Worthy of Note

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I admit it.  I use Wikipedia quite a lot.  When I was teaching I wasn’t one of those professors who said “Don’t use Wikipedia,” but I did say that if students used it they should look up the references and make sure they were legitimate.  Wikipedia is quite an achievement—a place to go to find out about many things, but not everything.  This leads me to an observation that I hope isn’t uncharitable: there are a lot of underwhelming pages on the website.  Anyone can edit it, of course, but I see quite a few pages of academics that have no more than a short paragraph of an (often) unremarkable bio, followed by fewer books than I’ve written.  And they have an encyclopedia entry.  It makes me wonder what it takes to be noteworthy.

I know quite a few Wikipedia page subjects.  Most of them are nice people.  Their greatest accomplishment is having landed a university post—maybe that’s enough to make someone noteworthy these days.  I haven’t managed to do it.  But many have.  And most of them don’t have their own pages.  I’m a realist about things like this.  My books don’t sell enough copies for anyone beyond you, dear reader, to recognize me.  This blog hasn’t had a million hits yet (it’s halfway there, in any case) and I can’t seem to retain followers on Twitter, or X, of whatever it is this week.  But then again, I don’t expect to be on Wikipedia.  Some people that I think should be aren’t.  Popularity shouldn’t be the measure of importance.  (That works both ways.)

It used to be that I’d run across Wiki pages with a header saying that a subject didn’t seem noteworthy enough.  Sometimes such warnings were even for publishers—those of us who write need to find outside information about publishers, no matter how small.  I don’t see those warnings much any more.  I suspect Wikipedia is so large (over six-and-a-half million pages) that constant policing would be necessary.  And how would it feel to have someone put a page together for you only to discover later that you’d been removed for just being too ordinary?  That’s gotta hurt!  Everyone, it seems to me, is notable.  All people should be paid attention to.  I suppose the rank and file of all of us would clutter Wikipedia endlessly, but I still do wonder how it is that surviving in academia is enough to make a person essential to know about, beyond their faculty webpage.

Life Learning

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One thing a recovering academic must learn is that the vast majority of people don’t really care what drives the academy.  They aren’t too worried about larger issues as systemic racism, or various groups’ feelings of unequal treatment.  In fact, most people are just looking to get by, keeping depression and hopelessness at bay.  There are few avenues to break out of the middle class, and even fewer to move up from the lower.  And going to school hasn’t been presented to most people as an opportunity, but as a chore that must be done until work can be secured and they can pursue surviving on their own.  This truth comes to me time and again when I’m reminded that deep thinking doesn’t sell books (not unless you’ve already established a reputation) and that if you try to bring the concerns of the academy to the public, they’ll look the other way.

The real trick, it seems to me, is educating people without them knowing they’re being taught.  People don’t like being talked down to.  Understandably.  When I listen to people without college educations, I learn a ton.  This is my matrix as well—it’s where I grew up.  Higher education changes the way you think, but it shouldn’t prevent you from communicating with those who are the vast majority of people in the world.  Anything can seem to be normal when it happens long enough, even living in ivory towers and discussing things almost nobody else cares about.  You see, I’m a realist.  And I still have a lot to learn.

When I write my books, my style is accessible but my topics are academic.  It has taken me years to realize this simple fact.  Anyone can read my books from Holy Horror on and understand them, but why would they want to?  The questions raised are those of the academy, and those in the academy know you by your specialization (ancient West Asian religions, historically declined, thank you).  A glance at how my Academia.edu page is viewed tells the story.  Nobody who visits there is interested in horror films or this blog.  They want the resource that can’t be renewed—my work on ancient history of religions.  I’ve moved to horror because I find lots of very intelligent people here.  Like those with whom I grew up, they are generally ignored by the academy.  They are also very accepting of outsiders.  You have to unlearn being an academic.  And it might just lead somewhere productive.

In Praise of Lecture

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As I look at our world and see divisions that certain politicians only make worse for their own gain, I wonder where we’ve jumped the rails.  I was just reading about science lectures in the early part of the last century.  This reminded me of a public lecture on dinosaurs that we attended in Edinburgh with some friends.  Yes, we were graduate students looking for stimulating, and inexpensive, entertainment.  I’ve always considered entertainment a learning opportunity.  Having grown up both poor and curious, I feel a fascination regarding most new things and I began to wonder why we don’t have more public science lectures these days.  We really enjoyed the dinosaur talk.  I think the lecturer was Jack Horner, but what really stuck with me was not his name, but the good feeling the talk left behind.

