As societies have evolved beyond the preindustrial era, they have become more and more dominated by bureaucracies. However, the ultimate form of bureaucracy is McDonaldization (Ritzer, 1996). This constitutes a broad range of bureaucracies dominated by the principles of the fast food industry: namely, efficiency, calculability, predictability, and control. These principles are slowly coming to dominate more and more sectors of society both in America and abroad. Unfortunately, McDonaldization is now affecting the discipline of philosophy itself. As thinking men and women, we must not allow this danger. We must not allow the field of philosophy to become permanently McDonaldized by powerful administrators, ritualistic bureaucrats, profit-seeking entrepreneurs and political hacks. It is time to use the power of ideas to combat this usurpation of wisdom.
McDonaldization embodies the idea that all human activities can be counted, calculated and quantified. The emphasis is quantity over quality, homogamy over diversity, slogans over systematic intelligence, scripted formats over heartfelt greetings, vacuous smiles over true expressions, routines over intelligent alternatives, para-social interactions over primary face-to-face unity, uniforms over aesthetic dress, the minimization of danger over wise precautions and administrative control instead of self-determined initiative. Above all, it embodies the triumph of subjectivity over objectivity, resulting in a bland stupidity, a dull pseudo-idealism, a one-dimensional conformity, and an odious, complacent ugliness which will serve as a monument to stupidity.
Philosophy is the greatest product of the human intellect. As philosophers we should be guided by the greatest minds of past human civilization. We owe it to their memory, to ourselves, and to future humanity not to sit passively by and allow this betrayal of reason. We must not allow the “irrationality of rationality” to overtake reason.
The emphasis on quantity over quality is inane. How many books or essays a philosopher has written are not as important as their quality. One immortal work is worth a thousand lesser ones. Also, homogamy is odious. It leads to a bland, unoriginal simplicity where every philosophy resembles every other in machine-like duplication. Some journals require essays of a certain length, in a definite format, or on designated topics embodying conformist values which no one dare challenge. Major book publishers often judge philosophy books solely on the criteria of how many copies they will sell, rather than considering their value.
As for slogans, this anchor of McDonaldization embodies witty sayings, botched stereotypes, inadequate analogies and hopelessly inane idiocies. Voltaire put it best when he noted that a witty saying proves nothing. It also indicates the surrender of reason to complacent dullness. In addition, they couple this with scripted formats, another gem of simian ignorance. When you walk into any McDonaldized enterprise, they ask how you are. The truth is that they don’t really care. This annoying gesture has become standard even among some faculty at universities.
Vacuous smiles also greet you. A genuine smile is pleasurable and life enhancing. But, these controlled, McDonaldized facial expressions almost make you desire to read Sartre’s diatribe on nausea. It must be extremely unhealthy for those who must constantly display this phony persona and extremely alienating to those who confront it. Smiling faces! Remember Hamlet’s line, “As false as dicers’ oaths” (Hamlet. 3.4.45). As philosophers, will we stand aside and allow mankind to be demeaned in this manner? Or will we strike back hard with the wealth of ideas that truly exists in our discipline? We must decide!
Yet, there is more. Another gem of McDonaldization are controlled routines. McDonaldized administrators loathe rational alternatives due to their desire to regulate every aspect of society. The more you think, the less predictable and controllable you are. Hence, the necessity to diminish the rational capacity and the result is the triumph of subjectivity. No surprises! Surprises might stimulate thought. Customers must to know what to expect in most settings and situations. Otherwise, they might be disappointed which is the equivalent of evil in an McDonaldized environment. Evil used to be genocide, slavery or horrid disease. Now, it is a change of flavor due to the taste of a sauce. Hence, the need for homogamy. Everything looks like everything else and everything tastes the same. Even in philosophy, mandated course outlines on predetermined topics embodying prevalent and often unexamined social values have become common. Also, the necessity for research has become secondary to the attainment of student satisfaction. Students, you see, must be satisfied, a McDonaldized value. God help the professor who seeks tenure who has dissatisfied students. Philosophers, are you content with being satisfaction providers? Wisdom is what we should be providing. This alter of McDonaldized lunacy must be smashed!
