Why My Political Science Degree is Useless.

As if i need more evidence against academia...

 

I just spent an hour and a half working on a new start to the direct statement of my philosophical / political theory, a manifesto of sorts. Every time i try to fucking write this two things happen:

 

First, i get caught up in bashing the opposition, talking about the "patched black denim anarchists" or the "loose-woven hemp idealists" who are so "bogged down in the morass of utopian idealism and obsolete moral altruism" to honestly puruse the "goal of challenging or even understanding the capitalist system" When i read this shit back to myself, it seems well-stated and cutting, but also incredibly petty and isolating. Like a double-negative.

 

Second, i get really really pissed off whenever i'm interupted. It's like i feel somehow entitled to spew off on my political opinions. When i'm interupted while writing a play i react to it as a reminder of how lucky i am to have a job where i have so much free time. When i'm writing philosophy, i scream inside my head and clench my jaw whenever the door opens, the phone rings or a truck arrives to deliver something.

 

In these ways i fall into exactly the kind of assholery that i'm trying to critique. if the medium is the message, then the message of polemical debate is inevitably bitter whiney bitching, and thus a political philosophy education is merely training for how to be a snarky little shithead who's whole purpose in life is to eat other peoples shit and then throw it back at them. fucking pointless.

 

I want to have this manifesto to distribute on tour with Paint the Town, I want to refer people to a direct statement of what i think or see happening, of what we're trying to do, but i can't get the tone right. I try to make it a wholly positive statement, but i worry then that it won't distinguish itself from the prevailing (and useless) ideologies. i envision legions of hippies nodding their heads, saying "right on, man, right on!" and then going on with their perspective and their actions entirely unchanged. I'm describing a radically different approach or mindset, and can't do so without critiquing the present approach as a point of contrast. I also can't do it without providing supporting evidence or reference to somewhat esoteric texts which are horribly misunderstood by our present society. I'm talking about Marx. Between the USSR and the Red Scare further development or critique of Marxism is really nigh impossible today because you have to correct all the wrong prevailing notions about Marx (the ones that led him to say "i'm not a Marxist") before you can then correct the things Marx himself was actually wrong about. By the time you're done with that people are either staring at you with a glazed look on their face cuz they just don't give a shit, or they're thinking, "well, he obviously must be confused, does he agree with Marx or not?"