Academic Conformism is the road to "1984."

The world is filled with conformism and groupthink.  Most people do not wish to think for themselves.  Thinking for oneself is dangerous, requires effort and often leads to rejection by the herd of one's peers.

The profession of arms, the intelligence business, the civil service bureaucracy, the wondrous world of groups like the League of Women Voters, Rotary Club as well as the empire of the thinktanks are all rotten with this sickness, an illness which leads inevitably to stereotyped and unrealistic thinking, thinking that does not reflect reality.

The worst locus of this mentally crippling phenomenon is the world of the academics.  I have served on a number of boards that awarded Ph.D  and post doctoral grants.  I was on the Fulbright Fellowship federal board.  I was on the HF Guggenheim program and executive  boards for a long time.  Those are two examples of my exposure to the individual and collective academic minds.

As a class of people I find them unimpressive. The credentialing exercise in acquiring a doctorate is basically a nepotistic process of sucking up to elders and a crutch for ego support as well as an entrance ticket for various hierarchies, among them the world of the academy. The process of degree acquisition itself requires sponsorship by esteemed academics who recommend candidates who do not stray very far from the corpus of known work in whichever narrow field is involved.   The endorsements from RESPECTED  academics are often decisive in the award of grants.

This process is continued throughout a career in academic research.  PEER REVIEW is the sine qua non for acceptance of a "paper," invitation to career making conferences, or to the Holy of Holies, TENURE.

This life experience  forms and creates CONFORMISTS, people who instinctively boot-lick their fellows in a search for the "Good Doggy" moments that make up their lives.  These people are for sale.  Their price may not be money, but they are still for sale.  They want to be accepted as members of their group.  Dissent leads to expulsion or effective rejection from the group. 

This mentality renders doubtful any assertion that a large group of academics supports any stated conclusion.  As a species academics will say or do anything to be included in their caste.

This makes them inherently dangerous.  They will support any party or parties, of any political inclination if that  group has the money, and the potential or actual power to maintain the academics as a tribe.  pl

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conformity

Comments

[Paul Robinson]

All I can say is that I have never in 20 years in academia felt the slightest pressure from other academics to bend my research or writing to fit their will. Pressure to conform has, however, come from outside the university - my one experience writing a report for a think tank did not end well. On the whole, in my own field of study, I find academics much more reasonable, nuanced, and willing to discuss and consider alternatives, than politicians, journalists, and think tank types. Of course, that is just one person's experience, and I wouldn't generalize from it, any more than you should from yours. But there it is.

[Vegetius]

Remember, Weinstein was fine with the anti-white, anti-western, anti-Christian agenda at Evergreen until it inconvenienced him. Then he learned to his shock that pulling his J-card would not give him a pass. At which point the pathetic attempt at gatekeeping called the "intellectual dark web" was declared.

Taleb and Weinstein have had an interesting back-and-forth on twitter lately over the latter's statement:

"We are going to have to figure out how to govern the Earth. That requires us to agree on values, ground rules and assumptions. I don’t care about private faith. I care that all populations maintain compatibility with a common belief system that prioritizes no one’s sacred book."

The test for whether Weinstein is lying or not is simple: will he support a global ban on infant genital mutilation?

[J]

It looks like Soylent Green is a not too far off possibility. Washington State has thrown out the dignity of the human death and subsequent corpse with their Washington State's bath water. They'll be composting dead human beings like they would compost rotting food or rotting garbage. With burial or cremation, there is some dignity given to the life of the individual who life has passed, whereas with composting, they'll be throwing the human corpse with its decaying fluids and all into basically a sewage pit to rot. With them composting human dead like a rotting cabbage, basic human dignity will have been cast into the trash heap. The Elites are now coming out in the open and calling for human cannibalism, and there could be legislation enacted like what Washington State did with human composting, legislation to make human cannibalism a reality. And a step further is turning the human corpse into a palatable food item, which is what Soylent Green was in the movie. The humanity of that movie thought they were eating vegetable crackers, unbeknownst to them they were eating their next of kin, or their neighbor down the street. In the movie, garbage trucks gathered up the dead corpses like they were cord-wood, and took them to a processing station, much like what the human composting will have -- processing stations.

