Culture war 2.0
Peter Boghossian writes:
The correspondence theory of truth basically states that objective truth exists and we can know something about it through evidence and reason…
In Culture War 2.0 the correspondence theory of truth—with its commitment to the idea that there are better and worse ways to come to knowledge about an objectively knowable world—is no longer common ground. For those on one side of this latest fight, the correspondence theory of truth has been replaced with more subjective ways of knowing. But this is not merely a turn away from objectivity to subjectivity. Culture War 2.0 is marked by one side’s turn toward understanding knowledge as determined by identity markers like race, gender, disability status, and sexual orientation. And—so the theory goes—the more “oppression variables” comprise one’s identity, the clearer one’s understanding of reality becomes.
So in the most recent iteration of culture wars, it isn’t just the idea that truth is relative. It’s that some truths – those stated by groups defined as oppressed – are much truthier than other truths, or at least much more worthy of respect and even of action.
Those people who accept the correspondence theory of truth (even though they may not know it by name) agree on the traditional rules of engagement (discourse, debate, dialogue) and do not view intersectionality as a necessary model for getting to the truth…These individuals are on one side of Culture War 2.0, and they include many liberal atheists and conservative Christians.
Those on the other side of 2.0 do not subscribe to the correspondence theory of truth, believe speech should be shut down if it’s hurtful or potentially harmful, and think intersectional, transformative approaches are necessary to refashion systems. These people are also predominantly atheists and Christians: intersectional “woke” atheists and intersectional “woke” Christians.
As a point of contact, I am a non-intersectional, liberal atheist. If a conservative Christian believes Jesus walked on water—and believes this either is or is not true for everyone regardless of race or gender—and if she values discourse and adheres to basic rules of engagement, then she is closer to my worldview than an atheist who believes race and gender play a role in determining objective truth and that her opponents should not be allowed to air what she considers harmful views.
Many conservative Christians understand this intuitively. So do many liberal atheists. And that’s what makes this Great Realignment of Culture War 2.0 so bizarre. It’s no longer liberals and atheists versus conservatives and Christians. It’s some atheists aligning with some Christians and other atheists aligning with other Christians. And each, in turn, believes that what’s at stake is no less than the future of Western Civilization. How this will play out depends on who wins Culture War 2.0.
It’s true that this doesn’t break down into strict divisions between Christians (or even believers) and atheists. But why should it? And what about all the agnostics in the world? Actually, those who believe intersectionality is the way to truth (or who pretend to think that) are political leftists whatever their religious beliefs may be. And although one can easily find some religious people among the leftists, the irreligious are more numerous on the left than the right (you can see how the numbers shape up here).
Religion vs. no religion is hardly the only divide in the culture wars. There’s age, sex, race, and level of education – with the college-educated more inclined these days to believe the “intersectionality” standard for truth.
Which is odd, because it used to be that universities in particular valued logic and were dedicated to the pursuit of objective truth. Back then, if professors acknowledged that the whole truth and nothing but the truth might be unknowable in many arenas, they nevertheless felt that we needed to strive to come as close as we can to the truth.
And yet now it is the university in particular that has backed away from such notions – which are felt to be racist, sexist, Westernist (is that a word?), and therefore an affront to the diversity which now seems to be the university’s most cherished and desired goal.
Diversity (i.e. color judgment) breeds adversity.
Individuals are characterized by a constellation of attributes. Classes of individuals form around majority correlations and alignments.
Objective truth exists with variable degree (e.g. correlation) in a limited frame of reference (i.e. scientific logical domain).
A bit more from the Daryl Davis interview I mentioned in the Black Republicans topic, which seems apropos:
spiked: Why is engaging people in dialogue preferable to bans and censorship?
Davis: It’s always stronger when someone chooses to change their mind rather than when they are forced to do it. For example, everyone knows about Rosa Parks and the bus incident. After people had boycotted the bus system for a year, a new law was passed that allowed blacks to sit anywhere on the bus. That was important but it did not yet change the minds of many of the white passengers. The law can compel behaviour, but the law cannot compel feeling. It was still necessary for white people to come to the conclusion that black people were okay and that they didn’t mind sitting next to them.
https://www.spiked-online.com/2019/11/15/why-i-befriended-the-kkk/
________________________________________________
A big reason I remain optimistic is that the postmodern intersectionalists have embraced the “hate speech” refusal to dialogue, which IMO betrays an accurate assessment they can’t carry the day with legitimate debate and one-on-one encounters (as our good man Daryl Davis exemplifies).
Instead our PoMo friends insist they can use the law to compel feeling. Or at least the appearance thereof.
Back in 80s San Francisco I knew a gay, black poet/actor, Bernard, who was roommates with a good poet friend of mine.
My friend invited me to a Thanksgiving dinner at their Noe Valley apartment. I showed up in my then usual poet-hacker-prole garb — jeans, boots but a nice shirt for the occasion. Bernard and his suave black friends were all dressed to the nines, sipping cocktails. Bernard turned up his nose and asked if I had just arrived from a hike.
Some years later Bernard had a successful group show in San Francisco titled “Afro PoMo Homos” — black, postmodern homosexuals. He parlayed that into an academic career at Hampshire College:
https://www.hampshire.edu/faculty/djola-branner
So I was class-shamed by a gay black, who got a great career out of being a gay black. Reason #566 that I don’t want to hear another goddamn thing about microaggressions from gays or blacks or professors.
As I don’t know what name to attribute to the advocates of intersectionalism (together with whatever other elements of their theory of verity are held necessary by them — if they hold any account of verity at all) is it fair or reasonable to term their organizing notion as the DeBaCoH, a shorthand standing for the “Degenerate Bastard Child of Historicism“?
I choose that name only because that’s what the flippy gizmo looks like, on the whole. But again, could be I’m mistaken regarding the parentage here. Anyone know better? Or have other suggestions?
DeBaCoH
sdferr: That’s a sub-neighborhood in NYC, isn’t it?
heh. Could be. Like a neighborhood basement under the basement which is under the basement in the deepest subway in the city.
“Culture War 2.0 is marked by one side’s turn toward understanding knowledge as determined by identity markers like race, gender, disability status, and sexual orientation. And—so the theory goes—the more “oppression variables” comprise one’s identity, the clearer one’s understanding of reality becomes.”
I was scolded many times over the last several years by faculty in the humanities/social sciences about how I was suppressing black/feminist physics by only teaching physics from old white men. I asked how could that physics be any different. They replied that the truths are different. These idiots actually think that if a black woman declares an object dropped from a building on earth accelerates at 2 m/s2, that we all have to believe her as her sex/race make her more closely aligned with the truth than that from an old, dead, white guy who said it was 9.8m/s2 and has been measured countless times probably by white people.
Good luck building a bridge or flying in an airplane with that “truth”.
Good luck building a bridge or flying in an airplane with that “truth”.
You mean like that pedestrian bridge over the roadway in Florida that collapsed? You have to wonder how anybody could screw up such a simple job. You see pedestrian bridges over roadways all over the place so building one that doesn’t collapse can’t be too difficult.
“those who believe intersectionality is the way to truth” are doomed to disappointment. Reality always has the last say.
However, those who advocate intersectional truth are to one degree of another in denial of reality. People in denial of reality are in fact incapable of exercising the voting franchise in a responsible manner. That BTW, includes Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, who are either mendacious liars or deluded.
Why the generic “she”? The writer is too deferential to the PC language police.
Here is another change story for neo and from the old part of the culture war
All of these were part of the global culture war that set the foundation for today
Freda Utley, who was very very well known… enough that Ronald Reagan had comments about her.. She was a change story unexamined..
