the deadly acedemia?
Writing about web page http://shehui.voc.com.cn/article/00/1065295.html
Yesterday Ouyang jie committed suicide. She was a famous economic professor with Sun Yat-Sen University, the most famous university in South China.
I do not remember how many times I heard news like this. Some PhDs, or professors, or researchers, often from the best academic institutions, often recognized as well-established or very promising, often relatively young, often with a family, often reportedly talented, commit suicide. Does that much studying and reading and researching leads nowhere but a total desperation? Is the academia, the place that I am so eager to go for, only a deadly site after all?
I feel sad and sorry for those who passed away. But I cannot agree with the media, which has been almost unanimously commenting on the ‘weakness and fragility of intellectuals produced by the defected higher education system in China’. There are certainly problems within the higher education system, but there are bigger problems with how much space there is for us to feel free and dignified. I am sorry for this almost pathetic Englightenment blief in human nature, but this is truely my bottom line of still willing to live.
‘Man exists. For him it is not of question of wondering whether his presence in the world is useful, whether life is worth the trouble of being lived. The questions make so sense. It is a matter of knowing whether he wants to live and under what conditions’. (Beauvoir,Ethics of Ambiguity, 15) I can not agree with Beauvoir more. We live this life not to find out when we do not want to live, but rather to understand when we want it to continue.
Suicide, to me, is a most serious and solemn decision. It may have nothing to do with ‘weakness and fragility’, but rather is a final declaration of freedom and dignity of an individual.
Xiu Wang
23 Jan 2007 01:42
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Kevin
Yes, I agree that some PhDs, or professors, or researchers are always suffering from high pressure. There are little space for them to feel free and dignified~
And nowadays, more and more students from universities committed suicide( I’ve heard that at least 5 students in Guangzhou universities committed suicide in 2006, 3 in Huanong University, 1 in GDUFS, 1 in Guanggong University. Actually I seldome paid attention to these issues, so I bet there are more similar cases). As far as I know, the reasons are vaired, but more or less about the high pressures, esp. study one. So I think the whole society should pay attention to these problems, something like fame, power, status is important, but there are some other things more important that, i.e. freedom, dignity.
29 Jan 2007, 12:01
Violet
Yes, it is a problem and some people just seem to be able to cope better than others and there are a few who just don’t seem to feel the pressure at all, they are the really lucky ones. I know someone exactly like that, she has an inner calm and absolutely nothing phases her ever. She is the sort of person who is wonderful in any crisis she’s very grounded and self contained. I’ve never seen her panic and I think that is because she simply never does panic. She doesn’t even drink camomlie tea.
09 Aug 2007, 14:14
Violet
“I know someone exactly like that, she has an inner calm and absolutely nothing fazes her ever.”
27 Aug 2007, 11:46
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