One question that kept brewing in my mind was the center point about which society’s operations rotated – the central theme, if you will, of this seemingly arbitrary (hi)story that we weave.

To be clear, I know that profit is the prime motive in much of society, and that the motive for profit is how the motive for status and security gets translated into social action, but the goal of raw, undirected profit doesn’t get people very far. It has to somehow channel through an activity for a profit motive to make a social impact – and what drives that impact – the reason why I can drive to a city and see a particular arrangement of buildings and advertisements – is what I’m still seeking. It’s the very story of how we define our reality and shape our world.

But that’s most of society…

I’ve drilled down a bit into academia as I proceed to plumb its depths, and I think I’ve realized why scholars seem to go out of the way to create such an air of mystique about the whole practice of writing papers for publication. (Of course, now it’s tradition, and reinforced by the peer review system to boot, but I mean why the eternally stupid practice of making things deliberately inaccessible was started in the first place):

It’s designed to draw grad. students in. An undergraduate interested in science and looking at scientific literature would probably think “Wow, look at all of this neat stuff being done couched in barely comprehensible language! I want to do that!” Society then offers a seemingly easy and assured way of doing that: “Go to grad. school”. The bargain here is “Follow our steps and serve us well and you will eventually be successful – you too will be able to do such work.” This sounds familiar – the carrot is being dangled again, and all you need to do to get it is work really hard! Forget the fact that you’re running on a wheel…

It really takes about one month to learn how to do such things. By 6 months in, not only should most research be failing to impress, but it should be routine. Of course, you’re stuck there for as many years as the school decides to keep you for. Even the timeline of a dissertation is not usually self-determined.