Para-social interaction is another symptom of this malady where face-to-face associations are replaced by impersonal interactions with images. The human equation is deadened here to be replaced by inert, efficient technologies designed to eliminate personal feelings in order to facilitate productivity. In philosophy, that productivity is not necessarily the genesis of scholarly essays, but quite often interface with administrators where professors must spend hours in front of a computer oblivious to all around them. Primary group associations are minimized. Maximized are emails announcing unimportant administrative matters or workshops which are often irrelevant to philosophical concerns. One reads that there will be a workshop on March 12th. Another informs of a workshop on April 10th. Still another on May18th. This emphasis on workshops is inane as it stifles individual initiative and subordinates the freedom to think independently from the crowd. Remember Kierkegaard’s famous dictum. The crowd is untruth. If this trend continues, there will no longer be great men and women, only great workshops.
Add to this the indignity of uniforms, both actual and symbolic. McDonaldized outlets require their employees to wear uniforms, which is a sign of subordination. In short, that their humanity has a lower value than that of the customers. They are there to serve. The uniform negates their individuality and reduces it to a mere status such as waiter or door man. Such statuses often receive low pay, few benefits and little respect. Philosophy professors obviously do not ware uniforms, yet they have administrative titles creating a hierarchy of inequality. The lowest is the adjunct professor, which was rare in the past yet is quite common today. These scholars are paid little, often have no benefits and no retirement packages. It goes without saying that this leaves little time for philosophical research considering that these individuals are in a constant struggle for mere existence. As for respect, they would receive more as peddlers at a lemon festival. This title is a symbolic robe of subjugation. The universities then often use the money their saving at the expense of these scholars to hire marketing experts at six figure salaries. After all, cash value is the core of McDonaldization.
The final assault is the “irrationality of rationality” which minimizes the danger of continued McDonaldization at the same time in which the putrid rock of falsity is glorified. In the same manner that fast food restaurants minimize the health hazards of fast food by stressing their utility, college administrators de-emphasize the dangers to scholarship and human dignity described above by focusing on the functional requirements of the entire system: namely, the need for the efficient transmission of knowledge which they measure in by the number of graduates or amount of student satisfaction. In this way, subjective preference is elevated above objective capacity.
McDonaldization is today overtaking our entire society. Yet, when it endangers the discipline of philosophy, we must raise our hands and say “this far and no more.” What sort of professionals do they think we are? Do they not realize that we will never cease to fight them with the power of ideas? The inheritors of a discipline that give the world Plato, Augustine, Leibniz, Kant, and Whitehead will not bow before the unholy alter of McDonaldization. We will not cease to examine the values of this usurpation of reason. I call upon all philosophers to attack McDonaldization with blogs, speeches, meetings, essays, books, and academic conferences! Resist!
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Edward Delia
Edward Delia Is a philosopher and social scientist. His undergraduate work was at Brooklyn College and he has graduate degrees from both Hofstra and Fordham Universities.
One solution to your complaints above is to make a clear distinction between philosophy, and the philosophy business.
You write, “McDonaldization is now affecting the discipline of philosophy itself.” To quibble a bit, I would remind you that McDonaldization has no impact on the discipline of philosophy at all, only on the philosophy business.
Every business enterprise comes with built-in limitations because the customer must be satisfied for the business to continue. In the academic realm it seems the customers for the philosophy business are typically university administrators, and beyond them whoever is funding the university. Like pretty much all human beings, these customers will seek to serve their own individual needs before turning their attention to other people and other matters.
Aren’t all professional philosophers doing pretty much this very thing? How many are willing to put their paycheck at risk in order to explore ideas without limitation? How many are even in a position to make such a choice? Aren’t most professional philosophers prioritizing business over philosophy?
One way to both be a professional philosopher and have the freedom to do real philosophy without limitation could be to break out of the academic gulag and sell one’s services directly to the public. You’d still have customers, but no one customer could dictate the terms of the relationship.
