toji.
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If your purpose in life is to write, read, create and bring to life a discipline such as philosophy, literature, history, science, biology, mathematics or physics, you need to understand that academia and the work associated with these disciplines can take you away from that purpose. If you really want to innovate, deeply understand or motivate change in these areas, the best thing you can do is to distance yourself from academia.
Why?
The academic institution is sustained by the maintenance of status and power, which leads it to maintain the status quo. This limits the capacity for dialogue, the generation of new theories and the promotion of alternative approaches. Indeed, it often excludes avenues of progress if they challenge tradition. A recent example is the social sciences' heavy reliance on statistics, which paradoxically limits the very approach that has driven their development. This is in contrast to the natural sciences, which, after the historical and abstract processes that culminated in the late 20th century, have become more and more abstract. Nevertheless, in the 21st century they are more advanced than ever, thanks to what? Thanks to their abandonment of rigour, to contemplation and the wandering of knowledge.
Nietzsche, in his book Morality and Moral Judgements, states that it is madness that leads to greatness and disciplined progress. Solitude and the search for isolation in the mountains, which produces a self-imposed madness, frees the individual from institutional dependence. It is the search for the free man, the one who is not constrained by the moral prejudices of an academic institution, that leads to true progress. That is why it is important to legitimise Kaczynski, not for his crimes, but for who he was and how he lived. This person, brilliant in his youth, was consumed by the empiricism of academia, which drove him mad. In his unhappiness, he demonstrated that progress is not to be found in society or in institutions, but in solitude.
Well-being is not in society. Just look at the people trapped in their mobile phones, living in an institutional system created by capitalism. Society, in its eagerness to perpetuate itself, has killed itself. Today there are no truly free people, but limited and atomised people.
You don't have to go mad like Kaczynski to recognise the malaise in society, he experienced it first hand, and the worst thing is that this malaise has permeated all spheres, and academia is no exception: academia has been corrupted by bioethics (the systematic study of human behaviour in the life and health sciences in the light of moral values and principles), and this in turn has been distorted by economic logics. Today, university careers and academia in general are focused on fulfilling moral principles that are currently purely empirical, traditional and economic.There is no metaphysical progress, no transcendental questions about life and death.There is only a focus on the reproduction of capital, on consumerism and on a life that is presented as free but is not.
Why?
The academic institution is sustained by the maintenance of status and power, which leads it to maintain the status quo. This limits the capacity for dialogue, the generation of new theories and the promotion of alternative approaches. Indeed, it often excludes avenues of progress if they challenge tradition. A recent example is the social sciences' heavy reliance on statistics, which paradoxically limits the very approach that has driven their development. This is in contrast to the natural sciences, which, after the historical and abstract processes that culminated in the late 20th century, have become more and more abstract. Nevertheless, in the 21st century they are more advanced than ever, thanks to what? Thanks to their abandonment of rigour, to contemplation and the wandering of knowledge.
Nietzsche, in his book Morality and Moral Judgements, states that it is madness that leads to greatness and disciplined progress. Solitude and the search for isolation in the mountains, which produces a self-imposed madness, frees the individual from institutional dependence. It is the search for the free man, the one who is not constrained by the moral prejudices of an academic institution, that leads to true progress. That is why it is important to legitimise Kaczynski, not for his crimes, but for who he was and how he lived. This person, brilliant in his youth, was consumed by the empiricism of academia, which drove him mad. In his unhappiness, he demonstrated that progress is not to be found in society or in institutions, but in solitude.
Well-being is not in society. Just look at the people trapped in their mobile phones, living in an institutional system created by capitalism. Society, in its eagerness to perpetuate itself, has killed itself. Today there are no truly free people, but limited and atomised people.
You don't have to go mad like Kaczynski to recognise the malaise in society, he experienced it first hand, and the worst thing is that this malaise has permeated all spheres, and academia is no exception: academia has been corrupted by bioethics (the systematic study of human behaviour in the life and health sciences in the light of moral values and principles), and this in turn has been distorted by economic logics. Today, university careers and academia in general are focused on fulfilling moral principles that are currently purely empirical, traditional and economic.There is no metaphysical progress, no transcendental questions about life and death.There is only a focus on the reproduction of capital, on consumerism and on a life that is presented as free but is not.
