User:Average/On Being an Academic
Amidst the confusion of this world regarding Truth and Responsibility, I present the following as a guide along the Path.
Let it be made clear, firstly, that the ideals of Academia are the pursuit of Truth and Wisdom along with their preservation and respect.
Such a far and high ideal is certain to have pitfalls, and they can be seen in the halls of academia and the world at large. So, if you're going to call yourself a Philosopher and a Doctor of such, you better get your cornuthaum on, because this world has been falling and there's no time to waste.
Enemies[edit]
Among the challenges of being a successful academic, they can all be completely boiled down to these two:
Adversary #1: Sloppiness. This could mean sloppiness of grammar or of scholarship itself. The purpose of writing a paper, for example, should be to educate fellow scholars about the world: I shouldn’t have to know your whole field (or your whole personality) to understand what you're contributing. Hidden blow: Field Entropy.
Academia's solution to this adversary is peer-review. It works okay, but it can't work well enough, because it’s run by publishers, not academics.
Adversary #2: Elitism. You made a name for yourself. Great. Got a patent, even? Woo, whang my chode. If these haven't advanced the state of humanity, they are only footnotes in the Corpus d'Academe. You don’t need to have published anything to be a contributing and valuable academic. And a real academic never shuns any argument. Hidden blow: Stagnation.
Academia doesn't even have a solution to this and has gotten slightly mired in it. The key requirement for holding the title of Doctor is the ability to defend it to anyone. If you're a doctor, you shouldn't need any institution to prop you up.
Nearly every academic is ensnared by these, right now, in the office next door and at the top of the University. The ones who get defeated by the first enemy turn into a clowns: perhaps liked by the community, but otherwise lost because few ever point it out to them or have stopped trying. Those who get defeated by the second turn into stodgy old crones, but you wouldn't know it because they don't hang out with you. They've settled in for the long nap.
But don't be defeated. There are allies. Read on...
Allies[edit]
The following are the allies along the path. There are four and only four; i.e., this list is exhaustive. Even though they are called “allies”, they aren’t necessarily friends.
These are called "crucibles" because they exist in a contradiction that YOU have to resolve.
Crucible #1: Scholar :: Adding Knowledge <==> Relevance
Crucible #2: EditNazi :: Flexibility of Format <==> Comprehensibility
Crucible #3: Teacher`sDilemma :: Student Independence <==> Student Devotion
Crucible #4: Responsibilities :: Community <==> Individualism
These allies will challenge every item that is important to becoming a good academic. Remember that and keep them with you. When you find yourself not knowing what to do, you can pull them out and get guidance. If you leave them behind, the ideals of Academe will recede from you. That's how important they are.
Finding the Way[edit]
The life of the Academic consists of a continuous interplay between these values: Knowledge, Appearance, Pedagogy, and Community Stewardship. This list should be complete; i.e., they are sufficient in which to build a successful University. You will find that they are directly correlated to the four allies listed above. Unfortunately, academe is failing on all but Appearance right now. It has elite institutions, but they don't know what they're supposed to do: making industrialists or making philosophers.
I'm going to solve this one for ya. There are two types of places for higher learning: those that go up towards abstractions and those that drill down towards the concrete. Harvard is like the former -- it should be producing excellent, balanced philosophers. MIT is like the latter -- it should know how to produce everything that the market is offering -- an elite trade school. But, again, neither is living up to it`s ideals.
Perhaps you thought being a PhD was simple, but no. The fad of postmodernism has soiled the whole works. Your industrial, televised, society has turned every human into a dog, cow, sheep, or a pig -- all farmed for GDP or to keep them fenced in. It's pathetic. You can't legitimately call yourself a doctor and then sit back and let the benefits of your title roll in. If truth and philosophy were simple there wouldn't be 5000 years of argument about it. Since eating from the Tree of Knowledge, we've discovered a lot of things, but we've lost who we are and have let the powers above tell us. I'll tell you this: if you don't know who YOU are, whether you're a monkey or a human made by a divine being, then you have no business guiding others, philosophically speaking. "Know thyself," remember? I'll solve this one for you to, just a little: we're not homo sapiens. Homo means "same". But we are male and female. There is nothing "same" about us.
This is all messed up, feel free to delete and/or edit...
When I was at one of the great academic institutions in this world, I was working on the most exciting research of humanity, working on the nature of the mind and creating a complete theory of knowledge. But just at the juncture of success, I was troubled by the facts of history: I could not resolve basic human problems in the world. Problems writ large after the NYC trade center collapse. Nothing in my work was going to answer these problems--nothing in anybody`s work.
As I was involved with the writings of Carlos Castaneda, a Native American voice came to me in the form of a internet chat room. Strange, that. Perhaps (and apparently) it was how their soul still spoke, as their original voice had been conquered, as writ in history. On the computer screen, she told me a story and through the power of her story she captured my attention and took me outside of myself -- into an altered state of consciousness. When "I" came back, I was sitting there in front of the computer as if I'd never left. I had never experienced anything like that before.
At that point, I dropped everything I was doing. I dropped my whole life, a possibility of a career, my family and friends. My world was obviously insane, but I was still too much in the fish-bowl to say exactly how. I knew that I couldn't take anything with me, not even myself and begin finally disconnected from the life that I had known.
I jumped into an Abyss with the Spirit of the American Indian and went to the other end of the Universe. What I found there was extraordinary. But I can't tell that story yet, because you owe me.
So I need to pull out one of those literary tricks, and leave you hanging on the cliff. What I found was and is for humanity. Keep in mind this is my story -- don't follow my example, because I already did it for you. One of it`s results is this little exposé; that is, the pain of re-entering this world is one of the reasons why this ditty exists. It's my way of filling in the void of being in this culture alone. Whether the hope for a just future is aborted or grows to maturity is still debated -- but only in myself, since no one ever knows it. I can't hardly represent myself anymore out in the world. In fact, if you were to see me, you'd see just a very average-looking man. By the time you get this, maybe a bum.
Anyway, what I found there in that purity and depth couldn't match what this world had to offer, or rather, had never offered. But I'm jumping ahead of myself. You could say that this, just like the voice of that Native, is my way of reaching out for you. You should explore some of those links and the wiki in which it sits.
Conclusions[edit]
After you've tamed the first ally, you can tell the difference between the wheat from the chaff, from what is relevant to what to ignore entirely.
After taming the second ally, you've not only perfected your language, but how to present your ideas to be accessible to the widest audience.
After taming the third, you've mastered the student-teacher relationship, finding the balance of challenging the student to being available to them.
After the fourth, you've become a become a responsible citizen and keeper of virtue. Socrates will be proud.
And eventually, you will find yourself at the pinnacle of the Tree of Knowledge. What happens after that?
Salut!
Attributions[edit]
Pacific Lutheran University for believing in the student<->teaching enterprise, other places for not noticing me sleep in the hallways when I was still formulating the Plan, and don Juan and the wisdom-keepers of tribal America for showing me another Universe. If you're a member of Computer Science, see also How to Code. Xer0Dynamite (talk) 22:13, 24 March 2015 (UTC)
