Jack Kerwick in Academia and the Spirit of Fear not only hits the nail on the head, he pounds it to the center of the earth:
“Academia, perhaps second only to Hollywood, remains the largest bastion of mental conformity in the Western world.”
Of course, we all knew that. What’s interesting is his assessment of the cause:
“What accounts for the tragic but undeniable fact that the average academic is a herd animal, I contend, is that he suffers from want of courage, the daring to think. Academics are possessed by what my martial arts instructor, retired USMC Lieutenant-Colonel and founder of Warrior Flow, Al Ridenhour, refers to as a ‘Spirit of Fear.’
This painfully conspicuous lack of fortitude, this Spirit of Fear, I further submit, deprives the academic of knowing the joys of thinking and learning and, thus, the motive to cultivate the courage to think in the first place.”
Hat tip: Maggie’s Farm.
“Climate of Fear”? There’s a saying for that, about life in academia, “the politics are so brutal because the stakes are so small”. They don’t lose much if they lose the job, but what they have is better than working for a living.
“the politics are so brutal because the stakes are so small”
I’ve heard that phrase before and it’s apt.
I suspect “won’t lose much if they lose a job” is something most easily said for folks who have real world skills and real world experience (i.e. not an academic). Nobody wants to lose a job but you and I might be more resilient than a college “educator”. Heck, even a burger flipper at Wendy’s knows they can get a gig at Pizza Hut. Most of us in a (real) modern career might have several job moves (especially at first) and accumulate ever more skills with time. A professor of grievance-ology has virtually no job prospects but the one they’re already occupying. I’m not sure experience at one University makes them more hireable at a different location? Or does it mean you’re from the “enemy” campus? Thus, the place where they rooted in as an adjunct (barely paid) professor is carefully maintained for their safety. They cannot survive the world at large.
I think that messes with one’s ego. Imagine the insecurity that comes from being a barnacle. How paranoid do you get making upper middle class money knowing you’re otherwise utterly unemployable? A Faustian bargain!
The punchline is this: working for a living ‘aint that bad. Sometimes it sucks but it’s not tragic. I think folks who haven’t done it fear it more than they should.
I’ve been saying it for years now; “Fear didn’t build this country, but it sure as hell will destroy it!”
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