Doing Good Work: Maintaining Integrity in the Midst of the Madness

In this blog Kumar Jayantilal, offers some ingenuous practical strategies to maintain integrity in the midst of the madness.

“I sell the fact that I can’t be bought,” Alex Turner, frontman of the Arctic Monkeys, once famously quipped. On an album that offered a prescient social commentary on contemporary existence via a mysterious hotel on the moon, Alex was referring to ‘integrity’ in the lyric and, perhaps on a deeper, metaphysical level, that it has been supplanted by artificiality. Seven years on since their critically acclaimed album – Tranquility Base Hotel and Casino – Alex is not far from the truth. Indeed, integrity, as the blog argues, is slowly disappearing into the ether like a Jeff Bezos space rocket, as we continue to sink into an existential abyss. Such a disappearance, I reflect, is increasingly made manifest in the lived experiences of the academic lecturer, in the way they think, work and exist. However, integrity is the blueprint in our pursuit to being a stronger academic and, simply, a better human. The blog, therefore, concludes by offering some ingenuous practical strategies to maintain integrity in the midst of the madness. First, however, the plight of humanity and its effects on integrity, or more simply ‘the culture’.

‘The culture’

Integrity, strictly speaking, is the quality of having strong moral principles. However, on a more spiritual level, integrity is the matter that remains after self-elimination. Indeed, as I will later discuss, when applied to the realm of professional practice, integrity is simple: doing good work. Realising such principles, however, are difficult in the complex, contradictory world we inhabit. Philosophically, the Western world is still predicated on Cartesian thought, where the mind and body are seen as separate entities: I think therefore I am. Reality, therefore, is scientific – something that is physical, observable, measurable and rational. To systemise the flux of an inherently messy social world, the scientific world promotes dichotomies – think questionnaires, categories and tick boxes. Dichotomies are helpful to the natural world, where truth is independent of the observer (the tree, for example, exists irrespective of my being there). However, they are counterproductive to the social world, where reality is less predictable and relative to the perceiver (for example, what is the purpose of education?). In fact, where power is involved, dichotomies can even exercise ‘violence’.

In a performative society, existence is about accruing enough capital to gain an advantage in the market that ostensibly benefits the individual, yet realistically benefits the rich, malevolent and powerful. Since numbers are inherently manipulable, and profit is pleasing to the eye, performativity becomes promiscuously pervasive and persuasive, though incredibly problematic. As capital is the ubiquitous way to measure the worth of something and/or someone, the human subject is reduced to what they can offer – a product. The product, scientifically, should be tangible, but (in the spirit of performativity) it should also offer value for money by yielding an advantage. What we get, as a result, is a distorted version of social existence, where quantity displaces quality. Indeed, social spheres that were previously public – sport, travel, health, housing and education – become a commercialised commodity and, as people, we are required to produce and consume as much as we can, as quickly as possible, to keep the markets moving, without critically reflecting on the implications of our consumption on the planet. Rather than being individuals with strong moral principles, therefore, we become a ‘brand’ – what do I offer to help me gain an advantage in the market? If you are competitive, entrepreneurial, workable and individualistic, such an existence likely benefits you: more stamps on your passport; more matches on your dating profile. Otherwise, society deems you a ‘loser’. That said, given that crises and the resultant austerity measures are becoming more frequent, the supposed ‘winners’ are struggling too, with people getting even less for more.

Since the markets are increasingly unpredictable, resulting in cultural trends shifting quicker than ever, people are having to continually (re)invent themselves in order to survive. Compounded by the culture wars, such (re)invention is typically centred around dualistic thinking. Wittingly or unwittingly, we are having to organise (or divide) ourselves into dualisms – left or right, woke or anti-woke. Given the algorithmic gratification that comes from scrolling, and the proliferation of influencers, big technology companies are reinforcing such dualisms, recommending ‘more people like us’ – in thought, in appearance. Subsequently, humanity, if not already, is becoming homogenised, where integrity is superseded by plasticity. In this ‘McDonaldization’ of culture, what happens is that ‘good’ – or even perfect – examples of human endeavour are conspicuous by their absence: think Godfather 2 (1974), or To Pimp a Butterfly (2015). Instead, mass-produced, regurgitated soundbites of information are circulated in the form of YouTube shorts and/or TikTok videos, where nuance is characteristically devoid and given the use of algorithms, radicalisation is rife. In short, we are becoming what we choose to consume. Human interactions, meanwhile, have become a manifestation of Artificial Intelligence (AI) interspersed with moments of raucous laughter, rather than any iterative, meaningful dialogue that arrives at a critical understanding of the social world. Alongside Super Sunday on Sky Sports, nowhere is such anti-intellectualisation becoming more palpable than higher education – ironically, the last bastion of criticality.

 ‘Am I battling ghosts or AI?’

Predicated on scientism, a key characteristic of the culture is that it assigns a deficit view to human beings – that we, in some way, are bereft of the knowledge, creativity and wisdom (or spirit, for want of a better word). To satisfy the ‘lack’, the culture puts forward commodities, customarily in the form of clothes and cosmetics – that if you purchase such and such a product, you will be a fully functioning human. It is the consummate cocktail of scientism and performativity: I think (and buy) therefore I am. Higher education, increasingly, is shifting towards a similar direction, adopting a business model to education. Students (the consumer) are constructed as being devoid of knowledge (the product), yet students wield proportionate power: their recruitment and retention are of paramount importance to the survival of academic institutions. What materialises, therefore, is a transactional relationship, where if you (the student) scratch my (the university) back, I will scratch yours. A symptom of such a relationship is that knowledge is commodified and, to ensure its successful exchange into students’ pockets, is instrumentalised into ‘content’. The ‘content’ must be both palatable, in that it is relevant to the purposes of the assignment (how does it help me to pass?) and digestible, in that it does little to problematise students’ existing ideological perspectives (how does this even relate to the way I think?). The lecturer, meanwhile, is in a paradoxical position.

