Have you ever wondered why so many of those people with the big academic degrees from the big elite Universities seem to be so out of touch with reality? I know the first thing I thought of was they spend so much time with books and other intellectuals that they forget what the rest of the world is like, assuming they ever had a clue about it in the first place. That was my first guess. Then I went to college.
My guess, though conveniently offered to me by Hollywood, was largely off the mark. The real reason was something I wouldn't completely discover until I had spent ten years of my own in academia and then a few more in the private sector. And no, there was no great capitalist guru who took me under his wing to point it all out to me. I'm not trying to pass off a sub-plot from Atlas Shrugged or an antidote from the writings of Napoleon Hill as part of my life.
I finally found the answer after long years of analyzing studies, papers, and books in various fields. Psychology, historiography, education, geology, and political science just to name a few. Through my own analysis I gathered a lot of pieces, enough to support my skepticism of modern academia's over-all credibility. Most striking in my experience was the dominance of Marx's dialectic amongst the world's historians, that in spite of Marx having been a minor scholar at best and his theories badly pocked with logic holes.
Then I found a book that has really seemed to put it all together for me. Indeed, it has put together more than just what's wrong in modern academic circles, but what's wrong in much of the world's public rationale today. I cannot recommend this book too much.
It's 10 Books That Screwed Up the World by Benjamin Wiker. In it he discusses not just ten books but fifteen. It's sub-title is And 5 Others That Didn't Help. A key base assumption of his book is that ideas matter and make a difference, some bad and some good. He strongly recommends reading each of the books he discusses for yourself so you can fully appreciate what's wrong with them. I strongly recommend at least reading his book. All of the others you may not have time for.
As much as I love writing critiques, I wont critique it for you. Instead I must insist on asking you to read it for yourself.
But I wont just leave you with that recommendation. I will actually give you my personal summary of what's wrong with much of modern academia. Note that reading Wiker's book will give you a much more complete picture, and many of his conclusions are not summed up here.
In as few words as possible and at the risk of over-simplifying, here it goes. They want power over others and they measure the amount of power they have over others by how much they see the world change to match their own views about how things should be. Thus they are more motivated by their agendas of "progress" than they are by the pursuit and dissemination of knowledge, or of being accountable to sound logic and reason.
Another way to put it is they have a lust for power. The way many of them would put it is they want progress. So beware what others call progress.
My guess, though conveniently offered to me by Hollywood, was largely off the mark. The real reason was something I wouldn't completely discover until I had spent ten years of my own in academia and then a few more in the private sector. And no, there was no great capitalist guru who took me under his wing to point it all out to me. I'm not trying to pass off a sub-plot from Atlas Shrugged or an antidote from the writings of Napoleon Hill as part of my life.
I finally found the answer after long years of analyzing studies, papers, and books in various fields. Psychology, historiography, education, geology, and political science just to name a few. Through my own analysis I gathered a lot of pieces, enough to support my skepticism of modern academia's over-all credibility. Most striking in my experience was the dominance of Marx's dialectic amongst the world's historians, that in spite of Marx having been a minor scholar at best and his theories badly pocked with logic holes.
Then I found a book that has really seemed to put it all together for me. Indeed, it has put together more than just what's wrong in modern academic circles, but what's wrong in much of the world's public rationale today. I cannot recommend this book too much.
It's 10 Books That Screwed Up the World by Benjamin Wiker. In it he discusses not just ten books but fifteen. It's sub-title is And 5 Others That Didn't Help. A key base assumption of his book is that ideas matter and make a difference, some bad and some good. He strongly recommends reading each of the books he discusses for yourself so you can fully appreciate what's wrong with them. I strongly recommend at least reading his book. All of the others you may not have time for.
As much as I love writing critiques, I wont critique it for you. Instead I must insist on asking you to read it for yourself.
But I wont just leave you with that recommendation. I will actually give you my personal summary of what's wrong with much of modern academia. Note that reading Wiker's book will give you a much more complete picture, and many of his conclusions are not summed up here.
In as few words as possible and at the risk of over-simplifying, here it goes. They want power over others and they measure the amount of power they have over others by how much they see the world change to match their own views about how things should be. Thus they are more motivated by their agendas of "progress" than they are by the pursuit and dissemination of knowledge, or of being accountable to sound logic and reason.
Another way to put it is they have a lust for power. The way many of them would put it is they want progress. So beware what others call progress.
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