told him, it's a certain point, like halfway through. I was like, if you can figure out a way to get all this shit done, even though you haven't done any of it. - Right. - I will still give you credit for like partial credit for these essays. And so he came to me again, like last week, still hasn't turned into anything. And was basically just begging me, like just sort of like this person is with you. Like, can I please turn the shit in? And I was like, I mean, what I told him, 'cause he just kind of ambushed me in the office. I was like, I mean, yeah, like go ahead, like turn it in, but I don't think that's gonna happen. But at this point, it's a similar thing. I don't have a strict of a attendance policy or a late work policy. So theoretically, you could not show up to any classes and then turn everything in on the last day. - Right. - And you could still get a C. Like theoretically within the syllabus, that could be worked out. But he's the only one that's done that, you know, a version of that. - But you'll have it. - So I mean, I don't, - Boo, I promise for the remainder of your career, literally every semester, you're gonna have some variation on that theme. - Yeah, most of the time, I just failed him, but I don't know why I'm like at this state. I guess 'cause he keeps coming, usually they give up, eventually. - Right. - He's been persistent. - That's the sad part. I mean, you know, the ones that really want to try, and there's something that they're dealing with that just can't allow them to get over the hump. Those are the hardest ones to deal with. I mean, one thing too, 'cause I've been in that situation so many times, Nate, where the student is sort of like, I'll do extra and then I'll get it all in, and I'll just, I'll just, you know, will on myself to do it, and then they never do it. And I just, like, those are the ones that eat me up. So I just see them, they're tormenting themselves, and then they just sort of like, with or away or go away or something. And to be honest, like in my earlier career as a teacher, like it was such a relief when they just went away, because I was so overwhelmed by everything else. But at a certain point, I started to shift, where I started, I wasn't that I didn't allow students to try to know what makes stuff up, otherwise, or try to find alternative paths. As I just started having blunter conversations with them about the value of letting some things, like cutting the cord on something so that everything doesn't fall out. It's like, you know, really recommending dropping a class, whether it's my class or another one, and having those kind of conversations. - Yeah, I've done that in conversations. In normal classes, when I actually meet the students, like I don't even know what the student looks like. Right, like I have not met the students. So in normal situations, I do exactly what Nathaniel's talking about. You get to that midpoint in the semester, and the student hasn't showed up at all, and you'd like, look, you need to cut your losses here because it's just not worth it. - That's right. - I'll try to, yeah, it's just not worth it. And I'll sign it with all kinds of work. - And then it didn't realize it? - Yeah, yeah. - Yeah, it's like, it's not a bad person, nothing bad happened here. - Right. - Here is just, you know, this is a really problem. - Only problem with this kid is that I'm pretty sure he would have lost his visa. - I told him he would. - Exactly, it's that kind of consequence where you go like, this is, so he, basically the fail, the F is better than a withdrawal for him, 'cause at least he's a full-time student. - Mm-hmm. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - At the end, yeah. So. - But this is, I mean, I mean, this is where I think that the, the deritting and focus on, you know, you can't get out of having to make the decision. There is no, you know, sort of, machining away, I mean, less if you just, I mean, it is a powerful and narcotic. But the other side of it that I think you have to hold just as strongly as the Theridian one is, it is such a fucked up environment that is not of your own architecting. That why are you teaching someone who seems to be pretty clearly not capable of taking this class? And then who in the world is putting their visa on the line to be here? Like this person has been set up to fail. Teaching an online class of 250 people is not teaching, right? It's just, and you're a teacher who cares, who cares personally about students, even ones that you haven't ever met before. So like there is an incompatible machinery where you're having your heart torn out by someone you literally never met. Just think about the fucked up architecture. It's really difficult to figure out why I'm single, isn't it? Yeah. Oh, the heart-wrenching quality of this piece. I think you've never met. This is the very first episode of Community when Jeff Weiner holds up the pencil and names it Steve and snaps it in half and everyone around the room goes, "Oh, yes." When I was younger, it was easier for me to do this because I mean, I just had a, it was easier for me to draw a hard line and say, "Look, it's the policy." And that's more than likely what I'm going to do. I mean, it's more than likely where I'm headed because I just don't see a viable alternative. But here's the thing. I'm just going to feel like shit about it. I mean, I just am. You know? And it's going to, I mean, it really, I'm not even joking about the losing sleep. Like, and I'm not even joking about the chest pain. Like, I'm, that's not even, I'm not kidding. Like, what about, what about next time, like, are you going to have to teach this thing again? At some point, or is this the only time? No, I'll teach it next fall. I mean, I designed this whole thing as something that's replicable. Oh, okay. Replicable, but here's what I'm going to do. The next time I do this, I'm going to really, really highlight. Like, here's the deal. And that'll definitely fix it all. There definitely will be. But the, the late work thing, would you consider like actually embedding in the syllabus more leeway for this type of like so that you know, I'll go the other way. I'll go, I'm going to go, because the past I have been, I have been more of a late work. Like, yeah, I don't really care. It's not a big deal. But the more that I think about what I'm trying to do in classes like this is part of the philosophy. Right. It's like, I'm trying to produce the regular repetition of practices. Because, you know, increasingly for me, I really do think that the content of what we teach is totally secondary to regularly getting them doing some intellectual engagements, discussion with other people, some blah, blah, blah, blah. That's the thing that we're actually training them on. So you can't do that. Like, it's not a question of you have to complete X number of assignments. It's that you have to do this every week. That's a totally different criteria. Yeah, right. So I think I'm heading more that way. I just feel like you're going to, this situation is going to be replicated for you. Like, I'm thinking of for your