One Suggestion for Hacking a Path out of the Wokeness Thicket

I'm feeling sad today, perhaps because I read too much "news." I struggle when I try to identify any institution that is functioning well. Perhaps the court system is the best example of an (imperfect) functioning institution, although the elephant in the room is that those who don't have the money to hire good lawyers are almost always fucked over by those who have lawyers. Okay . . . but when both sides have good lawyers, the system seems to work fairly well fairly often.

Some of our newly dysfunctional institutions have been captured by Woke ideology, resulting in a thick atmosphere of fear in which smart people intentionally say untrue things so that they don't get yelled at by the mob, which can result in suspension and job loss. It's a terrible situation in many institutions, especially in news media and colleges. I base this on personal stories I've heard from several self-censoring professors who are afraid to engage in a free exchange of ideas in the classroom. I've reported many of these problems at this website over the past two years.

When I feel this sort of melancholy, I actively seek out good news, and I usually find some reason to be hopeful. Today, it comes from one of my favorite writers and thinkers, Jonathan Haidt, who participated in a discussion group at Heterodox Academy (I was one of many HxA members attending). It was a long discussion and there were many speakers. Here's an excerpt from Haidt's presentation:

It's the climate of fear. I'm actually starting a new book on this. It's called Life After Babble: How we lost the Ability to Think Well Together. The core idea is that social media, made reputational destruction democratized, incentivized and freed from accountability. And that's what happened in 2014. And that's why we've had a climate of fear since 2014. So you're right to be afraid.

But here's what I've learned in the last couple years: almost everybody is reasonable. Leaders are the ones who get shot with little darts. Whenever they you know, it's as though they're physically getting shot with darts. And so they all came very quickly. But those who hold out, those who don't cave-- if you just wait a week--it's a hurricane inside of a hall of mirrors, and it blows on to something else a week or two later. So the people who stand up to it and don't bend a knee and don't bow down, they end up looking very, very good. So what I'm trying to develop is the idea that every field needs high professional standards, and a big part of that is depoliticization is not being on a team not fighting for politics, but living up to your standard as a professor doing research. You're a scholar, and what I hope we can develop an HxA is this notion of very high professional standards. If you're a true professional, you live your standards, and then you should be unafraid. We're not there yet, but I think that's that's where I think we can get to very quickly.

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The Consequences of Not Belonging to any Political Tribe

What is it like to not feel part of any political tribe? Mostly, it is to be dismayed to hear lies from the right and then lies of the left. It is to have a seat near the net of the tennis court, looking to the left, then the right, over and over, as lies are zinged back and forth. The party in power now, the Democrats, are certainly doing their part, whether it be immigration, COVID, Russia-Trump, abolishing the police will keep cities safer. And now there is the Democrat claim about Biden's economic package:

They are insisting that their plans, which are still in flux but amount to a call for some $4 trillion in spending over two bills, have no real costs at all—or that the costs should not be factored in, because they are "unfair and absurd."

As if $4 trillion will not risk massive inflation. As if $4 trillion will be completely paid for.

I'm not taking a position on whether parts of these packages make sense for the U.S. My concern is that the risks of these packages are being actively suppressed. I have very little respect for Joe Manchin, but I think he's correct when he claims that the current proposal amounts to "fiscal insanity." We are not having any meaningful national conversation about what is really in these bills and the extent of economic risk of committing $3.5 trillion to those things.  This, from the remorseless political party that threw the working class overboard decades ago.

This is simply the most recent example of a system that is completely broken with no hope of repair. It's a system where big corrupt campaign money and ideology drive the decisions, where inconvenient truths are ignored and suppressed and where most voters line up in ignorance to cheer their respective teams.

In four years, we might see the Republicans taken over, with their own brand of fiscal and ideological insanity. I truly see no end in sight.

This is the sort of thing that led George Carlin to indicate that he no longer had "a stake in the outcome."  I wish I could claim that everything is going well for our country, but I can't.

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Aphorism 9: Talk is so Cheap, it is Often Nothing at All

I was discussing a social issue with a neighbor more than 10 years ago. I said something like "that really bothers me" or "I really care about that." He stopped me and said something like this:

"If you really cared about it, you would be doing something about it."

That stopped me in my tracks because the only thing I was doing was ranting. I think of this often when I hear the choruses of virtue signalers. They are almost everywhere. For instance, among those who Identify as Democrats, I constantly hear that the environment "is the most important issue" and that "it is an emergency situation" and that "no other issue comes close in importance."

This is what I hear, constantly, from Democrats whose life style is indistinguishable from the life style of the average Republican. They drive similar gas-guzzling vehicles. They go on gas-guzzling vacations. They live in fuel guzzling houses. They live far from their places of work. They don't car pool or (in my city) use mass transit or bike to work. They revel in getting take-out food and coffee sold by businesses that use single-use paper, plastic and foam wrappings. I'm still doing my research, but I found one 2013 study that concluded that Democrats generate only 5% less fossil fuel than Republicans per capita. They claim that this is an emergency situation but they don't act like it is an emergency situation. If you asked the average Democrat to turn their thermostat down 5 degrees in the winter and put on a sweater, they will look at you like you are insane.

Apparently, that gives them the right to claim that they "care" and that Republicans don't "care" about the environment.

The environment is merely one example of many. We are surrounded by virtue-signaling virtuosos of both political parties. But at least they all "care."

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Ed Snowden Talks Shop with Daniel Ellsberg

Ed Snowden invited Daniel Ellsberg to have a conversation. These two men who are heroes to me (and to each other), discuss the importance of whistle-blowers, free speech and the war powers of the United States. Ellsberg points out (at min 8) that he did not disclose the Pentagon Papers because the government was lying or because the Vietnam war wasn't winnable. Almost everyone knew these things at that time. He did it because the war was "wrong" and it was "getting bigger," at a time where Nixon knew that he might be drawing the Chinese into the war and he was considering the use of nuclear weapons.

At minute 12, Ed Snowden explains that he acted not because he was against spying (though he was against spying), but because the government was acting outside of the knowledge and control of the People. The government was reinterpreting the Constitution outside of the knowledge of the People (and outside of the knowledge of most members of Congress) in a "secret rubber-stamp court." The People were no longer "partner" with the government, but "subjects" of the government. Snowden continued, from Bush to Obama to Trump, "the government is becoming less accountable to the People, and the people are becoming more accountable to the government."

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Carl Sagan’s 1997 Prediction

In 1997, Carl Sagan wrote the following in "The Demon Haunted World":

Science is more than a body of knowledge; it is a way of thinking. I have a foreboding of an America in my children’s or grandchildren's time—when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the key manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness.

The dumbing down of America is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30-second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance. As I write, the number-one videocassette rental in America is the movie Dumb and Dumber. “Beavis and Butthead” remain popular (and influential) with young TV viewers. The plain lesson is that study and learning—not just of science, but of anything—are avoidable, even undesirable.

We’ve arranged a global civilization in which most crucial elements—transportation, communications, and all other industries; agriculture, medicine, education, entertainment, protecting the environment; and even the key democratic institution of voting—profoundly depend on science and technology. We have also arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology. This is a prescription for disaster. We might get away with it for a while, but sooner or later this combustible mixture of ignorance and power is going to blow up in our faces.

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