William Merrin, his book about Baudrillard, Nietsche and some thoughts on university education

Today, on a sunny Tuesday morning, I was drinking cappuccino with William Merrin.

William Merrin is a Senior Lecturer in Media Studies at the University of Wales, Swansea, Wales, United Kingdom. I am a PhD student stuck at the Hauptbahnhof on my way to the Technische Universitaet, Dortmund, Deutschland. My self-assigned reading for this week is the book titled "Baudrillard and the Media: A Critical Introduction" (2005). I cannot afford the exchange of symbols with this smart and incisive person due to a plenty of reasons. Yet I can afford "a tightly controlled simulation of communication" (quote from Millard, p. 25) while reading his book and googling his name. Luckily, the author of this fascinating book has a blogger.com profile; he holds THREE blogs. My favourite so far is the Media Studies 2.o Forum. I enjoyed reading the post titled "Media Studies 2.0 - My Thoughts..."; especially the chunk in which he compares the media world of his son and the younger generations of his students to the media world of his own when he was of the same age... The first chapter following Introduction of the beforementioned book opens with a quote from Nietzsche's "Human, All Too Human". The quote is long. To sum it up, Nietzsche suggests "removing ourselves disctinctly from our time", let "ourselves be driven far from its shore back into the ocean of former world views". This enables us to be in a position of a contemplative observer of our own "coast". Consequently, upon the comeback to our time we have a better understanding of it. It seems to me that it's exactly the approach of William Merrin to his life and work, as well as the lives of others (his son, students, etc.) and the work done by others (Baudrillard and his writing come first to my mind).

When I meet a person, I recognize those abilities in him or her by observing him or her or/and starting a conversation. (I wish I could say "recognize easily", but I am afraid to sound supernatural to myself) Some people just posess those abilities to "sail off-shore and come back". Some - not. I had a friend, she sailed away from the "shore" and it took time to have her back again. This is extreme (frankly, I don't think so: it's just inappropriate in this culture, it would have been appropriate at some other age/ in some other place). Yet I believe the purpose of the university education is to train students, professors, instructors, etc. to practice those journeys as often as possible together. Hey, stop giggling! I am not talking about smoking pot together.