The Importance of "The Ponder"

We have a person in our department who is a wonderful historian and teacher.  Let's call him Labid Scheim.  His first reaction to external stimuli is typically to "ponder".  He uses that precise word.  I was originally a bit critical of his persistence to ponder.  Alliteration aside, my concern was that such pondering may constrain an immediate effort to get something done when we really need as many people as possible instrumentally driving our program and department forward.  This is certainly not unique to him- many professors in our department and around the country take this approach.  Consequently, it feels like we do not have an instrumentally productive enough division of labor to be efficient as a department.  But then again, maybe Dr. Scheim offers us a reminder of the dangers of pursuing outcomes "efficiently"...

We have a lot to be concerned about collectively in our Social Science Department.  Our APSS program is doing well, but it needs to expand and have enough mechanisms in place that it will continue to do well.  In addition, we will be losing General Education courses as other programs on campus attempt to teach sociology, history, economics and so on themselves (so instead of learning sociology from a professor with a PhD in sociology, a plastics professor will teach "Society and Plastics").  This means we may lose faculty via not teaching enough students.  Finally, we live in a world where (at least right now) politicians say they support public education and then make every attempt to cripple it.  Particularly in Wisconsin.

So, in my mind, we all need to recognize that it's in our individual and collective interests to do everything we can to make sure our program thrives.  There is no place "pondering" right now.  Or is there?

According to Max Weber, the main tragedy of modernity comes not from anomie or contradictions in capital accumulation, at least not by themselves.  The tragedy is when we use rules to govern our lives in a way that makes goal accomplishment efficient, whether that goal be profit or program expansion.  Weber argues that by using those rules to efficiently pursue our goals (what he called "formal rationality"), we lose something that makes us human.  We lose the meanings that we assign to our lives.  Like the character Peter in Office Space, we lose our enchantment with life itself.  I imagine it is this in itself we need to maintain against all pressures of modern society: the meaning of life.  This meaning is always both personal and collective, real and tangible while at the same time iterative and malleable, and it is not elusive.  Pondering forces us to make sure of that.  I haven't read it yet, but it sounds like the book Quiet might be really relevant to this topic.

As such, Dr. Scheim offers a reminder with the threat of the ponder that the efficient pursuit of our  goals is important- it's never rejected outright- but we must always step back and remind ourselves to pursue our humanity first and foremost.  And with that, I am going to go play with my kids in the leaves and forget about an article I am writing.  For now.