Dear Phil Tanny:
I appreciate your response, yet I must disagree with you as follows:
First, there is no definite boundary between philosophy itself and the philosophy business as the two realms are in direct interface with each other. The philosophy business determines what type of training a philosopher has in undergraduate and graduate school. Journals and book publishers determine whether one’s books or articles will be published. McDonaldized values often form the backbone of these processes. These values are usually unexamined such as diversity, inclusion etc.
Second, some philosophers are willing to sacrifice their economic status to achieve knowledge. This, however, is rare because McDonaldized values include cash as the bottom line in all enterprises. In addition, the status of the adjunct professor condemns a philosopher to exist an iron cage of subordination.
Third, there is no such thing as being a philosopher without limitation. We are all limited in our finiteness and our subordination to societal demands.
Regards,
Professor DeLia
This is a nice essay, and I can’t find anything in it to object to, but the problem is: it’s too late.
Academic philosophy was McDonaldized long ago.
I would only ask, where are today’s Ludwig Wittgensteins, its W.V. Quines, its John Rawlses, or even its Thomas S. Kuhns or Paul Feyerabends or Richard Rortys, or even an American Michel Foucault or two or three, or anyone else whose penchant for boldly suggesting new approaches or taking down philosophical shibboleths made twentieth century philosophy interesting and worthwhile?
And no, sorry, the various forms of collective grievance don’t cut it. Repetitious, whining, and just plain boring! I wonder when it will dawn on someone that if critiques of real power are a goal, unreadable pontifications on “intersectionality” aren’t going to come anywhere near it. Identity politics was never more than a distraction, and a juvenile one at that.
There are philosophically thought-provoking articles and books around today, and some fascinating ideas, but few are being put out there by career academics, and the only cases of those I can think of are based outside the U.S. (e.g., David Chalmers in Australia, or Nick Bostrom in the U.K.).
Dear Steven Yates:
You present a number of interesting comments. I desire, however, to render a few comments of my own.
1. It is true that McDonaldization began decades ago, but the intensity of this process has never been greater than today.
2. As to where the great thinkers are, they truly exist. Most of them are adjuncts incapable of attaining any recognition.
3. I can’t agree that identity politics is a distraction, but do believe the values underlying it are McDonaldized ones.
4. Only collective grievances against McDonaldization will be effective. Individual grievances will generally be ignored. There is power in numbers. We must collectively attack McDonaldization with the power of ideas.
Regards,
Edward DeLia
Hi Edward, and many apologies for taking so long answering … was at a conference put on by leaders of my newly adopted profession and thus otherwise occupied for close to a week.
I hope you see this.
I agree with your (1). Perhaps the fact that I’ve been out of academia for close to a decade now has made the acceleration of McDonaldization less evident than to someone viewing it from the inside. It is clear: academia has deteriorated since I left. Based just on following relevant recent and current events I could cite over a dozen reasons for thinking so.
(2) Again agreement. After all, I was one (an adjunct)…. Others have doubtless fled, since there are other occupations a philosophical education positions a person to do well. It might be worth noting: there are numerous books I would argue are philosophically important or at least interesting but not likely to be recognized as such by philosophers since the persons producing them never self-identified as philosophers. Academics have dropped the ball. Others have picked it up and run with it. Nassim Nicholas Taleb would be an example.
(3) To respond usefully I would need to know more of your thinking on identity politics to know why you think it isn’t a diversion from the Western world’s real power hierarchy.
(4) Agreed again, and I will surely incorporate this thought into the book I am writing in my spare time offering a theory of the job philosophy should be doing. It is, as you say, a collective action problem, however, and I come at the project knowing that the chances of its being noticed start at well under 50-50 and go downhill from there.
For further correspondence I can be best reached through my blog (clicking on my name should take you there).
This piece seems to me to point at a problem or set of problems, by using a particular metaphor (in my view perhaps over-using it to the point where the mapping is strained), but not to propose solutions.
How do we make philosophy something where we can enjoy a home-cooked meal or a cordon bleu restaurant meal, at our choice? Where choices abound?
