Toni Ahvenainen
Sociological thinking
Day 28 of 365
One of reasons why I'm having problems finding time to maintain flow of pictures is that I need to finish my thesis for university. Because of many things it has hanged about too long and I need to get it done. In practice it means, I need to live with a pretty big pile of books and produce some text every day. There is not much to do, but with everything else it becomes harder and harder to find time for it.
When I started my studies of social sciences in university I really didn't know what to expect. All I knew that I had red some modern sociological classics, most important being Michel Foucault's Discipline and Punish, which felt really intriguing to me at the time (and still is, but for other reasons). Within university I found other classics and becoming acquainted with sociological knowledge had two effects on me. First, it opened world in a new way to me. I found emancipatory explanations to my earlier life experiences regarding inequality and human behavior, and it taught me how to think with my own mind. Like many others, I too think, that it's one of the best things that has happened to me in my life. Secondly, it destroyed my older world view and part of me in that same process. Belief systems that I had carried with me and meanings I had invested in them slowly became more fragile and eventually kind of collapsed. I went through a state of depression and for a while I was just a ghost of what used to be me. Only afterwards I've understood this process a bit better, but it is still a bit mystery to me and effects me in many ways. There are, for example, things I cannot believe or relate to any more - things that other people feel natural and authentic. In some ways it feels like having left the childhood, you can never go back again, and having gone through this process I often feel that I've become a stranger to the world where people feel certain ontological certainty with their existence and identity. Naturally it's a sight characterized by loneliness, but there is also a certain feeling of presence which I've learned to appreciate.
Moral of the story: reading books is dangerous.
Year of the Alpha – 365 Days of Sony Alpha Photography: www.yearofthealpha.com
Sociological thinking
Day 28 of 365
One of reasons why I'm having problems finding time to maintain flow of pictures is that I need to finish my thesis for university. Because of many things it has hanged about too long and I need to get it done. In practice it means, I need to live with a pretty big pile of books and produce some text every day. There is not much to do, but with everything else it becomes harder and harder to find time for it.
When I started my studies of social sciences in university I really didn't know what to expect. All I knew that I had red some modern sociological classics, most important being Michel Foucault's Discipline and Punish, which felt really intriguing to me at the time (and still is, but for other reasons). Within university I found other classics and becoming acquainted with sociological knowledge had two effects on me. First, it opened world in a new way to me. I found emancipatory explanations to my earlier life experiences regarding inequality and human behavior, and it taught me how to think with my own mind. Like many others, I too think, that it's one of the best things that has happened to me in my life. Secondly, it destroyed my older world view and part of me in that same process. Belief systems that I had carried with me and meanings I had invested in them slowly became more fragile and eventually kind of collapsed. I went through a state of depression and for a while I was just a ghost of what used to be me. Only afterwards I've understood this process a bit better, but it is still a bit mystery to me and effects me in many ways. There are, for example, things I cannot believe or relate to any more - things that other people feel natural and authentic. In some ways it feels like having left the childhood, you can never go back again, and having gone through this process I often feel that I've become a stranger to the world where people feel certain ontological certainty with their existence and identity. Naturally it's a sight characterized by loneliness, but there is also a certain feeling of presence which I've learned to appreciate.
Moral of the story: reading books is dangerous.
Year of the Alpha – 365 Days of Sony Alpha Photography: www.yearofthealpha.com