The Goals of a So-called Academic Who Yearns to Be a Writer

My personal and professional goals have been converging towards a vanishing point for several years, but with my recent insights into the constraints of time and scholarship, it could be said that they have reached that point at which they are indistinguishable. It has always been my dream to become a writer, but it was that ability to express myself that brought me back from the brink. Writing is the creative outlet that keeps me from losing my sanity, and is therefore essential to my life. It had previously been my intention that I was going to use my collegiate time developing knowledge from various disciplines as research for various diffused writing projects that were the central reason for my remaining in an academic environment. Well, plans are good places to start, but are hardly final until they've been completed. As I got deeper into a study of philosophy, sociology, anthropology, psychology, and most recently neuroscience, I began to understand how destructive these divisions are to a truly integrated theory of consciousness.

Previously, I had decided in reaction to a philosophy class essentially entirely centered on Plato's Republic that I wanted to write a dialogue that would be both a response to Platonic psychology, epistemology, and social philosophy. That desire was inspired by what I felt was something missing in the project I had been conceiving, The Conversation Trilogy, in which each of the main characters in each of the pieces would represent the volitive, emotive, and rational aspects of me. I felt that by including this dialogue as the fourth and final piece, in which all of these dimensions of the self meet and interact with an integrated version of the consciousness that they had previously experienced as dominated by one of these general psychological systems. This led me to consciousness theory and to my concerns about the state of the social sciences and the need for more interdisciplinary interaction. There is beginning to be some good work in dual discipline interaction, but a quantum theory of consciousness requires integration on a much broader scale, which led me to the theories that I've been developing about the nature of consciousness.

These theories fit perfectly with my personal goal of writing a trilogy in which psychology plays such a key role in the development of the main characters especially, but they will also be the basis for my special project, which will consist of a dissertation on the neurological, psycho-social, philosophical, and historical necessity of spirituality in efficient human cognition and the role that art, in all it's forms, has had in facilitating the spiritual experience. I'd also like to explore the relation between prehistoric spiritual awakening and the neuro-chemical variability of what we have come to deem "mental illness". This dissertation will be the basis for the dialogue, and intend to include it as part of my special project.

I also think it's important to understand that the ability to integrate disparate disciplines and recognize overlapping constructs doesn't occur overnight, which is why I want to include the prefigurement of a theory as part of my special project. I intend for this to be a multi-media presentation that will include a visual and musical montage synched up with earlier philosophical musings that show the seeds of my interdisciplinary approach. Hopefully, that will give way to a theatrical presentation of the dialogue, Spirit: On Conversations, and then a return to, perhaps, a reading of some segments of the dissertation, which will then segue into a musical video created with my collaborative partner Tony McGowan, The Myghty Quinn, that delves into the question of the creative process and the question of insight.
As an undergraduate degree, going in so many directions (not as many as I had originally intended!) will help to prepare me for my personal goal of becoming a writer, collaborator, and multi-media artist, but it will also provide me with a strong knowledge base in most of the disciplines in the social science, which could lead to a productive professional career trying to help educational systems develop a more interdisciplinary approach to the social sciences. These projects are not necessarily mutually exclusive.

It is my intention to continue to use the academic rigor of a graduate level program to raise the stakes, and begin research on the book (the second element in The Conversations Tetra logy). It is also my intention to pursue the need for students, teachers, and administrators to understand the fundamental interrelations among the social sciences, and try to help to turn that understanding into fundamental changes in the way those programs are set up and run. It's long been proven that the more connections a neural network has, the more permanent the storage is and the easier retrieval is. So I will be following my personal dreams to become a writer, but at the same time I will be following a more practical course that may prepare me for a career trying to open younger generations to the amazing world of interlocking information.