University is Conversity

From co-dependent Conformity to the love of Wisdom

A Letter to my Professor that he doesn’t Deserve

I’ve been thinking a lot about what being truthful actually means to me. And I say me, because I will not claim to sit on any universal truths, nor will I refer to any fancy thinker unless he is obviously related to me as a teacher, master or whatever title a mental disruptor can have (now this might actually have been a lie, I do want to refer to what I’ve read to prove a point, guide and dig down some roots; let’s see how this develops, shall we?).¹

References has become somewhat of a bitch... Is it significant if a teacher is dead or alive? Who knows! I’ve never met a soul that can claim such a thing and be taken serious about it. Talking to the dead is not the same as claiming that what they say matter, because claiming that would be saying that they said something…

I am going to treat my previous professor as if he was dead. Why? Because I can not come up with any obvious use of him alive. Therefore, I will write him a letter, maybe put it behind a paywall and use it as my introduction-post for my Substack.

The background behind this letter is that I’ve had a few delightful conversations with him, mostly on videocall instead of having him mentoring me or giving me the actual help I needed. It was beautiful, because we became buddies in an instant!

We talked about a lot of things that was stupid about how things was currently thought of within the academy and he shared his recommendations of things to read, and I always got way too much to read and he happily encouraged in my ignorance and naivety. But, I was not really getting anything out of his mentorship—at all…

Mentorship to me, includes an embodied man. If the word mentōr was used by Homer, it has esoteric decent. I doubt any useful mentōr modelled by Homer was anything other than embodied. In Swedish, another word for mentōr is “handleader”, underlining someone actually leading ones hand.

After a few mails back and forth, and me trying to deliver anything within the cold and dead environment of public university, I decided to try to contribute to his last contribution as a chief editor in a “fancy” sociological journal, for well established boomers and their pupils of course. My subject was “established, outsiders and deviants” within sports — in my case, esports. I like throwing technology in the blend for obvious reasons.

I had already put my soul into the subject, gathered data and put together a suggestion for a framework to understand social a membrane, balances of powers inside and outside of that membrane and importance of common ritual.

The hours I put into this contribution would be ridiculous to try to make sense of, but let’s say, it was more than the month I spend on writing a manuscript. I was rejected for obvious reasons, and that was a result in itself for me. I could clearly hear his longings when we had our intro meeting, and if I would have followed up on his will, he would definitely had wanted my text in his works of editing his final journal of his career post-retirement.

In my creative process, I was stuck in a struggle between my burning passion and my understanding, what I wanted to do and what I had signed up for. I knew that I was welcome if I followed his rules. But I also knew it would be a waste of precious time. Our relations was halting.

Why I am using this letter as an introduction to my Substack is because it includes a lot of reasons why I have started to use this platform. It also includes

This letter starts from a point where I am answering a late respons to my contribution. His email was describing how they teach students to use their methodological tools with handyman metaphors. Little did he know, I am both trained as persistent anthropologist and handyman (mostly electrician).

Socialist university is dead, heill the guild!

Here we go…

Dear Professor

No harm done, I myself could not at all expect that my proposal for an article would not be received well as soon as my “delirium of creativity” had settled a week after I delivered my works. I remember exactly what you were hoping for and expecting after our first meeting and I did not deliver on that. That is on me. If we would have had more time together I would very likely put my soul into exactly just that.

Other than the formalities (this general “one should” you are referring to as an axiomatic norm) you are preaching to me above; I must say that I have experienced that you have a very useful perspective on the contemporary sports, and for that you have my eternal admiration.

Communication has been stumbling, to say the least, in dialogue with you, the faculty and university as a whole. They talk in formalities, I speak in substance. Life within the academy has been a long time waiting… Many online-meeting have had me waiting, counterpart does not always show up (you included), a lot of chasing after personel, misguided or absent details of contact info, pushing matters to colleagues and lack of feedback already from when I was a candidate.

“Top grade and thumbs up!” did not really contribute much to my growth. Cultivation of knowledge has been held in my own hands and internet as a tool has been exponentially more effective than most input from within campus.² To stay sharp and stimulated, I’ve made sure to practice what has been studied on the side (as a personal trainer, bouncer and organizer at a national sport association). Studies in sport science takes serious bodily practice! Today I am mentōr to a handful of my own students as a result.

