How Well Do You Know Clarissa: The Answer to My Identity

~ Clarissa

Here was the last question in the series:

We all know that I hate collective identities and refuse to join any of them. Except one. Which is this single collective identity that I not only acknowledge but am proud of possessing? (For one point).

And a supplementary question: Why? What makes this identity so much more attractive than others? (For 2,5 points.)

The answer is that the single collective identity I acknowledge is that of an immigrant. This is an identity of a person who actively shapes her life and refuses to accept “what the accident of your birth has given you”, to use the words of my favorite writer Juan Goytisolo. This is not a collective identity that just happens to you (like gender, race, ethnicity, linguistic group, etc.). This is something you control.

Now I would like to explain why I don’t feel part of the collective identity of academics. As we all know, I love academia and would not leave it even had I won those $600,000,000 in a lottery. I like my fellow academics for their dedication to their (often arcane and weird) fields of study, their passion for learning, their erudition, their refined sensibilities, their unusual hobbies, their rich vocabulary. Still, more often than not, I feel completely alienated from other academics. This happens for two reasons:

1. Academics love scheming and intrigue. It is highly possible that all human collectives are this way. I haven’t really worked in any other environment but I hear from people that sales companies, law firms, hospitals, etc. have the same kind of petty war-mongering.

If there is one thing I hate about human beings in general and my fellow academics in particular is the incomprehensible joy they derive from creating and dragging out ridiculous, petty squabbles. Instead of approaching a colleague who has offended them and saying openly, “Look, you offended me. I’m upset”, they engage in delivering a series of oblique hits to the offender meant to damage him or her without ever letting the poor sucker know for sure what actually caused the aggravation. As a result, the offender can never really make amends for the damage and is dragged into delivering a series of similarly oblique blows. This sort of idiocy then continues for years or decades, involving everybody around in the meaningless warfare.

How is this not completely insane?

2. Another quality I hate in academics – and one that other professions definitely do not share* – is whining. I am convinced that it is not fashionable among bus drivers, waiters, dentists, business people, lawyers, astronauts, etc. to complain publicly, obnoxiously, and endlessly about the horrible hardship of having to find a dry cleaner’s and attend a meeting. In my profession, on the other hand, it is not fashionable to avoid complaining. Of course, not everybody is that way, but too many people are.

Spending any amount of time with a group of academics invariably leads to me hearing that what we do is useless, nobody appreciates us, our social status is lower than anybody else’s, students are stupid, life is intolerable, and the world is about to end in some particularly horrible fashion.

Have you spent any time with people who work in sales? I have. Their profession is not at all easy. But at no point have I heard them spout as many doom-and-gloom scenarios as academics do at any given time.

Of course, academics don’t really believe all of these apocalyptic ideas they deliver with scary regularity. Just like the academic scheming and war-mongering, it’s a sort of a game. An identity-creating game that exists for its own sake and is highly enjoyable to the players.

It is not a game I am equipped to play, however. Which is why I can’t identify with my fellow academics and feel too different from them.

* I haven’t seen equivalents to the insanely popular College Misery website of the Hospital Misery or Restaurant Misery variety. And it isn’t like waiters, paramedics, nurses, and chefs don’t often work in extremely harsh conditions that no professor ever experiences. And frequently for a lot less money.

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Published by Clarissa

48 thoughts on “How Well Do You Know Clarissa: The Answer to My Identity”

    1. Another example of stupidity caused by intensely prudish bout of hysteria.

      Of course, every one of these banker losers use porn on regular occasions, which makes the entire thing even more funny.

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  3. Dont you identify as feminist also? Im thinking being a Jew is choice also considering its origins are religious(made up) in nature.

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    1. A feminist is not a collective identity. It’s a political movement and a school of philosophy.

      As for being Jewish, this is my ethnic origin. Nobody has practiced the religion in the family for over 100 years.

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  4. Have you spent any time with people who work in sales? I have. Their profession is not at all easy. But at no point have I heard them spout as many doom-and-gloom scenarios as academics do at any given time.

    They have the exact opposite problem. They pump themselves full of positive thinking and motivational speeches. The effect is the same. 100% smiley face and 0% frownie face has the exact same implication as the reverse situation—zero information.

    haven’t seen equivalents to the insanely popular College Misery website of the Hospital Misery or Restaurant Misery variety.

