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Maieutic (I): Shit Philosophy

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Javier Rodrigo

Maieutic is dialogue. It is the second act of the Socratic method of learning: the one that generates knowledge, after an initial phase of feigned ignorance by the teacher, through asking the right questions that stimulate the search for answers within oneself. It is not a one-way method, but rather wisdom is drawn from within the minds of the students and verbalised by presenting them with the right doubts and questions. For Socrates, maieutic is the midwife of wisdom: calm, overflowing, complex. Sometimes mistaken, but always critical. And always connected to the ability to establish an empathetic bond between teacher and student: the teacher must know how to ask the right questions, and the student must feel free to answer.

Mayéutica is also the title of what is possibly one of the best – if not the best – rock album in Spanish of the 21st century. Of course, this is not an objective position, but I find it hard to think of a more complex, beautiful, and addictive project (paradoxically, for an album with 15-minute songs; in fact, some consider it to be a single 40-minute song) than the symphony of progressive rock created by Roberto Iniesta, ‘Robe’, in 2021. An album that continues and completes the symphony started in the album by Extremoduro titled La Ley Innata, which has a Cicero-like name, and which, not by chance, features a vagina on its cover: childbirth, the beginning.

Socrates, Cicero, and maieutic. I think about all of this after attending Robe Iniesta’s concert in Barcelona and realising, not without immense joy, that at my 47 years old I was far from being in the younger demographic of the audience, as I would have expected from my experience with Extremoduro in the late 90s and early 2000s. Quite the opposite. Roughly speaking, the vast majority of the more than 23,000 attendees at the Parc de Fòrum were between 20 and 30 years old, as confirmed by reviews from newspapers such as Ara, which highlighted the connection “with a very young audience, who at the Fòrum sang as only songs that hit you can be sung.” Most of the audience hadn’t been born when Ágila was released, and many of them were likely the children of parents who had listened to Extremoduro in the car or had discovered them on digital platforms. Robe’s tour with his excellent band of musicians from Extremadura has been the most popular of the year in Spain, and the crowds of teenagers and post-adolescents that filled the front rows, central rows, bars, and toilets demonstrate the intense emotional connection between the silver-haired old wolf from Plasencia and his young, joyful followers. Like all rituals, music concerts are also forms of supra-individual connection.

I also reflect on this because we often fail to realise that many of the young people so devoted to Robe’s raw and beautiful poetry—those who are deeply moved, even brought to tears by his words—have endured immense struggles in recent years, particularly within the realm of education. It seems the older generations have forgotten how challenging it was for them to sit university entrance exams wearing masks, to miss out on the joys of secondary school or university life due to pandemic restrictions, and to suddenly adapt to an educational system that shifted overnight to project-based methodologies. A system that essentially said, “Figure it out yourself,” before abandoning them to the disconnection of online teaching. Some have chosen to replace empathy with insult, calling them things like ” the glass generation”, as if their shortcomings were not our own, those of our own educational and social system.

We, who observe the food chain of capitalism not necessarily from its pinnacle but certainly from positions secure enough to witness the fading of their political dreams—from the disillusionment with Podemos to the independence movements. After all, how can utopias be sustained when one’s primary aspiration is simply to secure a job and a place to live, to emerge from the collective collapse of an educational system that was already faltering and was catastrophically magnified between 2020 and 2022? Each of us, with our responsibility and agency, without self-complacently excluding ourselves, the educators. The teachers who package answers instead of asking questions; those who explain that learning is no longer necessary. Those of us who many times, too many times, have abandoned our role as midwives of wisdom.

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(Note: Shit Philosophy is the title of the Second Movement of Mayéutica)

Source: educational EVIDENCE

Rights: Creative Commons