Thread by @deontologistics

I really shouldn't let my adrenal glands do the talking. Let me try be a bit more conciliatory. I love academia. If I didn't love it so much I wouldn't have so much intricately tangled anger and resentment about being kept on its edges for 10 years. But I do and I have.

The same goes for the Labour Party. I was raised by people who were raised by people who could remember the stab of hunger and the fear of being evicted and for whom the Party's entrance into power was the most emancipatory development in their and their family's lives.

There's a link between these two things. My grandfather was what you'd call an organic intellectual. He passed his 11 plus and then couldn't go to grammar school because his father died and he had to start shovelling coal on trains. He eventually became a train driver.

His children were educated at a school run by a man who'd been in the same (school) class as him when they were boys, who he knew intimately was not his intellectual match, yet got where he was because they were not in the same (social) class. He knew education was a privilege.

My Nana got to go to school, but there wasn't even the ambition the she might *do* anything with her peculiar intellect. She spent her life tallying the books and serving people in shops, then churning through puzzle books and jigsaws. She was remarkable in ways most never saw.

These are the two grandparents I got to meet, and they instilled in me, both directly and indirectly, the idea that there is nothing wrong with curiosity, and that pursuing one's interests for its own sake is what makes life meaningful. A thing to be prized above all else.

I am who I am not simply because I inherited traits from both, but because these were cultivated by commitments that they articulated for their children and their childrens children. The joy of books and puzzles, and learning things for their own sake. By yourself if needs be.

I have consistently failed to fit this curiosity into the shapes implicitly articulated by the higher education system. I struggle to prioritise my financial stability over my thirst for wisdom, and this has only not lead to ruin because these values still animate my family life.

For me, these things (universities & socialism) are not simply defined by the love I have for them, but by a love that's bigger than me, and which has given me succour and support for my entire life. I'd apologise for this privilege, but it's too important for such pleasantries.

The socialism that animated the postwar compact was about concrete solidarity in its purest sense: Agape. It was about extending to everyone the things you wanted for you and your own, turning privileges into rights not conditional on familial or local ties. How far we've fallen.

There's a lot that can be critiqued in there too, such as the gendered nature of the compact, or its dependence on colonial economics. But I'm trying to stick to love. It's the ideals encoded in this love that make me want the reality to be better than it is. Universally so.

When this naive joy at what's best in life crashes into the hard bureaucratic reality that the postwar compact degenerated into, even as certain social battles were won, one cannot but feel exasperated. The outlets for this exasperation match the degree of value this joy encodes.

See this thread from yesterday on the value of breaking communicative taboos:

https://twitter.com/deontologistics/status/1362105571940392961?s=20

Looking at the current state of the university and the Labour Party (which wrought many of the changes responsible for the former's decay), I cannot but see in them the slow death of everything I've been taught to value above all else. I have no platform but I must scream.

But this screaming, where possible, should be done in a way that holds fast to the love rather than giving into the fear, anger, and hate that are its consequences. It should be strategic, measured, and sincere. I must mean every single word with which I choose to castigate.

Because the aim is not to alienate those who might be swayed by love, but merely to wake them to the real choices that they face. The one's that they would rather pretend are not theirs to make, and which those who simply don't care happily make for them.

Choose love guys. Even and especially when it fuels your anger. 🖖