Culture

Can We Contain The Contagion At Universities?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5zjckTqh730

There might still be time. We could still save the university. But we must act now!

Well, I say this, but I don’t believe it. I only say it because admitting hope eliminates charges of pessimism, a true American sin. Failing to acknowledge the possibility of Progress can lead to an expulsion from polite company.

(We did this before, but…)

“Say, Lot, where ya goin’?”

“Getting out while the getting’s good.”

“Oh, it can’t be all bad. You need to look on the bright side!”

“If you stay, you’ll soon be looking on the bright side, all right. As for me, I’m outta here.”

“It doesn’t help to exaggerate, Lot.”

We are doomed.

Before reading or listening to the following, picture the scene where Winston is being tortured in 1984. Remember that the goal of the torture is not to convince Winston that 2 + 2 = 5, or any sum. It is to teach him that whatever the State says is true is true because the State says it. Complete utter unthinking joyful willing submission is all the State will tolerate.

Because today 2 + 2 = 5, and tomorrow it could equal 4, you cannot hold in your mind any idea, for every idea is subject to change at any moment. You must become an unthinking animal in a progressive Utopia.

So much everybody who has read the book knows. What is less commented on is the solution to the problem Winston faced. We’ll save that until after you’ve watched the video or read the transcript. Here are highlights.

Setup: “On November 1, Shepherd, who teaches a ‘language use and writing skills component’ tutorial for a larger communications class at Wilfrid Laurier University in Ontario, Canada, played a clip in which University of Toronto professor, Jordan Peterson, debates Nicholas Matte over gender pronouns on the Canadian TV show, ‘The Agenda.'”

Result: “Shepherd was censured, and brought in for a meeting with course professor, Dr. Nathan Rambukkana, Dr. Herbert Pimlott, and Adria Joel, Acting Manager of Gendered Violence and Sexual Assault Prevention and Support at the Diversity and Equity Office.”

I repeat, Joel is the Acting Manager of Gendered Violence and Sexual Assault Prevention and Support at the Diversity and Equity Office.

Let me say that again. The Acting Manager of Gendered Violence and Sexual Assault Prevention and Support at the Diversity and Equity Office.

We are doomed.

RAMBUKKANA: Okay, so, I understand the position that you’re coming from, and your positionality, but the reality is that it has created a toxic climate for some of the students…

…one or multiple students who have come forward, saying that this is something that they were concerned about, and that it made them uncomfortable. You are perfectly welcome to your own opinions, but when you’re bringing it into the context of the classroom, that can become problematic, and that can become something that is – that creates an unsafe learning environment for students. [ellipses original]

No one in the history of mankind has had, or can have, a “positionality.” And it impossible—not unlikely: impossible—to create a “toxic climate” for students by exposing them to prounouns.

This person Rambukkana is the blitheringest of blithering idiots. But he/she/it, and I’ll settle on it, is also something else. It is also in charge.

JOEL: Can I mention the gendered violence, gender and sexual violence policy?

RAMBUKKANA: Yeah, please.

JOEL: So, under that, gendered violence doesn’t just include sexual violence, but it also includes targeting folks based on gender, so that includes transphobia, biphobia, homophobia. All those sorts of things are protected under the policy, and so those are things that Laurier has upheld as values as well as the Ontario Human Rights Code. And so those are things that we are responsible for, uh, not impacting our students in that way, and not spreading transphobia in that way.

That people in charge use words like transphobia, biphobia, homophobia in earnestness proves the coming doom. Why? Because these words are undefined! They are the left side of the equation 2 + 2. We do not know what the right hand side equals: only the State does, and it is always free to change its mind. What transphobia is today might not be what it is tomorrow. You must submit.

Now the, uh, solution. The solution to the problem of the university is to replace the university. Rather, remove it. You cannot stop employers from requiring “degrees”, and so you cannot stop kids from wanting to attend universities. And you cannot stop the indoctrination or mandated insanity at universities.

Thus, the only thing you can do is stop the universities. As I have said before, rocks from space are the best approach, but the treatment is radical. Gradual tweaks suggested by this fellow probably won’t work. And since none but the irascible few reading this blog would advocated actual rocks launched from actual space, the contagion festering at and emanating from universities cannot be, and will not be, stopped.

Thus, we are doomed.

Addendum See Bret Weinstein’s thread about the organized revolt against reality at Evergreen. “Because the academe matters, it would be difficult to overstate the hazard.”

Categories: Culture

17 replies »

  1. Your best chance is to get rational employers (that of course excludes ANY government position at any level) to refuse to hire college graduates and replace that requirement with a proficiency test relative to the job at hand. You have a better chance there because private sector employers already deal with stupid day after day and could use a solution.

    As for violence and sexual assault, there can be no sexual assault because there is no sex. There can be only assault. There cannot be sexual harrassment, only harrassment. There is no sex. So, the terms “sexual assault” and “sexual harrassment” must be eliminated, since they could trigger some snowflake.

    Yes, we are definately doomed. Not by these actions, but by the rational people sitting there doing nothing, sending their kids to public school, hiring college grads, etc. WE ARE KILLING OURSELVES by doing NOTHING. I have come to conclude this is what America wants. If a tax caused a revolution and nothing is happening today, America WANTS stupid, destructive fools destroying their country. There is NO other possible interpretation. None.