sake. Like, you might, because you will get the people who want to do what you're talking about. Are you trying to convert people who otherwise wouldn't be willing to do that kind of habitual? Well, they could repetitive discussion. Well, I think that, I don't know if it's willing or if it's overcoming obstacles or whatever, because like I said, literally, I'm not exaggerating. I have a 250 people. I gave 100 A's, which means 100 people. And does that mean that they were predisposed towards the creation of habits? Maybe it does. But that's an awful lot of people, right? Because I actually feel like if I didn't have this really strict, regular, you know, policy and habit, a lot of those people wouldn't have done it. They wouldn't have done it. So they were somewhat of a worse distribution of grades. Right. I mean, I actually think that that's true. I mean, I don't know that speculative, of course, but it's like, whatever, it's a teaching philosophy. When I spoke with earlier and she said, I would recommend this and it allowed me to clarify for myself. I'm like, ah, that's not what I care about. I don't care that they do the work. I care that they do it repeatedly. Like, that's different. So the idea of you could take a week and produce all of the papers for the, I mean, you could, right? Like, you could do all of the work to this class in a week. But that wouldn't accomplish the work of the class. You know? So otherwise to me, it's like, why not just put it all up online and just say, hand anything out in whenever you hand it in? Like, you know, Well, couldn't you do it? You could do that. You could. You could, but not, they could be a self-paced class, right? Like, you could do that. And I mean, there are versions of online asynchronous classes that are like, this is self-paced. Whenever you hand it in is when you'll get the grade. Yeah. But those are just content classes. That's a different, that's right. That's a different class. Yeah. Yeah. And I don't, I mean, that's part of the issue here is because this is a sci-fi class for non-majors, although these, actually, this particular student happens to be a major. So that's even a little bit weird, you know? But this is a, you know, it's, it's because it's a class for non-majors, I don't care that they learn the content. I don't care that they, that's why it's not like the greatest hits of science fiction. It's like stuff that will make you think. You know, that's why it's designed, the whole impetus behind the whole thing. And so the main, but it's curious, it's interesting to me, the major's class. So I taught a class of majors and then 200 people in non-majors and then 40 people in the majors class. So it's really too for whatever. And the major's class isn't any better than the non-majors in terms of this. Really? Yeah. There's no real difference. Now I will say the really good students in the majors class are way better than the really good students in the non-majors class just because they have more facility with how to talk about, you know, movies and short stories and novels and stuff. But in general, I have, I would say percentage-wise in the majors class, I've got the same kind of like out of 40 students. I've got 20 A's and 5 F's, which is about the same percentages it is in the non-majors of 200. You know, I got 100 A's and 15 F's. Do you think that, do you think post-COVID that students are expecting more leeway? Like what year most years do you? There's almost no like upper level or that all over the place. I will say this. I get far more emails at the beginning of the semester from the disability office. I mean far more to accommodate students. But those accommodations are always based on exams and I don't give exams, right? Like yeah. So, and to me it's like, I have said, and I say to say to students very explicitly, I've never met an accommodation that I'm not willing to accommodate. Never. It's never happened that someone's come to me at the beginning of the semester and said. It's gotta be one. Like hey, because you have to write a class every day. Come on, I mean a reasonable, I've got the ones that say I don't want you to mark the writing mistakes. No joke. I have, okay, well I haven't gotten those kinds of the combination requests. But it's like, yeah, like I said, I mean it's just once a week. Here's what you gotta do. You gotta watch a movie, you gotta read a short story, you gotta engage in a little bit of a discussion online with your peers and then you gotta produce a 500 word. And you know, 500 words is one page, right? For those who may not know, 500 words is a page, double spaced. So you've gotta have three interactions with other humans online in a discussion and write a double spaced page once a week. After having watched a movie, read a short story, or sometimes a novel, like you know, whatever. It's a few hours worth of material that they have to engage. But it's clearly easy enough for half of them to get a's. Yeah. Yeah. And I'm just wondering if, and there are quite a few people who I have one student for instance, who's clearly a non-traditional student and his, the mother of his children was killed in a car accident in the middle of the semester. And he- What kind of fucking- Jesus. When you have 250 people, man, you have real life, right? Like you're a whole city. You have a whole city. Yeah, you do. You just have like- And this guy sent me an email when he was at the hospital with his children saying, "Can I hand in my assignment late?" Because I'm literally at the hospital right now. And I was like, "Dude, take your fucking time. Relax. You've got more important things going on. I am not going to be your problem. You hand the stuff in whenever you hand the stuff in. And if future weeks this continues, just let me know." And future weeks nothing continued. Like he- Everything went fine in terms of completing the work for the class, right? And that's all he'd had to do. And he did. And he was faced with an impossible situation. Now again, that's not saying, "Well, so she should be able to do it." Because he was able to do it, you know? Like they're different lives. And- And someone who's experienced like anxiety disorder stuff, like I am totally sympathetic to how disabled, how hard it is, to like just reach out and ask for help. So part of the irony here is the thing that I'm demanding of them is something that I understand is extremely difficult for them to actually do in certain circumstances, for certain people. You know? It's like I know that feeling of like, "Fuck, man, I don't even want to like, I don't even want to send this email. I don't want to think about having to say, that's where I am right now with this great situation." I'm like, "I just want to not think about it." Let's talk about- It's amazing how much energy- It's fucking not think about this shit. Because then I'm- We're going to have to remove the nature really soon. I'm going to have to- I'm gonna have a fuck. - Yeah. - Can you check? (laughing) Holy shit. (laughing) (upbeat music) - But this is what it means to be a teacher, right? - Oh, really? - It's what it means to be