Categoria: thoughts on life and its philosophy

Turbulenzen und Zäsuren

da Peter Herrmann's Blog, posted in academic life - living in academia, joys - what we usually take for it, Peter's Log, thoughts on life and its philosophy
Liebe …, über Turbulenzen und Zäsuren muss ich noch nachdenken – nicht weil ich sie infrage stellen möchte, eher weil die Turbulenzen bei mit tendenziell schleichender Dauerzustand, auch als Denkherausforderung, sind; und zweitens die Zäsuren sich dann doch wie ein geballter Block, Keil, Flügel in den ganz normalen Wahnsinn einmischen – dazwischen-schlagend oder leicht sich hineinsenkend.
Wie schrieb ich nach dem Besuch der Alice-Vorstellung in der Opera?
C’ è più realtà nel paese delle meraviglie di tutte le meraviglie che pretendiamo di affrontare nella nostra ricerca.
Und mein zugegebenermassen chaotisch [erscheinender] [Denk-]Ansatz macht beides Spannend und verbindet teils die Welten, immer hoffend, dass ich dennoch auf dem Boden der Tatsachen bleibe. – Naja, was sind Tatsachen? Kürzlich hörte ich vom Stundenlohn des Herrn Gates. Dollar? Euro? ich habe es vergessen – allemal sollen es einhundertfünfzig sein, pro Sekunde …. Und so ist es doch oft: die wahren Dimensionen von Ungleichheit, Regelungen und Änderungen, auch jene im besten Sinne, erfassen wir oftmals kaum – bezeichnend der, wenngleich nach meiner Auffassung, zweifelhafte, Schritt Peter’s, nun Sachbücher durch Novellen ergänzen zu wollen [“The Baby Auction”, “Ardent Justice”], da ihm die Aussagemöglichkeiten durch Sachbücher begrenzt scheinen – Hat er Recht oder zeigt es nicht ein anderes Mal, dass es nicht nur – vor langer Zeit wurde darüber geschrieben – ein Elend der Philosophie gibt, sondern auch ständig die Verarmung der Sozialwissenschaft weiter voranschreitet – nichts Neues und doch erschreckend, wenn man in dem Verarmungsprozess teils gefangen ist, sich zu widersetzen sucht, und dann in diese Verarmungsfalle gerät: die Verarmung des Denkens durch über-systematisierung oder die Verarmung durch das Verlangen, den Menschen zu respektieren und nicht den technischen, administrativen oder unter allem den ökonomischen Interessen unterzuordnen.
Sicher sind all dies Geschichten hoher Komplexität – aber Komplexität wirklich reduzieren zu müssen, wie es nach Luhmann Aufgabe der Wissenschaft ist, ist Anderes, als Komplexität zu leugnen – etwas, was wir vor Luhmann bereits lernen konnten, etwa von Hegel oder Marx. Und sicher ist es ein Prozess, der lange schon zu finden ist – erwähnte ich nicht vor Kurzem erst die Kritik Alfred Marshall’s an der Segmentierung des Wissens[prozesses] ?  – und der doch immer neue Formen findet, nicht zuletzt durch die systematische Verarmung menschlicher Intelligence durch AI. Die Befluegelung will ich nicht bestreiten, aber doch die Gefahr der Vorgaben durch AI kann ich nicht übersehen: Die Weiterung des Schrittes, vor dem ich auch Studierende immer wieder gewarnt habe:
Eine Antwort zu geben, ohne genau über die Frage nachzudenken
erfolgt nun Rechen-Maschinen-geschneidert, durch die Forderung:
Eine Frage zu stellen, und sie so zu stellen, dass es der Algorithmus
immer auch berechnen kann.
Auch dies nichts Neues, denn in den Aufzeichnungen aus dem Kellerloch schreibt Dostojevski ja:
… der Mensch besitzt eine solche Leidenschaft für Systematik und abstrakte Folgerungen, daß er es fertigbringt, bewußt die Wahrheit zu verdrehen und mit sehenden Augen nicht zu sehen und mit hörenden Ohren nicht zu hören, um nur seiner Logik recht geben zu können.
In diesem Sinne danke fuer die Wünsche fuer uns alle
für 2018 und für ein erfolgreiches Fortschreiten auf den Pfaden der Erkenntnis!
und danke auch fuer das Angebot zur weiteren Zusammenarbeit trotz des teils störrischen Insistierens auf der Leidenschaft, sich auf im Rechtsdenken der Systematik und den abstrakten Folgerungen teils zu widersetzen.
In diesem Sinne mit dem Dank sendet Peter die guten Wünsche auch an Dich

