The Euro-American academic system: few more thoughts

The neglect of human sociobiology
Our intellectual tradition: non-existent, decadent, or congenitally dilute?

One may see the following as rollovers from the above.

As we have stated before on these very pages, one thing the old Hindus were good at was creating knowledge, systematizing it and teaching it. So the Hindus had a legitimate academic system. Among other Indo-European peoples such a system appears to have existed among the yavana-s and to a degree among the Iranians. We also know that at different points in the ancient world parallel academic systems were created by some of the West Asians, prAchya-s and in the krau~ncha dvIpa-s by the Maya civilization. Among all of these ours was one of the oldest solid academic systems (notwithstanding claims to the contrary among white indologists), and we can state with some confidence that it was one of the most extensive among those seen in the ancient world. It is the mental edge that this system conferred on it is custodians, the first varNa, which has enabled them to survive in modern academic systems dominated by other hostile groups. Despite this, we can say that today the Hindu academic system is in a shambolic state – not so much from the absence of creative individuals as from the lack of a more fundamental vision of its structure. Instead, the Hindu is forced to operate within the Euro-American academic system that is presented as the only one that exists. To be more clear, when we talk of the Euro-American academic system we are talking of the system that came into place in the leukosphere (even as leukospheric identity was just emerging) coeval with the phase that they term the “enlightenment” and was expanded primarily by the Germanic and Romance speakers in course of the second half of the 1800s and the 1900s – a period during much of which the Hindus were subjugated by the leukosphere. Certain scholars, such as the white indologists spearheaded by the American Sheldon Pollock, are certainly aware of the existence of an alternative Hindu academic system and study it closely. Nevertheless, the general attitude in this group is that the former Hindu academic system is a museum piece that does not deserve a de-extinction program, rather it needs to remain in the collections just as the skeleton of a dodo or a native American’s codex, with a few chosen items allowed for general display. We do not blame them for such a view as it is not their system but their object of study. But we certainly need to be concerned about their activities because it is our system and their actions could harm its revival. On the other side some people might realize that this *is* the Euro-American system but most do not even realize it – they believe that it is the only one that exists and has ever existed.

The only large scale reaction that has been observed in this context in recent times is from the prAchya-s. This has emerged in the first place because, as noted above, certain prAchya-s have had an independent historical academic system. But its modern form under Euro-American dominance has, not surprisingly, followed the path reflecting the general prAchya mode of imaging the self – for prAchya-s it is important to receive a second-person report on oneself in order to construct an image of self. Hence, they crave a report from the leukosphere in order to construct an image of their performance in the dominant Euro-American academic system, for after all the metrics of that system were set up by the former. Thus, they act much like vishvAmitra for whom being confirmed as a brahma-R^iShi by the deva-s not sufficient, rather he needed this to come from the mouth of his former rival vasiShTha. This tendency has gone hand-in-hand with metrics developed by the anglosphere for human capital. The not-so-distinguished cousin of Charles Darwin, Galton, had declared more that a century ago that the Hindoos were idiots whereas the prAchya-s were of superior intellect and that they could colonize Africa by edging out the cognitively less-endowed denizens of that continent. This image coming from the mlechCha has been of great importance for the prAchya-s and they have striven ever since to repeatedly earn assessments such as that offered by Mr. Galton (including the claiming ownership of African resources by chIna-s). Thus, their response to the Euro-American academic system has been to study it closely and game it at every level so that they come out as winners. Here we see distinct trends among different prAchya-s. The Japanese have shown greater innovation that certainly challenges the Euro-Americans at their own game. The chIna-s have shown more of artful and not so artful plagiarism accompanied by mass production to achieve a bulk that cannot be matched by mlechCha-s or their cousins from the islands. In the Koreans are similar to the chIna-s but on a smaller scale. They back these actions with a careful manipulation of Galton’s “original sin” i.e. cultivation of an image that they are cognitively superior to the mlechCha-s under the same metrics used by the mlechCha-s. Thus, what we have here is not a the creation of alternative knowledge system by the prAchya-s but an aggressive gaming of the mlechCha one. This could at some point even break the mlechCha hold on it – it could then be digested just as other systems under the prAchya legalistic framework. However, given that that they depend heavily on mlechCha approval for the measurement of their success, the mlechCha-s have thus far held the trump card. It is common for scientific institutes in prAchya lands like Japan, China and Singapore to call powerful mlechCha professors to assess their programs and advise them of whether they are doing good or bad. It is also common in these countries for a scientist’s net worth to be determined by papers published in certain tabloids and journals for which mlechCha-s have cultivated a universalist image. Thus, the study of the system by the prAchya-s, however careful, is only designed at discovering the best approach to the mastering game, not the the reasons for why the game exists and whom it favors. In a sense he is interested in being the player bought and sold at the IPL trade for a largest fee, rather than being the one who figures out who is raking in the millions by formulating such a bizarre version of the game.

Hence, it is not via the accepting glance of the prAchya but via the approach of an anatomist cutting up a cadaver that we need to look deeper into the Euro-American academic system. When we were in bhAratavarSha we only cared about the knowledge produced by the system for its sociology and structural scaffold was something with which we never intersected. Within our first few months in the mlechCha-land we got the chance to more closely investigate the scaffold, because some mlechCha-s viewed us as something of a curiosity and invited us to some of their sabha-s. It was then that we began discovering features of the system that show how it is structured. We placed these under several distinct categories such as 1) Systems of entry into the power structure; 2) Systems of legitimization; 3)the social dimension; 4) the code of unstated norms that must be adhered.

The formal mechanisms for entry into the power structure of the Euro-American academic system are rather complex and multi-tiered despite appearing superficially simply. Our own entry at the lower rungs of the system began in bhArata itself where the mlechCha administered to us an IQ test. We wondered then as to why we need to participate this rather idiotic exam when we had already attained a much higher education. Perhaps, due to our low IQ it took us some time realize that this was a thinly disguised IQ text and the mlechCha did not really care for what your true knowledge capital was. Instead, he was interested in knowing if we possessed sufficient cognitive capacity to serve as cannon fodder in the intellectual conquests of professor Big. Thus, the Galtonian yardstick was the primary entry point into the system, even as in the early days of our clade females chose males by the ratio of their shoulder to hip and the length of their member. We are not at all the type who denies the mensuration of intelligence or its predictive value, but what became apparent to us was that in the mlechCha system it was institutionalized to obtain high quality brain for use by the sUtradhArin-s.

Continued ..