Nobody
I am nobody. No-one will remember me. I will not make a huge difference. This is a huge relief.
Since I got to graduate school, I have been motivated by the desire to become somebody. To be a great researcher, to make an impact, to be known as someone who can challenge the militaristic and narrow-minded thinking that produces harmful engineering design.
I think this can also be expressed as fear of dying, if the most final death happens the last time someone speaks your name. Like a pharaoh, I would like to truly become someone recognizable. In the heat of my desire to become someone, the fears of a fall from grace hound me. I imagine failing out of graduate school, or worse, getting a Ph.D. and not being able to make an impact once I graduate. I imagine the bridge to becoming somebody is burning, and so I try to run quickly across it. But what is the worst that could happen to me if I fail? Maybe I die young, or I can't make it through graduate school and I become a high school teacher, or I pursue one of my venture ideas and it fails. These do not seem like such horrible ends, most things considered.
Still, to avoid these not so horrible ends, I find myself headed to what C.S. Lewis calls "the inner ring" in his 1944 lecture. I find myself attempting to become somebody in this community of Engineering Education. I find myself making personal compromises in order to belong. I think these compromises originate in me and my fears, and only partly in the community, and my compromises have not been so great, yet. But I still seek to be somebody to someone. And naively I think it is a more righteous reason for seeking somebodyness, to make the world a more peaceful place. It is still fear-based. It still can lead to desperate behavior, and it is still never ending (as C.S. Lewis surmises), and it is based on something that is fundamentally insubstantial. Even if I could achieve somebodyhood (and I can't) it would not last for very long.
Even those who are rock stars in ENGE (for me it's Leydens, Lucena, Cech, Riley and Downey, to name a few), their families will remember them, but how many people will remember them 100 years from now? How many people can I remember from 1917 or earlier that have made an impact on my work? Maybe Dewey. Maybe Horace Mann. Vygotsky seems ancient when he died in 1934 at the ripe age of 37. How often do I cite them? How many people think of them? The book, For the Time Being, given to me by my Professor, Jessica Livingston, is full of passages to remind us of this awkward state. We are standing on the bones of our ancestors, though they look like dirt to us. And we will become the dirt that our offspring will stand on. We will be buried under a sea of people.
This doesn't mean I will make no difference. The greats have made a difference, of course, but even if I do not become great, I can participate in a craft of greatness. I can participate in the larger collective effort that makes a difference. The enlightened society of Shambhala is based on this principle - that a difference is made, and a society meant for living a good life is achieved, not by the work of famous heroes, but by the work of nameless heroes. Alain de Botton, of the School of Life, breaks human effort into four categories (continue the species, master our minds, master the environment, increase our satisfaction), and claims that anyone can find themselves in this collective effort, and it does not require somebodyhood. I would rewrite that from a critical technology perspective, and hopefully with a little less human supremacy, but mostly I find this comforting.
It is a relief to be nobody. It means that the reality of me not being somebody does not have to hound me. It means that I can spend time comfortably on my bed reading a book, curiously learning with little regard for what a good person it makes me, or how much impact I will have. I will still make my difference - on personal levels. And on some higher collective levels with my research - maybe someone cites me one day. I will try to make the world a better place, as corny as that sounds, in my own way. I'll live by an ethic of work that seeks to accomplish that. But I do not need to be somebody to do that.
What I'm reading is The Ghost Map, and it is a big inspiration for this post, tying everything together. Being nobody means that I'm allowed to die. Every person dies, and there have been a lot of people. Many nobodies have died and continued the work of history, "good" and "bad". Buddhism has death as a central theme - being nobody, being "a grain of sand" makes you powerful. It is a relief. It is a truth, and it is hell to try to seek credentials enough to truly become somebody.
I am nobody.
Since I got to graduate school, I have been motivated by the desire to become somebody. To be a great researcher, to make an impact, to be known as someone who can challenge the militaristic and narrow-minded thinking that produces harmful engineering design.
I think this can also be expressed as fear of dying, if the most final death happens the last time someone speaks your name. Like a pharaoh, I would like to truly become someone recognizable. In the heat of my desire to become someone, the fears of a fall from grace hound me. I imagine failing out of graduate school, or worse, getting a Ph.D. and not being able to make an impact once I graduate. I imagine the bridge to becoming somebody is burning, and so I try to run quickly across it. But what is the worst that could happen to me if I fail? Maybe I die young, or I can't make it through graduate school and I become a high school teacher, or I pursue one of my venture ideas and it fails. These do not seem like such horrible ends, most things considered.
