Was talking with friend a couple weeks ago and the topic of his Master’s thesis came up. He admitted that he strongly disliked the contemporary insistence on using so-called “academic” or “dissertation language”, but there’s no way to get around it if you wish to advance in academia because its become the norm. I laughed because of how true it is, but also how revealing it is of the emptiness of modern academia.
I
I have a particular dislike of dissertation language.
I hate how simple (often even reasonable) ideas get wrapped up in unnecessarily complex verbiage just to make them sound astonishing or profound.
Hell, I just hate it on principle. I hate how the same people who talk about “privilege” use a writing style that is, itself, accessible to and performed by only an extremely privileged few. Much of it is self-centred drivel, and pretending it has anything to do with uplifting the poor/oppressed is Grade-A unadulterated hypocrisy.
Here’s a thesis: At any given time, no less than 99% of internet-driven SJW political signalling is really performative morality.
The internet is neither good nor bad, it is just a tool. A vehicle if you will. Tools can be used for noble or selfish intentions. But Marshall McLuhan was both correct and more prescient than he will ever know when he said, “The medium is the message.” The internet has enabled – accelerated, even – the proliferation of this obfuscatory bullshit in academia, with disastrous results for society.
Wow, isn’t that a bit of a stretch. Let me explain.
When you are in the context of a real flesh and blood human being in your own community whom you’ll have to interact with repeatedly over the course of years, you’ll try to be faithful, honest, dutiful, loyal, dependable, etc.. Most likely you’ll value those same traits in others.
Put us on the internet, and we have no need for any of that.
We’re not going to cooperate in any meaningful, real-world way with a bunch of people on the internet. I know this, you know this. It is no big secret. A simple glance at forums or social media or Youtube comment sections and you will see pure human id unfiltered by conventions of morality or even basic politeness. There are no penalties for bad behavior, while there is only a world to gain from hypernormal displays of ideology, virtue, ability, or what have you.
Morality on the internet thus becomes performative, a show you put on for a third party audience. The main thing is no longer to be dependable, or to have your actions consistently aligned with the words you say. The main thing becomes a race to have the best-sounding opinions. Status isn’t built on your long-term reputation but on your ability to prove that other people are less moral, or less woke, than you.
II
In the hands of such types, language becomes less of a system of symbols pointing to Reality, and instead becomes a set of tokens in a game of Power. This is nothing to fear, if the ancients are to be believed. Everything in human society is fundamentally germinated from the seed of the Will to Power. The key is to sublimate and conceal the game. Problems arise when the game becomes too obvious – too overt. Once language becomes an overt game, it leads to an abundance of Abstraction. Rivers cease to be rivers, mountains cease to be mountains, and nothing really means what it should say.
For instance, isn't it interesting how our children are…
forced into schools,
given electronic toys,
kept inside,
told to eat junk food and soy,
value only what is manufactured, mass produced, plastic and sterilized,
told to “learn to code”,
… yet are supposed to love nature and fight climate change?
Result is that kids love ‘Nature’ as an abstract concept, not as the real living thing. This is compounded by pop culture resulting in a Disneyfied vision of reality, and contempt for people who actually deal with nature – such as farmers and hunters.
This explains why veganism doesn’t produce the cognitive dissonance in them, as it should any sane and rational person. We have produced a couple of generations of people who love nature in theory, but don’t want to be in it. Don’t know HOW to be in it.
Hang on, what’s going on here? Are the children not, as some are fond to point out, the most educated generation in the history of the world? Their level of understanding should meet, if not surpass, that of every man and woman who has lived and died on this soil.
True understanding isn't abstract, it's existential.
You can intellectualize about something until your brain falls out, but. Real progress begins when you set out to EXPERIENCE what's being learned.
Modern education is based on pure theory and language games but has been stripped of everything that could have made it existential, therefore it creates no understanding.
The teachers have no true of understanding of the half of what they purport to teach. They have no skin in the game.
The kids have no skin in the game. They know the system will find a way to graduate them anyway, so divorced are they from the consequences of their choices.
Therefore, education is ineffectual. And the fruits have not fallen far from this ill-gotten tree at all.
III
Why are smart people that good at ignoring the truth?
Because they’re good at finding ways to accomplish what they want to do. And, like most human beings whose survival is no longer something they must personally work to ensure, what they want most to do is delude themselves.
The vast majority of people only want to maintain contact with Reality just enough in order to survive it. If that’s guaranteed, then there’s no need NOT to be crazy.
Not a fan of NN Taleb as he is pompous and lately a complete sellout. But the world should thank him for popularizing skin in the game.
Having no skin in the game corrupts. Smart people tend to go into fields that provide good insulation between their skins and the game. Truth claims stop being immediately relevant and become tools of social signalling in those kinds of environments.
Previously, people could signal via inconsequential pieties about unfalsifiable things. Now the doctrines involve very consequential things. Hence craziness.
We are presently seeing – and will continue to see in the coming weeks and months – the full ramifications of allowing dissertation language to metamorphose into this … creature. Open your eyes. Open your ears. Notice how much abstraction there is in the language people use around you. Notice the growing gap between signs and the things they purport to represent. Perhaps you will even tell yourself to use only plain speech and stop trying to sound clever for the sake of it. That would be a good start.
And above all,
Stay Solar.
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