When I was fifteen, I stole a pie off Mrs. Henderson's window. It was piping hot and delicious. But as the warm peaches and flaky crust settled in my stomach, so did the feeling of guilt and shame rest in my soul. I could not face my parents nor my peers, so I left my life of comfort and ease and took to the life of a vagrant. My schoolhouse was the varied and numerous empty train cars crisscrossing this great land of ours, my professor a hobo named Jumbo Tom (God rest his soul). My major was true living, the kind of living you can only feel when you don't know whether your next meal will be found in the dumpster or cooling on the unsecured windowsill of an unsuspecting housewife. I also minored in occasional knife fights.
...or I went to NC State, and majored in Political Science with a minor in Religion.
I went to San Jose State University, designed my own major in International Relations with a focus on Latin American area studies. No minor, although I did have 18 units of economics. I had gradiose plans - wanted to get a masters in Translation and Interpretation from the Monterey Institute of International Studies, now called something else, the name of which I can never remember, but with mounting bills and student loans, decided on the cheaper option of staying at SJSU. I was accepted into the Linguistics program. Unfortunately, theoretical linguistics was all they offered, none of the FUN areas of study, and after a couple of semesters of gagging my way through the Noam Chomsky tedium, I decided the fight to defend the value of real world linguistics was not the war that I was called to engage in. I dropped out of grad school. While I never went back to the hitchhiking days of my teens and 20's, I thereafter merrily and irresponsibly indulged my wanderlust gene until about the last five years of my life. No knife fights, a couple of fist fights. Oh, Religion. No courses at SJSU in religion for me (unless Business Ethics counts...) But I did read Ched Myers' Binding the Strong Man: A Political Reading of Mark's Story of Jesus and J. Dominic Crossan's God and Empire.
My PoliSci degree did not have a focus, I took a course in just about one of everything: US Constitution, International Law, East Asian Politics, Political Theory (my favorite), Criminal Law, Political Statistics, Public Policy, etc. I even used my degree right out of college, on track to become a lobbyist for a non-profit technology company in North Carolina. But my life took other turns.
My Religion minor was not intended (though, neither was my PoliSci degree. I began as a Computer Science major, didn't like the math, and finished a degree I was interested in). I took an Intro to New Testament class my first semester just to get my religion class elective requirement out of the way, and the professor was excellent. He invited me to his graduate-level seminar on Paul's Letters the next semester (I was the only freshman in that class), and as an excuse to take more of his classes, I minored in Religion.
I am to the point where I see almost every action by people as religious, so Business Ethics... definitely religion. I have not read the books you listed, but I feel like I've heard God and Empire in conversation at some point in the past.
Theoretical linguistics certainly doesn't sound like fun. I wonder if the use of large Greek words to label it has anything to do with my conception of what it must be?
What was your favorite of the political theories? I never thought much about that, but I am probably leaning toward some kind of Anarchist Theory myself or even Anarcho-primitivism (the Back to Eden path). ;>
I can understand about the math. :(
My course of study was very intentional. I actually went to the department head of the Spanish Translation and Interpretation masters program first. She told me frankly that most students flunked out of the program. Not because of lack of competence with the Spanish language, but because of failure to understand the concepts of political science and economics. Monterey Institute of International Studies at that time shared a lot faculty with the Naval Postgraduate School of Monterey, and it was a recruiting ground for federal and international placement. As I said, it was a rather grandiose vision of mine that never came to fruition. ;)
Linguistics is just the study of language. There are fascinating areas - historical linguistics, (how languages change over time); comparative linguistics, descriptive linguistics. The poet (and rancher) Jaime de Angulo, (of the circle of Alfred Krober at UC Berkeley, Ursula K. Leguin's father, by the way ) learned something like 13 native languages in 15 years, and described and recorded how they worked. After Noam Chomsky took over the field by storm, the only people who still do descriptive linguistics are the Summer Institute; they're Bible translators. I actually got in touch with them. A nice couple came to my home in San Jose and talked to me about their program. They, as it turned out, do not hire linguistists; they are church-supported missionaries. Anyway, Chomskian linguistics is about the quest for "language universals", apparently undertaken primarily by monolingual speakers of English, lol. No, Chomsky is undoubtedly brilliant. However, his theories struck me as clever, but lacking in substance. When I wasn't rolling in the floor laughing over such delicacies as the magical and undefined, "innate language acquisition device" of human beings. Yeah, dude, I got an innate running acquisition device; it's called legs. I believe I told you I was raised Church of Christ, right? Well, I've been on three amatuer learning quests in my life: beginning with the Nahautl language and culture of Ancient Mexico. My current one is Viking Age languages and culture (Old Norse and Old English studies). One of the two things that I love, to this day, about the Church of Christ is acapella singing. The other is something that is exceeding dear to my anarchist heart: the quest of the Church of Christ to become like the first century followers of Jesus, which to my mind, requires finding out what the early Jesus movement was like, before Imperial Rome got ahold of it- and edited some of the documents and established them as the canon-- and created the institution of the church. That was my other major study, and I went swimming in the non-canonical texts and the theological studies that examine the historical and socio-political contexts of Jesus and his followers in their own times. Thus, God and Empire, (and I really do believe that phrasing expresses a stark choice - as several of the early founders of the Church of Christ did, including David Lipscomb). Binding the Strong Man is a dense theological text. I had to read it slowly, sometimes repeating the same paragraph over and over, looking up the meanings of the jargon. But I loved Myer's "heart of fire" for the Jesus of his understanding. Myers wrote other books for the general public, but I couldn't relate to them, too blatantly political for me.
