Stucktopia
By
Leonard Zwelling
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/06/opinion/sci-fi-dystopia-pop-culture.html
In this op-ed from The New York Times on July 6, literary critic Hillary Kelly describes a group of recent television series in which humanity seems to be stuck in an inner world of unchanging repetition unaware of an outside world of challenge. I have seen one of these, Silo, and Kelly’s description is apt. There are a group of “leaders” who tend to keep the rest of humanity ignorant and working for the betterment of “everyone” while the leaders control the inner environment as well as access to the outside world.
Sound familiar?
Over recent years (let’s say the last twenty), I have heard a raft of complaints about how the leadership of MD Anderson is out of touch with the rank-and-file faculty. Let’s say that this is true, as I believe it to be. Why hasn’t anything changed?
The answer is actually in the stories of the television series. Somehow someone has got to rebel against the status quo and defy the regimentation that keeps things inevitable and change unattainable.
Currently, the Faculty Senate is working overtime to change this by engaging with the Executive Leadership Team and seeking full participation in shared governance. But it’s a hard row to hoe. The Governing Body is only peripherally interested in the opinion of anyone beside his minders in Austin and the various national surveys in which he chooses to enter MD Anderson.
In the end, this is all in the hands of the clinical faculty. Only they can make a difference in the attitude of the leadership because, believe it or not, the clinical faculty members are the engine of MD Anderson’s greatness just as research is the fuel that feeds that engine.
Essentially, Kelly calls the situation on the TV series, and perhaps in today’s society, stucktopia. People continue to do what they do, aware that it is not pleasant, but afraid to change.
As someone who has been a bit of a provocateur for some years now, I’ve hypothesized that if the clinical faculty turned Wednesday into Sunday just once, it would get the attention of the Governing Body and all his minders in Austin.
Care for patients with emergency issues, just like on Sunday, but the clinics will remain empty, just like on Sunday. (At least for now.)
Then again,” There’s another more realistic option that offers a thrill and reward of its own. If we don’t let the stucktopia keep its hold on us, if we rebuke it, maybe we shift ourselves ever so slightly toward optimism, and give the system whatever small hell we can.”
I think some faculty are doing this already.
