Jump Right Into Some Philosophy: Academia

My experiences and subsequent thoughts have been leading for quite a while to a more tempered view of most everything. Stick around long enough and I will explain. Tonite, though, I will just write here what I have been thinking about the business of Academia. As a master's student contemplating a PhD, this has been on my mind. Therefore the reaching of any semblance of consensus is a big deal to me and something worth sharing.

To "essay" in modern academic terms is to leave yourself open to certain reproof and rebuttal, often bordering on subtly disguised critical vehemenence. You carefully construct a theory, build it on meticulously researched historical foundations, flank it with corollaries, define its terms with appalling specificity, admit its limited scope and influence and still any theory is breakable, easy for the postmodern critic to dismantle. Build a fortress with a thought system and that fortess is always breachable. In fact, theories of deconstruction would attack the very words used to express the thought, in metaphorical effect pulling the fortress down brick by brick. I dont necessarily disagree with this reality. In fact I am inclined to mistrust the claims of any logical system that produces Truth (with a big "T"). But sadly, in my experience, the work of the critic is in effect a process of ego, fueled by a culture of Academia that rewards (perhaps solely) those able to vanquish, to void and destroy. I have long been troubled, (though previously undefined) that Greed seems to be the central motive behind continuous academic discourse. Greed, defense, protection of or propaganda for your strafied, specific academic niche, and therefore your livelihood.
It has become an example of how the human "need for security" enchanced by american consumer capitalism has infused waht many old men at Harvard still believe to be a noble aesthetic discourse. I will generalize and say that I think the rest of the world looks at academic professionals either as "overly romantic seekers of knowledge" or as "far too intelligent to be spending their lives fighting (literally) over whether or not a 200 year dead poet was bisexual". In a world that is increasingly moving towards the latter interpretation, the entire culture of Academia is at risk at collapsing into irrelevancy under the weight of its passionate defense of literary/theoretical curiosities. Disagree with me? Why do you disagree? Do you disagree with me because you are truly empassioned, i.e. your life has been enriched/enlightened by the debate over the aforementioned dead poet? If so, Then good for you, may you share that passion and communicate it well. Or do you disagree with me because you are the chair of a department, or a rising academic star, or need to have an article (any article!) published for your Cirriculum Vitae, or because you strive for personal validation? If so, I do not blame you, those are all common motives. But isn't it time to cut the BS in claiming that the motive of a "humble pursuit of knowledge" is what produces the majority of our academic discourse. The press of Capitalism and the machinery of Academia push responses, and accelerate a desire to leave no stone upon stone in the fortressses of our thought systems. Again, my frustration is not that stones are overturned, but that they are overturned in a supercilious quest for truth when in fact the motives are almost always supply, demand, surplus and survival.

More to come on this, as this is mostly a rant stemming from a larger theoretical discussion of Knowledge.

Thanks,
A. Allen