The lesson

Hit! 
And if you hit, 
hit really hard, 
preferably below the belt.

-MW




That I believe M. is evil and a true perversion of human nature, is probably no secret.
(Nor should it).   Extraordinarily ruthless people are perversions, even if they keep company with not just a few others.

Whether most people in her field are also is a question I cannot answer.

People keep secrets, and the reason they do is, I am perhaps more than guessing, is self-interest, which brings the circle around back to the beginning.

Of course, we all have the potential for evil, but in her case, she seemed to be more than amply exploiting its possibilities and realizing them, whether intentionally or not, etc. is clearly something I cannot answer, either.   The inability to distinguish between good and evil, to be willing to have an inkling of how much suffering and pain one causes others:  these might be considered to be the constituents of evil.

I'm sure Hitler or Stalin or Mao could not and were not willing (and/or unable).

That certain people can believe, and make others believe, they are fine people is a talent, but a destructive one, I'm  afraid, when and if they are, in fact, doing exactly the opposite.

Knowledge without self-knowledge is shallow indeed.  I believe it was Einstein who feared the end results of his discoveries.

In my experience, many people in academia delude themselves into thinking they are better (because smarter or more "successful" than others) people than they really are.  This comes as pretty shocking to me, as I studied the humanities, and many of the academics I have had contact with--especially MW--are under the illusion that just because they have won awards and fellowships that, ergo, their contributions to humanity--more of a self-serving abstraction than anything--are so much greater.

The truth may be, in fact, that they make terrible human beings.  But graduate education, unlike undergraduate education and the public speaking engagements, allows you to see this up, front, and close, which is why graduate school in the humanities (!) operates with such secrecy, arcane, opaque "rules," and demands loyalty of the most dubious kind.

In other words, the inner core is rotten, rather like the beautiful rosy apple you bite into only to discover a worm has been making its home inside.

Ah!  The lure of the beautiful and beautifully composed exterior(s)!

Western societies, and probably most societies throughout history more or less, have fallen prey to this.

Ever since Adam and Eve bit into the apple of knowledge.


* * * * *


The way I am beginning to see it, higher education at the graduate level, in many instances, differs not a whole lot from sexual prostitution.   At least sexual prostitutes make no pretense of offering other than a carnal-for-financial transaction, while the academics I have been around do.  Ego gratification seems to be their driving motivation for what they do.   If they went about their business "nicely," that would be one thing.  The problem is that so many of them are mean, and mean only to those weaker than themselves.

I'm sure Empress Wu Zetian of the Tang dynasty must have had a tender spot in her heart for her Pekinese, while committing the most horrendous actions.