The Biggest Fools on the Planet—–Reflections On A University Graduation Day

 

Gassy Hacks and Big Quacks

Today, we recall the “commencement” at the end of four years at the University of Vermont. The university itself is imposing and a little intimidating. The rest of the world works in warehouses or common office spaces. Academia labors in hallowed “halls” and prestigious “centers.”

 

vermontThe path to the hallowed halls of the University of Vermont

Photo via hercampus.com

 

 

People in the Main Street world work for profits… and are subject to market economics. The professoriate is above it all; no profit and loss statements… no profit motives or incentive bonuses… and (for those with “tenure”) no chance of getting fired, no matter how incompetent, irrelevant, or wrong they are. The private sector depends on output and results; academia harbors gassy hacks who may never produce much of anything at all.

The ceremony on Sunday opened with the procession of the university luminati, led by bagpipers of the St. Andrews Society. Ordinary people – even presidents of the United States of America – wear common coats and ties; the academic elite are gussied up with all manner of robes, funny hats, cowls, tassels, honors… and a line of capital letters following their names like baby ducks behind a waddling quack.

“All that brainpower… working on our Justin… it must have done him some good,” parents say to themselves. Then, they have their doubts. Justin seems to think that “diversity” is what really matters,  that Bernie Sanders has the right idea, and that eating gluten is a sin.

Privately, they wonder if they haven’t just been the biggest fools on the planet, spending more than $100,000 to put their boy through four years of brainwashing,  with no visible improvement in his critical thinking. But this is no time to say anything. It’s too late. So, they take their seats, along with thousands of others. At least, those were the dark thoughts gathering in our mind as we sat in a plastic chair on the green, waiting for the festivities to begin.

 

thinking dark thoughtsA mind invaded by dark thoughts…

Image credit: Joseph Loughborough

 

Criticism and Cynicism

Mr. E. Thomas Sullivan, university president, must have seen the clouds over our head.

“Criticism and cynicism will not lead to a constructive solution,” he said, looking right at us. But criticism and cynicism are just what the University of Vermont most lacks. Without them, the Yankees allow themselves to believe any self-congratulatory bunkum that comes along.

They say on Wall Street: When everyone is thinking the same thing, no one is really thinking. That’s the problem with the institution of higher learning on the banks of Lake Champlain. If anyone is doing any thinking there, they didn’t let him say anything on Sunday.

We’re used to commencement claptrap. The typical graduation exercise is always a mixture of lies, pandering, blah-blah, and flattery. The only redeeming quality is that it is transparently insincere.

Students are told how wonderful they are. They are assured that they are now equipped to go out into the world and be “leaders.” They are urged to “maximize [their] potential.” How? “Make a difference!” Make a “positive contribution.” “Advance society…” “Advance humanity…” “Save the world…”

Whoa! How do you do that? The suggestions weren’t long in coming…

“Who here doesn’t believe that climate change is the most important challenge facing this graduating class?” asked the university president in his opening remarks. Out of thousands of arms, only a couple hands went up.

 

cartoon_-_GW_Causes_StuffClimate change (formerly known as “global warming”): Considering all the bad things it causes, it is no wonder that it has been identified as the “most important challenge”…

Cartoon by Glenn McCoy

Mr. Sullivan hardly needed to ask. For him and the rest of the jury, no further deliberations were necessary. The verdict has already been rendered. No need for any more evidence, testimony, or eyewitnesses. The matter was settled. There was not a single dissent. Not a single question.

If there were any doubts about the difference between good and evil, or who should be elected president…none were mentioned; or how the world works… it was nowhere to be seen.

 

I Care, Therefore I Am

Students were cited for special recognition, awards were given, speeches made, on and on, hour after hour. One student was lauded for his contributions to “eliminating racism”… Another was “building communities”… Still another was congratulated for his efforts to “save the world”… Another was supporting “gender confirmation surgery”…

Every one of them was a world improver. Every one “cared.” And every one of these inchoate idealists had a ticket to government employment. Only one will definitely not find a nest among the zombies – one whose degree was awarded posthumously.

“I care, therefore I am,” suggested Gail Sheehy, who gave the keynote address and neatly summed up the event’s leitmotif. “Caring” is all you need to do. You must care about the poor, the excluded, the politically correct victims left behind by modern cutthroat capitalism.

 

tim doesn't give a shitTim on the other hand doesn’t care…

Image via huffingtonpost.de

 

Don’t worry about whether caring actually makes a damned bit of difference. Don’t concern yourself whether meddling in others’ lives really helps them.  Ignore Adam Smith’s insight that it wasn’t his love for humanity that got the baker up at 4 a.m. to warm his ovens.

Most likely, Smith was right; world improvement is a by-product of trying to improve your own life, not trying to change the world itself.  And Friedrich Hayek was probably right, too; trying to improve the world by inflicting your ideas on others does more harm than good. But at UVM, all you gotta do is care! And if you don’t care; you don’t exist.

 

A Strange and Hostile New World

No student was encouraged to bake better bread. None was rewarded for improving the internal combustion engine. Not a single one was recognized for anything that might demonstrably and convincingly make peoples’ lives better.

