Excellent essay, thank you for sharing. It makes me think about milk.
My career has been varied, but nearly three decades have been in food and the first ten I ran a dairy distribution company. I learned very early about microbe counts.
Milk and other food isn't wholesome and tasty one day, then suddenly spoiled and nasty the next (regardless of the code date). Spoilage is a function of how many bugs are alive in the milk. Their number is a function of the starting point (after pasteurization), time, temperature, and integrity of the packaging.
I think the same applies in the academy. The "bugs" were always there but conditions changed (I saw the start when I began college in '91). It's been the equivalent of leaving the jug open and on the counter for days.
I don't know how the curdled, stinking mess can be "restored." Shifting metaphors, maybe it's like a house with a big meth lab. The shell can probably be saved, but everything inside has to be gutted and built new.
You’re welcome. I just posted vaccine adverse material on the latest post of Lisa Wilkinson’s, on her Facebook page. Hopefully she’ll look into the matter.
I assume you have read john taylor gatto. He and other have documented painstakingly how and why education has been altered, used and weaponized. Academia, was started for a purpose, and it was NOT the betterment of humanity, but the more efficient control of an already intelligent but difficult to handle people... Top down power structures are grossly inefficient, but they offer that control. that influence. This is how allopathic medicine destroyed healers with "patent " medicine (it is far more profitable). You do realize that homeopathic hospitals were once dominant, but this was changed by ---you guessed it academia. Read the hundred year lie, or, is your cardiologist trying to ill you. many books were written on this subject. all you need are public libraries and a form for the debate of ideas. anything else is for political influence. Another field that was completely diverted, was archeology. same problem, science in general has been massively twisted from where it would have naturally gone. top down power structures are the problem. lateral power structures do it better and are more difficult to corrupt. I have been in 3 co ops. you can get the same things done, in a healthier way, in a co op.
I haven't read gatto's work but have read about these systems designed for population mind control and subservience. I've written about specific issues in medicine that you mentioned and how the training is killing trainees and doctors in the process. Academic medicine produces some of the most sanctimonious people.
Thank you for talking about vertical vs horizontal power structures. I agree (and have written about) how hierarchies are easily corrupted by untrustworthy narcissistic leadership.
I have had 3 co ops, for 3 different purposes. they are way more efficient and effective than what we do for almost for everything. there is a book you might like, it explains systems from the past that are far less corruptible. the ones that were destroyed by the corrupt one that came later. they were well documents by well meaning jesuit monks. The dawn of everything a new history of humanity, by david graeber and david gengrow. Monopolies, cannot compete by playing fair, so they don't. they then try to erase any memories of what cam before, hence the destruction of libraries of the maya and so on. Libraries are for everyone, archives? we will never see. because knowledge really is power. narcissism will be encouraged because, that shared fantasy? that is a perfect prison for you. people do not even know who their real enemies are.
Malignant behaviour destroying an environment? It will happen over and over again in every office situation. You can’t stop it, much like the rates of cancer morbidity being 50% (that gets all of us in the end, second only to heart) the odds of you being attacked are similar. But will it get you? Or do you have to move on again when it takes root? I can’t see this behaviour ever being eradicated……
This speaks to the heart of it, though many who have benefited from their time in their institution, including being supported and elevated by one would only suggest they became morally compromised due to woke infection rather than the corruption being exposed once they were able to finally see it.
What then shall we say? That the law is sin? By no means! Yet, if it had not been for the law, I should not have known sin. I should not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said, “You shall not covet.” But sin, finding opportunity in the commandment, wrought in me all kinds of covetousness. Apart from the law sin lies dead. I was once alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin revived and I died;
Romans 7:7-9
It is the paradox not just of power but of organization at any level.
Think about what is required for any endeavor to mature into what we would call an institution: people must organize themselves into not just a collective whole but discrete subgroups within that whole. There must be a measure of bureaucracy, with staff whose role it is not to fulfill the objective that first drew people together but to gather and then administrate relevant resources. There must be a hierarchy of leadership so that all the parts of the now-diverse organization work in concert and not in conflict.
There must be bureaucracy, staff, and a leadership hierarchy, because without these things the group will eventually disperse, the effort will dissipate, and the mission will ultimately fail (or at least no longer be fulfilled). Thus a measure of effort becomes diverted from the mission that birthed the organization into sustaining and perpetuating the organization itself.
The Second Law of Thermodynamics tells us that, in any closed system, free energy always proceeds towards zero and entropy always proceeds towards a maximum. Order invariably decays into chaos. Energy levels invariably trend towards equilibrium.
