What are you, fifteen? You don't really feel bad about this sort of thing, do you? Other than some of the do-gooders, more or less everyone is in roughly the same position, no? (Maybe I'm being fifteen, and this is more jokey than I think.)
"I taught you language, and your profit on't is: you went to law school."
some of us feel bad about this already; no need to pile on.
As CharleyCarp said to me the other week, what I do for a living is protect the strong against the weak. Yes, it's everyone (or most of us in the professional world, me more than most), but it's still seriously bad, and something we shouldn't forget just because it's upsetting.
I thought your job was to subtly manipulate those little self-doubts in the backs of their minds, so that although they become successful, they continue to despise themselves?
Thanks for the vine, Tim. I'm sincere in my claim to feel bad. Maybe it's transformed resentment about their BMWs.
I now protect the [redacted] against being [redacted]. But that's only temporary.
BMWs are a sign of bad taste, b/c they're all terrible luxury/performance for value. (Except the Z roadster.)
I don't mind protecting the strong against the weak. I mind protecting the unjust against the just. (Happily, I no longer feel that's my job, but I've been there before. It's not worth it, no matter how much you think you need that paycheck.)
But being an English professor? Be serious, Labs. Unless you're doing something far out of the ordinary, you haven't sold your soul by doing that. You haven't even really started soliciting offers.
English professor
For some reason I thought Labs' field was philosohy.
9- Whatever the fuck. You're probably right, now that I think about it. Same difference.
4: This is more or less exactly how I conceive my job. Actually, I try to get students to act on their seeds of self doubt, at least occasionally.
Universities: producing more enlightened despots since 1200!
I am reminded of a Heathcliff Huxtable line from the Cosby show. Vanessa had said something to the effect of "But why do I need to save money? We're rich!" And her dad replied, "Your mother and I are rich. You have nothing."
The spoiled brats in the recent DC thread notwithstanding, there is no reason to assume that the children of "well-off white people" have no need, or drive, to succeed on their own.
I hear you on this; you're hardly unique in feeling this way. There's a tendency for the system to perpetuate itself, and unless you fight it every step of the way, the role you end up playing--despite what seemed to you to be a series of personal and autonomous choices--will also help perpetuate it in some way. That's simply what's available, unless you deliberately choose opposition (and choose it from a pretty young age). Of course, how much indirect evil we contribute to the world varies a lot, and if it's too much, it's never too late to opt out. But, like Brock says, what you're doing isn't really close the line. Yes, you give them tools they'll misuse, but maybe also a bit of humanity, if you're lucky.
Waitaminute, I thought all us academics were undermining society from within by indoctrinating the children of the professional classes to hate their own and be pot-smokin' queer-studyin' hemp-wearin' librul FREAKS. Dincha get the memo, Labs?
Also? there's no shame in educating the elite of the future. Seriously. Wouldn't you rather have an educated elite than an ignorant one? I believe we have had experience of both.
Three reasons why you, Fontana Labs, should not feel bad *at all*:
1. The gains to education are not zero sum. Insofar as your instruction makes someone a better thinker, you have made us all wealthier. Even the poor and the weak.
2. Insofar as there are zero-sum battles for position, it seems unlikely to me that the quality of education is a large driver of ineqaulity compared to different level of social and intellectual capital derived from family background. Someone who has gotten into Princeton (whoops, sorry to blow your cover Fontana, or should I say Paul already has enormous advantages. Quality of education within Princeton is irrelevant in comparison.
3. The liberal arts make people better, irrrespective of economic return, and you in teaching it well you perform a mitzvah.
Then there's moments like this, when you feel really fucking proud of your students.
If universities all over the country don't have massive protests after this, though, we and they ought all to be deeply ashamed.
My job: ensuring that large multi-national corporations pay as little in U.S. and other taxes as possible.
Oh well, time to go buy an Audi A4 1.8T Quattro.
Should Aristotle have declined to teach Alexander? Should Endicott Peabody have shunned the likes of Franklin Roosevelt? Should Falstaff have spurned his pupil Hal?
Jesus Christ: "Police officers said they determined the use of Tasers was necessary when Tabatabainejad did not do as they asked."
Should Dr. Higgins have spurned Eliza?
(Note: 22 should be understood as word salad rather than a meaningful bit of commentary.)
16 and 17 are both absolutely true. I was projecting.
I think the complaint is being misunderstood. It's not the complaint of someone who acts to benefit bad people; this isn't the dark night of the soul of the Mob or (ahem) Big Tobacco attorney. It's also not connected to the thought that moderately talented well-off people oughtn't be well educated. It's the conviction that it is a Bad Thing that the educational opportunities of moderately good students with a lot of money are seriously different in quality from the opportunities of students of similar abilities but limited means, combined with the observation that my own labor is a very small contribution to this state of affairs.
