There's always something here that has given me pause. When I was in academia, people used to talk about the crisis of the humanities — which are always in crisis, I think — but anyhow, that was a topic of the day. I don't know if they ever solved it or what's up with the crisis, but I always thought there was, strangely, something akin to what you're describing here, but at the level of expertise of the humanities. The people who held this knowledge — not the technical knowledge, not the mathematical algorithm, but of words and written text, to put it in what I think are your terms — they were also detached from reality. So up high they had lost any touch with it.
Your view I can hear. I can see how it's not technophobe at all. I see the call; I see the detachment. I see how, in the pursuit of something, the technicians can be so blind to everything on their sides that they just pursue the thing.
What strikes me as similar is that if there's the ivory tower of the Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and coders, there's also the classic ivory tower of the technicians of knowledge — of printed knowledge if you want — right before the language becomes binary and numerical, mostly. That expertise is also equally blind. I think that when people look at the crisis of the humanities, your view of expertise versus layman points at that too. And that's also why, for example, it explains to me how discourses that are very academic and humanities-driven in nature become ideologies — they crystallize into shallow things in real life that only they can construct but cannot construct back.
This is a deep cut in the back catalogue and it's been a while since I wrote this one! Thank you for reading.
I've always found something odd about approaching the humanities as a "field of research" to be pushed forward according to the same model as natural science, as if our highest capacities are best served by having specialists gather increasingly arcane knowledge within highly bureaucratized academic institutions. Something of the original humanistic insight seems to have been lost amidst all this.
Thanks for bringing me back to this older essay. I should try to come back to the issues opened up here in some future writing.
Thanks, Devin. I’m glad you found the post interesting. Yes, I think there's lots of convergence here; It hasn’t found its way into any of my writing, but Buddhism has been a major influence for me as well, often informing my thinking on seemingly unrelated topics. Very cool to see some writing about the Zen tradition here on Substack!
There's always something here that has given me pause. When I was in academia, people used to talk about the crisis of the humanities — which are always in crisis, I think — but anyhow, that was a topic of the day. I don't know if they ever solved it or what's up with the crisis, but I always thought there was, strangely, something akin to what you're describing here, but at the level of expertise of the humanities. The people who held this knowledge — not the technical knowledge, not the mathematical algorithm, but of words and written text, to put it in what I think are your terms — they were also detached from reality. So up high they had lost any touch with it.
Your view I can hear. I can see how it's not technophobe at all. I see the call; I see the detachment. I see how, in the pursuit of something, the technicians can be so blind to everything on their sides that they just pursue the thing.
What strikes me as similar is that if there's the ivory tower of the Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and coders, there's also the classic ivory tower of the technicians of knowledge — of printed knowledge if you want — right before the language becomes binary and numerical, mostly. That expertise is also equally blind. I think that when people look at the crisis of the humanities, your view of expertise versus layman points at that too. And that's also why, for example, it explains to me how discourses that are very academic and humanities-driven in nature become ideologies — they crystallize into shallow things in real life that only they can construct but cannot construct back.
Anyhow, thanks for writing.
This is a deep cut in the back catalogue and it's been a while since I wrote this one! Thank you for reading.
I've always found something odd about approaching the humanities as a "field of research" to be pushed forward according to the same model as natural science, as if our highest capacities are best served by having specialists gather increasingly arcane knowledge within highly bureaucratized academic institutions. Something of the original humanistic insight seems to have been lost amidst all this.
Thanks for bringing me back to this older essay. I should try to come back to the issues opened up here in some future writing.
Thanks, Devin. I’m glad you found the post interesting. Yes, I think there's lots of convergence here; It hasn’t found its way into any of my writing, but Buddhism has been a major influence for me as well, often informing my thinking on seemingly unrelated topics. Very cool to see some writing about the Zen tradition here on Substack!