Evgeni Starikov

This is an authorized English translation of the paper by an outstanding
Russian economist Mikhail Gennadievich Delyagin, as appeared in the
Russian-speaking Internet on 19.03.2009 under the following URL address:

http://www.ej.ru/?a=note&id=8902

The translation has been carried out by Evgeni B. Starikov, ex-Soviet
biophysicist working since about 20 years in Germany and a number of
other countries, who added to the original paper a number of congenial
thoughts based upon the own everyday experience. This paper deals with
the critical and ambiguous situation in the modern official science,
tries to uncover the fundamental roots of this situation and invites
all those who feel themselves committed and involved to think about
possible ways to escape a serious collapse of scientific research all
over the world.


During the last centuries (at least since the beginning of the Renaissance era) the profession of a
”knowledge miner” – the one who obtains new information about the world
surrounding us – was, if not the necessary condition for, then at least
one of the key and most reliable ways of increasing one’s social status.

Astonishingly, but it looks like we haven’t noticed that already about two decades ago
the globalization has abolished this rule. So that nowadays any
possibility of social promotion for those involved into the knowledge
mining and processing – though being clearly dependent on the society’s
organisational level – turns out to be rather restricted.

Such people aren't now able to reach the levels of Andrei Dmitrievich
Sakharov or Lev Davidovich Landau, whose personal opinion was respected
even by the Soviet Communist Party leaders. Nor is it possible for them
to become someone like Alexander Graham Bell or Thomas Alva Edison, the
prominent symbols of their respective time. The human activity is now
specialized to the extent that gaining social success requires enormous
efforts, takes up a lot of time and has gradually turned into a
separate, self-consistent kind of business which is practically not
more compatible with the cognition, knowledge mining/processing per se.

The fundamental reason for this is a sharp intensification of the
communications due to the globalization: either you are totally
involved into the Search for Truth, or you are solely processing, using
and perusing the knowledge obtained by somebody else, converting it
into material or social valuables solely for your own consumption. The
former and the latter are two quite different types of activity,
rendering any successful combination of them extremely difficult – some
rare exceptions here only highlight the general rule.

As a result, a full-fledged segregation takes place: some people are
specialized in the knowledge mining, whereas others – in gaining the
social success. Presently, the latter doesn’t require even a primitive,
parasitical digestion of the knowledge obtained by others, but
exclusively a correct social communication, an ability to consistently
penetrate and populate some properly chosen communities. The latter
type of specialisation has very serious, far-reaching consequences for
those who willingly participate in it: it deprives a person of his/her
important human qualities, of his/her intrinsic human universality. The
whole personality structure is visibly transformed – we shall discuss
below how ugly are the forms such a transformation adopts and induces.

We would like to stress herewith that all the above pertains to the whole
world. Still, in what follows we are keeping Russia in mind, because
our society expresses all the world’s development trends in an utterly
sharp form. If the world is smiling, then we, Russians, are most
probably laughing hard. And where the world just catches cold – we,
Russians, are most probably coughing blood.

Restriction of the field of vision and ideologisation

To begin with, elites of the well-developed countries are seem to be
suffering from the heavy drunkard’s syndrome of “tunnel vision”: when
someone is “drunk as a skunk”, the surrounding he/she is able to
perceive starts to be extremely narrow, so that his/her peripheral
field of vision is practically lost. At the same time drunkards become
exceedingly over-reactive even when contacted just superficially.

This results not only from a crisis of the administrative systems in
particular and of the democracy as a whole (in the Western
understanding of the latter notion), but, regretfully, from essential
displacement of cognition, knowledge mining/processing in the modern
society as well.

The knowledge mining as it is has become so complicated and specialized, that the very process of it – and even sole processing of its results – requires Herculean efforts of many
engaged people. Consequently, when dealing with the scientific
research, you are always faced with the harsh choice: either you spend
your time to gain success in the society, or you are involved into the
true cognitive efforts. In the academic field a palpable
differentiation has taken place between the administrative officials
who preserve the carte blanche to steer all the resources and
investigation topics – and the researchers proper, who are directly
dealing with the very knowledge mining/processing.