Holy shit. The video B. linked to is horrible. The weirdest thing is that only one or two students are challenging the police (asking for badge numbers, etc.) The rest are just standing there.
And all because the kid was using the library after 11 PM without an ID.
Fuck, that ruined my day.
I don't think anyone misunderstood the complaint.
What's up with the link in 17.2? Should that be redacted?
28: It's a joke, son, a joke. </Foghorn Leghorn>
28 -- Examine that link carefully, and ask yourself whether Labs most likely got his Ph.D. in 1960 or no.
Rob, it's time you knew I'm one of the most pre-eminent philosophers of mathematics working today.
25: If that's your problem (and I'd agree that your problem is no worse than that), what you're worrying about is whether you should sell all that you have and give it to the poor. To which the answer is probably yes, but most people manage not to worry about it all that much.
What you do for a living harms no one, and benefits the people you interact with. You're a component of an unjust society in that you provide a good that only the rich can afford, but that doesn't make you any more culpable than any other seller of harmless luxuries.
Wait, I thought this was Fontana Labs. Now you'll be telling me not a single person in this blog community has ever been the subject of a festschrift.
re 17--
FL, just wanted to say thanks for that thing on what numbers could not be. Helpful piece.
34: not exactly. It's more musing about the badness of the situation. I might, in fact, work for less money at other institutions, but, given the way the academic job market is, this is pretty expensive in non-financial terms, as well as far from a sure thing.
The trouble with harmless luxuries, like the food wasted at a Roman feast, is that others are starving. I agree that there is no shame here, but there might perhaps be more honor than there is in trying to redress the balance, individually and as a society. I'm glad Pells and tuition deductability are back on the table.
40: This sort of worry always seems to me to be slightly out of place in the real world. You live in a relatively decent society, and while you shouldn't stop trying to make it marginally better, neither should you feel obliged to meet some sort of goodness purity test, if only because we don't have a very good test of that available.
Wow, I seem to have turned into Peter Singer. Surprising.
26: My understanding is that he may very well have had his id, but he refused to show it to them (and why not)? And that he said "I'm leaving," and that's when the cops ramped it up.
Re. Labs' complaint; the thing is, though, that if we *don't* maintain our consciousness that our part in the system perpetuates the system, then that *is* bad. Agreed that "fuck the system, I'm leaving!" would be a sophomoric reaction to the problem; but "oh well, that's just how it is" would be unnecessarily complacent. It's kind of like what Ms. Mentor says about feminists: your responsibility is to get tenure *so that* you can change things.
It's kind of like what Ms. Mentor says about feminists: your responsibility is to get tenure *so that* you can change things.
Color me suspicious of these sorts of claims, which always seem to be saying that to the extent you serve yourself, you serve society. I tend to think that people should certainly try to make things better, but they ought to do so while admitting that the scope of their vision is quite limited, and so the changes they will attempt to make will probably be limited as well. But that doesn't leave much space for heroes, so that strikes me as unlikely to convincing to most people.
I feel you. Because of my community organizing for the past four years, rich white people have an additional recreational opportunity in Sacramento. I'm proud of it and all, but the humanitarian awards aren't exactly pouring in.
Still, I don't think that I would have been doing something more helpful with that time and effort. Its more likely that I would have squandered it.
And, you know, the chops you build doing something to help the rich make you better at doing the same thing if you see an opportunity to help the poor later on.
44: Whatever. It was a bizarre escalation on the part of the cops.
43: I'm still feeling stupid for thinking you might be Paul Benneceraff, when clearly you are a different member of the Princeton philosophy department.
t's kind of like what Ms. Mentor says about feminists: your responsibility is to get tenure *so that* you can change things.
Color me suspicious of these sorts of claims, which always seem to be saying that to the extent you serve yourself, you serve society
I read that differently, as saying that you have to both get tenure, and then take steps to change things. I admit there seem to be those who feel that such as they are getting tenure is all by itself going to bring change, but I don't see that being claimed here.
people should certainly try to make things better, but they ought to do so while admitting that the scope of their vision is quite limited, and so the changes they will attempt to make will probably be limited as well.
Well yes--hence the feeling bad. Arguably doing things like making your own university better for women faculty, putting together new outreach programs and scholarships, and changing the curriculum to require more "multicultural" material doesn't effectively do anything to change the have/have not problem--it just makes the haves a little more diverse. Nonetheless, it's better than doing nothing.
