I was just thinking back on a number of conversations I’d had over the last twenty years with friends and acquaintances who had attended university.
Never having been to university myself, I only really know the academic culture by proxy; through professors I know socially, students, and friends who have attended. In reflecting upon several of these relationships, something coalesced today which I had only vaguely been aware of but hadn't gotten around to properly naming...
While talking about a given topic, let’s say anthropology, (the hard sciences create an entirely different kind of effect, and generally happier people), I’d say something relating to human behavior which seemed obvious to me, and the person in question would get really squirrely. I'd find myself quite without warning in the midst of a peculiar, heated debate which seemed to spread in multiple directions at once.
I’d be taken aback and finally say, “Alright.., so you're telling me I'm wrong about that idea. How about ___?” Nope, wrong again. I’d soon realize that there were no answers which would be acceptable. Eventually, I’d just ask, “Well then, what is the right answer?” -And this would create the most evasive behavior of all. These folks had essentially been taught that every statement was false, nobody knew anything, and that the very act of seeking truth was punishable by… something scary. But even getting them to admit this resulted in evasion. -It seemed as though being cornered into making any kind of statement at all was akin to asking to be attacked.
That squirrely, hunted expression in their faces and body language reminded me of the look an abused dog might give you, who knows what a rolled up newspaper means. These university grads, even much later on in life, looked like that. I've run into this a few times over the years and always find it really weird.
I put together an informal theory which I didn’t know applies or not to every school, but in general states that some of these people I’m meeting have been put through a program where they were never allowed to win; where they were shown all the available answers tried over the years by people much smarter than themselves, and then taught why every last one of those answers was wrong. They were taught to mistrust reality itself, and along with it any hope of self-confidence.
Being from the outside and self-taught, having not been worn down by daily doses of this psychological regime, I find that am often able to point out some of the logical holes in the examples offered to me, and outright doubt the veracity of many of the provided axioms. Eventually, I came bit by bit to realize that Universities aren’t nearly as impressive as they seem from the outside, but instead offer a strange mix created in part from massive amounts of data, a host of very powerful minds, but all of it creating a massive quagmire serving too much at once to absorb and question effectively; a punishing and toxic learning environment leading to fundamentally broken minds who wind up not knowing if they are coming or going. -This is not true for everybody, but certainly for some.
I feel like I dodged a bullet in not attending. (Not to mention a financial debt load).
I’ve lost friends over this stuff. -Ostensibly due to other issues, but in truth over a basic incompatibility of frequencies. I move through the world as many here probably do, with the base understanding that there is such a thing as Objective Reality, (reading through the material in these forums really cements this for me; much of my language and word use has been shaped by the work done here over the last twenty years). This colors everything I do and think and say, and that very mode of existence serves as a friction or ‘trigger’ for the programming installed in others by these university systems.
It only strikes me now that this is post-modernism in its raw form.
-And it’s not, I think, the result of any one particular subject or department, (though the humanities are certainly thicker with it than the sciences). It seems to be baked into the “Defend Your Thesis” philosophy upon which the entirety of academia, and indeed, the legal system are built.
We are told that Truth is difficult to know, almost impossible, and it is right and proper that you should be attacked if you try to poke a flag in any bit of land and have the audacity to call it Real.
I’ve always held for years, a nameless vague dislike for this system of debate encouraged at every level of society. Placing the burden of proof on the person making a claim. It just annoys and aggravates at every turn, from the endlessly re-told TV court room drama, to where it is played out in any given forum on the internet. It's a system which resists all knowledge growth, encourages sneaky, disingenuous behavior among the lesser developed, (the use of crappy arguments and outright evasion, “I will not read your link or suggested book because of _____ reason, (but really, because I am terrified that it might actually prove your point)” -because to lose an argument is to lose your identity. It is to feel pain! The combative system of debate rewards the fortifying of ignorance at all cost.
I think post modernism might have very deep roots indeed!
(My preferred mode of collective learning is one where everybody is trying to build an idea together, where people don’t identify necessarily with the data, don’t feel the need to defend or to attack, but simply want to bring their various perspectives together into something which makes sense, creating a viable structure which works from all angles, to help resolve the objective reality of a situation as best they are able. This does not mean that false ideas aren't identified and replaced when discovered to be faulty, it’s not about respecting feelings and rewarding everybody equally for participation, not at all! But the work is done without a bloody king of the hill kind of mentality.)
Something where rolled-up-newspaper-expression isn’t an unfortunate effect of simply trying to learn.