teachers. I mean, that was one of the worst byproducts of the pandemic for me was watching classes disintegrate into collections of individuals, each with their own, you know, laundry list, a fucked up nest that they live with. - And they're all dealing with fucked up things, guys. - Like real things? - I mean, real things, like these are not, I think back on my college experience and me not doing well in a particular class was entirely a product of lethargy and like staying out late and playing. - Yeah. - That is less the case with the vast majority of my students now. - It feels like it's for me only. - Yeah, like these are people working full-time jobs, doing all kinds of other, you know, like, all kinds of other stuff. - Good. - Why do you have so many students working full-time jobs? - When you have to, if you're students, you just have a lot of, so that's just a different dynamic. You wouldn't have them in your normal class. - Yeah, in my normal class, as I do, still, it's also the difference between going to a full-time university, self-care, line-up, and going to Tufts University, right? Like, I was going to a pretty privileged, you know, everyone there is pretty well off. Everyone, no one there. I was actually, I worked a part-time job all the way through college and I was rare. Almost nobody else that I knew worked at all, you know? And now I've certainly, I let that get in the way and that was my own, whatever, but I'm just saying, like, no, but, you know, the situations that caused people to get into difficult circumstances were not the mother of their children who was killed in an accident and they were not, oh, here, here, I got another one. Guy's deploying, a Marine who's deploying two weeks before the end of the semester, can I complete the assignments in advance so that I can go risk my life in the military? Well, you know, I have my feelings about the military, but my God, of course, you can, man, of course. Like, you know, of course, that's a real life circumstance, that is not, you know, I had a bad week in the gamecocks lost, you know, or I got really hungover. This has to be, yeah. But this is part of you being, the class is part of South Carolina global. Yeah, it's like, it's almost the equivalent of a commuter operation, right? None of them, that guy's not on campus, you know? Not as far as I know, I mean, I don't know. I don't know, I mean, I literally have not met any of my students except for one that I, that happened to recognize my voice out on the golf course and asked, are you muckle-bauer? (laughing) It was like, yeah, why do you say, like, well, I've seen you in my video lectures every week. Well, I've never seen you. (laughing) I'm just saying, demographics wise, if you were teaching just your standard in-person classes, you wouldn't have quite as many of the type of students. That's correct. That's certainly true. South Carolina is not a commuter school. It's most people that go there are still traditional four-year, 18 years old, that's why they're on. 40,000 students across the US. And to be honest with you, 1000 and, I mean, as you get to know more and more of the students, many of them, many, and I'm saying, this isn't unusual. They're living at home, they are caring for aging parents. That happens, right? Like that's, that's the commonplace. You know, they are not, like, there are, of course, plenty of these kids that are out here, you know, at the bars and getting loaded on the weekends. But not like it was at Penn State, I feel like, honestly. And Penn State's another big state school. Penn State's a little more privileged. Yeah, a little more, for sure. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So it's the stories that I frequently hear. I mean, there are times where I'm like hard line on policy stuff and just, you over, this is when I'm in a classroom, right? And you over here, then talking to one another and talking about like, yeah, I gotta be, I work at UPS from 10 p.m until 6 a.m. and then my first class is at 8. And I'm like, and the student is 20 years old, right? This is not a non-traditional, this is, and they're putting themselves through college. And some of those students do, some of the students do exceptionally well and some of them filter, right? And to me, I'm just super sympathetic to creating accommodations for them. Like, yeah, you don't, you plan to not sleep for Monday through Thursday. Because that's how you like live your life at age 20. It's like, I find, this is where I find the university just to be almost borderline criminal. It, in the way that it, it, it, incentivizes to leak of a word, but you know, obviously necessitate is to stront of a word, but to put students in this situation where they're paying gross amounts of money for to secure their future, their professional future. And then be put into classes where they're just a statistic. And there's, there's just no opportunity really for some kind of pedagogical back and forth. And then yet, the university itself is so fucking wealthy that has no problem, you know, $1 billion a, yeah, billion dollar, like ridiculous endowments, you know, it has its own professional sports team. - Carver's endowment is more than the GDP of like 25 countries. - Yeah, yeah. I mean, this is an hard one. - It's not, I don't know. But still, the endowment of South Carolina is not small. - No, no, no, yeah. - Yeah, university should not be this expensive, should not be this mass produced. It's not a problem of resources. It's a problem of allocation or distribution of resources. - Now, this is the whole administration question. I mean, it raises all the questions of the infrastructure, the administrative process and all of those things that are, look, they're really, really important issues, but they're just frankly kind of boring for people outside of academia. They just, it just doesn't, you know, it just doesn't, it's not sexy enough. I mean, that's what I said. It's like football is the opiate of the, you know, of colleges and universities, right? Because that's all the board of trustees needs to do. So, gain, go Cox. Spencer Ratler's a good quarterback, right? Like, and that just induces this euphoria that allows people to say, we don't actually care about the nitty gritty, now here's what they'll do. They'll set up the office for student services for, you know, for problems and they'll set up the liability containment office of counseling and they'll, they set up these offices under the auspices of we're creating outlets for students, but they don't seem to effectively do that job, at least from what I can tell. I don't know why that is, and I have lots of cynical explanations for that that you guys have heard many times. - All of mine are cynical, yeah. - But nevertheless, they don't accomplish the thing that the offices were designed to do. That I think, I think we can say that fairly clearly. - Yeah, diverting a bunch of money to the office of this, right? It's just never ever ever going to make up for just good, healthy student to professor ratios in class, where decisions like the one that you're facing are actually