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.