| Academic Mindset 1

Unfortunately far too many people fall into an academic mindset during and after their tertiary education, which is brought about by underlying levels of status-enhancing conditioning, along with a major focus on left brain, materialistic, mechanistic and reductionistic thinking.
This conditioning can include appropriating entitled intellectual, expert or authority status, that defers to like-minded, similarly educated others, or takes cover behind in-house technical jargon, and all too often with a know-it-all, self-righteous demeanour.
We rarely hear authoritative academics, experts and professionals criticising each other, or individually saying that they are wrong, or do not know.
These are all signs of a lack of awareness in those who assume such an academic mindset.
It’s also indicative of a lack of curiosity and openness to alternatives, or respect for other human beings, humanity at large, and often towards nature.
Yet at some point, every human being has encountered a rigid, closed-minded, controlling, academic, expert or authority figure.
Surely this ought to be a good insight for academics, experts and authority figures to acknowledge and learn from themselves.
I suspect that for some academics, an underlying psychology may be at play here, by being imperious and controlling towards others, perhaps to redress power dynamics, or even impostor syndrome, for their previously subservient position during their own education and position in society.
Academic conditioning is also boosted by in-house peer approval as well as referencing hierarchical academic sources to bolster their views, along with closed-mindedness and a belittling of others less academically credentialled, regardless of any facts or insights they may offer.
In fact the assertions of non-academics are too often regarded as being uneducated assumptions or conspiracy theories rather than evidence, facts or proof, because such views have not been academically verified, or claimed by the academic system.
Academics will often resist examining so-called controversial issues because those issues are outside of the remit of their programmed education and status.
The further educated that academics become, the more likely they will follow the requirements of their institutional system, in order to receive their qualifications.
This system of academics prostrating themselves often continues after graduation when they begin their career.
They obviously require funding, and much of that funding comes from institutions, corporations and governments.
Yet in order to obtain funding, academics have to toe the line about what they can research, and the studies they are allowed to publish, otherwise they won’t receive any financial support.
The end result of this, is that a great deal of research has culminated in perverse, anti-human and destructive environmental impacts.
Truth however, is above all, and it is certainly not destroyed by being open-minded, and nor is it exclusive to academics, for it allows all of us to connect with reality if we are curious enough.
Disappointingly, non-academics can become brow beaten and belittled by the domination of the academic system, if they attempt to counter it.
However, many others are conditioned through their own conforming, regurgitative education, as well as societal formality, to have a subservient mindset towards intellectuals, experts and authority figures, and therefore they tend to implicitly trust them.
Yet being obedient followers and having blind commitment to academics and their institutions, places those who follow them into a mindset of ignorant, blind faith or hope, which actually goes against how academics themselves are supposed to learn during their own studies.
Surely we all need to question, rather than blindly trust.
Finally, no expertise is absolute, and no one can be an expert at everything, and so at times we all have to trust others (even academics have to trust other academics in different fields) but let it be less of a blind trust, and much more of a truly informed, wisely-intelligent, whole-minded choice that is coherently human, and fosters kinship with life and nature.
(Please see contemplations on Authority, Conditioning, Experts and Teachers).

© Aaron John Beth’el

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