The Superior Man is aware of Righteousness, the inferior man is aware of advantage.
(Confucius)
Categoria: academic life – living in academia
university ranking …
I am wondering why ranking of universities is used though it may well put them in highly negative light:
Is it a warning: never go to Oxford if you want to maintain mental health and democratic responsibility?
Stop googling …
For once you have tasted flight you will walk the earth with your eyes turned skywards, for there you have been and there you will long to return.
(Leonardo da Vinci)
The other day a friend of mine sent me a link to an article — indeed, a very interesting article, raising many questions, and perhaps also some puzzled thoughts. One of the latter is on “the seven minute rule”. Spontaneously “speed dating” came to my mind. Never did it, cannot even imagine doing it — though I can imagine or even experienced if not love, so “attachment”, “sympathy”, “attraction” at first sight — and first sight is surely less than 7 minutes.
But there are two main points I am thinking about now:
First:
Of course, all these gadgets etc. are supporting this “turning away” from “deep communication”. At the same time I think there may well be a general shallowing of communication that supports the development of the reference to such means. If (taking an example) we (not necessarily as individuals but as “system”) ask for “power point knowledge”, nicely wrapped, offered in multiple choice packages … … can we expect people to think and engage in wider terms? I mentioned it frequently when teaching, and in different places: Often my students showed huge difficulties in the beginning; but after a while at least many had been attentive, engaged and liked the exercises of “eye opening”. After a while = after they learned that they will not get “slide-wrapped info” and after they learned and accepted: I am not interested in “tick-box” knowledge when they participate in class or when they are sitting their exam. I hate the term knowledge-based society, as in my opinion those, using the term, are actually often talking about skills and information based functioning. At times, the results of such tick-box-orientation is weird: I received the other day a “peer review” of an article I submitted. Some reasonable points. One …, simply stupid, sorry. The reviewer said:
With a reference to such classic thinkers as Marx and Bordieu, and new leftist thinkers such as Pikketty, the author calls for a revaluation of class-based analysis …
And then he criticised that I actually contradict in the following of my article Bourdieu’s class analysis. Leaving the question aside, if we can “qualify” and “classify” Marx, Bourdieu and Piketty (yes, with one k, not with two, dear reviewer) “in one pot”, the point is: I did by no way mention Bourdieu’s class analysis, let alone affirm it. Bourdieu wrote on other topics too and it is not enough for reviewers to show off by throwing names of authors into the debate, without recognising why they are turning up in the first instance …
Part of all this is also the overproduction: of students, of publications, of …. — I am very much in favour of mass education. But what we currently see is not mass education. We have more BA-graduates, but is their educational attainment really so much higher than the attainment of previous leaving cert attainments … ? Is not the MA today very similar to the previous BA, the PhD very similar to the previous MA …. — now we have post-docs and soon post-post-docs, and then ….
Sorry, I loose occasionally some patience here — it is all about increasing productivity of exchange values, completely forgetting the dimension of use value. It is about input and throughput and output …., every hen shows more sense with the put put put … in the chicken run —…
But there is surely a very serious thing about it — and it is for me a “problem”, a question. I am born BB, i.e. belong to the “before Bologna generation”, obtained a diploma in Germany. When I came to Ireland many years ago (I have had my doctorate at that time too), somebody said:
Your diploma is more than our PhD.
My first thought: nice, flattering …, but nonsense. I am not sure if I would maintain this “nonsense” today. And it is not about the German versus Irish but about the old-fashioned doctorate versus the new and highly commercialised PhD.
Complex and complicated issues. And part of it is the control of teaching by “blackboard”, by computerised systems …. — Then the frequently asked question:
But can we turn back the clock?
gains a new slant. Do we really want to turn it back? Do we have to look for another clock that allows “educating the masses” and doing it in a way that I would see as qualified (= really qualifying) way?
