During my professional career, I have observed many candidates aspiring to get a doctorate in the philosophy of their favourite subjects and dreaming to be called “doctors,” in short “Dr,” which is now frequently written without a suffix, perhaps because PhD production has attained unlimited dimensions and dots have failed to keep it in check.
The problem is not with becoming a doctor. It is about what happens when we become a doctor of philosophy of “this” and “that.” We start getting “ideas”-ideas, which should have come to us when our supervisors were pleading with us for them. But no, at that time, we were under some kind of block, understandably so, since ideas have a habit to come late. But when they come, they come with a vengeance, not for their owners but for others who become their recipients. Such ideas produce critical thinking, more inclined towards bashing than being productive.
Let us take a look at social media where you put a light-weight, teeny-weeny, absolutely apolitical, unbiased post with a picture of your dying flowers in a tiny pot and a caption capturing your bubbling moment of rapture in a few words. There it goes out, travelling with lightning speed, cudgelling up ideas, especially from those with honourable titles.
We feel strong when people get uneasy, nervous, and, at times, distraught in struggling to justify their purpose.
The reactions that come through their critically multifaceted lens are normally: “What a shallow, inconsequential, and self-centred post.” “Pakistanis have nothing productive or better to say.” “We have lost our touch with reality and live in a fantasy?” “Do people have anything productive to do?” “Do they start their morning by looking at their pot of flowers?” “Don’t they start their days with a philosophy of life that would teach them how to grow into becoming scholars?” “Do they know what economic and political crises we are going through?” So on and so forth.
With all these great ideas coming to their great minds, others may feel vulnerable, threatened, in fact, weak. They know, today, an article has to be revised and submitted, another one has to be reviewed, a fund for a conference has to be applied for, plans have to be made with like-minded professionals for future promotions and projects, pending remunerations have to be followed up – so much to do and time is short and unfortunately, life is too. After all, by the power divested upon by academia, they are in a better position to think, plan, and provide solutions to the world and even if not convinced, people have to accept their ideas without any retaliation.
They are authorized to shun people’s ideas, to reject a proposal, to mock a presenter, to dismiss a pitch, to trivialize a concept paper and taking the social media example given above; make them feel bad about their little eccentric-cum-idiosyncratic moments. But who gives them this authority or the right to be right about everything? Do they find their ideas coming from a privileged position because academia has fuelled their egos, or is it due to their actual potential, skills, and expertise? In academia and other administrative scenarios, we love being critical. We feel strong when people get uneasy, nervous, and at times, distraught in struggling to justify their purpose. Their reaction validates the good quality of our criticism and makes us superior in other people’s eyes, at least this is what we think.
The art of being ‘unnecessarily’ critical is never taught to a child; they learn it from their immediate, institutional, and wider environment. They hear the whats, whys, and hows in numbers galore and formulate a corollary of communicative strategies helping them to seek and retrieve information, manage relationships, express opinions, share ideas and most importantly criticise others without any constructive or prescriptive intention behind it.
But what we fail to teach them as scholars, as teachers, and as parents is that not everything is ideological, as we perceive it to be, not everything is philosophical, as we consider it to be, not everything is serious, as we pose it to be. Little moments of innocence and puny joys and even mistakes need acknowledgement, encouragement and selfless understanding. No matter, then, if it’s a stupid FB post or a momentary hype – you have the choice to ignore it rather than making it your responsibility to throw a toxic comment.
In this article, I am particularly concerned about how academic contexts infuse a sense of superiority that is absolutely untenable. Conferences, workshops, panel discussions, public defence, and classroom interactions are just some of the forums where people are encouraged to participate and appreciated for what efforts they have made. Sometimes the criticism is positive and helps improve the product and is often taken in good spirit but most of the time our so-called scholars’ (Drs in particular) reaction or response to the issue in question is without any valid, reasonable, relevant, and motivational/inspiring comment. Critical questions should aim at improvement and not negative critique. The modality required on such occasions should aim at more “how did you?” and not “how could you?”
The writer serves as the Chairperson (Department of English and Literary Studies)and the Acting Dean (Institute of Liberal Arts, University of Management and Technology, Lahore).