The need for bureaucracy and staff tells us that even systems of organization among people are governed by this same thermodynamic principle. Unless energy is expended in sustaining and perpetuating the organization, the organization cannot endure.
Yet the energy expended to sustain the organization is energy expended not in furtherance of the organization’s mission. Straight away this is moral compromise, for it means that at least some resources gathered are used for a purpose other than the one for which they were gathered.
The existential reality of the bureaucracies needed to sustain institutions of any kind—schools, governments at every level, and even charities—are intrinsically expressions of power. They must be, for it is that expression of power that gives the institution its very existence. As Lord Acton so eloquently observed, “power corrupts”, which makes these needed bureaucracies inevitably corrupted.
Everything needed to build up an institution of any kind and sustain it over time is thus by definition evil, yet also by definition necessary.
Institutions can and frequently do considerable good. Yet that good comes at a cost, and that cost invariably presents as a measure of evil. That cost is by definition a moral compromise—and in every institution that moral compromise is unavoidable.
so I’m currently a lab manager in cell systems biology at a ivy league institution…and I’m miserable. not my first rodeo with narcissistic people but it’s so much harder for me now (I started a week after october 7th)
As someone still in academia - doing ethics work - I ask myself a version of this question every day. Well done articulating the ongoing cognitive dissonance of trying to be good and do good in institutions whose varied allegiances are difficult to see, let alone understand. The PR machines of universities spin narratives that are often not reflective of the lived and performed values seen on their campuses.
I was never a part of Academia, but I've found that groups of people are the same no matter where they congregate. Jung's archetypes live out in every workplace, institution, and corporation that I have been a part of. Corruption, lies, power struggles - it's everywhere. Can academia be fixed? Maybe but when it comes to groups I always go back to the spoke in the wheel or the weakest link in the chain analogy. Every person's contribution to the whole is dependent on their ability to manage their shadow, and most people don't even acknowledge their shadow, much less learn to how manage it.
In a recent event at the Danube Institute we discussed the economics of the modern university system and how it replicates the redistributionist tactics used by the Babylonian priestly class to facilitate their lifestyles by imposing debt servitude on others. Cynical system.
I think the corruption you noted in the post-doc years reflects the scarcity of opportunities in the space at elite universities.
My idea for fixing the academy is to let a thousand flowers bloom. If we can make the cost of research equipment and reagents much cheaper, then there will be a lot more labs and a lot more options for people to find labs that are a good fit. Assuming most people are basically good, then most cultures will converge on norms similar to your phd.
When the barrier to entry for a lab is very high, then the entire focus of the endeavor is to protect the space and not to find the truth.
My favorite example of this is the work by a Polish scientist who figured out how to purify RNA with a desktop centrifuge, as opposed to a million dollar ultrafuge
Cheaper techniques and reagents means much less gatekeeping on research and this in turn leads to more opportunities.
What do you think regarding the size of an "institution?" Does this/would this apply on a family system level? Small community? Even if there are no other inherent institutions within? I know you ask for your readers' opinions, but I have more questions than answers. :)
I read as many of your articles as I can. You are a prolific writer. 😉
as i put it elsewhere, in my dyslexic typing left handed, were you actually under the impression academies was for humanity’s benefit. It never was. As it is not, it was always, a mechanism for “civilizing” those who could think well enough for themselves. for control. it was never ever needed. never asked for a the cowering public of simpering ninnies. that is the marketing lie. all that ever was needed were public libraries. open debates. Who funded the first universities? just look. none of them ever intended us to be well. thus is how allopathic medicine dominated real healers. this is how real historians were drowned out by the history that serves the few. academia, ivory towers of bullshit.
Nathalie, thank for you this fantastic essay -- I resonate so deeply with your observation that understanding narcissism became the "hidden curriculum" of your job. Though I hadn't yet landed on that phrase, I feel that understanding narcissism became the "hidden curriculum" of a role I had cherished in a global media organisation, which I left two years ago because the rot you describe ran so deep. I came to see my experience as an "initiatory ordeal" and -- though my career is by no means all sorted now -- I do feel like I have a much deeper understanding of the reason for our malaise, and agree that all social chnage work should begin with a thorough study of the mechanics of narcissism, which is why I believe your work is so valuable. (PS, apologies if I've missed this, have you ever come across Paul Levy's work on "Wetiko." It feels very aligned with your approach). Thank you!