    I haven’t seen Hospital Misery or Restaurant Misery, but I haven’t been looking for them. I haven’t looked at College Misery, for that matter. But I have seen some websites for/by lawyers that seem similar to the way you describe College Misery. One gateway into this world of hurt is a web search on the quoted phrase “third tier toilets”.

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    1. “They have the exact opposite problem. They pump themselves full of positive thinking and motivational speeches. The effect is the same. 100% smiley face and 0% frownie face has the exact same implication as the reverse situation—zero information.”

      Great comment! In fact, I think it’s worse than occasional whining.

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    2. “The effect is the same. 100% smiley face and 0% frownie face has the exact same implication as the reverse situation—zero information.”

      – I don’t need any extra information, but I would surely be happier around people who are less likely too see every minor issue as the end of the world.

      An example: the President and the provost have officially informed us that the news of 25% cuts are baseless rumors. We were told publicly who created the rumors and received apologies for that. Still, the fear-mongering about the cuts – THAT ARE NOT HAPPENING – is as intense as ever. We are collectively freaking about about something that is not real. I’d take motivational speeches over that any time. And this is precisely where I’m so different from my colleagues.

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      1. “I would surely be happier around people who are less likely too see every minor issue as the end of the world.”

        Of course, but 100% smiley people are even more annoyning in the long term.

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  7. IME people whine no matter what they’re doing. It’s part of the human condition overall.

    But…. there is something special (and infuriating to the relatively sane) about the whining of academics. It might be that often they intellectualize their whining (to justify it to themselves?) whereas most people just realize at some level that they’re venting.

    I whine about all kinds of stupid stuff but I don’t take myself (or the things I’m whining about) very seriously. Whining a little gets it out of my system.

    And IME intrigues among academics are far nastier and more toxic than usual work intrigues. Where I am it’s mostly very low level but last year it briefly erupted in a really stupid way and though it was relatively minor the effects linger…

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  9. My sister is on her way to being an academic (she’s just about to earn her doctorate), and Jesus, sometimes I wish she would moan more often. Sometimes she works so hard she gives herself headaches. Her friends discover on the floor of her dorm with a blanket over her head, going “Eeeeeeee…”. I think it’d be better if she were less stoic.

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  10. The law industry is the scam, not the law schools. The problem is that there’s too much jobs in the law industry, not that there are too much students in law schools!

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  11. I also feel very identified with the immigrant identity! Very much now that I’m trying to rebuild myself! I’d like more “citizen of the world” as a name though. When I’m in England I say Europe is much better, when I’m in Europe I say England is much better, and so on ….

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      1. I don’t.

        For better or worse, establishing individual and group identity (both on positive and negative grounds) seems to be part of human nature. “Citizen of the world” leads to delusion of local identity so that newcomers have nothing to attach themselves to. So they double down on their previous identity and the result is Husby and Woolwich (which the goodthinking people of the world are trying very hard to not notice and not learn anything from).

        I’m an American citizen (and American culturally and linguistically) who chooses to not live in the US. I have made sure to integrate pretty far into the country I do live in and have no desire to see it turned from a place with a specific culture to just another place on the map.

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  12. I think that your attitude may not make you that great a “citizen of the world”. All you did is underline the hypocrisy of “going along to get along”! And that always distorts the information available. And, in reply to my spouse n8chz, I think we ALWAYS need more information! It’s the only way we can make sure of the objectivity of the reality we experience. Since we subjectively experience reality, all private reality is actually distorted! Only the field of argument & peer review can keep us objective! We can’t do it ourselves privately. That’s why you need empathy for others. The information that seems most crazy, might often be the very solution to a important problem! So you have to use restraint & disclaimers whenever you discount a person’s opinion! You aren’t attached to their brain cells & 5 senses; and if you can’t be attached there, you can’t completely condemn their perspective!
    Also, you haven’t been in other professions in the US, so you can’t objectively be so dismissive of others’ experience! You have a lot to offer Clarrssa, but you need more compassion & empathy so you don’t alienate the wrong people! You might need them some day.

