There is a famous movies series in Japan called Kozure Okami (Lone Wolf and Cub in English) that I watched as a child. The premise is simple. A respected swordsman is defamed by his superiors, his wife is killed, and his 1-year old child is all that remains of his household. The swordsman spends the rest of his life as a kind of assasin with his child in tow, and a baby carriage filled with medieval weaponry that would make James Bond proud. Thinking back to the degree of bloodiness in these movies, I realize that it was back when movie ratings like R and such didn't exist in the foreign movie theatres.
The pivotal moment in this series is at its origin. When the father decides that he must flee and places before his child, Daigoro, two objects: a short sword and a brightly colored ball. Daigoro eyes both objects carefully and in the end reaches for the sword. His destiny is decided.
A similar choice in the academic enterprise exists today. On the one hand, there are dollars -- real money to be made by the businessification of universities in the profit-focused and highly efficient way of industry. On the other hand, there is honor -- placing a square focus on educational demands and opportunities for new careers to blossom with a constant and brutal discipline to look decades out for the future of humankind.
Then again, one can always strive to do both -- which is more realistic and ultimately difficult to achieve because it's easy to measure the blackness of black or the whiteness of white. Gray is ... well quite literally, gray. (I made a short note about this to myself in 2004).
Nothing conclusive here. Just another point of determination to find the right do both position. Work twice as hard -- not half as hard -- when doing both today.
Posted by maeda at May 21, 2007 11:06 AM