I was trained...

as a sociologist. I was a graduate student for roughly two hundred years. I had many successes, but was an ultimate failure. I am a quitter. I am ABD.

I don't know if I know how sociologists think anymore. I have no intimate contact with any. I seem to remember that even the most broadly intelligent ones were also great babies whose days were filled by (attempts at) compelling intellectual discovery coupled with a grotesque personal pettiness. A few were bitter. Most were people with whom I enjoyed spending time.

The distinction with all non-academic careers I have encountered is the existence of intelligent discourse. Pettiness and personality foible is everywhere a constant. But America, Inc. generally impugns thinking for its own sake. It uses the word "philosopher" as a shrouded insult. Dumb-Luck, on the other hand, gets plenty of good press.

Intelligent discourse is not simply absent as a goal. It is simply absent.

Academic life was thrilling because of the constant intellectual pressure on all boundaries, in all directions, all dimensions. Great heated arguments in the coffee shop or the classroom expanded existing cerebral spaces, or created entire new galaxies from the matter previously hidden within cerebral and empirical black holes.

The gravity in these black holes sucks the curiosity and energy from potential intellectual discourse in real world America, Inc. before it is ever born.

Philosophy and empirical reality are spun together in academic discussion to show the absolute value of both and the absolute value of neither. Theory and fact are bashed on wet rocks to wash away the dirt and expose the underlying fabric.

Academics learned from hippies about their various treatments of blue jeans. Denim, theories and facts have life cycles. Depending on how you treat them, they break-in, shrink, fade, and wear-out. Patching them is an often option, as is creating patches from them. Denim will only stay blue and crisp hanging unused in the closet. Fact and theory are not so fortunate even there. Torn, ripped and faded jeans have a lot of life in them: So too with both fact and theory.

America, Inc. is wont to discard jeans if pressing them does not restore them to some proper sense of fashion. It takes a cowbird approach to the dissemination of ideas. Delineation and fine distinction are not valued when homogenization and domination produce a better result. Individualization gets high marks in America, Inc. but I don't advise that most individuals try it.

It would be flattering to suggest I was an adequate student in most regards. It was a very fulfilling life style, despite the poverty. My current standard of living would not have been attainable with my passion so overwhelmed by my limited competence in that environment. I understood the concept of self-actualization. More idiot than ideal, I failed to understand the gulf to cross to reach even its beachhead.

Craig Taylor of Western Kentucky University once distinguished between sociology as a profession and sociology as a career. Professional sociologists are paid to teach and research common and esoteric topics; career sociologists, once trained, take their pedagogy and zeitgeist into the world and apply it in their non-academic careers.

I am become forced to take the lower trail. I vault breathlessly down this career path trying to run astride the Goddess of Adequacy, hoping to keep the giants visible in my peripheral vision. Failure is common. I fall behind her. I lose sight of the masters. Although I have here circumvented the journal editors, I have no power and no influence. America, Inc. owns too much of the day.



Kristofferson wrote that, "Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose." Perhaps this phrase has become cliche in America, Inc. Perhaps it is a matter of perspective, another small tear in these old jeans.

I bid the sociologists their own good day. Thanks for all of the memories.

I will
               watch
                   for you
       in my
      momentary glimpses
  of
                 the shoulders
    of giants.