Category: Sage Advice

A Reader Needs Advice re: Graduate School

The following is from a reader who approves of my idea of soliciting advice from the rest of you, many of whom are better apprised than me of the current academic climate and job market. Name and identifying details have been elided.

If you have a moment to offer some advice on the situation I've found myself in, I would be very grateful. If not, no worries. 
 
I moved a great distance from home with my wife (still within my country, ____) to attend a Ph.D. program in philosophy. I am [under 30]. The faculty member whom I desired to supervise my work is well-known and respected in her field and her interests align perfectly with mine. I completed the first year of my Ph.D., satisfying all my course requirements, only to learn yesterday that my supervisor has taken up a new position elsewhere in ___, and effective immediately will no longer be part of our department. I knew this was a risk of attending a school for the sake of one person. My gamble did not pay off. It is too late for me to transfer schools for this year. Waiting another year to reapply to other programs seems like a waste of time, especially at my age. There is no one at my department who can supervise my current interests (and if there are, they are nobodies). Part of me wonders if this is a sign to get out of academia now while I have the chance. But the skills I desire to acquire and the questions I want to pursue can only be acquired and pursued, 'professionally' anyway, in academia. What to do?
 
You did not say whether your wife is employed (and making good money) or whether you have children or intend to have them in the near future. Is she supportive both spiritually and materially? These are relevant factors.  Since you are a white male getting close to 30 whose political leanings are broadly conservative (else you wouldn't be corresponding with me), my advice is to leave academia now.  The job market is brutal, you are getting old, and the academy is a hostile environment for conservatives.  This is advice I tender with my 'practical hat' on, not my 'idealistic hat.'  I could say that philosophy is a noble calling worthy of years of sacrifice, that the genuine article needs to be defended and upheld in the currently decadent halls of academe; but that is advice I would feel comfortable giving to myself alone.  Rather than put up with the low pay and humiliations of the academic world, why not find the modern-day equivalent of lens-grinding and make like Spinoza pursuing philosophy as a free man unburdened by the institutional constraints of the leftist seminaries? Is it not nobler to separate truth-seeking from money-making, subordinating end to means?
 
Related:
 

Good Advice

If possible, avoid the near occasion of armed confrontation, assuming that such avoidance is consistent with manly virtue. But with hot civil war nigh, manly avoidance may not be possible. If push comes to shove, and shove to shoot, you had better be prepared both for the shooting and its aftermath.

Intellectually, though, it is exciting to be an owl of Minerva taking flight at dusk to survey the collapse of civilization. This old man is more intellectually and spiritually alive than he has ever been.  The waning of sexual appetite definitely helps. What a curse is concupiscence; what a drag on intellectual and spiritual development!  What a time waster! How sick a society that keeps one in heat for no good purpose.

As the end approaches, salutary Besinnung sets in. I am glad I am 70 and not 7.  It is the having done, not the doing, that is often the most enjoyable and the most profitable.  The serious philosopher should essay to live as long as he can so as to view life from every temporal perspective, and to squeeze from the grapes of experience the wine of many a vintage.  But he should also rejoice that he is not condemned to live in this world forever. He sets his sights beyond time's horizon in the company of the immortals, Plato at their head.

I tried to post the following at my Facebook page, but it wouldn't fit. So here it is.

What to Do if a Cop Stops You

The following advice can save your life, especially if you are an impulsive black not brought up to respect legitimate authority. And yes, the authority of the police is legitimate even if the particular cop you encounter is an arrogant asshole as some of them are.

Pull over when it is safe to do so. Roll down the driver's side window. Do not exit the vehicle! (That's cop talk for 'don't get out of the car.') Put both hands on the top of the steering wheel. This shows the cop that you do not have a weapon, at least not in your hands, and it demonstrates submission to his authority. Have the scruffy guy riding shotgun put his hands on the dashboard. When the cop arrives at the window, greet him, "Good morning, officer!" Be aware that cops deal with the scum of the earth on a daily basis and they are nervous. They just want to get home to their families alive at the end of the shift. Put him at ease.

