tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8078379512095504946.post8115509044219976496..comments2024-03-26T06:17:49.527-07:00Comments on Had Enough Therapy?: Academic Diversity and Ideological ConformityStuart Schneidermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12784043736879991769noreply@blogger.comBlogger7125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8078379512095504946.post-55909054264199666852016-03-19T14:15:30.382-07:002016-03-19T14:15:30.382-07:00Never understood why being a protester in one'...Never understood why being a protester in one's youth was powerful, brave or necessary. Seems like the tired old hippies just weep with joy when they see angry, spoiled youths getting angry about yet another something. Like its an automatic assumption that an assembly of PO'd students must be standing for an affront to justice. These adolescent brats have no idea what they're standing for. They might as well be protesting about the injustice of people having different color hair, or different bathrooms for men/women, or the absence of trans charcacters on I Love Lucy, or there aren't enough Asians in Riverdance. Our college campuses have amplified the most minute difficulties into blood curdling horrors that threaten our democracy. They look, sound and behave like idiots. I have no time for them. Enough. They need jobs. They need to grow up and get into the real world ASAP.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8078379512095504946.post-90159031031026256802016-03-18T02:19:30.355-07:002016-03-18T02:19:30.355-07:00David Foster and IAC,
Tonight happened upon a ne...David Foster and IAC, <br /><br />Tonight happened upon a new TED talk by Celeste Headlee with 10 rules of good conversation. <br /><br />On the subject of "everyone is being told they are special", she said <br />"And I kind of grew up assuming everyone has some hidden, amazing thing about them. And honestly, I think it's what makes me a better host. I keep my mouth shut as often as I possibly can, I keep my mind open, and I'm always prepared to be amazed, and I'm never disappointed."<br /><br />Perhaps that's consistent with my Pastor's statement from more than one sermon "We're all unique, but we're not special."<br /><br />I thought her list item #2 was most interesting, "Don't pontificate", and her suggestion was if you want to offer your opinions, start a blog. So either blogging is a way of exercising opinions without having to inflict them on your friends, or its a way of building the bad habits of needing to have and express an opinion on everything.<br /><br />So her advice (as a radio interviewer, at http://www.gpb.org/on-second-thought) is perhaps to make a "safe space" for others to express themselves, but its less clear what's the purpose of conversation. And since she's a people person, her purpose is apparently to draw people's unique experiences, which can be noble, and yet I wonder at what point I can challenge someone else's unique confused narrative without corrupting it with my own confused narrative? Or are we supposed to just keep quiet and write our interpretations down later in our secret journals, and not bother other people with our own differences?<br /><br />On the other side, perhaps the biggest failures in politics now is if 90% of politicians are focused on agenda, and they fail in the social lubricants and making friends outside of their political allies, then you fail to see they're treating your rivals as enemies, and create what you see, because they are nothing to you but objects of frustration to power. <br /><br />At least I can see that hyper-partisanship kills something important important, as Orrin Hatch said "The environment is toxic" as an excuse why the republicans have to refuse any hearings on a candidate for Supreme Court they've already declared must be categorically rejected out of principle. Everyone has an excuse that explains why the other side poisoned the well first.<br /><br />Anyway, I copied her list:<br />--------<br />https://www.ted.com/talks/celeste_headlee_10_ways_to_have_a_better_conversation?language=en<br />https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R1vskiVDwl4<br />1. Don't multitask.<br />2. Don't pontificate. [opinions]<br />3. Use open-ended questions. <br />4. Go with the flow.<br />5. If you don't know, say that you don't know. <br />6. Don't equate your experience with theirs.<br />7. Try not to repeat yourself. <br />8. Stay out of the weeds [incidental details].<br />9. The most important one. Listen.<br />10. Be brief.<br /><br />....FULL TRANSCRIPT on #2...