The Surface of Knowledge
We state that the scenarios of infinite postponement of knowledge in the setting of educational institutions are fraudulent. If knowledge is to be accessed, it has to be produced. There is no knowledge to be gained from the tertiary consumption of experiences. What the system offers us as the range of depth to delve into is only a tactic of deference that does not offer any respite from the compulsion to seek.
The insistence of the system to propel us into a perpetual state of becoming is problem.
The Surfatial University fulfils the persistent craving for knowledge that abounds. We do away with the self-serving model of plunging learners into never-ending self-doubt, chasing and the persistence of illusory depth. We offer the flat surface of knowledge as an entity which offers no sequentiality, that becomes an end in itself. The flatness of the surfaces that we offer have no deformities of terrain and no possibilities for the emergence of shadows. The avoidance of shadows allows a genuine chance for shadows to be considered. The university gathers around itself, a community that doesn't squint in the pursuit of some imagined pot of gold but rather one that allows itself to surrender to the moment at hand.
The emergence of knowledge has no role envisaged for the learner. There is nothing to do. There is nothing to be pursued. If the reluctance to be locked into a cycle of productivity is anything to be named, we would name it the main factor.
How does our University operate? What are its founding principles? What is its structure and how can you join it? Why is this the perfect time for us to introduce this programme? The Surfatial University operates through twitter. What is twitter? Twitter is a short messaging service on the Internet. As opposed to the structure of other websites, twitter is in the public domain and is not a walled garden. It is more similar to a blog than a social network. It is a micro-blogging service,…
We don't differentiate between students and carpenters. The only reason we are a university and not a church is because the word ‘university’ is sometimes related to the word ‘universe’. And, we like to think that we have one of our own. We have one of our own only because not having one of our own is a crime. Because if you do not have a universe of your own then that must mean that you live in somebody else's universe. And, that is a shame. Our university is a community of scholars, students and ana…
Being awakened, does not imply being perfect or even being morally superior to anyone. Being awake is just to say that the angst is not held back anymore. It finds an expression in multiple forms and one of them is the articulation of itself with a calmness that doesn't betray any impatience to give into it. Being awake is a quality of being that allows for no distortion between experience and its being processed as a plot which needs decisions and actor behaviour choices to be made. The lack…
The process that we go through before production happens, as an intrinsic part of being is what we called self-validation. Words like acceptance and notions of making peace with oneself do not fully capture this process with respect to its mechanics for production, so we make this choice of words. We choose to talk about this process as self-validation. If you free yourself from looking at yourself in ways which internalised the impedance of allowing the noise of sociality to enter your mind;…
Bringing something into existence is the act of production. We stigmatise very few things. And one of those things is a break in the flow of production of content. What is the main objective of our university? What does our model of delivering an initiation into a practice ensure? How do we deliver nuggets of information that can be compiled by the participants in the programme into an arcade of knowledge with a clear progression and completion framework? There are a lot of possibilities for…