Yesterday I saw an interesting documentation on Cuba: on the medical/health system. It is geared towards prevention. Very close to the patient as coproducer … — the doctors highly committed although they are not well paid. Amazing: a ratio of 1 doctor on 170 patients. When I had been in Cuba I “enjoyed” the medical service (well, one never really enjoys it, especially when one needs it after collapsing). It had been unbelievable, and it is a very long time ago that I experienced something comparable – it had been in Finland, with an excellent health care system that is now under huge pressure. On the other hand, one of the “highlights”, just before I left Ireland: I had to go for an eye test — and the doctor (GP) asked me what she should do. Short time before: I have had a pneumonia, went to the GP and he said: it may be that you have to go to hospital. Here is the referral – if it is not getting better, you can go to the hospital. BTW, it had been “the same GP”, a surgery, a medical centre and though it is the same you never know who will finally will be looking after you. finally they are not looking after you but after their money.
Doesn’t all this show that may of the gadgets and much of their use is simply a matter of “escape”, substitute, often due to US reinforcing it? US, i.e. we are doing it — any other reference of US may be accidental and accidentally relevant.
Second:
Yes, personal contact, face to face communication …. — I appreciate it, I miss it … and then there is a BUT. A BIG BUT. I suppose it is particularly felt by those who left home. No, I should not write “Who left home” — instead, I should write about those who truly consider the globe as a village and see the world as their home. Paradoxically, they may not have a home in the traditional sense of nation states, municipalities, family, parish etc. To some extent it is a matter of priests who spend their life on missions (though they are member of the family of god – and still, look at Aodhán’s kettle). To some extent it is a matter of comrades who spend their life, acting in different contexts (though they are member of The International, with all their difference as we can see them here and here and here and here and here.
To some extent it is a matter of artists who spend their life on tours (though they may be member of the avant-garde of thinking). Or to some extent it may be a matter of the business elite spending their life in private jets, hotel lounges, in the extreme case even living their own time, not manipulating their watch or their body clock and expecting others to adopt to theirs. All this is also a bit about New Princedoms.
Anyway, there is in general terms and in the different realms of life the phenomenon of “Out of Sight, Out of Mind” — with the numerous variations: “One craw does not attack another” (a more suitable translation of the German saying than the usual “There’s honour among thieves” and even the “Do unto others as you would have others do unto you”, indicating the need to personalise the other and making him/her very close to oneself. People making promises, people convincingly offering help and collaboration — and as soon as the door is closed, all seems to be forgotten, all and everybody. The concrete is concrete …, and any abstraction is for many difficult to handle.
It is an interesting phenomenon: xenophobia disappearing with the appearance of “the other”, “the stranger” in front of us. Note well: as individual.
In other words: there is always the problem that face-to-face communication can easily entail exactly this attitude, the one I mentioned and of which I said that there are numerous variations – I mentioned few, but the most dangerous remains to be added: NIMBY – not in my backyard.
This is surely one of the tensions we can observe now in connection with the phenomenon of migration. Instead of talking really about a general human right (as Rafael Correa did when addressing the UNGA did), we usually fundamentally maintain the idea of nationhood, of nationality, defining migration as flight only. Though it surely is currently for most such an escape, the very same attitude misses that only this basic pattern of nationalism, regionalism parochialism is nothing else than imperialism. I do not want to elaborate on this — Abby did this in her docu on the empire files; and in some veiled, though still frightening way Obama did this when addressing the 15th General Assembly of the UN — It is a long time ago, I visited with two friends, Yitzhak and David, the Anne Frank house in Amsterdam. Just before reaching the exit a collection of “statements”, written on paper, had been exhibited …., impressions. One paper said something like this:
Why are we so empathetic with just one girl though her conditions had been actually relatively good — why do we not worry about the thousands who suffered the same or worse fate? The answer is that it is already difficult for us to deal emotionally with the one case — feeling the burden of all who suffered would break us completely.
It is not about heroism nor martyrdom ….; it may be the weakness to push the suffering, the joys, the strives and efforts of those who are not present, out of mind though …
Is it this attitude that made Leonardo da Vinci saying
While I thought that I was learning how to live, I have been learning how to die.
Economics and Responsibilities …
Teaching economics is of course a balance act – the need to make students familiar with what is available in the poison cabinet of mainstream economics, and at the same time avoiding even during the short available time that anybody gets tempted by the captivating simplicity of the technical formulas (or repelled by the seeming neutrality). – Yes, Milton Friedman had been right, quoting about myths:
Someone once wrote, and I’m not sure who it was, that a myth is like an air mattress. There’s nothing in it but it’s wonderfully comfortable and deflation causes an uncomfortable jolt.