As a result, the science/research proper, the true cognition processes become more
and more socially negligible, whereas all the types of decision making
– and the most important decisions at the state/country level being
among them – are tending to be based upon emotions, prejudices,
whatever – but not upon the matter of fact. If you wish to have more
examples on this theme, please follow the homepage of Cato Institute.

Not only crisis of administration, but also crisis of cognition

In the whole world, the official science has become an intricate
administrative organism – one might even say – a new social formation,
which is not less important for the national self-identification than,
for example, the social formation of French peasants in the 50-70-ies
of the XX-th century, but obviously also not much more useful.
Superficially, this is manifested in that the grant system became
nowadays the dominant way of supporting scientific projects
financially, in the gradual decay of the fundamental scientific
research, as well as in the overwhelming diversity of pseudoscientific
hoaxes (like “torsional fields”, “global warming” etc.).

Meanwhile, when considered in more detail from its inside, the above-mentioned
social formation may be described as a kind of invisible barricade. On
the one side of it – a landlord, a plantation/latifundium owner or
something alike, who prefers to be addressed as “professor” or
“scientific group leader”. On the other side – a number of volunteering
plantation slaves (drudges/plodders/toilers), who are officially dubbed
“doctoral students” or “postdocs”. These slaves are absolute
volunteers, because nobody forces them at gunpoint to slog for the
landlord. The latter ones consider and treat the former ones just as
“chess pieces”, each of which has to obey a certain finite number of
primitive game rules. Depending on the personality of the landlord, the
analogy between the “scientific laboratory” and plantation slavery may
be more or less sharp, but the basic features are practically the same
in all the countries from USA – through Western Europe and Russia –
till the Far East.

Sometimes the “official science” may acquire extremely ugly shapes which at the first glance seem to be absolutely paradoxical within the framework of the well-developed democratic
countries. One characteristic example is a plantation in Germany where
the vast majority of the drudges are Chinese, Thai and Russian-speaking
people. The power of the local landlord is based upon the sole fact
that the drudges who would not like to return to their respective
countries have a right to get only temporary permissions to stay and
work in Germany. And only a letter from their landlord may help
officially prolong their permissions. Another typical example is a
plantation in Italy, where many Russian-speaking plodders and their
families are detained on an island. They have got a Russian invigilator
who speaks Italian as well and is in charge of distributing the
“expense allowances” (with no social security at all) among the slaves.
In these both cases the toilers are not cheated or misled anyhow. They
definitely know that they are slaves and they are reminded about this
fact every day several times a day, for the attitude of the respective
landlords and their helpers towards the slaves is unequivocal.
Furthermore, such landlords usually enjoy multi-branched connections
with the “underdeveloped” countries to traffic more and more new slaves
from over there, keeping the latifundium alive.

Still, the fate of the young native USA, European, Japanese&so on citizens
wishing to pursue scientific research is not too much different from
that described above. If you do not belong to the “narrow circle”, you
have no chance to properly penetrate the “academic society”: the
maximum you may get there is a temporary position with a very moderate
salary, hopefully with the social security, and may perhaps even
without the latter. But Woe Betide anyone who dares to somehow provoke
the His/Her Majesty Landlord, the “Big Brother” !!! You would then be
standing to lose your whole existence, because when you are looking for
a new job, you are always asked to show the reference from your former
employer, that is, your former landlord. In Germany, for instance, it
is formally prohibited by the law to write expressly bad employer’s
references. Still, there are silent conventions defining how to write
bad references in conformity with the law (for example, simply not
using superlatives in your writing). Moreover, there are phones,
E-mails, SMS-messages and many other ways of confidential communication
between the employers.

