# That's Academic By:: [[Brian Heath]] 2023-02-12 When speaking about concepts beyond a person's current pragmatic understanding of the world, it's not uncommon to hear, "well, that's all academic." This implies that the idea is not practical or useful. Minimally, it implies the idea has no consequence. It's just a technicality or esoteric idea that is obviously unimportant, or else everyone would know about it. This is a fatal mistake. Certainly, there are stereotypical Academic and creative people who are bad at communicating ideas and exist on the edges of society. They make mistakes and have bad ideas. However, every great idea started on the fringe of society with made-up words that whispered things into existence. Once these things provide societal value, they spread, and we quickly forget that all these crazy ideas were "academic." If we completely ignore and dismiss the "academic," human society will stagnate and die as life exists between order and chaos. Rejecting the chaos or "academic" means you'd rather be a rock than a bird flying through the air and enjoying the wind. We wouldn't enjoy things like indoor plumbing, antibiotics, or the right to vote without the fringe Academics and creative individuals. To degrade them is to degrade an essential part of humanity. To only embrace the academic or creative is to boil over into nothingness and explode into millions of pieces everything that has ever been. I doubt anyone adheres to this viewpoint, but nearly everyone in popular culture embraces the rejection of the academic. If you care about humanity beyond yourself, you'll find the balance between order and chaos. You'll understand why some things must change slowly and when to push the academic and creative forward because it's the only way to progress and live a better life. We must encourage the academic and creative, not outright reject and belittle them. Someone once told me I'm not an academic, and they meant it as a compliment. Little did they know that it was probably the biggest insult of my life. I'm not interested in simply being a cog in the machine and accepting the status quo. I remember thinking how far we have fallen that saying such a thing is considered a compliment. Academics still have much work to do, and if you think this entire post is just academic, you'd be right. #### Related Items [[Creative]] [[Science]] [[Progress]] [[Society]] [[The Human Condition]]