At Nashotah House, Milwaukee and Madison were both a little too far to venture for an evening lecture.  We had to be in chapel early the next morning, and besides, I had already started waking up early (around five in those days) to do my research and writing.  When we came out of Nashotah, the internet had taken over the world.  Let’s face it, when you reach, say, middle age, you don’t want to have to go out much in the evenings any more.  At least if you’re an introvert like me.  Particularly when it’s cold out.  And how do you even find public lectures these days?  We live near several colleges and universities in the Lehigh Valley, and I get occasional notices, but the lecture in Edinburgh was actually in a public venue, not a university site.  You see, I think that’s what we need to get people back on the side of science and critical thinking.

The internet favors your biases.  Algorithms send your way more of what you’ve already seen.  Each click brings someone some income.  (I hasten to add that I get no income from this blog; I pay for the privilege to post on it.)  Wouldn’t it be better if towns had lecture halls and scientists (and others) had the name draw to bring people in?  While at a small venue in the Easton Book Festival a couple years back, a university guy from New Jersey talked to me after my presentation.  “We don’t have many opportunities for smart entertainment,” he told me.  I’m no scientist and there’s a real debate about the “smart” part, but I took his point.  You used to be able to find public lectures that were cheap or free.  And everyone left feeling like they’d received a gift.

Nuts and Bolts

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It all began with an innocent laugh at the local hardware store.  It was Saturday morning, around 8:30 and I had to get some nuts and bolts.  Literally.  From those neat little trays that separate out individual pieces that may be the last place on the planet you can spend just a dime.  These local stores have an honor system with little bags on which you write down how many of which piece you took and the price.  Also a dying breed, these bags are made of paper.  One other guy was there doing something similar and when I picked up my bag, another clung to it and slipped to the floor.  He laughed.  Then apologized.  He explained that he seldom made it through the day without some aspect of Murphy’s Law taking place.  I let him know I didn’t take his laugh wrongly and that I knew Murphy’s Law, perhaps too well.

He then told me that he thought he’d write a book about it.  A novel, he said, like the book of Job.  My ears perked up.  Only this time, he suggested, God had to treat Job so that only bad things happened and used Murphy’s Law so that they would turn out good.  Every good thing God wanted to do would have to appear evil at first.  I encouraged this stranger to write this book.  I meanwhile couldn’t believe that I was having a conversation about Job with someone I didn’t know in a town where I’m still a bit of a newbie.  Do I have “former Bible professor” written on my forehead?  Even when I’m wearing a mask they seem to be able to tell.

Job, according to William Blake

But seriously, although I don’t get out much any more throughout my life I’ve had strangers approach me with religious issues for conversation.  Often at the strangest times.  I wonder if this happens to other people.  You can’t assume someone will know the book of Job, or what it’s about.  You can’t know that a stranger won’t take such a story idea the wrong way.  Me, I was counting out nuts and bolts.  Perhaps I was there to build my own Frankenstein’s monster.  Or some evil device to end the world.  Would Job calm me down or rile me up?  As it was, I was glad for the diversion.  8:30 on a Saturday morning is well into the day for me, having been awake for over five hours already.  And I’m glad to have an innocent laugh from a stranger.

Thinking Teaching

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I am a teacher.  Although no longer employed as one, my entire mindset is geared toward the profession.  Those hiring in higher education have no clue about this sort of thing.  Apparently nobody else does either.  I’ve worked in business now for over a decade and a half.  During that time only one employer has shown any inkling of understanding the importance of clear teaching.  Instead, most promote busy people trying to explain things in sound bites that lead to confusion, compounded daily (sometimes hourly).  The immense waste of resources this entails is staggering.  It is the most inefficient system I can imagine: in the rush to convey sometimes important information, necessary pieces are left scattered on the floor like seeds under a bird feeder in migration season.  In our rush to do our jobs, we settle for half-baked rather than paying a baker to make proper bread.

