"Things Are Crazy"

[WARNING: Ranting ahead]

I'd like to propose an indefinite moratorium on the following phrase, and all synonymous variations: 

"Things are crazy."

Last week a beloved friend inadvertently woke a sleeping giant when he included this phrase in an email to me. Said friend, who is an adept writer and talker, inspired me to finally compile and present my thoughts on the matter of the above phrase.
Initially I want to address the ambiguity of the phrase "things are crazy." It is a simple enough grammatical structure, a three-word sentence in the indicative mood; the speaker is saying that it is a current reality that things are crazy. But already things (not the "things" of the phrase, though) are becoming vague. Is this an observation of a general condition of existence? Are things always crazy? To remedy this ambiguity, people often modify the core phrase as follows: 

"Things are crazy right now."

"Things are crazy these days."

"Things have been crazy this week."

Here we already are considering some of the synonymic variations I refer to above. So it could be an observation about how these "things are" at a specific point in time, or during a specific period.

But what of these things? What is their nature, beside an apparently volatile mental condition? To alleviate my annoyance at hearing the phrase, I often amuse myself by imagining the "things" in question. When someone tells me that "things are crazy," I pciture his or her living space filled with small creatures, of reptilian or perhaps amphibian type, who are causing havoc. These small things might resemble gremlins or imps, running around the house, knocking things over, spilling liquids, and generally causing a ruckus. Perhaps they have behavioral problems. Possibly they experience hallucinations and hold deluded views of reality. 

You see, not only do I lack knowledge about the nature of the "things," I also don't know in what way they are "crazy." Do they suffer from recognized mental conditions such as sociopathy or schizophrenia? Or are they just plain old fuck-ups and hence projecting their fucked-upness onto the poor human's life? 

More likely than not, the speaker of the phrase "things are crazy" does not intend it to be a statement about monstrous creatures who have intruded into their lives and torment them. He or she probably doesn't even mean to be making a statement about the way of the world, or the human condition. The actual scope of the statement - what the person is really talking about - is usually much more limited. 

"Things are crazy for me."

And I'll give folks the credit they're due - I often do hear or read this particular variation. Though unfortunately the observation far too often remains unqualified by any pronoun. It is often qualified by reference to a location, or a specific situation. 

The family of phrases I'm grouping under the general archetype of "things are crazy" is a favorite utterance of academics: "It's a crazy time of the semester" which leads to common variations like "It's a busy time of semester," "It's a rough time of the semester" - all of which I have heard employed during the first week of classes, right after midterms, or during finals week - basically any time of semester can be a crazy time and can cause those things to get all hot and bothered. 

So let's take stock of the taxonomy we have so far. There's the ur-phrase:

"Things are crazy."

There are the time-specific variations:

"Things are crazy right now."

"Things are crazy today."

"Things have been crazy this week."

"Things have been crazy for months."

Then there are substitutions and variables on "crazy":

"Things are hectic."

"Things have been all over the place."

"Things are busy this week."

Sometimes folks even remove the "things":

"This week has been nuts."

When most people utter the phrase, I hear a strange echo, a kind of veiled sonic afterglow. It usually goes something like this:

"Things have been just crazy the past week." [pause of a few seconds...] I've got a lot going on in my life....

That's the secret message there in italics. When a person tells me "things are crazy" this person is usually also indicating how busy s/he is, how rich his/her life is, how many endeavors/projects/tasks/ongoing-something-or-others s/he has got his/her hand in. (This is an observation that go-getter types, into which category most academics fit, really like to make about themselves.)

But I'd really like to acknowledge that the phrase-type "things are crazy" belongs to the rhetorical category of bullshit - that is, a statement without truth value, one which can be proven neither true nor false. The usefulness of the phrase-type "things are crazy" lies not in its observatory power. No, the power of the phrase lies in its application, and in how it communicates what it does. When we say "things are crazy" (and yes, of course I have used it too...unfortunately), we are exculpating ourselves. A more truthful transformation of the phrase would go something like this: 

"I know I was supposed to do [insert task here]. I'm sorry I haven't done it; I just did not get around to it. I have no excuse, but I'm asking your understanding, since we have all been in this position at some point."

But when we say "things are crazy" we displace our own inability to do the things we should be doing outward and turn our own temporary lack of organization or irresponsibility into an external and general condition of reality. 

So once again I propose an indefinite moratorium on the phrase-type "things are crazy." For my part, I will make a concerted effort to admit openly when I have not been able to look at someone's email/call someone back/get something done when I said I would. I will not talk about those pesky apparitions we call "things." Because let's be honest, 

when aren't things crazy? 

 

And we wonder why academics have a bad rep....

