Critical Race Theory Successfully Implemented

Gosh, what harm could it possibly do to a reasonably well-functioning society to divide people into colors and to treat them differently based on their looks? Tap on this image and behold. This woman is well educated and drives a very nice car. Presumably, she is a person of significant means, both educationally and materially. Listen to how she addresses this polite police officer in this traffic stop. This appears to be the end game of a society permeated with Critical Race Theory:

Perhaps some people will argue that this woman is an outlier, someone who misunderstood CRT, perhaps as it is taught in the school where she is a "teacher." To that, I would suggest that the doubter should consider what is being taught, coast to coast, as part of Critical Race Theory: Categorize all people into racial silos and obsess about these "identities." See here and here. Also, all police officers are racist and all of them are hunting down "black" people as a matter of doing their job on an every day basis. This motorist exemplifies these CRT teachings perfectly.

For more on the end game of CRT/Wokeness, consider the takeover of Evergreen State College.

Continue ReadingCritical Race Theory Successfully Implemented

Normal People Think Out Loud Imperfectly.

Check out this video of Joe Rogan clarifying his views on the COVID vaccines.

I'll focus on this excerpt at the 2:50 min mark

Here's the thing. These are not like planned statements. Let's be real clear. When I say something stupid, I’m not thinking about what I'm going to say before I say it. I'm just. saying it, right? I don't have an off-air and an on-air voice. I don't. I have me. This is it. I got through the fucking net and I'm swimming in open waters, okay? And that's just how I live. If you say you disagree with me, I probably disagree with me too. I disagree with me all the time.

This illustrates a big problem. Way too many of us are walking around thinking that we need to talk only in prepared statements that are approved by our tribe. This is abnormal and stifled conversation, unhealthy for civilization. We need to get back to the idea that conversation is a collaborative enterprise where we listen charitably and test each others' statements with the aim being that we can figure something out together, rather than trying to "win." Meaningful conversations are always somewhat messy works in progress. This is the HxA way.

We need to reset the dial so that our public conversations better resemble our private thoughts. Currently, many people are out there listening in order to harpoon you as though the only thing you uttered (out of 100 things) is that one clunky thing that offended them, ignoring that conversation and thinking are processes by which we should be incrementally working our way toward truth, together.

Thus, I appreciate what Joe Rogan said in this clip. When we have conversations, we should not reading prepared inner scripts. That would not be real conversation. There should be a lot of missteps, especially when we are grappling with complex issues. We should always be charitable listeners, giving the speaker their best foot forward (until and unless they exhibit bad faith). We should always be willing to point out where we agree with the others before criticizing the one thing we disagree with. That establishes trust and opens up a robust conversation where all participants come away with a changed understanding of the others or of the world. This approach exhibits basic decency--it is the approach marriage counselors urge in order to keep marriages healthy, as indicated by John Gottman. It applies to the rest of us too.

One last thing. There are a lot of people out there engaging in nasty sport rather than conversation. They are wearing their language police hats, demanding compliance with their own standards of political propriety. I often wonder how they talk with each other in the privacy of their own homes, however. Do they demand trigger warnings from each other in their living rooms? Do they jump on each other for failing to use the proper pronoun? I suspect that they freely and privately admit facts that they condemn in public.

We need to urge each other to see live-time public conversation as an opportunity to learn from each other and to freely admit our low confidence levels and ignorance of some of the things we'd like to believe. We need to speak in public much more like the way we think and converse privately.

Continue ReadingNormal People Think Out Loud Imperfectly.

George Carlin is Desperately Needed to Poke at the Woke

We need George Carlin like never before, but he is no longer with us.  He was willing to ignore propriety and power centers and to pull the scabs off social absurdities with polished eloquence. He was able to do this because he no longer "had a stake in the outcome" of the "freak show." We need someone like Carlin to expose and ridicule the absurdities of modern wokeness, especially on college campuses. Unfortunately, some prominent comedians, including Chris Rock, have given up on performing for college students because they have become so Woke.  I believe I heard Ricky Gervais express this same reluctance in a discussion with Sam Harris (in these notes, he discusses the minefield encountered by modern comedians). The following short video illustrates what comedians are up against on campus.

Check out 3:40 of this video, the speaker is talking about what "they" want and the interviewer challenged her: "They don't speak with one voice, do they?" She then claims that 18-21 year olds are "diverse." This is a deep issue, perhaps the defining issue of today: For many people today, "diversity" does not include intellectual diversity. Her comment revealed the intense tribal energy in our coddled young people, as well as their desperate felt need to be protected ideas they consider offensive.

Continue ReadingGeorge Carlin is Desperately Needed to Poke at the Woke

The Poisonous Online Environment of Gen Z

Abigail Shrier discussed Gen Z with Harold Bursztajn, M.D., a psychiatrist. Bursztajn is concerned about Gen Z and he identifies smart phones and social media as two of the major culprits. How bad is this environment?