personal decisions that most of which would be forced to all the way earlier than this. - Way earlier is the omission. - If we were in a classroom, I would have encountered, or rather not encountered, the students sufficiently earlier, that I mean, the fact that matter is, here's another part of this. I feel like I was not a good teacher insofar as, here's what I did not do this semester, because you can't do it with 250 people. I didn't go through and try to pick out, at a midpoint of the semester, the ones that are in danger. The ones that are potentially, I didn't do that. I just, I don't do that consciously when I teach in class classes, but I do it just by being. - I have nothing to do, you just notice. - Right, because this, oh, haven't seen you in a month, we need to talk after class. Right? You know? And so it does, as Nathaniel said, it forstalls these problems in October, rather than pushing them into December. - Maybe that doesn't mean that the person passes the class, but maybe it means the person drops the class. - That's fine. - And it addresses the problem before the substantial consequence of, I'm gonna lose my job, I'm gonna lose my scholarship. And who knows, especially when there's mental health or even things like, you know, think of the possible consequences of how some of these storylines go. And am I gonna be okay with living with that? Fuck me, man. That's real. Now I know that's unfair and that gets a little bit, it's a little sort of self-indulgent to think in those terms, but it's true. - Yeah. - It's hard to wish it away. I mean, you know, I, here's what I would also say is, just because those sort of moralizing Calculi machineries are mostly to alleviate a sense of guilt. And I wouldn't just, you know, swallow them, hook line and sinker. But I also wouldn't simply dismiss them. You need them to act, just to sleep at night. You need, take a little dose. - You need a man. I need you. - Yes, yes, and this is Dared O's point. It's like at the end of the day, you gotta make a decision. Like, in other words, the decision will always be a leap of faith. It will always be, right? It can't not be. In other words, there's no calculus that's gonna simply tell you what to do. It just can't. Even the employment of a calculus is also itself a leap of faith, right? And so that's part of the interesting point where you go like, okay, here's the faith that I'm gonna commit to is that I created a policy and that's all I can do about this. And I absolve myself because you're right. And these are, you know, most of the decisions that we make are not that big of a deal. But even these are not that huge of a deal, but they're still consequential to see, they're not like, we aren't surgeons who are opera. I mean, this is my friend Tony says this all the time. He's like, hey, we're not surgeons, saving people's lives or killing people. We're just like, you know, worrying over their interpretation of Nietzsche. And I'm like, yeah, on the one hand, I get your point, but on the other hand, I think that we are consequential in ways, you know, the involvement in the institution and the role that that plays in not just people's development, but just their professional, you know, creating professional possibilities for them. It's not nothing. - Well, as a sort of silly thought experiment, so take the example of your student right now. So you're thinking about her future, right? And the context of you making this decision is going to affect her future at least in some way, either in a big way or in a smaller way. But you were thinking about contingency and the effects of the decision. I mean, it's possible that you failing her. - Yes, you're right. - I see where you're going. - Leads to better, leads to something more motivation. Leads to her making better decisions. - Yes, you're totally right. - And if you passed her, she just kind of stays in that. - You're totally right. - There's no way to know, but let's be honest. Let's fucking guess on that one. Right? You know what I'm saying? Like, you're right. When I'm playing a probability game here and the probability, and I understand the problem with probability is that it's wrong a lot of the time. (laughing) But you're right. You're right because that does happen. It does happen that, you know, a line in the sand becomes a moment of pedagogical moment for a person in their own adventure. That's right. - And again, the question about, the question isn't about the effect of the decision. The question is about the decision, the marking of the decision they make. - The marking of the decision. - The moment of the decision, the cut. And then that's where then you go to, I mean, given all the things that we're talking about right now and you go to, like for me, way too often of late, I go to, what is the value of the thing that we do then? Right? Like, given the circumstances of people's lives that we were talking about and all the things that are going on, it's like, what is this value? Why do we do this thing? And it's just really important to me in terms of why the three of us do this thing, right? Like, why do we do this thing? Like why is it, this thing is fun for all three of us. We've all talked about that many, many times, right? But what do we do this for? Right? 'Cause it's fun. Do we believe that it's important? Do we believe that developing certain habits of thinking? I mean, 'cause here's to me, like I'm a person who's immersed and trained in this and here's what it's produced for me, total freaking anxiety about giving a grade. (laughing) So, so to me, I go, well maybe people shouldn't learn that. (laughing) Well, maybe people shouldn't be taught in ways that will induce like limitless anxiety over every possible decision that it's, you know, infinite consequence. Yeah. You know. Man. I mean, it was not a real question 'cause I feel like your orientation towards this job obviously changes. Like, my compared to like my first couple, I mean, my experience is so much more limited than both yours, but. Yeah, well you're just younger. You're just younger, but in 20 years, you're gonna be saying what I'm saying now. In the trajectory of my teaching experience, though, I went from totally not caring to now really enjoying it, which I could try to explain through a number of factors why that happened, but I enjoyed, I think, for a number of like, what you would hope for, like, what you would hope are authentic reasons in the sense that you're fostering sensibilities in your students, you're allowing them to get interested in stuff, and, you know, having great conversations day to day. But I would never assume that my orientation towards my job is like a noble one. I don't know, I just think it's what I do. Like, it's just who you are. I try to be. It's the expression of your way of life, and you don't have to rationalize it by its nobility. You just say, "This is how I. " Because I think that I would go farther. I think I would argue for the nobility. Yeah, I would say that. A little bit. I think that I would say, no, I think that part of what I am trying to do is create a world in