My request for future Philosophers

Philosophy - the study for the elite. That’s what it is traditionally at least. But since I grow up in times of freedom and equality seeking, I rather disagree with this notion.

I am always impressed when I read a text that manages to convey a complicated issue in such simple terms that I can understand it as well. I sometimes don’t understand how philosophers can be worshipped who write texts in which one has to search for the sense in their writing. (Maybe there is just no sense and we are just desperately trying to interpret some coherent argument into them?) My old philosophy teacher once said after so many people in class always said “I know what it is, it’s all in my head, but I cannot explain it”, that that what you cannot express in words and explain, you don’t know. Now I know that he was probably referring to the question, if our thought is determined by our language, but I felt when judging us students so harshly, why not the great philosophers as well?

So my request to the great philosophers of the future: Learn to express yourselves!

Discussions in MUWCI

The frequency of discussions and the participation in MUWCI seems to decline. Less and less people come to or are late for college meetings or leave it early (I include coming late and leaving early, because I think it shows some carelessness). We had only one issue based college meeting since the academic year started and in general they become shorter and shorter since anyone who wants to talk needs to make a notice beforehand what leads to college meetings in which only Triveni announcements are made. Less and less people come to or are late for Global Affairs or leave early. Global Affairs – the only time in the schedule where the whole college is supposed to come together to discuss issues concerning the globe, for which we as UWC students apparently care so much.

Discussions in MUWCI are just rather bad. Always the same people talk, always the same problems, never conclusions or solutions.

So should we stop discuss?

No. We mustn’t stop trying. The issues we are discussing in these forums are not issues that we are going to solve in an hour. I think actually this cannot be the purpose of these discussions, since we are often discussing very ambiguous topics and questions to which there is not one single answer. The purpose of these discussions should be to keep us aware of the outside world and its problems and also the issues of our little community in this bubble, because even these we tend to forget between “the three S”: sleep, social life and studying.

Maybe if we had this approach to all our discussions we would leave them less frustrated as we often do now and maybe also more people could be motivated again to show up for them in the first place.

I haven’t lost all my idealism yet and I am not willing to already give up. I know I am hypocritical. I am one of these persons who never speak up in college meetings or student meetings and there are several Global Affair sessions I missed myself. But I think this doesn’t mean that I don’t have the right to criticize this development. I don’t have to find everything right, what I am doing.