This is a constant frustration for someone who has the soul (and mind) of a teacher.  Our society undervalues educators of all stripes.  And, yes, many people go into teaching without the requisite gifts or motivation.  I’m certain I’m not alone in having had a high school or college course where the teacher was completely disengaged or perhaps in out of their depth.  Students shut down, hate school, and then spend their lives making uninformed decisions on everything from politics to profession.  Teachers—good teachers—are the future of any nation.  I know our young are our future, but if they’re inadequately taught, take a look at the headlines and see what happens.  Why is it so difficult to see that if children aren’t taught well, institutions will perpetuate that model until everything is a barely contained pandemonium?

We see this happening in history.  A people or culture gets to a point where they just begin to implode.  Too many things that just don’t make sense have been built on top of other things that just don’t make sense.  The whole thing begins to collapse.  I see this happening all the time—the hurried email that simply doesn’t explain anything, sent in haste before moving on to the next sophomoric task just to get the job done.  When businesses take a look at budgets and feel a little scared, some of the first positions to go are those of trainers.  “People will figure it out,” they seem to say.  And we see the results.  Evolution has made teachers of some of us.  Many of us, of necessity, are doing something else for a living.  If only all jobs came with a blackboard.

Obscure Subjects

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The world is so full of things that require further explanation that I can’t believe there aren’t more universities.  No, seriously.  If you look closely, or even casually, there are so many things under-documented that it’s a wonder we get along.  Instead we focus on criminals who want to be president and deny science is real.  Alas.  What brings this on is that I’ve been working on a book that involves researching pop culture.  Naturally, there are books and articles to read, and even videos to view.  Still, some information just doesn’t seem to be out there.  I’ve run across movies that appear with no explanation.  They’re simply there.  Sure, you can find the name of the writer, director, stars, and such, but how did that movie come to be?  Unless someone (normally a journalist) has followed up the story of its origins, there’s really nowhere to go.  Unless there are extras.

I’m remembering how CDs came with liner notes.  (Does anyone remember CDs?)  Good notes gave you further information on the music.  It was documented.  There was an explanation.  DVDs often lack that.  If there aren’t “extras” on the disc, the liner notes don’t help you much if they don’t exist.  Now that we stream everything a search on IMDb is about the best you can do.  Sometimes Wikipedia helps, but only if the article cites its sources.  We need more information.  I read a lot about movies and I’m always glad when an author has found a source that explains a bit more about why this particular film exists.  Are we that non-curious?

Believe me, I know the world is too full of things already.  On some subjects too much information is already available.  Things like movies, and music—things that really move us—however, are left hanging in the air.  I’m curious about them.  I suppose I could subscribe to trade magazines, but I wonder why those who’re already paid to be professors—professional researchers rather than erstwhile academic hacks like yours truly—aren’t all over this.  Academic respectability can be a real problem sometimes.  I know I didn’t feel like I could explore these things until I’d been ousted from the academy.  You see, I think we need more universities.  Places where the curious can go to learn about even more obscure subjects, but subjects that are really important to people.  It seems a far better use for our ill-gotten gain than spending it on lawsuits just to bring down those that education could take care of as a natural benefit.

Modern Work

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The entertainment industry has proven itself, time and again, resistant to recessions.  It says something about our lives that we need that outlet no matter what.  The New York Times has been looking at the writers’ and actors’ strike in Hollywood as a piece of what they are calling the “fractured work” puzzle.  Noting how inequality inevitably increases in a capitalistic system, they put the screenwriters into a situation with which I am unfortunately familiar—that of the adjunct professor.  Adjunct professors now make up some three-quarters of the teaching force in higher education.  In case you haven’t had the misfortune yourself, an adjunct gets paid by the course (not very well, by the way) and has no benefits—medical or, often, retirement (some state schools are required to offer the latter, but you’ll never be able to retire on the pittance you receive).  The idea is that work is being broken into smaller chunks so that entrepreneurs can pay less for work done.

Everyone knows such a system isn’t sustainable.  It will crash.  Unless it’s reformed.  Some people have asked me about becoming a copyeditor for a job.  The thing about copyediting is that it’s freelance work.  Publishers generally don’t hire copyeditors full-time.  You can make a living at it, but it’s self-employment.  You need to set aside the money for retirement and health insurance.  As well as taxes.  And you have to work long hours to make it pay off.  I tried it for a year, but I’m a slow reader.  It was clear that I didn’t have the right literary stuff to make such a living, so I had to move into acquisitions instead.  If you know me personally you may find that ironic.