which there is a more empathetic relationship to alterity, a more attentive or attuned responsiveness to, you know, others in their different kinds of circumstances. But what I'm saying is, here's what one version of what attentiveness do, alterity, looks like, anxiety. (upbeat music) I have an aphorism for us to try to bridge our gap. (laughing) So this is 327, taking seriously. For most people, the intellect is an awkward, gloomy, creaking machine that is hard to start. When they want to work this machine and think, "Well, they call it taking the matter seriously." Oh, how taxing thinking must be for them. The lovely human beast seems to lose its good mood when it thinks, "Well, it becomes serious." And where laughter and gated are find thinking is good for nothing. That is the prejudice of this serious beast against all gay science. Well then, let us prove it a prejudice. And I mean, I've got two, that's a response in two ways for me. On the one hand is the, just as a response, I mean, just a purely personal response of the, you're taking the weight of this very seriously, John, and I think with very good reason. But since they already might not be the only way, I don't suggest, you know, obviously, like not caring about or laughing it off. But different kinds of laughter, right? They're different kinds of laughter. Different kinds of laughter. And then, yeah. And then the other one is into question, like, what are we doing here? Yeah. Well, in terms of like, you know, in so far as I feel like what I do has a certain nobility to it, it is exactly to prove the prejudice of sincerity against the gay science wrong. Right, that's-- I mean, I fully agree, like, if you want, you could not pick a more appropriate aphorism to summarize what I think, like, why Nietzsche's important to me and why I do what I do. It's like, because you don't have to be gloomy to be smart. You don't have to be, you know, stodgy and serious in order to be a thinker. And to me, Nietzsche's truthfully, the first person that ever taught me that, and still continues to be the one that I return to and that I learn from the most on that. It's like that sense of the-- that's the book four, right? It's the book four celebration, that affirmation of becoming. That's like, why is learning connected to seriousness? Daredos great on this in the minstrel van Contex. This is one of the undercurrent arguments there. In limited ink, is like, why is seriousness hooked to-- Or rather, there's a history to why learning and knowledge are hooked to seriousness. And it's a contingent history. It is not a necessary history. There can be other ways of thinking that are joyful and celebratory and laughing. And they're not necessarily derisive laughter. That's where you have to have different senses, different senses of laughter. Not dismissive, not-- That's right. You know, the deeply felt, you know, sort of, belly laughter. Well, and that's, I feel like, you know, my-- at least for me, that's my pedagogy. Like, my pedagogy-- you guys have taken class with me. It's always like-- it's always laughing. It's got to be laughing. Like, if I taught a single class and there wasn't laughter in the class, and at some point, it would be like a terrible class. It's a failure class. What the fuck am I doing? I don't know. I don't know. Yeah. But just thinking, I mean, even in terms of this, right, in terms of what we do, like, we laugh. Right? And that's not like a sideline. That's a dimension of what we do. I mean, it's maybe other people don't think it's funny, but like, fuck 'em. It's not everybody's company. But in terms of hooking it to thinking, I do think that some of the best thinking that I've ever done is, A, happened on this podcast, and B, it happens at moments of levity where we're making connections across things. And there's a humor to it. There's, you know, sometimes even the humor is the thing that leads to the intelligence that, yeah, just would not. Hence the importance of nature, right? Like, this is where-- Yeah. It's just, that's where I say it's so deeply important, not in that earnest sense. In fact, precisely, what is the aphorism that begins the gay science has always been one of my favorites. I don't know if we ever talked about that one. But it's the-- No, we did, yeah. --the wise man who is unable-- Well, I'm not going to find it right now, Pacific existence. No, no, no. This is the aphorism on the front. of the book. Like on the title page or whatever of the book, I'm not going to find it, but I can quote it. So at the wise man who refuses to laugh at himself, I laugh, right? Like, I mean, and that's the whole, that's the intro to the book is like, here's the, like, if you can't laugh at yourself, then your wisdom is laughable in the derisive sense. Right? Like, here's the issue of in what you got it. Yeah. This house is my own and here I dwell. I've never aped nothing from no one and laugh at each master, mark me well, who at himself has not poked fun over markets who are wildly different translation than the cough laugh. That is a portrait language. Like, yeah, I couldn't make sense of any of that. I can vote in my own house. Okay. So I live in my own house or my own place. Nima Niniq's knock him off. I have never copied anybody even half and at any master who lacks the grace to laugh at himself, I laugh. That's the cough man translation and that's a fuck ton better than what you just read. Yeah. And it says over the door to my house. Right? I live in my own place. I've never copied nobody even half and at any master who lacks the grace to laugh at himself, I laugh. Yeah. And was Nietzsche the first to really articulate that as a philosophical position? I mean, I'm sure something similar has been said in literature poetry, but philosophy that has to be the first. Right? It's the first thing I've ever heard of. Right. Like, I've just, and it's just, I mean, that's where to me, it's like the most important question in philosophy that Nietzsche diagnosis is the tone. Right? What I'm calling style, you know, in for a decade, I've been calling style and not writing that book, but the tone of the thinking, you know, what is it? What is the thinking smell like? Does it smell like earnest and serious and, you know, where does it smell light and dancing and laughing and, you know, that that and that's to me. Yeah. So that's where I think that there is a nobility in, you know, as I, I mean, the way that I think the terminology that I've used is I'm invested in fostering ecologies of joy. You know, I've used that expression before, recognizing full well that there's my particular version of joy is not everybody's version of joy. Well, I guess that's, that's what I meant by like bracketing the nobility part because I think I'm, I'm doing the best I can. I'm trying to foster those kind of relationships, but it's sort of impossible to tell and you're not going to reach every but. Oh my gosh. Like there's some people who just don't like it. They're like, they don't, I don't like you. I don't like what's going on here. Yeah. You know, and that's, you're not going to get that