The Perils of Academia

April 20, 2011

As I prepare to enter academia as a student for the first time in over two decades, I am full of trepidation. I grew up in academia; I know its pitfalls. I know the departmental political in-fighting; I know the petulant rants and tirades of academics, which would get them fired in the business world; I know the petty territorial skirmishes, as savage as in the wild yet unacknowledged by the supposed aesthetes engaging in the battles. At least in the business world this competition is open and acknowledged; in academia it is denied under the veneer of culture and thus infinitely more vicious. I know that departments are, after all, microcosms of high schools with their dramas, cliques, and side-taking. Faculty are often polarized on both theory – understandable, at least – and personality – rather unforgiveable, to my mind. Lord, I am hoping I left high school far behind…

Some of the pitfalls of academia were so aptly expressed in Muriel Barbery’s book The Elegance of the Hedgehog. In this novel set in France, one of the narrators muses thus on the oh-so-intellectual thesis written by a resident of her haute bourgeois apartment building: “but intelligence, in itself, is neither valuable nor interesting. Very intelligent people have devoted their lives to the question of the sex of angels, for example.” I agree. Call me a pragmatist, but I disdain purely intellectual play with no thought of contributing to humanity’s betterment. I know. I’ve been there.

I wrote my MA thesis in Linguistics on “The Relative Nouniness and Verbiness of Gerunds and Infinitives”. Yikes – it pains me to write it. Do you even know what gerunds and infinitives are? Most people don’t and are none the worse for their ignorance. Now, I did enjoy the intellectual game, but let’s face it: who cares? Through what stretch of the imagination could the relative nouniness or verbiness of anything count? In what way might it conceivably matter? How on earth could anyone be bettered, uplifted, enlightened by this thesis? Yet I passed with flying colors, my thesis advisors and committee praising my innovative approach to analyzing gerunds and infinitives. Wow. An innovative approach to analyzing gerunds and infinitives. Now that’s what the world needs. My thesis was like taking a microscope to a very tiny corner of human knowledge and further dissecting that minuscule corner. The light shed on that little nook will never filter up to normal human beings, you and me. So I consider it a futile effort, and even then I knew it was. It is no wonder I escaped from academia as soon as I graduated, despite my professors’ entreaties to begin a PhD. I needed to reconnect with the real world, with real problems, and with real people.

In another passage, Barbery brilliantly picks apart the basic strategy of academics as they desperately try to ‘publish or perish’, often scratching out meager little corners in their field that could hardly be of wider interest just so they can publish something, anything (and the plethora of academic journals only adds to this syndrome), pad their résumés and thus earn tenure. Apparently this is universal, or at least rife in Europe as well, as Barbery states in the field of philosophy:

…if you want to make a career, take a marginal, exotic text that is relatively unexplored, abuse its literal meaning by ascribing to it an intention that the author himself had not been aware of…, distort that meaning to the point where it resembles an original thesis, [and] devote a year of your life to this unworthy little game…

I’ve been there, too. I remember my friends who were earning their Master’s in English dissecting a text to a molecular degree that the author was unlikely to have imagined in his or her wildest dreams. I, too, kept publishing after I started working, squeezing one micro-insight after another from well-worn, hackneyed material just to publish it and be able to list it on my résumé.

I was climbing the professional ladder then. At some point, I hopped off. I just lost interest. That’s someone else’s game, and I have no interest in playing it. Publishing when I actually have something to say is a worthy goal; publishing just to stay ahead of the game (or barely tread water, as the case may be) is a bore, a futile, self-serving end in itself. As Barbery, my new intellectual heroine, says, “What is the purpose of intelligence if it is not to serve others?”

I hope that as I start my new degree, a PhD in Anthropology, I can find a way to avoid trifling office politics and make a contribution that will enrich all of us. To serve others, as Barbery says. I hope I can avoid the perils, pitfalls, and politics of academia and instead find its rich vein, then mine it for my and the world’s edification. What a hopeless idealist, after all this time. Still, if you ever feel a pressing urge to explore nouniness and verbiness, you know who to ask. Good to know!