Remember that Orwell's 1984 was poo poo'd as never happening just a few short years ago. And the 1973 movie Soylent Green was poo poo'd as science fiction when it was released.

World’s First Human Composting Facility is Coming to Seattle in 2021

https://themindunleashed.com/2019/12/human-composting-facility-seattle-2021.html

[fredw]

Academics make easy targets for this crew, but, as noted above, they they are far from unique in their tribal instincts. The thing that appalled me most after my Vietnam experience (apart from the fact that William Calley's entire chain of command did not go to prison) was the discovery of how many people had figured out that our cause was all but unwinnable and how little influence that discovery had. When the preparatory simulation exercises showed us consistently losing, the pentagon stopped the war gaming. Etc. all the way through the war. In fact even the catastrophe they suffered in Tet '68 did not shift the balance in our favor.

John Maynard Keynes made the academics' ultimate response to the notion that people in more "practical" pursuits are more realistic: "Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually slaves of some defunct economist.”

And no, Keynes was not that much an advocate for academics either: ” Education: the inculcation of the incomprehensible into the indifferent by the incompetent.”

[Fred]

Paul,

" being a professor gives one the security"

Sounds like you got yours are sure don't want to lose it.

[Serge]

This conformism is not only limited to the humanities, it has crept insidiously into the physical and natural sciences. Pharmaceutical companies can now depend on an endless supply of conformist Scientists who will advocate for the drugging up of children in order to treat imaginary first world diseases.

[PeterVE]

Yesterday, we had a guest Minister at my Unitarian church (I can feel the eye rolls from the commentariat already....). She has an economics degree from Princeton, a business degree from MIT, and an M.Div from Meadville Lombard Theological School. She comes to ministry after a career in high tech and slow food. She is of European and Native American ancestry, and practices the Hawaiian culture with her Big Island ohana. (Isn't that cultural appropriation? /snark)

She opened with two sweeping proclamations:
"I am here today to help you all break the habit of referring to Native People in the past tense..."
"We are standing on stolen land..."

She then followed those with an incoherent sermon, which I hesitate to even try to summarize.
One of her points was that Governor Bradford, who wrote the famous sermon speaking the shining city on the hill, believed in the righteousness of his cause, including treating the Natives as lesser beings. She did note that the Unitarian Church is a descendant of those original Congregational churches, but she missed the part where we still believe in the righteousness of our cause, and the right to treat the lesser orders as we wish.

Back to her two opening remarks:
I fully know that there are still descendants of the original settlers of our area still here.
The particular land where the First Unitarian Church of Providence stands is part of the land conveyed by deed from the Narragansett tribe to Roger Williams, and the deed is in the Providence City Hall Archives, signed by the Sachems Cononicus and Miantonomi.
I can hardly think of a better example of the product of group think, where the particulars of your audience don't matter.

[J]

Colonel,

Democrat Presidential hopeful just stepped into a bog without his waders on.

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2019/12/01/pete-buttigieg-nods-as-pastor-says-illegal-aliens-just-reclaiming-stolen-land/

[Fred]

Fredw,

Then why did North Vietnam sign the Paris peace accords?

[Diana C]

During my years as a student and my years as an adjunct instructor in several undergrad and community college programs, I also had no problems. I was teaching required undergrad classes such as research writing and essay writing.

It was easy in those classes to set my own standards. No full professors want to teach those classes because it requires much time and effort to plan lessons and to grade papers. For argumentation essays and argumentation research papers it was my right to insist that the student research all views of the research question they chose, though many students tried hard not to have to report the opinions they did not like and to have to explain exactly why they felt that side was invalid.

I was lucky in the fact that when I taught those classes, "political correctness" had not yet developed a firm foothold in the universities.

I left teaching those classes at about the time "political correctness" was beginning.

The only time I was reported to the Dean was by a student who wanted to research the question of whether Elvis was dead or not. I told her that if her source list included the National Enquirer or and other grocery store "news" magazine, I would not accept her paper. My department chairman didn't laugh at her complaint, but he did back me up and smiled when he told me he had said she had to follow my rule.

And sadly, the journalism majors were also hard to deal with. They didn't want to research at all. They felt all they had to do was call people they felt were important sources to provide quotes for their essays or papers. They didn't feel it was necessary to do any in-depth research on the issue they had chosen, usually an issue that was important at the time in the state or local community. It made them angry that I felt they should do some background research in order to balance quoted opinions.

