This is the first entry in the Cocoon's new series, Non-Traditional Paths into Philosophy, a series of guest posts by people who entered academic philosophy later in life or otherwise took a non-traditional path into the field. This guest-post is authored by Nicholas Drake, a PhD Student at Australian National University. If you took a non-traditional path into philosophy and are interested in contributing to the series, feel free to email me at [email protected]!
Nicholas Drake ([email protected])
I’m a New Zealander and a second-year PhD student at ANU, and have MAs in philosophy from Victoria University of Wellington and Washington University in St. Louis (WashU).
On my mother’s side I’m from Maimai, on the West Coast of the South Island, and my ancestors are Irish and English. On my father’s side I also have Irish and English ancestors and am of the Kāti Kuri hapū (subtribe), from Kaikoura, part of the iwi (tribe) Ngāi Tahu. I’m married, to Hannah Simpson, who is also a New Zealander. (For Māori, where and who you hail from are more important things about you than what you do for a living, so these things are part of how you formally introduce yourself.)
I started academic philosophy relatively late in life, beginning a BA when I was 40. I did a lot of different things before then, and it’s hard to know what to include in the space available; what follows leaves a lot out.
After I left high school, my focus was studying and teaching classical piano. During my 20s I became increasingly convinced I should be doing more to help other people, so stopped charging people for music lessons so money wouldn’t be an obstacle for poorer kids. I lived off whatever koha (donations) I received.
I increasingly wanted to do more to help others, so started Te Whiti-o-Rongomai House, a house for homeless people, in Auckland. Many people who came to live there came off the street, but there were also newly arrived refugees, people coming out of addiction rehabilitation, and people just at a loose end for some reason. Running the house was very difficult, sometimes because I didn’t know what I was doing or made bad mistakes in dealing with people. I was often extremely tired and stressed. I was able to help some people though, and that was very rewarding. Being able to help people have a roof over their head for a while, or a safer and more comfortable environment, felt very good. The two things that I was most grateful for were being able to raise funds to move over from Zimbabwe the family of a refugee who was staying with me, and spending quite a lot of time looking after the children of a homeless man staying at the house. They were wonderful children, and are now wonderful adults with whom I’m still in touch.
I was also involved in anti-war activism, and helped organize protests against the wars against Afghanistan and Iraq, in which New Zealand took part. In a protest action shortly before the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 a friend of mine (a Catholic priest) and I made a cross in our own blood on the floor of the US Consul’s office in New Zealand. After the massive demonstrations and other actions across the world failed to stop the invasion it felt like more direct action was necessary. I’ve never felt confident about that action at the US Consulate. It did mean quite a lot for the morale of some people who opposed the war, though. An Iraqi woman phoned me in tears and said, “Thank you for giving your blood for my country.” That makes it sound like much more of a sacrifice than it was, but it is good to know that at least some Iraqi people found the action meaningful in some way.
I was becoming increasingly concerned with environmental matters, and I wanted to live more simply and learn how to live in a way that doesn’t destroy the environment. The house was usually full or overflowing, but at one point, when I’d been there a few years, the house was suddenly almost empty for a while. I decided to take that opportunity to move to Whirinaki, in Hokianga, in the rural Far North of New Zealand. I lived there in a hut-like house on a hillside a little way into the bush and grew most of my own food in a clearing. I had a solar panel which powered some lights, and I cooked on a wood stove which I fuelled from the surrounding forest. I used hand tools, not power tools, and travelled by bicycle or by hitchhiking. My place was on land owned by the Land family, with whom I’d become friends. Various members of the family lived very simply in and near the valley I was in.
While living in Hokianga, I studied horticulture for a year at the small local campus of a Far North polytechnic, about 17 km away from my home, and I also gained a certificate in Māori studies there. I had begun learning more about the Māori side of my family, and learning the Māori language, a few years earlier. That was transformational for me. I’m on the autism spectrum, and throughout my adult life had social anxiety when around strangers or large groups, and often found communicating very difficult. I’ve always been adept at language, but struggled to interact with people properly. For example, I went to university to study music after high school, but found the social anxiety I experienced there overwhelming, and left after a year. Māori have a very different way of interacting from Pākehā (European) New Zealanders. For example, in a small university class Pākehā, like other Westerners in my experience, students will typically enter and sit down without greeting other students or the teacher. People might talk to one or two other people if they know them. In a small class in a Māori setting, every person who enters goes around and physically greets everyone there. If the class is meeting for the day, it will typically start with a karakia (a prayer, not necessarily religious), someone standing to greet and acknowledge everyone, and a waita (song). I found I was much more comfortable in settings where everyone was greeted and acknowledged. Also, speech making is very important in Māori culture, as welcoming, acknowledging, and thanking people is important; early on doing Māori studies in Hokianga I became relatively adept, and so was often called on to speak on behalf of my class or the school. Although doing this wasn’t easy on my nerves, I managed okay. Whaikōrero (speech making) is a profound and beautiful art, and I found I had an affinity with it. I started interacting with people in much more the Māori way, whether in a Māori setting or not; this eventually gave me more comfort and ease when meeting and talking to people. My social anxiety didn’t disappear, and I didn’t immediately have good social skills (I’ll never be any good at picking up on hints), but I started to become much better in social settings.