But there is another responsibility when it comes to the small print (if we may say so).
Somewhere, two test questions caught my attention. the one concerns “normal goods”, i.e. goods of superior quality, to be distinguished from “inferior goods”.
The question read like this – and the options for the reply are interesting:
Which of the following are normal goods?
• Sliced, white bread
• Salt
• Strawberries
• Tesco value baked beans
• Caviar
Leaving the branding part aside, suggesting (implicitly) caviar as normal gives some answer to the question “who are the economists”? And if somebody remembers right now the lines about “preaching water, while drinking wine” from Heine’s Germay . A Winter’s Fairy Tale, it may not be by pure accident.
Another question, however, makes me thinking if this is justified. This one, see below (and again leaving the branding aside), reveals, that the understanding of good food did not necessarily arrive in those circles ….
Which of the following goods are substitutes for each other?
• Pizza and hamburgers
• Pie and chips
• Coke and Pepsi
• Salt and pepper
• Bacon and eggs
Well, nobody is perfect and with such a small-print nobody and nothing will be …
Studies
In short, I reckon the studies to be the seed, and the more one sows, the more one may hope to reap.
Vincent in a letter to Theo, 18.9.1882
Intelligence instead of (Skills)”Knowledge”
Books … hold within them the gathered wisdom of humanity, the collected knowledge of the world’s thinkers, the amusement and excitement built up by the imaginations of brilliant people. Books contain humor, beauty, wit, emotion, thought, and, indeed, all of life. Life without books is empty.
Isaac Asimov: Puzzles of the Black Widowers (1990)
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As I’ve often said, you can shop online and find whatever you’re looking for, but bookstores are where you find what you weren’t looking for.
Paul Krugman
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We Have Such A Wealth of Unanswered Questions
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The notion that every well educated person would have a mastery of at least the basic elements of the humanities, sciences, and social sciences is a far cry from the specialized education that most students today receive, particularly in the research universities.
Joseph Stiglitz
New Princedoms
I know that several people are afraid of drawing long and occasionally somewhat contorted lines, preferring more technical approaches as those suggested in modern text books. But I am a bit afraid that this only defers matters and the history books in 50, 100, 200, 500 years, opening the view on the wider perspectives, will evoke the same disbelieve as the books today when they teach us about the cruelties of ancient and medieval times.
Sure, Keynes said in the First Annual Report of the Arts Council [1945-1946]
The day is not far off when the economic problem will take back seat where it belongs, and the arena of the ear and the head will be occupied or reoccupied, by our real problems — the problems of life and of human relations, of creation and behaviour and religion.
Now, when we look around, we can see already some of these grandchildren amongst us … — well, not really amongst us but when peeping across the walls of the gated communities we gain some insight. We then read for instance about an artist that
she also insisted she worked less than 20 days a year in order to be with their family.
She said: “I have to make one movie a year because I have to invest in their future and I have to be able to pay their way through college and be able to provide for them. I’m looking for movies that will shoot in Los Angeles, for projects where I’m part of an ensemble so I can shoot in and out in 10-20 days. It’s all about trying to spend as little time away from my kids as possible.”
Sooooo caring — this had been the “news” from August the 20th. News of the same day inform us about Rome:
Il funerale si è svolto in pieno giorno con sei cavalli con pennacchio che trainano una antica carrozza funebre, una banda che intona prima le note composte da Nino Rota per il film “Il Padrino”, poi la colonna sonora di “2001 odissea nello spazio” e la canzone Paradise, altra colonna sonora, ma, questa volta, del film “Laguna Blu”. Una scenda degna de “Il Padrino”. Adesso esplode la polemica per capire chi abbia dato l’autorizzazione al funerale.
It is about a “festive funeral” for a Mafia boss in the middle of Rome, blocking the entire traffic, which is bad enough though we are used to it. But dead as he is, he still sends a clear political message about “governance today”. Of course, this is frightening. And reading further one wonders what is more frightening:
- the fact that such funeral happened — and had been allowed
- or the fact that there are now investigations called for, signalling a state that is substantially weak … — and can only deal with the technical side of what happened, but does not have anything to say on the “state of the nation” that actually makes such things happen.
From my side, no word on this occasion on the church — the relevant article in today’s Il Messaggero’s Cronaca is written by Mauro Evangelisti.