Those of us who’ve always sought a spiritual existence, however defined, often don’t fit into a capitalistic system.  Especially if you question doctrine.  That’s why I became an academic—or at least tried to.  It’s one of the few places where people with my skill set can thrive.  Work often defines who we are.  Usually one of the first questions to arise when you meet someone is “what do you do?”  Specialists often suggest dissociating our selves from our jobs—I suspect that’s more necessary in positions in which a person is unwillingly being taken over by a position that’s not fulfilling on some level.  Wouldn’t it be better, since we’ve opted for fractured work, if we made it something you could do for a career?  The New York Times suggests specializing, but be careful, dear reader, in what you decide to specialize.  The “market” may well dry up on you and striking may not even be an option.

Life Semesters

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Some people have a school calendar in their blood.  For me, that was one of the great appeals of the teaching profession.  I worked a lot during summers—class prep and research take a lot of time and the two go naturally together.  I didn’t mind the ten hour days, and more, during the semester either.  When you’re doing something you love, you become your job.  It was quite a shock when the job counselor at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh told me that I had to separate myself from my job.  The two were one.  I would sit in that Oshkosh office researching for classes I’d never taught before.  My first year at Nashotah House I was writing 90 pages of class notes per week.  Anxious, but loving it.  There was so much to learn!  But that calendar has some natural breaks.

Academic careers involve sprinting that goes on for about four months straight.  Then you get a break of a month or two before sprinting again.  For those of us with my mental condition, that way of living just fits.  The 9-2-5 job is parsimonious second-pinching.  I’ve talked to other professionals in the field and they say the same thing—when your job involves thinking, there are no such things as fixed hours.  When I’m out on my jog before work and my mind comes up with a solution for that intractable problem that awaits me once I fire up the laptop, I’m working.  It’s just not “on the clock.”  It’s gratis.  Part of the problem is I don’t cotton onto sitting in front of a computer all day. Being “in the office” ironically hurts productivity.  In the teaching world you walk around and talk to people.  Summer days are spent with your nose in a book.  What’s not to like?

Not everyone, I know, is stimulated by that kind of lifestyle.  For me, it just works.  Some years I’m able to carve out a week’s vacation in the summer.  I try to save up enough vacation days, however, to get the week between Christmas and New Year’s off—a mini semester break.  When a person’s mind works in a certain way, finding employment that coincides with it is important.  Many people like the structure of a work day.  It tells you when to sign in and when to knock off.  It tells you when to eat lunch and when to take breaks.  Others prefer alternative work arrangements.  The 9-2-5 has never sat well with me.  It’s because the school calendar is in my blood.

Review, Please

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I realize few academics read my musings.  (Heck, few non-academics read them either!)  Nevertheless, I have a plea: please be a peer reviewer when asked!  I get hit with this particular conundrum from both sides—as an editor potential reviewers simply don’t want to do the work (hint: we’re all “too busy”!) and as an erstwhile member of the academy, I also get asked to do reviews.  Out of a sense of obligation, I always accept the invitations, if at all possible.  You see, I know how hard it is to secure reviewers.  In the past two-and-a-half years, I’ve been tapped as a reviewer five times.  Ironically, when I had my full-time teaching position (for fourteen years!), I was never asked.  How times have changed!  Editors are now beating the academic bushes for those of us in the hinterland who have credentials and good will, even as we’re out gathering twigs.

You see, academic publication simply cannot go forward without peer review.  If you publish, someone was willing to review your work.  Don’t you think it’s only fair to offer the same courtesy?  Academia used to be, and still should be, a community.  Yes, those who break into those coveted teaching positions are often Lone Ranger types, shooting from the scholastic hip.  Still, the system only works if we help one another.  One of the long-term accusations against the academy is that those within have tunnel vision.  (I suspect there may be some neurodiversity going on here.)  That may be true, but try to consider the wider picture.  Teaching jobs are tough, yes, but the rewards are enormous.  Believe me, if you haven’t had to work a 9-2-5, you may not realize just how privileged you are!