relationship out of them. I had at least like, I had like two students this semester that were kind of like that where they reacted against the material against my disposition and then that colored the rest of the semester. That's right. There's nothing you can do. Like, I don't understand what's going on. Fuck you. But you can't be their teacher. Like that's the the misunderstanding in terms of education is that you can just sign up for a class and learn from whoever happens to be the teacher. Like that's, I mean, if anyone sort of thoughtfully looks back on their life, they'll recognize that they had to choose their teachers and that they, that not everyone who was in front of them with the position teacher was in fact one of their teachers. You know, that they had to, they had to select, or it's not even choosing. It's the teacher choose them. They should, I don't know who did the choosing, but it's of the hundred or so teachers that we've had in our life, quote unquote teachers. Like four of them have been teachers and those when you look and they may not have even been, been quote unquote teachers. They might have been just people in your life who became formative and how you think about what it is that you do and how you move around in the world. And like, yeah, that's what we all do and we all do that with one another as well. We are all teachers to each other as well and students of each. I mean, that's that sense in which, you know, we always talk about like, yeah, you're not just a teacher, you're also a student, but like, there is a sense in which that's a bullshit statement that people make to, to pretend that there's equity in the classroom or something. But at the same time, it's also substantial. Like, I fully feel that way in relationship to the many people that I've have called my students in the past. Not all of them, right? Not everyone could be my student and not everyone could be my teacher, right? Like, not all of them. In fact, not even most of them, but there are some, some, you know, significant ones like you guys, obviously, and a host of others, you know, that have been absolutely integral to me developing into the kind of, it's not like I took this ecologies of joy thing and then went out into the world like Jesus to spread the good world, right? Like, it's like, it emerged precisely through all the ecologies of joy as a kind of mission is emerged through itinerant, you know, encounters with lots of different people over many years and lots of thinking and reading and writing and anxiety and scotch. Kind of go back to the pedagogy of the class and the sort of the situation that you're looking at. I mean, this is so important to me when I think about, I go back to Delus' first lines of the Nietzsche book. It's like, you know, Nietzsche is the thinker who added sense and value to philosophy. And I'm thinking here more particularly in terms of a value or perspective. It's just, you know, this is in 335, this is, you know, law and lip physics and he's talking about, you know, this presupposition of science that, that one or of like morality in science or moral science, that one's conscience is simply to be obeyed and that there's this, here's this presupposition, here's this unquestioned presupposition. And his line is, you know, that in short, there are a hundred ways to listen to your conscience, you know. Any names, a bunch of them, are you, you know, the fool who obeys because he can't think of any other objection or are you the one who listens like a good soldier who heeds the commander or like a, a, a, a lover who loves the one who commands or a flatterer or a, uh, and coward who fears the commander. And, you know, the, the, the particular content of the thing is completely unimportant compared to the, the style or the tone or the value or the perspective of the way this, of the way that this thing is animated. And, you know, you talk about sort of wanting to, um, cultivate ecologies of, of joy. Yeah, we haven't talked about 334 though. Yeah, it's, um, one must learn to love. And you, like, I'm gonna bring this one back to the, you're sort of in noble vision of what it is to teach and to teach some kind of attention to alterity. Um, and I had my students write on this, on this effort is I'm like, when I was at South Carolina, this one is called one must learn to love. And I feel like if this isn't what the classroom, like, if this is what I see the classroom as doing and, I'm pretty sure this is the way you'll see that your classroom is doing as well. This happens to us in music. First, one must learn to hear a figure and melody at all to detect and distinguish it, to isolate and delimit it as, uh, as a life in itself. Then one needs effort and good will to stand it despite its strangeness. Patience with its appearance and expression and kindheartedness about its oddity. Finally, it comes a moment when we are used to it, when we expect it, when we sense that we'd miss it if it were missing. And now it continues, relentless, uh, can, now it continues, relentlessly to compile and, and chant us until we have become its humble and enraptured lovers, who no longer want anything better from the world than it and it again. But this happens to us, not only in music. It is just in just this way that we have learned to love everything we now love. We are always rewarded in the end for our goodwill, our patience, our fair mindedness and gentleness, with what is strange as it gradually casts off its veil and presents itself as a new indescribable beauty. That is, it's thanks for our hospitality. Even he who loves himself will have learned it this way. There is no other way. Love too must be learned. If that's not a pedagogy of difference, I don't, I don't know what is this, this sort of repetition of, of, of generosity and, patience that is for the sake of allowing something else to emerge and by the way, you know, that I would add or wrinkle in there and allow for yourself to re-emerge in relationship to it as well that you're not this, you know, stable sort of paternalistic. This isn't a paternalistic kind of love wherein I, you know, I have the dominant position and then just allows this otherwise nascent thing. Quite the opposite, right? Like, quite the opposite in this case, it's like, it requires patience, fair mindedness and gentleness with what is strange in order for that to shed its veil and turn it to something new and indescribable beauty. That is the way it thanks us for our hospitality, right? Like, in other words, we have to be capable of welcoming. We have to be capable of welcoming and that's learning to love, right? To, to, you know, not just accept, right? Not just tolerate, you know? I mean, that's, that's a step, acceptance and tolerance are a step, but learning to love that which is not, that is not I, you know, that it's not my, my only hesitation around, because I completely, this is how I try to conduct myself in the future. classroom is like generous readings of my students writing of the conversation in general. I try to be as receptive as possible, not just to appropriate what they're saying. I