Lecturers have a responsibility to ensure as many students pass the module, while receiving a student satisfaction score that reflects their pedagogy. On the one hand, therefore, the lecturer must deliver the content as unproblematically as possible, yet on the other hand they must be seen, by students and senior management alike, to be providing an entertaining ‘performance’, like a seal in the circus, or a professional plate spinner. The situation, for lecturers, is nihilistic – damned if you do, and damned if you don’t. Like any business, however, the customer is always right, and given universities have adopted a corporate model, the student must get what they want. Since acquiring the degree certificate, with or without a reputable classification, is most students’ ambition, integrity is often lost. Students, for example, tend to engage in ‘studentship’, artificially ‘buying into’ the messages of the degree in order to pass, or investing in only the messages that relate to the module assignment. More contemporaneously, students may engage with AI, such as ChatGPT, to eschew group activities and/or, more flagrantly, write their assignment for them. Lecturers, meanwhile, feel a palpable pressure to ‘pass’ students which has been heightened due to the influx of non-traditional students who are often questionable in calibre. Work, therefore, that is of poor quality is being compensated in a performative act of fabrication. Meanwhile, students are falsely led to believe that their knowledge, skills and experience are of ‘degree’ standard. Subsequently, they will likely enter employability with a quixotic understanding of what the working world entails. In short, in the name of ‘passing’, we are setting up future generations to fail, with students receiving a university-related degree, yet a college-level (or worse yet, a primary-level) education. Given the need to publish or perish, inauthenticity tends to go beyond the lecture room, to the desk of the academic lecturer.

Performativity demands that academics have, akin to a machine, an exponential output. Academics, as a result, are having to be increasingly strategic with the work they publish, often jeopardising substance (good work) over style (quick work) to ensure ‘easy wins’, prevent themselves from being forgotten, and keep the accountability juggernaut in motion. Such a situation is present in the publishing of articles in predatory journals, with rapid publication times and a less rigorous peer-review process. Similarly, academics are having to broaden their research interests (doing work they would much rather do without) and diversify their mediums of publication, in another example of branding oneself to satiate the needs of existing and potential customers (readers). For example, having not published an academic paper in almost two years, and despite whatever altruistic reasons I have for writing the blog, I too am trying to ‘stay relevant’, in the hope that the academic blog is picked up by a potential recruiter for a more rewarding post. Or, more ghoulishly, the blog could just be my experimentation with AI! Whatever the rationale for writing, however, one fact is immutable: lecturers, in trying to do too much, end up doing nothing at all – a jack of all trades, yet a master of none, as my grandad used to describe me. And whilst ‘easy’ wins might provide a short boost to the ego and help to eschew the performative panoptic gaze, they do little to facilitate integrity. Integrity, as I turn to discuss, begins with faith. Thankfully, it cannot be bought.

‘Speaking the truth and consider what God's considering’

Faith, in the contemporary world, is seemingly absurd. How can we believe in something Higher, and feel that we exist, when the scientific world reduces everything to the physical, observable, measurable and rational? Yet, if the plight of humanity is ultimately predicated on Cartesian thought, and a scientific way of knowing, surely the antidote is a way of being that reconciles the heart, mind and body. Faith, indeed, provides an unwavering conviction that whatever life throws at us, our spirit and soul is eternally protected. Through worship or self-elimination, faith can yield different types of matter, such as strength, peace, love and – as per the emphasis of this blog – integrity. Irrespective of the innate fallibility of human beings, integrity offers solace in knowing that everything is forgiven in the eyes of the Lord. It is, as I touched upon earlier, a holiness. It is a feeling – or spirit, for want of a better word – that you have executed the Lord’s work and attempted to bring glory to His kingdom by finding grace in His sight. And since the Lord is omnipresent, integrity need not be restricted to a place of worship. As I discovered in the Sacré-Cœur, one can find mercy in all aspects of life, including the ordinary, meaning that integrity can permeate into the lives of lecturers at university. However, I recognise that such a spiritual shift is not always possible and that given regimes of performativity are likely to stay, a degree of circumspection is required. I acknowledge, for example, that it is necessary for students to pass, but the way they graduate should be of tantamount importance. How do we achieve such harmonisation between product and process?

First, lecturing must be considered as an art, rather than a science – something within, rather than without. In philosophical terms, therefore, I do not need to think in order to exist (as a lecturer), for I am a lecturer all-at-once when I stand in front of students. Indeed, like an actor, I might need to rehearse my lines, but it stands for nothing if I refuse to give the artistic element of myself that goes beyond the script – my spirit. Second, the act of lecturing should be (re)constructed as an embodied practice, of heart, mind and body – my soul. Students, like the audience of a play, are often not oblivious: they already possess the knowledge, creativity and wisdom before coming in higher education. It is, as lecturers, our job to co-constructively facilitate such an understanding in order to arrive at a shared consensus of a given phenomenon. We should, rather than watering down our messages, encourage critical thinking and independent thought, without altogether losing the essence of the project. Furthermore, instead of infantilising students by almost doing their assignments for them, we should embrace non-linear, more creative responses to assessment. Finally, as an academic, rather than solely conducting research studies that will likely accrue a high volume of views and citations, the emphasis should be on collaborating with colleagues that are committed to doing good work. In musical terms, a chart-topping single or an extended play (EP) might be necessary to mollify the record label, but the magnum opus should be an album of seminal quality. If not, like I have recently discovered, there is an increased likelihood of losing oneself to the madness.