12: It's also not clear what students will eventually do with the knowledge imparted. In the 70's I was showing & telling my CS students about the potentials for surveillance in databases of purchases. I know some of it took because years later I heard a few "You were right" comments.
What I don't know is how many of those students joined the ACLU or otherwise became advocates of privacy vs joining one of the three-letter agencies of intrusion.
b--your responsibility is to get tenure *so that* you can change things.
scmt--Color me suspicious of these sorts of claims
yeah, sure it can be a bs self-serving line. ("I'm going to join this investment bank so that I can change the system! From within!")
But that's why you have to walk the walk once you make it. I recently was called in to referee a tenure case where a woman had a gap in her productivity that might have been fatal. Turned out to be the result of kid issues--extreme kid issues, though I won't go into details--that to my mind completely excused the few articles in Science that she hadn't published during those years.
Yeah, there was some part of me that was rooting "be a hard-ass, vote against, she doesn't have a fat enough cv, you know it's what they would have done to you." But a little reflection about what kind of profession I want academia to be cured me of that (as well as talking it over with my wife).
We could make it impossible for academics to reproduce, but I don't think that would be a very good way to go. So, you take stuff into consideration.
and Tim, if you ever catch B *not* walking the walk, I hope you'll come down on her then.
(I'm not cross-posting this at MY's place, but he has a thread there which is highly relevant. Unfortunately, it has descended into the Summers debate once again).
49: Yeah, that probably came out wrong. I dunno what I was trying to say. I am leery of straightforward prescriptions unless I'm making them, I guess.
This is a post-Singerian egalitarian concern, labs. Were you Peter Singer you could say, truthfully, "a system with inequalities ends up benefiting everyone more, ergo, I am part of a just system." I think you are combining a Singerian concern about what we ought to be doing with our lives (either being Paul Farmer, or being I-bankers so as to give more money to Paul Farmer) with a more classical left-egalitarian concern about the justice of a system in which the rich get more and better goods, and in which there are positive feedback effects of those goods in zero-sum competitions. On the latter point, I would again stress that the role you play in that inequality is de minimus. Serious inequality derives from people being screwed by their family situation (where I'd be most effects are in place by age 10), or being screwed by their genes period. Our system may magnify those problems in an unjust way, but by age 18 most interventions are on the the flat part on the input/inequality curve.
I am more interested in whether we should all be Paul Farmer. What do people think about that?
(oh, and many thanks to whomever fixed my botched link...)
yeah, sure it can be a bs self-serving line. ("I'm going to join this investment bank so that I can change the system! From within!")
I'm feeling a little bit odd about my career goals, for this sort of reason. One thing I'd like to do is work as an epidemiologist/statistician for the United States's single-payer federal healthcare agency - getting data about population-level health trends so health care and preventive measures can be devoted to the right places at the right times. However, this agency doesn't exist, although it seems inevitable that it will. It seems to me that the best career experience for that would be to work for an insurance agency, getting data about population-level health trends so the agency can then deny people health insurance based on insanely cruel actuarial estimations of how much health care they are likely to need in a decade.
Hopefully we'll have a national health care system by the time I get my PhD and work for the EIS, so I don't have to enter that world.
50: But the "Haves / Have-Nots" problem can never really be solved*. The program you propose at least tries to give everyone a chance at getting into the "Haves" group, and trying to help most those with the highest potential for contributing to society. That's really the best you can do. It's why the idea of a meritocracy is so universally appealing, even if it's impossible to implement as people envision it.
* Well, ok, technically there is a solution to the "Haves / Have-Nots" problem, but I'd argue that the cure is far worse than the ailment. The only real imperatives are to ensure everyone has a way out of being a "Have-Not" and that life is still humane for those who don't make it. But that's why so many of us are liberals of some variety.
Baa, that's not right about Singer; I think it's a quantifier ambiguity. You're conflating some systems with inequalities with all systems with inequalities. On the other hand, you've convinced that I oughtn't feel bad. Party on!
While I am participating in this thread, I am also answering those emails that come at this time of year, the ones from starry-eyed, bright undergraduates who want to go to graduate school because it seems to them the best thing they can do with their talents. And I am pointing them to this, but I am also pointing them to this, by a guy called Fontana Labs. Whatever happened to him?
52: Thanks for the heads up--always good to get my daily dose of bitchy commenting in somewhere other than here.
56: I'm inclined to agree--but of course I also don't dismiss the fact that my self-interest rather supports such agreement.
Look, the question can't just be "what's the right thing to do?" because the right thing is often unlivable (unless you're Paul Farmer). The question you should ask (when you're trying to live your life, and not just arguing on a blog) is what balance you can reasonably expect of yourself between your own comfort and preferences, and the obligations you feel. Nevermind what you should do, because the answer to that is always "a lot more." It's a matter of what you, knowing you, can do, and then doing it. Less guilt*, more action.
