I think I have a more negative view of academics, personally, because of my lack of ability to fully get along well with other people and cooperate, generally, and play any degree of politics.
This does not mean that academia is not highly important to preserving knowledge and educating people at all levels. Academia gives students the chance to flourish and spend time, in isolation, contemplating about and learning about some of the most interesting aspects of reality. I wrote this page, however, to deflate some aspects of academics and inflate those who seek knowledge apart from institutions- as fraught with difficulty and isolation as this latter form of education can be.
Often people are raised in this or that religion and then become "educated" in academia. They leave the religious paradigm for the academic paradigm. While I think academics is more enlightening than most religious education, one must realize the subtle, coersive nature of all human institutions. Where there are peers and money and ego, there will be a muddying of truth and any attempts toward objectivity.
But a University or College is a better place to learn than most others. One must simply be aware of the capacity for money and acceptance to push everyone towards that particular paradigm that is common to most academics.
Academics, in general, can be a horribly double-edged sword. On the one hand, we have the most concentrated grouping of "educated" thinkers. On the other hand, we have an institution of people who can not simply say or do anything they want without fear of reprocussion or ridicule from governments, departments, students, or deans. And, most importantly, when everyone is "educated" within a single academic paradigm, certain features of reality can be ignored or twisted.
And, if you think academics are free to say and believe anything they want, then you simply have not seen the exemplary cases of professors being removed for supporting 911 truth. Even if it is true, the powers that be don't want it taught out in the open. So, then, at least historical truth and historical perspective begins to skew towards that of the rulers as opposed to the oppressed.
Universities can be a buttress against tyranny and injustice or, as we can see throughout history, they can be the very incubators for fascism and slavery.
Certain ways of thinking or exploring reality are seen as nonsense, in general, in academics. Certain ways of seeing life and existence are not compatible within some academic circles. It is often more easy, in academic study, to attribute anomalies to human frailty and hallucination than to investigate such deviations from this or that theory or paradigmatic worldview.
Academia often produces papers and views that are far removed from everyday life and language- so much so that it sometimes borders on, or rests within, complete irrellevance- sometimes to the point of being irrellevant even to others within a particular field.
How much work in one field is being read by others in the same field? Or, is it more likely that most are simply writing and producing with minimal attention to the work and writing of others? Is there even enough time to both produce and absorb all the ultra-specific work being done in one sub-sub-field of a particular department?
If you do not believe in climate change, for example, are you not burned at the academic stake? (I'm not denying climate change here, by the way). If you talk about aliens, are you not an academic pariah? If you think consciousness can change reality, are you not a leper? If you talk about government conspiracies, are you not out of bounds?
If you cross into several disciplines, such as with Omega Point Theory of Frank Tipler, are you not then ostracized from all sides? Interdisciplinary study is looked down upon yet it seems the only way to get a clear picture of reality.
On the one hand, we have thinking in isolation and on the other we have petty human politics. On the one hand we have objectivity, on the other, we have money. Academics are, in many universities, employees of governments. Governments have agendas and academics who defy these agendas are often ostracized.
At the Ivy Leauge institutions, for example, in the United States, one finds more emphasis on the opinions and attitudes of rulers and the rich. It is to be expected, but, when our "best" universities are propaganda machines for the New World Order, we have a problem.
Howard Zinn's "A People's History of America" was shunned by the Harvard historical review, yet it is one of the most widely read and important books ever written about American history. In the highest academic institutions, we have the highest arrogance and lack of concern for humans in general.
At the most prestigious universities in America, we are taught the benefits of greed and amoral money making and power grabbing. Preparing rulers and captains of industry, these institutions are cradles for war and social injustice.
Academics is the institution that, supposedly, pursues and maintains knowledge. In reality, academics are fingers of government propaganda and class structure without, typically, being aware of it. Academics have a pay scale and a reputation to uphold much moreso than any investigation or imparting of truth.
Many gods and experts in academics, like Noam Chomsky and Carl Sagan, are morons who, in some cases, have actually been paid by government intelligence agents for their "opinions" that trickle down the pyramid of belief in colleges and universities. "My god! Noam Chomsky said it? It must be the spoken word of god!". Ridicule of ideas outside a particular paradigm is a great tool in academics as well as in fascist states. I must say, in retrospect, as of late 2010, that Noam Chomsky is beginning to understand and convey the truth of the 911 situation.
