Weekly Brief
A call to action for the Philippine academe: construct new models of the world that better fit the new data we are seeing.
In review and in prospect
An emerging pattern in the manner with which the Philippine Opposition gingerly picks up the pieces following their catastrophic rout in last year’s national elections is their gravitation to the academe both for validation and for a regrouping and reconsolidation of lost ground. To be fair, “dissent” had always found its roots in the social sciences and humanities academe — supposedly a safe space for contrarians to preach to their captive audience. More importantly, in a society that lazily defers to credentials very likely because of a thin tradition of critical debate, the academe in the social sciences and humanities fields provides a strong base for arguments backed by mere appeals to authority — essentially claiming a position is right because a person with academic credentials said so.
A common observation made of people who spend the bulk of their professional careers in the academe is that they lack “street smarts”. The academe, after all, is necessarily an ivory tower. Teachers teach and students learn. It’s a power structure that is a one-way street in the traffic of ideas. As such, academics are often criticised as being unaccustomed to having their ideas challenged and that, perhaps, they have become addicted to this comfy zone where they are, by virtue of their positions in that power structure, entitled to deference.
A quote that had been attributed to one famous business leader or another goes like this;
If you're the smartest person in the room, you are in the wrong room.
In essence, this means that one can only grow if one’s thinking and beliefs are routinely subject to challenge. Competition is what makes us sharp and participating in a competitive free market of ideas is what makes our minds sharp. The pathway opposite to this is where one, rather than seek challenge, remains cocooned in a room of like-minded or, worse, deferential people. By the very nature of their circumstances academics are most prone to suffer from the worst consequences of the latter. This is most acute in the Philippines where academics, rather than gaining intellectual humility as they behold the vastness of knowledge, instead, acquire outsized arrogance on the back of the small subset of that knowledge they “worked hard” to acquire.
The human mind, after all, is a generalisation and simplification engine and, as such, habitually applies a reductionist approach to building models of the world from the information it acquires. Acquiring information takes work and consumes energy. Contrary to what we are led to believe, our brains are averse to novelty as it is programmed to conserve energy by keeping its host within parameters that fit existing models that it took pains to construct. Fortunately, newly-acquired information fits one’s mind’s model of the world in a lot of cases. For example, you have a mental model of your bedroom so you wake up in the morning and go about your morning business half conscious (and your brain guzzling less resources); content that what you are seeing fits what you expect to see. But wake up and find yourself staring at a blue sky instead and your mind and body snap into full consciousness rapidly sharpened by an adrenaline boost and awash with energy funded by taxes put by the body on the heart to deal with this unexpected data. This is why most heart attacks happen early in the morning where, even under the best of circumstances, the heart is already hard at work getting you out of bed.
The call to vigilance in these times of uncertainty is to tweak our models or, as might be the case today, construct new models of the world that better fit the data we are acquiring. The academe is called to step up to be a strong participant in this exercise and to participate differently. Rather than hold fast to old templates, scrounge around for “parallels” where none exist, and then throw tantrums when under fire for failed traditional thinking, academics who, presumably, are trained to think outside the square and are well-equipped with the intellectual tools should do their proportionate share of the heavy lifting required to upgrade existing models and create new ones where existing ones fail.
Last week's blog posts
April 2, 2023 by benign0
"What seems to ail the Opposition is that their aspiration is not to win. Their aspiration is to be seen to be the 'good' forces in any 'fight' and that those meant to lose are the 'evil' ones."
Should we continue to write about Leni Robredo even after she was buried in the the 2022 elections?
April 1, 2023 by benign0
"Robredo remains as relevant as she has been over the last several years. She is still seen to be the 'hero' who will 'rescue' Filipinos from the 'evil' regime of the second Marcos presidency."
March 30, 2023 by benign0
"That a country of more than 110 million cannot produce even one Opposition leader to replace this loser says a lot about the pool of talent in its society. If not to win the next national election, the Opposition should at least prove that the Philippines’ got talent."
March 29, 2023 by benign0
"Do Filipino women who just want to work necessarily want to be known as a labour cohort entitled to certain legislatively-enforced privileges? Ultimately, there will always be an abundant supply of takers for every job offering..."
March 28, 2023 by benign0
"Indeed, using Tagalog in an intellectual discussion is like joining a gunfight armed with a knife. It does not help too that many Tagalog speakers who are uncomfortable with English suffer a deep insecurity to begin with."
Another Yellowtard social media “activist” @MiaMagdalena sued for allegedly committing SLANDER!
March 28, 2023 by benign0
"The second offense related to the Child Abuse Law is in relation to [Mia Magdalena] Longid’s alleged including in said Facebook post 'a picture depicting herein complainant and her daughter'."
Why is there no P- or F-pop? Filipinos still in denial that theirs is a country of low standards!
March 28, 2023 by benign0
"Filipinos think success is necessarily an outcome of luck and the graces dispensed by a god. Societies with strong traditions of excellence and track records of achievement will beg to differ."