Read this if you're hell bent on war

kpsta,

What I said was that I chose to leave the journalistic field because they write about history, rather then participate in the making of history.

Also, I was saying to ask your professor what he thinks about the teachers in FOREIGN countries that are teaching the hatred of America.

I do believe that most people in acadamia lead a sheltered life, and are for the most part of the liberal variety.

I do not have anything against opinions, that is what makes this country great, and I do concur that there are some very narrow minded people, young and old.

However, it in no way invalidates my point that a lot of academic people are idealists, with no real solutions, or ideas on how it works in the real world.

The Real world is not covered by tenure.

DaDakota

 

Your condecension irks me.

They have a job, they go to work, they earn a paycheck and give part of that paycheck to the government. They have friends, they have acquantences, they live, they love, they lose, they win.

I don't know what world they live in, but it sounds pretty ****ing real to me.

 

Dakota you talk to much and know very little. Man of action huh, I'm glad you are no where near politics. I feel sorry for the people who lost their lives but if you attack their country many more Americans will die because of our ego. Think before you act because you can not undue destruction.

 

I think you may be missing the whole point about "history"...

How then do you define "making history"? As I see it, anytime that someone writes about history, they are writing history-- producing history. Assuming what they write sees the light of day, they are putting into writing what may be the only account that defines a particular moment or event-- that is quite literally making history. As much as going into battle, engaging in political acts that will be remembered, or anything else that you deem to be making history...


It sounds really self-righteous when someone says, "I don't write about history, I make history!" If you influence the way people think (be it good or bad) through teachings, then you are making history as well. If you have some part in changing the way that future generations think about the world, this is far more valuable than a short-term solution for a long-term problem("quick, surgical strikes"... c'mon, like that will show them... terrorism is certainly rooted in more serious global problems and won't go away that easily...).

 

What I find so odd about that Churchill quote so beloved by conservatives is that it isn't statistically powerful...

There are millions of intelligent, older liberals. How does this quote apply to them?

Such assertions are accurate in that the further entrenched in current systems one becomes, the less likely one is to wish change. It's against self-interest at that point.

 

There is a reason people talk about living in an 'ivory tower.' When you are in an academic environment you have the latitude to see the world in black and white. This is wrong, this is right. When you are actually making decisions that affect people's lives you realize you are dealing in shades of gray. If you are a professor you can deconstruct without ever having to actually construct a solution. It is much easier to find your own 'truth' in that atmosphere and it is much harder to get fired, since you really have to **** up and you really don't make decisions that make a difference on a day to day basis. You teach your 101 classes, which are no different that any other professors 101 classes. Occasionally some upper level classes that you teach hold your interest, but more likely you live your insulated life in some small college town and go to academic dinner parties and you never make decisions involving those shades of gray. Mr. X got a 50, he fails. Ms. Y got a 90, she passes.

As someone who was an academic and who is now in the business world I can tell you things ARE NOT THE SAME.

 

I am not demeaning academia or journalists in any way.

I am saying, it was not for me, and I think that it is easy to sit back and analyze and discuss politics and religion and world affairs in a SAFE classroom setting.

Also, many journalists put themselves in danger in time of war to show the people what is happening....incredible, but as for me, I would have prefered to be shooting a gun rather then a camera.

You can have whatever view you want, liberal, conservative, etc..etc...but none of those views will stop Terrorism.

The only way to stop it is to take action against it, I understand that he is saying that our government is not clean in any way, and I am willing to concede that point.

Haven, as for the churchill quote, you are right, there are many older people with varying views. However, I think it is valid in that many more young people are a lot more liberal and tend to get more conservative as they get out in the REAL world and discover that life is much different then what you thought it was going to be in college or grad school.

Now KPSTA,

When those people are writing history, they are only writing THEIR own views of history. It is important to remember it for sure, however, I really do doubt that we completely ever understand it unless we were actually there at the time it was written.

DaDakota

 

Sheesh, sounds like you had some tough business classes? Again I repeat what I said (to another poster) about regrettably never meeting a teacher that inspired him/her. You were clearly studying something in which people try to invent black and white answers and force them on others... this is not indicative of higher education as a whole. One of the first things that students are encouraged is exactly to look at problems in shades of gray. To suggest that professors just go to academic dinner parties is also kind of narrow minded-- plenty of professors do wonderful work outside of universities by helping to build solutions to different problems.

That people in the "real world"-- I assume that you are talking about the business world here-- do something more valuable than teachers is ignorant. There are just as many people living in this "real world" you are referring to that have totally lost sight of the bigger picture. I am not saying that teaching is everything, but as one who loves to see people getting something out of their educations, I'll continue to defend it.

 

Well, according to a CNN.com poll, 49% of people feel more anger than sorrow or shock.

