History & Human Motivation: Its Complex...

Soo...my Lehrman Institute began today. It's kinda surreal being back on Columbia's campus to learn. I'm staying in the Freshman dorms and have already hit up my old Starbucks a few times. I'm also trying to get back on track with this fitness thing. I ran my old route around the Jackie Onassis reservoir (it was beautiful). I miss Columbia in a lot of ways. But I have to say it...I already miss Philly :( And I LOVE reppin (is that how you spell it?)Philly here in NYC. We have many haters here...

The lecturer is AMAZING. What makes him amazing is not the amount of history that he knows. Its the way that he is helping me complicate my understanding of an era and topic that I thought that I had a pretty firm grip on. I know that I say this to you guys in class all of the time, but please let me serve as a witness and an example of the fact that LEARNING DOES NOT STOP (even during the summer).

Please allow me to "geek out" and share my favorite idea of the day with you:

Professor Brown (yes Chris Brown, no not that one) offered and idea that has made me start to rethink how I will teach the idea of of reform efforts and intellectual revolutions happen. This point truly resonated with me. The most constructive way to think about ANY commitments to reform [in this case anti-slavery and abolitionism] is not to think of how great ideas come down from on high and effect action.

The practical way to analyze it is to think more specifically about what experience may have supported an individuals reading of those thoughts. Also consider that oftentimes, the writing of philosophers and scholars more likely reflect the beliefs of individuals based on their own actions and experience.

History is not a simple, blind, and straight forward “MARCH OF IDEAS.” In other words, people en masse didn't read the writing of philosophers and immediately change their behavior and rise up against slavery, or racial segregation, or for women suffrage, or for against European imperialism. The changing of the human mindset is more complex and less linear than that kind of thinking suggests. Naturally.

Anyway...chew on that for the summer. Miss you all already! Writing this in class and should be paying attention...