Studied, Yet Stupid
Sunday, Steven Hayward published a piece about some of the sillier output from academia of late. The relationship between pregnancy and higher mathematics, an abstract basically about a specific form of Latin music that simply makes no sense, and a course with minimal syllabus that mostly seems like a professorial gripe session, all make an appearance. But then people have been making fun of what passes for academic study for decades. The difference between then and now is that now the silliness seems more corrosive somehow.
Which brings me to Arthur Brooks introducing a happiness column in The Free Press. Brooks has been deeply academic in his pursuit of happiness. I am familiar with Brooks’ work, but not deeply read as what I do know seems rather intuitive to me. Further I am quite spiritual in my approach to happiness – my faith leads where I need to be. But in his column Brooks notes something rather remarkable:
In the late 20th century, my mentor and friend, Martin Seligman of the University of Pennsylvania, noticed that almost all studies in his field of psychology focused on problems and pathologies. There were virtually no studies focused on people who were generally fine but wanted to be better. Seligman believed this was a huge oversight, but also an opportunity. It led him to champion the discipline of positive psychology, based on the hypothesis that an absence of negativity does not imply the presence of positivity. Psychologists, he argued, should develop tools and interventions not only to lower unhappiness, but to raise happiness as well.
That speak volumes. Academic work has narrowed from study to problem-solving and they are very different things. Why else would psychology end up focusing on pathologies instead of the workings of the human mind? All this stuff lead me to the catalog of my alma mater and I noted with no small amount of interest that in my old major there are now course like “Chemistry and Society,” as if the pursuit of understanding matter and its interactions were not sufficiently relevant or interesting.
And then I reflected on our politics and how very deeply personal they have become. Our politics are no longer issue driven, they are passion driven. It is not about searching what is best, but demanding what is best for me – and how I feel. No longer do people oppose a politician because they disagree with his or her policies, rather they simply find the individual distasteful and decide that all which flows from the individual is therefore tainted in some fashion.
People have always been subjective. But what we see here is a feedback loop. The primary goal of academia used to be to learn objectivity. That’s what studying something, anything, is all about – setting aside your biases and personal interests and observing the thing of itself to learn how it works. But no more, now the academia wraps up the personal and biased in a big-word package and calls it “learned.” And that feeds back into the general culture – and most importantly into government. Movement between academia and government is quite fluid.
If you want an explanation for the lunacy that currently is our society, you need look no further than the death of objectivity. The academy, in pursuit of the almighty dollar, has made objectivity secondary since subjectivity can register more students and generate more tuition. Add to that the idea that everyone should be university educated, which is simply nonsense.
Come to think of it, people really hate Trump because he is about as far from academic as you can get – smart, but not academic. Could it be the tide is turning?
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