Politics, herd mentality, and the problems of keeping a job and ridicule keep a lot of truth and openness outside of academics. Ask any academic what they think of the New World Order, our H.A.A.R.P. weapon, or the existence of aliens, and you will soon find out why academics is really no great place for wisdom and truth. It's a great place to work, because you really don't have to do much of anything once you get tenure. And, it's a great place to get locked into an opinion and argue it to death, forever.
Great minds are independent and are always in danger of losing whatever job they have. Speaking truth will always get you fired. And, dealing with departments full of idiots who think themselves genius would be a great challenge to any free thinker.
The greatest problem in academics are the careers and jobs that are at stake when an academic says or does something that is against the grain of academia in general, their departments, or their governments that fund them. Academics are as free as they are allowed to be and I hope that policies of tolerance for ideas continues worldwide.
One of the greatest problems I have found as an independent, non-academic researcher who was briefly academically trained, is the limited academic paradigm in terms of the range of possibilities in our universe from science to alien life to political conspiracies.
All of these things are essentially off-limits and the government and main stream media take is generally the same range of possibilities found in academic circles. Questioning scientific principles or being interested in the tens of thousands of instances of the alien abduction phenomenon or even in the genetic remains of potential alien beings, is seen as outside the realm of proper study.
However, I would contest that no other phenomenon constitute such interesting possibilities for human kind. And, given the false-flag demolition of the world trade center complex, one would think more academic research would be continuing in that arena. However, academics are self-censoring out of fears concerning reputation and position.
The academic world, though a wonderful foundation for rigorous thinking, can be a repressing and stifling environment for the truly open mind. Academic study, in a sense, erects blinders on researchers without even knowing they have them. In many European nations, being an academic is basically being a government employee and, as such, they are not permitted, largely, to research that which the government does not want researched.
If, for example, climate change is simply a ploy for power and control of world economies, then academics have been led directly as the leaders of this ploy. Not that it may not be a very real phenomenon because humans certainly are altering the Earth and its water, air, and land.
It is good that all knowledge is becoming available to all people and that the academic monopoly of knowledge has all but crumbled. Epistemological monopolies are bad for everyone and I applaud MIT for its initiative to make all courses and materials available for the world. All people should have free access to all knowledge.
There are those who are happy that they are the gatekeepers and privileged few guardians of varieties of knowledge and who believe that the limits of human knowledge are only attainable by the select intelligences that pass through their halls. This is pure garbage because everything humans have ever discovered is demonstrable to even the dullest mind if the teachers themselves were not such failures at conveying knowledge.
Nothing humans have done is all that complicated except in the mind of the complicators who hold themselves so high. True genius lies in the imparting and explanation of knowledge, not in its obfuscation and hoarding. I have seen small books about particularly obscure topics in academia that cost more than a hundred dollars.
I expect that the pages are lined with gold and silver and that semi-precious jewels should be found in the bindings. I am aware of, but unfazed by, concerning this issue, the problems of publishing. When knowledge costs much more than the paper it is printed on and reasonable profit margins, then there is a degree of classism at work.
Another one the most important problems in academics today is the lack of inter-disciplinary understanding. I earned a degree in Cognitive Studies, which is an inter-disciplinary degree that combines computer science, artificial intelligence, psychology, nuerobiology, linguistics, and philosophy of mind. In many of these areas, professors were largely unaware of the research being done in other domains.
But, all of these areas of study overlap and are at least complimentary and at most crucially important.
A computer scientist who is attempting to model the complexity of the human mind may be unaware of the centuries of work done in the philosophy of mind.
A neuroscientist may be unaware of the problems inherent in inductive reasoning and these problems may shed light on complex issues related to neurological mapping.
There is a degree of arrognace on the part of each academic department about the superiority and importance of any particular area of study.
Perhaps if there were not departments but simply professors with areas of interest, this could be helped. All areas of human study are worthwhile and no departments should snuff out others.
The move towards pragmatic study in terms of the economic viability of a particular area of study is eroding the humanities.
The monetary concentration on business, engineering, and science is understandable but detrimental to a well-rounded and interdisciplinary education. The more we can remove concerns about money from the academic experience, the better. |
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That being said, in places like America, the importance of money to a comfortable existence can not be overstated. People who do not have money should be wary of spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on an education that does not necessarily translate into employment. The problems of repaying student loans and making money with a humanities degree is daunting in places like the United States, where education can be prohibitively expensive.
My experience in academics was largely positive and enlightening. However, the possibility of alien visitation is off limits to an academic's study. It is blasphemy. The possibility that consciousness may be more complex than simple mind-brain identity is blasphemy. These, amongst many other off-limits topics, makes academia its own form of religion. Not necessarily scientific, but institutionalized within governmental and propagandized limits.
