Operating at the Wrong Level

I felt bad for my marketing professor today, as he was having very little luck getting the class to engage in discussion. I wasn't feeling particularly motivated to join in myself (partly because I caught the apathy that was going around and partly because it was Monday morning) and found myself failing to respond to simple questions I knew the answer to (e.g. that Bill Gates and Warren Buffett oppose the abolition of the estate tax).

The primary problem I have in the class overall, though, is not lack of interest in the topics or a creeping malaise, but a difficulty in engaging at the generally extremely simplistic level that seems appropriate to the context of a group of average college juniors (who, let's face it, are in many respects dumb kids who know nothing). As Tam has pointed out to me many times, I struggle with answering "easy" or "obvious" questions, and in this class, I often feel that the answer he is going for (when I do see where he is leading) is easy, obvious, and sort of wrong, since what are to me very important nuances are ignored, such that the bald statement is not one I can actually support without qualification.

For example, a couple of classes ago, Dr N asked the question, "Why did communism fail?" Given the A+ I received in comparative economic systems, in which unsurprisingly this topic was examined a great deal, I think I am probably more qualified than anyone in the room (including the professor) to answer this question and yet... this is not something that is easily summarized in a soundbite, and the short answer that came to mind - "Because the success of communism was at a minimum dependent on the complete remaking of mankind, which is not fucking possible with the tools they had at hand" - didn't seem quite the thing to say. I did manage eventually to offer some comments but it was awkward.

Today, we were discussing the political situation, and I know that his intent was to make us consider the fact that politics provides a part of the external environment in which businesses operate and thus, is an important consideration for businesspeople when considering what the future is likely to hold, what risks to take, and so forth. But my god. I do not think I have ever been involved in such an unsophisticated discussion of politics in my life. Even when I knew what he was going for, I was unwilling to respond to questions like "What is the underlying philosophy of the Republican party?" with an answer like "A commitment to small government and the free enterprise system" (note that this response would not include anything about moral authoritarianism since it's a business class) because no rational person who has watched e.g. the Bush administration in action could say this without gagging and because the Republican party itself is in turmoil over what it stands for, as the old coalition of free market libertarians and social conservatives threatens to break down.

The unfortunate byproduct of my unwillingness to be complicit in a reductionistic discussion of political stereotypes is that the only people who were willing to speak up to any significant degree were, yes, you guessed it, the two Ron Paul supporters in the room. This brings its own amusement, of course, but sort of leaves the professor stranded, having to work with such paltry (and often crazy) material.

I would like to take the class as an excuse to get better at answering simple questions with simple answers. Wait, this makes me sound like John Kerry trying to emulate George Bush. (Nooooooo!) What I am really interested in is being able to generate short responses that capture some essence of the truth, even if limited in extent and application. This seems like a useful skill to possess and this class is definitely a low-risk place to practice it.

And I would like to throw Dr N a bone for the good karma if nothing else.