Although I enjoyed manual labour, after four years in Hokianga I found my intellectual side was unsatisfied. I’d read a large amount of non-fiction throughout my adult life, mostly philosophy, politics, and modern history. It was reading philosophy, broadly construed, that led me to change how I was living at more than one point and that persuaded me I ought to be doing more to help others. In Hokianga I was able to get books by visiting the nearest library, about 50 km away, but didn’t have people around I could talk to about many of the things that interested me. I also found that I had learned about all I could about philosophy from reading on my own. So, I decided to get a PhD in philosophy. I hoped that I would eventually be able to help people in a way that used my intellectual side, but had no firm idea of what that might involve.
I started by doing a BA by distance with Massey University. All the course materials, along with library books, were posted to my letterbox (which was a couple of kilometres from my home, a distance that now seems amusingly far). I found writing essays without a computer difficult, and also found I didn’t have time to study while growing food and getting firewood. I decided I needed to live somewhere with electricity and phone and internet connections, and moved to Wellington, New Zealand’s capital city, somewhere I’d long been very fond of. I continued my BA by distance there. I supported myself while studying by working with children, including supervising three out-of-school care centres.
After completing my BA, I did a BA(Hons) and MA in person at Victoria University. Having done my BA by distance, this was the first time I did things like attend classes and meet professors and other students. I still had quite a bit of social anxiety, and I also sometimes suffer from depression, which can make social situations difficult for me. I worried about how I would manage all this in a setting where I was interacting with others daily. As it turned out, I found my time at Victoria very enjoyable. The faculty were very friendly and supportive, the other students very smart and interesting, and I soon felt very much at home. I also met my wonderful wife Hannah at Vic. I began to feel as if an academic career might be a good idea for me – I imagined a career working in a philosophy department could be very enjoyable and, possibly, help me be useful to others. I decided it would be good to do my PhD in a US programme, in part because it’s hard to get a job in a New Zealand philosophy department with a New Zealand PhD, and in part because I felt I needed to do more coursework before starting a dissertation. (New Zealand PhDs are by dissertation only.)
I joined the PhD programme at WashU, and completed an MA en passant. I was going to write my dissertation there under John Doris, who would have been an excellent supervisor, but in 2019 he moved to Cornell. That and other factors, including my wife’s work situation, led me to decide to move to a different programme. I started at ANU in July 2020, where I’m supervised by Nic Southwood. I’d long been impressed by ANU’s reputation as a friendly, supportive, and lively place, a reputation it has very much lived up to since I’ve been here.
My philosophical interests are in areas of ethics and metaethics. At John Doris’s suggestion I started studying wellbeing, and became interested in how the idea of wellbeing is treated by policy makers who aim to promote it through wellbeing policy frameworks. My dissertation is on which theory of wellbeing policy makers should use.
I hope to have a career in philosophy, but sometimes worry about the nature of the discipline. Although I’ve been lucky to be part of some of excellent departments, it sometimes seems they might be exceptions. At times decency, professionalism, and open-mindedness seem much rarer among philosophy professors than other groups of people I’ve lived and worked with. This makes academic life unnecessarily hard or even awful for many students, especially graduate students, who are dependent on the good will and good behaviour of faculty. I say this with, I hope, due humility – I often fail at treating people well, though I hope I do a decent job at trying. At times I get the impression that effort isn’t widely being made.
As I say, though, I have found some philosophical communities to be great places, and I’m very happy in these environments. I have many wonderful friends who are philosophers, and there’s something very special about those philosophers who are kind and open-minded people. I hope to find a path in philosophy that also contributes to the world outside it.
(Correction, 8/20, 5:50pm EST - this post originally misstated the guest author's institutional affiliation as Australian Catholic University. The post has now correctly lists them as a PhD student at ANU)
Very cool to hear the abridged version of your full story, Nicky. Also, congrats on the move to ANU.
Posted by: Austin | 08/20/2021 at 12:36 PM