try to be open to alterity, but I'm not sure that. I mean, I don't know. I feel like I'm doing a pretty good job practically speaking, but just theoretically, you don't know the motivations of your conductor behavior all the time. So is this a matter of just willing that relation to alterity or trying. Is it like an attempt? Is it a perpetual attempt? Or like how do you think about it? Because for me, there's a little bit of a disconnect, at least conceptually speaking. It has to be a continuous attempt. Like he was just certainly can't know it. I had a time. And I would also say that it can't because, you know, as Joan said, it's not tolerance or acceptance that there has to be. There's a back and forthness to it too, that sometimes, you know, patience and generousness and all these other sorts of things are not. It's not simply openness. It's not a passivity. Sometimes it. There needs to be like a. A challenging. Sometimes there needs to be, you know, something else that sort of like provoke response. But it's always sort of like a. I mean, this is where it's experimental for me is. It's. Try something and then see how it responds and then adapt to it. And. And allow yourself to be changed by the thing that's coming back to you. So the sort of experimental. I think that's. I mean, that's. It's the best way that I can think of it too, boo-boo, because I will say, yeah, there is a kind of will to it, right? There is a kind of commitment to this, but that the commitment is not a resolute one. The commitment is one of. I'm going to try and see how this plays. I thought as an example when Nathaniel was speaking there, I thought of your prospectus defense and you remember how mad I was at you. And I said it, right? Like I said it in the thing. I'm like. In the defense, I'm like, this document has made me angry. And I'm going to explain to you why it has made me angry because I think it's really important. And that expression of anger was like, that was a form of caring, right? That was. It was. That was not. Because I certainly know in myself, like, if I didn't give a shit, I'd be like, "Well, fuck it. You know, that was a form of care." Now, there are many ways that that thing could have gone and who knows? And I would. It's incumbent upon me in that situation if I am willing and encounter with alterity to be receptive to how it plays for you. At the same time, I'm only me. I am not an assortment of all possible things. And so there are things that I'm not going to do. I'm not going to be like the nice gentle. I'm just not going to be that guy. You know? Anything that you say is really smart and really good. And it's like, "No, sometimes it's stupid and sometimes you're wrong." But that's. It's not. It's not better or worse. It's just different. They're just different things. And you as a different kind of organism are going to respond differently to some things. But I'm wondering, like, in a situation like that, if that was a calculated. Like, a calculated risk you took, like, I'm sure he'll be able to handle it. Absolutely. Like, would you have done that with somebody else? In the same exact way? Well, I mean, I certainly have done it with other people in similar ways. No, I know. But not everybody else. I would say that. But yeah, certain people you wouldn't do. Absolutely. Absolutely not. Like, there, you know, I learned very much. I mean, that's to me the great thing about graduate pedagogy that's at least for me different from undergraduate pedagogy is we have a long enough period of time that different types of interactions can occur. It's years. It's not weeks. And the result of that is different things that, for instance, if I discovered, and this has happened to me before, that that kind of exchange makes you shut down, then I don't do that anymore. You know, now again, I'm not all things to all people. So I am a limited in my array of possible behaviors. But like, okay, you try something like, I interact obviously with different students differently. Yeah. And I'm really nice to some students, which is people find shocking sometimes. You know, and people find, I told you the story of the friend of mine who got, like when I said, hey, this paper is really great. She's like, you're done with me. You hate me now. No, no, no, it actually really is great. You're like, no, this is how you're dismissive. You're being complimentary. You're like, no, no, I liked it. So, you know, but I do think that there is a kind of, I don't know, it's a responsibility. To me, and that's, the responsibility comes from, that's the fun part of being alive. Like that's, so the responsibility is not one, it's not a weight. It's like, here's what opens the world to you, is learning how to encounter it as something other than just another version of you or a failed version of you or an inadequate version of you or an idealized version of you. You know, it's like, I think it's really, for instance, I think about the number of times, I mean, I had been studying and immersed in the English language for 54, you know, whenever I started talking, but like for, you know, my entire life, right? And I frequently have misunderstandings with people and I will say almost to, in every, almost in every case, not in every case, because someone, but I thoroughly enjoy those misunderstandings. I find them fucking fascinating when I realize, oh my gosh. I see how you heard that thing that I said that way. I didn't think of it that way and I didn't mean it that way, but the way that you heard it, it's that you're not big sense. Big sense, right? And I'm like, what happens to me in that moment is I've encountered another. And it's like, and it's like, wow, that is really cool. Like, so that's making it a life. Yeah, that sense of responsibility is not a weight. It's a fascination, you know, at least for me. And that's the teaching man, like what is teaching other than that, you know, it's not getting them to be mini-meas. Because fuck, nobody wants that. I don't want a little-- Well, some of them did, I guess. Well, I think it's not a lot of teachers. Yes, I think a lot of teachers. For a lot of teachers, it is because you can say the same thing about me. Well, John, you are trying to make them into mini-meas and so far as the me there is supposed to be this adaptable comportment in relation to others. I'm like, yeah, okay, you're right. You win. On a logic scale, you win. Right? You're right. I am trying to reproduce versions of myself, but myself in that case is-- Insofar as myself is a different-- Is that a self-differentiating? That's right. That's right. --perventually becoming-- That's right. With the notion that any mini-me that you sort of create, given enough time, it's going to be completely unrecognizable to both yourself and that-- A little-- One would hope. Right? One would hope. I mean, look, you got-- you know, I don't know. I mean, I feel very close to you guys, but you guys are not me, and I'm cool with that. I'm not only cool with that. It's necessary. It's important. I don't-- It'd be a boring conversation, otherwise. It wouldn't be a conversation. It