Universities should be places where students freely explore ideas. Universities should not be places where students muzzle themselves because they worry about what other people might think about their sincere ideas, concerns and criticisms. A recent survey by FIRE unveils massive dysfunction in the classroom. It appears that many colleges are training students to be social media tribe members rather than independent thinkers upon whom we can depend to challenge prevailing norms and improve our communities.
Fully 60% of students reported feeling that they could not express an opinion because of how students, a professor, or their administration would respond. This number is highest among “strong Republicans” (73%) and lowest among “strong Democrats” (52%). Black students are most likely to report an instance where they censored themselves (63%). Just 15% of students reported feeling very comfortable publicly disagreeing with a professor about a controversial topic. Only 11% of female students reported this, compared to 19% of male students.
I look forward to reading Chloe S. Valdary when I'm looking for intelligent, good-hearted, nuanced and hopeful ideas. I like her approach here. We desperately need big unifying ideas at this point. This is an excerpt of her recent Tweet thread, focusing on the universal plight of alienation. [Note:DEI is an acronym referring to Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion].
For the first step in defeating Pandemic #2, please watch the new documentary, "The Social Dilemma." (You'll find it on Netflix).
As you use social media, try to cruise at 10,000 feet like a disinterested anthropologist and then ask yourself whether kind-hearted intelligent people should be talking at each other like much of what you will see.
Pandemic #2 is invisible, just like Pandemic #1, and you'll feel like you are in charge of your thoughts the entire time. Pandemic #2 quietly invades our minds, then erects filter bubbles around us that destroy the possibility of civil discourse on the most important issues facing us. Pandemic #2 destroys the possibility of e pluribus unum. We need to take action now, because huge misplaced financial incentives guarantee that Big Tech is not going to rescue us.
This Tweet makes a serious point. We are talking apes who evolved for 2M+ years in a Pleistocene environment, until about 11,000 years ago. If you time-traveled back to this era of evolutionary adaptedness, you wouldn't even be able to find a piece of paper or a pencil. Back then, "big" communities numbered only a couple hundred people. Instead of math and science, people exuberantly indulged in rampant superstition There's no reason to assume that our bodies/brains have significantly evolved since then.
Why would any rational dispassionate observer today conclude that the deeply ingrained tribal instincts of billions of people can be sufficiently trained up through any culture to handle modern levels of physical and social complexity? I'm not surprised at the widespread dysfunction. Rather, I'm repeatedly shocked that the we have any sense of order at all.
If Americans are getting great at anything other than screen time these days, it is buying into Orwellian definitions. The political right has more than it's fair share, but now the political left is doubling down, as pointed out by Christopher Rufo:
George Carlin pointed out that every euphemism is a red flag:
Here's a Carlin excerpt in transcript form:
I don't like words that hide the truth. I don't like words that conceal reality. I don't like euphemisms or euphemistic language. American English is loaded with euphemisms, because Americans have a lot of trouble dealing with reality. Americans have trouble facing the truth, so they invent the kind of a soft language to protect themselves from it and it gets worse with every generation. For some reason it just keeps getting worse . .
And now, in on of the more notable twists of fate for the insane year of 2020, we have the absolute worst messenger, Donald Trump, leading the charge against Critical Race Theory. Trump, historically tone deaf on this issue if not outright racist, has decided to attack CRT purely for political advantage. Biden has pushed his head into the sand on this issue, along with many other public voices, including the moderator of last night's presidential debate, Chris Wallace. No, CRT is not "racial sensitivity training." CRT is not the modern version of the Civil Rights Movement. It is the opposite. It is a pernicious misguided embrace of racism as a tool for fighting racism. On the political left, this embrace of CRT is a worthy example of kayfabe.
Kayfabe - In professional wrestling, kayfabe /ˈkeɪfeɪb/ (also called work or worked), as a noun, is the portrayal of staged events within the industry as "real" or "true", specifically the portrayal of competition, rivalries, and relationships between participants as being genuine and not staged. The term kayfabe has evolved to also become a code word of sorts for maintaining this "reality" within the direct or indirect presence of the general public.
Most of those in the spotlight know that they are speaking nonsense, but they are either cowards or actively pulling political strings. The result is cringe-worthy political theater with no good end in sight. It is my belief that those politicians on the political left, almost without exception, know that CRT is antithetical to the teachings of Martin Luther King and that CRT is setting back the Civil Rights movement by several decades. Dividing people by "race" was a bad idea 400 years ago and it remains a bad idea. One of the worst ideas anyone has ever had.
In my view, the first racist act is choosing to believe that "race" is a real thing and that it should somehow matter for reasons other than setting exposures in portrait photography. Without this starkly wrong initial move, racism would be impossible. The far right and the far left are now in agreement on this unscientific belief and they are acting as equal and opposite forces giving rise to hate and violence throughout the political spectrum. The last thing we should be doing is covering up a bad idea like CRT with a euphemism, especially when courage and honesty are the best approaches and an important presidential election is only a few weeks away.
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