This is one of the days on which my instinct to cut and run from the academic fold is very strong.
These are some of the Banes with which I have always tried to work and to say are “all right” – but which are hard to handle in large doses, especially when there is no antidote or counterbalance close at hand.
1. Officiousness.
2. Groups of men in positions of at least semi-authority, repeating to each other conventional wisdom as though it were new data.
3. Irresponsibility.
4. Inefficiency.
5. Self-serving entities.
6. Self-aggrandizement.
7. Muddledness.
8. Egotism.
9. Dearths of creativity.
10. Empty convention.
I am in an anti-academic mood of the Nezua style, tired of the repression, the suburban dream, and the bourgeois aspiration which often seem to be the most important elements of the work. After careful consideration over a space of many years, it really seems to me that these are the three keys to success – it is not yoga but conformity with these modes and desires which enables people to sit and work on their narrow specialty, while energy-sucking blandness reigns.
I have also begun reading Virginia Woolf, Three Guineas. Woolf suggests that it is the daughters of educated men who have the least power and agency, because they are the most superfluous of people. This is interesting, as it may help to explain my constant malaise. The malaise could be a combination of 1. not having the social power and privilege one believes oneself to have, 2. not being recognized as an autonomous being, and 3. being unware of 2, or unable to believe it because it is so irrational – and confused therefore by its symptoms. It is clear that I will have to study a few things about class and gender.
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 