Why did
and I both waste our time at university, what makes a school like a restaurant, and how is it even possible that I have a friend who used to go running with Alan Turing? These are some of the questions that find answers in the the second of these In-Between Videos.It dawned on me that this series is also a good way to curate a monthly-ish collection of links to work I’ve been doing and things that got me thinking – so along with the opening part of the video, the links and notes will always be available to everyone. The full video is available to paid subscribers and supporters.
I did threaten to record a video where I would talk about the questions that came in response to The Wild Chatbot, last month’s essay about what Vanessa Andreotti and the Gesturing Towards Decolonial Futures collective are up to with AI – but the live session with Vanessa did a better job of that than I could have done on my own, so here’s the recording of that:
Another theme I will probably talk about in a future video is how I fell back into relationship with the Bible through the Feral Bible Study sessions that
and have been hosting for the past three years. In the meantime, here’s a post in which Vanessa, and I reflect on what happened in one of those sessions, a few weeks ago.
What prompted today’s video is a note that
posted the other day:I remember passing through this same sensation in my late twenties, though it would be a good while longer before I was capable of writing a book. For a while, I was inclined to beat myself up over not having made better use of my university years – but then it hit me, I might have had all the time in the world and one of the world’s best libraries on my doorstep, but I didn’t have any questions of my own yet.
So this video is about finding a question that is yours to carry – and how our approach to education may get in the way of this.
References
Here’s my friend Isak Stoddard’s PhD thesis, Perilous Times: Carbon budgets and the cosmopolitics of climate mitigation, which he successfully defended this morning. Congratulations, Dr Stoddard!
Paul Khera shares some of the stories of his grandmother’s village in the deep Himalya, to which he was transplanted at the age of six, in a mysterious little book called Being Continued.
Derek Rasmussen sets out his ‘Restaurant Theory of Education’ in Some Honest Talk about Non-Indigenous Education.
Alan Garner wrote about going running with Alan Turing for The Guardian in 2011, and the story is taken up by Andrew Hodges, Turing’s biographer, in an essay for First Light, the collection Erica Wagner brought together to celebrate Garner’s eightieth birthday. (You can read my contribution to First Light here.)
Finally,
’s Snowy Tower is highly recommended as an exploration of Parzival, one example of the centrality of ‘asking the right question’ in the myths by which humans have found their bearings in different times and places.
Thanks for reading, watching and joining me in these rambles. More on Illich’s late writings on the university coming up in an essay later in the year, while my next public essay should be with you in a week or so.
Oh yes – and I’ll get the video from Buber Club edited and sent out to paid subscribers and fellow travellers early next week. On which note, I’m off to Isak’s doctoral celebration. Have a good weekend!
DH
