A Tale of Sweet Revenge from Robert Sapolsky’s Book: Behave

I'm reading Robert Sapolsky's excellent 800-page book, Behave: THE BIOLOGY OF HUMANS AT OUR BEST AND WORST. He tells this story about his wife:

So we’re in the minivan, our kids in the back, my wife driving. And this complete jerk cuts us off, almost causing an accident, and in a way that makes it clear that it wasn’tdistractedness on his part, just sheer selfishness. My wife honks at him, and he flips us off. We’re livid, incensed. Asshole-where’s-the-cops-when-you-needthem, etc. And suddenly my wife announces that w e’re going to follow him, make him a little nervous. I’m still furious, but this doesn’t strike me as the most prudent thing in the world. Nonetheless, my wife starts trailing him, right on his rear.

After a few minutes the guy’s driving evasively, but my wife’s on him. Finally both cars stop at a red light, one that we know is a long one. Another car is stopped in front of the villain. He’s not going anywhere. Suddenly my wife grabs something from the front seat divider, opens her door, and says, “Now he’sgoing to be sorry.”I rouse myself feebly— “Uh, honey, do you really think this is such a goo— ”But she’s out of the car, starts pounding on his window. I hurry over just in time to hear my wife say, “If you could do something that mean to another person, you probably need this,” in a venomous voice. She then flings something in the window. She returns to the car triumphant, just glorious.

“What did you throw in there!?”

She’s not talking yet. The light turns green, there’s no one behind us, and we just sit there. The thug’s car starts to blink a very sensible turn indicator, makes a slow turn, and heads down a side street into the dark at, like, five miles an hour. If it’s possible for a car to look ashamed, this car was doing it.

“Honey, what did you throw in there, tell me? ”

She allows herself a small, malicious grin.

“A grape lollipop.” I was awed by her savage passive aggressiveness— “You’re such a mean, awful human that something must have gone really wrong in your childhood, and maybe this lollipop will help correct that just a little.”That guy was going to think twice before screwing with us again. I swelled with pride and love.

Continue ReadingA Tale of Sweet Revenge from Robert Sapolsky’s Book: Behave

Peter Boghossian: Don’t Mistake Criticism of Ideas for Harassment of People

Professor Peter Boghossian of Portland State has been called a "bully" and accused of harassment by a colleague, Dr. Jennifer Ruth, professor of film studies and vice president of grievances and academic freedom at Portland State University. Ruth set forth her accusations in a paywalled article published by the Chronicle of Higher Education. Boghossian recently responded with a detailed letter to the editor at the same publication. Boghossian's response takes aim at a set of recurring problems, all of them related to Woke Ideology. These problems are currently exploding into view at many American universities. I am quoting Boghossian at length because his letter succinctly identifies Ruth's hypocrisy--her unwillingness to subject her ideas to meaningful criticism in a meaningfully public venue.

As Boghossian points out, this dispute exhibits multiple iterations of ironic hypocrisy in that the topic of Ruth's alleged distress is that she should be able to attack people and ideas, face no meaningful pushback, at an institution dedicated to dissecting and critiquing ideas, at which she serves as a VP of "grievances."  And she has chosen to protect her original accusations against Boghossian (and is colleague, Dr. Bruce Gilley) behind a paywalled article. Gilley has written his own response here. Intellectual dysfunction doesn't get any better than this.  Boghossian does a great job of setting forth some basic principles common sense at his publicly available article:

By claiming that criticism of published ideas and pedagogical models is harassment, and by creating institutional mechanisms that erect barriers to wholly appropriate critique, entire lines of scholarship become exempt from scrutiny. The academic process depends on having the freedom not only to state ideas but also to criticize other ideas. Limiting criticism in academia is tantamount to telling potters they can make all the clay pots they want so long as they never use clay. This is particularly disturbing because the claims in question — almost always about race, gender, and sexual orientation — are presented as knowledge and then used to influence public policy.

It is worth noting that criticism is framed as harassment only by academicians working in certain domains of thought that are in Critical Theory’s orbit. Civil engineers are not claiming that criticism of truss bridge design is harassment. Physicists are not claiming they’re being persecuted when their contributions to quantum theory are criticized. Philosophers are not claiming victimization when their arguments about free will are scrutinized. Claiming criticism is harassment occurs when a discipline’s North Star is not Truth, but ideology.

The internal rationale for calling criticism “harassment” is as simple as it is absurd: because these Critical Theories are believed to proceed from one’s “social position” as an occupant of some “identity category,” the person and her ideas are treated as though they overlap. They do not. Thinking they do is a dangerous mistake for anyone to make, not least institutions that are nominally devoted to Truth. The backbone of rational thought is separating people from ideas to protect the dignity of the former while being free to criticize the latter. . .

One reason I use Twitter is to inform the public of what is going on in university classrooms and in what counts these days as academic scholarship. Academics who disagree with my ideas also frequently criticize them on Twitter. This is of value for nonacademic onlookers who can compare our arguments. Extramural criticism is one of the few avenues left now that academic journals have become echo chambers that reinforce and promote specific ideological lenses. . .

There’s a dual irony in Ruth’s accusations. First, if there’s an institutionalized rule that criticism of academic work is harassment, how would Critical Theory, which is entirely predicated on criticizing existing systems, have emerged? It would not have.

For yet other perspectives on this dispute at Portland State, consider this article at DI and this article by Bruce Gilley: Silenced by the Sheep: Academia’s New Censorship.

Continue ReadingPeter Boghossian: Don’t Mistake Criticism of Ideas for Harassment of People

“The Nation” Attempts to Fight Racism with Racism

Have you had enough racism from the Woke yet? This article by a 42 year old graduate of Harvard Law School is courtesy of The Nation, a publication that brags that it was "founded by abolitionists in 1865." Here's an excerpt demonstrating what now passes for an attempt [see The Nation's About page] to "bring about a more democratic and equitable world":

I’ve said, here and elsewhere, that one of the principal benefits of the pandemic is how I’ve been able to exclude racism and whiteness generally from my day-to-day life. Over the past year, I have, of course, still had to interact with white people on Zoom or watch them on television or worry about whether they would succeed in reelecting a white-supremacist president. But white people aren’t in my face all of the time. I can, more or less, only deal with whiteness when I want to. Their cops aren’t hunting me when I drive through my neighborhood; their hang-ups aren’t bothering me (or threatening me) when I’m just trying to do some shopping.

That’s because I haven’t been driving or shopping in person. White people haven’t improved; I’ve just been able to limit my exposure to them. I’ve turned my house into Wakanda: a technically advanced, globally isolated home base from which I can pick and choose when and how often to interact with white people.

This article has been noticed by many on Twitter. One of those people is one of my favorite writers on Twitter, Thomas Chatterton Williams. His Tweet and the resulting comments are well worth a visit:

Continue Reading“The Nation” Attempts to Fight Racism with Racism