Thank you so much Matthew! I believe all jobs and relationships have a hidden curriculum, mostly about outsmarting narcissistic behaviours (from my experience) and cultivating specific virtues to overcome adversity/annoyances.
I have read about Wetiko back in 2020 during our famously long lockdowns, churning about systems of oppression and the mutation of feudal system into the institutions we have today. I agree with Levy - it's a mind virus and we need to do everything we can to immunize against it.
Really great question! Not sure I know the answer. I am personally skeptical of academia having any kind of a moral revival right now, but my cynicism also makes me sad because high quality research is so vital to a functioning society. It would be interesting to see if there are any good case studies of a rotten institution being reformed and what factors came together for that to happen.
Thank you Christina! I don't know of any institutions that have reformed (I've searched but definitely not well). The elitism of most institutions from their inception already compromised their ethics, so their moral baseline was already quite low.
I also don't think high quality research is possible when driven by publish or perish culture. The quality will always be a reflection of scientist's mental models and their preferred version of biological reality.
Thank you for the mention, Nathalie. This is a very honest and eye-opening firsthand account of how these institutions affect people, and I really enjoyed your comparison between narcissism and ‘infectious ideas’ and literal tumor growth. Very vivid imagery.
I don’t know if these institutions can be saved. I certainly hope so, as universities have the money and the power, and salvaging their integrity would be the easiest way. However, to borrow your analogy, you cannot turn an apple back once it is rotted, and it might make more sense to replace these old institutions with new ones. I think this will happen organically as people turn away and look for alternatives—Platforms like substack already seem to be filling this role.
Thank you for reading Melissa and for inspiring this piece!
I'm grateful for Substack for being an independent platform for sharing ideas without commercial and political interference. May more institutions be birthed that preserve its values.
My impression is academia is truly a horrible place to work.
your impression is accurate to anyone who isn't the favoured Golden Child.
I've had the same impression since I was in school.
Excellent essay, thank you for sharing. It makes me think about milk.
My career has been varied, but nearly three decades have been in food and the first ten I ran a dairy distribution company. I learned very early about microbe counts.
Milk and other food isn't wholesome and tasty one day, then suddenly spoiled and nasty the next (regardless of the code date). Spoilage is a function of how many bugs are alive in the milk. Their number is a function of the starting point (after pasteurization), time, temperature, and integrity of the packaging.
I think the same applies in the academy. The "bugs" were always there but conditions changed (I saw the start when I began college in '91). It's been the equivalent of leaving the jug open and on the counter for days.
I don't know how the curdled, stinking mess can be "restored." Shifting metaphors, maybe it's like a house with a big meth lab. The shell can probably be saved, but everything inside has to be gutted and built new.
I appreciate your bugs metaphor. Too many spoil the substance. I agree that the building can stay as long as it gets a good clean from the inside.
Thanks Nathalie. I am hopeful we can apply effective anti-microbials to lower the counts. I'm just not sure what form that will take.
🙏 Great post, now shared on Dr Pierre Kory’s Facebook page: https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=pfbid027xymqxivtboTK3wUNDPFmBBHLidYDfSs12pNhmUvqchPjfzJYAV9t7kH4gJtGpA4l&id=100076303818569
Thank you for posting it there!
You’re welcome. I just posted vaccine adverse material on the latest post of Lisa Wilkinson’s, on her Facebook page. Hopefully she’ll look into the matter.
I assume you have read john taylor gatto. He and other have documented painstakingly how and why education has been altered, used and weaponized. Academia, was started for a purpose, and it was NOT the betterment of humanity, but the more efficient control of an already intelligent but difficult to handle people... Top down power structures are grossly inefficient, but they offer that control. that influence. This is how allopathic medicine destroyed healers with "patent " medicine (it is far more profitable). You do realize that homeopathic hospitals were once dominant, but this was changed by ---you guessed it academia. Read the hundred year lie, or, is your cardiologist trying to ill you. many books were written on this subject. all you need are public libraries and a form for the debate of ideas. anything else is for political influence. Another field that was completely diverted, was archeology. same problem, science in general has been massively twisted from where it would have naturally gone. top down power structures are the problem. lateral power structures do it better and are more difficult to corrupt. I have been in 3 co ops. you can get the same things done, in a healthier way, in a co op.
I haven't read gatto's work but have read about these systems designed for population mind control and subservience. I've written about specific issues in medicine that you mentioned and how the training is killing trainees and doctors in the process. Academic medicine produces some of the most sanctimonious people.
Thank you for talking about vertical vs horizontal power structures. I agree (and have written about) how hierarchies are easily corrupted by untrustworthy narcissistic leadership.
