Even erudite flies get smashed now and then for sounding too ‘school smart’. As one of many AU students not immersed in an academic social sphere, Jason’s ‘Fly on the Wall’ column seeks to aid and abet the success of others in his cohort. We won’t always be understood when we speak of what we are learning in school but we can rest assured that our education still has value.
His lighthearted approach to sociological philosophy stems from conducting field research at bush parties and working his day job reforesting the mountains of BC. Born in the city of Vancouver and raised on a farm in the Fraser Valley and an orchard in the Okanagan, he attained a diploma in Horticulture in the Creston Valley and then returned to school as a Sociology major. Today’s he’s an AU Master’s of Integrated Studies student who spends his spare time enjoying nature walks, snorkeling and reading whatever philosophical and sociological tracts capture his fancy.
Jason is fascinated with the micro-sociological thoughts and interactions that frame and demarcate our experience of daily life as well as the philosophical realm considering essential questions about what it is to be a human. It’s dense brush but Jason seeks answers where murkiness holds sway.
A Few Theoretical Influences: Louis Althusser, Isaac Asimov, Jean Baudrillard, Simone de Beauvoir, Aime Cesaire, Carol Clover, John Cummings, Kurt Cobain, Jacques Derrida, Emile Durkheim, Michel Foucault, Erving Goffman, Antonio Gramsci, Martin Heidegger, Thomas Hobbes, Agnes Martin, Karl Marx, Georg Simmel, Max Weber
A scanty few decades ago childish tears and angst were met with the phrase “I’ll give you something to cry about!” Social evolution means that what was once a real threat evolved into a threat of a threat before landing with a plop in a puddle of joke threats that, ideally, would bring cheer to… Read more »
Adults though we be, and increasingly learned ones, we remain susceptible to the hubris our narrow mindsets invariably bring. So, when pondering Alexandrina Victoria’s 201st birthday and the kicktail long weekend in May that bears her name, we run the risk of oversimplifying the era of her Imperial regime. England was at the height of… Read more »
Although May Day is now past, the insight it can bring continues on, much like how we continue our exploration from last time of it and how our studies at AU separate us from the conformity of clapping hands and stomping feet. As times changed so did Mayday celebrations. But, like Mother’s Day that celebrates… Read more »
The year was 1986. Kindergarten. A larval Fly on the Wall refused to sing or perform the actions of the classic kiddie tune “If You’re Happy and You Know It.” He was told to go sit in a chair in the corner. What a pretentious kid, or was he precocious? Maybe he was channelling his… Read more »
As spring’s fervid grasp permits life to flourish, we at AU might take a moment to record our progress as we arrive at this season of rebirth. Foremost among methods of self-germination may, for we studious AU students, be the act of writing itself. Each essay has affected us as a dialectic between the course… Read more »
In spring we dust off our outdoor selves and, hopefully, gain new perspective on ourselves. Everything appears differently in the bold light of the season and this illustrates the subjective nature of the act of seeing itself. Take photo albums, for instance. When I look at family picture books, aged and oxidised by the loving… Read more »
Imagine back, way back, to 4500 BCE at a humble hunting and gathering settlement in Western Ukraine. That’s where the earliest paintings of decorated eggs were discovered (Baring & Cashford, 61). What joy these ancient people must have felt at the advent of spring! 6,600 years later their painted treasures convey a delicate brilliance familiar… Read more »
Nudge nudge…poke! Spring peaks its snout out from between piles of snow that can only dream of a future as glaciers. Wherever we came from, and wherever we go, it helps to take a look at the big wide picture. Thousands of years ago an endless winter covered almost every available patch of land across… Read more »
It’s an old cliché that we’re hard-wired to be social animals. Like cows dipping their heads to nosh on some clover, all the while furtively murmuring gossip about whose calves nibbled at whose udders unbeknownst to the other’s Mothers, we humans thrive on gabbing in groups. Who are we going to low conspiratorially to now?… Read more »
“It is dangerous to read newspapers” wrote Margaret Atwood in the late 60s. What she meant was clear: the establishment couldn’t be trusted to tell the truth or even to veer away from doing the wrong thing. During the Vietnam war the contradictions of the world were inescapable for a generation whose access to this… Read more »