Decolonizing The Spirit
Decolonizing The Spirit
Pit the Indigenous against the Colonizers to keep the Asians away
This is a part of the “Decolonizing” series. See here, here, here, here and here for previous takes. We thank our special reporter, McGoohan, for the screenshots and a report.
Contrary to the flyer above, on the subject of the reason-spirit-body triad1, there is more disagreement between Plato and Freud than between the Western and Indigenous philosophical traditions. Does CIT care? We doubt it. They only care about the Western - bad/Indigenous - good binary (wait, we thought binary was a sign of whiteness).
But a dense “holistic” fog will help to keep the lazy kids of White elites in and the hard-working Asians out… in/out of the university admissions today, and in/out of the jobs tomorrow, that is.
As a side note, the writing of the flyer does not belong to any respectable written or oral tradition: it defies logic, syntax, and grammar:
For the authors, “Teaching-the-Whole-Person” is allegedly a good thing, something the Colonizers don’t do: why, then, do the authors want to decolonize themselves?
It’s “vs.” , not “v.”.
“…dualism…, which conflict_ with…”
It is impossible to “feature personhood holistically”: one can either “treat one’s personhood holistically” or “feature one’s personhood comprehensively”.
“…including `place’” seems to be out of place: it is not preceded by any lists to be included in (and we are not ending on a preposition).
“[s]peakers also speak…” (sic.).
“[s]peakers also speak… and describes…”.
Thank god, the flyer is given a limited space: if the forum organizers decide to publish one more page of their bad writing, both…
…Plato and Lame Deer will raise from their graves to deal with the CIT impostors.
Unless, of course, their bad English is all a deliberate display of linguistic justice.
But… probably not.
Now to the discussion itself, which apparently bore very little resemblance to the flyer, as Indigenous people were only casually mentioned if any…
The presentation was cut short since, as always, and in the spirit of decolonizing competence, the presenters could not figure out how to operate zoom for nearly 20 minutes. Not to worry, there’s always time for the land acknowledgment. Amen and Awomen.
Selected topics (our comments in Italics)
Learning space as a sanctuary (because apparently, students are an endangered species).
Classroom space is/was a place of performance. You are on the spot. Have to prove yourself. This is bad. (What’s bad is that we seemingly gave up on all standards of performance and the need to prove yourself and replaced them with the constant need for safety and assurance).
One teacher’s solution to make it a welcoming space is to play music while (black) students come in and get themselves settled (isn’t it cultural appropriation? What if our black students like country music? Help me here!).
The speaker (whose first name is Perpetual) says we should identify ourselves first as humans. She notes that during introductions people identified themselves according to titles, professions, roles, etc. (wait, wasn’t it a big no-no until five minutes ago?)
Blathering about “opening the door” as opposed to being a gatekeeper in the classroom (those pesky “standards” again!).
Talks about “Drinking the bleach”, which entails “anything you need to do to get by” in an institution (that’s adult life for you).
Towards the end, the presenter asks “what is your body feeling?”
Our special reporter, McGoohan, summed it up beautifully: Yuck.
This brings the Woke beyond the realm of Time and Space, to the world of spirit, spirits, and spiritual.