*You should recognize, however, that you're not a fantastically good person, but someone compromised, just like almost everyone else.
You want to get tenure so you can "change things"? What things? The function of the university/college as a machine for erasing inequality? Then really, you need to be angling to become Dean of Admissions -- because that's where the critical social-engineering decisions are made.
And if you do get that far, you will find, holy moley, we need to admit some rich kids to pay the damn bills around here, because the Philosophy Department sure as heck isn't a profit center.
(Actually, that was cruel and smart-alecky; I'm told that in many colleges with sizable fees for education, the Philosophy Department is a profit center -- low overhead and lots of majors. The more majors, the merrier the accountants. But the broader point stands.)
Less guilt*, more action.
Ogged, you know my life has always been lived with much guilt and little action.
Slol, you do feel bad about all this from time to time, right?
is what balance you can reasonably expect of yourself between your own comfort and preferences, and the obligations you feel.
Part of the problem is that there's some sort of implicit assumption of a stable "you" in that sort of approach. Put it this way: if you start picking stuff and doing what needs to be done, you will become a different person--one who doesn't take advantage of his significant other. (That's not snark.)
61 works for me.
62: Actually, I personally may end up opting out of the tenure thing entirely (or not). But yeah, being as I care about education, and being as I care about justice, one of the reasons for getting tenure would be to have a secure position from which to push the university to become, as you put it, a machine for erasing inequality.
Dean of Admissions would be fine, if one's talents lay in administration. But there really is a fair bit that motivated teachers can do along with teaching.
57: Right, I was just saying that equality is not a value in a Singerian system. If equality maximizes, fine; if not, who cares. If one believes that the unequal system we have now is more maximizing than an equal system would be, you can accept it and party like a rock star.
61: Likewise correct, the question is real how much like Paul Farmer you should try to be. Here's a hypothetical in that vein. Imagine some space alien has the cure for cancer. The only way for him to get it here to earth where it would be useful is to basically ruin his life: spend 100 years in travel, abandon his family, etc. I think we can all agree that we would be very grateful if this space alien were altruistic enough to take the trip. But do we think he *ought* to? How mad are we at him if he doesn't make the trip?
That piece of Burke's would have been damn good advice to my younger self. Not that I'd have heeded it, or that not heeding it didn't lead me, by a circuitous path, to what's been best about my life.
Grad school permits postponement, in a way. So does Peace Corps or military service, which might be cheaper and more constructive.
Slol, you do feel bad about all this from time to time, right?
If by "this" you mean the role of the university in perpetuating the upper class, then no, not really. I teach at Big State U and in the main I don't teach especially privileged kids. An awful lot of them are the first in their families to attend college. Many of them are here instead of at a Name Private University because it's an incredibly good deal -- as expensive as it's gotten -- for higher education.
So among the many things that make me feel bad, being a tool of the hegemonic oppressor isn't one. I feel a hell of a lot worse about the way I yelled at my kids yesterday.
It is true that I used to teach at Super Elite U, and that there I worried a bit more about this sort of thing. But even then there were extenuating circumstances that meant it was low on the list.
I feel a hell of a lot worse about the way I yelled at my kids yesterday.
Don't worry, I'm sure they'll balance the scales in your later years.
implicit assumption of a stable "you" in that sort of approach
That's only a problem if you also assume that your decision is taken once and for all. There's no reason you can't reevaluate regularly (and this is in fact what people do, right?).
Right, Slol, I should have asked about your feelings about counterfactual employment.
I pointedly refuse to engage with Baa's slippery slope toward deontic agony.
The "ruin your life to cure cancer" scenario seems kind of similar to what we said about hostages in Iraq who make videos: we don't think making the video is the right thing to do, but it would be monstrous to blame the people who do it. Just flip around the doing/not-doing.
Or, you could do a consequentialist analysis, and wonder, for example, how high we should set the bar for abandoning your family, and even whether a population crisis looms and a cure for cancer would end up causing more suffering than it alleviates.
Etc. etc. Doesn't Aristotle say that only two things are always wrong? I think I remember that one was rape, but I can't remember what the other one was. Rooting for the Yankees?
Don't worry, I'm sure they'll balance the scales in your later years.
I read Thackeray's Vanity Fair a few months ago (for the first time, as embarrassing as that is), and was very surprised to find a vivid and frank depiction of elderly abuse in it. An old man in a wheelchair (the baronet who's the father of Becky's husband) who is being abused by his attendant.
