Monday, May 17, 2020
I've been paying attention the math department emails more than usual to see what people have to say about Covid-19; and, I haven't really seen anything. It's all part of the routine of how "Serious guys (and girls)" operate. Sharing their humanity in an open forum like that is considerd "bad form" or "inappropriate". Instead, the emails tend to have an "institutional" vibe like outsiders correctly imagine one would see in a large government or corporate entity. Instead of an email like this:
"Hey, I wanted to reach out to you and tell you what I think about Covid-19 and where we'll be in 5 years. Anyone else thinking about this? I've been kind of worried for my students, to be honest."
you see ones that look like this (this not an actual email, just one I made up to resemble the anoydyne language one typically sees):
"In the coming week we will have a strategy townhall meeting to discuss our continuity goals for the Institute for the coming 5 years. We invite all faculty and staff to come with questions and concerns."
And if there were a townhall, it would not be memorable. It would involve a few "key people" orating their practiced, abstract thoughts (about "excellence", and "the Institute"); followed by a few bumbling people asking questions and making ego-gratifying comments, that are unintentionally funny, because it makes clear they don't know what they are talking about; followed by a snicker or two, and a glib course-correction comment by a "serious guy" elder-statesman; following by 20 seconds of awkward silence; followed by a repeat of the practiced, abstract thoughts routine. Nowhere in this will one hear the *human* element -- except as another practiced, orated abstraction "about humanity", not humanity itself.
It's not specific to the department I work in, or even the school. It's a general phenomenon that occurs in all serious institional structures -- in government, in corporations, in foundations, and so on.
Alan Watts once described it in several of his lectures -- I seem to recall he even once used the term "institutional creatures", but maybe I'm misremembering -- for example this one:
YouTube Video
He said that one thing that is missing from modern institutions (back when he was alive, and even today) is the "fool" or "the joker". The fool -- like the fool in a king's court -- is there to remind people of their humanity; to keep them from becoming too stuffy and buying into "the game" so deeply that they forget it's just a game. He says that monks used to place a skull on the table next to them, to remind them of death; and that this served a similar purpose. Get too wound-up in the game, and one forgets that one doesn't have very much time left until at Death's door; *remind* one of death, with a skull, and it tends to cause one to ask questions like, "What am I doing here? Who am I, really?"