I started college in 1960. Got into math and spent 10 years full time in school and got a PhD. Taught computer science for 5 years at a prestigious college left to go to AT&T Bell Labs and worked on process engineering and later quality. I am one for whom college worked out.
I continued the idealist search for knowledge in particular the attempt to understand practice - say the practice of a craftsman or a doctor. First following Michael Polyani and his observations on the importance of group tradition for scientists. Read a lot of history of philosophy and applications of philosophy and in the last 15 years spent most of my time with the French polymath Bruno Latour.
I don't know if this is relevant so you can delete at will.
What sparked this was the recent article by the Economist Michael Hudson who focuses on debts. He talks a lot about rentier economics -- extracting rents. Student loan debt extracting rents. Neoliberal economics is about extracting rents.
Finance capitalism is the new God. As Bruno Latour says, one can not understand anything about world politics of the last 50 years without putting climate change front and center.
In short, when I went to school I didn't know what I was going to do. And while I worked hard and got good grades, the goal was not the grades. When my grandson interviewed for college with an asst dean of an engineering college and asked what he was going to college for, he said to make money and that was the right answer in the response from the asst dean. That was never my concern. There was a good enough economy that I knew that I could make it somehow, maybe in a trade. I am of the generation before the break described in this article.
I started college in 1960. Got into math and spent 10 years full time in school and got a PhD. Taught computer science for 5 years at a prestigious college left to go to AT&T Bell Labs and worked on process engineering and later quality. I am one for whom college worked out.
I continued the idealist search for knowledge in particular the attempt to understand practice - say the practice of a craftsman or a doctor. First following Michael Polyani and his observations on the importance of group tradition for scientists. Read a lot of history of philosophy and applications of philosophy and in the last 15 years spent most of my time with the French polymath Bruno Latour.
I don't know if this is relevant so you can delete at will.
What sparked this was the recent article by the Economist Michael Hudson who focuses on debts. He talks a lot about rentier economics -- extracting rents. Student loan debt extracting rents. Neoliberal economics is about extracting rents.
Finance capitalism is the new God. As Bruno Latour says, one can not understand anything about world politics of the last 50 years without putting climate change front and center.
In short, when I went to school I didn't know what I was going to do. And while I worked hard and got good grades, the goal was not the grades. When my grandson interviewed for college with an asst dean of an engineering college and asked what he was going to college for, he said to make money and that was the right answer in the response from the asst dean. That was never my concern. There was a good enough economy that I knew that I could make it somehow, maybe in a trade. I am of the generation before the break described in this article.
Here is the link
"Michael Hudson on Student Debt Relief, Inflation, Ukraine Disaster Capitalism, Petrodollar Challenge"
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2022/09/michael-hudson-on-student-debt-relief-inflation-ukraine-disaster-capitalism-petrodollar-challenge.html
Gaia will force humans to invent new ways of life. Examples from the Maya, who are still with us will be important in the future.
https://illwill.com/zapatista-autonomy
Zapatista Autonomy: A Destituent Experiment?
Jérôme Baschet
September 7th, 2022