Managed thought

Another snapshot of the self-destruction of thought: “Under this asinine rule we’d never have heard of Darwin.” The “asinine rule” is a quantitative measure of scholarly productivity UK bureaucrats use to allocate funds. Academics get high marks by treating “research” as an industrial product. That sort of research is normally worthless, but such questions fall outside the system and are ignored.

The contradiction of the modern mind is that it denies transcendence so it can manipulate and control everything. Unfortunately, “everything” includes the mind itself. As a result, the life of the mind becomes just a social and economic process to be managed like any other. Things like “contemplation” and “truth” become fantasies without recognized relevance or existence. The consequence is something that looks impressively like knowledge and thought but is not. Jean Cocteau put it best: the problem with the modern world is that stupidity has begun to think.
Posted by Jim Kalb at May 02, 2003 03:05 PM | Send