Kevin M. Kruse, PhD and the Princetonian Daily Rag
I dislike certain journalistic styles. If it’s too hip and filled with vitriol, open ridicule and vulgar cuss words, it is more offensive than casual exchanges with the same tidbits. If it represents itself as “reporting,” it had best mind its P’s and Q’s.
On the other hand, it is more common to see this kind of style and organization of the subject which reads like a very slow person in a rowboat using only one oar so that the craft goes around in circles and seems to take forever to present the story.
Another fun analogy is that scene in “The Sound of Music” when the smiling nun is searching for the key to let the Nazis in. The suspense is both comic and, well, suspenseful. In news reporting, this kind of over lugubriousness has a different kind of impact.
I don’t spend much time on Twitter because the forum has a certain low quality of discourse most of the time even from relatively thoughtful persons. It is designed for short, emotionally juvenile exchanges.
In this case I had a little extra time and was interested to see what academia, the arena of learned folks, might be up to. I’ll save you the suspense but also encourage you to read the whole thing and make up your own mind as if you and I were rational actors in this pantomime.
Some guy who makes a living (likely a very good one) at some propaganda mill went back and looked at another guy’s doctoral publication from more than 20 years ago and found he hadn’t footnoted up to some arbitrary standard modern academic practice believes has some value in human discourse.
Because of that, the first guy and all his tribal group believe the second guy should lose his academic living and, I don’t know, be treated as if he had committed a crime against the life of the mind forever. Let us bring back the pillory.
The article in a Princeton fish-wrapper also cites some student (class of ’23) who believes this case of plagiarism is the equivalent of a case involving another professor from the first tribe, who was booted from his job for having had a “relationship” (“knew” her in the biblical sense?) with a student and kept her from getting psychological treatment (?).
God only knows what reason I should be interested in the opinion of this student, who I imagine was screaming it from a gallery at the back of some hallowed hall during a formal proceeding.
Out of respect for your time and attention, let’s consider the brain science. We really ought to learn something useful from this childish nonsense with somewhat serious adult consequences.
First, at least one study I’m not going to footnote properly here found that people who were given contradictory statements by political candidates reacted differently based on whether they supported that candidate or not. You may say, big whoop, bucko, as if you know something more, and you very well may know this. But there’s more.
What goes on in the brain to sum it up, when our candidate looks bad? The parts of the brain that engage first are those to suppress emotional disruption, and the cognitive parts engage only a bit later, when rationalization kicks in. After justifying the contradictions of our candidate’s positions, the brain gives us a shot of dopamine.
Our brain rewards us for using our mind irrationally. It’s as if to say, Good job, tribal rube! Keep on with your idiocy and, like, what’s for lunch?
But that’s not the more I promised. Even if we know about these things, the question remains what are we going to do about it?
Knowing about a condition does change the way we can respond to it. If you haven’t inferred it, for instance, in the case of this article I was aware almost instantly of what supposedly was going on with my responses and my brain.
I can’t say I could feel my amygdala and the insula, that small region of the cerebral cortex located deep within the lateral sulcus, humming away, but I can tell you I am feeling my dopamine fix even as I type. I’m lovin’ it more than the double burger and fries I ate yesterday, to the detriment of my metabolic cancer switch.
I’m not going to cite any of the sources for what I’m writing because this is a different communication form. I’m not an academic. I’m not a journalist. So feel free to treat me and anything I write or tell you ever with all the disrespect from your false position of intellectual and emotional superiority.
Getting back to this tempest in the Princetonian teapot, another aspect of it involves the former, younger self and the current selves. The area of the brain activated when we look at our former selves is the same as the area when we consider others. Our response differs from our response when we consider our present and future selves. Our identity in terms of brain response is tied to our present and future, less to our past selves.
That’s from a Scientific American article which cited some studies. I choose to believe this information without being able to say I can feel it happening in my head. I do feel that way about my past self, however, even if I also feel not as close to whom I happen to be right now or will be tomorrow as I choose to believe others do.
When I read an article like this about a situation like this, my first thought is people get paid money for doing things I would like to be able to do and get paid for, until I recall my past self decided more than 40 years ago not to do those things and try to make a living at them, because of the conditions I identified at that time, which have clearly only deteriorated even further.
I admire both the idea of journalism and history. I have listened recently to some very brilliant talks by at least one historian with grave relevance to current and future events. But I am also well aware of the utter nonsense that both journalists and professors of history have to put up with in the practice of their professions.
Granted, I put up with essentially the same human nonsense in my life, but I do not have to do it in connection with my practice of what I like to do.
Yes, no one pays me to read books and write stuff. No one really respects me much for my book learning or even the occasional funny things I say, and sometimes I do wish the Prince would have picked me at the ball, oh, fairy godmother!
But the deadly mind-numbing practice of both journalistic and academic standards in many cases galls me. There are more idiots who because of tribal affiliation and subservience to power and wealth get to pretend to be good at something and worthy of respect for it than there are persons (both their present and former selves) who are genuinely interesting in their professional fields.
In any mature and civilized society, if a guy found another guy hadn’t properly attributed a list or a fact in some more than likely poorly written dissertation two decades ago, the first guy would have contacted the second guy and said something to the effect of, Dude, you need to go back and add some notes.
The guy would have had the professional decency to give the other guy notes, instead of threatening to take away the chosen venue for his dance recital and kick him out for not paying his rent before the tenth.
It is no wonder between the brain chemistry and the wretched impositions of formal education on our free-form human creativity, innate curiosity, and prosocial tendencies that even conversations don’t get anywhere very fast. Add the constant threat of economic insecurity most of us live under. What’s the impact on our priorities, on our values, because of that fear of loss?
Get this. Get a load of this. The typical conversation about something one person finds interesting is like the Italians digging in at Sidi Barrani in WWII. Barely over the border in Egypt, is that any way to conquer Egypt? Nothing like the German blitzkrieg! And Rommel only lost to Montgomery (thank goodness) because he literally ran out of gas (diesel fuel actually).
Why can’t we be more like the Mongols in our conversations, and less like the Sidi Barrani Italians?
Part of the answer is revealed in this silly situation at Princeton. But the broader truth is not in our academics and news reporting, but in ourselves. (That’s Shakespeare, sort of.)
Past, present and future, the way we use our minds without understanding our brains is often really a bummer for everyone concerned.
I Dwell In Possibility 