Many editors dread the prospect of having to find new reviewers.  They spend time on university websites that are designed for recruitment, inviting them back to school (believe me, it’s tempting!), not to help editors find experts.  And we don’t like to use the same person over and over.  Reviewing also has some benefits—there are carrots as well as sticks!  I encounter new and untested ideas as a peer reviewer.  Who doesn’t like to be the first to get a crack at new knowledge being born?  My own portfolio of review requests stretches from semitic goddesses to the weather to monsters.  I’ve published in those areas and colleagues had to read my materials to make that possible.  So if you’re an academic and someone asks you to be a peer reviewer, please say yes.  Pretty please, with sugar on top.

Seminary Daze

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It’s surprisingly easy to throw away an expensive career that once held much promise.  It really involves just a two steps: spend thousands of dollars earning a Ph.D. in religious studies, and take a job in a seminary.  It’s disheartening to watch colleagues going through this as seminaries contract, then close.  I know how it feels personally.  You’re suddenly aware that your years and years of training have made you practically unemployable.  If you do find a job it won’t pay as well.  Chances are you won’t enjoy it either.  Having taught in a seminary will mark you in academia as one of those “uncritical believers,” and, well, nobody wants to touch one of those.  While I would’ve taken a regular seminary job after my doctorate, my wife remembers me lying awake at night asking “Am I cutting off my career if I take a job at Nashotah House?”  The answer: yes.

I’ve been watching colleagues have their worlds torn apart as seminaries try to figure out how to stay open when institutional churches are dying.  Megachurches don’t require a seminary degree to run—natural grifters do it quite well with no advanced education, thank you.  But mainstream churches have been losing members, and therefore financial support, for years now.  And seminaries supply a commodity no longer in demand.  This may have been a trend when I started out back in the eighties.  If so, nobody told me about it.  I walked into this career naive and came out jaded and cynical.  My motives were to help other people.  It’s getting harder and harder to find jobs where you do that any more.  At least while being able to keep body and soul together.

Thing is, it takes years to earn the degrees you need to teach in a seminary. You have to think ahead.  When I started out, trends suggested a huge glut of jobs in the teaching market.  That never panned out, of course, as human predictions seldom do, and the decline in jobs has been pretty steady over the past thirty years.  Back in the eighties seminaries were doing okay.  Growing, even.  I do hope it didn’t have anything to do with me, but I hit this surprisingly fragile market at just the wrong time.  After having been overboard without a life preserver myself, it pains me to watch colleagues facing the same fate themselves.  Religion hasn’t disappeared—it’s simply taken on new forms.  Those forms don’t require seminary. Those of us who followed the rules on how to teach religious studies, however, somehow find ourselves in disposable careers.

Admit This

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I thought about writing a letter to the New York Times, but I know my chances of getting it accepted.  A piece run yesterday in said periodical on elite college admissions policies, which favor the affluent, presented an argument frequently used in defense: high-performing colleges are faced with the problem that the highest achieving students are affluent.  I’m here to call shenanigans on that.  I don’t often state explicitly what my background is here on this blog, knowing as I do that I had white privilege on my side, but this admissions reasoning is elitist to the hilt.  I grew up in a poverty-level household and yet when I reached college it was only to have professor after professor marvel at how well I did in their classes.  My GPA at graduation was 3.85, partially brought down by “freshman orientation” and senior ennui.  After graduating summa cum laude, I graduated seminary magna cum laude.  My doctorate was with a major European research university that didn’t use the cum laude system.

In short, a guy from a non-affluent background can succeed academically.  Professors who think otherwise don’t know what they might be missing.  There is a bias against the poor that assumes that intelligence is bred, not an innate ability.  My academic track-record demonstrates that this bias has no expiration date.  Despite my record of achievement, I was routinely passed over for positions at universities and colleges, many of them elite.  I used to keep my rejection letters but the file was getting pretty heavy to lift.  An academic unknown, I didn’t have connections in “the club” and was asked to check my working-class abilities at the door.  I’ll confess when I see such reasoning as “we can’t afford to take chances on the poor” my blood begins to boil.

Some of the smartest people I know never attended college.  Even as a child I could tell if someone was capable of deep thought or not.  I didn’t know many college-educated people; my social circle was among blue collars.  Clergy were the few exceptions, and not all of them had attended college.  Nevertheless, I could see what admissions committees (I used to serve on one) call “special intelligence.”  I also saw how terribly petty the discussions could be when it came to admissions.  Try as I might, I just can’t feel sorry for those in higher education who feel trapped by their own success.  There are gems located in mountains, even if they tend to be buried under tons of plain rock.  Admission teams admit those most like themselves.  Thus it has always been.  And we are poorer as a society because of it.

