When the Conquistadors sailed for the New World they brought along chests of mirrors and combs to dazzle the indigenous peoples and to give away in exchange for their land and their bodies in slavery. In my experience, the academic system can operate in a similar way. It is great at flattering us, preening our reputations and dangling glistening trinkets in front of our faces while at the same time it slips a gold ring through our nose and makes us a slave.
What are the combs and mirrors of your academic life? Some of mine would be the fancy dinners, the position of authority and respect that comes with teaching, the “Doctor” before my name, and the aura of being an expert.
In relation to this mysterious aura of expertise, note how you react when another scholar unwittingly trespasses onto your academic “territory” and talks about your speciality. What is your first instinct? If you’re anything like me, then mixed in with the curiosity and interest in finding out something new there is also the feeling of being threatened, and wanting to demolish their argument so that you remain the undisputed king or queen of your academic castle. How unlike the Christ who came not to be served but to serve, and how unlike his apostle who writes to the Philippians “What then? Only that in every way, whether in pretense or in truth, Christ is proclaimed, and in that I rejoice.” (Philippians 1:18).
All these combs and mirrors can blind us to what is humanly at stake in the question of how much of ourselves we choose to give to our academic job, and we risk ending up like the proverbial donkey relentlessly plodding forward to reach the carrot dangled just out of reach: “driven” in the worst sense of that word.