I begin, as usual, with a link:

http://chronicle.com/temp/email2.php?id=CmsDGXwDwYbYBrFjwsbxqRCFdDBC4zqx

This, from today's Chronicle of Higher Education. The present post will not easily fit into my proposed format for this blog; it does not address an aspect of popular culture, or a certain musical performance that I find invigorating and rewarding, or anything of the like. Instead I find myself dragged right into the muck which Mr. Reeson inhabits: self-reflexive meta-commentary by academics on academia. (I usually save the putrid stew of bitching, self-evaluation, armchair-professoring and plain old ranting that all fit under the rubric of this "meta-commentary" for in-person, voiced conversations--i.e., shooting the shit with friends who are also in grad school.)

It is not the first time that something published in the Chronicle has raised my ire, or inspired me to fits of condemnatory logorrhea (--case in point), though again, those usually manifest in the spoken, rather than written, word. However, Mr. Reeson's comments compel me to use a blog post to weigh in on his editorial. My initial reaction was to believe that his piece was a ruse of some sort, a practical joke meant as a send-up of the self-importance many professors feel. But I must remind myself that the views and opinions expressed in the Chronicle under cover of pseudonymity often border on the surreal and absurd. Reeson is in all likelihood sincere in his musings.

Although Reeson seems to be at pains to alert the reader that he does not condone selfish, anti-social, and childish behavior on the part of humanities faculty members, his essay as a whole serves as a sheepish apologia for the kind of antics experienced by most people who serve on or are in contact with such faculties. If it were simply a matter of a room full of PhDs trying to stir up the dull waters of their professional lives by creating a bit of office drama, Reeson might have at least half a point. Yet he reveals his cloistered perspective in his failure to mention how faculty dysfunction negatively affects non-faculty members of an academic department (...yes, them...remember?). When brilliant professors get cranky--either because of spats with other profs, or for whatever reason--administrative coordinators, program administrators, assistants to the chair, in short staff, are often the ones who must weather the storm. Even when conflict is not brewing, staff may have to put up with random tantrums, sudden requests (orders) to stop what they were doing and assist a faculty member with a dire task like showing him or her how to make double-sided copies. (Needless to say, the occasional graduate student can also get caught in the crossfire of departmental politics). So, issue #1: Reeson is a classist. Academic departments would not exist were it not for the staff. So to lament that faculty "only hurt ourselves" by being mean and selfish is to discredit the labor and humanity of our colleagues in the main office.

I also find Reeson's version of structuralist analysis of faculty infighting as a form of ritualized sociality to be unpalatable in its false logic. This paragraph in particular is a gem:

"Now I'm not trying to normalize or sanction conflict. What I am trying to suggest is that conflict must have a certain practical value for us. We professors are a relatively intelligent bunch. But by refusing to be nice to one another, we poison our work environment, effectively peeing in our own pool. Why would intelligent people do that unless it served some purpose? Couldn't it be the case that academic conflict — even as it creates certain problems — might also solve certain problems, problems that are particularly acute for academics?"

Normalizing conflict is precisely what Reeson tries to do in this piece. It is insulting on multiple levels. Firstly, since when has intelligence ever precluded aggressive or unethical behavior? Secondly, why does intelligence necessarily lead to "rational" or "practical" actions? Did intelligence prevent "great minds" like Dostoyevsky or Charlie Parker from doing something impractical like hitting the bottle or needle? Thirdly, and perhaps most distressingly, Reeson suggests a quantitative approach to interpreting and analyzing faculty behavior where a regularly occurring action must serve some positive, beneficial, or productive function. The more something happens, the more likely it is that there's a good reason for it to happen. Extending this logic further suggests so many harrowing examples of how it could be (and has been) employed that I need not even cite specific instances.

I must also take exception to Reeson's thoughts on the special problems that academics face: tragedies of the moderately-affluent intelligentsia such as boredom, ennui, wanderlust. The agony of teaching courses in a field you consciously chose, year after year, earning a comfortable salary. I respect boredom: it is a powerful human emotion which can lead to or coincide with others such as depression and anger. But I will not place the charge of boredom on the profession; instead, I place it on the person. (If Reeson wants to experience boredom, he could work the night shift as an office building security guard night after night. If he wants to know repetitious labor, he should try working in an automobile assembly line for 35 years.)

So, to conclude I return to the thoughts of Mr. Reeson's non-academic friend, who reiterated the proverbial wisdom that though professors learned many things, how to interact with other humans was not one of them. While it is a simplistic and prejudicial statement that cannot serve as a general theory of academic social conflict, I do believe that it lies somewhere near an accurate explanation of this conflict. I think that those academics who do not get along with their co-workers are not so much socially inept as unwilling. The job of university professor does not emphasize social skills; the highest premium is placed on "brilliance." Even the non-superstars in Reeson's own department were once starry-eyed graduate students who worked hard to get into their graduate program, then worked hard while in it, and were sure that their dissertation would shake the world. The job training most academics received was in how to write well, how to develop critical thinking skills, how to develop and market a research project. Nobody told them that once their dissertation (or article, or book, or job talk) got them a seat at the faculty meeting table, they would have to interact with their co-workers. I suspect that those faculty members who interact with peers in a disrespectful manner view those interactions as a distraction from the "real" work at hand. To them, faculty meetings and collegiality are just not a part of their jobs, even though they are.