Lived experience and academic knowledge are not the same thing; in fact, you could comfortably posit them as diametrically opposed. This is not to say that lived experience does not belong in the academy, but simply to make a distinction between the two forms of knowledge. I do not see them as competing, and in the best of worlds, I think they are mutually supportive, but they are not the same thing. This may seem obvious to some, but there has been a rising trend for some time now to uncritically incorporate lived experience into the academy in ways I think are problematic. I do not want to create a hierarchy here and in fact, I think it is the tacit or unconscious acceptance of a hierarchy which has created the problem in the first place. So, when I make the distinctions I am making, think of them as domains separated
I want to say something about the insane price hikes we are seeing, but it’s hard to know what to say, really. My food bills have nearly doubled, not because of my meat intake as posh meat seems to have stayed about the same price, but because of the amount of fruit and veg I consume. Soon I will need to reconsider what I eat. My energy bills have gone from 4% of my income (after rent) to 7% of my income, and will shortly rise to around 13%. I already turn everything off at the plug at night and/or if I am not using it, so there isn’t a way for me to cut back further other than not having a fridge, or not using the cooker, or turning off the lights. I dread winter, because this flat is freezing. My neighbour told me a young girl of about 16/17
Sometimes I wonder if we all have a single conundrum that we wrestle with all our lives or if it’s just me. As I have indicated before, the singular issue for me is about finding meaningful work. Someone recently asked me why we even have the notion that work should be meaningful. My immediate response was Protestantism. It’s been a long time since I read it, but I definitely still subscribe to Weber’s theory that the Lutheran notion of being called to serve God by our activities in the world has become institutionalised in Protestant and capitalist cultures. Being called to serve God is de facto meaningful for those who believe and so, whilst we may have lost the Protestant framing over the centuries, the notion that we should find meaning in our work remains.
I was about 4 when this picture was taken. The point of it is not to showcase the lovely smocked dress my mum made for me, but to evidence the ‘vanishing wildlife’ poster behind me. I have always cared about the environment. I have no idea why, but I simply cared from a very young age and was a child member of the WWF and so forth. This environmentalism, and yearly farm visits to feed the lambs, led to me being a vegetarian for over twenty years. It meant I stopped using plastic bags about a decade before there was a push for this. It meant I bought recycled products in the 1980s, and later did my own recycling long before it became normal to do so. In fact, I can remember being in my early teens and pontificating that the only recycled product I wouldn’t use was toilet paper. Quite
For what feels like all of my life, there has been an inherent tension between what I have to do (school, work) and what I want to do (read, write, exercise, make things). I think that fundamentally, human beings are creative beings, if we understand creativity as discovery and exploration which is channelled according to our desires and aptitudes, but I have never figured out how to marry my creative urges with work. There just isn’t anything I want to be when I grow up. When I was in my twenties, I solved this conundrum by working in environments I enjoyed (nightclubs, the music industry) as they were creative environments where it was okay to be not like the others. I didn’t mind so much that I felt unfulfilled professionally as at least I was supporting good times or the art/music of others. Moreover, I made sure that my personal time