Quote: (05-14-2015 12:36 PM)General Stalin Wrote:
Unfortunately the real issue here is that the times of a true University being a place where progressive scholars can go and pursue unadulterated knowledge and truth is far, far behind us.
Higher education is a business, and an incredibly profitable one at that. Special interest and maintaining profit margins has been fueling modern academia for a long time now. The motivation and intentions for people to attend college/university, teach, and administrate are far removed from the romantic vision of ancient Greek philosophers and scientists seeking answers and going against the grain of common-thought to discover and enrich themselves and the world.
You think the environment surrounding your average young adult in the Western world today promote pursuit of knowledge and truth?
I have a degree and I know many others that do as well. I have been to higher learning institutions and they are not the sanctuaries of true progressive thought that should be expected of them. They are not scholarly havens where you can go to question common doctrines and engage in objective debate in pursuit of new ideas.
The only part of a campus where real knowledge can be pursued is in the privacy of a dorm room, or select small class rooms where a maverick professor has the balls to ignore faculty guidelines - because to voice your ideas and question the dogma in a classroom is the last thing you are expected to do.
If you want to be a "scholar" and "pursue knowledge" and "seek the truth" then pick up a book. Go to a library. Open a webpage or two. Observe the world and have an open mind. You don't need to pay money to have some delusional, subjective, racist cunt like this with an axe to grind and some bullshit degree from some other university feed you her opinions about masculinity when she doesn't even have a dick between her legs.
Spot on.
The fact is, what does pursuing Truth have to do with the university system?
Around half of the world's greatest thinkers were not academics. Descartes, Plato, Socrates, Rousseau, etc, had limited to zero professional education and spent their adult life outside of the academic system.
The other half of the world's greatest thinkers can be credited to the academic system.
What one notices is that there have been roughly 3 major periods of academic dominance in the world of science and thought:
- The Hellenistic age (the period right Aristotle and the Lyceum and Academy were both at their peak)
-- Rich men from all over the world would send their sons to Athens or Rome to learn.
-- Lasted until the collapse of the Roman empire and onset of the dark ages (~250 AD)
- The Medieval academic Age (monks and Christian clergy created a university system spanning Europe; the Islamic world had a brief flowering of thought but ultimately their ideas were from the Hellenistic Age or Abraham)
-- Lasted roughly from 400-1300 AD
-- Thomas Aquinas was the last great thinker of this age
- The current "Western" model of academics where the top universities are located within a few key America/European cities
-- Started with (the end of the enlightenment) Kant and has lasted until present, won't last much longer (college bubble tells the future)
What has happened, in each of these epochs of learning, was that the university system started off with brilliant thinkers, and came up with tons of new ideas that changed the status quo forever. However, eventually, these university systems become too ossified and dogmatic, choked out new forms of thought, and become obsolete with time.
So back to the three epochs mentioned above, and their deaths:
- Hellenistic university system: Eventually became dominated by skepticism and denial of truth. Dominated by relativism and the idea that all arguments were equally valid, human knowledge was completely worthless and there was nothing we could ever know. They basically took Socrates to the extreme and the universities of this time stopped producing any valuable knowledge in favor of being the biggest asshole in the classroom. Try reading any of the academics from this time, it's some of the most boring trivial garbage you'll ever see.
- Monastic university system: Dominated by the idea that things could only be known vis a vis the revealed word and God given hierarchy; famous incidents like Galileo's imprisonment marked how badly dogmatism and authoritarianism entrenched itself within the Catholic schools all over Europe.
- Current system: Dominated by authoritarian Hegelian forms of thought (Communism, Feminism, Racism, insert "ism" ideology here).
What's interesting about these epochs of learning was that thinkers pushed outside of the current university systems did not fade away into obscurity, but instead went on to develop new schools of thought and change the course of history outside of the academic world.
For example, as the Hellenistic Age collapsed with Rome and all of it's pagan universities, this provided fertile ground for Christianity and (eventually) Islam. As people freed themselves from nihilistic skepticism, they turned to God given certainties to guide them.
Likewise, once the Medieval era's schools became too entrenched and dogmatic, the Renaissance and Enlightenment started with a return to classical texts, and a huge number of Enlightenment thinkers were not academics as many of these classical ideas were considered heresy. Eventually these Enlightenment thinkers would come to dominate all forms of Western Cultural thought, and become the norm, which is what we have today in our school system.
However, just as previous academic systems became dogmatic and authoritarian, so too has our current Enlightenment based model of academics with their Hegelian ideologies. These thinkers have totally destroyed the Humanities and Arts within the Academy, and have made usury of their students part of their business model. On top of this, the internet has become the world's most important technological revolution and has allowed ideas forbidden within the academic world to flourish on the internet. It's obvious the current academic system is not going to survive, just as the many academic systems in the past have died due to their own hubris.
After graduating college and seeing the world before me, I fully expected the university system to perish while the next generation of thinkers and geniuses to gather through the internet. So far my prediction is still right on track.
Look at how far the "manosphere" has progressed and grown; the red-pill has become it's own school of thought because men who follow the rules of human nature are rewarded with sex, love, and respect from his peers.
But there are also many other areas that are being explored online that are forbidden inside the university: race, politics, philosophers who've fallen out of favor (e.g. Schopenhauer), the making of the world's first printable 3-D gun - and these things are, in my opinion, just the start of the avalanche of new ideas that were held back by the university system but has been let loose upon the world due to the internet.
So, General Stalin, you are totally correct when you say our current universities aren't places to pursue Truth, but as far as I can tell it's because of some flaw within human nature. Universities of the past always start off with noble purposes and make great achievements before becoming dogmatic and authoritarian which results in the next generation of thinkers creating a new world of thought outside of the old university system and eventually giving birth to a new university system.
This cycle, for all we know, will last as long as the human race lasts.
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