The Coddling Of The American Mind (Trigger Warning Article In The Atlantic...)

That was a hyperbolic joke pretty post pretty obviously

Yup, and with almost no real anti-Christmas 'warriors' to be found, when we actually look for them. Whereas you do actually get a significant number of young people self-identifying as a 'Social Justice Warrior' (as well as it being a label that gets applied to people by others)

xp to Mordy that one

That was a hyperbolic joke pretty post pretty obviously

FWIW I read that as a 50/50 could be serious could be hyperbolic post, but this being ILX I decided to assume deliberate hyperbole as that's a common style here

The conflation of criticism/statements of opposition etc with 'banning' and 'censorship' is one of the most corrosive things under the sun rn imo

I thought this thread bump would be about https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/06/lolas-story/524490/

The conflation of criticism/statements of opposition etc with 'banning' and 'censorship' is one of the most corrosive things under the sun rn imo

Yup

war on christmas stories are mostly an excuse for the news to promote buying things & competitive consumerism

if the internet wasn't here and we didn't have 24 hour news streaming instantly to every corner of the globe this type of stuff would probably just remain controversies for a dozen people. but we are here, the genie isn't going back in the bottle. i think there's definitely merit and conversations to be had around the actual issues whenever these things come up so long as it isn't just limited to "how can we label this discussion and ignore it" and airmchair sociology generalizing

"Her name was Eudocia Tomas Pulido. We called her Lola."

L-O-L-A Lola

At least three of the commenters are blaming 'Democrats' for this, which uh.

"Her name was Eudocia Tomas Pulido. We called her Lola."

L-O-L-A Lola

Read somewhere that "Lola" is "Grandmother" in Tagalog.

Honestly until a couple years ago I thought Walk on the Wild Side was just about, like... ya know, get out of your comfort zone, man! Then again I never know what songs are about.

Is Mountain High, River Deep about puppies and ragdolls and true love or did I read that one terribly wrong too?

gdamnit i meant River Deep, Mountain High.

I always thought The Who's "I'm a Boy" was a trans anthem and pretty neat. Is it phobic now?

Lou Reed had many bad qualities, but transphobia wasn't one of them.

"Holly" was an actual person

I am suspicious of this story because the first time I saw it was a link from Heat Street, which is a noxious right wing garbage fire.

if you want to heat up the street sometimes you have to burn the garbage

noxious right wing garbage fire or '80s syndicated action series about an ex-cop with a motorcycle?

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-campus-mob-came-for-meand-you-professor-could-be-next-1496187482

Any trustworthy pieces on this that aren't behind a paywall?

try this maybe?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2017/05/26/professor-told-hes-not-safe-on-campus-after-college-protests-at-evergreen-state-university-washington/

or this: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2017/05/30/escalating-debate-race-evergreen-state-students-demand-firing-professor

Thanks

So they're asking people to stay off campus on a day when there are classes scheduled? I feel like the articles mentioned don't get into the history and particulars of this tradition enough: past turnouts, current success. I googled up the Day of Absence and it looks like this all happened way back in April.

The university thing is more of a head fuck for me. It's like, really? You can't go talk to other people who want to learn stuff in another country? Really? The one place where you need to be free to express everything you possibly can. You want to tell these people you can't do that? And you think that's gonna help?

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/thom-yorke-breaks-silence-on-israel-controversy-w485142

not a particularly thoughtful argument from Thom there. this little snippet from Nigel is honestly more persuasive than anything Yorke says:

I think that it's true to say that the people you'd be denying [the music] are the people who would agree with you and don't necessarily agree with their government.

well he is kind of, as he says, "retarded"

yeah that one line from Nigel is pretty good, should have been the entire response. a lot of this feels like Thom getting into a hissy over being told what to do, rather than providing any nuance to their decision-making, indulging in the very black-and-white thing he is decrying.

That TESC controversy seems like a textbook situation where very strong emotions (mainly fear and anger) were already stirred up by off-campus events in the larger world, and due to a lack of appropriate nearby objects to fasten onto, they were vented upon the nearest facsimile of an enemy they could locate. You can't say the students are wrong to feel fear and anger, or their analysis of social ills is off-base. The disproportion is of size. The threat posed required so much less firepower than was trained on it.

But this is strictly an initial impression formed from the minimal information in mordy's linked articles, which distance lends it a simplicity that the participants probably would not recognize as true.

That is one of the points that Weinstein made on the Joe Rogan podcast yesterday. I haven't listened to the entire thing, and Rogan is full of his usual wide-eyed "PC gone wild" bluster that makes him so difficult to listen to, but Weinstein is given a chance to relate his account of the situation at length.

http://podcasts.joerogan.net/podcasts/bret-weinstein

The Evergreen State College controversy is the worst one of these things yet. Seriously, these protesters won't even abide a modicum of disagreement. Bullies.

Clearly the dangerous, paranoid fringe politics in this country is coming from the right not the left but I don't think they're unrelated. These kids are just the other side of the coin of right wingers who think Hillary Clinton is a human trafficker.