would be a monologue, right? So here's the end of 3.39 of Vita Feminina or Femina. I mean to say that the world is brimming with beautiful things, but nevertheless poor, very poor, and beautiful moments, and in the unveilings of those things. But perhaps that is the strongest magic of life. It is covered by a veil of beautiful possibilities woven with the threads of gold, promising, resisting, bashful, mocking, compassionate, and seductive. Yes, life is a woman. Life is a woman. I know. It's like-- Everything was really great up to that last sentence. I know, I know, I know. I actually had a thought about not reading the last couple of the last line. I know. But it gives you that-- I might get to that shit. It's the Beyond Good Neymar, right? Like, it's supposed to be a walk through like it's-- I think in some pretty simple thing, it just weighs like, what? Because life's way better than being a man. I know why. You know, it's like-- It's like-- The life would suck if it was like a man. Yes. Yeah. Uh, yeah. It's just-- It sounds like a Rolling Stones lyric or something. Life is a woman. It does. It really does. And it sounds-- I recognize all of the ways in which that could be an incredibly patriarchal condescending thing to say, like there-- And I recognize all the ways in which it can be heard that way as well. But I mean, that's just like, no. Here's a deal. Life is dissimulation and uncertainty. And if you treat it with sort of-- if you encounter it with patience and interest and fascination, it will reward you with-- you know, you'll be fascinated. Like it'll-- With otherness, right? And so, yes, the sort of-- I don't know, "Syncdocal Reduction of Life as a Woman" is one that's hard to hear. Well, anymore. For pretty understandable reasons. Sorry. This is a little tangential, but related to what you're saying. I mean, Nietzsche, as we all know, or at least as the three of us know, was sick for-- and I think we talked about this-- was like perpetually sick and ill. And I think Batai-- I was reading some Batai who was obsessed with Nietzsche. And he was basically just highlighting the fact that all of the things were going wrong for this guy. He could have been a symptom of those things, but he chose to sort of overcome them and enact this-- whatever, like laughter, in that sense. As opposed to-- like, in relation to other people who are given all of the affordances and still laps into whatever Christian judgment, Nietzsche somehow, with all the excuses, still able to do this other thing which is just kind of a stop. - It's a dark, cynical guy. - Yeah. - It's so funny that he's sort of like, yeah, often configured. - I know, but. - Like, Nietzsche is nihilist. It's like, "Hey, you got nihilist." - Yeah. - This is like, you clearly didn't read it. - No, no. - Or the dark brood. - The dark brood, I've always said like, in a Hollywood movie, if you wanna have a teenager who's dark and brooding, you have been reading Nietzsche at some point, you know? Because you're like, that's just not it. - Do you think that's, do you think that's residue of him being appropriated by the Nazis? - I think it's the goddess that thing. - It's the goddess that thing. - I think it's goddess that thing. - Just that statement. - Yeah. - But then he also has what doesn't kill you, makes you stronger. There's not, you know? That's a huge fucking control. - I mean, he's the thinker of affirmation, but, you know, I will also say, like I remember when I was reading Nietzsche, when I was a teenager, and I very much had the punk rock, kickass, break shit, fuck the idols. It wasn't sounding out the idols. It was, let's smash them all, let's fuck up conventional values like that. You know, I very much had that, and I still have, I still harbor a deep sympathy for that as well. But you think of the passages that Nathango has just read, they're very gentle, you know? And they do have that sense of like, oh, an interest in beauty and love. These are not words that you usually associate with Nietzsche. And they have a very particular resonance in Nietzsche for that reason. And so the Nietzsche that appeals to me now and has for the last 20 years is very much a different Nietzsche than the one that like initially got me interested. - I almost forgot about the nihilism Nietzsche, because what we read, like with Delus' Nietzsche, I was reading Betai's Nietzsche. This is all the life affirmation stuff. So like I've been so dissociated from the nihilist Nietzsche. - And I don't know Betai's Nietzsche, but I do know that that, I mean, I don't know if this is what you were getting at, but that notion of sort of like he's of a great spirit that sort of overcame all of these other things. He had all the excuses, but he was the great soul that overpowered all of it. I increasingly suspicious or sort of like, I distance myself from that version of Nietzsche as well, just because it doesn't seem like he's, like, you know, I think it's not my favorite way of thinking about say something like will to power of, but I'm going to dominate the things around me. I'm going to be self-controlled. I'm going to be the sovereign that's able to transcend my, but I'm going to be the great man, that I'm going to be the uber bench and that notion of the ubers bench. And you know, the Nietzsche of affirmation is like, I will be transformed what looks like a terrible health, which and is a terrible health for certain kinds of life. I shall affirm to become a great health for a very different world. This is my health, not my sickness, it's my health. - No, yes. I mean, I think that's what I was trying to say is that, instead of devolving into the disposition that he critiques, he had all the excuses in order to lapse into that. And instead of that, he chose life affirmation, affirmation of distance. - And at the same time, it's just an impossible disposition at that. - And think about making, how do you reach out of your own era in order to sort of be post-allocated that kind of disorientation that basically, yeah. 'Cause it's not an orientation, it is an anti-orientation. - I do sometimes think though that his writing to a post-humus audience is a major thing that allowed him to. - Yeah, gave him a-- - Go for it. - Give him a review. - I've read all these fucking idiots, cannot hear me, the only way I'm gonna be able to do this thing is imagine a future reader that can hear me. - I think that's a really good point. Writing to the future as a constitutive element of the philosophy, not a secondary, retorum rhetorical element in its usual sense. - Yeah, or just even about pragmatics of the writing, as well as how he's, that's how one of the ways he affirmed his-- - That's cool, I wanna try that now. I wonder if I think of my writing that way, if that's gonna, I mean, that's an interesting thought experiment, 'cause I've never thought of it that way. Like I always think of myself as writing to, sort of-- - What's specific about that? - Well, like colleagues, right, or people in the field, or students, you know, but like not, that's a really interesting thought experiment. (upbeat music) (upbeat music)