In his Foreword to my last book, Joe Sobran praised it but also said “It’s not really a book.”
By training, Joe was a Shakespearian scholar, and a set of opinions and deductions like mine is not a book. He said it could use more citations and statistics.
My first book was subject to the same sort of criticism, though it was critically acclaimed by the most amazing people. But it was written to explain the point of view of Southern and “ethnic” working people, and it only included factual information they were likely to know.
My first book was dedicated to the proposition that you don’t have to be a Rhodes Scholar to know you are getting screwed, though the self-styled “intellectuals” thought working folks hadn’t figured them out.
And my bona fides for representing this point of view in 1976 were unique: I had been writing for working people’s protests and had a list of groups that wanted me to do it for them that was as long as your arm.
Who said I could speak for them?
THEY did, and were pissed off when I couldn’t.
You must suit your book to your message. My last book was written in 2004. My book was aimed at a whole generation which had lots of experience looking up things their professors wanted them to, but no experience at all in THINKING about the information they had.
You can lie every bit as effectively with a list of selected references as you can with no references. You can prevent someone from shoving THINKING on you by disputing and editorializing on each reference they make.
My book was NOT devoted to the idea that they had the wrong facts, but that they had been trained to warp their THINKING about the facts they did know.
In the days when books were hand copied citation was the essence of scholarship. As a result, the entire body of people I wrote the book about. Our Academic Priesthood, has perfected the technique of lying by selected references and shouting down all dissident thought about those references.
The usual answer to this is to write a book with different references.
In Medieval times, you would write a book only after you had read the entire literature on a subject, all ten books of it, and then quote it heavily. Doing that today makes you look smart, because that is what people USED to do.
But new information technology should produce a new genre from the Middle Ages model. If I cite what I think is a fact, somebody will tell me I’m wrong. Why keep thinking what you always thought when thousands of people can shake your most deeply-held illusions by Googling it?
The problem with old scholarship is that people don’t say what they REALLY base their opinions on. Most of our society is run on assumptions that a scholar wouldn’t actually state.
Most people would be petrified if they had over 3,000 articles in print, as I do in BUGS, where I proceeded to state what I was thinking without cleaning it all up. But in the Google Age, that is a new way to get your reality straight.
For twelve years I have done this and while a scholar would be embarrassed to death at having as many errors as I have had exposed, it has done me nothing but good.
Your computer can deliver information no ten thousand scholars could deliver, but it can’t THINK for you. So I admit my inferiority on the scholar front and devote myself to what only the human brain can deliver.
#1 by Epiphany on 03/07/2011 - 6:14 am
It is really weird how much the Asian Americans and Jews talk like we are somehow opressing them, instead of the other way about. It really is intriguing to me!
#2 by Epiphany on 03/07/2011 - 6:18 am
The College Professors, these days, are a little looney. That is especially true, of course, of Philosophy Professors.
#3 by backbaygrouch on 03/07/2011 - 6:56 am
“Over 3,000 articles…” This is an understatement. This is article number 4,000 in the archive. Congratulations. We look forward to thousands more.
#4 by Dave on 03/07/2011 - 10:55 am
It is nothing more than the effect of crippling regulation.
Being effective is literally prohibited in academia.
It’s all form over substance. Everything is about the hidden agenda of self-interest from the beneficiaries of the system. That the system is actually productive is beside the point.
There is no denying the benefits of the Stanford School of Engineering, etcetera, but these wins by academia are used as covers for its massive waste.
99% of the research that academia puts out is garbage. Colleges and Universities are massive sinkholes of resource waste, much of it borne by the public.
It is not unfair to say, “A whole lot of nothing is going on.”
The exceptions to this rule as used to veil the truth. It is a lot like Communism.
Robert Whitaker nails it perfectly: “I…devote myself to only what the human brain can deliver.”
In other words, substance over form.
#5 by Genseric on 03/07/2011 - 6:20 pm
You’re both right about the wastefulness of it all.
As written elsewhere: I have found that in academia, as well as in modern industry, waste and how much one can actually waste is what is truly valued and celebrated. One cannot reach the next rung without having proven just how many resources one can devote to a minimal gain-or even better-a Negative gain.
In the future-when we have OUR say-we will do as the Germans are doing RIGHT NOW. We will do MORE with fewer resources. In so doing, we will prove to the World just what makes us the most brilliant DOERS of all time.
Make it happen. The Mantra. Choose to USE it.
#6 by Simmons on 03/07/2011 - 12:48 pm
You posted before googling, I do it myself, then I slap my forhead.
#7 by Epiphany on 03/08/2011 - 5:29 am
It is no secret that those who hate Germans in particular, hate White Gentiles in general!