Bella Dodd, another change story from Bronx NY
Now i introduce Benjamin Gitlow, a change story from the early part of the culture wars in the USA
yes… advocating communism was once against the law…
i even took the time here to note and point out when the last such law was removed!!!
which i guess removal made it easier to have Culture war 2.0
He was a revolutionist, and he insisted that Darrow defend him on the sole ground of the ‘right of revolution.’
which now is normed as us having a right to such, as you can see by the groups that back the groups using the kids.. if you read these things you find tons of the catch phrases and other items that people like Obama used as a kind of duping delight to admit in front of you what you did not know was even an admission!!!!!! A kind of “look at those ignorant rubes” thing..
he became publisher to influence… even went to visit and talk to Stalin..
a real revolutionary….
but something strange happened on the way to revolution…
Gitlow basically debated Stalin at the podium of the supreme soviet..
and for opposing democracy (consensus)..
for this is what happens to those who become part of the culture war!!!
they rise and fall (on their swords) based on whether they continue with the consensus
Gitlow was one of the chief organizers of the left in the United States.You could say he was one of the Founding Fathers of the so-called “progressive movement.” As such he understood how the communist organization functioned in America — behind the scenes. He knew the strategic thinking of the Comintern. He knew everything the communists were doing in those days.
and like the others mentioned… you probably never heard of him despite it..
like neer hearing about will munzenberg and how he gave our kids the superiority attitude!
and such goes history… of course, there is tons more… always tons more
Neo: in the most recent iteration of culture wars, it isn’t just the idea that truth is relative. It’s that some truths – those stated by groups defined as oppressed – are much truthier than other truths
Maybe you see it as the most recent iteration… but its foundational from way back to the united fronts movement… ie. those groups defined as oppressed are the classic fronts..
this point goes all the way back to Marx and Charles Pierce ideas on Pragmatism…taken up by William James and John Dewey.. the latter of which created our soviet style unified school system from copying that system
Were women oppressed? Not really in the US but the truth was useful in moving women into industry so they could be taxed and their children inculcated to the new pragmatism, and taking credit for hastening what was going on anyway claiming it would not have happened without them.
the whole movement once taken over was geared to that as the other fronts of race, and homosexuality and more..
but this really influenced people like WVO Quine, Hilary Putnam, and Richard Rorty – all names probably unknown to most as well.
while these are better known: Martin Heidegger, Wilfrid Sellars, and Jacques Derrida..
All facts, even the most simple ones, are disreputable. Fact-talk, being wedded to that-clauses, is entirely parasitic on truth-talk. Facts are too much like truth bearers. Facts are fictions, spurious sentence-like slices of reality, “projected from true sentences for the sake of correspondence” — WVO Quine
Neopragmatism – It repudiates the notions of universal truth, epistemological foundationalism, representationalism, and epistemic objectivity. It is a nominalist approach that denies that natural kinds and linguistic entities have substantive ontological implications.
i cant go on, it would be way to long, too much people dont know as this has gone on so long, they cant see that far back. It takes that long for such a thing to be embedded to the point where nothing but death and its absence during change can change it. You could not convince a Aztec by logic that sacrifice would be a bad thing.
The theory of knowledge of Marx and Engels started from the materialist premise that all knowledge is derived from the senses. But against the mechanist view that derives knowledge exclusively from given sense impressions, they stressed the dialectical development of human knowledge, socially acquired in the course of practical activity. Individuals can gain knowledge of things only through their practical interaction with those things, framing their ideas corresponding to their practice; and social practice alone provides the test of the correspondence of idea with reality—i.e., of truth.
This theory of knowledge is opposed equally to the subjective idealism according to which individuals can know only sensible appearances while things-in-themselves are elusive, and to the objective idealism according to which individuals can know supersensible reality by pure intuition or thought, independent of sense. — Brittanica, Dialectical Materialism..
no more… no more…
AG Barr addressed the Federalist Society this afternoon. Josh Blackman kindly made a running thread of Barr’s remarks. That thread has been reduced to Threadreaderapp form: Attorney General Barr to give the 15th Annual Olson Lecture #FedSoc2019
It’s a good read. Do yourself the favor.
Yes, he got some spiffy new threads and chose a great new name… but did Aniken Skywalker truly cease to exist?
Video of Barr’s address on YouTube here: https://youtu.be/BhjD–oEsGQ
Begins about 19:00 in.
I was scolded many times over the last several years by faculty in the humanities/social sciences about how I was suppressing black/feminist physics by only teaching physics from old white men.
physicsguy: I believe it, not that you require my corroboration, and I share your horror.
I walk around my Uni Engineering building and see a number of prof doors festooned with “Diversity is Keen!” sort of posters. The advertised speakers are 50-50 male-female, though the real STEM m/f ratio of course is quite lopsided towards men for unmysterious reasons.
Today I noticed we also have a professor “Yin Yang” (no joke). I didn’t care to inquire as to the sex or gender flavor.
Boy. I really dread this. I have to choose a minor and I would like to go for something Lit — make use of all those fervent hours sipping from the fountain of great Western literature — but my brain goes to sleep, then jolts into high alert, when I read some of the course descriptions which veer into “Race, Class and Gender in the 19th-Century Novel.”
So, now I know why I think the way I do. I believe that objective truth exists, and that we can know something about it through evidence and reason. I understand, especially when we venture into philosophy and religion, that not all people who also believe in objective truth agree with me. I respect those people. The natural world is more easy to investigate, and those who accept objective truth should be ready to accept the evidence and where it leads. I have a much harder time respecting people who simply refuse to look at evidence in the natural realm.
“Culture War 2.0 is marked by one side’s turn toward understanding knowledge as determined by identity markers like race, gender, disability status, and sexual orientation.”
Quite similar to the Nazi view that there were such things as “Aryan science” and “Jewish science”, and “Aryan mathematics” and “Jewish mathematics.”
Maybe it’s a shame that Dead White European Males got to the low-hanging fruit of modern science first and staked their claims. No one is going to invent calculus or relativity today and get credit.
I wouldn’t say it was because they were White European Males (much less Dead) but they were and no one else is going to run those Four-Minute Miles again, though lots of other people can today.
Out in flyover country if you asked a vast majority of people what is “intersectionality” the response would be what the hell is intersectionality. Normal people don’t think that way, they don’t view people that way. They view them as individuals.
The so called intellectuals seem pompous and devoid of any trace of common sense to me. From my perspective, if you can’t grow food or slaughter a hog or shoot a deer or repair your roof; don’t mention intersectionality in my presence unless you are ready to be considered a fool. And believe me, I will call you a fool.
This is making Ayn Rand sound extremely prescient. She even called her philosophy, Objectivism.
Schrodinger’s Cat and Quantum Physics not withstanding, for human affairs there is an objective truth that doesn’t change regardless of what you or I think about it. The better we all understand that truth, the better equipped we will all be to navigate together this adventure called Civilization.
Those who deny this may win some battles, but they can never win the war. They can only destroy themselves and everyone around them. Eventually, this foolish will pass.
Alchemy.
Lysenkoism.
“La plus ca change…”
“if you read these things you find tons of the catch phrases and other items that people like Obama used as a kind of duping delight to admit in front of you what you did not know was even an admission!!!!!! ” — Artfldgr
I vaguely recall reading some pundit making that point, although I can’t remember the details. I do believe it is probably true, as Obama frequently seemed to be making some kind of in-joke in his comments.
From Tablet – two articles that are related to the topic.
https://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/294061/imagined-communities
https://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-arts-and-culture/293686/the-religion-of-liberal-democracy
sdferr on November 15, 2019 at 6:43 pm said:
AG Barr addressed the Federalist Society this afternoon. Josh Blackman kindly made a running thread of Barr’s remarks. That thread has been reduced to Threadreaderapp form: Attorney General Barr to give the 15th Annual Olson Lecture #FedSoc2019
It’s a good read. Do yourself the favor.
* * *
Excellent read indeed.
The Democrats will almost certainly demand that Barr recuse himself from all aspects of law enforcement, as he has demonstrated an explicit bias in favor of enforcing the laws of the country.
Anybody else remember the furor caused by Schlesinger’s “The Imperial Presidency” back in 1974? Looks like Congress and the Courts have “fixed” that — for Republican presidents, anyway.
This is making Ayn Rand sound extremely prescient. She even called her philosophy, Objectivism.
Roy Nathanson: When I read “Atlas Shrugged” in 1971 I thought she had her points, but made them in an overly broad, over-the-top way.
Then Obama was elected.
“Schrodinger’s Cat and Quantum Physics not withstanding, for human affairs there is an objective truth….”
A bit of a nick pick here…actually QM is very objective. The popular version misrepresents what QM is all about. QM predicts very objective outcomes that are verifiable. Where it differs from Newtonian Mechanics is that those outcomes are tied to a probability. For example, for a particular physical situation say QM predicts that 70% result A will happen, and 30% result B will happen. You go into the laboratory and sure enough A shows up 70% and B 30% .
More definitive objective evidence is that fact that all of you are communicating here via smart phone or computer; all based on modern solid state physics which is all based on QM coupled with Maxwell’s equations. Another piece of evidence: lasers which are now ubiquitous are possible only through the development of quantum statistical mechanics…the list could go on and on.
The 60s sexual revolution promoted sexual promiscuity as “good”, but the reality is that promiscuity is bad for society. It is a Big Lie that sexual freedom is good — because altho it feels good to the individuals at the time, divorce and infidelity are sub-optimal for the raising of children.
