Borderland Eng.ver #2 (After the Program - Academic)
In the following, I will write rambling stuff I would like to write down after the program. I thought it would be easiest to divide them into academic and other personal matters, so I have categorized them as such.
I was able to make my interest specific
I believe that I have achieved one of my goals through the aforementioned program, "to specify my interests," at a fairly high level. I think it is easier to understand this by quoting the abstract part of my Research Proposal ("Thesis Statement") as it is:
This study examines whether there are specific types of Israelis and Palestinians who tend to, or not to, join a people-to-people organization (namely PCFF), and if so, what those types are. More specifically, I am interested in whether and how people’s socio-economic and other personal backgrounds inform their decision to, or not to, join the organization, and whether there are specific peculiarities in personal backgrounds of the organization’s members compared to the non-member population. I am also interested in examining how people’s various interpersonal and intrapersonal interactions and struggles in decision- making processes (such as advice of family and intuitive spurs of themselves), often conflicting and demanding difficult negotiations, ultimately motivate them to decide to, or not to, join the organization.
To break it down, I wanted to find out "what kind of people tend to join organizations that promote peace and reconciliation in Israel and Palestine?".
If I were to leave the specific topic of my research proposal for a moment and put my even broader interest into words, it would be something like, "In a place like Israel-Palestine, where the dominant values are 'hatred' toward people belonging to different groups, how can some people still try to compromise with each other?". Based on this broader interest, the above Research Proposal was developed through literature review and research on peacebuilding organizations actually being operated in the region.
On hindsight this is a considerable change (or growth), considering I could not answer when I was asked what I was specifically interested in in Israeli-Palestinian conflict from a peer student in the program.
Now, let me try to summarize here why I have become interested in the above.
I have long been interested in "human beings." If you ask me what exactly I was interested in, it would be difficult to answer, but I was attracted to the complexity of human beings, and I felt that there were many questions that could not be understood by mathematical or scientific methods, or questions that could not be answered in such as way as to say "Yes, this is the objective answer that everyone agrees on".
One such question is "Why do we live?" I think it is one of the most typical questions that has no objective answer, which is very broad and fundamental. I think it is one of the questions that people have been grappling with since ancient times in the form of religion and philosophy.
It was the last winter when I was studying abroad in Sweden that I took a special interest in this question and tried to find a tentative answer in my own way. Before my study abroad, I had been stuck in the fast-paced life in Tokyo, but during the winter in Sweden, I finally found time to free myself from almost all practical stresses, and I was able to slowly turn my attention to long-term questions. As I introspectively confronted questions such as "What kind of person am I?" or "How should I live?" the ultimate question I was made to face was "Why do I live?" to which I could never find an answer.
A few months later, Albert Camus's "The Myth of Sisyphus" supported my thinking. Camus, a leading exponent of the philosophy of the absurdity, stated without reservation that "there is no meaning to life," and paradoxically tried to find in this stark truth a kind of "beauty" in human life. I felt that Camus's argument provided a foundation for my own thinking, and I basically agreed with his argument.
On the other hand, a critical self secretly emerged, wondering if the arguments of Camus and myself (I know it is too presumptuous of me to write me side by side with Camus though) were really valid. My critical self was trying to find clues to refute them, mainly from two points.
The first is religion. Among them are the monotheistic religions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, which have had a great influence on the "Western" world. Without exception, those religions address the question, "Why do human beings come into this world?" (Rather, one might argue that those religions arose as a result of human beings addressing such a question), and each should have found a compelling answer to teach and guide human beings. Or, regardless of their teachings, these religions have provided some "meaning of life" to their believers throughout the ages. Religion, therefore, can be a powerful counter-argument to the claim based on absurdity that life has no meaning. Of course, Camus was aware of this, and in "The Myth of Sisyphus," he frequently criticizes Christian thought. In particular, Camus, who places emphasis on "rational thought," denounces the attitude of religion that tries to explain all questions outside the realm of reason with "God" as a result of human weakness that tries to turn away from the inconvenient truth that "life has no meaning".
That is, of course, one powerful argument. But just because Camus said that "things outside of reason are (by definition) unthinkable" does not prove that "God does not exist". And even if something equivalent to "God" does not exist, we cannot rule out the possibility that any small fragment of the answer to the question of "the meaning of life" may lie outside the bounds of reason. It is just that (at least ordinary) human beings cannot even prove that possibility unequivocally.
Is religion really just an escape route for humans faced with the limits of reason, as Camus says? Or is there something more than that, and does it offer some insight into the "meaning of life" as well? This is the first of my critical thinking.
The second is more personal. I am a privileged person, born and raised in a relatively stable environment in middle to upper class in Japan. I have never found myself on the brink of life or death, or worried about whether or not I will be able to make ends meet tomorrow. Nor have I ever been deeply involved with people who seem to be living such lives.
That is why I was skeptical about my own thoughts on the question of "the meaning of life". How universal is the "meaning of life" as thought by such a privileged person? Ain't I only thinking things from a very narrow perspective? - those were the suspicions that I had. Because of that, I wanted to be involved with people who live in a reality completely different from the one I was born and raised in, and to be as close as possible to the world as they see it.
