The Clutter of Disclaimers

I figured that since no-one really visits this website and I can’t imagine that changing any time soon, that I would use this part of the internet to write down my thoughts about things. 'Things’ here is deliberately vague and widely encompasses topics that might arise whilst I’m studying or in practice and themes that might pop up repeatedly in my projects… Essentially, anything and everything vaguely related to what I understand to be Architecture. And since I can be quite sure that only my mother is likely to read these little ramblings, I can use a conversational tone, and hopefully avoid the clutter of disclaimers demanded of more formal articles on more well visited corners of the internet. So, to mum, if you are in fact reading this, to make a small disclaimer… I am not looking for any pointers on my grammar or syntax. I am likely to repeat myself and phrase myself with all the clumsiness expected of an amateur who is required to write only one essay a year as part of her degree, and outside of academia, only scribbles this or that for her own piece of mind. So, my disclaimer is this: I write only for fun and for myself.

You see then that it’s important to state my ignorance before I begin discussing important ‘things.’ It’s important to state that I can provide no official sources or indisputable facts, nor can I claim to add anything remotely original to existing discussions. You can see that it’s sensible to get all of this disclaiming out of the way before I even begin to say anything with my own voice, before I even dare state an opinion pulled raw from my head. It’s wise to get all that out of the way, as it is as equally boring to write as I’m sure it is to read. So then, that leads me nicely onto what I figured might be the topic of this small entry today: this strange world of debate and disclaimers which exists in the world of academia but also, more broadly, in the ‘adult’ world where articulating a point to colleagues, friends and family is increasingly exhausting. As we all know, the mental gymnastics of justification, asserting assumptions and stating disclaimers is tedious, and that’s before throwing academic references and professional conduct into the mix. So now, with that out of the way, maybe now I can say what I’m thinking?

It’s this:

The shear volume of obstacles confronting our stream of consciousness is overwhelming. It seems that an unavoidable part of growing up, and entering an ‘adult’ world, is that the act of thinking becomes regimented and systematic, and it begins to constrain and hinder us in ways unknown to us in childhood. A point cannot be made, it seems, before stating the three assumptions which have led to its conclusion, and the multitude of sources which justify it. It’s a scientific way of thinking which has been applied to even the most liberal arts, allowing them to join an academic framework concerned with control and credibility. It is, undeniably, exhausting. (Disclaimer) If I seem overly critical of academia, it is not due to a lack of respect for its capacity to standardize, measure, and control, which has many obvious benefits. My concern lies in the attitude, the ‘stiffness’ which this system might begin to cultivate, and the potential implications on certain subjects, particularly the arts.

How many young people already perceive academia negatively? How many of those had a passion for learning which, after having been fed through a machine of box-ticking, strictly structured essays and painting examinations found themselves reluctant to express any opinion or emotion before first being sure that it was the one which an examiner might award marks for? It is this reluctance to express a thought, which is the centre of my interest. It is what might have stopped me from starting this entry after the first disclaimer. This underlying fear that we (us fresh to the adult world) will be ‘caught out’ by someone who knows more than us, is discouraging us from ever opening our mouths. And what impact might that be having on our rate of learning, for if we are too embarrassed to ask a question, then how much remains unanswered? Have we become overly-concerned with trying to anticipate how others might disprove us, too scared to be misinterpreted, that a point can no longer stand without an army of disclaimers behind it, ready to launch a preliminary attack? Or is this caution and concern a necessary constraint on a young mind?

I have no answers of course.

I am a big fan, as you can probably tell by now, of asking questions.