"May I see your driver's license?" "Certainly, it is in my cargo pants pocket." Point to the pocket. Then SLOWLY pull out your wallet and hand him the license.

"May I see your registration and insurance papers?" "Absolutely, they are in the glove box." Now open the glove box and pause for a second or two to allow the cop a look into it. Then SLOWLY take out your papers and hand them to the officer.

If you follow these steps, then, instead of getting roughed up or shot, the cop may likely say, "You were doing 70 in a 55 zone, but I'll let you off with a warning." Or maybe he writes you up. If the latter, then you accept the citation and you pay it. The law is reasonable; you violated it; you accept the penalty. Don't try to bribe the cop or tell a story about whatever. Be a man or a woman, not a scofflaw leftist punk. Take responsibility for your actions.

What Can a Sane individual Do in the Present Political Situation?

This is a repost from last November. Given how fast things are unraveling, what I wrote then sounds  a bit lame now. Still, I think my suggestions are sound. They are things I do. Whether you should do them is your call.

……………………….

What can an individual do? Not much, but here are some suggestions.

Exercise your rights and in particular your Second Amendment rights; the latter provide the concrete backup to the others. A well-armed populace, feared by the totalitarians, is a strong deterrent without a shot being fired. Money spent on guns, ammo, accessories, and range fees goes to support our cause.  Be of good cheer, and hope for the best. But prepare for the worst.

Vote in every election, but never for any Democrat. And don't throw away your vote on third-party losers. The Libertarians are losertarians and the other third parties are discussion societies in political drag. Politically, they are jokes. Politics is a practical business. It's about better or worse, not about perfect or imperfect. Don't let the best become the enemy of the good. Make your vote count — not that any one vote counts for much. Thanks to Trump, the Great Clarifier, there are now real choices.  The days of Tweedle-Dum and Tweedle-Dee are over. 

Vote with your wallet. Contribute to conservative causes, but never give money to leftist causes, organizations, or publication outlets. Did your alma mater ask for a contribution? "Not one dime until you clean up your act."  That's what I tell them. PBS and NPR programming is sometimes surpassingly excellent, but to give money to these left-leaning outfits is inimical to your interests as a conservative. Don't be a fool who empowers his enemies. 

Vote with your feet. Do you live in a sanctuary crap hole such as California? Leave. But don't come to Arizona, this rattle-snake infested inferno crawling with gun-toting racists. Keep heading East.  Move in with Elizabeth Warren. Her 3.5 million dollar pad near Harvard Square has plenty of room.

Punish any leftist 'friends' you may still have by withdrawing your high-quality friendship from them. Let them experience consequences for their willful self-enstupidation. Ceteris paribus, of course. 

Finally, show some civil courage and speak out: blog, facebook, tweet. But temper your rhetoric and don't incite violence. That's what they do (Maxine Waters, for example, hiding behind her Black Privilege.) But if you are young and need gainful employment, be careful, be very careful.  Never underestimate the mendacity and viciousness of leftists.  To them you are a deplorable 'racist.' Truth and morality are bourgeois fictions to them.  Power is what they believe in. 

Don't retreat into your private life lest you wake up one morning to find that there is no private life.

In this article, Rod Dreher admits that he has no idea how to go about fighting the 'woke' militants.

Carpe Diem!

Carpe diem skullSeize the day,  my friends, the hour of death is near for young and old alike.  How would you like death to find you?  In what condition, and immersed in which activity?  Contemplating the eternal or stuck in the mud of the mundane or lost in the diaspora of sensuous indulgence?

The clock is running, and in the game of life it is sudden death with no way of knowing when the flag will fall.

For some of us the harvest years come late and we hope for many such years in which  to reap what we have sown, but we dare not count on them.  For another and greater Reaper is gaining on us and we cannot stay the hand that wields the scythe that will cut us down.

Latin and Greek for Philosophers

Here, by James Lesher. Sample:

Ex vi terminorum: preposition + the ablative feminine singular of vis/vis(‘force’) + the masculine genitive plural of terminus/termini (‘end’, ‘limit’, ‘term’, ‘expression’): ‘out of the force or sense of the words’ or more loosely: ‘in virtue of the meaning of the words’. ‘We can be certain ex vi terminorum that any bachelors we encounter on our trip will be unmarried.’