An earlier response made one suggestion, but it seemed a little like setting up a philosophical foodtruck.
Perhaps any solution will of necessity involve a wide range of approaches to doing philosophy rather than homogenization.
I’d be fascinated to hear the solutions proposed by others.
Mr. Geelon,
Thank you for this post, which invites collaboration and showed both politeness and criticism together.
I’ve two answers to throw into the mix.
The major issue is faculty governance of academic institutions. Faculty are supposed to be the decision makers around academic mission. What has happened is that administration has become increasingly the indirect or now often direct guide of academic mission.
The indirect decision making happens by using austerity considerations to cut or shape programs and to determine the employment category of faculty. Rather than opening the books to faculty and giving faculty reasonable timelines to decide on academic mission matters in conditions of austerity (or of market fluctuation, or of the infamous 2026 enrollment bubble collapse when U.S. college age population plummets), the administration calls the shots, thereby determining academic mission and setting faculty back on their heels and often against themselves via internal competition.
The direct decision making happens by rolling out mission agenda for an institution or program without it coming from the faculty. There are a variety of ways to do this, most of them grouped under the concept of strategic planning, which of course comes from business and involves warfare as a metaphor (stratēgos, from Greek, for generalship in war).
Faculty must organize to take back governance of the academic mission. This requires that faculty be ready to make tough choices and that they become ready to examine the books reasonably. It also probably demands union–style organizing and collective actions.
Who watches the administrators? Administrators often mean well and truly think that they respect the faculty. I don’t think that administrators in higher ed. are usually soulless bureaucrats. Yet they have little check on their power and their incentives are not geared toward the academic mission of a place or to respecting faculty governance. Moreover, they have a conflict of interest when working the books and allocating the budgets. Their ranks have swollen, with no check on them. It’s a huge structural problem. The faculty have to take back the academic mission.
When faculties govern the academic mission, more reasonable balances between standardization – which is important for science – and local autonomy slowly get worked out. Commonalities between institutions emerge internally by way of finding what works best there for learning, rather than externally by gimmicks and forms that are imposed from without by administrative incentives or fiat.
The problem in academic philosophy goes deeper than McDonaldization and rests in what I call “industrial theory” – the notion that philosophy should, or must, produce theoretical knowledge or applied practical know-how for professions or societies. What is left out of this mix is the relational, or more colloquially the interpersonal. Philosophy’s object is wisdom, and that depends on (a) putting relationships first and on (b) pursuing a way of life, being a person, as intrinsic to philosophy.
This problem with philosophy has its roots in the industrial revolution, roughly, coinciding with the rise of the bureaucratic state, capitalism, colonialism, modern science’s increasingly professionalization, and the formation of the research university. However, the problem draws on an oversight deep to Greek antiquity, which is the ignorance of the inter/personal as a discrete form of reasoning.
Academic philosophy can deal with this problem in part by making relational reason an explicit concern equal to theoretical and practical reason and by protecting the original goal of philosophy in wisdom, corresponding to an emphasis on philosophy as a way of life, even in seeking theoretical knowledge. In everyday terms, academic philosophy can go some way to what you seek by focusing on good relationships as the setting for wisdom. One might even think of this as returning to the “philia” in philosophy — good relationships around wisdom-seeking.
Thanks for your productive question.
Sincerely,
The moral collapse of the university, by Bruce Wilshire. Nuff said.
Hi Professor Delia,
You wrote, “First, there is no definite boundary between philosophy itself and the philosophy business as the two realms are in direct interface with each other.”
It seems entirely possible to do philosophy without having any connection to academia, a career, a job, earning income etc, ie. the philosophy business. The boundary between the two realms is the paycheck, or lack thereof.
The term “philosopher” does not apply only to those in academia, or otherwise making a living doing philosophy.
Why does one have to be bound by societal demands, unless one is seeking something from the society? If one wants money from the society, then yes, one has to play the game as written. But if one doesn’t want anything, one is not bound by anything. One is then free to follow reason where ever it may lead us.