This generation seems helpless and hopeless. Why — I asked him — did this generation possess the highest recorded rates of anxiety, depression and suicide—and the lowest rates of sex or physical intimacy? These young Americans may be as radical as Flower Children, but they seem incapable of organizing a Woodstock or hosting a “Love In.” Where was their Kumbaya? What put the damper on their “Good Vibrations”?

Based on his thousands of hours administering psychotherapy to university students, Bursztajn believes it is the online life they lead which renders them anxious, unhappy, and emotionally malnourished. Social media trains them to divide humanity into allies and enemies. It offers them little basis for hope. Their online world is not a new-age vista of possibility, but rigid series of high-stakes social contests, in which players rack up “likes” and form alliances, but never actual friendships. “To the extent that you’re dealing with a culture of algorithms, not all things are possible—only the things in the algorithms,” he explained.

Bursztajn's conclusions thus mesh well with those of Jonathan Haidt and Tristan Harris, both of whom blame social media for siloed thinking and high rates of anxiety.

Continue ReadingThe Poisonous Online Environment of Gen Z

The Continuing Relevance of John Stuart Mill at Schools and Colleges

Last week I attended a seminar sponsored by Heterodox Academy. The title: Does Mill Still Matter? Among those featured at the seminar were Jonathan Haidt, Richard Reeves and Dave Cicirelli, co-creators of "All Minus One," an illustrated version of the second chapter of Mill's On Liberty. This new book can be downloaded for free.

I transcribed the following excerpts of Jonathan Haidt comments. What follows are Haidt's words at the live seminar, minimally edited for print.

What I think is happening on campus is that we've traditionally played a game in which somebody puts forth an argument and then somebody critiques it. And that's what we've done for 1000’s of years, until about 2015. And then, a new game came into town, where people weren't seeing this like tennis, a game we are playing a game together. They saw it more as a battle like boxing or something where it was a struggle for dominance and power. And when you think of it that way, yeah, it's hard work. And it's painful. But if you think about it as like, you know, playing tennis or a game together, you're expending calories. It's not exactly hard work. It's hard play. And that's what I've always loved about being an academy is that it always felt like hard play. Until 2015.

A common phrase that began in 2014-2015, which is, “you are denying my existence” or “If that speaker comes [to campus to talk], then he or she is denying my existence.” And, you know, it's suddenly came out of nowhere. And we're all talking about what do you mean, denying your existence? And it's because this new way of thinking, where it's all a battle for power, and it's all about identity. And so if there's an is there's a speaker who's critical that on transition-- doesn't accept the reigning dogma on the trans issue? Well, that person thinks, or you might think, that they're critiquing an argument about something. But critiquing the argument is critiquing the identity, which means you're denying that I exist. That really helps us understand why there's such incoherence on campus since 2015, because some people are taking any criticism of their ideas as an attack on their person. And therefore you think I don't belong here on campus. And again, you can't have a university like that.

I also just want to add in one of my favorite quotes I've found in the five or six years I've been working on this topic. This is from Van Jones when he spoke at the University of Chicago. He was asked by, David Axelrod, what he thinks about students who are demanding no platforming and safe spaces and things like that. And while this isn't exactly million in that he's not really talking about, like the benefit to truth, but he's talking about the way this actually makes you stronger and smarter. This is just so brilliant. He says, there's a certain kind of safety, that it’s safety from physical attacks. You know, of course, we care about physical safety. But then he says, I don't want you to be safe ideologically. I don't want you to be safe, emotionally, I want you to be strong. And that's different. I'm not going to pave the jungle for you put on some boots and learn how to deal with adversity, I'm not going to take all the weights out of the gym. That's the whole point of the gym. This is the gym. And Richard and his friends protested outside as a political act. And then they went in because it was the gym, and they actually wanted to hear what he had to say. And that, I think, is the model of a politically engaged college student, or what it should do.

I was asked, What do you think is most fundamental question? And they say, Oh, you know, is there a god? Or what's the meaning of life? No, that's like, a big question. Fundamental means, basic, like the thing that everything else is built on. The fundamental question of life, is approach or avoid. That's it. As soon as life began moving, as soon as you get little tails on bacteria, you have to have some mechanism for deciding this way or that? Approach or avoid? And all of the rest of the billion years of brain evolution is just commentary on that question.

And so the human brain has these gigantic tracts of neurons on the front left cortex, specialized for approach. And then a frontal cortex specialized for avoid. And so all sorts of things go with this. So when we're in explorer mode, some features of it are, we're more, we're curious. We take risks. You might feel like a kid in a candy shop with all these different things to explore. You think for yourself. And the model of a student in this mindset would be whoever grows the most by graduation, or whoever learns the most by graduation wins. If that's your attitude, boy, are you going to profit from being in college for four years. [More . . . ]

Continue ReadingThe Continuing Relevance of John Stuart Mill at Schools and Colleges