Bearing all this in mind, a justified question may be asked, so what could be the moral atmosphere near such an invisible barricade ? Grudge, glee and bullying will as a rule
surround and accompany you there. If you are a young woman and
interested in scientific research, you might even learn in practice
what “the right of the first night” means. The usual administrative
approach used by the landlords is the old and good one: “divide et
impera” – or in plaintext, everybody has to peach against his/her
colleagues: this is the only way for the slaves to be commensurate with
the rest of the plantation. Moreover, temporary working agreements of
the slaves and, as a consequence, their chronic inability to reach
decent living standards, to start and maintain their families etc.
renders them a set of lone “mankurts”, “desperados”, incapable of doing
anything without an order from their landlord.

The only “bounty” the slaves might hope for is a vague possibility to occupy a place on
the other side of the barricade some day, that is, to become a landlord
him/herself. Still, if your parents or relatives are not somehow
connected to this system, or if they are not an integral part of it,
you have almost no chance to become a landlord. Otherwise, the landlord
will round up a group of toilers to prepare your PhD thesis, after
getting your PhD you will be sent to abroad as an “assistant professor”
at some renowned university like Harvard, Yale, Cambridge, Oxford etc.
And in a couple of years you may wish to come back and organize your
own plantation in your home country ... The very landlords’ community
resembles rather a violent gang of racketeers (when they reek their own
interests are endangered) than any normal society. Hence, if you are a
“drudgeon” and just occasionally have approached the “Holy Grail”, the
“Divine Fire” will burn you to ashes ... Are the most perverse
antiutopies by George Orwell coming true now and then within the
leading democratic countries ???

Someone of you might, of course, say: “Well, but research activity as it stands would be so
fascinating for me, that maybe I could nevertheless go for paying this
dreadful price to reach the only aim – being involved into some
exciting scientific research”. Then, our next questions to you are: Do
you really think, any substantial and important research is being
conducted by such “official scientists” ? Is there any socially
conspicuous outcome of all these plantations described above ? The
answers are definite: NO and NO. The only master and profiteer in the
whole plantation is the respective landlord – his/her direct profit is
the social success exclusively for him/her – he/she will never share it
with anybody. There is practically no scientific research in the
plantations, no clear-cut programme, no knowledge mining, no sensible,
useful results – there is only a desperate hunt for increasing values
of some purely formal parameters: the number of scientific grants the
landlord gets hold of, the number of papers published in “renowned”
journals with the highest “impact indices”, the number of citations,
the number of invitations to hold keypoint talks at international
conferences, the number of memberships in the editiorial boards of
scientific journals, the number of doctoral students defended their PhD
theses under the landlord’s “leadership” (in other words, how big is
your “group” or, better to say, how many plodders you are maintaining
at your plantation) ... Rather boring, isn’t it ?

… To sum up, the final (rhetoric) question comes: do such landlords really deserve
any social success they are striving for and enjoying so much ? ...

Well, nowadays only three countries upon Earth are lively interested in
promoting scientific research owing to its global prestigious
significance: USA, Japan and Germany (the fourth one was the former
USSR maintaining its powerful scientific infrastructure for quite
different reasons). Most recently, China, India and Saudi Arabia have
joined the “science benefactors” club. These countries solemnly spend
huge amounts of money for scientific research. Other well-developed
countries do basically the same way, but with much less financial
efforts. However, the main actual global outcome of this tremendous
activity seems to be a steep increase in the number of the landlords
and drudgeons as described above. Is this kind of money investment a
really good idea ??? Does the number of the landlords somehow
contribute to the country’s prestige ??? And what about the enormous
number of the drudgeons ??? All the world’s “steering committees” who
are possessed of the monopoly to make vital decisions about scientific
resources distribution are populated by the landlords only. All the
“national scientific advisors” around the world are always the same
landlords. But the latter are in fact not professionals in the
scientific branches they claim to represent, they are solely “home-made
PR-professionals” aiming at their own, exclusive, personal social
success, they are really interested in nothing more than that. Is it
responsible to commit serious, essential decision making tasks to such
people ???