The best societies are those which optimize the situations for their children. As a Libertarian, I supported & enjoyed living the idea of “responsible promiscuity”. This can avoid unwanted pregnancies, which are among the worst outcomes of promiscuity, but there always at least some hurt feelings in breakups, and more so after the relationship has turned sexual.
Ayn and her “Randroid” Objectivists were usually against the Libertarian Party, and uselessness, despite so many Libs holding her and most of her ideas up as an idol.
She cheated on her husband with her quite younger lover, Nathaniel Brandon, a popular and successful psychiatrist, who was married to Barbara Brandon, who wrote a good book about their relations.
My paraphrase takeaway – “All smart people are smart enough to lie to themselves in ways that they believe.” Ayn & Nathaniel, arguably geniuses both, were able to lie to themselves about the rational correctness of their relations. Rand more about “The Virtue of Selfishness”, Brandon more about Self Esteem.
Both lying to themselves at the time.
Rationalization – not really the truth.
Good obit interview about Nathaniel from 2014
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/nathaniel-branden-1930-20_b_6265196?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly9kdWNrZHVja2dvLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAK5Q0qOzuDbJayBxOWVBu8ev9cMZf7cP-IlyBse0dKBqcwimdVShdkwAvYhrAwO5x6iWTtCW2BaCBsXhaBi1EPExEgrOouy7JLvfNyQLlSGFRzDkeneMr3TQ3mbY6O-Wm9TqeIKlttSNpBA4mfq2BCf5dgRJULWVpwjxi2S2vYlo
AG Barr’s Barbara K. Olson Memorial Lecture text (DoJ website): Remarks as Prepared for Delivery
[…]
The correspondence theory of truth….
“Well, EVERYBODY KNOWS….”
Personal truth
Alternative truth
“According to award winning columnist at the New York Times…”
The odds are..
“According to published professor at University of Wasamatta U…
Latest abstract of reports by “experts” indicate that (fill in the blank) MAY need several years of more necessarily expensive “study”…
Six Blind Men and the Elephant.
The Emperor’s New Clothes
The Telephone Game has NEVER served “The Truth” well.
I had a very disheartening conversation a while back with a woman, a very intelligent and capable woman in her mid or late 30s, about postmodernism. The great thing about it, she said, is that it acknowledges a multiplicity of truths, that everyone has a different truth based on their experiences etc. I replied that to say we all see one reality in different ways is not the same thing as saying that we all see different realities. She didn’t seem to see the distinction.
Physicsguy,
Thanks for acknowledging that it was a quibble. I know that the Standard Model, no matter how quarky (see what I did there?) has held up very well over time. My point was that, on a subatomic level, “truth” really is altered by observation.
Tom Grey,
If sexual promiscuity was your only takeaway from Ayn Rand, you really missed the main points.
And, by the way, human custom are endless and endlessly changing according to circumstances and fashion. I do agree that the principal goal is to provide stability for the raising of children. But, that problem has had, and does have, multiple solutions. Your solution and customs are not natural laws of the universe.
David Foster on November 15, 2019 at 9:15 pm said: Quite similar to the Nazi view that there were such things as “Aryan science” and “Jewish science”, and “Aryan mathematics” and “Jewish mathematics.”
And where did THAT LEAD TO? Been saying invest in ovens if your not going to push back..
i wasnt being ‘hyperbolic’, i was being honest to people who were not cognisant of how close we are to that PROCESS
which is why i kept hammering away to learn the process to learn what it was and what happened
and ignore the characatures that are easy to look at but tell you abso-f*king-lutely nothing about process
we are almost fully nazified… making the mistake that the race issue was the key issue
when the race issue is being used to hide its a culture issue..
jews, according to engels, are hidebound… they would rather die than change
the ‘racist’ slavs as Trotsky coined the term for, did not want to become russ, but stay slavs
the fly over people do not want to change their culture to become new socialist man/woman
the idea that race is color is an american thing that makes the essence of the actual thing, remain hidden
and like Nazi Germany, we are going to kill people soon, as i explained dozens of times before
good people will kill people for only one thing – being cheated or believing they were cheated or wronged
this goes back to before humans were humans at all
IF we understood these essentials, we would see things clearly, regardless of what gilt they put on it
or what disguise it took on to cover and confuse…
but we resist, because of ego, ego forbids the feminists from saying they been cheated
and all the articles written by women against it, and having it all, are saying women got a raw deal
ie. they been cheated…
so there is another psychological component here besides being cheated making people wiling to kill
yes, that is true when they did not have any emotional investment, life change and such to it like a con game
when they DO, they almost would rather have the loss that hides the con than admit the con and be SHAMED
welcome to the real game..
David Foster gets an AAA+ from me for that insight and truth
Here is another facet of the game, and its played as a psychological war
which we dont want to recognize is a war, because we in the west value community and togetherness, and all manner of nice things (as we see)
and that when we stop doing that, we start being things we dont like
so we will put our head in the lions mouth, just to prove its not dangerous
part of this process is to use a diamond to cut a diamond
[so, did feminism help women. YES… it helped them out of their families, to change the culture, so that the elite who are dark like this, can use them for sex and dispose of them at will. It did NOT release them from being oppressed, it released them from the protection of their homes, their families, and the surrounding culture, and regressed them back to the era when they wre truly nothings to be used, abused, and have zero recourse!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! oh, and the men tring to stop that, are evil… remember that! they are going to take away all the fun that being that can bring, right?]
This is using one culture to smash another culture, and destroy its tenets till the people that remain, care about nothing, and will resist nothing as they dont have a reason… ie. they become slaves without limits… the kind that can be ordered to put their fellow people into camps, or shoot protestors, and perhaps sterilize women without them knowing it (recently in the news), or kill their own children rather than toss them into ovens and so negate the subject to be angry at (which was Hitlers ‘mistake’ in his attempt to fulfill the prophecy of Engels in the Magyar struggle)
The Fronts are allowed to act and do things, while the prior culture is pushed down
blacks and race groups are allowed to beat up the Jews/whites
(Jews are not safe as a protected class, not at all, they just think they are so that they dont act and use their brains to stop things or help the opposition. ie. they are made impotent by that)
the nude swim with a transsexual is a way of smashing the moors that children matter and should not be toys of adults… after all, there are some like epstein who want to enjoy their “little fishes”.
[10 points bonus if anyone can point out what that little fishes reference is about!!]
the ruling class is the class in this game which will have no limits (again)
since the revolutions that put people in charge over their own fates
the ruling classes have been the MOST oppressed, and that is who they are actually referring to when they speech and say, we will end oppression (of the elite who serve the people now)
yes, we will end the limits of sex with children so that once again, the ruling class can enjoy that naughty pleasure… we will remove the aprobation from murder and killing so that the ruling class are free to breed and domesticate the under menchen… the ruling class may even want to bath in blood literally, as they have done before… and the sadistic among them feel most oppressed that they cant enjoy a good murder while having orgasm a very naughty pleasure…
ALL these things are going to be ‘allowed’ again soon
if we as a populace realized it… how hard would we push back on?
the youth are not smart enough to do this, so they are always taking advantage of them in this way to impose the new order as a lie that benefits them, and claim that restrictions put on by the old, are evil and bad..
but once those restrictions are gone… why not have sex with a 6 year old?
even the hate being misdirected to Islam over this serves to use the diamond to cut that diamond.. diamonds cut each other never one cuts another and remains unchanged.
[my mind was never this dark till it been tainted by the kind of people that above refers to. until someone shoots at you to kill you, you might not believe they even willing to kill you. even worse, you wont believe that not only are they willing to kill you, but that slow torture and having fun doing that, is even better in their minds – and that your refusal to be their party subject is really a problem for them]
physicsguy on November 16, 2019 at 8:23 am said: A bit of a nick pick here
and one back at you..
its NIT pick, not nick pick
pick nits. look for and criticize small or insignificant faults or errors. The image here is of the painstaking removal of tiny parasitic nits (lice or lice eggs) from someone’s hair. The phrase originated in the mid 20th century, chiefly in North American usage. See also: nit, pick.
it also implies that a person doing it has no manners to let the little things pass
🙂
She cheated on her husband with her quite younger lover, Nathaniel Brandon, a popular and successful psychiatrist, who was married to Barbara Brandon, who wrote a good book about their relations.
she didnt..
they had an open relationship… like many who are elite
see hellfire club, trapeze club, killing kittens…
[even Plato’s retreat and a few others]
even Ben Franklyn attended the original hellfire club in England
and the one in ny was a different thing entirely, and open to the general public
Roy, sexual promiscuity was my main argument against Rand, in practice, while I was and often continue to advocate much of her virtuous selfishness and especially anti-busy-bodyness of the do-gooders, especially in economics.