If man plays …

da Peter Herrmann's Blog, posted in academic life - living in academia, joys - what we usually take for it, Peter's Log, thoughts on life and its philosophy

and only then ….

In Schiller’s own words
Therefore, no error will ever be incurred if we seek the ideal of beauty on the same road on which we satisfy our play-impulse. We can immediately understand why the ideal form of a Venus, of a Juno, and of an Apollo, is to be sought not at Rome, but in Greece, if we contrast the Greek population, delighting in the bloodless athletic contests of boxing, racing, and intellectual rivalry at Olympia, with the Roman people gloating over the agony of a gladiator. Now the reason pronounces that the beautiful must not only be life and form, but a living form, that is, beauty, inasmuch as it dictates to man the twofold law of absolute formality and absolute reality. Reason also utters the decision that man shall only play with beauty, and he shall only play with beauty.
For, to speak out once for all, man only plays when in the full meaning of the word he is a man, and he is only completely a man when he plays.
 … of course, Schiller, in Letter XV of his collection upon the Æsthetic Education of Man does not fully explain or exemplify what play means. Nor does he tell us explicitly if it is for all of us the same. For the child it surely is not the same as for the philosopher.
One of the latter came across some snippet of information, useless, unimportant and thus being a major temptation to play, offering a break from checking algorithms and their legal meaning. A day in November last year, checking the holidays for 2018, I clicked on a link, to learn about Palindromes. Hardly knowing even the meaning of the term, I quickly learned the basics, namely
In 2018, people who write their dates in the m-dd-yy format will be treated to 10 consecutive days of palindromic dates. Every day from August 10, 2018 (8-10-18) to August 19, 2018 (8-19-18) will have a palindromic date.
Such back-to-back Palindrome Days in the m-dd-yy format are not that rare. Every year since 2011 have had 10 consecutive Palindrome Days. In 2011, they occurred from January 10, 2011 (1-10-11) to January 19, 2011 (1-19-11). In 2012, the same sequence of dates occurred in February. In 2017, this will happen in the month of July, in 2018 in August and in 2019 in September.
…
Notice a pattern here? As long as you write your date in the m-dd-yy format, every century has 9 years with 10 Palindrome Days in a row.
Play …
Can’t we read these in some way as days where past and future are ‘visibly’ – or is there are term like ’numberly’? – brought together in presence? Capturing the entire time universe in the sequence of just 24 hours? – A recurring ‘big bang’, isn’t it? … – You remember Goethe, contending in the ‘Diwan’ that
He who cannot draw on three thousand years is living from hand to mouth.
Nothing for boxing people who unlearned to play, leading a triste life, cut off, seduced by nothingness, not allowing the shine of light.

truth, the small and the large …

da Peter Herrmann's Blog, posted in academic life - living in academia, joys - what we usually take for it, Peter's Log, thoughts on life and its philosophy

Let us go with what is good. First there are the portraits. They dominate in terms of value and numbers. Exhibitions are in danger to alter, being increasingly galleries of portraits only. ‘Art goes for bread.’ The words Lessing suggested to be said by his painter Conti, about 100 years ago, is today even more true. There are not many orders, or even none; and to paint a huge wall painting at a venture …, there are few who can dare doing so. Everybody escapes into the small and family life, because the large and general condemns to starvation. Actual arts is at the loosing end, the portrait on the winning side: the mere effigy emerges occasionally as portrait of an epoch.