Instead, the caring alumnae leave the university like drunks leaving a bar after closing time, their judgment impaired by the heady fumes of do-goodism.

Will the world really be a better place a year from now… or two years… or however long it takes for these “carers” to work their magic?

We don’t know. But you’d think that a university would be a good place to at least ask.

 

Image captions by PT

 

The above article originally appeared at the Diary of a Rogue Economist, written for Bonner & Partners. Bill Bonner founded Agora, Inc in 1978. It has since grown into one of the largest independent newsletter publishing companies in the world. He has also written three New York Times bestselling books, Financial Reckoning Day, Empire of Debt and Mobs, Messiahs and Markets.

This is a syndicated repost courtesy of acting-man.com. To view original, click here.


 

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IndenturedServant

I self identify as Tim.

bb

You the fool he is talking to , Tim.Good Grief.

Suzanna
Suzanna

The author was robbed…”I care more than you do/I am more
liberal than you are.” A game I am well familiar with. I grew up in
a University neighborhood populated with upper middle class
caring types. Some of the BS was so thick you couldn’t wade through
it. $100K for gluten abhorrence. I got news for the gluten crowd…
it is the keylating GMO crap that is ruining your guts, not gluten.

Jenny R.
Jenny R.

As a member of academia — albeit one relegated to the basement of the ivory tower, in the room next to the dungeon by way of a warning — I will be the first to admit that the problem with academia is that for a very long time been an absolute political and corporate whore (I’m rather long in the tooth, so while I enjoyed some good classes under good profs the rot had already taken a good hold…there’s the reference point).
Education cannot really be handled exactly like a business, as it leads to a cafeteria style education and a complete dismissal of any sort of educational standards, never mind containing one iota of integrity.
Honestly, the system needs to be burnt to the ground in my opinion and completely revamped (just please warn me ahead of time because they’d likely lock me in the basement out of spite). I can always go back to working at the factory or on a farm, although admittedly I am not as young as I used to be and rather like not having to do that sort of labor now (but I tend to think this gives me a better work ethic as well as a fount of wise counsel to students…if you think you have it bad staying in to research a paper this weekend, well my darlings, try doing split shift on an engine production line and get back with me, until then shut up and do your damn paper). Emphasis on actual scholarship, rewards for merit in the pursuit of rigourous scholarship and going back to the Western canon would be nice.
Sadly, one of the first things that needs to be addressed is the incredibly entitled, soft behavior of many of our college students (and their over indulgent mummsies and dadas)…it’s a multi-front war to be honest (yes, I’ve had students that tried to get me fired because they felt everyone who sat their backsides in a lecture seat deserved at least a C for just being there…who can really teach under those circumstances? only the hacks).

James the Wanderer

One of the clearest services my adviser did for me was to let me into his world – the endless meetings, pointless disagreements, petty bickering over nothing, colleagues who were brain-dead in various ways – and I don’t include the one who wrote my “welcome to the graduate program” letter, after I passed the qualifier – he was later arrested for having child porn and looking at it on a plane! One of the other passengers noticed and turned him in – ending a mildly promising career in a day.
But I figured out after seven years of effort that I really didn’t want to be a professor – not in the current system. It’s just too insane, as Bonner notices – and in different ways.
There was a program going on with Federal funding. One group of highly distinguished professors and their grad students and their collaborators were investigating a certain compound. They wrote numerous papers on it, the lead professor declaring it was perfect for a certain function. My adviser was sceptical about that compound, and gave me a task to investigate it myself. When I performed an Archimedes density test on a sample, it changed from jet-black to brick red – the clearest possible indication that it reacted (with water) and was unstable. The function involved CREATED water – the compound would literally decay and fail to perform in service.We shared our results with the lead professor, who was man enough to recognize failure – although he had two more papers out before he admitted it, padding his publication list.
What distressed me most was the the failure was found by me – the least qualified, least degreed and least research experienced person in a room full of Ph.D.’s, post-docs and distinguished fellows numbering fifty or more! I understand that some of them only do numerical simulations on computer clusters, but how did we get six+ years and lots of dollars into a program and NO ONE NOTICED THIS INSTABILITY BEFORE ME? I knew right then and there I was not an academic prospect, and sought no position in academia after that. The madness leads to tunnel vision, and eventual blindness.

Ouirphuqd
Ouirphuqd

Institutes of higher learning are becoming oxymoronic. I dished out a tidy sum putting my two offspring through the now notorious University of Missouri. They are good kids, but they were indoctrinated in all the PC bullshit and will have to experience on their own at that other school, “The University of Hard Knocks”. What can’t go on forever won’t. The wake up call back normalcy is coming, the pendulum has swung as far as possible, the swinging back will be very interesting!

Maggie
Maggie

I hear you Ouirphuqd. Our son is in his senior year(s) at University of Missouri’s Science and Technology School (Rolla) and while the engineering school probably manages to escape most of the PC crapola, he still comes up with some inane comments that worry us.

Fortunately, he’s smart and has a good GPA in Computer Engineering, so we are hoping he manages to succeed in spite of being a millennial educated during this time.

Ouirphuqd
Ouirphuqd

Maggie: Good luck to your son, I hope he excels in life. We Americans have been dealt a hand in which not many are showing their cards yet. We soon will be!

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