Self-Indulgent Nah, nah, nah.

My personal tastes for individual behavior tends to be somewhat more refined than merely pointing at someone and laughing until exhausted or soiled. I also generally try to avoid mocking those that I know my friends respect--or at least tolerate. Although it's been common throughout my life for me to dislike (or even despise) many of my friends' friends, I try and give them the benefit of the doubt whenever possible. I figure, if someone I respect is willing to waste their time on them, they can't be entirely devoid of value. Right?

That said, there are limits to my (obviously) overabundant congeniality. I can't go into just what those limits are, but I can provide an example. Consider the following image:


It isn't enough that "Giles Weaver" (a pseudonym probably intended to hide the author's shame) manages to butcher Nietzsche's name in a way that I haven't seen since the first time I tried to teach the melancholy syphilis sufferer to a Freshman Intro. class. His use of the epigram without proper citation (it's from Beyond Good and Evil, #156, dumbass) only goes to demonstrate the amount of "Nietze" Mr. Weaver has actually read; let alone understood. It can be no typo. Missing three letters in the man's name can be no typo.

Anyone more sane than I that might be reading this (which is a most obvious contradiction if ever I saw one), might think I've gone off the deep end...again. With all that's going wrong in the world (some of which Mr. Weaver comments on in his article), certainly there are better things to lose sleep over (haha..er...gak) than some crackpot screwing up the name of probably the most mis-quoted, mis-interpreted, and mis-used philosopher in history.

Actually, let me take that back. Following Dennett's lead in Darwin's Dangerous Idea (1995: 461), I'm inclined to consider Nietzsche not as a philosopher in the traditional sense (whatever that means), but as a sociobiologist. Dennett ranks him just after Hobbes; I'd consider it a tie.

Back to my ranting. Why get so worked up over such an ostensibly trivial error? Maybe "Giles Weaver" really isn't that well read in Nietzsche, and just found the quote on some random Nietzsche quote generating website. So what? Must everyone be versed in such things?

My short answer: "Yes."

My slightly longer answer: "At least if they want to portray themselves as even mildly 'educated' (again, whatever that means)."

I admit, I read Nietzsche at 12 and, as has been well established, I'm not right in the head. (Whether there is a lurking causal connection in the preceding claim, I've yet to determine.) However, you'll recall that just a handful of paragraphs earlier, I mentioned that my Freshman Intro. students managed to survive Freddy N., so it certainly isn't that much to ask, is it?

And now my longer and incredibly personal-issues-motivated answer: Academia is suffering enough already. It has long since ceased to be an institution concerned with the pursuit and advancement of knowledge, and has become just another corporate entity. Anyone attending a state university may as well go to aisle 43_Q of their local Walmart and simply purchase a degree of their choice.

After all, that's all the average university student is really interested in acquiring: the paperwork that says their "eligible" to earn more money than the "lazy people" they're all so convinced are responsible for the poverty in the Sudan, etc..

And it's all the major universities are really interested in providing: so long as you buy it from them and not from some bulk discounter with their "roll-back prices."

And at the end of the day, it's all the majority of faculty at said universities are willing to deliver any more. Those that ever cared about anything have been, or are in the process of being, run out by their younger, more cut-throat, more "efficient," and all-so-predictably corporate counterparts.

Don't believe me? Ask one some day. Ask a university professor hired after the mid-70s why they do what they do. Then ask them how the university judges their performance as a professor. Pause, and pay careful attention to their answer. If it comes quickly, it will most likely be the prepared response they gave in their first (or second) job interview. Even if they tell you the truth and are on of the rare "true academics" in the world, their answer will no doubt remind you of something like this:

A priest and a cab driver find themselves face-to-face with the pearly gates and Saint Peter himself after the cab driver slams his car headlong into an oncoming wave of NYC garbage trucks (yeah, right). Pete looks to the cab driver and says, "Ah, we've been expecting you. Here are the keys to your one-off Lamborghini/Aston Martin hybrid sport SUV. It's gold, just as you'd always wanted. And here are the keys to your ocean-front home overlooking the Playmates-only nude beach. Do enjoy."

Saint Peter then turns to the priest and says, "Hello, Father. We've been expecting you as well. Too bad about that cab ride, but at least you're in a better, and much less smelly, place. So, here are the keys to your slightly rusty 1973 Ford Pinto and your studio apartment over Mr. Wang's Chinese Palace and Sushi bar."

The priest pauses as the cab driver squeals past in a flurry of excess and beach-babe-nudity. "Forgive me for asking," the priest says, "but could I inquire as to just how it is you distribute wealth here in heaven?"

"I'm glad you asked," replies Saint Peter. "It's all rather complex, but in a nutshell, we make use of the Harvard Business School's latest research on employee efficiency and performance-based advancement...or something like that...it's really all a bit beyond me. At any rate, it really just means that wealth is distributed in proportion to an employee's (in this case, person's) overall contribution to the success of the company and its profitability (in this case, Heaven and Special-Guy™ Recruitment). Now, we recognize that you've done a great many things in your life, and you'll be happy to know that you even managed to save a couple of souls along the way. That cab driver, however... Well, he's another story. Within 15 seconds of getting into his cab, everyone of his passengers was praying like there was no tomorrow."

It was probably funnier when my shrink told it just after calling me a "slob whose brain had slowed down." Funny guy...a real fucking crack-up.