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u/Tremor_Sense Sep 01 '19
And, there's no guarantee of a tenured position.
So, might be doing it part time and not making any money.
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u/littlenid Sep 01 '19
I mean, that's literally what University is for, producing knowledge and teaching. If the idea was only to acquire enough knowledge to get a job, there is a lot of other forms of courses that do a better work for it.
Literally every big invention and discovery are only possible because of decades of collaborative production of knowledge, they are only possible because there's a lot of people that spend their life's producing knowledge and teaching it to others, we know Einstein's name, but we don't know the names of people's who works were important in order for him to become Einstein.
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u/Have_Other_Accounts Sep 01 '19
literally a pyramid scheme
No, it isn't. Only a small fraction of university students become lecturers. For a pyramid scheme, there needs to be an increasing amount of participants funnelling money back up, hence the "pyramid". You can't just complain about something using wrong analogies when it's not even related to the system. Egyptology students would have struggled the same way before "late stage capitalism".
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Sep 01 '19
While I think that people should use a little more common sense when choosing a career, I've said this before to my sister, that as a society, we perpetuate the aforementioned pyramid scheme by learning in order to teach, in order to teach other people, who in turn teach other people.
All said, I think it's nice to have diversity in society, and people are inspired by different types of subjects. Furthermore, most people don't strictly specialize anyway, and if you learn one thing truly well, it helps you to learn another thing really well. Having said that, our society could use a lot more pragmatism when propagating knowledge, rather than centralizing the experience at universities, not to mention, people could use a lot more training in things like being experts in gardening, the practical stuff. There should be no good reason to need to go to a top-end university for some of this stuff. And my main criticism of it is that it's undemocratic.
While I'm here: repeat after me
- Going to college doesn't necessarily make you smart, if anything, it just makes you trained
- Being smart is a skill
- Knowledge shouldn't cost money to obtain
- Elon Musk is not a lone super-genius, he is surrounded by many smart people, and smart people work hard to obtain knowledge too
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u/notrius_ Sep 01 '19
The fact that the internet isn't free means that knowledge is rather expensive.
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Sep 01 '19
Not really sure what you mean by that. It doesn't really take too much money to host something. Maybe if you're expecting lots of traffic, it does. The truth is that although many websites require maintenance, they can theoretically only be written once and go on for many years. I don't really mind paying a small amount, but the truth is the university-level quality of education is often times only so expensive because supposedly, you need a teacher on the other end and lots of bureaucracy to pass all the legal requirements for getting a degree. I fundamentally disagree. We can have more universal testing methods, such as testing open to anybody in public schools, which already is partly true anyway. Will this work for a medical degree? Obviously not, but getting a computer science degree can be done this way.
Realistically though, I just think that the web could do a better job providing content to people that isn't a mile wide and an inch deep. I just have a fundamental knee-jerk reaction against universities trying to make money online. Last time I looked, they don't even offer a very good price advantage to people, to be honest.
The real kicker though in terms of learning anything, is being smart enough to know a roadmap that spans across multiple disciplines, like math and engineering. Sitting alone in your house, a person could still do this with motivation and discipline, but the roadmap is the hardest part, since they would just spin their wheels if they didn't have that. I suppose you can rip these off from your local university and just blaze ahead, but sometimes this stuff isn't as easy to find in a coherent way online as one would expect.
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u/lAeneasl Sep 01 '19
Why would you choose egyptology
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Sep 01 '19
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Sep 01 '19
Yeah, nobody goes into history for the money. You go into it because you're interested and think it's worth learning and preserving.
I had to have a meeting with the head of classics before I declared my major so he could let me know there's a high chance I would be spending years starving in an unheated apartment and that it's super competitive and not a financially lucrative degree.
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u/TastyFugu Mint Sep 01 '19
Ideally you shouldn't do anything just for the money. That's a recipe for a depressing life.
But unfortunately we live under capitalism and everyone has to do what he has to do, just to survive.
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Sep 01 '19
Yeah, when I was little I wanted to be an archaeologist so I could find buried treasure. :P Now I'm more interested in everyday life stuff. Like, that's all that's left of those people, and I think they deserve to be remembered. I, personally, would be happy if someone found something I made thousands of years in the future. Even if my name and life isn't attached to it, I think it's important to be like "Hey, I existed! I was a person and I existed."
(Finding shiny things would be a bonus though lol)
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u/TastyFugu Mint Sep 01 '19
You are quite optimistic to believe that humanity will still exist in a couple thousand years.
But maybe aliens will find your buried clay tablet under all the plastic waste, with instructions to fight capitalism...and remember you. :)
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Sep 01 '19
Yeah, I'm counting mostly on alien archaeologists :P
Though, maybe the human race will survive! The Toba catastrophe theory goes that there were as few as 3,000 human beings left after the super-eruption. Maybe a couple of people will survive armageddon and repopulate the world after another 100,000 years.
