@Castabulan
As you can see from just looking at the dates of these posts, I am not comfortable with posting on a blog because it becomes something about yourself even if you try to make it about others. I am more comfortable extolling the virtues and accomplishments of others and also supporting the opinion of others. This is evident by my Twitter feed of @Castabulan. I do not usually have my comments but amplify others' thoughts and opinions. It is a bit uncomfortable for me to presume I can say things others are not or cannot. I believe most people are better than me and am proven right everywhere I turn.
But there has been a shift in my motivation and understanding given the current state of affairs in both America and the world. There are historical and monumental happenings everywhere that will be important to understand for future generations. I want to write to those people who will be looking through the historical record of this time two hundred and fifty years from now. I want them to know that people were fighting and struggling to make the future a better place.
My Current Shift
The shift occurred because of much of the reading I have been doing during the Coronavirus Pandemic Lockdown we are experiencing right now. I am still reading the Malazan Books of the Fallen and my comic book of the moment is the delightful Rat Queens. Both these fantasies have something in common that has inspired me to frame my blog and Twitter in a new way. At one point in Rat Queens, the female adventuring heroes are in a bar getting drunk (a common occurrence in Rat Queens). One of our motley crew is hit on by a man. She lets him know she does not date bards and bards are not welcome in their adventuring party, the eponymous Rat Queens. He then explains that he is not a Bard but a Chronicler. A Bard creates his own stories, a Chronicler records others' stories for posterity. This reminded me that one of my favorite characters throughout the Malazan Books is the Imperial Historian who chronicles the stories within Steven Erikson's Malazan series shared with the reader. So this has given me a better way to find peace with being more active online. I was never comfortable being a Bard, but I do see the import of being a Chronicler.
Twitter as a Chronicle of the Times
So this then is the way forward. My Twitter can be best seen as a chronicle. I, like most, do not post original content but pass around already existing content created by the Bards throughout America and the World. And the Bards I listen to reflect who I am. Some of this will become more clear when I continue the task I am setting for myself; explaining the hashtags I have created on my Twitter for the students in my classes. That way the Bards and just the general audience they tell the stories to can have insight into at least my chronicle.
#SomeClarity
As we in higher education continue to experience the necessity of moving things online, I still have a lot of residual resistance. I am not alone. I am really a lecturer, needing to be in front of and with my students in order to help them learn and grow. I joke that I feed off of the energy of my students. Behind every joke though is some truth and my students are my energy, my motivation, and the source of my eternal life as they keep me young. I craft my lectures around providing #SomeClarity during a time in the political life of the planet that is very difficult to understand and stress-inducing. What this means in our current context is that this is all new to me but I will do my best to move my lectures, or at least some of the understandings of the chronicle I may have.
So I will use this forum to explain my hashtags that you can then explore on Twitter to come to your own understandings. I encourage you first to simply search @castabulan and then the hashtag or hashtags that may interest you. Then drop my delimiter and look at what others have crafted around the hashtags that currently occupy the comfort of your mind.
#SelfVsCommon
There is some method here about the order of presentation of the hashtags. Bear with me and let us get started. My broadest possible hashtag is #SelfVsCommon. This identifies debate and discussion items. I teach at Folsom Lake College and am the Chair of the Department of Political Science. I am the only full-time faculty being supported by many accomplished adjuncts. Through the years, I have been fortunate to teach across our discipline and have taught all core sub-disciplines, American Politics, InLabels
ternational Relations, Comparative, and Political Theory. The common teaching thread throughout these courses and, in Political Science in general, is how we as a species make decisions together. When we do so we are confronted with the reality that we are all self-interested actors.
We are alive; there has never been nor will there ever be people exactly like ourselves and, while we are here, we hope to have a meaningful life. We have dreams and aspirations. But we do not live in a vacuum. We are surrounded by other self-interested actors and that fact compels us to also process how we want others to be treated and ho we want to be treated by others. Hence the necessity for always balancing the self-interest with the common interest. All political science explores this from different perspectives and frames. It certainly unites all my classes and I hear from old students it gives them a good way to understand their other political science courses when they leave Folsom Lake College bound for larger schools and departments.
So when using the #SelfVsCommon hashtag I want to open the topic for discussion. What is your self-interest (needing to go out and get a haircut)? What is the common interest (continuing social distancing and obeying our stay-at-home orders)? I am usually not one to put much of my own opinion as a Chronicler using the hashtag #SelfVsCommon. Sometimes I do want to insert an item that I think needs to be part of balancing the self-interest with the common interest or believe that there is a crucial missing issue within the broader issues being discussed. And this is not a way to delimit discussion nor is it vetted or screened by anyone else. It is just I from the future prospective of trying to help others form their own opinions on things that I often do not understand entirely or understand differently than most.
Addendum: My hashtags are designed to be accessible and that is why I write them as I do. Computer readers for the visually-impaired need to have the capitalization that you may encounter. When you use my hashtags or any other hashtags, I ask that you know and follow this. And yes I know not all the hashtags I use are "mine."
