Week 8 - Calvin Huang

Shahjahan’s story of his grandpa is somehow really familiar to me.  Shahjahan explains that his grandfather did not view the world as a science.  He could not “see a world in which there was no sense of meaning or purpose without a divine reality” (686).  In a way, I get what he was saying.  If all the universe was just the aftermath of some physics it would be very bleak indeed.  It would have to mean that our existence was only the after product of a seemingly random event.  We are just byproducts of an intergalactic laboratory.  However, if we were made with a purpose and someone higher than us decided to make us, we would be more reassured.  The fact that someone decided to create us would give us meaning.  But I can also see the other side of the reasoning behind science.  If we were just happenstance, it would mean that it was not of design to be made.  The fact that we have been made randomly puts that much more importance on our lives.  It’s like we should be grateful that the universe had just the right variables to sustain our existence.  So either way you look at it, we are definitely special.  The rest of the article goes on to explain how institutions are purposely limiting our connections to our spiritual ways.  Of course, these institutions have displaced indigenous spiritual practices and have replaced those with information fed by the corporations.  We need to consider our choices because if we do not, we will be absorbed into corporate machine.

Citations

Shahjahan, Riyad Ahmed. "Spirituality in the Academy: Reclaiming from the Margins and Evoking a Transformative Way of Knowing the World." International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education 18.6 (2005): 685-711. Web.

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