As strange as it might sound, I deeply dislike academia. Strangely, because that's what I do for a living; not strangely, because it was not my first career choice, but something I ended up doing, for a number of reasons - decent (not great but decent) payment, relaxed schedule, sometimes fun environment.
A few years ago, it looked pretty well - nice people (we were graduate students then), a lot of alcohol (needed sometimes), smart talks (and smart asses), good quality humour. Well... that was just the surface, the visible part of the iceberg. The deeper I got into the academic waters, the more I hated them. And it's not only a matter of people... I have nothing particular against people. I mean... I don't dislike academics as a separate species among the humankind, but on an equal foot with everybody else. And, to be very specific, I don't dislike all academia - I fully understand why exact sciences or medicine should exist. But humanities?
Never until now in the history of humankind people were paid to produce nothing - and this is my main problem with Humanities: what they deal with and live out of is the production of words. OK, there were the king's fool and the king's poet... but they had a role. What role do all the graduates of some beautiful sciences (no, it's a very wrong word, this is anything but science... but how else to call them) have for the society?
Some time ago, I was having a rash when hearing the words 'French post-structuralism'. They all looked to me like people with a lot of time to waste and a lot of pens & papers at hand. Sadly, the disease seems to be spreading. I hear about new academic specialties and I can't stop wondering... WHY do they have to make a discipline out of everything? WTF is a specialist in Culture, huh? Why do you need to graduate 4 yrs of college to be able to have an opinion about a movie (and call yourself a film studies specialist)? OK, you can write about females and discrimination, but WHY start a gender department and create a school of thought called 'feminist studies'?
Don't take me the wrong way - I can understand all this as a... let's say... sect. Such as a group of people sharing the same beliefs. And I can also understand the students paying for getting a degree in one of those fields... in the end, we are all so deeply imbued with the idea that 'believing is paying' that we owe a big thumb up to the Church... but let's not divagate. Why does the society pay for this?
I know, academia is actually a business. We managed to convince everybody that the main asset of today is real time information and real time communication, so the poor students are buying the crap and pay their tuition, imagining they will end up being smarter. My fear is, however, that they will end up being just indoctrinated. We never teach them to doubt or to wonder... we teach them what the gurus said. But this is not a religion, a spiritual way... it's just somebody's opinion about how things are. All the respect for Foucault, but Jesus worked more to be quoted so often. And dying on a cross should give you more credibility than wondering whether a pipe is a pipe or just the representation of it.
Moreover, we don't teach them anything about work. Again, maybe the 20th and 21st century are a step closer to the Apocalypse (the one that my grandma is waiting for since the beginning of 2000), but all along history people were paid to WORK. What do the 'humanists' do, be them teacher or students? They produce words on papers. Are they inventing at least a sharpener for a ball point pen? Nope, they are INTERPRETING - because this is what they are taught to do. To interpret the interpretations of others.
In the world of interpretation, nothing seems to be real anymore. There are levels and meta-levels and a lot of psychoanalytical jargon trying to convince you that nothing from what you see is real, but it is a product of your subconsciousness, or of the collective subconsciousness, or of some Oedipus/Elektra complex or God knows what else. If it's not psychoanalytical, it's Marxist and it's about class and oppression. And if it's not Marx, then it's the Panoptikon and the ubiquitous relations of power. C'mon, people... WAKE UP. Even princesses take a crap, once in a while...
A few years ago, it looked pretty well - nice people (we were graduate students then), a lot of alcohol (needed sometimes), smart talks (and smart asses), good quality humour. Well... that was just the surface, the visible part of the iceberg. The deeper I got into the academic waters, the more I hated them. And it's not only a matter of people... I have nothing particular against people. I mean... I don't dislike academics as a separate species among the humankind, but on an equal foot with everybody else. And, to be very specific, I don't dislike all academia - I fully understand why exact sciences or medicine should exist. But humanities?
Never until now in the history of humankind people were paid to produce nothing - and this is my main problem with Humanities: what they deal with and live out of is the production of words. OK, there were the king's fool and the king's poet... but they had a role. What role do all the graduates of some beautiful sciences (no, it's a very wrong word, this is anything but science... but how else to call them) have for the society?
Some time ago, I was having a rash when hearing the words 'French post-structuralism'. They all looked to me like people with a lot of time to waste and a lot of pens & papers at hand. Sadly, the disease seems to be spreading. I hear about new academic specialties and I can't stop wondering... WHY do they have to make a discipline out of everything? WTF is a specialist in Culture, huh? Why do you need to graduate 4 yrs of college to be able to have an opinion about a movie (and call yourself a film studies specialist)? OK, you can write about females and discrimination, but WHY start a gender department and create a school of thought called 'feminist studies'?
Don't take me the wrong way - I can understand all this as a... let's say... sect. Such as a group of people sharing the same beliefs. And I can also understand the students paying for getting a degree in one of those fields... in the end, we are all so deeply imbued with the idea that 'believing is paying' that we owe a big thumb up to the Church... but let's not divagate. Why does the society pay for this?
I know, academia is actually a business. We managed to convince everybody that the main asset of today is real time information and real time communication, so the poor students are buying the crap and pay their tuition, imagining they will end up being smarter. My fear is, however, that they will end up being just indoctrinated. We never teach them to doubt or to wonder... we teach them what the gurus said. But this is not a religion, a spiritual way... it's just somebody's opinion about how things are. All the respect for Foucault, but Jesus worked more to be quoted so often. And dying on a cross should give you more credibility than wondering whether a pipe is a pipe or just the representation of it.
Moreover, we don't teach them anything about work. Again, maybe the 20th and 21st century are a step closer to the Apocalypse (the one that my grandma is waiting for since the beginning of 2000), but all along history people were paid to WORK. What do the 'humanists' do, be them teacher or students? They produce words on papers. Are they inventing at least a sharpener for a ball point pen? Nope, they are INTERPRETING - because this is what they are taught to do. To interpret the interpretations of others.
In the world of interpretation, nothing seems to be real anymore. There are levels and meta-levels and a lot of psychoanalytical jargon trying to convince you that nothing from what you see is real, but it is a product of your subconsciousness, or of the collective subconsciousness, or of some Oedipus/Elektra complex or God knows what else. If it's not psychoanalytical, it's Marxist and it's about class and oppression. And if it's not Marx, then it's the Panoptikon and the ubiquitous relations of power. C'mon, people... WAKE UP. Even princesses take a crap, once in a while...
thank you for this.I have to admitt, that I can understand your anger, I mean we are not even selling an illusion, I miss real talk in universities and on conferences such much...where did the lightness and the realness go?
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