Looking at all this, the only medical analogy which
immediately comes to mind is “proliferation of cancer cells” ... Do our
societies suffer from a sort of “social cancer” ??? If so, is it
already a deadlock or there are still some ways to regeneration ???

Any proper scientific research requires a voluntary agreement among free
people who would like to solve some actual, interesting, important
scientific problem. Such people ought to come together and try to
organize a harmonic team based upon the well-known democratic
principles. Everyone is free to quit or change the team if he/she is
not more persuaded by the significance of the scientific problem or by
the performance of his/her colleagues. No one will have any bad social
consequences, if he/she suddenly quits or changes the initially chosen
team for some sound reason. At this point you will say – well, such a
picture is throughout idealistic, something like this is sheer
impossible. And we regret to agree with you ... But then all of us have
to forget about such things as fundamental scientific research, aren’t
we ???.

To this end, it should be noted that the fundamental
science most probably cannot recover after being drowned or vulgarized.
For example, the fundamental science asphyxiated by Hitler for its
slowness and unpredictability could not experience rebirth in the
post-war Germany. After a small number of the leftover Soviet
scientific research workers (not to confuse them with the scientific
administrators !) will physically die out, the Russian science, which
is now living solely from its rich traditions of the Soviet time, will
also cease to exist. What would remain is the fundamental science in
the USA and several scientific schools in Great Britain (if indeed !?!)
– which is by far not enough for any real progress of the mankind.
Moreover, global monopolies, who are not always interested in
technological advances, can also easily block the development of the
fundamental science.

The crisis in the science is in effect masking a terrible reality: The cognition as it is has ceased to be the
main productive force.

This is shocking but, seemingly, one cannot avoid this.

The reason is simple and fundamental at the same time: with the advent of
globalization, the mankind has rather concentrated its concerted
efforts on changing itself (first of all, changing its own
consciousness) – and not more on changing its environment. It is the
latter aspect that represents an actual historical hallmark of the
globalization, and by far not SMS-messages or pornosites.

The less the world surrounding us is an object of directed cognition, the
more the human consciousness takes over the latter role. Consequently,
the industry becomes less and less concentrated on producing some
material goods or – as an intermediate stage – some services, but it is
rather interested in creating and maintaining some definite, more or
less pre-determined states of the human consciousness.

To change the world (along with its social component) we had to discern it first
– and the science which helped us to accomplish this task was one of
the most important instruments of the mankind.

However, what is being changed nowadays is not more the whole world, but its relatively
small and by far not universal part – the human being itself.
Furthermore, the changes are not even concerning the human being as a
whole, but only its consciousness. Accordingly, one of the most
important categories of the human activity, earlier devoted to studying
literally everything what surrounds us, has now been occupied by a
rather small group of people who are studying human consciousness and
the methods to work with the latter. It should be noted here that due
to the specificity of the topic (the object of study is now the very
instrument of this study – the human consciousness), the scientists are
not so numerous among those working with the human consciousness: such
people are mostly narrow practitioners aimed at achieving some
particular and specific results.

By and large, this probably constitutes the end of the scientific-technical revolution which has
radically changed our world in the 50-ies of the last century – and,
moreover, this marks an abrupt deceleration of the progress in the
human capabilites.

May perhaps, this is just a manifestation of the human collective self-protection: the capabilities of the mankind to change the world have thus far overtaken its capability to fathom
the consequences of its activities, and it is now really necessary to
“have a break, have a Kit Kat”.

There is no doubt that the mankind will refurbish its cognitive instruments in some future. But
this would not be a linear, painless process, as it looks like nowadays
– so we may perhaps have to withstand a while, as long as this tendency
really unfurls.

Although the new technologies of knowledge mining and processing will surely improve the situation in the due time, presently we seem to be heading into the new Mediaeval era, new
Barbarian age, when the social success – and therefore the omnipotence
of power – will belong to mediocrities who consequently neglect any
knowledge.

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