As you can probably imagine, my visit to Israel-Palestine provided numerous insights into these two critical questions (It wasn't until later that I reconfigured those questions nicely like this though). One reason is that the region has historically been an important focal point for Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, and many of its inhabitants have been particularly religious compared to other areas; the other is that, especially in Palestine, I got an opportunity to involve with people who live in harsh realities that I had never seen before, but who are still living with dignity.
So I recognize that it is important to relate the impact that my visits to those areas had on me with what I had been thinking before that. It is not that I had been thinking nothing, or something completely different, and not that the visit to the region was "out of the blue" and all my ideas were turned 180 degrees upside down.
However, there were, of course, some realizations during that visit that were independent of my earlier thinking, and they also played an important role in the development of the specific academic interests mentioned above.
For example, the way the people who helped me the most in Palestine talked about "us as Palestinians" and "them as Israelis (or Jews)" was very impressive and shocking. The "we" are poor, struggling to survive today, and constantly threatened by Israeli soldiers. In contrast, the Israelis—or Jews—are exceptionally diabolical beings who don't hesitate to humiliate us and take our land. To speak in such a way, making the distinction between "Us" and "Them" any clearer, to try to speak of ourselves in a demeaning way at every turn, to think that a few Israeli soldiers represent all Israelis (or Jews) whose faces they had never even seen. And above all, that they cannot maintain their identity and "reason to continue living" without having such a far from wholesome way of speaking and thinking. The unbearable feelings I had when I sensed these things have remained with me.
From another perspective, I also could not help but be amazed and admire those Palestinian people for continuing to live in the midst of this never-ending threat. I myself need a clear "purpose/meaning of life," and the stimulation, change, and sense of "contributing to others" that I continuously get in the course of my daily life provides me with that purpose and meaning. Or, to put it another way, these stimuli and the sense of contribution to others allow me to turn my attention away from the naked truth that life might be meaningless. But for many Palestinians, every day is an endless cycle of mental exhaustion and attempts to make ends meet in the face of continuous threats. In such a situation, how do they face the "naked truth", when it is overwhelmingly more difficult for them to seek exciting changes and create creative values compared to me? And why do they sometimes seem to know something very important that I don't? These questions and interests are also the ones I have been keeping in mind since that time.
Now, how does the above mentioned interest in the search for the "meaning of life" lead to the question of "Why are some Israeli-Palestinians willing to compromise?" Unfortunately, I have not found a firm logic for this crucial connection so far. If I had to say, it is that the aforementioned phenomenon of "maintaining one's own identity by degrading others" indicates that, at the same time, acknowledging and compromising the humanity of others can become a crisis for one's own existence and identity. It is directly meaningful for the search of the meaning of life to know the source of their strength and resilience that allows them to continue to live while being forced to risk or actually face such a crisis. There are many other possible connections, but to be honest, this part is largely a matter of intuition. I think there are important implications for the "meaning of life" in the intense interactions with others, such as hating each other, coming to terms, forgiving, and loving each other. But that is a somewhat convincing intuition, and I have a sense that I am not in the wrong place.
I have gone rather off topic and delved rather deeply into my motivation for my area of interest.
In fact, I was in the middle of writing my impressions after the program. Now I will go back and move on to the next impression.
I was able to write a Research Proposal that I actually wanted to implement
This is directly related to what I wrote just now, but I believe that the Research Proposal I wrote was not just an assignment for being graded in one course, but also something that will be useful to me in the future. I mentioned earlier the significance of the fact that I was able to specify my own interests in the process of thinking about the content of the proposal, but moreover, I am personally quite satisfied with the final product, which makes me think like "I would really like to carry it out on my own".
This was largely due to the advice I was given to plan freely when writing my Research Proposal, assuming that I was a full-fledged researcher with various resources and skills, and not limited to my current abilities. At first, I was thinking, "If only I could write a realistic Proposal that could be directly useful in the research of my bachelor's or master's...," but as a result, I had the opportunity to write a so to say "dream Proposal" that was quite a long shot but feasible in reality. I was able to think and write with an emphasis on whether or not I wanted to do it, rather than whether or not I could do it. It may not be the right word given the cruelty and urgency of my field of interest, but I think it helped me to be excited about it.
Of course, I am sure that my interests will change as I continue to learn and deepen my practice, but I think it is very significant that I was able to invest my considerable energy and output what I most want to do at this point in my life. I hope that this project will be like the North Star that guides me when I lose my motivation and become lost at some point in the future.
I was able to build good relationships with teachers and friends
As for "networking," which was the last of my goals, I think I accomplished that as well. I will write more about the relationships with other participants in the next post, but I think it was very meaningful to build reasonably deep relationships with people with similar academic interests and orientations. For example, whenever I had a conversation with other students and got feedback from them, such as "What is your research question of your proposal?" I was able to gauge my own level of certainty about my interests and find words that more accurately describe my interests.
I built a good relationship with my professors as well. I was able to present my research topic in a concise manner in informal one-to-one sessions (I still felt a bit nervous though), and the feedback I received on my proposal was very useful. In addition, the academic conversations that we had aside from the proposal - about the professor's own research topic and his/her thoughts on it - were also very meaningful. In particular, when I told one of the professors that I shared the vision of the academic initiatives that she was promoting, she not only spoke enthusiastically about her aspirations, but also shared some concrete ideas that I myself could help promote, which was very impressive. Although there are still some unknowns as to how I will be involved in the future, I think it is fair to say that we were able to establish a relationship that has the potential to last for a long time to come, which is a good accomplishment.
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