Not singling out UVA!

Literary Criticism

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One of the drawbacks to being an editor becomes apparent with much reading.  Some people have writing skills.  Others don’t.  That’s no reflection on intelligence, insight, or even brilliance.  Good writing is part talent and part hard work.  The drawback is when someone thinks they’ve got what it takes, but they don’t.  I’m a gentle guy.  I don’t like to hurt feelings and yet I have a job to do.  You see, good writing involves a few things—writing for your readership, being aware of what that readership likes, and giving new information without being all technical about it.  I’ve read academics who write very high-level monographs, sprinkled with “wells” and “you sees,” which come off like a guy my age trying to impress a twenty-year old by being groovy.  Just admit you’re writing for other scholars and get down to it.

Then there’s the verbless sentence.  You know what I mean—a literary rim-shot, usually at the end of a paragraph, to heighten the drama.  Solid technique.  This only works, however, if you don’t overuse it.  I’ve read books where nearly every paragraph ends with such rim-shots.  Then the author started writing one-liner paragraphs.  This isn’t a Saturday Night Live cold opening.  The writing has to have a certain amount of gravitas.  Especially if you’re wanting to publish with a university press.  I realize that the dream of many academics is to write for a wider readership, but honesty is still a virtue.  When I wrote Weathering the Psalms I pitched it as for general readers.  Ha!  Not even specialized readers have found it that engaging.  It was a book for specialists.  I see that now.

Don’t get me wrong—I read plenty of good writing.  Some of it’s even beautiful.  Editors, however, have to read an awful lot to be able to pick out the gems.  I remember my volunteer experience on the archaeological dig at Tel Dor.  At the pottery reading sessions, a specialist would quickly sort through a box of four-thousand year-old fragments and say within seconds if there was anything interesting (“indicative” was the term she used) or not.  She did this by reading pottery like an editor reads proposals and manuscripts.  You get to a point when you can just tell.  Writing well can be learned.  Some people have an innate talent for it.  Being a gentle guy, it’s hard to be honest sometimes.  I have to keep reminding myself, however, that it’s still a virtue.

The Skinny on Asherah

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After being removed from academia, my work on Asherah started to receive notice.  You see, I’m not part of some academic dynasty and I never landed that prestigious job that would convince people I had something worthwhile to contribute.  Besides, it turned out that several other scholars were writing books on Asherah at the same time I was.  The subject, however, has proven “evergreen.”  Asherah holds a lot of explanatory power, it seems.  She solves mysteries like an antique Holmes or Dupin.  And the Bible is full of mysteries.  The other day I saw an article by Raanan Eichler suggesting that Aaron’s rod might’ve been an asherah.  This is an intriguing idea.  In case your Exodus is a bit rusty, there are two staffs (or staves, if you prefer) that feature in, well, the exodus.  One belongs to Moses and the other to Aaron.  (Keep in mind that they were octogenarians when they began the trek.) Their stories continue through Deuteronomy.

Tova Beck-Friedman ‘s “Excerpts of a Lost Forest: Homage to Ashera,” Grounds for Sculpture

In the narrative sometimes the stick is Aaron’s and sometimes it belongs to Moses.  It transforms into a snake, it turns dust into biting gnats, it divides the Reed Sea.  In short, it’s the kind of staff you’d see advertised as a miracle-working purchase on infomercials these days.  One of its many features is that it produces water from a rock when it strikes said stone.  The problem is God had told Moses to be a stone-whisperer, not a stone-striker.  Because he hits the rock with the staff he’s barred from entering the promised land.  It seems like harsh punishment for a bit of dramatic flair and I suspect that’s why Eichler suggested that the staff was an asherah.  