It hurt. Ugly scene. But also a surprise that Thackeray noticed it, and reported on it.
(Of course, elderly abuse was also noted by Aristotle, so ain't nothing new).
jesus, the chances of our both reaching for Aristotle within a post of each other.
I was thinking about this question recently. I was walking along and the thought hit me, "do I believe that my (relatively) comfortable life is based on injustice?" Do I, in other words, believe that the injustices of the world are so great that there is no way that I can live my life as I do without profiting from those injustices?
I don't have an answer to the question but, for me that put the dilemma in relatively stark terms. If I decide that I don't believe that I am profiting from injustice I am ignoring huge amounts of evidence to the contrary. If I decide that I am, I have to decide if I am willing to give up my life as I live it, in the name of justice.
I also tend toward the more guilt, less action school of thought, but I can't ignore the question.
Let me put it another way. IIRC there is a line in The Ethics of Ambiguity to the effect that any modern ethics must start from the position that we live in a world that contains evil and that demands a response. (it's entirely possible that I am not recalling correctly here).
I believe that I have lived my life in ways that reflect strong ethical principles -- provided that I am comfortable taking the world in which I live as a given and believe that my only ethical obligation is make moral decisions within that world. But if I believe that I have a positive moral obligation to try to change the world I have utterly fallen short of that obligation.
43. Damn you; I was so ready to make that joke.
Right, Slol, I should have asked about your feelings about counterfactual employment.
Yeah, okay, this is important. The question now is, let's imagine, what if you taught at a small liberal arts college that was not really elite -- i.e., one that was not turning out cabinet officials and CEO's, but, as you say, corporate lawyers and i-bankers, and not white-shoes ones either; maybe insurance executives and regional sales managers, even. A college, let's say, with a sufficiently high tuition, so that it disproportionately selected for rich kids with unspectacular academic records. How would you feel about that?
My guess is, you wouldn't like it much, for the reasons you're intimating more than explicitly offering -- too many of the students aren't there to get educated, they're there to get credentialed, and they're there, in that particular place, so they can be among students of their own social class instead of having to mix with the proles down at Big State U. You, in turn, are therefore there to provide them with that credential, as painlessly and, honestly, effortlessly to them as possible, so they can get on with the business of business, secure in the knowledge that they've been sufficiently near to some Erudition at one point in their lives.
So, you are asking, what do you do. As with so many of the binds life presents us, your options are, get right with it or get out. Because, pace baa, you're not, at least in this counterfactual, at Princeton, you can't quite get right with it for the reasons he suggests. But his number one and number three are not bad.
But honestly, those kinds of solutions never persuade me, personally, because that's not how I think about these problems. baa's pushing you toward an evaluation of your career as positively good; I'd tend to ask, is it sufficiently non-bad? So okay, in this scenario, you haven't got Alexander or FDR at your knee; you've got Babbitt. Is it so wrong to get Babbitt's attention, even fleetingly, and give him a good dose of what-for? Can it possibly outweigh the harm you're doing by licensing Babbitt to just get on with a career?
Yes, I think so. Certainly, you're doing more for young Babbitt than the lacrosse coach is. Also, you have to put food on your family, pay for swank window treatments, and so on.
And, you know, you're probably young enough to get out, too. Publish some stuff, man. You know, not on the blog. And the more you can do that, of course, the more good you're doing, too, because the classroom isn't the only place you do your job.
BTW, I attended a school much like the one you describe, for high school -- it originated as a "seg" academy, they sometimes call them, a private school in the South for rich white kids so they don't have to go to school with poor black kids. By the time I went there, there was an excuse -- the education was better there than at the public schools. (Only a little later, the public schools instituted an academic high-performance track -- so you could be segregated, but for a lower cost!) I felt a little guilty about it then and I feel more guilty about it now, but I had terrific teachers, and I feel lucky for that too. And if I think about it, I think my cokehead classmates probably benefited, at least a little, from having good teachers.
Also, as long as it's true confessions time, some of the guys in my fraternity at college wouldn't sound too different from the guys in the LNS thread. I thought they were psychos even then, but I think it did *me* some good to learn there were plenty of psychos in the privileged classes.
I'm not sure "Babbitt" is a good choice to name this model. Babbitt, and for that matter, Arrowsmith were products of State U, The University of Winnemac, in Zenith. And one source of their insecurities and bumptiousness was its cattle-call character. And Babbitt had started out, we're told, as a campus radical.
The person in Lewisworld who has to struggle with ordinary life after a small liberal arts college is Carrie Kennicott.
