25
Oct
2009
Status anxiety
For the last couple of years I’ve been becoming increasingly interested in what the future is going to be like, and the methods employed to predict its nature.
Up until now it has been a fascinating sideline to my everyday activities of teaching and trying to solve design problems with computational tools.
Although teaching is generally thought of as being in the academic realm, it is really quite a practical job. One is engaged in the transference of knowledge and skills, which by the very nature of the introductory level of the course are a long way from the cutting edge of one’s work. Whilst the process of teaching is academically fascinating (and I hope to do some work centred around teaching and learning once this project is over) and the activity of teaching and seeing the teaching have a positive effect is immensely rewarding, it isn’t in the realm that currently consumes my time and passion.
I have been gaining an escalating level of baseline nervousness over the last few months as this project builds momentum and it has been feeding off itself. This came to a head yesterday during a conversation with Angela about what to do at Christmas, and I realised that I’d rather work than talk about plans, and although I liked the abstract idea of something fun far off in the future, its planning was completely uninteresting – perhaps even offensive – to me.
Angela diagnosed me as having status anxiety, and it dawned on me that this was probably a very accurate description of my malaise. In my day to day life I get to be modestly important. I have risen from the person who about this time of year in 2005 nearly wet his pants in excitement at being accepted to go to Smart Geometry, to being a 2009 tutor. In that realm people (at least show a pretence) take what I say seriously. But now I am being exposed to new ideas, whole new fields of ideas, rich histories of debate which I know nothing about. I am, once again, the 11 year old going off to big school for the first time.
I read a very brief excerpt of Jeremy Till’s new book ‘Architecture depends, in which he takes the piss out of the Vitruvian mantra of ‘commodity, firmness and delight’ as our philosophical cornerstone. I would imagine that profession of balloon modelling has a more insightful core phrase, and it made me wonder what it is that I, given my education, can actually offer to the rest of the research community. Surely it doesn’t boil down to the ability to draw relatively pretty pictures?