Of course, the biblical account doesn’t use the word “asherah” for the staff at all.  Although it accompanies the Israelites through the wilderness, and in some accounts is placed inside the ark of the covenant, it isn’t called an “asherah.”  But being in the ark puts it into the tent of meeting, and therefore later the temple.  And we do find an asherah in the temple later in the biblical story.  The thing about asherim is that they’re never defined in the Good Book.  We simply don’t know what they were.  They were made of wood and they could’ve been poles.  They might’ve been trees or statues.  A rod or staff seems to be a slimmed-down version of a full-blown pillar, so who knows?  Maybe an asherah accompanied Israel from the beginning.  Of course, being outside the academy (my own promised land), I’ll never know for sure.

Measuring Humanity

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The humanities have fallen in love with data.  Let me put a finer point on it: those who use the humanities as a profession have had to turn to “evidence based” metrics in figuring out what it means to be human.  As an actual human, I’m feeling data fatigue.  Some of us aren’t good with numbers.  Our teachers encouraged us to move into the humanities.  Now, at an age of not young, many of us are being instructed that we now have to get good at numbers because numbers are the only truth.  I have philosophical and spiritual objections to this, but you can’t get a job as a philosophical and spiritual objector.  Numbers don’t, and can’t tell the whole story.  The term “calculating” used to be used to describe a person without feeling.  Now we’re all just calculators.

Whither can we go to experience true humanities again?  Professorships are “measured” by success factors.  “Key performance indicators” are applied to the gods.  There are immeasurables, but they can’t be slotted neatly into our computer’s algorithms, so they are swept off the table.  If you want to wear a white collar, you have to put business first.  The soul is dying, but that’s just fine as long as we can keep the body alive.  You see, the humanities used to be about those things that can’t be quantified with “evidence based” metrics.  How it feels to be in love, or why we cower in the presence of an unseen deity.  How do you put numbers on artistic inspiration?  Sure, we can “measure” aspects of Beethoven’s seventh symphony, but they don’t explain what it’s like to listen to it.

Kowtowing to capitalism feels shameful to me.  But challenging capitalism is like pacifists standing up to those with assault rifles.  Greed derives its power only from getting everyone to agree on its objects of value.  The humanities try to argue the point, but those with control of the money are in charge of hiring.  And they do it with their abacus always close to hand.  I never learned to use a slide rule but calculators were required to graduate from the academic track in high school.  Now when I’m being asked to apply that kind of thinking again, I have to cast my mind back nearly half a century while my human brain dreams of reading and writing novels, viewing paintings, and listening to beautiful music.  But it’s a work day, and when it’s all said and done, data rules.  Look for no empaths in upper management.

A Theory

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Do you remember that crazy college professor you had?  Chances are there was more than one.  As a late friend used to say, that’s why we pay good money to go to college.  I have an idea, perhaps even a theory, that the neurodiverse used to be largely institutionalized.  And I don’t mean in mental hospitals or “insane asylums.”  I mean in two well-respected social institutions: the university and the church.  Before you can object to the latter, consider that ministers, and before them priests, derived from shamans.  Nobody would doubt that shamans think differently than most people.  So, my theory is that when neurodiverse people came along in capitalist societies, they were shunted toward jobs in higher education and religion.  Out of sight to most people most of the time.  Then capitalism grew.

Both the church and the university became businesses.  Again, if you doubt me about churches, get to know a few bishops.  You’ll soon see.  In higher education, business people were hired as deans and presidents.  Not knowing how to handle their neurodiverse employee pool, they began hiring more “normal” people.  Those who, with no real insight or ambition, figure teaching is a cushy job.  It pays well, and it’s respectable.  But to do the job right you might just have to be neurodiverse.  Now, I don’t have the means to test my theory, but I suspect if you surveyed students over time as they graduated, you’d find fewer and fewer crazy professors.  As my departed friend would likely have said, they’re not getting their money’s worth.

Money doesn’t compromise.  Many people are driven by it without ever asking themselves why.  Do they want to be able to build private rockets to take them to Mars when capitalism finally destroys this planet?  Do they want private jets and the endless headaches of having to worry about getting even more money?  Studies tend to show that wealthy people are far from the happiest on the planet.  In fact, many of them are privately miserable.  They don’t have to work, true, but what do they think about?  Deeply.  I’ve never been driven by money.  I would like a bit more than I’ve been able to manage with my background and specialization.  Enough not to have sleepless nights over whether we can afford to fix the roof.  And still buy books.  It may be crazy to still read like a professor when I’m no longer in the guild.  I like to think I’m participating in a very old tradition.