Okay, but Carol is a sympathetic character. Morally, Babbitt is closer to FL's students than Carol. Maybe the better model would be some of Bret Easton Ellis's or Jay McInerney's characters? But I don't remember any of them.
That's an epic comment, Slol. You win Huge Call of the Day.
80: Let's not get stuck in trivialities. The important point is that slol's a bad person, and he's OK with that.
(I'm fairly astonished that professors worry about these sorts of issues.)
agreed, 78 is an excellent comment, but is everyone comfortable with
But honestly, those kinds of solutions never persuade me, personally, because that's not how I think about these problems. baa's pushing you toward an evaluation of your career as positively good; I'd tend to ask, is it sufficiently non-bad?
That's a reasonable description of how I live my life, but is that really a good criteria? This isn't to criticize slol, just to say that since he's put words to a perspective that many of us share, we should ask if it's actually a good perspective.
Babbitt is a buffoon, albeit one with real human feeling, whose predicament achieves a kind of pathos. The people whom we suppose Labs teaches are slicker and less insecure than that, is all I'm saying.
The important point is that slol's a bad person, and he's OK with that.
See, on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays I'm a Puritan, so I think we're all bad people. It doesn't matter whether I'm okay with it or not.
Tim, could you say more about why this is astonishing?
The people whom we suppose Labs teaches are slicker and less insecure than that, is all I'm saying.
Okay, I yield! It was a foul! I surrender my right to make literary references!
87: I cried a little when I realized no one loved the Caliban reference as much as I do.
Honestly, what occurred to me was, it's good that you weren't using the Caliban reference to talk about teaching persons of color.
86: Because, as should be obvious by now, I'm basically a much cruder version of slol: I worry about being bad rather than good, and it seems to me that unless you're VDH or someone like that, you're unlikely to be doing bad. In your specific case, we have (or I believe we have) pretty good evidence indicating that (excluding you Rome-love) you're a pretty good person; I would think you would think the same about yourself.
I can imagine wondering if you could be doing more good, but not if you (that is, FL) are doing serious harm to anyone or anything other than ogged's colon.
since he's put words to a perspective that many of us share, we should ask if it's actually a good perspective
I don't know if it's a good perspective, but I think it's a useful perspective, because it's much easier to identify the bad than the good. So it's easier to be non-bad than to be positively good. And it's also a step away from being bad, which might therefore be a step on the way to being good.
Shorter me: First, do no harm.
89: aha, but all my students are white.* Zing!
90: aw shucks, Tim. It's just that I want to be Earl Shorris.
*Exaggerating, but not by much.
Earl Shorris is just about my favorite person in the world. If I could make any kind of livable salary in a program like his, I'd do it in a second. Which does lead me to ask, anyone know if that's doable?
Your literary references are fine. It's fun to work them out, though, because of the ancient and perennial nature of the types we find in Lewis; Tom Wolfe and Murray Sperber, meet Sinclair Lewis — as if they wouldn't acknowledge it anyway.
Which does lead me to ask, anyone know if that's doable?
Given that the Clemente Course(s) appear to be taught by regular faculty, then no. What's the difference between a large pizza and a university professor? A large pizza can feed a family of four.
Okay, that's embittered exaggeration. The correct answer is sure.
Ogged, we should correspond about this. From what I can tell, from watching an outpost of Clemente up close, large parts of the staffing are covered by people with other jobs, as slol says.
hmm.
never heard of earl shorris before. thanks for the link.
Liked this part a lot:
"they don't have the moral life of downtown," by which she meant Manhattan south of Harlem, where she grew up. Thinking she had probably undergone a religious conversion while in prison, which is not unusual, I asked rather casually what she meant by "the moral life." What a surprise when she said, "Plays, museums, concerts, lectures, you know." I said, "You mean the humanities." And she looked at me as if I were some kind of cretin: "Yes, Earl, the humanities."
ogged, you're such a squishy liberal at heart. No wonder you pick on yourself.
I should have clicked the link. I thought you and ogged were talking Earl Schieb, another Great American. I'm pretty sure that he makes a pretty good living.
it's the difference between a good lacqueur and a white-wash.
I'm fighting the temptation to write a very snarky comment about this thread. (Something along the lines of how it's not so worthwhile doing good works anyway because you'll just be told that you're in the pink ghetto and therefore bringing down all women everywhere.) But there does seem to be some trade-off between the intrinsic goodness of what you're doing on a day to day basis—say, helping the poor—and your ability to influence policy at a high level. And it's not such an irrational choice to try to do good things you can see, rather than doing lots of things you feel uncomfortable about in order to attain power in the long term. Which is what some of us were arguing a while back. I felt that some issues of quality of moral life were not addressed in previous discussions of careerism. Just thought I'd note that here, where people are expressing ambivalence about the value of what they do.