It is indeed a sign that politicians — be they state actors, “societal civilians” or corporate actors — are completely disempowered, let alone people being able to gain and maintain power — just these days I stated in an article on the “Death of Representative Democracy”:
Und paradoxer Weise ist gerade auf diese Weise der Demos von den Herrschenden gewählt: an technischen Entscheidungen darf es teilnehmen und auf dem Jahrmarkt der Eitelkeiten darf es sich tummeln, während die eigentliche Politik hinter der Bühne gemacht wird.
Nur auf der Erscheinungsebene hat sich das Politikfeld zu einer Bühne verwandelt, auf der sich die Eitlen tummeln: Konsumbürger, Aktivbürger, Staatsbürger, Vereinsbürger … — für jede(n) findet sich eine scheinbar einheitliche Bühne. Sachverstand wird gern gesehen — soweit er sich an Details zermürbt. Als großer Sachverstand aber stört er die Schau, denn die großen Rollen bleiben immer noch den Mächtigen vorbehalten.
In short, I highlight there the degeneration of democracy — it is now a playing field of vanity, providing a stage for “different kinds of citizens” as consumption citizens, active citizens, citizens of nation states, citizens of associations … . They can present their specific skills, get crunched by discussing technical details, thus hiding the fct that the real power is still just that: power by way of force.
The latter can be taken from the interview with Yanis Varoufakis:
HL: You’ve said creditors objected to you because “I try and talk economics in the Eurogroup, which nobody does.” What happened when you did?
YV: It’s not that it didn’t go down well — it’s that there was point blank refusal to engage in economic arguments. Point blank. … You put forward an argument that you’ve really worked on — to make sure it’s logically coherent — and you’re just faced with blank stares. It is as if you haven’t spoken. What you say is independent of what they say. You might as well have sung the Swedish national anthem – you’d have got the same reply. And that’s startling, for somebody who’s used to academic debate. … The other side always engages. Well there was no engagement at all. It was not even annoyance, it was as if one had not spoken.
(Varoufakis, Yanis, 2015: The full transcript of the former Greek Finance Minister’s first interview since resigning; Interview in the New Statesman: 13.7.2015; 17:37)
It remains a declaration of war — a scenery that is not much more than a translation of what Bert Brecht had in mind, talking about Freedom and Democracy.
So it makes much sense when the German PDS notes in a press release highlights
that Tsipras decision to step back and to call for bend elections shows how far the intervention of the creditors in the national sovereignty of Greece reaches: under the conditions imposed by the institutions Syriza can not fulfill its mandate to govern.
Now, it remains an open question if and to which extent politicians should be blamed — at least the intellectual elites have to bear their part. After recent allegations against Zygmunt Baumann, a new muddy wave had been launched. Just believe me, as I refuse to name the person who does not deserve an increase of his citation-index — as a commentator rightly states, it is an
appallingly crass piece of attention grabbing nonsense.
(sorry for omitting reference, Leslie — see the argument before)
In sum it is about this: a critique bringing forward that Bauman, on many occasions, is guilty of self-plagiarism. It is one of many similar debates: substance does not matter, is not even recognised and only form counts — as it is form that can be counted — see also the recent entry here.
If we want to look at figures, we should look at figures that are relevant: unemployment rates, orientation of economic policies on national performance instead of global responsibility, the privatisation of hospitals and the subsequent maltreatment of patients and staff, the Making of the Migration Crisis, going hand in hand with fears of extinction of nations, prices that make accommodation unaffordable, thus opening space for speculation and leaving places prone to alienation by different forms of ghettoisation …
We can be somewhat cynical-optimists and turn Clausewitz’ statement around. Instead of
War is the continuation of politics by other means
it is nowadays still:
Politics is the continuation of politics by other means.
Indeed, a matter of establishing New Princedoms, while the old princes are finding their pompous chaperon to the last rest.
But how long will this last? the last rest, and the war by politics?
— Nomen est omen? A friend of mine said the other day that the danger of the Northern American trump …, ops Trump, with capital T of course, is that he says what many USNA-citizens want to hear. And also Mr., ops, sorry: Dr. Schäuble and his mates clearly showed this link between the two wars.
Even if history does not repeat itself, the question remains if we can see at the horizon a new Spartacus, a new Cicero or a new Cesar … .