Rugged Individualism

April 13, 2011

Every country has its national myths, stories about itself that shape and define its identity. Catalans have the myth of seny, meaning wisdom or sensibleness, and rauxa, or impulsiveness. Most foreigners I know living in Catalonia would be hard-pressed to identify specifically wise or impulsive traits among the natives, but scratch the surface, really ask a Catalan about his or her national traits, and seny and rauxa are always mentioned.

We Americans have our own myth of rugged individualism. You know, the brave pioneer family – or individual – striking out on their own, into the wilderness, conquering the land (um, not to mention the people that were there before them… but that’s another issue). The individualist who thinks for himself doesn’t want government (Big Brother, that is) messing with his life. Our heroic icons: successful people who pulled themselves up by the bootstraps, the self-made (wo)man, the Marlboro man. Do your own thing. March to the beat of your own drummer. Our language is rife with words and images that express our exaltation of individualism, and we can thank Herbert Hoover for coining the term ‘rugged individualism’, as he put it, “those God-fearing men and women of honesty whose stamina and character and fearless assertion of rights led them to make their own way in life”. Yikes! Sounds like a scary, overly self-righteous super-race to me! Sounds tiring, too.

We contrast this to more collectivist cultures, ones that value the group and make decisions based on the community. We disparagingly refer to herd mentality, to following the pack, drawing on animal metaphors to show the inferiority of this kind of society. We view this as weakness, as a lack of moral, intellectual, and/or physical strength. We pity their weakness, spinelessness, lack of self-reliance compared to our super-evolved culture of advanced individualists, monoliths uniquely capable of weathering the storms of life on their own. I am a rock; I am an island. We write self-help literature to counter this social disease: “codependence” is a bad word, and anyone who is simply dependent deserves our pity, not to mention disdain.

Yet this myth is not only belied by the history of mankind; it is also belied by the history of America. Banding together has always been a survival strategy for humans; how else could we have outwitted all the other animals we competed, and essentially still compete, against? We are, after all, the naked ape – a pretty harmless, almost laughable, specimen compared to our mammal brethren. Think about the covered wagons of those pioneers. Rarely did a pioneer family strike out on their own, and if they did, they rarely survived. Instead, groups of pioneers travelled together, and when evening fell they drew their wagons into a circle to protect themselves against any external threats.  When they reached their destination, neighbors pitched in to help each other build houses. The pioneers relied on each other.

We all survive because we rely on each other. We form societies to lean on each other. Humans don’t live in isolation, except the occasional crazy – or spiritual – hermit, or perhaps the uniquely American phenomenon: the survivalist, individualism taken to the nth degree. Also the exception that proves the rule. While thinking for oneself is undoubtedly a virtue, why do Americans glorify individualism to such an extent? We are so afraid of being engulfed by the group that we make life harder for ourselves. Why do we see relying on each other as a sign of weakness instead of strength, not to mention simply a sign of our humanity, or our humanness? Why isn’t reliance viewed as a human need… as well as a wonderful opportunity to generously give the people we rely on the chance to grow by helping us? I suppose there are occasional freestanding people of genius who manage to achieve greatness without anyone’s help, but I dare you to name one.

I don’t advocate blind adherence to the group, mindlessly conforming to what some randomly-chosen ‘leader’ says we should do, listening to ignorant hype and believing it to be the truth. I believe in thinking for ourselves and informing ourselves about the world. But I also believe that there is strength in numbers, and that self-reliance is hugely overrated. Why is alienation such a uniquely American ailment? When asked to share their first impressions of Americans, my students from more collectivistic cultures say ‘lonely’. I defend Americans – we like to be alone, we choose to be alone, I tell them. And that’s not a total lie, yet there is some truth in the loneliness of Americans.

