Deathly Wisdom

It is  very sad to observe that the ideals and moral framework that is impressed upon you from childhood (and that you perpetuate to your own children) is so far from the lived experience. Perhaps, as Terry Pratchett’s Death advises,  it is necessary for us to continue to believe what is not true, in order that it may one day be true.

I have recently experienced the agony and the ecstasy of  the interface  between academia and the real world (for lack of a better term).  The purity and idealism of youth was inspiring. The pace of progress and the meticulous, systematic explorations were, to me,  evidence of the vital and powerful crucible of reason and science  continuing to percolate, distil, tear down and build up knowledge.

However, with this ecstasy was the agony of observing (directly) the intolerance, self-serving and self-interested opinions of a broad swathe of people. Perhaps, this is the luxury of winners. At a fundamental level,  in my external opinion, conflation of reputation and value is wrong and, even worse, dangerous.  Further, we human beings are spectacularly poor at picking winners and losers. Resourcing,  reputation, money, fame may have become necessary  in today’s world (though I would debate this) but they are certainly not sufficient.

Who would have thought a dull appearing German Jewish patent clerk would have been able to put together the panoply of ideas of over 3 millenia and changed the world? Almost synchronous, another charming partial Jewish, man was building a reputation for rebuilding a Germany emerging from the Depression and with this power would usher an ideologically-based genocide.

To paraphrase Martin Luther King Jr, “…I have a dream that one day people will not be judged by the institution they come from or,  who knows them ,or what impact factor the journal they publish in, or whether they are a single author  but by the critical assessment of their ideas…”

Yes, a fantasy…but I am very human…