my own translation of the following words by Fontane, from his ‘A summer in London‘

Doch halten wir uns an das Gute. Da sind zunächst die Porträts. Sie prävalieren an Wert wie an Zahl. Die Kunstausstellungen drohen mehr und mehr zu bloßen Porträt-Galerien zu werden. »Die Kunst geht nach Brot.« Was Lessing seinen Maler Conti vor fast hundert Jahren sagen ließ, ist heut mehr denn je eine Wahrheit. Bestellt wird wenig oder nichts; und auf gut Glück hin ein mächtiges Wandbild zu malen, wie wenige dürfen’s wagen? Alles flüchtet in das Klein- und Familienleben, weil das Große und Allgemeine ihn verhungern läßt. Die eigentliche Kunst verliert dabei, die Porträt-Kunst gewinnt: das bloße Bildnis wird gelegentlich zum historischen Bilde.

All this had been written a long time ago …, and is still so true.

While reading those lines a couple of weeks ago, I remembered just the day before: the exhibition

FABIENNE VERDIER MEETS SIGMAR POLKE. TALKING LINES at the Pinakothek der Moderne, including the Musical Intonation in the St. Markus church, with Christoph Reiserer, Saxophone & Michael Roth, Organ.

some more info here and here.

Can one say an erotic intonation, music of epochs merging, drawing lines just in order to dispute, to cross each other, even breaking them open, to solve tensions in complete relaxation…. as the communication of the lines of Verdier and Polke.

Sure, things are easily over-interpreted, and also admitted that not everybody needs to have the same sense and sensation. Still, as I pointed out in my contribution to the debate: we may easily overcome the metaphysical suggestions, taking things as they are – the repercussions of calligraphy in Verdier’s work, far from being ‘closed’, finished and finite; and reflecting in the things, in the expressions, in the ‘Chinese characters’ and for what they stand the as much as the need for a provocative approach to the virtues:

  • Magnificentia
  • Dignitas
  • Honor
  • Gloria
  • Ratio
  • Velocitas
  • Moderatio

virtues that are perverted by the Emperor Maximilian claim to be their personification, perverted by the fact that they are ‘closed’, defined as finite.

And with such provocation – and opens to it – the supposed tension and impossibility to understand: fir instance the east and the west, is easily overcome …, if we allow us to engage, to come close and ‘touch’

Is it true that Karl Jaspers said the following?

True philosophy needs communion to come to an existence

And

Uncommunicativeness in philosopher is virtually a criterion of the untruth of his thinking.

 

We surely need more philosophers – in arts, in economics, in law and in life …, those who allow themselves to touch and to be touched – a pity that all those are in danger of being starved to death as soon as they attempt to paint beyond the portrait … – is that the reason behind some faiths demanding

Thou shalt not make thee any graven image.

The fear of distraction from the reality – the fear of non-communication by tighten it in a strict framework of phrases? Doesn’t it then remind us of

The Other Christmas Story

two years ago posted here on the blog?

When did it begin? When did we depart?

da Peter Herrmann's Blog, posted in academic life - living in academia, Peter's Log, quotes, thoughts on life and its philosophy
When did it begin? When did humankind depart from the path of thinking wisely instead of glamorously? And easily moving on the margin of faked realities!?
Well, apparently ist was not before 1927-28, the year of the
GIFFORD LECTURES DELIVERED IN THE UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH BY ALFRED NORTH WHITEHEAD.
In the book emerging from there:
PROCESS AND REALITY. AN ESSAY IN COSMOLOGY
we read on page 39:
There is no point in endeavouring to force the interpretations of divergent philosophers into a vague agreement. What is important is that the scheme of interpretation here adopted can claim for each of its main positions the express authority of one, or the other, of some supreme master of thought-Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Locke, Hume, Kant. But ultimately nothing rests on authority; the final court of appeal is intrinsic reasonableness.
The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradi- tion is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato. I do not mean the. systematic scheme of thought which scholars have doubtfully extracted from his writings. I allude to the wealth of general ideas scattered through them. His personal endowments, his wide opportunities for experience at a great period of civilization, his inheritance of an intellectual tradition not yet stiffened by excessive systematization, have made his writings an inexhaustible mine of suggestion.

