Saturday, August 20, 2011

Teaching

In keeping with the theme of the new beginning to a school year, I offer this poem.  It should serve as a philosophic question about the role of Teacher and the nature of authenticity.  Can one teach and be an authentic person (Dasein) too?

Is it just to be cruel?
Can a teacher be an effective tool?
The greater question I thought you knew –
can a teacher be authentic too?

The mask we wear covers our despair.
Education is a bore – perhaps a tug-bear.
This empty nothingness I call myself,
is like an old library book lost on a shelf.

It possesses many words and statements,
but lies desolate and a plague of placements.
The course of action forces satisfaction;
Frustration acts and nothingness faces reaction.

The power of emptiness despairs of peace,
and a lift of burden and tension release.
The mask that covers the nothing
is an objectivity which only resembles a being.

The –ness of conscious represses truth,
and offers lies to cover up for sooth.
The anguish of a dark despair
is beforehand present everywhere.

What power possesses any being,
which wears a crown of meaning?
The function of a transcendental apperception
is to offer fools a mild and passive reception.

The stain of a bleeding meaninglessness
rejoices in forcing da-sein to responsiveness –
responsive to a surface of which there is no underside,
no wholeness, virtue, justice, substance or pride.


I ask you take this impeccable example
the supply of meaning is very ample.
Provided meaning is disguised in the form of a salary,
which reeks a smell much like a theatre gallery.

But a teacher must no actor be,
a comic, tragic or other he.
He must be self and thereby see,
that he an authentic da-sein can be.

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