Still, to avoid these not so horrible ends, I find myself headed to what C.S. Lewis calls "the inner ring" in his 1944 lecture. I find myself attempting to become somebody in this community of Engineering Education. I find myself making personal compromises in order to belong. I think these compromises originate in me and my fears, and only partly in the community, and my compromises have not been so great, yet. But I still seek to be somebody to someone. And naively I think it is a more righteous reason for seeking somebodyness, to make the world a more peaceful place. It is still fear-based. It still can lead to desperate behavior, and it is still never ending (as C.S. Lewis surmises), and it is based on something that is fundamentally insubstantial. Even if I could achieve somebodyhood (and I can't) it would not last for very long.
Even those who are rock stars in ENGE (for me it's Leydens, Lucena, Cech, Riley and Downey, to name a few), their families will remember them, but how many people will remember them 100 years from now? How many people can I remember from 1917 or earlier that have made an impact on my work? Maybe Dewey. Maybe Horace Mann. Vygotsky seems ancient when he died in 1934 at the ripe age of 37. How often do I cite them? How many people think of them? The book, For the Time Being, given to me by my Professor, Jessica Livingston, is full of passages to remind us of this awkward state. We are standing on the bones of our ancestors, though they look like dirt to us. And we will become the dirt that our offspring will stand on. We will be buried under a sea of people.
This doesn't mean I will make no difference. The greats have made a difference, of course, but even if I do not become great, I can participate in a craft of greatness. I can participate in the larger collective effort that makes a difference. The enlightened society of Shambhala is based on this principle - that a difference is made, and a society meant for living a good life is achieved, not by the work of famous heroes, but by the work of nameless heroes. Alain de Botton, of the School of Life, breaks human effort into four categories (continue the species, master our minds, master the environment, increase our satisfaction), and claims that anyone can find themselves in this collective effort, and it does not require somebodyhood. I would rewrite that from a critical technology perspective, and hopefully with a little less human supremacy, but mostly I find this comforting.
It is a relief to be nobody. It means that the reality of me not being somebody does not have to hound me. It means that I can spend time comfortably on my bed reading a book, curiously learning with little regard for what a good person it makes me, or how much impact I will have. I will still make my difference - on personal levels. And on some higher collective levels with my research - maybe someone cites me one day. I will try to make the world a better place, as corny as that sounds, in my own way. I'll live by an ethic of work that seeks to accomplish that. But I do not need to be somebody to do that.
What I'm reading is The Ghost Map, and it is a big inspiration for this post, tying everything together. Being nobody means that I'm allowed to die. Every person dies, and there have been a lot of people. Many nobodies have died and continued the work of history, "good" and "bad". Buddhism has death as a central theme - being nobody, being "a grain of sand" makes you powerful. It is a relief. It is a truth, and it is hell to try to seek credentials enough to truly become somebody.
I am nobody.
The idea to become "somebody" is an interesting one. I'm sure lots of people would like to be famous, but obviously not everyone can be. Another thing to add to your idea of being a nobody is that of time. Eventually even the well known people will be forgotten given enough time. It seems, at least now, very unlikely that people would forget someone as famous as Einstein or a group like The Beatles. I think given enough time everybody will be a "nobody". However, I don't think this is a bad thing. I think what matters is who you are while you were alive, assuming there is no version of an afterlife. We are dead much longer than we are alive and will eventually be forgotten. Time wins every race.
ReplyDeleteYou are somebody to me, my dear cousin. And, if my spirit has a memory in �� years! It will remember you! Your depth, your honesty, your search for truth! I love your soul! Thanks for sharing your innermost thoughts and feelings!
ReplyDeleteThis past weekend I went to Out in STEM conference, and it was there I was reminded of somebody I would become, or rather the somebody I already am. I spent a week in meeting people, and I would introduce myself, "hello, my name is Ramon. And I'm nobody special." And of course I meant within the context of the conference, as people came to me and would ask me questions as if I were somebody. So as I did the entire weekend I've talked about race. I challenged people when they brought up discussions of colorblindness or race neutrality I corrected people when they were referred to color is not racism, and all the arguable facets of white supremacy. And by Sunday, moderators of talks with preface with "and I'm sure if we get it wrong someone will correct us". I left this science, technology, engineering and mathematics conference understanding that, even within the queer community, there is a lot of work to be done. I still am nobody special, I am not famous, and I hold great titles. But I am somebody, and so are you. The evidence is in your writing.
ReplyDelete