A Note & A Reading List
An update from the abyss of R and STATA code.
As free subscriptions have mounted to the Mailer, I have been motivated to be more productive in landing upon and producing intersting and relevant content to the Mailer’s readership that spans the bridge between the increasingly decaying ‘academic’ institutions and “The Public” as in Gurri’s “Revolt of the Public” which I highlight below. Several ideas have crossed my mind, but one in particular is to use the Mailer as, in part, a way for mentees that have sought out my academic mentorship to—in their own words—tell their stories about their journeys in undergraduate (and graduate) education as well as their own perceptions as to how the Academy has prepared them or failed them for understanding the world. Given the current crisis of authority we are experiencing in the Academy and in our insitutions more broadly,
these guest posts I hope will show just how the Academy is failing its current charges. Here is a sample from a forthcoming guest post from one of my mentees, Anjali, who was born and brought up in Malaysia and then spent her teenage years studying in India. After completing her high school, she moved to Vancouver, Canada where she majored in Psychology and minored in Law and Society from the University of British Columbia.
Stay tuned! And, if you know of anyone currently in the Academy at any level, and would find the idea of a guest post sharing their reflections on what it is like to be amidst the current ‘anti-science’ moment, please have them reach out to me.
A Reading List for the Current Moment:
I have tweeted these book recommendations several times before,
but I think the list is worth reproducing here for those not regularly on Twitter. Each of these works provides deep insight into the current cultural upheavel we are living through and I believe will help readers more fully understand what is happening in the world around them. Each work provides insight into unique elements of the current cultural upheavel from the individual-level (Cleckley: The Mask of Sanity) classic from which all modern notions of psychopathy flow
to the larger societal level (Gurri: Revolt of the Public).
Each read is uniquely challenging, but I encourage readers to work through them, and where understanding is lacking, do your own research as needed using the interwebz. Perhaps the most challenging of all of these works is Paglia’s “Sexual Personae”,
but it is also perhaps the most enriching and penetrating of them, in terms of its scope and insight into the Apollonian and Dionysian (cf. masculine & feminine) forces that shape and contour the human condition. Goldberg’s “Why Men Rule”
would pair well with Sexual Personae I think, and is razor sharp in its logic and rigor. Rieff’s “Triumph of the Therapeutic” provides rich insight into the ascendance of ‘trauma’ and ‘victim’ discourses in modern cultural parlance, especially in our cultural and educational institutions, and conveys with remarkable clarity the challenges that a post-religious ethos presents for cultural stability.
Each of these books can be found on Amazon or Ebay or similar outlets (Half Price Books is also a good option), but a note that the Goldberg books are rare and can be pricey if you find them. They can be obtained, however.
Well, I don't know where my first comment went, but here's a question: I get how academia has grown "anti-science" in response to some issues (i.e. gender), but I wonder if there is a counter movement that seeks to wipe out any resistance to the dominant dogmas. For example, the "trust the science" movement during the pandemic, advocating the universal imposition of a vaccine, essentially the enforcement of a medical intervention. Because "science". So how about these (complementary?) developments? The more one strays away from science in some areas, the more one invokes it in other areas?
I've only read Cleckley, but based on his inclusion, I'll be checking out more on this list. If you like Cleckley, also check out Political Ponerology, by Andrew Lobaczewski (about which I write on my stack).