—

May be at some stage then some people thought they can write a new body text, leaving the area of footnotes. Seeing posters, advertising a new Amazon Echo, I was getting curious what this is about – and looking it up here, I read
Amazon had been developing Echo devices inside its Lab126 offices in Silicon Valley and Cambridge, Massachusetts since at least 2010 in confirmed reports.
And I am wondering if they don’t have any better ideas about spending their time there …? Maybe reducing rubbish heaps instead of filling them up?
Sure, you may thoughtfully ask if I do not have anything better to do than commenting on it. – Yes, I do, and yes I can do and think other things – from a lovely lunch with friends, making jokes while going for a walk to tackling more profound questions, actually trying to define questions and problems instead of providing solutions to problems we do not have.
Hey, listen Mr Steve Amazon Gates, but that is exactly the point: creating and duplicating text blocks, and pretending they are more than footnotes to Plato. They are not more, they are just a stupid way of distracting reading the original – even if we are told we can make things our own.
And they are ways of distracting from reality, whitewashing as it was called, photoshopping as it is called.
—
Without distraction, we may then read in Plato’s Republic:
If the entire soul, then, follows without rebellion the part which loves wisdom, the result is that in general each part can carry out its own function—can be just, in other words—and in particular each is able to enjoy pleasures which are its own, the best, and, as far as possible, the truest. … When one of the other parts takes control, there are two results: it fails to discover its own proper pleasure, and it compels the other parts to pursue a pleasure which is not their own, and not true.
It continues:
In which case, I imagine, the tyrant will be furthest removed from true pleasure – how own proper pleasure – while the king will be the least far removed.
  • We have to add: there and then the king, the ideal king, was understood as philosopher.
  • We have to ‘complete’ from today that the market is our contemporary tyrant.
  • – it is surely worthwhile for everybody to read a bit further, to be ore precise to read what had been written before the quoted conclusion had been made.
—
So, looking at Plato’s teacher, we may have to accept the following:
Standards of beauty are different in different eras, and in Socrates’s time beauty could easily be measured by the standard of the gods, stately, proportionate sculptures of whom had been adorning the Athenian acropolis since about the time Socrates reached the age of thirty. Good looks and proper bearing were important to a man’s political prospects, for beauty and goodness were linked in the popular imagination. The extant sources agree that Socrates was profoundly ugly, resembling a satyr more than a man—and resembling not at all the statues that turned up later in ancient times and now grace Internet sites and the covers of books. He had wide-set, bulging eyes that darted sideways and enabled him, like a crab, to see not only what was straight ahead, but what was beside him as well; a flat, upturned nose with flaring nostrils; and large fleshy lips like an ass. Socrates let his hair grow long, Spartan-style (even while Athens and Sparta were at war), and went about barefoot and unwashed, carrying a stick and looking arrogant. He didn’t change his clothes but efficiently wore in the daytime what he covered himself with at night. Something was peculiar about his gait as well, sometimes described as a swagger so intimidating that enemy soldiers kept their distance. He was impervious to the effects of alcohol and cold, but this made him an object of suspicion to his fellow soldiers on campaign.
We still speak of them, admiring, criticising and even with this acknowledging their ongoing meaning. We will not know, but may ask: who will really admire, criticise and with this acknowledge Mr Steve, when possibly standing in about 2500 years at some gates that open the way across the amazon.
For my part, I am happy coexist merely as footnote, even as footnote of footnotes – and of course, I am happy when I can help students and scholars a little bit to understand the body texts of humankind and their meaning [for] today.

