rajeev sharma

Ever wondered whether it is right for us to earn a lot when there are people who cannot even afford the basic necessities of life. Hollywood aside, journalists, academics, and intellectuals have already self-selected for anti-materialist bias by choosing a path away from money, which may account for why they’re so down on consumerism (unless it involves Volvo station wagons). In this they’re true to their ecclesiastical origins; monasteries, after all, were once havens of learning, and intellectuals often operated in a churchly context. Worse yet, some intellectuals, abetted by tenure and textbook sales, are doing very well indeed, and they in turn can feel guilty about all those itinerant teaching fellows and underpaid junior faculty whose lives suggest a comment by Robert Musil in his novel The Man without Qualities: “In every profession that is followed not for the sake of money but for love,” wrote Musil, “there comes a moment when the advancing years seem to be leading into the void.” Read more at http://wwics.si.edu/index.cfm?fuseaction=wq.essay&essay_id=87167