Hi folks, if you've any thoughts on these sketchy complaints let me know, thanks.
I’ve done a masters in music and also began PhD in it, then began but again withdrew from a second masters in religion with the intention of changing direction in the PhD. I became disillusioned with the whole academic scene in both areas- music academics don’t listen to music and India academics don’t practice Hinduism or even visit India. Neither have had their souls touched and they remain profoundly innocent.
The nature of academic activity is intellectual study. My subjects of music and South Asia however have by contrast a core practical dimension- whereas maths perhaps is the study of maths and history the study of history, music and religion essentially aren’t their study. They are visceral aesthetic experiences and indeed interesting exactly for being realms of meaning that move us profoundly, distinct from regular rational account.
Academics tend to think that they don’t need to worry about the experiences or these things per se, but indeed there is a problem here. To take a analogy in philosophy you could be the world’s leading expert on swimming but if you haven’t learnt to swim you’ll drown in water. And such a person I insist is compromised even on their chosen intellectual level because they’re putting the cart before the horse in not referring their theoretical understanding to hard reality.
They’re making no observational checks and all they have are sky castle theories floating above the ground, when they should be floating directly or swimming in water, and judging their work by mere internal consistency in a wider and sickly relativistic context. If this argument and its application to art and spirituality needs grounds we can look to the reality checks provided by the universality of aesthetic experience.
None of the South Asian academics I’ve met either at Edinburgh or Lancaster in Britain had any remote interest in Hinduism per se or travelling in India to actually engage with the culture- asking them if they were Hindu would be like asking if they were in the Flat Earth society, or at best they’d just stare at me and get uncomfortable. Even if they’re not Hindu I’d expect them to have some affinity and enthusiasm for India but again they absolutely do not, none of them. I cannot underline this enough, regardless of how strange it may sound when stated; the system in fact actively selects against the genuine seeker.
There’s a subliminal awareness in both fields that their position is crazy but they carefully confine their circle of contacts to similar other academics, way up in their towers. I’ve even seen faculty downplaying and undermining students’ efforts at creating a Vedic society or hosting festival events, or making any relation between the study and Hinduism itself- there’s a lot of fear.
They could be studying zoology for all the engagement they have with the subject itself and instead study it for other reasons. I've been to six music conferences including three in the US and one Indian philosophy conference and met great numbers of these characters, whose reaction to me is consistently some combination of mystification and horror. I’m done with it and can see there’s something seriously wrong with the whole educational basis of Western thought. It’s interesting though and I’ve put together extensive notes trying to make sense of it all.
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