Magic small numbers

da Peter Herrmann's Blog, posted in contemporary socio-economic situation, joys - what we usually take for it, Peter's Log, social quality, thoughts on life and its philosophy

Friday I returned from Berlin to Munich – apparently I was going the new route [though still not the new speed] which is today opened with new trains and new time schedules this had been celebrated on the eighth in Berlin.

From the tenth of December it takes less than four hours to go that route. Going on the sixth to Berlin, the ‘back route’, was a bit more ‘the old style’: slower, especially through some mountainous areas, nice especially where there had been some snow veiling the trees …

From yesterday then: Berlin – Munich in less than four hours. New trains I assume, tightened rails I suppose, new schedules for sure, new staff may be …? Of course that shortening of the journey is a great disadvantage. On the other hand, there is no opportunity, no reason to look out of the window. The magic four: every four years elections; every four month amending laws; every four weeks a new diploma; every four days we may get a new job …, if we get one; every four hours we read entire libraries, summarised in some wiki.

– May be think about some new expression: to wiki a book = put it into a easily digestible format that does not need long intellectual chewing. Al this is about even on earth even? Trains with heavenly speed as their is no reason to fly? Thoughts flying into the brain like roasted pigeons flying into the mouth in the land behind the gingerbread-wall of paradise … – Mind, the synonym is to veil a book. As mutes the synonym for the paradisal pigeon may just be fast-food.

– No, I am afar from praising any good old times, times that never really existed anyway … I am leaning back, quite comfortably … – the …, well, once these people had been called rain conductor … walks along the corridor.

‘Coffee …? Anybody want a coffee ….?

I do not ask for one, thinking about one often quoted passage from Keynes, that surely will also be present in the wiki-libreria:

But this long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead. Economists set themselves too easy, too useless a task, if in tempestuous seasons they can only tell us, that when the storm is long past, the ocean is flat again. [A Tract on Monetary Reform (1923)]

Looking at Keynes unwikied, didn’t he mean implicitly: of we only look at wikied policy measures – short and short-lived, we are not able to solve the underlying problems. And there are good reasons to look out of the window – or read entire books – before writing and boxing. Well, all this is surely also about skills and knowledge.

Well, there is a difference between expresso and espresso. And ever trust anybody who promises to make a nice expresso, very quick.

one of the root causes of bad academics today

da Peter Herrmann's Blog, posted in academic life - living in academia, thoughts on life and its philosophy

One of the root causes of the problems of academic work today is surely the lack of open, possibly confrontative communication. Instead of sitting alone in the offices, and ‘communicating’ by way of gathering information, we may learn from a kind of small print we find in the preface to Keynes’ General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money.

The writer of a book such as this, treading along unfamiliar paths, is extremely dependent on criticism and conversation if he is to avoid an undue proportion of mistakes. It is astonishing what foolish things one can temporarily believe if one thinks too long alone, particularly in economics (along with the other moral sciences), where it is often impossible to bring one’s ideas to a conclusive test either formal or experimental.

Well, there is so much in economics – even in unexpected veins – one could sometimes think economists are just ordinary human beings.

Academia Now and Then

da Peter Herrmann's Blog, posted in academic life - living in academia, contemporary socio-economic situation, thoughts on life and its philosophy

I am wondering if and in which way we can and have to speak of changes in the academic world.

Putting it into a question one could ask:

Can living in the academic world be compatible with working academically?

It has something religious – similar to the questions, leading to and accompanying the Reformation, criticizing the institutionalised church in order to rescue faith.

It has something ancient philosophic-economical, where we find the contrast of Oikonomia, roughly  use-value oriented and resource-respecting management of the household  and Chrematistike, roughly the exchange-value oriented money-making, money becoming as fetish a use-value.

If we are generously accepting that different sides are justified, instead of insisting on a romanticised ideal, there still remains the

cui prodest, cui bono?

To be precise, it is not just the question who benefits. Centre-stage we have to ask

Where do we find systemically and what are the leading motives?