I consider that tragic. Sorrow first. Empathy before hate.

 

Well, actually I studied in several disciplines and taught in another. But my point is that as a professor and as a student, graduate or otherwise, you talk. Talk talk talk. You don't actually enact policy decisions. You talk about it. So it is easier to see things in black and white. Yes, there are academics that see the shades of gray, and yes there are people outside of academia that are idiots, but the nature of an academic position is NOT to solve problems, but to talk about them.

 

And please don't call me or my writing ignorant. I am just as educated and articulate, if not more so, than you.

 

Actually,

The only lasting answer is education, and understanding.

The people are hating us over there because they are taught by their teachers and parents and governments that America is evil.

The only way to change those beliefs is a wholesale change in the way those people are taught.

I do not condemn teachers, I respect their positions, and even admire them. I am not naive enough to believe that they know more then anyone else or have all the answers, but they do the job that they chose, and a lot of them do a darn fine job.

However, the most important thing to teach people is to think for yourself. Any teacher that does this is providing a much better education then just the basics.

Now when you try to put up an article written by a teacher as a means to make some people take pause in their thought process, this is where it begins to enter into that gray area. Teachers and Professors are not any more in tune with what goes on in the world then the average man or woman on the street.

So, don't believe everything you read or hear, just because it comes from someone you respect, think for yourself.

DaDakota

 

I wasn't calling you ignorant, so I apologize if that is how you understood it. However, I'd have to say that by throwing out the "all they ever do is talk, talk, talk/the nature of an academic position is not to solve problems" argument, you are getting yourself into the whole "black and white" problem for which you are condemning professors in the first place.

 

Thoughts from Deepak Choprah forwarded to me in an email:

Here is something else to consider. Deepak Chopra was on Ecclecticos on KUT FM, www.kut.org and his eloquent words of wisdom have helped me, maybe they will be of some use to you as well during this stressful time.

As fate would have it, I was leaving New York on a jet flight that took off 45 minutes before the unthinkable happened. By the time we landed in Detroit, chaos had broken out. When I grasped the fact that American security had broken down so tragically, I couldn’t respond at first. My wife and son were also in the air on separate flights, one to Los Angeles, one to San Diego. My body went absolutely rigid with fear. All I could think about was their safety, and it took several hours before I found out that their flights had been diverted and both were safe.

Strangely, when the good news came, my body still felt that it had been hit by a truck. Of its own accord it seemed to feel a far greater trauma that reached out to the thousands who would not survive and the tens of thousands who would survive only to live through months and years of hell. And I asked myself, Why didn’t I feel this way last week? Why didn’t my body go stiff during the bombing of Iraq or Bosnia? Around the world my horror and worry are experienced every day. Mothers weep over horrendous loss, civilians are bombed mercilessly, refugees are ripped from any sense of home or homeland. Why did I not feel their anguish enough to call a halt to it? As we hear the calls for tightened American security and a fierce military response to terrorism, it is obvious that none of us has any answers. However, we feel compelled to ask some questions.

Everything has a cause, so we have to ask, What was the root cause of this evil? We must find out not superficially but at the deepest level. There is no doubt that such evil is alive all around the world and is even celebrated. Does this evil grow from the suffering and anguish felt by people we don’t know and therefore ignore? Have they lived in this condition for a long time? One assumes that whoever did this attack feels implacable hatred for America. Why were we selected to be the focus of suffering around the world?

All this hatred and anguish seems to have religion at its basis. Isn’t something terribly wrong when jihads and wars develop in the name of God? Isn’t God invoked with hatred in Ireland, Sri Lanka, India, Pakistan, Israel, Palestine, and even among the intolerant sects of America? Can any military response make the slightest difference in the underlying cause? Is there not a deep wound at the heart of humanity? If there is a deep wound, doesn’t it affect everyone?

When generations of suffering respond with bombs, suicidal attacks, and biological warfare, who first developed these weapons? Who sells them? Who gave birth to the satanic technologies now being turned against us? If all of us are wounded, will revenge work? Will punishment in any form toward anyone solve the wound or aggravate it? Will an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, and limb for a limb, leave us all blind, toothless and crippled?

Tribal warfare has been going on for two thousand years and has now been magnified globally. Can tribal warfare be brought to an end? Is patriotism and nationalism even relevant anymore, or is this another form of tribalism? What are you and I as persons going to do about what is happening? Can we afford to let the deeper wound fester any longer?

Everyone is calling this an attack on America, but is it not a rift in our collective soul? Isn’t this an attack on civilization from without that is also from within?

When we have secured our safety once more and cared for the wounded, after the period of shock and mourning is over, it will be time for soul searching. I only hope that these questions are confronted with the deepest spiritual intent. None of us will feel safe again behind the shield of military might and stockpiled arsenals. There can be no safety until the root cause is faced.