I certainly DO claim promiscuity is negative, both among American blacks (some 70% of kids being raised without their fathers being married to their mothers) and even in big welfare (but NOT socialist) Sweden.
You claim the raising kids problem has multiple solutions — but fail to quite claim that all are optimal.
It has one optimal social solution – a society that pushes with laws & customs to maximize the number of non-abusive child-years that kids are raised with married parents; with specific mitigation support for the children of irresponsible parents.
This solution means there are more kids in unhappy marriages, and more shame for women with kids w/o husbands, which we could call a ‘bad-positive’. But far fewer kids being raised by a single parent, the ‘bad-negative’.
The sexually selfish, Randian (& Heinlein, another Lib hero, see Moon is a Harsh Mistress) idea of multiple partners came along with The Pill, as well as abortion, to support and promote sex w/o having unwanted kids.
Fail.
70% of black kids, now about 30% of white kids — how many sub-optimal kid raising families do there have to be in America before you’d think there are too many to accept promiscuity as one of “multiple solutions”?
This was a post about “the Truth”. On a blog by one who changed from Leftist to Righest/Open Truth. It might be that there multiple optimal solutions, including one supporting promiscuity, but I don’t believe it nor see data for it.
I used to support promiscuity, but the Truth, in data numbers, like the number of kids being raised outside of marriage, and the higher number of problems those kids have growing up, those statistical facts have had me change to now oppose promiscuity. Along with a lot of other coercive stuff I continue to oppose.
Monogamous morality is turning out to be socially optimal, as measured in outputs captured by (very imperfect) “social scientists”. But tho we have trouble seeing, or measuring, what is optimal, it is still there. Like truth.
After Barbara found out about Nathaniel’s cheating, not before, the four of them agreed it would be “open”, allowing Ayn and Nathaniel to sleep together without divorce from Frank (Ayn’s husband, financially dependent on her) nor Barbara.
JudgyBitch helpfully explains why men are “privileged”
https://www.bitchute.com/embed/eBNhMFXYsiIF/
bonus link:
https://www.avoiceformen.com/gynocentrism/i-love-my-female-privilege
😉
[Ayn Rand] cheated on her husband with her quite younger lover, Nathaniel Brandon, a popular and successful psychiatrist, who was married to Barbara Brandon, who wrote a good book about their relations.
Tom Grey: I read Barbara Branden’s book and recommend it. Coincidentally I picked up Nathaniel Branden’s version, “Judgment Day” from a free box a week ago.
I don’t particularly like Ayn Rand or her movement, but they make for a fascinating chapter in the crazy quilt story of America.
BTW, the tv movie, “The Passion of Ayn Rand”(based on Barbara Branden’s book) with Helen Mirren as Rand and Peter Fonda as her husband, Frank O’Connor, is surprisingly good. Anyone who thinks Peter Fonda couldn’t act, because he was an obnoxious sixties dick, only got the second part right.
RIP, Peter Fonda, (August 16, 2019).
If we could somehow see, closeup, quarks, leptons, and bosons, etc.—all the fundamental particles of physics and all their waves and wave functions—and by this intimate experience begin to realize how everything in the universe is jiggling and moving about entangled in several places simultaneously, and is here and there all at once and is always probabilistic…then, we might not use words like truth and reality and certainty and knowledge of fact. We would use other concepts.
Has anyone else found it weird that Dr. Nathaniel Branden, founder of the self-esteem movement and a disciple of Ayn Rand, unleashed one of the least helpful memes, self-esteem, of popular psychology?
On paper, self-esteem sounds good. In practice, it leads to participation trophies and non-stop coddling. (Granted, that’s not exactly what Branden had in mind.)
I think pop psych stars should go back to recommending LSD.
https://amgreatness.com/2019/11/15/the-lefts-unholy-trinity-of-ideologies/
“While examining and confronting the roots of the Left’s unholy trinity of ideologies, a curious insight occurred to me: my father never thought I’d read one of the three books* and agree with any of them. He believed American exceptionalism was a self-evident truth even a 12-year-old would see. I did.
Ironically, in its perverse way, the Left agrees. This is why the Left strains to impose upon our free people a “cancel culture”; unconstitutional bans on “hate speech” (i.e., anything with which the Left disagrees); the campus silencing of conservative views and the creation of “safe spaces” from the free exchange of dissenting opinions; and, yes, relegating the books of dead white males down the memory hole—with the exceptions of The Communist Manifesto and other inked screeds of similarly loathsome ilk.” – Thaddeus McCotter
RTWT
*Mein Kampf, Communist Manifesto, Alfred Steinberg’s The Bosses, about corrupt Democrat and Republican urban political machines in early 20th-century America.
Educators, like almost every other human being on earth, mostly care about money. They realize they have very sweet gigs.
So they will do or say ANYTHING that allows them to extort more funds – and keep the cash for themselves – from productive taxpayers. Even if it is in total opposition of what is supposed to be the actual purpose of their lives.
For example: administrators and tenured professors have no problem at all paying teaching adjuncts what works out to be considerably less than $15/hour. Much more money for them isn’t it?
Pursuit of money is so ingrained in humanity that any who totally renounce it, and actually live that way, are world famous. Perhaps one-in-a-billion.
Mother Teresa is an example.
Mac on November 16, 2019 at 10:12 am said:
I had a very disheartening conversation a while back with a woman, a very intelligent and capable woman in her mid or late 30s, about postmodernism. The great thing about it, she said, is that it acknowledges a multiplicity of truths, that everyone has a different truth based on their experiences etc. I replied that to say we all see one reality in different ways is not the same thing as saying that we all see different realities. She didn’t seem to see the distinction.
* * *
Indeed.
It’s a continuing observation about the Left and Democrats in general (maybe some conservatives believe likewise, but the odds are lower — see Barr below).
https://www.thenewneo.com/2019/08/13/conspiracy-conspiracy-whos-got-the-conspiracy/#comment-2450318
AesopFan on August 14, 2019 at 10:15 am said:
“it is hard to believe that anything that many of these people say—particularly about some very controversial issue—is actually what really happened, otherwise known as the the “truth.” “– Snow
Maybe they just prefer their own truth over facts.
* * *
https://www.thenewneo.com/2019/08/10/bidens-gaffe-is-the-lefts-truth/
“We choose unity over division. We choose science over fiction. We choose truth over facts.” – Biden
“In light of what I’ve already written here, that sentence follows as the day follows night. The left does choose “truth over facts.” After all, isn’t that what “a higher truth” is about? Fake but accurate.” – Neo
* * *
The Left seems to be mostly choosing Science Fiction, specifically Speculative History.
And don’t forget Scott Adams & his “two movie screens” theory.
Barr, describing the difference in ideologies in his Federalist Society address, doesn’t talk about different truths directly, but I think they implicit underly what he did say.
https://www.justice.gov/opa/speech/attorney-general-william-p-barr-delivers-19th-annual-barbara-k-olson-memorial-lecture
I note Barr refers to “conservatives” not “Republicans”; see McCotter’s remarks about “bossism” at the link quoted above.
Tom Grey on November 16, 2019 at 11:52 am said: It might be that there multiple optimal solutions, including one supporting promiscuity, but I don’t believe it nor see data for it.
The support for such is a false support created by one of Franz Boas contemporaries.. Margaret Meade.. [same as the paper for justifying all sexual promiscuity including deviancy, was Albert Kinsey – a man who got gratification from sticking a toothbrush up his urethra, and who sexually abused babies by proxy to prove they are sexual beings not babies whose sexual natures exist but are not fully formed… much like their pre-pubescent penis or clitoris… ]
Margaret Meade: … an American cultural anthropologist who featured frequently as an author and speaker in the mass media during the 1960s and 1970s She earned her bachelor’s degree at Barnard College in New York City and her MA and PhD degrees from Columbia University. Mead served as President of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1975. Mead was a communicator of anthropology in modern American and Western culture and was often controversial as an academic.[3] Her reports detailing the attitudes towards sex in South Pacific and Southeast Asian traditional cultures influenced the 1960s sexual revolution.[4] She was a proponent of broadening sexual conventions within a context of traditional Western religious life.
She was also a communist, like Franz, and like Betty Naomi Goldstein.. who used to write for communist press, before she got married to a wall street arbitrager, and wrote the feminine mystique!!
the problem came when people tried to follow up on her pacific sex stuff. I am married to a Asian woman, and i will tell you, they are NOT more loose than western ladies… in fact, western ladies now would make Babylonian whores blush… and are quite the turn off for men who want more than a superb free prostitute in a hookup..
