In 1992 I decided to try grad school again. One semester almost drove me nuts but I learned that what I had said about academe in A Plague on Both Your Houses in 1976 was, at the very least, true. In 1976 it had been many years since I had left academe and my description of it struck even me as a bit overblown.
I found out in 1992 that it wasn’t. But I had no illusions going in. One person, hearing I was in Political Science, said, “It must be fascinating to them to ask you about all your campaigns and making laws and working for the President.”
I was actually stunned by this statement. Obviously it had been a LONG time since this person had been in school, or maybe, like most people, she just didn’t notice while she was there. I sort of mumbled, “No, they’re too busy to be interested in that stuff.”
In school, your sole interest is in listening and regurgitating on tests and trying not to worry yourself into a breakdown. The person who asked me that had a college degree, but probably had not been to grad school. She probably thought that GRAD students would be interested in the subject they were dedicating their lives to. I understand that was once true.
My father used to advise us to talk to a professor about HIS subject, because to HIM that was the most fascinating thing in the world. Back in HIS day it was probably true. After all, back then the few people who had doctorates could make good money anywhere. But by my time academe or government were the only places a man could be assured of a job for life.
Graduate students and professors have less interest in their subjects than a plumber does in pipes.
One thing I noticed was the difference, even from my generation, in the reaction of professors and grad students to the words, “If you’re so smart, why ain’t you RICH?”
In my day, professors or grads would just chuckle at it. Today they start to explain how just anybody can get rich if they’re MEAN or GREEDY enough or how it’s all a matter of chance and so forth.
They protested too much and they protested WAY too quickly.
There are endless books about how industrialists shape their mentality around the industry on which their money and power depends. But I am the ONLY person who has written a book of that sort about academe.
Academe is an industry so gargantuan that it could stuff US Steel in its vest pocket without a bulge. On every issue its attitude is that if things were turned over to the Intellectuals, things would be fine. All money would be OK if the Intellectuals took it and gave it out.
This giving all money to the dictatorship of the proletariat, made up of Intellectuals, used to be called Communism or Socialism. On the day the Soviet Empire collapsed, every Communist or Socialist became, in a single day, Environmentalists. No one else noticed that, of course. If they had noticed it they would have been surprised.
I wasn’t. The program of Environmentalism today is a Kyoto Treaty where all production becomes subject to the dictates of the Intellectuals.
#1 by backbaygrouch4 on 10/22/2009 - 5:47 pm
Two points. One serious, one less so.
The fall of the Soviet Union left Communism an orphan. It was a solution without a problem. Environmentalism, especially Global Warming balderdash, became the anointed crisis demanding the same old solution. For most intellectuals Communism is The Solution. Their task is to find a problem for it.
Your father gave you good advice. I was naive in college. Nobody gave me that fine Introductory Suck Up 101 course your dad taught you. About halfway through, however, I skipped a step and advanced to Intermediate Suck Up 201. Having happened upon a directory of Masters’ degree theses that had never been opened, after a couple of days a light bulb went off.
A professor often touts his doctoral thesis, but in most cases his Masters opus has gathered dust. The following ploy worked a couple of times. I waited for the appropriate moment in the course that touched upon the subject matter then asked leading questions that enabled the quarry to wax eloquent in a florid mastery of detail. After class I innocently complimented the performance and expressed an interest in the obscure point. Tears once nearly flowed. At long last recognition.
Of course I was burdened with reading his arcane effort but an A was assured. It worked a couple of times. Yeah, it was kind of weasel like, more so since I didn’t need to do it for the grade but it made it easier and more secure. Also, it was a minor level power trip.
#2 by bruce on 10/22/2009 - 9:44 pm
A question and a few comments:
If you went back to grad school, does that mean you had once been a professor without a doctorate, or that you were going for a different field of study?
Perhaps I’m being naive, but in my experience as a grad student in the hard sciences, people are still somewhat interested in what they are studying. The hard sciences are different from other areas in academic life, perhaps because it’s a lot harder to turn a math or physics dept into a BS factory like one will find in the social sciences. It’s hard for me to imagine being truly interested in one’s subject of study if the subject in question is mostly just a bunch of people repeating each others BS.
#3 by shari on 10/22/2009 - 10:59 pm
The thing is, no matter what somebody is interested in, they have had to give, at least tacit lipservice to the pc cult. Anyone who cared about what they were doing was going against the flow.
#4 by Simmons on 10/23/2009 - 10:54 am
Academe is a giant with no spine, only the authoritarians of the Right’s respectable conservatives enforce its dictats. But if they were to have an ounce of responsibility placed on their shoulders the farce would collapse.
Basic Mantra thinking that turns the concept of “anti-racism” into a trial of the “anti-racists” can be used in any circumstance. Imagine Pol Pot’s professors in France standing trial for genocide? Imagine Jane Elliot standing trial in our coming Nuremberg anti white genocide trials (with the SPLC as co-defendant). Imagine Professor Spindly Wrist standing trial for his/her actions in the Obama administration for his/her recomendations that a poor couple should pay ten times more for home heating than they could afford and their child died of pneumonia.
To give them some credit for they have fostered the coming racial revolution (I mean the non-violent sea change coming). It was academe’s idea to lump whites together as the evil majority and for the minorities as they are constituted today to form our current governing method – minorities versus majority based on RACE. Without them the pre FDR coalitions might still exist. Now it is racial, pure race all the time.
God bless the professors, God bless Obama (former college lecturer)
#5 by Simmons on 10/23/2009 - 11:09 am
A Nick Griffin BNP failure to use the Mantra alert. At AMREN there is a thread from Thursday night dealing with Mr. Griffin’s appearance in the lion’s den where he failed to use the Mantra. This was noted by one poster who got thru, “Luke” about post 35, I chimed in but who knows if it will get past the censors.
Bob see my last post in GC II for references to other people using your exact rhetoric.
posted here because GC II seems to be the new dead zone
#6 by Simmons on 10/23/2009 - 11:21 am
Mod you can let people know that comments can be left on the BNP’s website relating to specific events. I left a two sentence reminder that Griffin needs to use the Mantra.