  2. One other thing: In using 1984, one presumes this will illustrate how bad things are. First, millenials think 1984 is a training manual for their lives. Second, we now know 1984 was achieved VOLUNTARILY. The people wanted to live like that. It wasn’t imposed, it was voted in and heartily supported. Using it to illustrate we are doomed only shows we volunteered to destroy ourselves. Not the state. US. Not a good way to talk people out of their chosen doom.

  3. I listened to the entire recording. It’s prickly eerie in its similarity to George Orwell’s “1984”. I mean, you wonder that the participants don’t seem to realize it.

    I also listened to Jordan Peterson to see what is all the fuss. I find him mild mannered, articulate, presenting a history of “postmodernism” starting with failed French marxism in the 1960’s and re-branded. He explains that their thinking, to use the word loosely, is that you must not legitimize your opponent by having a conversation. In essence it shares some cultish aspects which includes forbidding their members from debate or dialog with the enemy, and this obviously helps maintain purity of belief. It explains why I have never had a real dialog with anyone on the left, must less an SJW which is simply the extreme manifestation of it.

    It is unclear what an SJW believes other than once an enemy has been designated, he is the enemy. I use “he” purposefully. The other 69 genders get a pass.

    Jordan is unruffled by all this; he says that when he goes to an event, if they let him speak he makes a point. If hecklers don’t let him speak, he has still made his point, or more precisely, the hecklers make it for him.

  4. While respecting his defense of his liberty and challenges to socialism, I see Jordan formulating most of his other arguments out of whole cloth. I especially question his avid support Nietzsche, Freud, et al. In some sense, his defense of liberty is the gateway drug for a lot of nonsense.

  5. I am totally encouraged that an “intended” product of the “contagion” had the immunity against it.

    I think of my poor niece who is an “ally”, bemoans her privilege, speaks on intersectionality and in spite of it, saw the insanity of Evergreen. Whereas this young woman (like Weinstein) was totally blindsided, she did NOT back down.

    I was encouraged by both.

  6. They have to have someone to punish at all times. Having purged the conservatives, they will now proceed to devour themselves from the fringes in.
    Like watching piranha. Enjoy the show.

  7. Nate,

    Oddly enough, the Government (including state and local) is exempt Griggs decision, and can require IQ tests, civil service exams, and polygraph tests, etc. that private employers cannot.

    As for the larger subject. The University is supposes to expose students to ideas that unsettling and challenge their prejudice. We have managed to spin 180 degrees on that one over the years.

  8. The solution is to remove state support (federal and state) from so-called institutions of higher learning, stop student loans. Thereby only the very rich or very capable (who get need/merit based scholarships) will be able to attend. Also, remove publication count and grant support as bases for promotion. It is to be hoped that academe will return to the situation prior to World War II, with many fewer colleges. The financial squeeze will accomplish what good sense can’t.
    A corollary: local and state governments will fund trade schools as alternatives to present-day secondary schools.

  9. I share the hopeful pessimism of Jonathan Haidt and his co-conspirators at heterodoxacademy.org —

    https://heterodoxacademy.org/2016/10/21/one-telos-truth-or-social-justice/

    particularly the section on “Schism”.

    (I am too lazy to chase down the proper reference, but I believe it was C.S. Lewis who pointed out that hopeful pessimism is the only appropriate attitude for a Christian, to wit: (1) All Things Human, left to themselves, will, by virtue of the Fallen-ness of Human Nature, tend to go to Hell; but (2) God is Merciful, and we may Hope that He will rescue us.)

  10. You don’t need aptitude tests.

    First, rewrite your job descriptions. Barring regulatory requirements, do not include education, training, experience, or credentials. Rather, provide a list of the objectives you will want your new hire to meet in his first six months.

    Having done so, you can replace the aptitude test with a retrospective review of the applicant’s greatest work achievements, and then ask how he’d deal with one of the problems that will fall on the person you’re going to hire. Barring regulatory requirements, do not concern yourself with his education, training, or credentials. Lou Adler has written extensively on this; see his “Complete Guide to Hiring and Getting Hired” or this linkedin article: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20140425000037-15454-the-two-question-performance-based-interview-for-assessing-anyone-for-any-job/

  11. @Bob If universities banned private testing to bolster their position, how much chance do you have of undermining their government funding?

    The University will use all legal means to ensure its survival. There is no way around it, only through it. America is a theocracy of crypto-calvinism, and the universities are its seminaries. The only way to defeat them is by taking them over, or destroying their power. That will require a fundamental shift of power within the government.

  12. ” Acting Manager of Gendered Violence and Sexual Assault Prevention and Support at the Diversity and Equity Office. ”

    Please tell me someone made this it up……..

  13. These are the same universities that charge so much for an education that students won’t be able to pay back their student loans? Why do you want to save such people? Students pay through the nose so they can call everybody racist, white supremacist and whatnot.

    If there’s a market for people calling other people racist in exchange for 50.000 dollars per year, you get people that will be called racist, while pocketing dollars by the bucketload.

  14. Tar. Feathers. Rope. Lamp posts. Walls. Blindfolds. Stakes. Firewood. Garlic. Holy water. Torches. Pitchforks.

    Some assembly required.

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