Dear Phil Tanny:
I comprehend what you are asserting, yet I cannot agree with you views as follows:
1. When I write of the philosophy business, I am not only thinking about making money, but rather about what the philosophy business controls: namely, the manner in which philosophers are trained in college and graduate schools. Often McDonaldized administrators, not professors, determine what texts should be
used, what topics to emphasize and what issues to deemphasize. This shapes their minds and determines the way they think to some degree depending on the individual’s singular capacities.
2. Of course, you may learn philosophy outside of academia. Asserting this is simply being a champion of the obvious. It is a fact, however, that most philosophers are trained in the university and are affected by McDonaldized values.
3. You ask why does one have to be bound by societal demands.
The answer is that we all are born into a society and learn everything including language during our formative years. This includes the norms or demands of society. This shapes our mentality and limits are capacities. We can through our self-determination later reflect upon these norms or even reject them, yet they still determine our intellectual development.
The danger is the effect of McDonaldized norms and values on future socialization. Max Weber warned of an “iron cage” and he was correct.
Regards,
Edward DeLia
Bendik-Keymer writes…
“In everyday terms, academic philosophy can go some way to what you seek by focusing on good relationships as the setting for wisdom.”
If you can expand your use of “relationship” to extend beyond just our relationship with other people, I’m with you here.
As example, Western religions typically address our relationship with reality, with our relationship with other people being a subset of the larger issue of relationship with reality, ie. God in religious language.
Philosophers might (and likely have) inspect the premise the word “relationship” is built upon, an assumption that there are two or more different things which can then relate to one another.
Are “things” real? Are division, separation and boundaries real? Or are they useful illusions generated by the inherently divisive nature of thought, by the way thought works?
We struggle to maintain good relationships with other people because we fundamentally perceive ourselves to be separate and alone in reality, a perception of infinite smallness which generates fear. We want other people to help ease our fear, and when they don’t cooperate relationships tend to become problematic.
We try to manage these human relationship problems with moral rules, but as 3,000 years of Judeo-Christian morality would seem to prove beyond doubt such well intentioned efforts have limited impact, as the world is still filled with human conflicts of all kinds.
The reason morality is such a limited clumsy tool is that it doesn’t really address the underlying source of bad relationships, the thought generated illusion that we are separate from all else.
If you wish to explore in directions such as this, I’m all ears. If your analysis is to be limited to moral sermons, well ok, but they do a better job of moral sermons at church, having had 2,000 years of practice at it.
Mr. Tanny,
Relationships with the non-human are part of relational reason by way either of personification or of taking what is impersonal personally, usually by way of analogies that involves both depersonalization and self-consciousness. It’s a complicated topic, too complicated for a back and forth on this thread. I discuss some of it in an early form in The Ecological Life (2006).
Morality, however, is basic. That’s not a sermon, but just an analysis of responsibility. Wittgenstein pointed to the grammar of human life, and he was getting at something there. I’ve already pointed to Darwall and Strawson; so perhaps you might want to start there to understand what’s going on here.
With best wishes,
[Sorry about the length… Interesting subject is my excuse….]
Homogamy relates to genetic inbreeding, and by extension the inbreeding of ideas, or, more generally, emotions. But there is worse. Recent French philosophers and sociologists call it: “Pensee Unique” (Sole Thought). In that case only one system of thought, the so-called free market, which is neither free, nor a market, rules all. It’s also called “liberalism” (however it is not full of liberty, but just the opposite; for example in gigantic rooms in various media of the West (and China), myriads of workers with low educational levels, determine what can be seen and was is censored.
I suffered personally above 1,000 acts of censorship from media which, per their official position (“press” privileges) have the fiduciary duty to always let the truth through (I tell the truth always and nothing but the truth, it’s easier that way.)
Thus, in the USA, that “Sole Thought” of the free market is supposed to cure the healthcare system (it doesn’t work: the US has the highest GDP health spending, yet the worst outcome among the forty top nations). It’s also providing with the wealthiest university system (but are wealthiest places the most intelligent?).
I prefer to “Sole Thought” the notion of intellectual fascism, which is more general, as it enables not one, but several system of thought, while ferociously excluding others.