I'm fighting the temptation to write a very snarky comment about this thread. (Something along the lines of how it's not so worthwhile doing good works anyway because you'll just be told that you're in the pink ghetto and therefore bringing down all women everywhere.)
Unsuccessfully, I see.
Aw, come on. It was mostly a substantive point, no?
it's not such an irrational choice to try to do good things you can see, rather than doing lots of things you feel uncomfortable about in order to attain power in the long term
Except who says this has to be the choice? That was never what anyone was arguing: be a bastard to gain power. I continue to think that what you were hearing and what was actually being said were two different things.
I demand that teaching philospohy at a small liberal arts college is not selling your soul for power.
No wait, that is not a demand; that is a solid fact.
I was referring to the ambivalence about "defending the strong against the weak." If you're a social worker, you don't usually feel that so much. I wouldn't have thought that liberal arts professors have it either.
Actually I believe a lot of social workers find that their jobs require an enormous amount of paperwork and gatekeeping, and are often very frustrated by seeing how little they are actually able to do to help people.
I wouldn't have thought that liberal arts professors have it either
But Labs does. Or he did, until we all told him it was okay to be Gordon Gekko in tweed.
"Actually I believe a lot of social workers"
It might be, you know, constructive to defer to the social worker on this one.
"teaching philospohy at a small liberal arts college is not selling your soul for power. ... that is a solid fact"
it is certainly a solid fact that there is no market for such souls. Call back when you find a buyer.
111: Is ac a social worker? I didn't realize. Good for her, and I'm glad she doesn't feel that way. But I do know people who do.
That word, I do not think it means what you think it means.
Well, I knew Ogged was kinda fucked up, but I didn't think he was a pedophile.
any argument he doesn't like is now the chickenhawk argument.
Maybe he's pointing one out, way over there, to distract us.
I don't understand how we get from
If you're a social worker, you don't usually feel [ambivalence about "defending the strong against the weak"] so much.
in 108, to
Actually, social workers … are often very frustrated by seeing how little they are actually able to do to help people.
in 109.
The second doesn't cut against the first. In fact ac has written extensively on bureaucratic horrors.
oh I see it! No, that's a Mexican dunking a basketball.
what's he saying to that small african american child?
I, personally, would feel a great deal of ambivalence about, say, telling someone that they don't qualify for housing aid. Is that not protecting the strong (the state) against the week (people who are poor, but not poor enough)?
But then I also feel a fair bit of ambivalence about being a humanities professor, and would prefer to teach at a public institution over a liberal arts one because of that.
Sorry, Tourettes. I don't tangle with the ac mafia.
121: I think the connection was in the idea of achieving contentment through knowing that one was doing good works as a social worker. B. was pointing out that many social workers remain dissatisfied about the minimal extent to which they are actually doing good.
Well, after 123 I can't quote Foghorn Leghorn lest I sound like a racist.
"Ah say, ah say, come heah, boy. . . "
I think the feeling is usually that, as frustrated as you are, if you weren't there, these people would be totally fucked.
As always, LB says what I meant to say much better than I.
But one could feel that one was doing good works as a social worker while also being frustrated with paper work and red tape. I would imagine most jobs involving good works also involve such frustrations.
I don't tangle with the ac mafia.
"mafia" s/b "cult"
I am, in fact, certain that there are satisfactions which flow from a life spent in public service, and commend anyone who freely chooses such a life. In fact, as I originally noted in 34, there is a strong argument that each of us should sell what they have and give it to the poor.
I plan to retain a saffron robe, staff, and begging bowl, but I don't think that's unreasonable.
I plan to retain a saffron robe
For someone about to divest herself of worldly goods, you have an expensive taste in edible robes.
so long as the bowl is not made of a precious substance. hmm, strike that, join with me to fight for the workers of the world! It'll be more exciting, though we're liable to get hit with billy clubs.
I said I was retaining a staff. Should serve me well, if the cops only have billy clubs.
we'll have to move to 19th century Britain.
I said I was retaining a staff.
Somehow, a beggar with servants doesn't seem particularly poor.
19th century Britain definitely had a lot of work for reformers and do-gooders. Can I be Mary Wollestonecraft?
Yes. And I'll be Burt the Chimneysweep.
Most adult chimneysweeps employed very small children to do the actual sweeping. You'll definitely be in the "part of the problem" camp, although I suppose there's also an argument to be made that you're giving the poor urchins work.
we'll have to move to 19th century Britain.
