Fake it till you make it! A teacher’s perspective on the illusions of respect

 

The luminous blue screen of my computer holds its steady gaze at me, and that’s making me a little uncomfortable.

Apart from some winks and forehead wrinkles caused by occasional stray thoughts, my eyeballs keep ogling the blank white sheet, waiting for an outpour of words. I am pushing my brain into forging a relay of thoughts on the phenomenon of respect.

Fake or real, we covet it; it remains the most common denominator in all spheres of life.

The Anatomy of the Void

An immeasurable abstraction as it is, the phenomenon of respect flourishes in an ambience of predictability for acknowledgement. So, naturally, it entertains a rich element of uncertainty around it—a vacuum that welcomes expansion and void. And it is there, in the heart of it, that we find a core desire for an expansive will to stretch.

Perhaps it is this very void that gravitates the mind into seeking it.

But there is an intellectual catch in this craving; a warning to take care of, as Aristotle famously posited centuries ago:

"Nature abhors a vacuum."

Of all the possible meanings that can be brewed out of this observation by the great philosopher, the one I seek is uniquely relevant to the element of human esteem.

The Captive of Facticity

Esteem, in varying degrees, signifies a level of respect or honour that one is credited with by conforming to the laws and decrees already framed by the culture one is born in, or made to work for.

In existential philosophy, this aspect of life—where an individual seems no more than a captive of the circumstances already decreed for him—is called his facticity.

Race, class, age, past, body, beliefs, desires, and personality traits are the given, factual dimensions of human existence. All these aspects are the ones that can be viewed from a cold, third-person perspective. Consequently, all measures of respect or dignity valued in a particular culture or working environment are assessed solely with reference to these factual dimensions.

In this regard, a person in possession of a certain level of self-esteem is predominantly a slave to the social conventions they are forced to adhere to.

Most definitely, this endowment and reception of esteem is part of a social rigmarole networked into a variety of social conventions. Through this network of needs that humans have woven for a collective claim over the attainment of temporal prosperity, comes the question of mutual integrity and credibility. That’s where they are naturally bound into an obscure ideal of estimation for one another.

The rule is simple: the better aligned you are to the predetermined dimensions of social norms, the higher claim you owe unto others’ estimation of you.

Sartre and the Café Mirror

But human consciousness is rarely that simple.

A distinctive characteristic of human consciousness, argues Jean-Paul Sartre, is that it is capable of ‘nihilating’ Being. An individual causes a world to be discovered through the negativity he imparts to elements of that world.

To illustrate this, Sartre uses his famous example of looking for his friend Pierre in a café, only to realize that his friend’s absence is as real and vivid as the other physical features of the room. This leads him to suggest that there is a nothingness at the heart of human consciousness which allows individuals to doubt, imagine, and interrogate things in the world.

This introduces a profound paradox. It demands a deep scrutiny of existence against all claims of self-authenticity and self-consistency.

In principle, the entire intellectual quest into self-actualization swirls around this basic problem: this "nothingness at the heart of human consciousness."

This nerve-tingling sensation occasioned by the discovery of a great void, or a vacuum, puts a massive question mark on the notion of credibility we long to be recognized with. Since our entire social, professional, or economic pursuits are anchored around some ideals to be met, we desperately want to meet these ideals keeping our personal ideality intact.

The entire struggle that ensues is a kind of perpetual tension between being and nothingness.

As we get closer to ‘being’ by conforming to the element of facticity, the nothingness recedes. It seems fitting to say that like many other coveted ideals, esteem stands an evident risk of being fake, since it does not seem to coincide with the ideality of personal pursuits on a deeper intellectual level.

The Elusive Stature of the Teacher

The notional feel of this respectability is nowhere as besmirching and elusive as in the profession of teaching—especially in a society like ours.

Here, it is crudely dubbed as the profession of those who, by a certain twist of misfortune, had to skid away from their line of desired profession and later settled for teaching as a mere means of survival.

It is not a very wrong perception, though.

Nevertheless, how justifiable is the intensity of contempt that is so often lashed up against this means of survival? What is completely overlooked by the critics is that teaching has been ranked as the third most stressful job in the world, positioned just after heart surgery and air traffic control.

Certainly, this element of stress, as envisioned by visionaries, authenticates the extreme sensitivity of dealing with the human mind, character, and, by extension, the soul. Does that not sound like a credential potent enough to win a stature and esteem in society?

Well, the answer from the world is always bleak and unworthy.

If life is doomed to be a "losing battle," as Bernard Shaw famously noted, why not face it gracefully? Why not fake some esteem—unless, of course, we can finally find a way to make it.