Her basis for things was Captain Cooke and his experiences in Polynesia, ignoring that women from all over, are attracted to status (as proven by a very famous American politician who lacked looks, or by a famous movie producer now up on charges). Also, she forgot, conveniently that some practices are born out of a necessity of infertility and survival, two things very important to island cultures (along with genetic mixing… ). these foreign men, would have MHCs that were very different than the local men, and to the local women, would appear to be super mates to be with, and so, would throw themselves at them.
she took advantage of this in writing her book/s
you wont read in the wiki for her or kinsey that their work had been refuted
with kinsey being the most quoted researcher in LAW.. not medicine!
her and his work was used as false justification for later things
the iron curtain prevented the west from knowing what the result of this sexual version of feminism was – the collapse of the population, marriage, and socials structures of the population practicing it.. as found out by Kolontai… The Soviets (who are actually still soviet), learned this and stopped a lot of it BEFORE they visited it upon the liberalizing west… as a weapon, as the version here was not allowed the pseudo saving remedies that they were able to act on (sent that document from Harvard discussing it to Neo, it was never put up, and i dont have a copy as i was let go for diversity – after 15 years)
to make the story a bit more interesting… her pediatrician was Dr Benjimon Spock, which took the worry of mothers all over, and screwed up their kids by telling them how to raise kids and not listen to their families as that was the source of the problems (as usual 180 degrees from truth)
ie. communists patting each other on the back to raise up some point and make it more valid to the public who would not notice… and so, be tricked into accepting it as if it went through the normal process or regard and respected facts and TRUTH… [co-opting the biological and psychological]
the more recent work that set it back again, is the kind of thing that the left being in charge of the presses, would do.. just as when books come out, like the one neo recently said was good, and not yet out, was already getting bad reviews as leftists went to the website and reviewed it as “nasty, couldnt even finish the preview notes”…
she established the new truth with lies, he took it back, then they re-etablished it
which is why women are soooo happy being super sexual objects of the few wealthy men in college in hookups
debaseing themselves to get the few men who are above them, and so, satisfy their hypergamy
Well i will say that despite christian, bhuddist and murderous islam, the dominant religion in indonesia, the anamists still exist and practice all over as you can see easily… so, this christianization was a tale… a very tall tale… as ALL religions other than the liberal atheistic one of the communists, align with womens desire to not be a plaything of the public, and be the one thing in a mans life… [as archeological evidence ALSO shows]
the few exceptions to things like this tend to come from the pagans… but even the pagani werent all about sex, they just made few exceptions like spring festivals where people could meet from distant places and prevent inbreeding (no, we did not know genetics that proved the point, we did know the outcome of inbreeding, we were no longer wanderers and so bred animals and knew exactly what would happen)… the others that DID be all about sex were often ruling classes who basically treated it as the nintendo of the time..
as always … there is a lot more we are missing… as we tend to replace the known with personal theories
why? cause we were taught to do it as a more entertaining thing.. the problem is that it disconnects you and the knowlege from the past, and spends its time generating the most acceptable lie to dominate discussion… which then, casts out the history of what happened… as the lie that is foisted by the victim on themselves, does not carry with it the truth of cause and effect, but the truth of imposed false logic.
this is how we sold women a bag of magic beans..
and have been weakend to the point of inner civil war, and external (well, that isnt even on the table to look at)
THE MENSHIVIK, BOLSHEVIK, STALINIST FEMINIST – By Simon Karlinsky
Jan. 4, 1981
https://www.nytimes.com/1981/01/04/books/the-menshivik-bolshevik-stalinist-feminist.html
Russia’s Demographic ‘Crisis’ How Real Is It?
Russia’s Demographic Decline Continues
Russia Takes on Its Demographic Decline
even today, they are dying out because of those years… but at least now, we are equal and wont grow faster than they will, even worse, we are importing people to replace the infertile feminists and other groups of the left… who by following the left, exterminated their lineages… just as hitler overtly tried.. and so, destroyed their cultures, fulfilling the communist goals of removing the racists (as cultural not color)
Even in our most rational thinking, there can be great confusion. E.g. the division by a differential like dx. These are as close to zero as we like and we divide by them all the time, but great care must be used as they are not exactly like numbers. All this confused mathematicians for a couple of hundred years. The truth is perhaps a nebulous idea.
“Pursuit of money is so ingrained in humanity that any who totally renounce it, and actually live that way, are world famous. Perhaps one-in-a-billion.
Mother Teresa is an example.” – Tuvea
Christopher Hitchens even complained about her.
Whether he was correct or not, I take no position (heh), but he was certainly adamant.
https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/1969260-the-missionary-position-mother-teresa-in-theory-and-practice
“I began the project of judging Mother Teresa’s reputation by her actions and words rather than her actions and words by her reputation.”
“The rich world likes and wishes to believe that someone, somewhere, is doing something for the Third World. For this reason, it does not inquire too closely into the motives or practices of anyone who fulfills, however vicariously, this mandate.”
“Who would be so base as to pick on a wizened, shriveled old lady, well stricken in years, who has consecrated her entire life to the needy and the destitute? On the other hand, who would be so incurious as to leave unexamined the influence and motives of a woman who once boasted of operating more than five hundred convents in upward of 105 countries—“without counting India”? Lone self-sacrificing zealot, or chair of a missionary multinational? The scale alters with the perspective, and the perspective alters with the scale.”
“The flood of donations was considered to be a sign of God’s approval of Mother Teresa’s congregation. We were told that we received more gifts than other religious congregations because God was pleased with Mother, and because the Missionaries of Charity were the sisters who were faithful to the true spirit of religious life. Our bank account was already the size of a great fortune and increased with every postal service delivery. Around $50 million had collected in one checking account in the Bronx. . . . Those of us who worked in the office regularly understood that we were not to speak about our work. The donations rolled in and were deposited in the bank, but they had no effect on our ascetic lives or on the lives of the poor we were trying to help.”
? Christopher Hitchens, The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice
Educators, like almost every other human being on earth, mostly care about money. They realize they have very sweet gigs.
Tuvea: Yes, indeed. I recall a Massachusetts woman a few years ago tried to murder a rival for an academic appointment.
Maybe tenure was the right way to go once upon a time, but these days I don’t think so. I see no reason professors should have a sacred right not to worry about their jobs any more than anyone else — especially given the way adjuncts are treated like disposable tissues.
Despite tenure professors won’t take principled stands against the left-wing mob or in defense of Western civ. What good are they and their tenure?
New paper in Science finds that Mesolithic peoples(10 to 6 thousand years ago) near Rome we’re less heterozygous than Neolithic and more recent. This means mothers and fathers contributed same allele in sperm and ova. This means more consanguinity in ancient peoples. I guess tribes were smaller and more isolated.
AesopFan: “The Missionary Position” by Hitchens is a great little book.
In an odd turnabout the Catholic Church interviewed Hitchens as a Devil’s Advocate while considering Mother Theresa for sainthood. Even Hitchens was impressed.
I’m ambivalent about Mother Theresa. I admired her devotion but she definitely came under the heading of Nutty Nuns for me.
I am glad some of you have noted Atty. General Barr’s speech to the Federalist Society. It is well worth reading in its entirety, and probably bookmarking and re-reading.
The battle is not about whether we like the current president’s personality or his Twitter feed. The battle is about the structure of our Republic and deliberate efforts by leftists to dismantle it.
More on Truths Differing
https://amgreatness.com/2019/11/15/the-lefts-raising-and-glorifying-of-cain/
“Consider the National Post story about that British Columbia custody case and notice how the reporter is totally on board with the lie, referring throughout to the man’s daughter as a boy. The Associated Press observes that rule, too, as do other news organizations. When I first was told of this, back in the newsroom in San Antonio, I exclaimed aloud: “You mean that if a man wants to pretend he’s a woman, we have to pretend he is, too? Journalists lie, my God, journalists lie! There’s no lie so big a journalist won’t tell it, so long as it’s P.C.”
You can imagine how that situated me with my “woke” colleagues!”
“From Adam’s free will to Sinai’s Commandments to Jesus’s promise, “You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free,” intellectual freedom and the rule of law are enjoyed by the human race as the gift of God. And whenever those who deny God’s supremacy achieve supreme power themselves, intellectual freedom and the rule of law are the very first things they steal from everyone else.”
An article speculating about why Schiff won’t call Bolton as a witness, which presumes to know what he would say just as much as the Democrats do, although with perhaps greater accuracy, notable for this observation:
https://amgreatness.com/2019/11/13/whose-witness-is-bolton/
“Taking jobs as representatives of the president, as ambassadors and NSC staffers do, and then acting according to what they consider to be “higher loyalties” is simply dishonest. Using such dishonest persons to bolster an attempt to impeach the president on the pretend-ground that their policy preferences are superior to his, is politics of the most contemptible sort.”
