Fantasy 1

I love fantasy and SF literature, especially literature, but also films and graphic novels. To me the works of le Guin, Banks, Miéville, Stephenson, Moorcock.... I find that fantasy is the best vehicle for researching consciousness, language, ethics and politics. I love the quote from Miéville that he's only in it for the monsters, which is a lie of course. Oddly it seems that Tolkien and Harry Potter are the only fantasies beknownst to a large number of readers, and even more oddly it seems that while many people accept Tolkien and Rowling as cool, all other fantasy is dismissed as silly, childish and superficial. Of course, in many ways the case is that while Tolkien is amazing in many ways, he is a stuffy old reactionary Catholic, and Harry Potter, well.... more on that later.

Thinkers and practitoners

Watched this great Ted talk and was deeply inspired.... I just love the way this guy uses philosophy in a practical way .... I fall firmly into the Dionysian category as he presents it there. His thoughts on how our obsession with perfect forms are dangerous for the environment tie very well in with Taleb's thoughts on our tendency for platonicity and its dangers. I personally find that a lot of what makes for problems in my professional life stems from this problem (in others) ....

Values for teachers 1 - spontaneity

Well, now school is about to start and (as often) I'm thinking about teaching, schools, education.... I've been a teacher for, god help me, thirteen years now - mostly teaching English, though my main subject is philosophy. I am currently (supposed to be) working on my master's thesis (I've been working on the degree over the last few years) and part of that will be an exploration of teachers' values and identities.

I find that education is too organized and lacks spontaneity. I think tests and demands for programs and concern with credit points, timetables and, well, mostly it's the endless testing, and obsession with putting students in boxes, and being 'accountable' is slowly smothering the human spirit.

Operating within this world, and hoping to provide some relief and possibly incremental change, I have tried to introduce spontaneity and serendipity into my classroom and work. I don't prepare (not very much), I don't stick to my plans, I listen to my students, and I rarely use dictionaries. I try to simplify instructions, open up minds and try as hard as I can to get to know my students (I have a large number of students and I'm bad at names so this is a real challenge for me).

As per preparation and dictionaries: I consider my years in university (in the past and present) to be preparation. I would rather spend my time reading weird fantasy novels and quirky philosophers than looking up all possible meanings of the words in a text that is to be dealt with on a given day.

Some might call me lazy, others something else, that's just the matter of the way things works.

le Guin

To my mind clearly one of the greatest writers of the 20th century. The left hand of Darkness and The Disposessed are great novels and studies of human nature. In TlD she explores questions of gender and identity by imagining a planet where androgynous humans live. These humans take turns being pregnant and mate when they are 'in Kemmer' - and then one of them becomes male and the other female. This happens once a month, the rest of the time they don't think about sex... The politics of the planet are complex, but there have never been any wars. Interestingly its published in the same year as Christianity under the Glacier by Halldór Laxness - and its style, political and philosophical outlook is oddly similar, possibly more on that later.  The Disposessed is a fascinating study of anarchism (le Guin is an anarchist) and it posits two worlds, where one of them is a kind of an anarchist 'utopia'. The message is that, of course, utopia is not utopia, and that the revolution is a constant state of mind. Two points captured my attentions. The first is the question whether anarchism doesn't inevitably mean that we become our own oppressors, and whether the revolutionary isn't better of with the queen in the palace to fight her, instead of having her inside your own head (in the firm of a kind of kantian ethic) .... another point is her exploration of love and sexual loyalty and fidelty as a self chosen form of discipline that is the grounding for all other love and loyalty, to yourself the world etc. This idea is also explored in The left hand of Darkness. I haven't talked about her fantasies, which are also good, and she is a very charismatic and fascinating person all around. She is a very soft sf author, there are few battles in her work, she focuses on social and psychological issues and does so in a very powerful and interesting way.

Taleb

Visiting with my good friends Guðný and Hersir in Akureyri this spring I started reading Fooled by Randomness by Nassim Nicholas Taleb - a guy I'd been intrigued by but never gotten around to reading. I borrowed the book (G&H being extremely generous and generally nice human beings), finished it and am now more than half way through The Black Swan (borrowed from the library). Taleb, like Feyerabend is a kind of swashbuckling, arrogant and funny writer - with a deep sense of human frailty. They diverge seriously in their estimation of Popper - Feyerabend loathes him while he is one of the few thinkers Taleb really likes. I sometimes wonder if Taleb has actually read PKF - maybe he is part of his 'anti-library' (the books you've read are less important than those you haven't). Taleb's central concern is to oppose our race's tendency to platonify - to take our theories and ideas, and nowadays they are dressed up in math, and imagine that they represent reality and can help us predict. Taleb shows us very clearly they do neither. Economics pretending to be like physics is the bane of modern finance. Of course it's a bit more complex than this (I'll get back after finishing the book) - but the central message is one of down to earth skepticism - suspend judgement and don't believe long term predictions in any field - they will in every case be wrong. Look out for Black Swans - but don't waste time trying to figure out in what guise they will come - they are unknown unknowns.

Hampson

When I was writing 'Philosophy for you' (Icelandic: Heimspeki fyrir þig) with Róbert Jack, and working on the chapter on faith I was introduced to the work of Daphne Hampson. She is a truly amazing thinker, and a bit of a rebel. She started her career as a theologian operating within the Church of England fighting for the right of women to be ordained. Disillusioned by this struggle and probing Christianity further she came to the conclusion that Christianity is neither 'ethical nor true'. Nevertheless she is a theist and terms herself a 'post-christian'. She posits 'that which we call god' as a reality created in the interaction of humans. It is important to note that for her 'god' is real in this sense, it is not some subjectivist or pragmatist concoction.
Drawing on feminism, progressive theologians, continental philosophy and virtue ethics she is an engaging and fascinating writer. She came to speak in Iceland a while back - ironically I was giving a talk at another conference at the same time (ironic because I almost never give talks).
I hope she'll return one day.
A speech by Hampson, containing a lot of her important ideas.

Feyerabend

A philosopher who has stayed with me since my teens - I borrowed my uncle's copy of Against Method (I haven't returned it, and I've bought a newer version - making the borrowing a theft?) when I was ca. 17 ... I didn't read it then; and still haven't read all of it; but somehow it is a defining work for me .... I recently read the last three chapters which affected me profoundly. His best work (in my opinion, the only one that counts here) is Three Dialogues on Knowledge; a very deep and entertaining piece. His vision is one that is profoundly informed by a deep respect for human attempts at understanding and living in the world, and contempt for any system of thought that announces itself as the only valid one - and in his time, and ours, the system claiming such a place is Western rationality and Science.
In the Dialogues he says that when you address Being (as a mystic; scientist; artist.... whatever) Being answers. A beautiful idea.
When I was looking for the picture of PKF I came across the Paul K. Feyerabend foundation  and this made me happy.

Snufkin

Snufkin is one of my great heroes, and mostly because of the scene in one of the books where he and the Moomintroll come to a place controlled by an unusually stuffy Hemul. The Hemul has posted signs all over proclaiming all kinds of bans. 'No Smoking'; 'No Singing'; 'No walking on the Grass' - and Snufkin proceeds to break up and throw away all the signs.