Yeah, when I read that quote about cheer, and winning Cambridge, I perhaps do not read it the way intended.
I'm probably too prone to reading a university and its in group as believing it-selves the whole of mankind. The optimism of an academic can be the optimism of someone who has collected rents from the rest of the economy, and has no direct stake in how well that economy is actually working, up until it actually fails. If the rents are steady or improving, the academic may be happy, regardless.
In theory, economists study money, engineers study energy, and agronomists study food. These are fundamental elements of theoretically predicting how well everyone else is doing. In practice, governments may simply be paying academic economists, engineers, and agronomists to only study what the governments wish to have talked about.
Scholars who want governments and scholars overseas to treat with them may only have one set of deals they prefer to think about.
Locals may be quite a bit interested in how their neighbors, government bureaucrats, and so forth deal with them.
Theory matters, but it is also not food, shelter, security, and so forth.
Delusional insular nihilism, would not be real optimism.
Someone who tests theory, and can list items that need work, or have costs or pain attached, might be more optimistic in reality.
Yeah, when I read that quote about cheer, and winning Cambridge, I perhaps do not read it the way intended.
I'm probably too prone to reading a university and its in group as believing it-selves the whole of mankind. The optimism of an academic can be the optimism of someone who has collected rents from the rest of the economy, and has no direct stake in how well that economy is actually working, up until it actually fails. If the rents are steady or improving, the academic may be happy, regardless.
In theory, economists study money, engineers study energy, and agronomists study food. These are fundamental elements of theoretically predicting how well everyone else is doing. In practice, governments may simply be paying academic economists, engineers, and agronomists to only study what the governments wish to have talked about.
Scholars who want governments and scholars overseas to treat with them may only have one set of deals they prefer to think about.
Locals may be quite a bit interested in how their neighbors, government bureaucrats, and so forth deal with them.
Theory matters, but it is also not food, shelter, security, and so forth.
Delusional insular nihilism, would not be real optimism.
Someone who tests theory, and can list items that need work, or have costs or pain attached, might be more optimistic in reality.
Eloquent and insightful - much appreciated.