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      1. Yes, Clarissa, there is a lot of weirdness in the world! I however, have learned to cherish this! Even in physics we have 2 virtually proven theories that have never ever been proven wrong in the laboratory! Quantum mechanics & relativity! And even string theorists and membrane theorists haven’t resolved the fact that everything predicted on the macro scale of relativity, is 100% contradicted on the micro level of quantum mechanics! Yet both micro & macro levels exist together IN OUR WORLD! This is a scientific example of the existence of paradoxes in life! Two totally contradicting truths that are, never the less, simultaneously true! Both 100% true, AND 100% contradictory! Life is a paradox, and while we might want to dismiss one another because we can’t see their perspective. We have to be careful, or we might put our own foot in our mouth and bite hard!

        If you want respect or compassion from anyone, we have to accept that we may have to be willing to put ourselves in others’ shoes before we open our mouth and dismiss them! Because what we do and say to others is bound to come back to us someday. So try to embrace the other side before you hurt someone’s feelings, regardless if those people are students, colleges, fellow bloggers, or anybody else.
        Your advice on writing, women’s rights, gay rights and many things are WONDERFUL, and I love this!

        But sometimes you seem to just criticise brutally just to blow off steam! I can understand this, as many people can seem toxic to any individual. But if you try and see their side of it, even if you disagree, you might understand how you might feel similar. IF you had their exact same experiences and motives as they do! Understanding can be a source of collaboration and compassion, and lower blood pressure, If you let it!

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        1. “If you want respect or compassion from anyone”

          – No, I don’t. This would be an extremely weird thing to want from anonymous readers.

          “But if you try and see their side of it, even if you disagree, you might understand how you might feel similar.”

          – No, sorry, this doesn’t sound like an interesting plan. Mostly, it sounds like a recipe for very boring blogging. 🙂 Do you know how many insipid blogs with the message of “every point of view is equally worthy of existence” and with exactly 2 readers there are out there? What’s the point of adding to all that inanity?

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  13. Teachers bitch among themselves about dumb students as an exercise in one-up-manship or as entertainment. I am sure that the ancient philosophers compared notes on “worst student”, “most ridiculous statement”, etc.

    I do not mind belonging to “collective identities”. I find the concept useful to examine the meaning and use of assumptions held by myself , and other people’s assumptions about myself based on my membership in a particular “collective identity” (stereotyping). I think it is useful to remind myself that my experiences may give me a blind spot (lack of understanding) about some topics.

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    1. I never felt accepted by any group. All my life, I hear from women that I’m not really a woman, from Jews that I’m not a real Jew, from Ukrainians that I don’t count as a Ukrainian, and so on. Well, if they don’t want me, I don’t want them either.

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  14. The academic world and the church congregation polity gave rise to the saying that the most bitter fights are about the least consequential things.

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  15. 2 links:

    1) “Former All-Star outfielder/current Twitter maniac Jose Canseco was just accused of rape. We know this because he publicly named a woman he claims is his accuser to his more than 500,000 followers, followed by photos of her, her phone number, and an address of a gym where she works out.”
    http://jezebel.com/ok-unless-she-is-under-18-whats-the-problem-509378701

    2) London terrorist attack: Man hacked to death with meat cleavers outside Woolwich army base
    Footage shows one of the men carrying a blood-covered knife and meat cleaver and saying to the camera: “We swear by almighty Allah we will never stop fighting you.”
    http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-05-23/man-hacked-to-death-in-suspected-london-terrorist-attack/4707506

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  16. // This is not a collective identity that just happens to you

    Except immigrants, who immigrated as children and teens with their families; people who leave because of fear (economic and/or security reasons); refugees …

    I don’t understand why one can’t apply to immigrants similar kind of critique you applied to academics. Many of them don’t succeed in the new place, complain about it, see native population as inferior (partly because of seeing only the lower classes of it), etc. Sure, not all immigrants are like this, but not all academics are like you descrbed either.

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    1. “Many of them don’t succeed in the new place, complain about it, see native population as inferior (partly because of seeing only the lower classes of it), etc.”

      – I don’t spend any time with FSU immigrants but a lot of time with immigrants from Spanish-speaking countries, India, and Western Europe. As a result, my vision is skewed. 🙂

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  17. Pingback: Why Is There No NATO in Asia? Collective Identity, Regionalism, and the Origins of Multilateralism | sambhalkezabaan

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