Uncle Bill advises,

When it comes to Latin, and not just Latin, don't throw it if you don't know it.

Are You a Gray Man?

In contemporary Internet lingo, a gray man is typically a prepper who seeks to be unobtrusive and to blend in.  He is 'gray' in that he tries not to call attention to himself, his beliefs, and his stock of guns, ammo, food, and other survival supplies that he hopes will see him and his family through a collapse of the social order. His 'bug-out bag' is at the ready should he need to split for his hideaway.  He worries whether he can make his escape without drawing attention to himself.

Grasshopper and Ant _by_Charles_H._BennettIt is the old Aesop tale of the Ant and Grasshopper revived and updated. The Grasshopper spends the summer in the pleasures of the moment, dancing and singing, giving no thought to the future. Comes the winter he must beg the Ant for provender, whereupon the And delivers a stern rebuke, telling the Grasshopper to dance the winter away.

The latter-day Grasshopper does not beg; he demands, in concert  with others of his shiftless ilk.  He cannot be reached by any rebukes or sermonizing. He is a dangerous hombre who poses a lethal threat.  The latter-day Ant appreciates the threat and seeks to meet it by being both armed and unobtrusive.

He who provokes an evil-doer bears some responsibility for his evil-doing.

The gray man is the opposite of the 'tacti-cool' dude who foolishly flaunts his preparedness and advertises his tools.  His truck sports NRA, Sig Sauer, and other decals. A bumpersticker reads, "I'm your huckleberry." The 'tacti-cool' dude carries open or with inadequate concealment. His T-shirt is tight so that you can admire his marvellous pectorals, but he 'prints' like crazy. If questioned, he insists on his Second Amendment rights. He is right to do so, but nonetheless imprudent. 'Liberals' have no respect for the rights he invokes, and there is no reaching them by any appeal to reason.

Imprudent advertising leads to pointless conversations and worse. Years ago, a man questioned my open carry deep in the Superstition Wilderness, claiming that guns are illegal in a National Park. I pointed out that we were in a National Forest.  I don't think I got through to the idiot. But I did marvel at his foolishness in arguing with an armed man in the middle of nowhere.

There are foolish people who don't know what 'brandish' means. They see a man with a gun strapped to his belt and they call the cops claiming that some guy is 'brandishing' a firearm. This can lead to an unpleasant encounter with law enforcement. The wise man, understanding human nature, avoids contacts with cops, knowing full well their propensity for arrogance and overreach. Power corrupts. Power suborns moral sense.  I say this as a hard-assed law and order conservative who believes in the death penalty.  I believe that said penalty is not only morally permissible, but also in some cases morally obligatory.

And then there are the bad guys who, seeing an armed man, will calculate whether they can take his weapon from him. Or they may be planning an attack of some sort. The armed citizen, seen to be armed, will be the first target.

So I advise a certain grayness in these and related matters.  Exercise your rights, but do not flaunt them. Stand on principles, but don't sacrifice prudence to principles.

Grasshopper by Lefebvre

Wikipedia, The Ant and the Grasshopper:


Because of the influence of La Fontaine's Fables, in which La cigale et la fourmi stands at the beginning, the cicada then became the proverbial example of improvidence in France: so much so that Jules-Joseph Lefebvre (1836–1911) could paint a picture of a female nude biting one of her nails among the falling leaves and be sure viewers would understand the point by giving it the title La Cigale. The painting was exhibited at the 1872 Salon with a quotation from La Fontaine, Quand la bise fut venue (When the north wind blew), and was seen as a critique of the lately deposed Napoleon III, who had led the nation into a disastrous war with Prussia.

The Great Blizzard of ’78 and How I Got my Dissertation Done

Reader Josh E. asks for tips on how to get a dissertation done. Here is how I did it.