An example is the unholy alliance between “liberalism” and Wahhabism (the ferocious religion which enabled the Saudis to control Arabia). Wahhabism is so primitive that its ancestral version was punished by death, in Twelfth Century Egypt. However, the plutocracy behind “liberalism” has found crafty to promote Wahhabism as “Islam” and condemn then the fear of Islam, that is, Islamophobia, as racism. That is exactly as intelligent as if one qualified those who feared the Catholic Inquisition of the Middle Ages as “racist”.
Thus one sees two fasces there: one “liberalism”, the other “Wahhabism”. They are tied together with two other systems of thought, the fossil fuel economy and financial plutocracy with its ruling banks (“investment banks”, which actually speculate, and large money center banks). The large banks lend to the wealthiest, while ostensibly creating everybody’s money, and, in particular that of fossil fuel industry and its frackers. Hence the world is dominated by half a dozen systems of thought, tightly bound together by the systems of thought in turn created by the wealthiest, and thus most prodigious universities.
This binding together of a few rigid systems of thought serving the basest instincts is necessary to implement political fascism. Hence, as the Roman Republic came to be ruled by the fascism of Octavianus and his successors, an imperial cult arose, where even a living emperor came to be regarded as a god. This was accompanied by an elaborate plutocracy and an enormous system where slaves were viewed as things (older slave systems, say in Babylon 2,000 years earlier didn’t view slaves as things). Hence one can see that the intellectual fascism system of Rome was quite complex (Roman Catholicism was added to it later), and had various bundles tied together..
Details count: under the fascist emperors, extremely complex dinners could speak of many things… but not politics. That could, and did, kill: spies were everywhere, same as today on the Internet.
Fasces were a bundle of rods all tied together, representing the people all as one, with, or without an ax in the middle to mean, or exclude lethal power.
The fundamental idea of political fascism was to tie people together. But what ties people together? And one does this best with a few ideas and emotions shared by all, and only those. These ideas and emotions in common constitute the strings binding the people together.
To make a crowd, one needs this sharing of a few ideas and emotions binding together, and nothing else. This is why the crowd is untruth, as Kierkegaard said.
What is intelligence? What finds out truths, by establishing new logics, that is, new connections and entanglements, causes and consequences, guesses, and new emotions. Fostering intelligence demands the exact opposite of intellectual fascism.
McDonaldization is today overtaking our entire society. It has happened many times before, and leads to all sorts of collapses in succession. Cognitive collapse leads to ecological collapse leading to moral, then social collapses, and then typically massive annihilating war.
The ultimate example of a succession of catastrophic collapse is what befell the Late Roman Empire. Starting around 380 CE, Roman emperors Gratian and his hand picked colleague, Theodosius I, enacted decrees potentially condemning so-called “heretics” to death. At that point, thinking has become dangerous. Thus learning had become a sin: “men in black” (the spiritual ancestors of today’s Jihadists of the Islamist State) went all around and burn books, libraries and killed intellectuals. Intelligence, culture, subtlety became major sins, and sure enough, the most famous intellectual, the most beautiful Hypatia, who had turned down many monarchs, was raped and tortured by a mob organized and inspired by Saint Cyril of Alexandria. She was cut alive by oyster shells, in an horror repeated for many a top intellectual: Boethius, beaten to death, Bruno, roasted alive after piercing his palate.
The Roman state collapsed within years, as a direct result of this assault against intelligence (the invasion by many nations happened in December 406 CE).
A century later, the Franks re-established a Roman state. How did they do it? The Franks were few, Gallo-Romans, numerous. So the Franks had to persuade the masses they should rule. They didn’t do so much by the sword (as Islam would do), but by instituting tolerance. Namely the Franks enabled many systems of thoughts as having an equal say (including Judaism, Paganism, Secularism. etc…) That tolerance for mental diversity, encouraged ever greater intelligence. By 655 CE, queen Bathilde of the Franks, an ex-slave who had escaped and been caught again, before she married the future king, outlawed the slave trade among Franks (the citizens of gigantic empire of the Franks). This was a technological choice towards machines, science, technology. By 1,000 CE, the Franks had distanced Rome in crucial technologies (to some extent that was true from the start as the Franks had superior weapons and ploughs… That’s how they defeated the Goths).
