16 April, 2010

The Quest for the quest of understanding

I look out of my window and try to look between the tree branches to see a glimpse of the sea. No success. The sight out seems as blocked as my vision of my future. I can see about a year ahead no problem, but after that it's all cloudy. And even that year of clarity is all thanks to the upcoming Erasmus exchange period. Without it I'd be really confused right now.

I have the classic student problem: I'm not sure if this is the right field of study for me. ”You'll get over it”, people say. Fact is, I don't want to get over it. Getting over it would mean silently accepting that life is just what it is, and there are things you just can't change and you just have to accept. I don't want to ”get over it” and accept the proposition that it's more important to study something leading to a good job with a nice paycheck than do something you're really interested in.

All this angstyness is linked to my increasing boredom regarding my studies in the field of business and technology. It's all work and no play. Meaning, that it's all very much directed into teaching what you need at work: budgets, thumb estimates, generalizations and various PC applications. There's no room for playing with ideas, no critical assessment of the theories and their implications. We're taking too much for granted in the world.
Call me and idealistic leftist fool wanting to avoid real work if you will, but I feel all the above makes my studies at times utterly dull. What I'd want is ethics, trying to see the big picture, trying to understand what ”it's all about” and whether the direction the world is heading makes any sense.

I always get a nice, warm feeling inside me when I hear someone mention philosophy. It always gets me all fired up. It's precisely the same feeling I got out of it (maths and physics, too) in high school. I want to understand, I want the world to make sense. I'm too naive to accept the world has no sense or meaning. I want to know. And frankly memorizing lists about the various ways of segmenting a market or analysing company performance seem of very little help in gaining that
understanding.

As for now, I'm trying to overcome my doubts for a brief period. From September onwards I'll spend 10 months in beautiful Austria, which will be an awesome experience. No need to waste that in fear of the future. I don't know what'll happen after that, but at the moment I feel like it'll involve completing my Bachelor here and applying for Practical philosophy (meaning ethics and philosophy of societies) in Helsinki.

I feel I'm ready for a quest of understanding.

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