Freedom and unfreedom,

Maybe we should be writing a paper about freedom in acaemia,

From Gizem,

Confusionism: constant fusion of ideas
A squirrel of enthusiasm jumps from one idea stone to another and suddenly stops in front of a huge oak tree with attractive leaves of curiosity. She looks around, really quick, to see if the area is safe from potential ‘invaders’ – the troublesome creatures of desire, the sirens of ambition and obedience, the animals of brutal coercion, the devoted guardians of dogmatism, and the fearful human beings whose throats are threatened with new ideas. They all want conformity, she thinks, therefore I need to hide to survive. She runs in with hope, and also with despair. She runs in with hunger, finding the deliciousness of fresh nuts of knowledge. No, it is unfair to say she is greedy, this is just pure self-indulgence after years of deprivation from freedom. She feeds herself with it, overly ambitions, overly fast – not even leaving a second to digest any of it. She wants the impossible, she would absorb the sunshine hidden in the nutshell if she were allowed to. She would know the value of it, and would never – ever – lose it to the blind invaders.
At that present moment of relief, her mind opens up to sense how her existence has gained a new meaning, rather than a dull survival in midst of dark authoritarianism.
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Acadreamia is an iron cage sometimes. It is almost a sin to write creatively and use allegories, or metaphors. Instead, we have to worship the ground rules of objectivity with subtle judgments hidden inside. Papers we write need to be as ‘structured’ as possible with no active voice or subjectivity. We are allowed to be ‘innovative’ as long as we are not controversial. The journal articles flow with nicely organized intro-methods-results-discussion structures, but life out there we refer does not have that order. We call it ‘error’ or ‘nuisance’ when it diverges from our so-called reality, nature calls it an irresistible and a constant change. We lie scientifically, fearing the chaos in our brains. We want to have control over everything, first on experimental designs and methodology, but then on our lives and on each other. Surprise is not welcome, uncertainty is never tolerable. Our creative minds, however, are full of new ideas. How come could we think through aggregated numbers or percentages, or ‘research-suggests-that’ patterns? Once artificiality is internalized, we find ourselves trapped in the iron cage of convention. If you have ever authored a paper, you know what I am talking about. If not, you will know, soon!
It is another scene of cynicism that I was hesitant to blog, feeling hopeless that any change can happen. However, I realized that this blog is a Deweyian/Michaelian experiment in which I have the freedom to be authentic. So, I would like to try something different – I will post my stories, sometimes fairy tales, and ideas in a combined manner. After four years in grad school, I am tired of pretending to be ‘philosophical’. I do believe that science is a creative enterprise as in art, and it is an agent of social change, rather than static numbers to outline facts of an artificially constructed world…
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