Stupid bits of comedy that have stuck in my head for decades:
From a fantasy fall TV schedule:
Mendel & Lendl -- One's a twentieth century tennis star; the other, a nineteenth century monk. By night, they fight crime on the streets of eighteenth century London.
Most adult chimneysweeps employed very small children to do the actual sweeping.
Geese, too, didn't they? I could swear I'd read that stuffing a live goose up your chimney was a method of cleaning it.
But I thought the 'sweeps were all happy? Don't tell me that Mary Poppins scene where they're all practically whistling out their a#$holes is a lie!
144: Um, no, that's a euphemism for um, well, you know . . .
143: Oh dear god. The mind boggles.
'Ello, guvna! Stuff a live goose up yer chimney? Only a pound!!
The required fortitude makes you proud to be an Englishman. Especially on very cold nights.
Isn't there something in Rabelais about the superiority of the neck of a live goose for wiping your ass with? Warm, soft -- a little hard on the goose, and of course risky if the goose is uncooperative.
JFTR, I don't believe I actually said that LB defends the strong against the weak -- it's something I say about myself* -- and even if I did, I wouldn't have meant it as a rebuke. First, because it's not really true, given the variety of cases people at firms like ours do, and second because the system really does require that even the bad people get lawyers. This isn't so much true with social work -- while the people abusing kids should have a lawyer, if they find themselves in legal jeopardy, they don't need someone from the state to come help them do better job at abusing. Or take their side in an extra-judicial dispute with the kids about whether this or that act was abusive. As for academia, the problem for less privileged college students isn't really that the better profs are going to higher status institutions.
* I have a favorite opinion in a Strong v. Weak case. It was in the Seventh Circuit, and the opinion goes on for pages about how I (my client, really) sucks: 'You suck. You totally suck. The extent to which you suck is simply unbelieveable.' Pages and poages of this. And then it says, in a very short space, more or less, 'however, none of the reasons that you suck are actually before us in this case, and on the issues that are before us in this case, you win.'
I love judges like that. I had a case a couple of years back where I was representing a sympathetic nitwit who had gotten taken for a whole lot of money in a business deal because he couldn't read the financials of the business he was buying. We got an opinion like that from the other side: "This is a crying shame, and no one should do business like this, and [the other guys] are bad, bad people. On the other hand, in any deal involving this much money, you're presumed to be a sophisticated investor, so [my client] loses."
(and I didn't take it as a rebuke, certainly, just wanted to credit a good line.)
Honestly, FL: what else are you going to do? Going to find a career that doesn't contribute to inequality in one form or another? Good luck with that.
He could try stealing from the rich and giving to the poor. Maybe start with the staplers.
"Most adult chimneysweeps employed very small children to do the actual sweeping"
yeah. Until the goddamn unions came in, and then the next thing you know any small children that wanted jobs were getting beaten on the picket line.
Honest! An Economist told me so!
I have to admire the way that LB stumbled on the goose-in-chimney reference, and then immediately recovered with the Rabelais reference. That's class; that's a performer. Next, she'll attempt the triple-axel.
Yeah, but shouldn't she feel guilty, being a figure skater? Surely all those indoor ice rinks contribute to global warming.
impossible. The ice is *cold*.
Cold things can't warm stuff up, see? Christ, didn't you ever take Physics 101?
I plan to retain a saffron robe
Monks' robes were usually dyed with the much cheaper turmeric.
Blimey, this redistribution of wealth is trickier than I thought.
I believe they're sick to bloody death of them, yes.
I think this is a bit harder on your students and yourself than is warranted. Some of them will grow up to be goody two shoes public service types, and even if they don't, a liberal arts education is an actively good thing. It's just, it's an actively good thing that should be available to poor kids too.
That's what I always told a fairly conservative friend of mine when he made fun of my white-privileged-American-liberal-guilt: there's no reason to feel guilty, but we ought to recognize that we're incredibly lucky.
I have a new favorite song verse this week, which I happened upon last Saturday, from the middle of "Chimes of Freedom."
"Through the mad mystic hammering of the wild ripping hail
The sky cracked its poems in naked wonder
That the clinging of the church bells blew far into the breeze
Leaving only bells of lightning and its thunder
Striking for the gentle, striking for the kind
Striking for the guardians and protectors of the mind
And the poet and the painter far behind his rightful time
And we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing."
The images in the other verses have always gotten to me--"the refugees on the unarmed road of flight", "each unharmful, gentle soul misplaced inside a jail"--but I don't personally know a lot of people like that. I do know a fair number of people who could fairly be described as "guardians and protectors of the mind."
164: And does turmeric ever dye cloth! Never, ever, ever, let it splash upon a white shirt. It's magic dye.