In my opinion the engagement at the universities (Gothenburg, Karlstad, Linné and Umeå) is way too low. Staff show up, sometimes late, mentally absent, which is something I can understand when I see that the mimicking students most of the time only retell what they believe members of the staff are saying (mostly part of an unconscious sociological figuration). They are “learning” a mantra senselessly. The substance is absent in a way that tells me that most of the students are wasting their time and money. For a conscious student (open for insight), as I think you would regard me as, this is a very expensive joke.

With results in hand, a clear majority of the students never gets a job within the field in program “Science of Sports”. The advertisement communicate differently. You know this, lifting a high salary you are part of the con. Nevertheless I am asked, by you in your email above, to “stand in line”, apply for an apprenticeship in science to learn what exactly? In your answer to me, two weeks after I sent my first manuscript (three months before a final product), you excuse the late reply, giving me instructions with handyman metaphors like I was a kid. Who does that? I was a professional handyman for 8 years! I know, from experience that your campus are schooling extremely ineffective “factory workers”, calling it “science”, because all the science method, theory and philosophies are recycled concepts used by middle class (at best) with loans up to their ears, reproducing crap that nobody can use for almost anything. It is preschool, not a serious schooling of researchers…!

I am wholeheartedly grateful for our conversations. You were my buddy! When you recommended Homo Ludens (“playful human”),³ I used it to wake the child up within me. Not the other way around, as you now expressively put it, addressing me as if I was in need of learning how to be a scientific “worker”. As a worker, I am tangibly aware of how to use tools in a way that earns me money. I’ve both been an apprentice, worked hard and in some ways mastered a few things myself. Did you not read the presentations we were asked to write in the introductions of every course we shared? How is students suppose to learn anything if you don’t know them? I am sincerely curious…

I have been grieving that we did not spend more time together. For that I am just as guilty as you are. I am truly sorry that I did not stalk you more than I did. I learned your ways of expressing yourself to get your attention, I dug into some of your favorite thinkers and I invited one of your earlier apprenticeships to my podcast and “stole” a whole box of books from another. A halfhearted seduction. And I have been playful about it, a proper homo ludens.

Some of these thinkers steal my attention still. Did you shiver when Baudrillard declared universities as carcasses and the hollowness of an academic diploma?⁴ Were you frightened when Latour described a ridiculous subject “inside a head” looking out from the head, labeling an object “out there”?⁵

I always imagined you smoking quite a lot of weed, either when you were young(er), or still do sometimes on the patio outside your cute house with a beautiful green surrounding. Then you sent me inspiration about outsiders and deviants by Howard Becker,⁶ and it felt like I was right about your smoking. Or did you only romanticize? Did you devote your body to your research, like I do?

When I was joyfully detaching myself from the pain of not fitting in socially, together with Norbert Elias and his theory about “the established”, I was faced with a question. Did you guide me to this place, the place where I can now embrace myself as an outsider? As an individual? Perhaps, an actual modern man? Or were you trying to leave me a step by step guide how to become sociologically established? Maybe your soul doesn’t distinguish? At the end of the day, it’s my path. Either way, it worked!

I truly understand that I never delivered an article according to your customs, but most importantly, I never delivered your will. As a recently retired professor, I would guess that you were hoping to have yet another smart student under your list of merits? Isn’t that what a teacher yearn for? Schooling students that extend their teachings beyond their lifetime? To be a part of cultivating genius?

In case of current university this means moulding genius. So I hope you will excuse me if my manners has been unreliable. Rarely is it communicated to me in a proper hierarchy of values that makes sense to me, does it for anybody else? Or is it plain and simple…? do as your told, get a girl, have children, off you go! Well I was never convinced, and looking at general population; mental health, divorce rates, “gender war”, chaotic education, lonely people etc. I believe my own lack of understanding of these rules of conformity is quite healthy.

When I read all the material in these courses that was spammed in my direction (very few told me how to priorities, nota bene, necessary for the norm, cheating was just suppose to be read between the lines) I quickly understood that quite a few people were putting any effort into actual thinking. Is university just about communicating relatively well? Unifying manners in flux? Not actually understanding?