I don't know if I have a favorite political theory. I'm the kind of person who doesn't like subscribing to one particular model of the world, but I think using multiple models depending on when they explain something the best is a better way of operating. I think political theory was my favorite subject because I was introduced to so many different ideas. Hobbes and Locke in particular have been very helpful to me to conceptualize larger political and interpersonal dynamics. And Hobbes definitely leans toward that anarchist view of the world.
I don't know if you told me you were raised in the Church of Christ, but I assumed you were more or less associated with it when you brought up Lipscomb. I may have things to eventually say on some of those topics you brought up in my Letters from Under the Sun Substack. I have about a hundred things I want to write for it, but I'm not sure yet what I'll get to first.
Actually, David Lipscomb has some enthusiastic followers among the Libertarians.
I look forward to seeing your "letters". :) And I do agree with you -- although there are numerous influencers in my life, the first and foremost is my own experience. I don't like boxing in my thinking with "loyalty" to any ideology or theory or doctrine. For me, it's character and conduct that matter--or in terms of politics, the real world results of your precious theory. Or to apply James 2:18 to a slighty wider vision, don't bother to define yourself by what you believe --be it religion, politics, whatever; our actions most assuredly define who we are, regardless of what we might say. That's not so much a perfectionist position, as a comment on the standards of conduct that a person continually aspires to. Or could care less about.
Where did you go to school and what was your major?
When I was fifteen, I stole a pie off Mrs. Henderson's window. It was piping hot and delicious. But as the warm peaches and flaky crust settled in my stomach, so did the feeling of guilt and shame rest in my soul. I could not face my parents nor my peers, so I left my life of comfort and ease and took to the life of a vagrant. My schoolhouse was the varied and numerous empty train cars crisscrossing this great land of ours, my professor a hobo named Jumbo Tom (God rest his soul). My major was true living, the kind of living you can only feel when you don't know whether your next meal will be found in the dumpster or cooling on the unsecured windowsill of an unsuspecting housewife. I also minored in occasional knife fights.
...or I went to NC State, and majored in Political Science with a minor in Religion.
You also exercise your poetic license.... :)
I went to San Jose State University, designed my own major in International Relations with a focus on Latin American area studies. No minor, although I did have 18 units of economics. I had gradiose plans - wanted to get a masters in Translation and Interpretation from the Monterey Institute of International Studies, now called something else, the name of which I can never remember, but with mounting bills and student loans, decided on the cheaper option of staying at SJSU. I was accepted into the Linguistics program. Unfortunately, theoretical linguistics was all they offered, none of the FUN areas of study, and after a couple of semesters of gagging my way through the Noam Chomsky tedium, I decided the fight to defend the value of real world linguistics was not the war that I was called to engage in. I dropped out of grad school. While I never went back to the hitchhiking days of my teens and 20's, I thereafter merrily and irresponsibly indulged my wanderlust gene until about the last five years of my life. No knife fights, a couple of fist fights. Oh, Religion. No courses at SJSU in religion for me (unless Business Ethics counts...) But I did read Ched Myers' Binding the Strong Man: A Political Reading of Mark's Story of Jesus and J. Dominic Crossan's God and Empire.
My PoliSci degree did not have a focus, I took a course in just about one of everything: US Constitution, International Law, East Asian Politics, Political Theory (my favorite), Criminal Law, Political Statistics, Public Policy, etc. I even used my degree right out of college, on track to become a lobbyist for a non-profit technology company in North Carolina. But my life took other turns.
My Religion minor was not intended (though, neither was my PoliSci degree. I began as a Computer Science major, didn't like the math, and finished a degree I was interested in). I took an Intro to New Testament class my first semester just to get my religion class elective requirement out of the way, and the professor was excellent. He invited me to his graduate-level seminar on Paul's Letters the next semester (I was the only freshman in that class), and as an excuse to take more of his classes, I minored in Religion.