Looking at the distribution of income within the sector of Higher Education is revealing. And understanding that this is not the only sector where power is abused is frightening. And that power is often abused not just for private benefits, but where dependents are guided into wrong directions is a disgrace …

And there are still people speaking about freedom of thought and speech? Well, we see, it is not just a matter of a finger …, it can also be about having a different approach or uncovering injustice or speaking about it. And then people hear they should think outside of the box …?

Well, there is something biblical in all this as we know from Genesis 26 ff. – still encouraging some to ask Why can’t we do what we like to do?

Small Print on Freedom of Opinion and Speech

da Peter Herrmann's Blog, posted in general, thoughts on life and its philosophy

It had been again and again an issue over the last two years or so, I spent in China: does it exist? How is it oppressed? and not least: But ‘we/they in the west’ can say what we want’.

YES WE CAN

though there is some small print we should not forget – an example may show what this is about.

Why can’t we do what we like to do?

da Peter Herrmann's Blog, posted in academic life - living in academia, thoughts on life and its philosophy
Why can’t we do what we like to do?
– this was the question a Chinese student asked me when I visited the country the last time and walked across the Campus before going to the conference. It had been one of these somewhat strange encounters: a student seeing a Westener, taking the opportunity to proudly exercise a bit of English. I am never sure what to think about it – it reminds me of what can be read in Bakewell’s ‘Existentialist café’:
Not being black, not being gay, not being in Switzerland, there is still sometimes ‘something special’ about being white and hetero and in China [similar applies in other countries, including the occasional introduction as ‘Herrmann the German’ after having lived there nearly twenty years, and an introduction that actually was meant to be very kind] – sure, there is some ambiguity about it, depending on the ‘other person’ [the one who looks, stares or dares to talk …], the own mood and …, ah, so many things, including a possible nice smile or a somewhat rebukingly-fearing look.Is all this what some people man when they are talking about ‘social skills’?
**********
A sentence in Marten Blix book on Digitalization, Immigration and the Welfare State [Edward Elgar, 2017] made me thinking about this in a wider context. On page 84 we can read:
Whether automation will hit an insuperable obstacle when it comes to to tackling tacit skills remains to be seen. Rather than being brick wall beyond which automation cannot venture, tacit knowledge might be reshaped or subject to circumvention and redefinition.
The highlighted part is as remarkable as easily overlooked: Skills, by [my??] definition have the tendency to be as set of rules, more or less easy to learn and also simple to algorithm-ise – the simplicity consists basically in something we may call ‘cutting off the edges, making the wedges’.
**********
Life and living is not just a technical rule – though in the context of digitisation and IT-development technical rules surely play a more pronounced, more visible role. Underlying is a social rule: the arrogance of a class that aims on shaping a world according to its own image …. Doesn’t this remind the person, well versed in the bible of Genesis 26 ff.? There we read:
 Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. God blessed them; and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” Then God said, “Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the surface of all the earth, and every tree which has fruit yielding seed; it shall be food for you; and to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the sky and to every thing that moves on the earth which has life, I have given every green plant for food”; and it was so. God saw all that He had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.
Those in the dark, remain invisible, are expelled, allowing the untouchables to be amongst themselves:
This egalitarian style can clash with the Valley’s reality of extreme income polarization. ‘Many tech companies solved this problem by having the lowest-paid workers not actually be employees. They’re contracted out’, Schmidt explained. ‘We can treat them differently, because we don’t really hire them. The person who’s cleaning the bathroom is not exactly the same sort of person.’
(Freeland, Chrystia, 2012: Plutocrats: The Rise of the New Global Super Rich and the Fall of Everyone Else; New York: The Penguin Press)
Are we really talking about New Princedoms and refeudalisation?
**********
Coming back then to Anhui [and Changsha … – and even some international airports or some ‘melting pots’ of apparently complete and absolute indifference], perhaps one should think also more about the need of social knowledge as something that entails sovereign mastering of technical rules going hand in hand with empathy when encountering the other: fully understanding the other person [the one who looks or stares or dares to talk …], the own mood and …, ah, so many things, not least the respect of oneself as part of the situation: also with his/her own rights, defined by the interaction ….
And coming back to the question of the student:
why can’t we do what we like to do?
I suppose the answer is simple: because we are teaching and learning too many skills, and too little real knowledge. We are, even after the supposed enlightenment, and perhaps increasingly again ruled by gods, not by ourselves. And we do not even need a question as the answer is always the same, not allowing any critique anyway. And not even allowing a question … – boxing people ….