In this moment of shock I don’t think anyone of us has the answers. It is imperative that we pray and offer solace and help to each other. But if you and I are having a single thought of violence or hatred against anyone in the world at this moment, we are contributing to the wounding of the world.

Love,
Deepak

 

Wow.

Academics suck...let's banish them! (note: just kidding, lighten up)

So only people of action are really to be considered even keel...what exactly is action? My wife is a computer programmer. My uncles are lawyers. What actions do they do? Answer: my wife programs and lawyers, well, "lawyer."

What "policy decisions" are they enacting? What about garbage men? Waiters, financial analysts, real estate agents, ceo's of software companies, etc...what policies do they enact?

Obviously, all make decisions that have a relation to other people. It is unavoidable in any carreer. How is academia any different? What about the many academics who are active outside the walls of academia?

Anyway, don't feel the need to answer, I already know the responses over the differences...they are nice, really. I am just talking, though. I know nothing. Discuss amongst yourselves.

Hayes,

I am actually opposite of you...I for a bit ran a small business (didn't own, just basically ran it). I now am back in academia because I feel that there is more for me to offer the world through this route. I am a "man of action" and know that the old job was a waste. This way I can more effectively change the world...and I indeed will.

Anyway, you all bore me, as I bore myself. Your feeble minds cannot comprehend my drastically superior intellect. Yawn.

PS. I, too, have been mad at my government for things it has done (and in some cases continues to do) but I do not understand what that has to do with this situation. Nothing is perfect, but nothing deserves terrorism, or the lack of response to terrorism. In '94 I spent a year warning the world of the perils of foreign terrorism on our soil, of people who are known threats being allowed to be here (it is now known that one of the guys, already a known suspect for a bombing in the '80s, was allowed a tourist visa) but, no...nobody listened to me. Yet another example of me being better than everyone else...suckers. [/end stupidity]

 

kpsta, Tolpatcsh and Rimbaud have all written neat points about academia... and I'll bore everyone w/ a few more.

I graduated in 1995 and quickly immersed myself into the business world so that I could a) make money and quit being a poor arsehole and b) take some time off.

Well, making money is always fun, and it certainly appeases the ego of someone that grew up poor. Making money will perhaps always be a goal of mine, merely b/c of the fear of doing w/o. The "taking time off", for me, turned into 5-6 years of a vacation. I became a consumer, a member of the herd... and I believe I saw the intuition that many that are anti-academic feel. Unfortunately, that was... for me, b/c I didn't truly understand the point of academia, and b/c I still had too much baggage attached to silly liberal arts disciplines (no offense you liberal arts hippies ).

I started my collegiate career as a philosphy major. A few years in, I crumbled under the stresses of having lost all faith in everything, college had become a liberal haven for me... until philosophy destroyed that outlet of faith as well. Too balance my sanity, I escalated my geology minor to a geology major. Many of the questions actually included answers, so geology kept me on the sane path.

The work world was initially just a continuation of the academic world for me. I worked at Kennecott Utah Copper here in Salt Lake and we were addressing enough problems to keep ourselves mildly alert. Though I didn't get to do the really cool research, I at least was on the periphery of enough cool work to keep abreast of the state of the field. Later at KUC, I became a software developer. My options went up a 1000 fold. I left for the green pastures.

The green pastures of software development are great... but it's rather easy to become a member of the herd. Other than staying on top of your own discipline (and this is incredibly time consuming) you don't really experience any self improvement. In fact, much of my leisure time evaporated into becoming a soulless consumer. I bought a nice car, wasted money on stupid things, etc. etc. I lost touch w/ my geological roots. I became dumb. It's definitely fun to take a mental break, but the difference between being numb and being dumb, is imo, you recognize you're dumb when you want to pull something up and cannot.

For me, the academic world offers hope, a soul of sorts. It's at this point in my long winded post that I finally babble up to the question: how is industry more of a 'real world' than academia? In industry, few people are doing anything other than data entry, or mechanized laborious work of crap they learned years ago.
Eventually, even much of programming (one of the few fields in which you still get to answer problems) becomes laborious boring data entry work. Even worse, working all day breeds fatigue in which one later just responds to their familial needs at night. How is this the real world? Is the real world dumbed down? Perhaps people on this board somehow merged their business life w/ an intellectual life... but I personally couldn't do it. I was too tired to do anything other than stare at the boob tube or just fall asleep when I was constantly working. Life is laborious. You get to a point in which you can't research the incoming information enough to dissiminate between bs and valid data. IMO, you become susceptible to the machine.