If you have different truths, then you aren’t bothered much about things that look dishonest to rational people.
Despite tenure professors won’t take principled stands against the left-wing mob or in defense of Western civ. What good are they and their tenure? [Huxley]
A few do, now. Without tenure, there might not be anyone left on a university payroll to do what you are describing.
I wouldn’t be able to spend even one minute with the dying poor in Mother Teresa’s Calcutta, let alone give them the loving care she did. I recommended reading Malcolm Muggeridge’s Something Beautiful for God, or watching the BBC’s documentary of that book, as an antidote to Hitchens’s toxic book.
Hitchens’s toxic book.
Ann: Have you read the book? What Hitchens had to say wasn’t pleasant, but as far as I know, it was true.
Loving care? One of Hitchens’ most telling points was the lack of pain killers available to those dying under MT’s care.
If I reach such extremis, the last thing I want is someone at my side cooing in my ear about how God loves suffering and wouldn’t I like to be baptized, but tough luck on the painkillers.
Meanwhile, the Sisters’ bank accounts swelled with stacks of cash including from Charles Keating, who had defrauded customers with junk bonds but donated generously to Mother Theresa, so she wrote a letter to the judge pleading he show leniency to Keating.
The prosecutor wrote Mother Theresa a respectful, yet tart letter, asking:
_______________________________________________
You urge Judge Ito to look into his heart — as he sentences Charles Keating — and do what Jesus would do. I submit the same challenge to you. Ask yourself what Jesus would do if he were given the fruits of a crime; what Jesus would do if he were in possession of money that had been stolen; what Jesus would do if he were being exploited by a thief to ease his conscience?
I submit that Jesus would promptly and unhesitatingly return the stolen property to its rightful owners. You should do the same. You have been given money by Mr. Keating that he has been convicted of stealing by fraud. Do not permit him the ‘indulgence’ he desires Do not keep the money. Return it to those who worked for it and earned it!
If you contact me I will put you in direct contact with the rightful owners of the property now in your possession.
http://bocktherobber.com/2006/10/mother-teresa-the-crook/
_______________________________________________
Needless to say, Mother Theresa never replied.
AesopFan on November 16, 2019 at 1:19 pm said:
“Pursuit of money is so ingrained in humanity that any who totally renounce it, and actually live that way, are world famous. Perhaps one-in-a-billion.
Mother Teresa is an example.” – Tuvea
Ted Kazinsky the Unabomber is another…
huxley:
If you’re interested in reading it, there’s a rebuttal of some of Hitchens’s and others’ claims at First Things — “Mother Teresa and Her Critics”; couple of excerpts:
The first one —
The second one–
Ann: The article is mostly a gainsaying of Hitchens et al. (though I notice no rebuttal to the public Keating accusation so I’ll take that as a true and valid witness against Mother Theresa).
So it comes down to “He said/She said” which one weighs, as one will, based on other information and experiences.
My parochial school experiences of the Catholic Church were of hypocrisy and deceit. I heard Fr. Gumpel in the voices of the priests and nuns who proclaimed their love and devotion to Christ while being cruel to children.
Frankly, and I grant you unfairly, I assume Fr. Gumpel is likely lying in whole or in part, because that’s his job and one Catholic spokesmen have been at for quite a while and only in the past two or three decades are being caught out.
Needless to say, Mother Theresa never replied. [Huxley]
The money came to her, who knows what the provenance was. What is the provenance of all the money that has passed through your hands?
The prosecutor sounds like the usual calculating government fraud to me. I was glad to read Mother Theresa never replied.
Kai Akker: Mother Theresa acknowledged she received substantial donations from Keating and on that basis made her special plea to Judge Ito. Therefore at some level her organization was tracking that information. Aren’t charitable organizations required to do so?
Therefore, Mother Theresa doesn’t just sound like a calculating fraud, she was one.
Re: “…those who believe intersectionality is the way to truth (or who pretend to think that) are political leftists whatever their religious beliefs may be.”
Sorry to beat a dead horse, but:
Those ARE their religious beliefs.
Leftism is a functional religion. A person who claims both to be a Leftist and a Christian, or both a Leftist and a Practitioner-of-Judaism (I avoid the term “Jew” so as to abstract from family lineage and focus purely on orthodoxy and orthopraxis) is exactly as incoherent as someone claiming to be both a Hindu and a Christian. Leftism is incompatible with non-negotiable portions of the Judeo-Christian faiths.
This in no way denies that some persons claim to be Christian while being obviously Leftist. Of course they do. But inasmuch as they practice Leftism, they always hold to tenets which would be recognized as heresy or even apostasy, by all the Christians in the year 1900, or 1800, or 1700, or 1600, or 1500, or 1400…, et cetera, all the way back to the Resurrection.
And it doesn’t make sense to call something “Christian” now if it falls clearly out-of-bounds for all the actual Christians for 95%+ of the history of Christianity.
So one problem with a Leftist claiming Christianity is that, even in doing so, he practices a tenet of Leftism (namely, pretending words don’t mean things and may be used merely for propaganda value) and violating a tenet of Christianity (namely, that it is gravely immoral to lie).
Now we, in this set of comboxes, want to both understand what is true, and convey it to one another.
So let’s not dissemble. Leftism is a functional religion. Some people claim to practice another religion while being Leftist, but consistent experience shows that they usually sacrifice the core of the other religion in favor of Leftism’s chief tenets, and thus that they are really merely Leftist. Their self-identification with the other religion is simply sham, propaganda, and an attempt to do to that other religion exactly what Leftists ALWAYS do to respected institutions: They infiltrate them, conquer their institutional hierarchies, gut them, and walk around wearing the carcass like a skin-suit, demanding respect.
I read the letters from your links already. I am afraid your contention sounds to me like baloney with a double-dash of bitters, Hux! Her request was plain and it would certainly have been easy for any judge to disregard, as she made it so, in sentencing someone he concluded was criminally guilty.
What is the provenance of all the money that has passed through your hands? I will furnish you with the names and addresses of those you should send it to.
Kai Akker: In case anyone is in doubt, I am not a charitable organization. However, I am to some extent accountable to the IRS.
Your claim seems to be more gainsaying plus personal insult. What is your point?
Are you saying that Keating did not donate to MT’s organization? That he was merely a good soul MT was somehow aware of as being “kind and generous to God’s poor” and therefore he should be treated leniently?
Keating’s donations to MT are not controversial and certainly MT never denied them. Hitchens:
At the height of his success as a thief, Keating made donations (not out of his own pocket, of course) to Mother Theresa in the sum of one and one-quarter million dollars. He also granted her the use of his private jet. In return, Mother Theresa allowed Keating to make use of her prestige on several important occasions and gave him a personalized crucifix which he took everywhere with him.
–Christopher Hitchens, “The Missionary Position” p. 65.
Btw. I am huxley. Please address me as such.
My point is, Dr. Huxley, your eagerness to condemn belies your arguments, which are specious.
(though I notice no rebuttal to the public Keating accusation so I’ll take that as a true and valid witness against Mother Theresa).
Therefore, Mother Theresa doesn’t just sound like a calculating fraud, she was one. [Huxley]
Listen to yourself. Robespierre would have had nothing on you!
Peter Boghossian: “If a conservative Christian believes Jesus walked on water—and believes this either is or is not true for everyone regardless of race or gender—and if she …”
Boghossian has already surrendered, and he can’t even, and won’t, see it.
R.C.: “Sorry to beat a dead horse, but: … [paraphrase: one cannot be both a leftist and a Christian]”
Exactly.
huxley:
It does seem to come down to personal anecdotes. My own 12 years of parochial school experience were almost the complete opposite of yours. All but one of my nun-teachers was kind and caring, and I never, even as a rebellious adolescent, when I balked at some of the strict rules imposed, thought them full of hypocrisy and deceit.
Kai Akker: More insults. No reasoning.
Done.
Ann: Good enough.
In the previous thread about truth vs relativism, I was struck that I can’t function as a human being without some relativism. People have different experiences and assimilate different information. They effectively live in different realities, whatever the Ultimate Reality may be, if there is one.
As humans we are so terribly limited, yet we must still function and survive as best we can, despite our limitations. Hence, our imperfect shortcuts.
huxley: So true. Well said.
The great paradox for those who know the One who created the universe, and loved us enough to die for us, is that God’s perfect plan requires using us imperfect people.
Bob Kantor and Ilion,
Thanks for calling out the writers whose brains seem to have run off on them when it comes to distinguishing the inclusive pronoun of unspecified gender, namely “he,” with the specifically female pronoun “she.”
