Percy-L: Literary, Religious, Scientific, and Philosophical Discussion of Walker Percy

["Eckert, Robert G SPC MIL USA FORSCOM" <robert.g.eckert AT us.army.mil>]

List

This exchange has made me think of Pirsig in ZMM:

"The school was what could euphemistically be called a "teaching college." At 
a teaching college you teach and you teach and you teach with no time for 
research, no time for contemplation, no time for participation in outside 
affairs. Just teach and teach and teach until your mind grows dull and your 
creativity vanishes and you become an automaton saying the same dull things 
over and over to endless waves of innocent students who cannot understand why 
you are so dull, lose respect and fan this disrespect out into the community. 
The reason you teach and you teach and you teach is that this is a very 
clever way of running a college on the cheap while giving a false appearance 
of genuine education." (Part II, Ch 13)

 Bob Eckert


PS

Cash, or gold? 



----- Original Message -----
From: Wade Riddick <wriddick AT usa.net>
Date: Saturday, October 11, 2008 16:04
Subject: Re: [percy-l] College Essays
To: "Percy-L: Literary and Philosophical Discussion" 
<percy-l AT lists.ibiblio.org>


> >Peter and Rhonda,
> >
> >I too sympathize. I normally stagger my assignments, but I messed up
> >with my cut and past job on my syllabi. All four classes turned in
> >their work this week!
> 
> If I could chime in my two cents, the decline in reading and 
> writing that's
> occurred in American society across the last fifty years has had a 
> verydeep and detrimental effect on our collective capacity for 
> independent,critical thought.  As life and our understanding of it 
> grows increasingly
> complex, it's all-the-more crucial that we hone our analytical 
> skills; I
> don't know how we do that if it's not writing and grading essays and
> tossing around ideas in seminars.  Instead of investing in the 
> developmentof these faculties, a variety of political choices has 
> made teaching this
> sort of reflection more expensive and out-of-reach for the average 
> citizen.
> If you or your students doubt the benefits, then let me simply say 
> this.  I
> doubt I would be alive today if I didn't have a degree in English and
> graduate classes in microeconomics and statistics under my belt.  The
> amount of bullshit that masquerades for scientific truth in 
> medicine today
> is truly staggering - and deadly.  I didn't just encounter potentially
> fatal misinformation from one doctor; I got it from almost every 
> corner.
> For example, I brought in research published in scientific 
> journals linking
> gut bacteria loss to autoimmunity and one gastroenterologist told 
> me he
> didn't "believe" it - as if personal "belief" is supposed to be a 
> measureof scientific proof1 - and then he referred me to the local 
> doctor who had
> first pointed me to the theory saying, "She has a good reputation with
> problem cases like yours."
> 
> I understood instantly from game theory that he was relying on a
> reputational effect as a cognitive short-cut for his decision-
> making.  But
> he didn't need to.  All he had to do was stay current with the 
> literatureonce he got out of medical school - you know, do what 
> he's required to do
> by law.  He believed Dr. Cave could help me because she had a 
> "reputation"for helping problem patients no one else could deal 
> with.  What was she
> using?  Magic?  In his mind, what was her "reputation" supposed to 
> be based
> on?
> 
> In a competitive marketplace, economically useful information is 
> supposedto be disseminated.  If a doctor does something better 
> than you do and
> you're in competition with him, you're supposed to study what he 
> does.  How
> does that information travel?  The only source of new information 
> for the
> average doctor these days seems to come from drug company reps who 
> haveeconomic incentives to skew their spiel.  And if it's not 
> covered by a
> patent, they have no incentive to discuss it.
> 
> If you haven't been trained to spot subtle lies, you can't get a 
> clear view
> of reality and you can't help your patients.  It's like 
> deconstruction.How do you understand what's not being said?  How 
> do you understand the gap
> between what is said and the underlying reality those symbols are 
> supposedto represent?  How many doctors get the kind of liberal 
> arts education we
> did?  For that matter, take a look at the stock market slide and ask
> yourself how many businessmen could benefit from a few history 
> classes.
> Our economy brims with specialists who know very little about reality
> outside their increasingly narrow field.  They cannot integrate 
> what they
> know with information from even closely related fields - even when 
> livesdepend on it.  The result is a comedy (or tragedy) of 
> ironies.  You see
> this when a rheumatologist tells patients to eat foods that make their
> inflammation worse because he thinks of it as a "nutritional" 
> problem and
> that's beneath him.2  You see this "semiotic bubble" when the 
> executivesrunning A.I.G. and listening to their investment 
> products division didn't
> understand the basics of forensic accounting, fraud and Ponzi 
> schemes (or
> worse; perhaps they did).
> 
> It's easy for the sign to drift away from the signified.  Perhaps 
> we all
> need a little shock every once in a while to prick the inflated 
> bubble and
> shake loose the light - or, as Albert Gore, Sr., put it, "Defeat 
> may serve
> as well as victory to shake the soul and let the glory out."
> 
> Having said that, when I consider the current socioeconomic and
> technological trends, I can't help but worry that our capacity for
> independent thought and collective judgment is in decline.  
> Perhaps this
> upcoming political realignment will prove me wrong or at least 
> reset the
> clock.  I certainly hope so.
> 
> If the medical examples don't stir your soul or bother your 
> students then
> consider this: I've been in cash for several years now.  Like Warren
> Buffet, Paul Krugman and a lot of other contemporary critics of our
> capitalism, I knew our economy was tied together with bubblegum and
> shoestring and Bush was running short on shoestring.
> 
> Wade Riddick
> 
> 1.  I think T.S. Kuhn would say it is and I would agree with him; but
> that's entirely the problem.  We don't train people to understand that
> their grasp on rationality is essentially a "belief" that we need to
> constantly question in light of new evidence - particularly in the
> sciences.  Yet as we need more of this as scientific knowledge 
> multiplies,we're getting less of this.
> 
> 2.  It's not a bad choice economically since it does make the patient
> sicker which then sends them running back to the rheumatologist 
> for more
> medicine.  Of course, it's hard to construe this as good behavior 
> in the
> context of the Hippocratic oath.  For another example of bad medicine,
> consider how many rheumatologists think it's acceptable to 
> prescribe COX-2
> inhibitors like celebrex to arthritis patients despite the fact 
> that it
> makes autoimmunity worse and degrades the formation of new 
> collagen in
> joints.
> 
> 
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