[fredw]

Because they thought the accords meant that we agreed to let them win the war. That interpretation doesn't mesh with Nixon's ferocious rhetoric about the Christmas bombing, but that was the truth. And they were pretty shrewd about that sort of thing.

I can't prove it and they would never say it, but I thought at the time that the Christmas bombing sent a message that we needed an end to it more than they did. So they reached out and sure enough we were willing to settle on terms similar to what they had offered in 1968.

That is not to say that they were anything other than horrible brutal people. But they were not stupid horrible brutal people, and they had the commitment to see it through. And we did not. It was their country.

[jdledell]

Pat is probably going to toss me out of here for this comment. Conformity and "Group Think" is a human characteristic that is probably hard wired into our brains. It is not just academics who are subject to this trait but every group, poliitcal, religious or otherwise. That is how we got into Iraq. I got a kick out of an article in the Hill this morning about Trump's trillion dollar annual defcits. The comment section was almost universal in " it was Obama's fault". There was "group think' at work since anyone who disagreed was roundly booed and the fact that not a single Republican congresscritter has raised their voice on our annual deficits when if it was a Democrat President the hue and cry would drown out normal reporting. Don't get me wrong, the Democrats are not any better but group think is very widespread.

[turcopolier]

jdledell

You are a brave non-conformist soul. I hope I am your friend.

[turcopolier]

fredw

Contemptibly disrespectful to the brave men who carried out Linebacker II. It would seem that you were a communist sympathizer. No sympathy for all the Vietnamese who did not want to be ruled by the communists?

[Fred]

Fredw,

A few million South Vietnamese would disagree.

[turcopolier]

All

I was careful to include a wide diversity of groups in my critique of humanity.

[Fred]

Paul,

They are pushing the envelope in Cambridge. Got a couple students killed, rather ironic that,. But I'm sure they are not responsible nor will they adjust their theory based on the new evidence. Video here:
http://www.unz.com/isteve/london-bridge-victims-professors-now-getting-some-unwanted-attention/

[Diana C]

I guess I was thinking of the common people, who did count themselves as Christian, and not the people in the "schools," though some of Chaucer's characters were in the church--e.g., a prioress, a friar, and so on. But these characters certainly knew how they were "supposed" to live their lives but clearly weren't living their lives as the church would have them live.

In that regard, perhaps there was a group of Christians who were IN the church. What I am saying is that almost all people in England at that time were--or at least considered themselves as Christians. However, they were indeed not living their lives as a member of the "Borg."

Perhaps, since I am a Protestant Christian, I am also not part of the group of people who are Christian and who are "accepted" in this Borg-like group.

I often feel dismissed and diminished when my Christian beliefs, which I have held since childhood, seem not to be worthy of consideration in the discussion.

[TonyL]

"Because they thought the accords meant that we agreed to let them win the war."

No fredw. That's a naive (or simplistic, should I say) thinking. They had no illlusion like that, they just practiced age old Sun Tzu's teaching. In other words, if you know you can win with diplomacy why spend the blood and treasure to achieve the same thing? Demonstrate to your enemy that you are really willing to fight to the end no matter it takes, and then negotiate the peace to your favor.

[fredw]

Indeed you did. The commenters seem more focused on academics.

[fredw]

"A few million South Vietnamese would disagree."

I doubt it. The ones I have spoken with about it saw it pretty much the same way at the time. They spent a couple years hoping against hope that they were wrong - that the US did have the commitment to see it through. Their hopes were disappointed.

[turcopolier]

fredw

"A couple of years?" Our involvement started before the French left and lasted until 1975.

[turcopolier]

tonyl

you seem to have missed the fact that between the armistice agreement and the onslaught in 1975 there were two + years. In that period of time they watched and waited until the US Congress cut off all aid to SVN and then they overran the country.

[Fred]

Fredw,

Would that be the ones who fled communism after the NV army invaded the the Republic of Vietnam or the fine people of the Socialist Republic who brought freedom from the barrels of all those guns?

[turcopolier]

Fred

The NVA invaded SVN in 1964. That is why we brought major forces into the country in 1965.