Of such practical illiteracy (since I assume that at one time these “trendy” guys and gals knew the difference perfectly well) is such a farrago made of English that one becomes all but unable to figure out what is meant by what is said. It’s particularly dismaying to see this self-righteous posturing in the writing of lawyers, psychologists, and philosophers … or anyone who presumes to litter cyberspace with his affectation of ignorance in the name of, what, I hope not respect for women!
(Surely if I must demand to be treated as if I were a man in order to gain respect by hiding my womanliness, I am as nothing in my real, feminine self.)
Besides, it’s a particularly pretentious way of asserting one’s “with-it” credentials. “Look, Ma! I can make a fool of myself, too!”
“People have different experiences and assimilate different information. They effectively live in different realities, whatever the Ultimate Reality may be, if there is one.” – huxley, in re Ann’s different experience of parochial school
FWIW, Hitchens came out of a severly dysfunctional family, and experienced a type of allegedly Christian upbringing that gave him a severe allergy to religion of all stripes afterward. The Mother Teresa / Keating situation does exemplify how easy it is to spin events any direction, depending on a priori assumptions.
What could be worse? A tag team of Huxley attacking Catholic schools of his youth (talk about beating dead horses) and Mother Theresa, teamed up with Yammer attacking Jesuits and all non-Yammer religions. Perish the thought!
The Mother Teresa / Keating situation does exemplify how easy it is to spin events any direction, depending on a priori assumptions.
AesopFan: Actually I don’t see a lot of options re: Mother Theresa / Keating, unless one believes Hitchens flat made up stuff.
Perhaps he did, though I doubt it, because it would have been so easy to refute and thereby discredit Hitchens for the rest of his claims.
Mother Theresa and her organization accepted $1.25 million from Keating, then MT sent a letter to the judge pleading for leniency for Keating. When the prosecutor informed her the donations were stolen and suggested she return the money to those defrauded, as Jesus would, she never replied nor made any attempt to return the stolen money.
That’s straight reasoning and doesn’t have anything to do with my upbringing or Catholic school experiences.
Perhaps om would care to defend Mother Theresa on the merits without making it personal.
Parochial school abuses are well-known and at this point uncontroversial, even extending to the horrific, documented sexual abuse of hundreds, probably thousands of minors. Two of my friends told me that priests came onto them in high school. Somehow I think that was wrong.
Not all priests committed such abuses and not all priests covered for other priests. But the abuses still happened and were still terrible and wrong.
The Church’s solution has been to admit as little as possible, pay as little money as possible and over time to eliminate most contact between children and priests/nuns.
If om doesn’t care about that and prefers to ridicule those who still might care about it, I see that as his problem.
Alas, nothing is sacred….
https://nypost.com/2019/11/16/astros-emails-reveal-how-deep-cheating-scandal-went-in-2017/
File under: Say it ain’t so, Hunter.
huxley:
So nothing has changed since you were a child in the late 50’s early 60’s? Are you sure it wasn’t millions abused? McMaster preschool effect, maybe?
Ann’s experience didn’t line up with yours, and by the way I’m not a Roman Catholic.
At the public middle school I attended a pedophile molested a 5th grade boy during school. Word got around to the rest of the school. Not a Priest not a Nun, One may infer that sick people abuse the weak. Duel by anecdote?
You choose to focus on parochial schools. The alphabet people are trying to normalize the abuse throughout society. You might reconsider the focus of your outrage.
When the prosecutor informed her the donations were stolen and suggested she return the money to those defrauded, as Jesus would, she never replied nor made any attempt to return the stolen money.
What, the entirety of Keating’s available assets were the issue of embezzlement? (NB, Keating was put on trial for inveigling his customers to buy uninsured bonds; he peddled the bonds from 1987 to 1989. Did he donate to Missionaries of Charity before or after he peddled the bonds?).
The Church’s solution has been to admit as little as possible, pay as little money as possible and over time to eliminate most contact between children and priests/nuns.
You’re expecting various Catholic dioceses to pay more to plaintiffs than their lawyers bargain for? How do you expect that to work?
“Perhaps om would care to defend Mother Theresa on the merits without making it personal.”
I’m pretty sure the people helped by Mother Theresa with that money needed it more than the people it was taken from, even if Hitchens is entirely correct. Which isn’t to say it was the morally correct decision but that it was a decision made by someone whose primary goal was to help people.
And, of course, if Mother Theresa’s entire existence is to be defined by nothing more than her relationship with Keating, I wonder how Christopher Hitchens would fair by that same standard? Hitchens, after all, publicly identified himself as a Marxist until fairly late in his life and thereby willingly linked himself with the most murderous philosophy of the 20th century.
Mike
In addition to which, Mother Teresa undoubtedly saw whatever resources came her way as having been guided to her by God. And she would devote them to the mission she was on, to serve God in the ways she understood, accepted, and did. To think of her being criticized by the likes of Christopher Hitchens is like — what, complaining that Roger Federer was no champion because he missed signing one little boy’s autograph ball. Talk about different leagues of being!
Could she ever have been greedy? Could she ever have lied? Or, more likely, said something she thought would happen one day, only to change her plans the next month? She was human, I would imagine those things might have occurred at some time. But someone will have to show me her mansions and her yachts for this reader to consider the extreme condemnation elsewhere in this thread anything other than bitterness and anti-Catholic bias.
The tangents took an interesting subject off into the fields. On the main course of the thread, I can only offer my agreement with Kate’s 9:09 pm post and Roy Nathanson’s of 11:24 pm, with the assist a little further along from physicsguy. For all the philosophy I was once required to study, basic common sense plus Hume always seemed to eat away at the more esoteric angles, for me.
Want to see a real world consequence of this Culture War, and the Swedish authorities acceptance of their “truth” about multiculturalism?
See this article about Malmo, and how it appears to have been “transformed” from being a quiet, peaceful town of 320,000 Swedes into what appears to be an urban war zone, and not the dreamy epitome of Swedish Socialism.
The advice from a cop investigating a home invasion described in the article, who admitted that the police were overwhelmed by the crime reportedly originating in “immigrant neighborhoods”?
Move your family out of Malmo.
https://quillette.com/2019/11/15/abandoning-malmo-to-its-criminals/
I urge you to read the article linked to above, and, if you do, you will discover that formerly peaceful Malmo has now become some kind of war zone.
First off, despite the “authorities” efforts to ignore and disguise what has been happening, Malmo has already been dubbed the “rape capitol of Sweden.”
In addition, according to this article, so far there have been 26 bombings just in the town of Malmo alone(Sweden itself on the road to an estimated 150 bombings this year country-wide)–car bombs, bombs in restaurants and shops, people assassinated on the street, home invasions and robberies, everyday people injured when buildings they are passing by blow up, etc.
It seems like a species of Hell.
See also this article about bombings in Sweden at https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2019/08/22/sweden-bombings-and-explosions-up-45-percent-in-2019/
Snow on Pine,
The Shaw of Iran wanted to change the culture of Iran. He was American educated and wanted everything that America had for his citizens. Well, we all know how that turned out.
The lesson to be learned is that you can’t force a culture to change. Cultural change must happen slowly and organically, no matter how much benefit the change might bring.
The people promoting multiculturalism are courting social disaster no matter how good their intentions may be.
The Soviets, North Koreans, Chinese Communists, Khmer Rouge, and some relatively recent Germans showed that you could change a culture profoundly and quickly. But those are just examples from the last 100 years
Our intellectual betters, the woke SJWs must have good intentions and good reasons for their demands, /sarc
R.C. @5:45
Brilliant!
‘Leftism is incompatible with non-negotiable portions of the Judeo-Christian faiths.’
Specifically;
#1. You shall have no other gods before me.
#9. You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.
#10. You shall not covet.
The god of leftists is power and covetousness is their creed. And they have no trouble bearing false witness and committing other unholy acts to get it. E.g. Kavanaugh.
The post Christian world ain’t gonna be pretty.
The Shaw of Iran wanted to change the culture of Iran. He was American educated
He wasn’t.
wanted everything that America had for his citizens. Well, we all know how that turned out.
The Shah took an interest in economic development: education, public health, production, public works, military power. From 1953 until his exile, he showed zero interest in electoral and deliberative institutions or public discussion. That was the modal disposition of governments in the Near East, North Africa, and Central Asia at the time.
The Shaw of Iran wanted to change the culture of Iran. He was American educated
He wasn’t.
wanted everything that America had for his citizens. Well, we all know how that turned out.
The Shah took an interest in economic development: education, public health, production, public works, military power. From 1953 until his exile, he showed zero interest in electoral and deliberative institutions or public discussion. His was the modal disposition of governments in the Near East, North Africa, and Central Asia at the time.