In academia, the only difference between all of the working and ****ing and eating and ****ing that everyone else gets to do, is that you're still surrounded by members of specialized disciplines that are still pursuing their specific fields. Rather than being immediately surrounded by say 100 java programmers whose biggest push is to insult vb programmers, you can perhaps still pursue incredibly important questions. Sure there's meaningless work associated w/ pleasing the 'client', but in the luckiest of worlds you still get to pursue your baby, you still get to pursue truth.

IMO, that's somewhat more comforting than spending my next 30 years the way I've spent my past 5. Writing code for someone that'll be obsolete in 3 years, or writing code for someone when they change their minds on every damn spec.

Just some babble, sorry...

btw (I can't remember who wrote immediately after me... Timing?.. yeah Timing)

Timing, I appreciate your attempt to give validity to our bombing of 100s of 1000s of civilians in Japan... but imo, you're not recognizing my analogy of 'objective' and you're also downplaying the fact that, in those terrorists' eyes, they are in a war. Most of these groups have declared war w/ the US, and the US is full on aware of this fact.

But more importantly, imo, we're not being tactful when we ignore the fact that we explicitly targeted a civilian population. Blah Blah Blah.

 

Achebe what is the objective of hijacking four civilian airliners, full of the maximum fuel possible, and then driving them into buildings with thousands of civilians? It would seem that goal is terror and cold blooded murder. The US has a long history of not bargaining with terrorists, not giving into terrorism. What kind of idiot would think this would achieve any type of political goal? Only an absolute madman would really believe that this type of action would bring relief for Palestinians. Only a madman would believe that Americans would remove their military presense in the middle east because of this attack. This goal was quite clearly to brutally murder civilians.

I find it pretty humorous that 50 years after the fact there is "new evidence" that Japan actually surrendered before the bombings. As if nobody would have noticed the Japanese Emperor on live radio declaring a full and unconditional surrender. As if after the first bombings nobody would notice the Emperor surrendering on live radio. While you're at it why don't you provide that evidence that we never landed on the moon and that the Lochness Monster is alive and well. That seems to be about in the same league as this ridiculous assertion.

Anyways, the attempt to equate killing simply because both have an "objective" is preposterous. The objective in Japan was to end a deadly long World War in which tens of thousands of American lives were lost and would continue to be lost if an invasion could not be prevented. The goal of this latest attack was simply to murder as many Americans as possible.

 

rockHEAD,

Deepak is enlightened. Thanks for the post.

Personally, I don't feel hate. But I cannot condone letting a bunch of wackos threaten my family for years to come. I say, get rid of these sick, evil bastards now, then try to fix the things that caused this.

Unfortunately, I imagine that will never entirely get rid of wackos, no matter what we fix.

 

Hey Timing, calm down for a second.

Okay.

Are you okay?

I think we're all inferring that the attackers want the US out of the Middle East. I think we're all inferring that the attackers want the US to stop backing the colonial power called 'Israel' and get out of their territory. I think we're all inferring that the attackers want the US to pull out of Iraq; you know, the place where we waged war so that we could secure access to oil. The place where we killed 500,000 Iraqis to stabilize our economy and to 'liberate' the little place of heaven called 'Kuwait'.

Just call all of that a hunch though. I could be wrong.

If you don't think that there are millions of Americans wondering tonight why we're so concerned w/ Israel, you're deluding yourself.

BTW, do you honestly think that a suicide bomber's intent is to simply kill the lives in front of them? You need to study the hatred that actually causes these people to do these things. These aren't little Ted Bundy's on steroids... they're people waging a religious war. Hell, I doubt you'd ever find a 1000 serial killers in the US. I bet though, that you could indoctrinate a 1000 people to commit a holy war in a few months.

I know nothing of this 'new' stuff. It actually wasn't my point. Are you sure that you actually r-e-a-d my posts?

BTW, I HAVE watched military experts discuss the ramifications and intent of us dropping the bomb. Japan was a has been by the time we approached the island. The bomb was a live test, w/ live Japanese people and it was completely a sign of power. If you honestly don't believe that... well... Then again I'm debating w/ someone that keeps ignoring the fact that we casually vaporized over a 100,000 people. What the hell are you gonna do?

Okay. Sure. Keep telling yourself that. Perhaps one day you'll come to grips w/ the hypocrisy of bombing civilians period. It's not right just b/c we did it. Damn man, is this little hoity toity truism about not killing innocents only applicable to Muslims?

Actually Timing, forget the entire Japanese example... b/c I know you'll never be able to question your rah rah. What do you think of the East Timor example? If we give arms and train our allies to kill others, are we to blame? If not, then why invade Afghanistan?

Oh yeah, I forgot, we're the US...

(I just came from Curry in a Hurry in Salt Lake, btw. Some ****ing idiot threw a can of gasoline at the place. These are real issues, and real people are going to get hurt. It'd be nice if everyone found comfort in their GOD (or whatever) and tried to seek understanding in a peaceful manner).