I am channeling my former academic self and it is working. I haven’t had this person so well channeled in years. It is really fun to get this objective. It gives one a great deal of power and speed. Objectivity and power were, of course, not valued in Reeducation, and I lost them by taking Reeducation seriously. It is nice to be back and there is still more to get back, but I can really feel it coming on.
To have returned to my scientific mind does not seem to involve coldness or alienation, as Reeducation believed think intellectual activity did. Quite the opposite, actually – it seems warm and connected. I really do not think I was so far off in the first place. I think coldness and alienation are actually characteristics of McCain/Palin and Da Whiteman in general – standing on our necks, smiling. And I really do think it is possible to go back in time.
I have been told by one colleague that this site offers high level academic advice I am not qualified to give, and by another that I pretend in it to be more intelligent than I actually am. Both opined that I would be wiser to return to “reality.” But there is no advice here.
I am performing an ancient text and I do have help writing to the extent that I am able to peer deeply and sometimes brush the dust off some tablets inscribed with enlightened words, by enlightened beings. It does not take a terribly skilled reader to realize that I am indeed trying to return to reality, that this weblog is the methodology, and that is working as nothing else ever did.
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 
I apologize for snorting while reading this–but really. It’s silly to say that your text is more intelligent than you are. Generally one of the measures of intelligence is the IQ of one’s writing. Does she think you are plagiarizing all this??!?
I’m so deeply tired. Only one more day working on this article (actually a chapter for a book).
Yeah, isn’t it funny how people conclude that your real self must be less intelligence than the expressions of life you give, on a daily basis.
I’ve been thinking a lot about how this works. It’s like if someone’s own reference points in life are remarkably narrow, they think you must be having them on when you can see more and experience more than they do. It can’t be true, they surmise. You are simply putting one over on them, having a laugh at their expense. So there is a tendency to disbelief in intellectual experience and deeper, wider ranging reflection than mose people accept and adhere to in their everyday lives.
I find this deeply disturbing.
sorry. less ‘intelligent”, I meant. (I’m tired)
I know, I also snorted when I was told this. If I am plagiarizing, where is my source? I asked, and the person got upset.
I think it is indeed this feeling they have that I am “having them on.” People fear intellect. (Hm: I thought I was coming to academia to hide from this anti-intellectual attitude, but my greatest academic trauma was the discovery that it was rampant within these walls as well.)
I don’t know if people fear intellect so much as they simply don’t believe in it. If my own experiences do not open a window on to the point of view of the intellectual, I may think they are just playing a fancy game, which I could also play if only I knew the tricks.
True, that’s more accurate, they don’t believe it’s real – it’s a game in which they could participate if they were so inclined, or which they are angry that they can’t participate in because they think it just involves a series of tricks.
Precisely.
I’m in sporadic contact with someone who thinks being an intellectual (or, more to the point, having intellectual tendencies) involves a trick. Whereas I am incredulous that he would genuinely think this, he cannot understand that I think there is a genuinely objective standard concerning intellectual capability and work. He thinks I’m being disingenuous and haughty at the same time.
Yes – they don’t like people to have intellectual skills or face reality. To be genuine is to be wallowing in a reactive bath of “emotions” manufactured by right wing ideology, etc.
I’m offended by this colleague’s comment to you. What exactly are the qualifications for communicating how one makes sense of this industry? Aside from that, humility and respect seem lacking here.
Yes, there is no humility and no respect but the comments about the blog are so laughable that they don’t affect me. If they’d have humility and respect in a few other areas I would feel a lot better generally than I do / than I have been.