I think that's pretty spot-on. Having spent the first half or so of my adulthood in relative poverty among relativity conservative people, and the second half in relative affluence as a member of the Academic world, I've seen much of this first-hand. Especially the holiness spiral (what a great descriptive term), which, now that I'm aware of it, may go far to explain the corruption of our education system.
On large university campuses, the faculty who get the least respect are probably the Education profs (even the ones with PhDs and not EdDs). They noticed the 'respect' (or at least attention) given to the Angry Studies profs (even the ones without PhDs), and began engaging in a Lefty holy spiral combat. And in the course of doing so deliberately t infected their (mostly) below average intellectual ability undergrads. I believe it started around 1995, looking back.
I am much indebted to Alex Macris, a very smart guy who writes Contemplations on the Tree of Woe, (https://treeofwoe.substack.com/) who turned me on to the concept, which I think has great explicative power in our time and culture.
I suspect you are right about the academy as well. It fits in well with the old canard that, in the academy, the more minor the issue, the more passionate the uproar. So one-upping each other over trivia parsing gender definitions among the dozens on offer seems about right for a culture that, in general, can't top each other with their yachts, Richard Mille watches, or the number of homes they own.
Oddly, that sort of thing today is the province of rappers and their ilk, whom the dons look down upon even as they envy them with every sinew of their being.
I think that's pretty spot-on. Having spent the first half or so of my adulthood in relative poverty among relativity conservative people, and the second half in relative affluence as a member of the Academic world, I've seen much of this first-hand. Especially the holiness spiral (what a great descriptive term), which, now that I'm aware of it, may go far to explain the corruption of our education system.
On large university campuses, the faculty who get the least respect are probably the Education profs (even the ones with PhDs and not EdDs). They noticed the 'respect' (or at least attention) given to the Angry Studies profs (even the ones without PhDs), and began engaging in a Lefty holy spiral combat. And in the course of doing so deliberately t infected their (mostly) below average intellectual ability undergrads. I believe it started around 1995, looking back.
I am much indebted to Alex Macris, a very smart guy who writes Contemplations on the Tree of Woe, (https://treeofwoe.substack.com/) who turned me on to the concept, which I think has great explicative power in our time and culture.
I suspect you are right about the academy as well. It fits in well with the old canard that, in the academy, the more minor the issue, the more passionate the uproar. So one-upping each other over trivia parsing gender definitions among the dozens on offer seems about right for a culture that, in general, can't top each other with their yachts, Richard Mille watches, or the number of homes they own.
Oddly, that sort of thing today is the province of rappers and their ilk, whom the dons look down upon even as they envy them with every sinew of their being.