On Monday, August 5, 2002, at 01:26 PM, joanna bujes wrote:
> At 04:59 AM 08/05/2002 -0400, you wrote:
>> In my experience of academe over the 15 years I was in it, 20 if you
>> count
>> undergrad, few professors or grad students are what I would call
>> intellectuals. Most of them are technicians, the best of these are
>> good,
>> evem excellent, at a narrow craft. They have no interest, for the most
>> part
>> in a broader vision. They lack cultivation or humame learning. They
>> have no
>> books in their homes. They might as well be auto mechanics for all
>> their
>> education.
>
> You're absolutely right Justin. One of the reasons I left academia
> suprised even me: the complete lack of intellectual curiosity. There is
> more intellectual ferment among software engineers (where I now spend
> my working hours), then I found among the self-satisfied intellectual
> policemen at most of the campuses I taught.
i don't know. i didn't know that many self-satisfied intellectual policemen. ok, i knew a lot, but i didn't have to spend any time with any of them.
i feel way more intellectually (nevermind politically) isolated in the web world than i did in academics. i reckon it's a function of several environmental factors. there were many awful things about grad school, but one of them wasn't the political-intellectual community i felt i had challenging me all the time. of course, most of the people i spent time with weren't philosophers or religious studies geeks (like myself), but historians working in/on central and south america or in the american studies program. maybe that explains it . . . there certainly weren't that many marxist/activist medievalists or philosophers . . .
i agree, however, with the spirit of justin's critique--technicians. there are intellectuals and there are politically-engaged intellectuals, but they are the exception, no doubt.
j