coldhearted scientist وداد

JOB MARKET PEOPLE: You do not have to have a Ph.D. program at your new school, but you do want a strong major and a good M.A. Barring the M.A., you want a really, really strong major. Otherwise you might as well stay home and teach at a community college, or “go secondary,” because it is what you will be doing in essence, anyway.

SELF ABUSE TRIGGERS: One of my main ones is men drinking heavily while speaking heatedly in Spanish, especially about how to build up faltering businesses or initiate new academic programs. One of my typical responses is to stop exercising. That is in part because I feel frozen to my chair, and in part because I am already so agitated that I want to sit still until the world stops whirling.  Other times I respond by either overeating or undereating. (That is how I lost too much weight in Peru, and then gained back too much this semester). Another response is to undergo extreme sleep deprivation. In sum, I will try anything I can do to displace the pain into an area I can control and express or experience it there rather than where it is. I must guard against this trigger better and better.

AMERICANS: I have now read 75 essays by these citizens. Of 75, 50 were violent in some way. People really do seem to like war and the death penalty; they do not like the theory of evolution; they oppose homosexuality and divorce. Many cited “Biblical principles” as the source of their views and asserted that the United States was founded upon these.

I could grade these essays completely on logic, evidence, and so on, that is, I could consider them coldly and impartially. But it has been our custom to figure out how to give people as many points as possible. That means I have to pore over the essays more than I normally would, and try to empathize with them.

It feels abusive. That means I am being too flexible. All right. I see what I am doing.

CHRISTIANS: Judge not, that ye not be judged. I find, however, that I am so non judgmental that I accept total outrage. Reading these essays I am understanding Christianity better and better. One difference between me and Reeducation, which was Christian although I did not realize it at the time, was that I like to discover causes of things, whereas in Reeducation discovering a cause was called “blaming others.” I never understood this, although it is of course convenient for the oil companies to say we are “blaming” them for global warming when all we are really doing is attempting to understand its causes.

Now I may understand why Reeducation so emphasized “taking responsibility” and “not blaming.” Christians, if the content of my 75 essays is any indication, really do need to learn these things. I would like these essay writers to develop the virtue of charity. And no, I am not being judgmental, I am using discernment.

I am of course speaking of charity in its deeper sense, not in the vulgar form of donations to the poor. Because this is the other aspect of the 75 essays I have read that frightens me. Many say that poverty is a terrible problem they would like to eradicate, but all they can offer for methodology to this end is a) donating money to homeless shelters, b) volunteering with the Red Cross, and c) helping poor people get an education so they will not be poor.

I should not complain because these are the only nonviolent essays I have received. However it amazes me that not even one of the writers thought further.

Axé.