There are thoughtful words coming from a possibly unexpected corner of the world, written in a letter by Fidel Castro Ruz on the 5th of July of this year, and published in the Granma
Cuba conoce el valor y la capacidad combativa de las tropas rusas, que unidas a las fuerzas de su poderoso aliado la República Popular China, y otras naciones del Medio Oriente y Asia, tratarán siempre de evitar la guerra, pero jamás permitirán agresión militar alguna sin respuesta contundente y devastadora.
En la actual situación política del planeta, cuando la paz y la supervivencia de nuestra especie penden de un hilo, cada decisión, más que nunca, debe ser cuidadosamente elaborada y aplicada, de modo que nadie pueda dudar de la honestidad y la seriedad con las que muchos de los dirigentes más responsables y serios luchan hoy por enfrentar las calamidades que amenazan al mundo.
Intelligence intellectuals and other people
I was rather interested in my fellow-prisoners, who seemed to me in no way morally inferior to the rest of the population, though they were on the whole slightly below the usual level of intelligence , as was shown by the their having been caught.
(Russels: Autobiography: 256)
I had supposed that intellectuals frequently loved truth, but I found here again that not ten per cent of them prefer truth to popularity
(Russels: Autobiography: 240)
Of course, after having read today an article in the German Die Zeit, I am wondering if only the latter is true, and the first should read today: Intellectuals and the rest of the population tend increasingly to lock themselves up in virtual worlds of numeric and algorithmic truth:
Nun, die leise peinliche Antwort lautet, dass ein System scheinbar raffinierter Anreize die Gefühlswelt der Wissenschaften neu codiert hat. An die Stelle des Zorns über die Verhältnisse in der Welt und an die Stelle des interpretativen Abenteuers mit offenem Ausgang ist die Sorge getreten, ob man genug Drittmittel eingeworben und ausreichend Aufsätze in internationalen Zeitschriften publiziert hat. Die Höhe der eigenen Drittmittel und für eine breitere Öffentlichkeit zumeist nahezu unzugängliche Fachaufsätze gelten im Wettlauf um Evaluationspokale inzwischen als der zentrale Ausweis von Kompetenz.
Indeed, as I read recently:
Un mondo dove non serve farsi domande, cercare risposte, pensare, provare a fare bene e costruire.
Thus, they are easily losing increasingly the ground under their feet
Education
Sure, it is a topic, popping up again and again — and we are facing with variations only. Some more here:
******
The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom.
Isaac Asimov
******As a matter of fact student riots of one sort or another, protests against the order that is, kicks against college and university management indicate a healthy growth and a normal functioning of the academic mind.
Youth should be radical. Youth should demand change in the world. Youth should not accept the old order if the world is to move on. But the old orders should not be moved easily—certainly not at the mere whim or behest of youth. There must be clash and if youth hasn’t enough force or fervor to produce the clash the world grows stale and stagnant and sour in decay. If our colleges and universities do not breed men who riot, who rebel, who attack life with all their youthful vim and vigor, then there is something wrong with our colleges. The more riots that come on college campuses, the better world for tomorrow.
******
The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination.
Albert Einstein
Two tales from academia
Did you know that thanks to your librarian, you and your colleagues have access to hundreds of highly downloaded and cited articles, all available on the award-winning SAGE Journals platform?
An advertisement came with this content by mail from SAGE (ah could have been any other of these DIY-grandeurs (not as spammy as offers from Ivory coast but not containing more substance.
Valery comes to my mind, a librarian I really admired for her excellent work – she fearlessly faced the flood of
highly downloaded and cited articles
and still found the really interesting ones, barely known, this not (often) cited, but allowing true excitement when reading and thinking further ….
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We never find the entire truth … but part of it is written at least in the preface
As Levitt sees it, economics is a science with excellent tools for gaining answers but a serious shortage of interesting questions.
Not sure if the book is as exiting as it is promised in the prefaced “Explanatory Note” – but I am sure that I like to ask questions, and apply then the tools, instead to doing the thing the other way round.
Looking at academia I am wondering if denying the right to ask questions, forcing us to go the other way around, may be about denying a fundamental right ?
COMMEDIA DELLA VITA OR PÁNTA RÊI'S FIRM GROUND 