Retired, But Not Retiring...

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Never let it be said that retirement is simply an issue of steady decline into dotage, senility and, well, death: at least it doesn't have to be, anyway. As I said to my drinking buddies the other day, I feel more intellectually aware and alive now than ever before; now that I have the freedom to do, read, listen to and watch whatever the fuck I choose at whatever pace I choose, than ever was the case when I was working, or even when a student, at the point when the process of learning about teaching oneself stuff was only in its formative stages.

I realize that, although not well off in the crass, conventional sense of the phrase, I am nevertheless blessed to be able to be who I want, pretty much when I want [caveats exist], and I realize full well that this is not the case for a very large slice of humanity. What I am trying to do may well be in the long-term existentially futile: the quest for knowledge for its own sake is, ultimately, limited by one's own existence, unless the afterlife is really a thing. I don't foresee, at my advanced age, any significant contribution from me to the sum of human knowledge; but what the heck. If I manage to spout some common sense that someone finds useful, then I'm a happy bunny.

I'm currently exercising myself with a piece from The Journal of Critical Sociology by John O'Connor, entitled "Marxism and the Three Movements of Neoliberalism". Lightweight reading it ain't, although like an awful lot of this of stuff, it would benefit from a hefty shaving by Occam's Razor. Having said that, there are some good ideas and plenty of references to follow up on the back of it. Why, you might ask, do I do this? I guess the answer is two-fold. One is the mantra of continuing intellectual curiosity that my Dad passed on to me, and the second is, in some way, to encourage that same curiosity in others: don't accept without question what those with agendas would have you believe. Challenge orthodoxy: always with reason, argument and evidence, but tend towards going against the accepted grain. The world needs more challenging thought and less obeisance to false Gods...



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