The reading of PPM9 offers further exploration of the claim made upon us by the tidings of the Tide, expressed in the question, How is it with the Nothing? This meditation offers a description of the emotional response to this question, which is 'irritating,' and 'confounding' because it disrupts our acculturated habit of anticipating and expecting forward 'progress'. (In making my description I am recalling the anxiety expressed by students in my courses, many of whom are school teachers. Provocative questioning interrupts the expectations they have about philosophy of education.) Another important aspect of this meditation is the first mention of 'silence,' as an implication of the relationship between Being and learning. What is silenced, first and foremost, is what I call the 'juridical voice,' and the "incessant chapter of adjudication and measure." Here I am imagining the 'voices' of the policy makers, accreditation organizations, etc., and even the 'voices' of the laws and policies themselves that have an obsession with measurable 'outcomes,' and have fetishized the algorithm. In turn, the 'chatter' and 'noise' generated by those voices dissipates into the vast openness of an 'empty' concept like 'the Nothing.' The noise of the "educator's" voice dissipates in the emptiness of the Nothing. Silence reigns.
February 13, 2014 was the 10th anniversary of the original experiment that produced 363 phenomenological mediations, published as 'Being and Learning' (Brill: 2012). Each day between Feb 2014-15, I returned to the original meditations, and my commentary is documented here. And then, again, on February 15, 2024, on the 20th anniversary of the first days of the original experiment, I revisit and comment on a daily basis, once again.
Silence reigns. 20/10 years later, silence is less a matter of being silenced, but of the silence of Being, or being-silent. Of course, this is a major theme in the forthcoming meditations. Yet, the mood of systemic critique is more or less dissipated, and the emphasis today is on the positive, the affirmation of the reception of the poetic, the encounter with the work of art, specifically, music, and the silence that is filled in that encounter.
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