PhD and Permanent Head Damage!

Satirists and humorists describe a person with a PhD as a person suffering from the “Permanent Head Damage” syndrome.

The thing is; if you are a PhD holder and your head is still intact as it was before you started your degree, the possibility is that you have managed to get that PhD through some other means other than your own head; maybe through other’s head.

One of the signs of learning is that the more you learn the more you know how much you do not know. The age old dictum of Socrates; “One thing I know that I know nothing” becomes an actual experience of a true PhD.

The assertions and convictions you had before you had your PhD appear so foolish and immature that you pause long and hard to make any such assertions again without making sure of the evidence available.

Dogmatism gives ways to pragmatism. There could always be another way of looking at the same reality and come to a different conclusion. But in the eyes of ordinary folks, such a position lacks conviction; it’s a weakness. Especially if a pastor takes such an approach to Bible, it is worst. Such a pastor either knows nothing or his head is permanently damaged!

The other day, a pastor friend gave me a long distance call and lectured me nice and long. Having heard from the man after nearly 15 years, I wanted to have the same friendly conversations we used to enjoy. But alas! He demanded that I respect him because he has gotten his PhD. I congratulated him and hung the phone; wondering about the kind of PhD he had gotten!

The idealist is often misunderstood and thought to be a lunatic by the common folks who are busy in looking for the things that would make their lives livable in this world.

An ordinary father worries about putting things on the table so that his children won’t go hungry; a roof to maintain over their heads, clothes to cover their bodies and a stable future is what he thinks about all the time. If he can lead a life of peace and relative prosperity to his dying days, that would be a great success for this father. When an idealist comes to such a man’s house and talks about life in a deeper sense, this simple father has no interest in it.

Thinking is such a luxury that ordinary folks cannot afford in life. Something must happen, something must force a man to think. And, I think for this reason Socrates said, “by all means, marry. If you get a good wife, you will be a happy person, but if you get a bad one, you will be a philosopher”! Something has to force a man to think because thinking is such a difficult job.

The naive, the proud, and the innocent ordinary folks appear to have no time to think about the deeper things and therefore, to them, the thinking person is often considered a lunatic or out of sync with the world they live in. If a person has a PhD in any field of knowledge, he/she is most likely a thinking person and thus to the unthinking, he appears to have incurred Permanent Head Damage (PhD).