On 23/07/11 15:02, Jim Devine wrote: > Carrol Cox wrote: >>> What is different about the present to generate such gloom? > > jmp wrote: >> That the leftist elite - and bourgeois academics - find their own >> livelihoods threatened? > > Who are you criticizing, jmp? be specific. Or is this simply a > drive-by slam at people you disagree with, without feeling the need to > be specific about (or to defend) the points of your disagreement?
I am merely - with a touch of humor - suggesting an answer to a question in a slightly provocative manner, but only the provocation seems to have come across, but very effectively so. > To assert or imply that someone's opinions reflect only their economic > interests simply says that you have absolutely no reason to discuss > issues seriously with them, since you don't respect their opinions at > all. That is a strong reaction... > jmp, what elite are _you_ speaking for? I am not speaking for anyone else than myself, but I know quite a few people who agree that academics make way too much money and that it is especially tedious to hear someone making £40-50-60.000 a year ($70-90.000) - or whatever the numbers are - speaking of economic injustices. > (By the way, a simple reason why people on pen-l might be gloomy is > that the vast majority of people -- and not just some "bourgeois > academics" -- are being screwed by the system and we have empathy.) Yes, that is most certainly the case for many, _and_ there is nothing strange - is there? - about being more alert and empathetic than usual when one's own livelihood is threatened - seems entirely human to me. The point of the post to which I responded, however, was precisely that the elite's game has always been like this, only more remote, i.e. exported to the coloured and the poor. Now it is knocking on the front door and I wanted to suggest - which isn't exactly a strange thing - that there is more gloom when a threat is a threat to yourself and your community, than "merely" a threat to some nomads in East Africa. So, I think that, Empathy - for a fully waged professor - would be an offer to make a third in wages (more or less) and hire two more colleagues. Empathy for junior academics would see the wages halved (more or less) in order to be able to hire a colleague. m _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