……………………………………

I had an odd schedule in those days.  I hit the sack at four in the afternoon and got up at midnight.  I caught the last trolley of the night to the end of the line, Boston College station.  I got off and hiked up the hill to my office where I worked all night on my dissertation while listening to a classical music station out of Waltham, Mass.  Then I prepared my lectures, taught a couple of classes, went for a run, played a game of chess with my apartment mate,  Quentin Smith,  and was in bed by four again.  That was my schedule early fall '77 to late spring '78 every single day holidays included.

That's how I got my dissertation done. I ruthlessly cut out everything from my life except the essential.  I told  one girlfriend, "See you at my dissertation defense."  She later expressed doubts about marrying a man given to occasional interludes of "hibernation."  Another girlfriend complained that I kept "odd hours."  True enough.  And I still do.  I don't get up at midnight any more.  I get up at 2 AM.  I've become a slacker.

One night in early February the snow was coming down pretty thick as I caught the last trolley of the night.  The trip up the hill to my office was quite a slog.  A big drift against the main door to Carney Hall made it difficult to get the door open.  But I made it inside and holed up in my windowless office for two or three days as the Great Blizzard of '78 raged.  I got a lot of work done and finished the dissertation on schedule.

Blizzard 78

Addendum.  An excerpt  from Dissertation Advice on the Occasion of Kant's Birthday:

So finish the bloody thing now while you are young and cocky and energetic.  Give yourself a year, say, do your absolute best and crank it out. Think of it as a union card. It might not get you a job but then it just might. Don't think of it as a magnum opus or you will never finish. Get it done by age 30 and before accepting a full-time appointment. And all of this before getting married. That, in my opinion, is the optimal order. Dissertation before 30, marriage after 30. 

Panicked over the Wuhan Flu (Wu-Flu)?

For perspective, consider that in recent years 30,000 to 40,000 Americans each year have been killed in car crashes, and that thousands and thousands die each year of various strains of influenza the names of which are not bandied-about by the 24/7/366 media.  The Maverick advises: resist group-think and mass hysteria. While taking reasonable precautions, live your life and consider what really matters. This is not to say that the COVID-19 virus is not a serious threat. It is, and it is being dealt with by a serious president who gets called a 'racist' and a 'xenophobe' for his eminently sensible travel bans. People such as Joe Biden who hurl these epithets are moral scum and need to be denounced as such.

There are things about which people should be panicked [or at least seriously concerned].

For example, the contempt for America and capitalism taught to a generation of young Americans from elementary school through college is worthy of panic. The extreme levels of economy-collapsing debt we are irresponsibly piling onto the backs of future generations to maintain “entitlements” is worthy of panic.

So is the premature sexualization of children—encouraging them to choose their own gender and taking 5-year-olds to public libraries for “Drag Queen Story Hour.”

But such things hardly register with most Americans.

I feel awful for kids today. They are relentlessly told that global warming poses an “existential threat” to life on earth. They are relentlessly told that President Donald Trump poses an “existential threat to America”—the words used, for example, a few weeks ago by Frank Rich in New York magazine, and used by the “moderate” Michael Bloomberg repeatedly in his speeches.

And now they are told their families had better stock up on toilet paper because only God knows when they will be unable to leave their homes.

It was a Democratic president who told Americans, during World War II no less, that “we have nothing to fear but fear itself.” He is a liberal idol, in part for saying that.

That is more or less exactly what Trump has been saying. Yet he’s an “existential threat” to our country.

Now chill out and have a beer. May I recommend a

Corona beer virusThe dude had a couple of Buds, but he was none the wiser.

The Stock Market is Tanking. Do Nothing.

Good advice. I learned the lesson back in '87. New to the game, I freaked out on Black Monday. Of course you remember the 508 point drop in the Dow. I got out, locking in losses, but then took too long getting back in. Now I am older, wiser, and if truth be told, a tad wider. 

Here is an old post of mine from 2008 that stands up well: Some Principles of a Financial Conservative. Agree or disagree, but if you disagree you won't budge me from views only reinforced by my experiences since aught-eight.  The main, thing, however, is to think hard, critically, and for yourself.

And another thing.

Don't say that money is the root of all evil. That's just silly. Say something that is true:

The inordinate love of money is the root of some evils.

Point proven in Radix Omnium Malorum.