The Cult of Academia

Academia isn’t unique. It’s just another system. No different than the military or corporate life. To get ahead you bend the knee. Don’t talk about the wrong thing or you’ll lose tenure. Don’t write in your own voice, don’t lecture too far off-script, or you’re out. 

Read an academic paper: they all sound the same. Even the “cool” ones conform to the format. The medium itself neuters individuality. 

And then there’s the gatekeeping. Try to read a study on ScienceDirect or Google Scholar. Paywalled. Fifty bucks to peek at the truth. Knowledge is sacred, but only if you pay the tax. Knowledge is free, but to access it, I have to break the law. 

Academia sells the theory of universal education, but in reality, the doors are locked to outsiders. If you’re not inside the walls, you’re left to get your “knowledge” from CNN or Fox or Joe Rogan’s podcast or whatever youtuber you vibe with this week.  

Meanwhile, peer reviews, something that’s supposed to be safeguarded, are just another wall most of the time. Findings get buried if they don’t fit the mold, or if the manuscript doesn’t tick the boxes.  

Many peer-reviewed studies are flat-out falsified. Entire journals have been caught publishing garbage. But because they passed through the gates, they get the pass. Meanwhile, brilliant work gets buried because the author isn’t in the right circle, didn’t kiss the right ring, or didn’t conform to the “good ol’ boy” system that runs the review boards.

It’s also a hierarchy bordering on the comical. Undergrads bow to grads, grads bow to PhDs, PhDs bow to tenured gods. Respect is earned not by what you create, but by how many years you’ve sat in a chair. It’s no different than a 30-year-old demanding respect from a 25-year-old just because of age. 

And worst of all, many of them are divorced from reality. They talk about the world from behind walls or atop their ivory tower, but won’t step into the filth, the blood, the grit of real life. Complexity becomes their weapon. Obscure abstractions become synonymous with brilliance.  

This is why academic language is a joke. They don’t say “walk,” they say “ambulate.” They don’t say “cold shower,” they say “thermogenic exposure.” They don’t say “junk food,” they say “hyperpalatable food substances.” Pick up any journal and you’ll find the same garbage. Complexity becomes camouflage. The harder it is to understand, the smarter it must be. I dont think so. I think it makes you sound ridiculous.

Even Einstein, Albert motherfucking Einstein said it best: "If you can’t explain it simply, then you don’t understand it well enough”.

Theres a reason some of the most brilliant minds of all time left the cult.  

Frederick Nietzsche became the youngest professor ever at Basel but left academia by 34. His ideas didn’t fit the institutional mold. He saw academia as sterile, bound to conformity, and chose to write for the world instead of colleagues. His legacy proves that world-changing philosophy requires leaving the cult when it no longer serves creation. 

Richard Feynman technically stayed within academia, but he mocked its self-importance. He refused honorary degrees, hated pretension, and taught physics through stories, jokes, and bongos. Feynman made physics accessible not by “playing the game,” but by breaking the game’s rules.  

Feynman didn’t dress his findings up in crazy language like inchoate or tacit or "indeed, the ontological phenomenology of epistemic structures”.

Carl Sagan was sidelined for being too popular. Harvard denied him tenure, and later, many in academia dismissed him because he spoke to the masses instead of hiding behind equations.

But it was because he broke that wall that billions fell in love with science. He went against the academic priesthood. Instead of publishing only for journals, he went to television, creating Cosmos: A Personal Voyage (1980), passing the torch to the next generation of scientists.

Aristotle studied under Plato, but when Athens turned against Macedonians, he left the Academy and built the Lyceum, his own school, his own system, his own way.

Socrates was literally put to death for asking too many questions.  

This isn’t to say academia is all bad. It isn’t. Having an expert in front of you, teaching you the ins and outs of the subject you want to learn is nearly impossible to replicate Even if you pull a Will Hunting (1997) the feedback loop and interaction between student and teacher is on a different level. Experts are experts for a reason, most of them. There are good academics that care deeply about spreading knowledge to those that want to learn.

Researchers are the prime innovators for humanity. Without them, we wouldn't advance. We need good researchers to help us solve the world's problems. Innovations are made every single day by good researchers who put their craft and bettering humanity above the institution.

"I'm not trying to cure cancer for harvard, I'm trying to do it for the millions of people that die from cancer every year". or "I'm not trying to do good heart surgery to make the hospital look good, I'm doing it because its my job."

Academia only becomes bad when you mindlessly obey a false hierarchy, when you allow your individuality to be stripped away from you. To willingly allow yourself to just become another cog in the machine.  

Don’t follow the safe path. Follow your own. You want to be an academic? Be an academic for you. For the people you want to teach. For your work.  

You don’t become a genius by bowing to tenured gods. You become a genius by tearing down their shrines.