Why do liberal professors hate the military?

[marct]

Hi Naomi,

I will admit, I sterotyped when saying academia is "liberal" and the military "conservative." That is black and white thinking on my part. Things always seem to be shades of gray.

Well, that's a first step. Next thing, we'll introduce you to colour !!!!

How to get acadmics to have a balance between the "active" and "contemplative" lifestyles? That is something I'm still trying to figure out.

We see the same strain inside the academy as well, especially in the status games between "Pure" (or "Theoretical") and "Applied" research. Personally, I'm actually a theoretician but, in order to have some connection with reality (however limited that may be), I do a lot of "applied" work. For me, the trick was realizing that the "contemplative" mode of theory was, essentially, a sterile bore unless I had some chance of testing it out somehow or other.

But I think it also stems from a part of human nature. No matter how much we try to "civilize" ourselves, there is always that primitive part of us, that fight or flight response.

"Civilization" is, frequently, over-rated and used as a term to avoid getting your hands dirty by doing any real work . Case in point: one of my academic specialties lies in the area of "narratives" (actually, myth, folklore, etc.). I am using that rather "abstract" area of knowledge in a number of applied ways including to help publishers restructure their editorial policies and, also, to restructure ways of thinking and talking about Information Operations and Terrorism.

The "primitive" response of fight or flight (part of our limbic system actually), is actually quite instructive. One of the things that many academics forget is that we are animals in the sense of being biological creatures, and we have to take that in to account when we do our academic work, otherwise we are just engaging in mental masturbation.