Art Deco,
I didn’t say that the Shaw wanted to turn Iran into a democracy. He was a king, after all! But, he did want the modernization of the liberal democracies.
My point was about the speed of the process being counter-productive.
om,
Those examples show that you can enslave a people rapidly. That is not the same as cultural change.
In the ex-Soviet world, when the USSR dissolved after more than three generations under atheist communism, people returned in droves to their traditional religions. And, of course, the endurance of Jewish cultural traditions is legendary.
Plato and Aristotle, Aristotle and Plato—two ways of looking at things, two differing approaches, plus their predecessors and their many ramifying branches and descendants down through the millennia til today.
I used to look back at history and wonder, how the hell did the general “Zeitgeist” of so many of the people in, say, pre-WWII Germany or England in the same era change so radically, so that in the case of the pretty universally acknowledged to be highly educated and sophisticated Germans the crude, jack-booted Nazis were able to come to power, and, in the case of England, you could have the famous February 1933 Oxford Union Society “King and Country Debate,” in which the proposition that “The House will under no circumstances fight for its King and country” passed by 275 votes to 153, and went on to be known as the “Oxford Pledge.”
A Pledge which was adopted by several other Universities, and a pledge which Churchill wrote he thought influenced how the leaders of Germany and Japan viewed England, and their estimations of whether it would defend itself or not.
The Pledge representing a pacifistic attitude that in England, as history proved, was not universal at all.
Well, now its not so much of a mystery, and I can see how such things can happen–because isn’t this the kind of sea change in the mind-set, attitudes, and behavior, the “Zeitgeist” of a lot of people, the exact situation we have been living thorough for the last several decades here in the U.S. since the end of WWII?
Thus, an immediate post WWII U.S. population that you could say was in general majority Christian (and often fervently so) has become less and less Christian—post-Christian, as some see it.
A post WWII population generally characterized by intact families and in wedlock births is now quite often characterized by out of wedlock births and “broken” families.
In the immediate Post WWII period we had well-functioning K-12, colleges, and universities, which generally did a good job of educating our citizens and instilling in them a common information base, and a characteristic “American” set of values, ethos, and viewpoint which created and reinforced American “social cohesion,” educational institutions which are now, in the main, reduced to mostly propagandizing our citizens, and badly educating (and bankrupting) them in the process.
One result of this failure is that a post WWII population that you could certainly say was patriotic has morphed into a population in which many disdain the word “patriotism,” and many—especially the young—are ignorant of our country’s actual history, and pretty obviously despise their country.
Post WWII everyone pretty much agreed that we had only two sexes. Now, we have somewhere around 54 or so, at least that is what we are told, and that some people think.
Post WWII entertainment that could be characterized as being almost universally “wholesome” has been replaced by entertainment that is mostly trashy, inane, vulgar, and that often has a nasty edge.
In a word, a formerly robust, simpler, but more grounded and healthy U.S. society has morphed into one which is now—for all of its supposed advanced knowledge, “progress,” and sophistication—exhibiting widespread and increasing signs of decadence and instability.
Down through the ages we have all been swimming in an intellectual ocean permeated by ideas that have slowly—millennia by millennia, century by century and, now—as change has accelerated—decade by decade, or even year by year—“nudged” us, or sometimes forced us in one direction at gunpoint.
In the last several decades we in the West have been nudged mostly in one direction; towards world-views, ideas, and behaviors which would have been verboten and “unthinkable” immediately after WWII, but which are now—in part or in whole—the norm for many people in all spheres of life.
Moreover, as justification for these massive changes in Zeitgeist, we in the West have been sold the idea that to think (and behave) in these new directions is to become more educated and “aware,” more civilized, broad-minded, sophisticated, and tolerant.
But, is that really the case?
Where did these ideas come from, who set these ideas loose in the ocean?
Philosophers.
You would be wrong to see philosophy as merely the rarefied province of intellectuals playing at words, or of little actual, practical consequence.
Because it is the often rarefied and perhaps initially abstruse ideas of these philosophers—filtering down and permeating and influencing our ideas, viewpoints, thoughts, behaviors and society—which have, over the millennia, centuries, and, now, decades, or even a few years—changed everything, and ultimately, in the last century or so, resulted in, among other things, untold misery, and an awful lot of carnage.
“Where did these ideas come from, who set these ideas loose in the ocean?”
“Philosophers.”
It’s not the thinkers’ fault. There are few new ideas under the sun. For example, the sort of self-loathing in our society today fits perfectly along side that “Oxford Pledge” from over 80 years ago.
The problem is in the loss of ability or willingness to say “No.” The entire Trump affair boils down to an entrenched establishment trying to enforce/uphold standards in the face of a disruptive outsider. I sure as heck wish there’d been such a fierce commitment to propriety when Bill Clinton was in the dock.
The establishment is losing, intellectually if not actually, because their new devotion to standards comes abruptly and arbitrarily after not giving a crap about them for at least a couple of generations.
Mike
Whence comes Zeitgeist, Snow on Pine? What is it doing, that concept? From G.W.F. Hegel, a philosopher. And doing? It’s carrying the hubristic victory cry of Historicism over all the other failed dogmatic metaphysical systems theretofore. Or so it claims.
Ach, and put to what use today? Irony?
Philosophy is once again to get the blame for the political errors political men (not philosophers) refuse to own? So Socrates was murdered in his time. Next?
There has been a crisis of liberalism in our time, taken very broadly. Philosophy in its turn has been discredited for a very long time now. In one sense we can see this discredit in the degenerate use of the word philosophy in common speech. In that sense the word means nothing special or distinct at all, but anything anyone cares to choose. “His philosophy of breakfast foods.”
This loss of distinction is itself a symptom of the modern crisis of liberalism, a crisis we see echoed in the Colleges and Universities, the very creatures of the enterprise of philosophy as it was once understood, by such as Plato and his student Aristotle, founders of the Academy and the Lyceum respectively.
Perhaps our difficulty is somewhat less the presence of philosophy in our time than that the difficulty lays in its absence?
Perhaps I should clarify what I wrote above to say that, it hasn’t just been the original orientation and viewpoint, the key ideas of these many philosophers, but more importantly it has been how these various philosophical viewpoints and ideas have been understood, interpreted, and implemented; people taking a viewpoint or idea, adapting it to his own–sometimes unsavory uses–using it as a pattern and justification for his actions, and running with it.
Roy Nathanson on November 18, 2019 at 12:37 pm said:
…
Those examples show that you can enslave a people rapidly. That is not the same as cultural change.
* * *
But culture certainly changes for a people that has been enslaved.
The underlying original may resurface to some degree (see Russia), but it will undoubtedly be altered by the experience.
AesopFan:
And of course there is the example of the minor effect on western European culture that happened as a consequence of WWI. Kill enough people and cultures are changed. Warfare, pestilence, and political pestilence seems to be pretty effective cultural change agents; to be followed by more global warfare, genocide, famine, ethnic cleansing, ….
Cultural change? But maybe it is a different word I’m looking for? DuckDuckGo!
My point was about the speed of the process being counter-productive.
Which process? The Iranian economy grew quite rapidly between 1954 and 1977. It’s not hard to think of countries which experience rapid economic development for the better part of a generation and do so without decaying into madcap political revanchism. Just during that era there was Oman, Japan, Saudi Arabia, Malta, Roumania, Taiwan, Botswana, Greece, Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea, Spain, Portugal, Israel, Bulgaria, Puerto Rico, Brazil, Austria, Barbados, Trinidad, Italy, Thailand, and Germany. Yugoslavia fell to pieces, but it would be a novel interpretation of that event to locate it’s economic successes a generation earlier as a proximate cause of its political disorders.
Snow on Pine on November 18, 2019 at 5:45 pm said:
I’ll tell you how an entire country polarized Left hand negative totalitarian.
Good old Adolf the Seraphim, decided to use Negative Othering of “hostile foreign enemies and domestic” to narrow down the choice of Germany to be “saved by Adolf or destroyed by sub human scum”. This reduced the choices to be something less than optimal.
But people chose to go with that, because the power of Adolf could be had by them, if they joined his movement and collective. So people joined to “clean the Swamp” so to speak. This narrowing of choice is also seen in the Flight 93 election narrative.
I am quite hostile vs these methods, because I know who is behind them.
https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/ensign/1978/07/war-and-peace-and-dutch-potatoes?lang=eng
This is the opposite in polarity. Hitler is a powerful figure that can polarize an entire culture towards the negative service to self. But does that mean we have nobody on the other side doing the reverse?