I am over-educated. Way too many higher degrees. Furthermore there is no question in my mind but that PhD training makes you over/un-qualified for most jobs, not just as a matter of the way other people look at you, but as a matter of the way you think and approach things. So maybe miseducated is a better term. I'm not sure that there's any such thing as being too learned or too smart -- although a court in I think CT through out suit by a would-be police officer who claimed that he was denied a job because he was too smart; the court said that wasn't a protected class -- but overeducated, definitely.
I too share annoyance at the pseudo-populism that sneers at the ideas of pointy-headed long-haired innalectuals in favor of the plain common sense of the People. Of course I have some self-interest on the table, being among the former despite a short haircut, but there's no virtue in general in ideas being ideas of the poor and uneducated unless you can link those ideas with interests that poor and uneducated have in knowing the truth about something. In the case of religion it's quite the opposite; it's manifest, as Chuck noted long ago, that the grip of religion on the "masses" is ideological.
But note that Chick never made any practice of the sort of religion-bashing characteristic of the high enlightenment (Voltaire, Diderot. D'Holbach, Sade, Paine, etc.), much fun as that was, and revived lately by Hitchens, Dawkins, and Harris. It's not that he thought religion wasn't full of fresh male cow patties any less than they, he just didn't see the point in trying to refute it as opposed to abolishing the conditions that give it a grip.
Now of course we are a lot further away from that than he thought he was, so maybe that makes a difference. But generally speaking I think you have to consider the advantage of making fun of religion versus the cost in any particular situation.
--- bitch at pulpculture.org wrote:
> At 04:51 PM 9/28/2007, Doug Henwood wrote:
>
> >Besides, this pseudo-populism annoys me. In this
> society, there are
> >advantages to being rich. Is atheism, or freedom
> from superstition,
> >one of those advantages? And what's wrong with
> being educated? It
> >also annoys me when highly educated people doubt
> the value of
> >education. I just don't believe them. It's a faux
> populist pose.
>
> i forgot to ask: what on earth could "over-educated"
> mean anyway? is there
> some line drawn as to what just the right
> (goldilocks) education is so that
> you aren't under- or over- educated? is there a
> commission somewhere that
> determines this?
>
>
> thought you'd like this quote from a Greek working
> woman who participated
> in some of the earlier women's liberation movement.
> (Rita Mae Browns (Of
> RubyFruit Jungle fame, also wrote something along
> these lines, too, when
> explaining why the separatist commune she was in
> didn't work out. the
> presumptuousness of the leadership, meant the
> creation of rules about
> clothing and material goods that women from blue
> collar working class
> backgrounds couldn't fathom or abide by. That is,
> when peole from white
> collar backgrounds thought they were doing things in
> line with the way the
> "ordinary people" did and why, they were a little
> confused:
>
> "Both Alix Kates Shulman and Cindy Cisler suggest
> that in emphasizing
> consciousness-raising as the foundation of theory,
> Sarachild and others
> were trying to counter the recondite rhetoric of the
> left with "straight
> talk and simple language." Sarachild was undoubtedly
> influenced by Mao, who
> maintained that education did not necessarily bring
> one closer to the truth
> and who cautioned revolutionaries against reading
> too many books, even
> those with a Marxist orientation. Her thinking also
> bears the obvious
> influence of SNCC organizers who, like Mao,
> developed a great respect,
> something bordering on reverence, for the wisdom of
> "the people" a
> respect embodied in the SNCC slogan "let the people
> decide." However, some
> of "the people" in NYRW the non-Movement women
> with little or no college
> education thought it elitist of Sarachild, who
> after all had been
> schooled at Harvard, to counsel them against reading
> theory. For example,
> Irene Peslikis, a working-class Greek woman, shared
> Sarachild's commitment
> to consciousness-raising but also wanted to
> understand Marxist theory, and
> she resented Sarachild's advice that she avoid
> reading it. "I didn't want
> to be ignorant. I wasn't afraid that [reading Maxist
> theory] was going to
> destroy my authenticity." "
>
>
> Bitch | Lab
> http://blog.pulpculture.org (NSFW)
>
> ___________________________________
>
http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
>
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