Humanity is now facing the greatest crisis in 66 million years. We need extreme intelligence to get out of it optimally. Hence our greatest enemy should be intellectual fascism. How to fight it? Installing mental diversity is necessary, but not sufficient. Intelligence has to be augmented, and that means young people have to be exposed to complicated, sophisticated, up to date factual knowledge. Independently of feel-good fast food o the easy way out.
Dear Patrice Ayme:
I don’t agree with you about the collapse of the Western Roman Empire. It is true that Theodosius issued decrees that anyone caught worshiping the old gods should be put to death, but this was an attempt to prevent the reemergence of the decrees of Julian the Apostate to restore the Olympian gods. It certainly was not the main cause of the collapse of the Empire. That was due to causes which may be traced back to A.D.180 including political, economic and social decline. The ultimate reason was the collapse of the Roman military. Also, too much diversity and not enough unity was cited by Edward Gibbon which is the opposite of McDonaldization.
Edward DeLia
Vize Incorporated
Dear Edward DeLia
Right, the proximal reason for the disintegration of the Roman empire was military defeat. What were the two most prominent defeats?
Hadrianopolis in 379 CE and Frigidarius in 394 CE. At Hadrianopolis, due to the fascist structure and Christian derangement Syndrome, Valens engaged a battle against the Goths when and how he should obviously not have done it. Obviously he was imitating the wrath of the deranged Christian jealous god (he was jealous of Gratian and trusted in miracles). Two-thirds of the Oriental army was annihilated. At Frigidarius, using mostly the Goths, the Catholic fanatic Theodosius I destroyed the entire secular Occidental army of Arbogast… thanks to a hurricane…
In 15 years, most of the Roman army had been annihilated. Both crucial, shattering defeats happened because of Catholicism and the self-defeating way it induces individuals to interact with the world.
First you have to undo the Enlightenment, which made the mentality of empiricism, quantification and rationalism divorced from spirituality the dominant mode of Western thought, bringing what Rene Guenon called “the reign of quantity” to Western civilization. Hyper-capitalism armed with networked computing technology is showing what a grey, soulless dystopia that mentality can produce. Traditionalists, Romanticists and other anti-modernists have been talking about this for centuries; maybe others are prepared to join them now that the radical quantifiers are threatening to disrupt and remake all our institutions along the lines of McDonalds, including the universities. Whatever philosophy contributed to creating this mentality is part of the problem, which developed over centuries. Undoing it with better philosophy may take centuries, but it’s a worthwhile project and it’s time to start.
Dear Baron Black:
We don’t want to do away with the entire Enlightenment even thought some aspects of it were dysfunctional.Kierkegaard attacked the Enlightenment in his book, ‘The Present Age’, for its emphasis on objective rather than subjective meaning. In this respect, he was correct.
Second, the problem goes beyond hyper-capitalism as socialist nations also embody McDonaldized values or norms in their respective cultures. Nothing is more soulless than socialist institutions. They often illustrate the ultimate dystopia.
Third, powerful philosophical ideas can change the world. Consider the impact of Thomas Paine or John Locke.
Edward DeLia
Given the number of complaints with academia, it would be interesting to see a section of the blog focused on careers for philosophers outside of academia.
I’d be particularly interested in self employment opportunities. One still has customers, and thus some level of BS, but no one customer can rule one’s life.
Dear Phil:
You seem to be obsessed with careers outside academia.The point is, however, that philosophy is essentially theoretical. The only thing you can do with philosophy is teach it or write books about it. This is not essentially a money making field. If you desire money, start a business. Philosophers usually earn modest incomes.
It should also be noted that even if you choose a career outside of academia, you still be affected by McDonaldized values which are pervasive. McDonaldization is not merely a series of arbitrary individual complaints, but is rather a massive social problem affecting the entire society and the discipline of philosophy itself.