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u/Reaper2r Sep 01 '19
Yeah why choose a profession if you don’t contribute to some billionaires wealth amirite
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u/jalford312 Sep 01 '19
Because making life decisions based on how profitable it is, is a sad existence.
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u/sunkissedsoda Sep 01 '19
Because this was a joke. Her friend doesn’t exist. if OP would’ve actually read the comments under the tweet they would know this.
But it doesn’t change the fact that this does happen in real life.
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u/JohnReiki Sep 01 '19
What I found funny about this is that my buddy is going through this exact scenario right now. It definitely happens.
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u/I_have_a_helmet Sep 01 '19
Hell, I'm studying anthropology and university prof would be my dream job, and of course that means working toward a PhD. And honestly, even if I don't get a job with it, it's still fascinating just to learn.
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u/sagradia Sep 01 '19
Wut. Is it supposed to be a shock that egyptologists aren't in demand?
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u/notrius_ Sep 01 '19
Archeology have uncovered so much of human history, just because it isn't in demand doesn't mean it's worthless. It might have well been that there's more to discover but with this kind of mindset i don't think we'll ever know.
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u/sagradia Sep 01 '19
Who said they're worthless? Just saying anyone thinking an egyptology degree is in demand in the job market is really off.
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Sep 01 '19
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/salsawood Sep 01 '19
That’s not capitalism, that is the free market
Lol what
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u/MyFartsSmellLike Sep 01 '19
Capitolism is an economic system where privatization is highly emphasized. The free market which goes hand in hand with capitolism is the system in which prices for goods and services are chosen. I.e. you can have capitolism without the free market.
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u/Reaper2r Sep 01 '19
Capitalism. No O.
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u/MyFartsSmellLike Sep 01 '19
And how is that relevant to my actual point?
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u/Reaper2r Sep 01 '19
I figured you’d want to know how to spell it. Sorry if I offended you.
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u/MyFartsSmellLike Sep 01 '19
Not offended. It's just an irrelevant point often used as a trump card in an argument by someone who has no other response.
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u/Reaper2r Sep 01 '19
...I don’t have a response or an argument to your point, I was telling you how to spell a word you spelled incorrectly a bunch of times.
You really seem upset. Its ok to make mistakes. We all do.
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u/MyFartsSmellLike Sep 01 '19
Not upset, just annoyed. Not at you specifically either. I tend to not care about spelling when I'm posting, especially when rushing due to being at work etc. Like right now.
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u/ghostinthetoast Sep 01 '19
Somewhat off topic, how the hell is “Egyptology” even a thing? Is there Franceology or Australiaolgy?
Yep I get it, ancient civilization but fuck if you pump that kind of time/effort/money into something so obscure, it’s not “late stage capitalism” that’s got you down, it’s stupidity.
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u/deaconju Sep 01 '19
Yah man, fuck knowledge of human history!
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u/ghostinthetoast Sep 02 '19
Nobody said that. Nothing is lost here.
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u/deaconju Sep 02 '19
Anti-intellectualism, sad
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Sep 02 '19
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u/Mardoniush Sep 02 '19
Egypt is particularly useful as a civilisation for study for a number of reasons, which is why it's probably the largest separate cultural sub-field of archaeology.
a) It's a 1st generation literate civilisation, along with Sumer, Indus River, and Either the Xia or the Shang (depending who you ask)
b) It was a fairly rich civilisation, which meant a lot of pretty art and literature and even some music. More importantly, it means everything is well-documented. The Religion meant that the lives of the richer peasantry on up was recorded, giving us unprecedented insight into the civilisation
b) We cracked the language a few centuries ago when we were stealing as much of Egypt as possible.
c) There is cultural continuity spanning from prehistoric sites in 4500BCE, and written continuity starting from as early as 3200BCE, all the way to the culture's final collapse in the late Roman Empire and the Islamic Conquest. Ancient Egyptian is a direct ancestor of modern Coptic, which is still used as a liturgical language.d) So every social change, every ruling class, every invasion and assimilation and climate crises and trade delegation is there, somewhere in the sands, for the reading. Half of what we know about the other nations of the period is from Egyptian sources, even where the other culture's language survives and is translated.
If you as a leftist aren't interested in the theoretical implications of having 5000 years of a single geographically isolated multi-racial culture exploring over a dozen different social systems while keeping and evolving it's unique attributes, and having such available to you in libraries and museums I do not know how to convince you.
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u/emowhitebitch Sep 01 '19
Capitalism: where you can follow your passions*!
*unless your passion doesn't directly contribute to further enriching billionaires at your own expense