I have had 3 co ops, for 3 different purposes. they are way more efficient and effective than what we do for almost for everything. there is a book you might like, it explains systems from the past that are far less corruptible. the ones that were destroyed by the corrupt one that came later. they were well documents by well meaning jesuit monks. The dawn of everything a new history of humanity, by david graeber and david gengrow. Monopolies, cannot compete by playing fair, so they don't. they then try to erase any memories of what cam before, hence the destruction of libraries of the maya and so on. Libraries are for everyone, archives? we will never see. because knowledge really is power. narcissism will be encouraged because, that shared fantasy? that is a perfect prison for you. people do not even know who their real enemies are.
Malignant behaviour destroying an environment? It will happen over and over again in every office situation. You can’t stop it, much like the rates of cancer morbidity being 50% (that gets all of us in the end, second only to heart) the odds of you being attacked are similar. But will it get you? Or do you have to move on again when it takes root? I can’t see this behaviour ever being eradicated……
I'm with you - narcissism is here to stay. BEst to learn how to defeat it or not give energy to feed it.
"Morally compromised institution" is redundant.
If it's an institution, it's morally compromised by definition.
This speaks to the heart of it, though many who have benefited from their time in their institution, including being supported and elevated by one would only suggest they became morally compromised due to woke infection rather than the corruption being exposed once they were able to finally see it.
What then shall we say? That the law is sin? By no means! Yet, if it had not been for the law, I should not have known sin. I should not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said, “You shall not covet.” But sin, finding opportunity in the commandment, wrought in me all kinds of covetousness. Apart from the law sin lies dead. I was once alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin revived and I died;
Romans 7:7-9
It is the paradox not just of power but of organization at any level.
Think about what is required for any endeavor to mature into what we would call an institution: people must organize themselves into not just a collective whole but discrete subgroups within that whole. There must be a measure of bureaucracy, with staff whose role it is not to fulfill the objective that first drew people together but to gather and then administrate relevant resources. There must be a hierarchy of leadership so that all the parts of the now-diverse organization work in concert and not in conflict.
There must be bureaucracy, staff, and a leadership hierarchy, because without these things the group will eventually disperse, the effort will dissipate, and the mission will ultimately fail (or at least no longer be fulfilled). Thus a measure of effort becomes diverted from the mission that birthed the organization into sustaining and perpetuating the organization itself.
The Second Law of Thermodynamics tells us that, in any closed system, free energy always proceeds towards zero and entropy always proceeds towards a maximum. Order invariably decays into chaos. Energy levels invariably trend towards equilibrium.
The need for bureaucracy and staff tells us that even systems of organization among people are governed by this same thermodynamic principle. Unless energy is expended in sustaining and perpetuating the organization, the organization cannot endure.
Yet the energy expended to sustain the organization is energy expended not in furtherance of the organization’s mission. Straight away this is moral compromise, for it means that at least some resources gathered are used for a purpose other than the one for which they were gathered.
The existential reality of the bureaucracies needed to sustain institutions of any kind—schools, governments at every level, and even charities—are intrinsically expressions of power. They must be, for it is that expression of power that gives the institution its very existence. As Lord Acton so eloquently observed, “power corrupts”, which makes these needed bureaucracies inevitably corrupted.
Everything needed to build up an institution of any kind and sustain it over time is thus by definition evil, yet also by definition necessary.
Institutions can and frequently do considerable good. Yet that good comes at a cost, and that cost invariably presents as a measure of evil. That cost is by definition a moral compromise—and in every institution that moral compromise is unavoidable.
so I’m currently a lab manager in cell systems biology at a ivy league institution…and I’m miserable. not my first rodeo with narcissistic people but it’s so much harder for me now (I started a week after october 7th)
I would have thought cell systems bio would be less political than humanities. What has changed?
As someone still in academia - doing ethics work - I ask myself a version of this question every day. Well done articulating the ongoing cognitive dissonance of trying to be good and do good in institutions whose varied allegiances are difficult to see, let alone understand. The PR machines of universities spin narratives that are often not reflective of the lived and performed values seen on their campuses.
I was never a part of Academia, but I've found that groups of people are the same no matter where they congregate. Jung's archetypes live out in every workplace, institution, and corporation that I have been a part of. Corruption, lies, power struggles - it's everywhere. Can academia be fixed? Maybe but when it comes to groups I always go back to the spoke in the wheel or the weakest link in the chain analogy. Every person's contribution to the whole is dependent on their ability to manage their shadow, and most people don't even acknowledge their shadow, much less learn to how manage it.
