In a university publication I read these charming words by an associate professor: If your minorities are out of line then you can whip them back into line.
I don't know, maybe this is just my limited experience in academia, but there does seem to be an awful lot of stupidity around. 'Thoughtlessness', precisely.
And I can't help wondering to myself: why is that? Why is it that people who are actually very sharp in their own field, good at solving difficult problems, are also often , well, to not put too fine a point on it: arseholes?
Does it stem from all those years of a lack of contact with reality (imagination unmoored can slide into all sorts of fantasies, and technical competence can replace integral intelligence)? The inability to talk like a human being, the contempt for ordinary lives? The world is a concept. All those years of dissecting, calculating,abstracting, analyzing, and holding to scrutiny? Is it, as Edward Said once noted, the degree of specialization and the inability to see the bigger picture (understanding as seeing oneself and others in the right light, from the right distance)?
His thoughts already rove away to the more general case, and tomorrow he knows as little as he knew yesterday how to help himself. He does not now take himself seriously and devote time to himself. He is serene, not from lack of troubles, but from lack of capacity for grasping and dealing with his trouble. The habitual complaisance with respect to all objects and experiences, the radiant and impartial hospitality with which he receives everything that comes his way, his habit of inconsiderate good nature, of dangerous indifference to Yea or Nay...his mirroring and eternally self-polishing soul no longer knows how to affirm , no longer how to deny.
----N.
Monday, June 01, 2009
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4 comments:
i think one reason for it not being at all a surprise that academics have such opinions is that universities most of the time are highly hierarchically structured and most of the people in top positions are too privileged to ever have had a clue of the life of the minorities, so the logical consequence of this are necessarily statements like the one you have quoted. does not surprise me at all.
another aspect of course is specialization, or abstraction, but i don't think one can blame it all on this. a gardener which is a "lower kind" of profession is also highly specialized in all his plants, not necessarily knowing the latin words for the plant but how it grows every little aspect of it.
rather i think it is the nature of specialization at the university, the way university people think everything has to be abstracted and in combination with capitalism this is a very bad mixture.
i'm not recommending them to follow a class of ethics or philosophy for they are not any better with regards to making statements like this. it's just plain arrogance.
my remedy would be to let them all do work a shitty job for a year or so. not a week or a month, a year so that they really get the idea that not everyone has such a cosy ivorytower existence.
First things first: hello, anton! :-)
I don't know anything about gardening so maybe you're right. But I wonder if someone who still dealt in abstraction-but in many fields-would be as narrow in his approach? Anyway, that's wildly speculative. Maybe it's a combination of both things?
I think you're right about the privilege bit but in this particular case I think there's also a specific dynamic and it's this: there's a group of western-educated 'intellectuals' who return to this country who love to play up this whole idea of disenchantment and decadence. This is twofold: the decadence of the west and that of the locals, the illiterates, with their 'shrine culture' and oral traditions.
And given that everyone is against 'the muslim world' (according to them) a sort of reaction sets in: we're superior, on the true path. The only position towards 'the west' has to be one of reaction, resistance, preservation of "our" tradition.
The key word in that quote is "your" minorities.
So, for me what is surprising is this: if 90% of what the west is producing is harmful to the west (another one of his nuggets) what the fuck is he doing here teaching politics, what is he doing in academia?
Actually, anton, what's going on here is actually quite insidious. can't write about it here but it's all orchestrated.
so, yes, whipping them back into place is about hierarchy but I get the feeling it's more about a religious hierarchy and a way of reclaiming the muslims' 'moral authority'.
yeah. i agree with all what you say, i was a bit generalizing away when i first replied, but it;s true, there is the religious component and decadence and moral superority and what not and those people's own hypocrisy when they condemn the west yet stay at academia, etc etc.
i wonder how you stay sane.
hello. and take care.
Hullo Billoo,
I used to ask this question myself - why so smart in some areas, so dumb and uninformed in others and indeed, why so abstracted from reality. I had a number of hunches
1; Human beings are generally a mass of contradictions and it is foolish to assume that a questioning outlook in one area translates into others.
2. If a person enjoys spending their life exploring and creating theoretical constructs many of which have no obvious application outside of an academic context, they are less likely to want to get their hands dirty or deal with the imperfect world (full of contradictions and difficult to classify and systematise).
3. There are indeed idiots in every sphere and if they can safely go about their business without being challenged in their idiocy, there is no hope.
Many greetings from Baku.
Are you ever in LOndon these days - it would be good to have a coffee
Beth
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