Edward DeLia
Customer or Student satisfaction is directly proportional to the height of the barrier that constitutes the cultural enclosure in which Western society seems to be immersed. Let’s stop dividing ourselves between satisfied and nihilists, we find the courage of constructive doubt. The real revolution in the future will be to be able to ask questions that affect a partly satisfied and partly surrendered society.
Mr. Baron Black, seeking solutions through old or new values far from the logical method does not improve the human condition. logic is not alienating, satisfaction is. We will have to create a new philosophy of doubt to awaken people satisfied by the torpor and give constructive perspective to the nihilists. Satisfaction of the senses and subjection that leads to compliance are the modern coercive tools in use now widespread in the western world. Logic is a neutral instrument and does not depersonalize man, as it does not exclude curiosity. The spirit of man is research, infinite research, motivated by emotion. This path can be done very well without abandoning logic. Having doubts, however, makes you free, even free from power, and this is why every large organization tends to satisfy its customers, to avoid their possible questions.
The greatest danger I see is quantity promoted to quality by means of ideology: in economy, selling a great quantity of scarce quality items produces a corporation of value by means of money ideology; in arts, the productions most debated by a quantity of uneducated operators become masterpiece by means of opinions; and eventually, even in philosophy, a quantity of Ph.D. have redeveloped outdated doctrines into science by means of dull reductionism.
I left moral, law, and religion as an exercise for the reader…
Your essay strikes home especially hard in my case. I was fortunate enough to have been employed as a teacher of philosophy at Sonoma State University in California, where I taught for 25 years. At that time, the orientation of the school was toward experimental classes in all departments, and faculty were encouraged to form “cluster colleges” within the larger format of the university (then just a “college”). Among my standard classes I also taught Eastern Philosophy, focusing on Buddhism and Hinduism. My primary western interests were in the Philosophy of John Dewey, and I began to compare Dewey’s “Principle of Continuity” with a number of developmental systems within Eastern Philosophy, particularly in Tantric Buddhism. Here is where my career took a disappointing turn. Papers I wrote comparing Western and Eastern philosophy were regularly turned down in both fields. Eastern thinkers did not like those comparisons, and Western philosophy journals refused to consider my findings. I persisted, and the price I paid was to fade entirely from view in field of professional publication. I continued my research into developmental systems in Western and Eastern thought after my retirement in 1992, and wrote numbers of papers none of which would be accepted by journals in the field. One of my best students, when applying for entrance at a university, was admonished by a department head there because, as he said, the people she had been studying actually “have nothing to say to each other.” this despite my demonstrating in my classes for years the vitality of the conversations the would have had. What you call McDonaldization caused Journal referees to refuse even to look at a paper that did not exactly fit their required word processing or footnoting format. In 2017, I wrote a book outlining the entire thrust of all my work, only to be unable to find any philosophers I contacted even to agree to read it, since I had no track of famous publications they would recognize. You will perhaps understand the situation when I add my description of my book: “This book challenges the “dominant paradigm” of reality, which claims that the equations of physics open the only window through which we may view the true nature of reality. Acting on the possibility that this paradigm is false, the book proceeds to explore, find, and evaluate alternate views, focusing on developing an understanding of who and what we are in the greater scheme of the real dimensions of life. In this search the reader will travel beyond physics to the worlds offered by those whose views have been regularly condemned and suppressed as worthless, mystical, and even thought of as dangerous. These include encounters with occultism, the esoteric Tarot, and Western and Eastern mysticism as found in Tibetan Buddhism, Egyptian mythology, and the long tradition of Hermeticism as described by the semi-mythical “guide of souls,” Hermes Trismegistus. Most importantly, philosophers and philosophical psychologists of the western tradition such as Henri Bergson, John Dewey and Carl Jung, whose works have been eclipsed by the current styles of mainstream philosophy, are brought to the fore and their works are found to contain elements of these other, technically forbidden, ways of thinking.” My book is entitled “ARE YOU OR ARE YOU NOT” and I will offer a free complimentary copy to anyone interested.