Ah- I got laughed at when I mentioned shadow work back in my research days. Academia is for conformists.
this might interest you.
In a recent event at the Danube Institute we discussed the economics of the modern university system and how it replicates the redistributionist tactics used by the Babylonian priestly class to facilitate their lifestyles by imposing debt servitude on others. Cynical system.
https://twitter.com/philippilk/status/1777660332476871026
I think the corruption you noted in the post-doc years reflects the scarcity of opportunities in the space at elite universities.
My idea for fixing the academy is to let a thousand flowers bloom. If we can make the cost of research equipment and reagents much cheaper, then there will be a lot more labs and a lot more options for people to find labs that are a good fit. Assuming most people are basically good, then most cultures will converge on norms similar to your phd.
When the barrier to entry for a lab is very high, then the entire focus of the endeavor is to protect the space and not to find the truth.
My favorite example of this is the work by a Polish scientist who figured out how to purify RNA with a desktop centrifuge, as opposed to a million dollar ultrafuge
Cheaper techniques and reagents means much less gatekeeping on research and this in turn leads to more opportunities.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/2440339/
Thank you Nathalie. Great story and info here.
What do you think regarding the size of an "institution?" Does this/would this apply on a family system level? Small community? Even if there are no other inherent institutions within? I know you ask for your readers' opinions, but I have more questions than answers. :)
I read as many of your articles as I can. You are a prolific writer. 😉
as i put it elsewhere, in my dyslexic typing left handed, were you actually under the impression academies was for humanity’s benefit. It never was. As it is not, it was always, a mechanism for “civilizing” those who could think well enough for themselves. for control. it was never ever needed. never asked for a the cowering public of simpering ninnies. that is the marketing lie. all that ever was needed were public libraries. open debates. Who funded the first universities? just look. none of them ever intended us to be well. thus is how allopathic medicine dominated real healers. this is how real historians were drowned out by the history that serves the few. academia, ivory towers of bullshit.
Nathalie, thank for you this fantastic essay -- I resonate so deeply with your observation that understanding narcissism became the "hidden curriculum" of your job. Though I hadn't yet landed on that phrase, I feel that understanding narcissism became the "hidden curriculum" of a role I had cherished in a global media organisation, which I left two years ago because the rot you describe ran so deep. I came to see my experience as an "initiatory ordeal" and -- though my career is by no means all sorted now -- I do feel like I have a much deeper understanding of the reason for our malaise, and agree that all social chnage work should begin with a thorough study of the mechanics of narcissism, which is why I believe your work is so valuable. (PS, apologies if I've missed this, have you ever come across Paul Levy's work on "Wetiko." It feels very aligned with your approach). Thank you!
Thank you so much Matthew! I believe all jobs and relationships have a hidden curriculum, mostly about outsmarting narcissistic behaviours (from my experience) and cultivating specific virtues to overcome adversity/annoyances.
I have read about Wetiko back in 2020 during our famously long lockdowns, churning about systems of oppression and the mutation of feudal system into the institutions we have today. I agree with Levy - it's a mind virus and we need to do everything we can to immunize against it.
Really great question! Not sure I know the answer. I am personally skeptical of academia having any kind of a moral revival right now, but my cynicism also makes me sad because high quality research is so vital to a functioning society. It would be interesting to see if there are any good case studies of a rotten institution being reformed and what factors came together for that to happen.
Thank you Christina! I don't know of any institutions that have reformed (I've searched but definitely not well). The elitism of most institutions from their inception already compromised their ethics, so their moral baseline was already quite low.
I also don't think high quality research is possible when driven by publish or perish culture. The quality will always be a reflection of scientist's mental models and their preferred version of biological reality.
Thank you for the mention, Nathalie. This is a very honest and eye-opening firsthand account of how these institutions affect people, and I really enjoyed your comparison between narcissism and ‘infectious ideas’ and literal tumor growth. Very vivid imagery.
I don’t know if these institutions can be saved. I certainly hope so, as universities have the money and the power, and salvaging their integrity would be the easiest way. However, to borrow your analogy, you cannot turn an apple back once it is rotted, and it might make more sense to replace these old institutions with new ones. I think this will happen organically as people turn away and look for alternatives—Platforms like substack already seem to be filling this role.
Thank you for reading Melissa and for inspiring this piece!
I'm grateful for Substack for being an independent platform for sharing ideas without commercial and political interference. May more institutions be birthed that preserve its values.