One thing that doesn't seem to get mentioned by the pro-Weinstein narrative is that this Day of Absence was entirely optional and required pre-registration.

http://www.portlandmercury.com/blogtown/2017/06/02/19057135/what-we-know-about-the-lockdown-and-unrest-at-washingtons-evergreen-state-college

another one of those great situations where if you take a side you're automatically lumped either with an old tone-deaf professor or a bunch of dumb brats

I think both extremes come from a rather rapid delegitimization of institutions. In that sense the decline of academia is the canary in the coal mine. It's possible this current legitimation crisis is being driven by new communications technology, or it's simply just the "terminal phase"of the present organization of capital, but it seems clear that is what's happening. We are in a moment in which the"legitimizing beliefs" which ground institutions are nowhere to found.

xp to Treeship

speaking of evergreen, looking forward to the inevitable softening of treeship's stance on this in about 20 posts

Another outcome of legitimation crisis is that every action we can take, from our social media postings to our consumer choices, is then overladen with "political" consequences. The whole of everyday life becomes politicized.

From Weinsteins original email:

If there was interest in a public presentation and discussion of race through a scientific/evolutionary lens, I would be quite willing to organize such an event (it is material I have taught in my own programs, and guest lectured on at Evergreen and elsewhere). Everyone would be equally welcome and encouraged to attend such a forum, irrespective of ethnicity, belief structure, native language, political leanings, or position at the college. My only requirement would be that people attend with an open mind, and a willingness to act in good faith.

Sad lol...

We are in a moment in which the"legitimizing beliefs" which ground institutions are nowhere to found.

http://peterlevine.ws/?p=18594

... when things are going well, institutions offer attractive deals to citizens that they would be very happy to accept today. For instance, if unionized manufacturing jobs paid decent wages, people would like unions. If local government agencies had enough resources to provide consistently decent services, people would like government. If political parties were driven by volunteers (instead of swamped by money that flows to for-profit consultants who work for entrepreneurial candidates), people would engage with parties. And if a metropolitan daily newspaper offered the best available way to get news, sports, classifieds, and comics, people would subscribe, the subscription money would pay for journalists, and readers would trust the news industry.

But there are reasons that these institutions are not prospering. They all have competitors or outright enemies.

In that sense the decline of academia is the canary in the coal mine.

yeah, if the canary had personally leaked the carbon monoxide

We are in a moment in which the"legitimizing beliefs" which ground institutions are nowhere to found

i think ryan is on to something here and i also think a lot of this is technologically driven. similar to how digital technology is making past physical media meaningless we are deconstructing a whole host of previously accepted beliefs. in the past these beliefs were largely defined at the top and dictated by authority. whether they were genuine or coherent in of themselves was sort of not really an issue since there was no easy way to challenge that hegemony. now thanks to tech not only can everyone have input, but the discussions are occurring faster and faster, giving everyone open access but also weakening that original belief.

Bill Maher had a guy from Google on his show last night talking the ethics of what they do, and kept asking "How do you ethically manipulated people's beliefs". this rubbed me the wrong way cos it felt like he was connotating "beliefs" with social media/identity culture signifiers. i am not sure they are the same thing, and i think assuming they are is a bit dangerous and self-glorifying on the part of the tech industry. ultimately there is always a political element to what you make public. what you believe is something in and of your own experience, and what you choose to share invariably presents a simplified/commodifiable/calculatable version of that infinitely nuanced and ultimately unspeakable personal experience. at some point we are going to have to get real with this lost spiritual element to modern consumer/social/political culture and own up that these are just market-friendly approximations. in the meantime the global dialog will continue to deconstruct so much human posturing into its core absurdities.

there's lots that i don't get about the drive to undermine institutions, but the thing i get the least is the belief by the opponents of these institutions that they _benefit_ from the destruction of mediating forces. i understand that they're opposed to mediation, but they really seem to believe that their form of ideological purity is the only possible form of ideological purity.

unions did not succeed simply because everybody rationally agreed that giving rights to workers was a social good. a large part of that decision was concluding that unions were a more palatable alternative to open war between labor and capital.

Right, but in each and every country the world over, capital only came to that conclusion after labor showed a willingness to wage open war.

If there was interest in a public presentation and discussion of race through a scientific/evolutionary lens,

Oh god. Why did he think this would be useful in this context?

confirmed old white guy

presumably as a biologist he wanted to spread the gospel of race not being biologically real, that being the kind of thing that scientists think settles all issues

"to put phenotype aside and reject this new formulation"

Yeah it wasn't going to be a eugenics lecture.

I doubt that was the intent.

And even if he actually wanted to say 'constructivism, yay!' then clearly he could have formulated that less 'bell curve'-ish.

k3vin k.
Posted: June 3, 2017 at 9:45:47 AM
another one of those great situations where if you take a side you're automatically lumped either with an old tone-deaf professor or a bunch of dumb brats

Best to take the brave position of worrying about how you'll look

I get the sense from the Rogan interview that he sees himself as speaking for science and reasoned discussion and against postmodernism. So there's another way to read his intent here. By proposing this lecture on the science of race, in a context where the issues are rather orthogonal, being about inclusivity and safety for people of colour, he then gets to claim that the students aren't interested in actually listening to his conclusions and just assumed that it would be about the biological difference between races. When really it was just an irrelevant topic.