I am to the point where I see almost every action by people as religious, so Business Ethics... definitely religion. I have not read the books you listed, but I feel like I've heard God and Empire in conversation at some point in the past.
Theoretical linguistics certainly doesn't sound like fun. I wonder if the use of large Greek words to label it has anything to do with my conception of what it must be?
What was your favorite of the political theories? I never thought much about that, but I am probably leaning toward some kind of Anarchist Theory myself or even Anarcho-primitivism (the Back to Eden path). ;>
I can understand about the math. :(
My course of study was very intentional. I actually went to the department head of the Spanish Translation and Interpretation masters program first. She told me frankly that most students flunked out of the program. Not because of lack of competence with the Spanish language, but because of failure to understand the concepts of political science and economics. Monterey Institute of International Studies at that time shared a lot faculty with the Naval Postgraduate School of Monterey, and it was a recruiting ground for federal and international placement. As I said, it was a rather grandiose vision of mine that never came to fruition. ;)
Linguistics is just the study of language. There are fascinating areas - historical linguistics, (how languages change over time); comparative linguistics, descriptive linguistics. The poet (and rancher) Jaime de Angulo, (of the circle of Alfred Krober at UC Berkeley, Ursula K. Leguin's father, by the way ) learned something like 13 native languages in 15 years, and described and recorded how they worked. After Noam Chomsky took over the field by storm, the only people who still do descriptive linguistics are the Summer Institute; they're Bible translators. I actually got in touch with them. A nice couple came to my home in San Jose and talked to me about their program. They, as it turned out, do not hire linguistists; they are church-supported missionaries. Anyway, Chomskian linguistics is about the quest for "language universals", apparently undertaken primarily by monolingual speakers of English, lol. No, Chomsky is undoubtedly brilliant. However, his theories struck me as clever, but lacking in substance. When I wasn't rolling in the floor laughing over such delicacies as the magical and undefined, "innate language acquisition device" of human beings. Yeah, dude, I got an innate running acquisition device; it's called legs. I believe I told you I was raised Church of Christ, right? Well, I've been on three amatuer learning quests in my life: beginning with the Nahautl language and culture of Ancient Mexico. My current one is Viking Age languages and culture (Old Norse and Old English studies). One of the two things that I love, to this day, about the Church of Christ is acapella singing. The other is something that is exceeding dear to my anarchist heart: the quest of the Church of Christ to become like the first century followers of Jesus, which to my mind, requires finding out what the early Jesus movement was like, before Imperial Rome got ahold of it- and edited some of the documents and established them as the canon-- and created the institution of the church. That was my other major study, and I went swimming in the non-canonical texts and the theological studies that examine the historical and socio-political contexts of Jesus and his followers in their own times. Thus, God and Empire, (and I really do believe that phrasing expresses a stark choice - as several of the early founders of the Church of Christ did, including David Lipscomb). Binding the Strong Man is a dense theological text. I had to read it slowly, sometimes repeating the same paragraph over and over, looking up the meanings of the jargon. But I loved Myer's "heart of fire" for the Jesus of his understanding. Myers wrote other books for the general public, but I couldn't relate to them, too blatantly political for me.
I don't know if I have a favorite political theory. I'm the kind of person who doesn't like subscribing to one particular model of the world, but I think using multiple models depending on when they explain something the best is a better way of operating. I think political theory was my favorite subject because I was introduced to so many different ideas. Hobbes and Locke in particular have been very helpful to me to conceptualize larger political and interpersonal dynamics. And Hobbes definitely leans toward that anarchist view of the world.
I don't know if you told me you were raised in the Church of Christ, but I assumed you were more or less associated with it when you brought up Lipscomb. I may have things to eventually say on some of those topics you brought up in my Letters from Under the Sun Substack. I have about a hundred things I want to write for it, but I'm not sure yet what I'll get to first.
Actually, David Lipscomb has some enthusiastic followers among the Libertarians.
I look forward to seeing your "letters". :) And I do agree with you -- although there are numerous influencers in my life, the first and foremost is my own experience. I don't like boxing in my thinking with "loyalty" to any ideology or theory or doctrine. For me, it's character and conduct that matter--or in terms of politics, the real world results of your precious theory. Or to apply James 2:18 to a slighty wider vision, don't bother to define yourself by what you believe --be it religion, politics, whatever; our actions most assuredly define who we are, regardless of what we might say. That's not so much a perfectionist position, as a comment on the standards of conduct that a person continually aspires to. Or could care less about.