Comment by Bombthecat
1 day ago
I didn't, but I saw a friend go into a week long alcohol session because he wanted to leave academics and couldn't take it anymore...
It must be like a pit fight, but with connections and half truths
1 day ago
I didn't, but I saw a friend go into a week long alcohol session because he wanted to leave academics and couldn't take it anymore...
It must be like a pit fight, but with connections and half truths
"in academics the in-fighting is so vicious because the stakes are so low" - interesting to see what happens now that that stakes are just democracy and an entire country!
I mean the whole point of democratic system _is_ you want rotating cliques and infighting. Because defaulting to consensus isn't really that democratic.
The large blocks need to be able to move forward in legislation but the more uglier and tumultuous the backroom dealing are (within legal bounds) the healthier the democracy is.
I believe this is also what colours our views of the general academic infighting — academics are rarely rotated out except in the lower ranks, so it's a different type of skillset of building long-term alliances that drives their progression through the academic field and available careers in a particular institution (not even talking about "academic points" through publishing in recognized journals, which is a different discussion altogether — even with that criteria satisfied, to move to the next rank of professorship, you need to be elected by your colleagues).
Basically, academic tenure is opposite from democracy.
Potentially, but it might also be how humans work. See any season of survivor.
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The tension between effectiveness (cohesive decisions swiftly implemented) and representation (complex reduction of utterly disparate points of view to a workable compromise) is the main force at the core of democracy.
Most of the electorate doesn't really understand it, constantly clamoring for one or the other to be the only guiding principle, but you need both - and one has to find a way even when they appear completely irreducible. Democracy is beautiful in a very messy way, a bit like nature.
The usual grifters have had their chance in most Western governments. Lawyers, landlords, the gentry, etc… I am skeptical but the present bunch that is usually very well represented in most western/eastern governments have had plenty of time and opportunity and look where we are at now.
> and look where we are at now.
Living easier, richer, safer lives than 99.99% of all humans who have ever existed?
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IMHO, the logical conclusion of your comment is that humans basically suck at prioritizing common good and very long-term vision, independently of their background.
From what I observed of my time in academia, I don't see any reason for academics to do any better than other groups. Like everywhere, the starry-eyed, altruistic ones always lose the fight against the political sharks.
This is very general and I don't see the point honestly.
Different countries are very different.
You probably can name "the usual grifters" in your domicile but don't expect the same patterns to be transferrable to different regions.
Sometimes pathologies are portable like the the authoritarian state capture toolkit but even there _who are you doing it with_ can be quite different even though _how you are doing it_ may seem familiar.
Also by any metric the general unspecific list of countries "east and west" has lots of variance in life expectancy, happiness, poverty, literacy etc.
So I can only read this as pointless general venting or faux cynicism.