Tamara I. Hammond - How to Avoid a Phd (Penalty for Hardworking Dummies): Wishing I Were an Autodidact

HOW TO AVOID A PHD

(PENALTY FOR HARDWORKING DUMMIES):

WISHING I WERE AN AUTODIDACT

Tamara I. Hammond

AuthorHouse

1663 Liberty Drive

Bloomington, IN 47403

www.authorhouse.com

Phone: 833-262-8899

2022 Tamara Ionkova Hammond. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Cover Designer: Ivana Georgieva

Published by AuthorHouse 11/10/2022

ISBN: 978-1-6655-7526-3 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-6655-7527-0 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-6655-7525-6 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2022920788

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For my talented and reliable American husband Ernie, who,

unlike his country, kept his promises to me, and to whom

I dedicate this book with love and appreciation

M any special thanks to my grandson Triston for his Toltec wisdom, love, and help during my work, and for brightening my life.

Many profound thanks to my daughter Tammy for her enlightening information, and to her husband, Peter, for his hard work.

Many genuine thanks to my American friends and family, who inspired me to write this book, and who will always have my love and gratitude.

Many heartfelt thanks to my Bulgarian friends and family, whose support and encouragement are essential in my expatriate life.

Many sincere thanks to my friends around the world for their care, communication, and networking.

Many whole-hearted thanks to my book-cover designer, Ivie, for her creativity and profound understanding.

T his book is a continuation or rather rebuttal of my 2011 book titled How to Obtain a PhD, about hard-working dummies chasing the American Dream. In my subsequent book with the same acronym for PhD (Penalty for Hard-working Dummies), I argue that incredibly nave thinkers and intellectuals fall victims of the educational system and propaganda in America including the author of this book. I was heavily brainwashed by a sophisticated industry called People Relations founded by Edward Bernays in the 1920s that is even more effective today. In my case, after 15 years in academia and a Doctorate degree, I finally broke free from the neoliberal ideology that kept me hostage for quite some time. Yet, in the first book I deciphered some important aspects of the propaganda and was able to see through it. For example, the financial predatory lending for profit, the food and drug fraudulent industry, and the two-party system that works for the same elites, among others were obvious to me from the beginning. Paradoxically, as I delved into my academic studies, I was swayed away from my critical perspective as I was emersed in the deliberate promotion of corporate agenda in the complete absence of opposite views.

Fortunately, thanks to dissident figures such as Eugene Debs, Howard Zinn, Noam Chomsky, and independent journalists such as Chris Hedges, Glenn Greenwald, Matt Taibbi, Max Blumenthal, Aaron Mate, and Caitlin Johnstone among others, I reexamined and challenged the propaganda imposed on everyone by equally mercenary academia and media. In addition, whistleblowers and heroes who risk their freedom and comfortable lives to reveal the truth about our governments unconstitutional spying on its citizens and carrying out illegal military actions, lifted the veil of secrecy and shed a light on the grim reality of corporate tyranny. To celebrate my liberation from the manufactured consent among corporate controlled media and academia, I decided to share my newly acquired enlightenment with everyone eager to know the truth. More importantly, I wish I were an autodidact instead of investing more than a dozen of years in ridiculously expensive institutionalized boot camp called higher education. I argue that the goal of the business model of higher education is to enslave future employees through enormous debt and to condition them to work around the clock in low-paying, precarious jobs for decades in order to pay back their student loans. Any massive investment in formal education precludes the quest for learning the truth while simultaneously delays unbiased research by years. As an autodidact, I could have stumbled upon the truth significantly sooner if I werent wasting time digesting the mandatory ideology of mendacious mythology designed to maintain the status quo.

This astonishing delay in my discovery of the truth illustrates how powerful the industry of propaganda is, strengthened by the network of mass media, academia, and think tanks working for the real owners of Americans large corporations driven by profit. The exploitation of the majority of Americans by a handful of super rich multi-billionaires is both facilitated and obscured by mass media because their very few owners control the official narrative. Through very sophisticated mechanisms of propaganda that constantly disseminate the illusion of freedom, democracy, and meritocracy, the myth is perpetuated ed nauseum. More outrageously, the media sell to the public absurd ideas such as endless wars, individual responsibility for institutional failures, and social injustice presented as meritocracy. At the same time, the incessant propaganda conditions the public to accept the denial of basic human rights such as healthcare, living wages and higher education as undeserved luxuries. More importantly, the persisting system driven by greed, which prioritizes profit above human health and existence leads to the devastation of life on earth and cannot be sustained anymore.

Fortunately, people are waking up to the sobering facts of climate emergency and the independent new media both inform people and organize their resistance against their extinction. Demonstrated in organizations such as Extinction Rebellion founded in November 2018, as well as Sunrise youth movement in the US from 2017, citizens outrage cannot be suppressed anymore. The opposition is especially embraced and led by the younger generations who are educated by new independent media and have avoided the massive propaganda by choosing not to watch TV or mainstream digital media. Although constantly growing, the awareness of Americans about the exploitative and deadly system that benefits only a few moguls and denies everyone else a decent life, still lags behind the worlds response. Only since 2019 there was a shift in public opinion, and as of 2021, two-thirds of Americans believe global warming is both real and caused by humans. The change is driven by the mainstream media who finally decided to support the ideas for green energy for profit, thus breaking the silence they maintained about what they knew since the 1970s. To paraphrase Greta Thunberg, the teenage environmental activist from Sweden, people are not evil or lazy, they just didnt know the scientific facts about our dire situation.

Sadly, as history teaches us, most of the genuine movements get co-opted by special interests, and perhaps unwittingly, they are neutralized by the very powers they fight. The environmental movements are not immune from being co-opted in government cabinets that work covertly against their ideas. By the time this book is published, many of the movements and independent media outlets could be disempowered or corrupted. This recently happened to the Sunrise movement as its leaders were neutralized in 2020. By given a fake seat to the government table they are compelled to accept incremental changes with generous promises for future betterment. The predominant bad actors here are the corporations whose financial interest leads to gross inequality and extinction of the civilization, with the help of their accomplices, the media and academia, who willingly deceive and misinform the public in order to preserve their privileges and high social status. Although a drop in the ocean, every dissenting voice is important, because the solution lies within the many populations who have the power of the numbers and could use it to force governments to change the direction towards extinction.