Been once again pondering trying to make it in academia.
It should be a slam dunk, at least on paper. I’m crazy good at school. Academically gifted out the wazoo. School has always been depressingly easy for me.
Yes, even in college.
And I have to admit, I am curious to see just how far up that goes. Surely at some point on my way to a doctorate in psychology I would begin to feel the strain. It can’t be that I am too smart for school in general, can it?
God, I hope not. I want challenge, god time it. Give my mind something to really struggle with. A heavy burden to strive and strain against.
Because I’ve been bored in school for way too goddamned long. There has to be a place where the work is at least difficult enough to demand my full attention.
Instead of what I’m used to, which is being so bored that teachers who don’t know me yet think I am not paying attention and try to catch me daydreaming by asking me what they just said.
Only to have me explain everything they just said in the last half hour back to them only better phrased and more to the point so it takes me only five minutes.
Yeah, I know that’s a dick move.
It sure was funny, though.
Anyhow, it occurs to me that my ability to do that would make me one hell of a good teacher. The kids would just plain learn more from me because I could get them through the officially mandated curriculum in the first half of the class and use the other half to do things that are actually interesting.
And of course, my lectures would also be incredibly fun and entertaining because I’m an amazing dude and not only would I be dedicated to making education come live for my students, more to the point I wouldn’t want my lectures to bore me.
Meanwhile, back at the point.
My plan would be to find a well respected institution of higher learning that nevertheless wanted me as an extra (im)mature student, take as many courses at once as they would let me, ace them with my usual airy disregard, and hopefully attract the attention of my professors and get some sort of buzz going about myself as a student.
That would hopefully lead to things like scholarships, invitations to guest lecture, being sent to academic conferences, and other goodies.
And we would see how far I could push that, like I said. But the idea would be to get a doctorate and become a lecturer and get published in fancy journals and such.
Sounds like a decent way to make a living, all told.
But would I get bored with stuffy old academia too easily?
Even if I deliberately make myself into an academic bad boy whose lectures spark riots and whose published works set off great fusillades of angry commentary?
That does sound like an awful lot of fun.
Hmmm. I will think about it. Seems a lot easier than trying to make it in show biz.
Then again, I haven’t even given show biz a chance to appreciate my talents.
I should at least give them a shot, shouldn’t I?
More after the break.
Can they learn?
I think we have to go on the assumption that they can not.
What I am talking about is the tendency of us liberal intellectual types to act as though those on the other side of the political spectrum are merely ignorant and naïve and therefore if we just raise their awareness and enlighten them, they will suddenly turn into intellectuals just like us.
Do you get why they might find this approach rather galling and patronizing?
And the thing is, they might just lack the hardware to think like us. I am not saying they are stupid in terms of gray matter, but it may just be that people of average IQ do not have the kind of extra mental CPU cycles to devote to seeing things in an open and complicated way that leaves plenty of room for nuance.
That’s just not an option for them because they are not like us. And nothing we can do or say will change that fact.
Therefore, if liberalism is to succeed, we have to stop thinking of our Republican/Conservative friends as temporarily stupid geniuses and start treating them the way they want to be treated : with respect, dignity, and compassion.
And that starts by listening to them. REALLY listening to them. Without interruption or rebuttal and with plenty of patience and attention.
Listening to someone attentively and respectfully is in no sense the same as agreeing with them. You might vehemently disagree with everything they say. That’s fine.
But for now, you keep it to yourself. Let them say whatever they feel the need to say. Only ask polite and respectful questions intended to help them get out what they feel they need to get out.
I think you’d be surprised how much more calm and reasonable people can be when someone genuinely wants to know what they think about things and why.
Above all, there are to be no signs of hostility or opposition. So no slogan soaked clothing or other political artifacts in view.
Nothing is accomplished by making people feel like they are under siege by hostile forces and they have to fight like a cornered rat just to survive.
That just makes people deep themselves deeper into their entrenched positions.
I fully believe that if we could get both sides together and get them talking in this spirit, a whole lot of the animosity and tension would evaporate as people discovered that they actually felt the exact same way about a hell of a lot of things and realized that the other side are not demons or hellions but just ordinary folk trying to make sense of a very scary and chaotic world in whatever way makes sense to them.
We’re all human beings here.
Let’s start from there.