Frames /sing

kvond

Ktismatics and the Wooden Stake of Vampires

Ktismatics offers one of the most balanced and insightful takes on the recent uproar over K-punk, Levi and Graham’s attempt to isolate a particular kind of internet un-dead vermin. Really worth reading for any number of reasons.

“On Projects and Energy Suckers” 

Part of the Elegance…

Who are the grey vampires, sucking your energy away from your project? They differ depending on what phase your project is in. If you’re in the formative, nebulous, middle-distance phase, then anyone who keeps your focus either too broad or too narrow can be an energy-sucker. For example, the grad student with a domineering advisor is too easily sucked into becoming a disciple or acolyte rather than channeling his/her energy into exploring something distinct. Conversely, the domineering advisor can be sucked into complacency through the flattery of fawning admirers. Academe is good at promoting these sorts of codependency relationships. The underling grad student, in order to establish a distinct identity, may have to pursue a course of active resistance to established ideas and respected figures in order to break free, even if that means being perceived by these respected figures as a grey vampire. And the established advisor may have to resist his/her students’ admiration and support, even if in so doing the students feel rejected and consequently drained of energy.

For me the entire neighborhood squabble has been a product of a certain kind of intellectual arrogance — notably NOT a “human type” — that seems to drive those that think their thoughts essentially of a better quality or worth then the thoughts of those that question them. Ktismatics is responding to the recent characterization that Grey Vampires are those “without projects”…

3 responses to “Ktismatics and the Wooden Stake of Vampires

  1. the voice of parodic reason June 24, 2009 at 8:21 pm

    I loved the notably NOT human type although, also, NOT of a particularly erotic type of inhumanity either.

  2. anodynelite June 25, 2009 at 6:21 pm

    The notion that the only motivating factors behind questioning an established thinker, academic, or their work/s *must be* a combination of laziness + jealousy–well, that just seems extremely immature and potentially delusional. I do understand, of course (as LS pointed out once) that there are reasons why some people react neurotically or excessively to being systematically questioned. I know that, myself, I really don’t like it when people put themselves in imaginary positions of authority (intellectual or otherwise) over me– unless perhaps they have attained legitimate “expert” status in a rigorous field–and that this has some correlates in earlier negative experiences.

    But at the level of interaction supported by the internet, I think few of us have sufficient information about our peers to make judgments regarding their “motivations” for questioning us. All we can do is speculate, and those speculations usually say as much about us as they do about our inquisitioners.

  3. Pingback: Blogwars theme song (with bonus video) « Dead Voles

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s

%d bloggers like this: