1968 and all that.....

In May 1968 French students followed the example set in American Universities and protested against the encroaching powers of the universities and authorities. They were shortly joined by over ten million workers who bought France to a standstill.

The Sorbonne, one of Europe's greatest universities, was occupied and declared a "people's university", a state of emergency was declared and a 35% increase in the minimum wage was won by striking unions. As quickly as it arose, the strike dissapated, but anarchism has been born and a residual fear of the left was left in the minds of the authorites.

How tame we are now. The universities are in the grip of business societies, Pepsi-sponsored student unions and over-zealous administrators clambering for League Table success. Students have been rendered apathetic by a culture of individualism, the failure of their own institutions and the burden of debt which forces them to pursue "sensible" options.

Lecturers and researchers, for their part, lost all radical intent through the rise of postmodernism, the redirection of funding to business schools and the horrific effects of political correctness. Where there was once a vocabulary of exploitation, capitalism and alientation, now academics fall over themselves to describe the discourses by which all opinion is constructed as equally valid.

During the same period, our rights have been eroded, the world sits on the brink of environmental catastrophe and industry directs our politicians, universities and media stations. Both students and lecturers would do well to take note of the banner held on one of the 1968 marches which read:

"We want nothing of a world in which the certainty of not dying from hunger comes in exchange for the risk of dying from boredom".

Grrrrrrr.......anxiety

After working 14 hour days for 3 years and being in a tough relationship for 5, I developed depression in 2003 and was put on a crazy antidepresant called Citalopram (recently found to be linked to increased suicide risk, insomnia, and nausea - so that'll make you feel better...).

Anway, whilst I'm much better now, I still get a lot of anxiety when I'm stressed or worried, which seems to happen more easily than before. It's frustrating because the happy, confident me of the past seems to be weighed down by this unpredictable stranger that can affect everything from your memory to your concentration, relationships, energy and moods. In short, when this thing is there, it's pretty rubbish.

When the anxiety is like that, on the outside I seem to appear entirely normal whilst on the inside, this irrational black hole of angst, fear and reflexivity taints every emotion, experience and thought I have. You can't help but feel duplicitous. Which, of course, makes it worse.

My (lovely) fiancé seems fine with it all, though I sometimes want to tell her that I'm not really like this, and if only that stranger would go away, I'd be a better, happier, more carefree me. When I'm like that, I feel like I'm cheating her of a person who's better than the one she's got. But to say this, sounds like an excuse, and an exercise in chest-beating woe-is-me so I try not to.

Anyway, it's here now, though this is mostly my fault from drinking a little too much in previous weeks. It will go. To those of you out there (and there are millions) who deal with this every day, I respect you more than anyone I know.

The 30 month article........

Ok. So as a lecturer, I'm expected to write articles. Blogging doesn't count. There's an enitre, self-sustaining hierarchy of journals which we're supposed to publish in, which only ever get read because other academics want to know what to write. It's like a South Sea Bubble of 'knowledge'. And it hasn't burst.

Anyway, had an idea (almost three years ago now) about the way in which ideas spread like viruses and decided to send the paper to a top management journal. Let's call it the Journal of Management Studies. Because that's it's name.

So amazingly, they don't reject it (98% failure rate apparently) and the four (yes, 4!) professors who reviewed it gave me their comments to improve it for publication. Now, regardless of the fact that most of these comments were contradictory, I made the changes and resubmitted it. Now this pattern of resubmission, comments, resubmission has now been going on for almost three years and I'm starting to wonder what the point of it all is, especially now the reviewers are asking me to reinsert things (!) that two years ago, they asked to be removed.

And you, the taxpayer (gawd bless ya) are paying for this linguistic merry-go-round. Still, it beats stacking shelves at Tescos.......

Who am I?

I drank too much whiskey and wine last night. Far too much. I woke up in my mum's dressing gown in my sister' bed (she wasn't in it). What was interesting was that I was woken by my lovely fiancé I not only was unsure as to where I was but also wasn't sure who I was. I even went to the mirror just to check.

It was a pretty horrible experience. For about five minutes I was a thinking thing, peering at a world that seemed alien and unfamiliar. I felt scared, unsettled and unsure. Why?

I think people carry round an illusion of 'me-ness' that provides a coherence to everyday life. It enables experience to be woven into a consistent story and allows a way of thinking where all you experience can be related to an objective "I". Without this, as Sartre showed, we experience an angst, an undermining, by which our trust in the world is shaken and all meaning is destabilised. For what it's worth, Giddens, Beck and others link this to with the modern condition: globalisation, change and instability.

For me, it's the amber alcohol. Anyway, it reminded me of a thought I had when I had depression a few years ago. That was, the experience of being depressed seemed entirely natural. I couldn't understand, given the world and our lives, why everyone wasn't consumed by a morbid, destabilising anxiety. Then I thought that if everyone did feel like this, most of them would (and do!) kill themselves. So maybe, we evolved "happiness" as a survival instinct. Maybe this concept of self, our love and happiness, is simply nature's way of keeping us alive long enough to reproduce. Maybe the depressed and anxious are just seeing the world with the rose-tinted spectacles removed........

Anyway, mine's a large one. Cheers x

Bath Ales Brewery Tour

Last night our local organised a brewery tour to the Bath Ales Brewery. For £6.50 there was a vast amount of drinking and a talk by one of the Directors, Richard (pictured below). Richard was quiet, interesting man, who did his best to compete with the increasingly loud, and sometimes overbearing, audience.

Talking to people on the tour, it was interesting to see how they each got different things out of it. A few red-nosed glassy-eyed men were clearly focused on getting as much down them as possible, having calculated that the alcohol / price ratio made the tour a more profitable exercise than their local trip down the Dog and Duck. One guy who I approached was conducting his engineering analysis of all the structures and welding in the brewery whilst another seemed to be intent on setting up his own brewery and was fixated on the different recipes for the beers.

For my sins, I caught myself asking about the business. The margins, the market, the operations and distribution. At once I realised that my interest was, sadly, the least interesting of all those present, and decided instead to join the red-nosers in their pursuit of Dionysian bliss.