… boxing humans …

da Peter Herrmann's Blog, posted in academic life - living in academia, thoughts on life and its philosophy, works

Well, moving in the academic realm is too often about boxing humans – yes, both sides going together: putting people into boxes and brutally beating them up. The following a letter I sent to relevant newspapers as comment on what is going on, how students [and lecturers] are mal-treated, disrespectful encounters when students are following their curiosity. It makes me increasingly sad, and I feel deeply ashamed …

******

Dear colleagues,

adding to the various discussions on ranking and formalistic approaches to studying, admission to universities and performance of third-level teaching and research, one point is easily overlooked – the following example is perhaps extreme, though not necessarily completely exceptional.

I worked for two years as professor of economics at Bangor College China, Changsha [BCC] before taking up my current position as research fellow at the Max-Planck Institute for Social Law and Social Policy in Munich, Germany. Still, one persisting bond to the previous job is concerned with writing references for some students. Some universities where students applied, accepted only references, requiring my mail-address from the previous job – but shouldn’t universities at this time and age accept that scholars are moving, following ambitions and calls in other positions? This means: they should also accept that mail addresses change, and one may even prefer to use a non-institutional address. Anyway, I mentioned the BCC-mail address – however, sending a mail to that address is answered by an auto-reply referring the sender to another address. This is the first point where the institution that was seeking the reference – the Graduate School, The Chinese University of Hong Kong – failed. They ignored the auto-reply and I did not know about the request they sent. Finally I was made aware of it [by the bright applying student], checked the dormant mail box and continued to the website for the submission of the reference. A form opened [after going through a more or less cumbersome procedure], asking for replies to multiple choice questions. I still think students are not made up of multiple choice elements, instead: they are real beings, humans with a multifaceted personality that cannot be squeezed into such forms – even when considering data-processing as an at-times appropriate tool. So, instead of ticking the boxes I preferred skipping them, attaching a recommendation letter instead. However, the system did not allow me to submit the letter unless I would first answer the multiple-choice questions which would feed into a one-dimensional profile. I complained, sent the letter as a mail attachment – and did not receive a reply by the said office of the Hong Kong University. At some stage, I agreed – honestly disgusted by the lack of qualification and respect towards students – ticked the boxes and attached the letter [again cumbersome, as one had to enter a code which was not clearly legible, not allowing to distinguish 0 and O]. I sent another letter of complaint to the Graduate School, The Chinese University of Hong Kong – which was again answered to the BCC address, and again they failed to resend the mail to the e-mail address mentioned in the auto-reply.

If these are the standards of entering higher education, one should not be surprised that at the other end, i.e. at the time of finishing studies, many people have difficulties. They feel their creativity being limited by the requirements of publishing, acquiring funding and the competition along lines of subordination under expectations instead of striving for innovation [see Maximilain Sippenauer: Doktor Bologna; Sueddeutsche Zeitung, 20.10.2017: 11]

Still, it is a bit surprising that all this is well known and still not much is changing. Surprising … ? Perhaps it is not really surprising if we consider that the income of top-administration posts increase while the income of lecturers does not follow accordingly [see for instance the article titled: Times Higher Education pay survey 2016 in The Times Higher Education; https://www.timeshighereducation.com/features/times-higher-education-pay-survey-2016%5D.

It seems that there is a long way towards ‘supporting the brightest by open systems’, overcoming the dominant administrative policy of ‘wedge the narrowest by furthering their smart submission’.

Sincerely

Peter Herrmann