Truth as value is very low, for sure. Everybody lies. Why would you be honest if it is all about diplomas, money and references? Shallow pride, whoring and being “popular”. “Knowing” the “right people”, schoolyard politics… A great example, Foucault is valued so high, so many is referring to him, and almost nobody, I repeat, nobody, in Sweden understands the man. He was a Nietzschean, and must be understood through him! How do I know? Everyone is using him from the standpoint of falsely, and cynically hearing “victims” as value! Nietzsche was always heroic… So much for robust and trustworthy system…

As a fan of Nietzsche myself, I as often as possible supported my comrades in school, learned the education materials early to be available for others. Not selflessly, of course, but because it forced me to get better! It got me smarter. I laughed so much when we had our only course in sociology (my favorite subject, of course!) and one of your previous apprenticeships flunked us all! He was barely on site, but we did not meet his standards, so he took his leave for Christmas and flunked us. Of course, we were considered “victims” to the faculty, so they pretended to demand more of us and let us all through. I understood him. But he had no chance to live up to his potential. I felt bad for him…

I understood quite early that the bar was set extremely low. Incentives are to expand the system by endorsing middle class interests. A system that serve vague abstract goals with no chance to succeed will only reproduce opinions until it implodes under it’s own meaninglessness. Stupidity is rewarded. Deviation is excluded. Genius killed.

Since grading is made with such a vague system, I mostly got same grades as the average joe. But hey, I also got the benefits of both being a victim and established within the “warmth” of conformity. Nothing mattered. Results beside the point; most of us was not going to work in sports anyways…

I should not be so quick to judge; what was the incentives anyway? To keep the machinery going? Give researchers fat salaries to attend to their hobbies? Yes, and yes? I’ve read the arguments. They are weak! If everyone is in on the con, of course everyone will “feel like” they are “doing work” with your precious “tools”. But I have done actual work, with tools, working extra hours getting whipped by foremen to meet deadlines, building tangible and useful constructions, put into the economy that got taxed to serve your hobbies. And, I am actually not judging, it is a winners game, well done! Established and get to work with your passion, I salute you! Truly.

This game taught me way beyond the worth of my student loans. Marx would have been proud of me as a working bitch. Now I have my own students! Kept outside of conversity, of course… Instead I’ve decided to start my own initiatives within my own network that comes from several backgrounds and educations, so that we can share notes. We are coming from candidates, doctorates, lecturers etc. Together we can break the cycles of conformity and do actual work with more honest telos. All this without expecting the homogen outcome that was suffocating the life out of all students and personel at campus.

Me and the world of academics wanted mostly different things, and for that I thank you, so much, that you subconsciously challenged me into submitting to my fate. I am no longer bound by sociological figurations, and can do my work as an attentive, embodied, passionate troublemaker and anthropologist. As a result I can prioritize tangible and pragmatic results where reproduction doesn’t go before research; a general nervous oversight overrides insight.

And dear Professor, with not only one, but two! chairs, I am definitely taking on your challenge on writing a book, even though I am already considering myself “a man” before finishing it. If, as you put it, Hegel actually held that opinion, he can go fuck himself! I get the feeling that our dead germanic friend took himself a little to serious, don’t you think?

Yours Truly,
Viktor

1. Why am I using this Letter as an Introduction?

Truthful to me means seeking truth for a greater cause. Being a man of his word. It is up to you if you want to share such a cause with someone. I declare, as many has before me, university dead and over with.

Now I am exploring a new belonging.

I am putting myself out there (and here) because I want to sort these confusions out together with whomever is interested: If you are a newborn, in a new paradigm (a social, technological and normative platform, in this case, a network society), where everyone is playing, working and abiding according to old habits it is important to note that you are also judged by the old habits.

My professor above, is therefore stuck between wanting my best (as a mentōr or father should, they want you to excel beyond themselves) and not understanding why my work and contribution is not according to his own experience, background and history. This is where the coin flip happens; he gives to the best of his abilities. I have to do some dirtywork and premeditate his intention. It is almost like dating.

Since the personel at the university doesn’t understand this, they are also lacking in giving me feedback, it is impossible to spare time and effort into knowing where to begin. They don’t know where I’m coming from, and they don’t know where I am headed. In this case, most importantly, they don’t know who I am sharing my path with. I am outside of the union, watching the con.

My elders are raised in an industrial society, and will most likely behave according to this industriousness. Why? Because they are conditioned under a completely different set of paradigmatic conditions. Fixed telephones, not “smart”phones. Under the age of industry, you acted differently to get the same outcome; the tools you got things done with was different; and this resulted in a completely different intensity and inherent values.

If you want a family today, you are going to have to either playfully submit to the confusion of this paradigmshift, vita activa, or dig so deep into your soul so that you are able set your own conditions, vita contemplativa. Or, the sweet spot in the middle, team up!