My students are also horrified by the idea of feeling pressured to move out of your parents’ house at age 18. Let’s face it, now that we’re older we know that an 18-year-old is a child. Few have the wherewithal to make wise choices. On top of it, if they are going to college they’re probably already in debt from student loans, so why dig them deeper in the hole? For what? The much-vaunted independence? Living in squalor to prove their strength? That’s cruel. I did it – we all did. We had to or risk shame at our immaturity. I got in debt for doing it. And I got myself into hairy situations – which fortunately worked out well – that I wasn’t mature enough to handle. The situation in Spain where adults live with their parents well into their thirties isn’t the idea either, but 18 is awfully young to throw our offspring into the cruel world. Independence? They’ll get there… we all do.

When the miners in Chile were trapped, the news reported the following: “Though some miners have requested them, personal music players with headphones and handheld videogames have been ruled out, because those tend to isolate people from one another.  With earphones, if they're listening to music and someone calls them, asking for help or to warn them about something, they're not available. What they need is to be together." (http://www.gmanews.tv/story/202026/chiles-trapped-miners-get-brad-pitt-not-nintendo) Togetherness equals survival. Standing alone is for the strong; togetherness is for the weak. But don’t we band together as a society precisely for the strong to help the weak, and for the whole to be stronger than its parts? Aren’t we all weak at some point in our lives? Or is that just a liberal view of what a society and community should be?

To my mind, collectivism is the very definition of society. We band together, work together, survive together, flourish together. We take care of each other, help each other, give to and take from each other. We are each other’s biggest responsibility. This is a sign of our higher consciousness and humanity. Viciousness, competition, and survival of the fittest are the law of the jungle. As humans, haven’t we risen above that?

The Red-Eye

April 3, 2011

Saint Louis, MO – Chicago, IL

6 a.m., March 11, 2011

We are bleary-eyed like everyone. Six a.m. Who can deal? But we line up, check our bags en route (a very circuitous route) to Spain. We board, settle in, look around. The plane is filled with mainly businessmen (some businesswomen). I note the men. Big, hearty Midwestern guys. At least six feet tall, bulges around the midriff. Dress shirts half-tucked in, half-untucked. Ties askew. Jackets rolled into balls and used as pillows for the duration of the flight or jammed into the overheads. Oblivious to their surroundings except to sleepily greet whoever is near them with a good-natured comment. Hair haphazardly cut and combed. Totally unaware that they might be making an impression, that anyone is looking at them. Tired, slightly sweaty already. Decent fellows (almost said “chaps”, as my British friends might).

Barcelona – Madrid, Spain

6 a.m., March 21, 2011

We are bleary-eyed like everyone. Six a.m. Who can deal? But we line up, check our bags en route (a very circuitous route) back to Illinois. We board, settle in, look around. The plane is filled with mainly businessmen (some businesswomen). I note the men. Trim, neat, stylish. Five-eight to six feet max. Well-ironed shirts (ironed by their wives or cleaning ladies, if the wives are lucky; if not, they’ll stay up ‘til one in the morning to make sure their husbands – and children – are well-pressed). Ties neat. Jackets carefully removed, folded lining-out, neatly stowed. Aware of the impression they’re making; perhaps a curt nod and “Buenos días/Bon dia” to the person next to them. Hair well-cut, neatly combed, sometimes slicked back, old-style, with “gomina”. Subtly looking around the cabin, noting who is there, who is worth noting, what impression they’re making. Tired, perhaps, but polished. Attractive, knowing men.

The American guy. He’s a good guy, a simple guy, a man’s man. Feminine side atrophied, if it ever existed. The Spanish guy. He’s clever, perhaps too clever by half, philosophical and therefore not at all simple, a woman’s man. Feminine side well developed, enough to wield when useful.

The other night I was out with two friends, Spanish and Ecuadoran women, married to Americans. They know all about Latin men, love them, but prefer to marry the decent American lug. Me? I know that decent American lug. I miss the witty, knowingly charming, polished Latin man, the one who knows what to say when. My friends say, “Yes, they sweet-talk you but behind your back who knows what they’re up to, while my American guy may lack in the graces but he’s solid and faithful.” So right. Damn… where’s my hybrid?!?