Coming up for air

So what?

For as long as I tutored strategy and business studies, that was my favorite question: so what? Student after student, graduate or undergraduate -- it didn't matter -- would parrot off what they thought I wanted to hear, when necessary quoting the course material or one of our many auxiliary supporting texts, regurgitating precisely and conscientiously what they had read and taken in. And I was the jerk who asked, "So what?"

The first time it happens you get looks, I can assure you: everything from what's-that-supposed-to-mean to where-do-you-get-off-embarrassing-me-like-that. Oh, I know, I can be a politically incorrect, insensitive clod (or so I've been told), but in a situation like that, what choice did I really have? Repeating what someone else had said (written) was apparently good enough for their understanding of "learning", but it didn't even scratch the surface of mine. Now that I'm no longer in a classroom, even occasionally, I sometimes find myself wondering if my questioning ever did any real good. I just don't know. One of the "problems" with being a teacher -- at any level, in any subject, the world over -- is that you never (or rarely) get to see what becomes of your charges. You do your part, or so you believe, and hope for the best.

When I look out into the world, though, when I read what our so-called leaders have to say, what are so-called media folks have to present, what so-called educated people spout out, I'm not so sure. Really. What good is science, if you can simply ignore it? What good is discussion or debate if it's simply one opinion versus another? What good is reflection if personal preferences and values are all that's necessary? What good is learning, exploration, discovery, or research if so-called answers are little more than what the loudest speaker happens to think at a given moment in time? When I turn on the TV (which I assiduously avoid, succumbing only when absolutely necessary), when I log into Facebook (more and more reluctantly), or when I simply browse the Web (and don't ask, because I don't know why I do that to myself), I find more and more expression, but fewer and fewer statements. A lot of folks are talking, but too few are saying anything; and those who do have something to say, are being ignored, not listened-to, and even belittled by other who are simply loud, often obnoxious, and simply in-your-face.

A friend of mine recently got on my case for being so negative, for being arrogant enough to point out that what a lot of folks think are worthwhile thoughts are, in reality and at bottom, bullshit. Aside from my innate cynicism, why is any opinion as good as any other, why is one belief as good as any other, why are facts and time-tested explanations simply waved aside simply because someone just doesn't believe something? To be honest, it simply boggles my mind ... or what little of my mind that I have left.

Someone needs to explain to me why things such as climate change, pollution, and alternative energy; the explanatory strength of physical laws and evolutionary theory; the minimum wage and workers' rights and safety; hunger; poverty; income inequality; wealth maldistribution; and any number of topics are not just not talked about, but why we're still mulling over whether they are issues are not. The jury is in. They are issues that need to be resolved; they are facts that need to be acknowledged; they are bases of discussion beneath which no discussion is possible.

And it too often seems that no discussion is possible. So, who am I really talking to?