2. Who are you as a Reader

I am expecting this to be a lively network for collaborations, since rivalry has to be playful to be of use. I prefer to play by the rules of sports, collaborations to playfully beat an opponent respectfully and with cunning. This is how you build empires, even inside your mind.

I expect you to be active, and not passive. Nothing is achieved by reading, everything has to be practiced. As I’ve described in the letter, I spend most of my time at the university outside campus to learn. You will get to the core of things by actually get out there and do it. Passivity is a disgusting social phenomenon, so get your wingman and get started! If you don’t have any, reach out to me, and I will have a look at what we can do about that.

Can you recognize yourself in the letter above? Good! That means that you are ready to let go of the old and embrace the new. It also means that you and I might be able to have wonderful conversations. Reach out to me and tell me about yourself.

3. What I Want

…is to expand, organize, be generous about and deepen my thinking.

That might include you.

I am well aware that I am not always so easily understood. It comes with my territory. Compromising is not my strong suit. Sometimes my friends even declare me the enemy, as they should! I am a threat to their ignorance. But preferably, just let me know how I can be more specific…

I am trying my best. Most people are… If you don’t understand me, that means I have not been able to summarize something that I wanted to share together with you. Or we are having differences, beautiful!

So again, do me that favor, keep me informed. It is unfortunate to not get feedback, as I had to endure during my time in school, such a waste of potential joy!

A dear friend to me told me that the meaning of life is not our chosen path, but with whom we share it with. A living soul should therefore do their best to make themselves understood through making themselves redundant, same friend showed me just that; serving uncompromisingly. An amazing gift to experience.

I am trying to commit to as much posting here as possible. But I also know that life takes turns that is beyond my control. Therefore, I am very open to suggestions on themes to visit, what to look into in my studies and critique that can increase my flow.

I have to risk losing people to live my path, and this is incredibly hard for a Swede to learn. Why? Because in a cold climate, during rough conditions, belonging is even more important than in a lukewarm community. So choose them well, choose them wisely; I chose my professor for very good reasons, and the extremely small portions of time opened up oceans of wisdom for me. I will therefore urge you to not recommend anybody to read this if it is not somebody you want to keep in your life forever.

I am hoping to extend several lifetimes here, and you will only be able to tell if you live it yourself.

4. Anthropology

…is the study of humanity across time. Both present and past. So let me warn you, I will be jumping between looking at history (everything is history), analyzing current times (there is only now) and speculating on the forces of the future (respond to potentiality).

This is what I do. Uncompromisingly.

But I’ve noticed that being something often leads to creating something. So I might as well go with the flow, and make up my membranes as I go—as you should.

I have enormities to share, so if you want to tickle it out of me, go ahead! Try. I am childish, but not very ticklish. You have been warned.

My works is based on a foundation by Bard & Söderqvist. To understand the basics of what I am leaning my writings on, for full foundational understanding, I recommend reading all six books in whatever order that intuitively feels compelling.⁷

The current theme of study is Zufism, Old Norse Archetypes and Military Anthropology.

I will use this platform to speculate freely. It is not a secret. My texts are useful to me, and my team. I am making no further promises. My “finished” works is further down the road.

5. Don’t listen to me

I don’t care if you are not buying, I’m not selling.

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1. I am schooled first in sport science, with a bachelor and beyond a first masters with major interruptions in my social life, failing to finish a master’s thesis because I entered the school in Philosophy, and later, Theology of Bard & Söderqvist. On my journey; Sports became E-sports; E-sports became War; and War became Anthropology.

2. When I write exponentially, note that I am writing it as a metaphor, and not as something that I have put any time or effort to measure in a popperian manner.

3. Huizinga, J. (2016). Homo ludens: a study of the play-element in culture. Kettering, OH: Angelico Press.

4. Baudrillard, J. (1994). Simulacra and simulation. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

5. Latour, B. (1999). Pandora's hope: essays on the reality of science studies. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.

6. Becker, H.S. (1997). Outsiders: studies in the sociology of deviance. New York: Free Press.

7. All the works of Bard & Söderqvist is collected in: The Futurica Trilogy; The Netocrats, The Global Empire, The Body Machines and The Narratology; Syntheism - To Create God in the Internet Age, Digital Libido - Power, Sex & Violence in the Network Society and Process & Event.