<br /><br />Number two: Don't pontificate. If you want to state your opinion without any opportunity for response or argument or pushback or growth, write a blog. <br /><br />Now, there's a really good reason why I don't allow pundits on my show: Because they're really boring. If they're conservative, they're going to hate Obama and food stamps and abortion. If they're liberal, they're going to hate big banks and oil corporations and Dick Cheney. Totally predictable. And you don't want to be like that. You need to enter every conversation assuming that you have something to learn. <br /><br />The famed therapist M. Scott Peck said that true listening requires a setting aside of oneself. And sometimes that means setting aside your personal opinion. He said that sensing this acceptance, the speaker will become less and less vulnerable and more and more likely to open up the inner recesses of his or her mind to the listener. Again, assume that you have something to learn. <br /><br />-----Ares Olympushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09726811306826601686noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8078379512095504946.post-77244260634362516732016-03-17T20:42:50.687-07:002016-03-17T20:42:50.687-07:00David, you make a good point about identity. When ...David, you make a good point about identity. When everyone is told they are special, and their world of make-believe is as good or important as anyone else's, you get this kind of madness. A friend once described Leftists thusly: "We think they're wrong. They think we're evil. That's a huge difference." For a group that evangelizes about social justice, racism and the barren earth we're creating, they seem like spoiled children. They have no sense of humor. I never understood what was noble about protesting something, like being an activist is a coming-of-age experience. I was turned off by it because they seemed so pissed off about... well, everything. Every idea is boiled down to some dualistic simplicity of good versus evil. For people who celebrate diversity and tolerance, they don't seem to have much themselves. It's a farce. I expect one of these peace-loving punks to wear a T-shirt that says "I HATE BIGOTS," and it will of course be partially funded by the college's community service fee. I am scoffed at for being a Catholic white male of privilege by youths blind to their own privilege. They're humorless and spoiled because no one challenges them to think and make distinctions. That's not a well-formed identity, that's programming. So many people have told these kids they're extraordinary, but not that they are also equally ordinary. This is shocking to them. When your self-concept and social identity is this fragile, it's a wonder more aren't terrified. Ignatius Acton Chesterton OCDhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18222603717128565302noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8078379512095504946.post-84062946478312841102016-03-17T20:14:38.624-07:002016-03-17T20:14:38.624-07:00The issue is why some people are threatened to the...The issue is why some people are threatened to the core by differing opinions, to the point they become enraged, unhinged, or even violent.<br /><br />Most believing Christians..not all...can remain calm and polite when talking with someone who says there is no God and no Heaven.<br /><br />But a very substantial # of believers in, let's say, Anthropogenic Global Warming or the evils of GMOs will react to challenge like the devil himself is about the carry them away. They appear to be threatened to the core of their identity by disbelievers.David Fosterhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15464681514800720063noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8078379512095504946.post-66095904521463819042016-03-17T19:35:28.661-07:002016-03-17T19:35:28.661-07:00Ordinary people also seem furiously dogmatic.
Dis...Ordinary people also seem furiously dogmatic.<br /><br />Discussion turns to rage. It happened to me. I lost a friend of 20+ years because he disagreed with me.<br /><br />"You don't know shit. You worked for the government!"<br /><br />Colleges. Freedom is Slavery. And the other insane diktats in "1984". Orwell was suicidal (really), but he was oh so prescient. -- Rich Lara Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8078379512095504946.post-51094270688539434512016-03-17T17:41:52.385-07:002016-03-17T17:41:52.385-07:00Stuart: Once ideas function within a cult, they be...Stuart: Once ideas function within a cult, they become dogma. Or, as Boyers says: their status becomes “all but unimpeachable:”<br /><br />Lots of big thoughts here, and they do seem unlimitedly applicable to all human behavior everywhere, so it makes me skeptical about anything and everything, as if I was careful enough to believe absolutely nothing, then I'd be free from dogma.<br /><br />What seems to be missing from the discussion perhaps is the idea of cult and counter-cult, that is when there are two competing cults, each convinced of their own truth, and rejecting of their counter-truth.<br /><br />At one level that may be the worst of all conditions, at least for the true believers who are trapped into a refusal to think, but the two sides do sort of represent psychic landmarks for others who are not true believers to try to make sense of things. And journalists are also taught to be objective and neutral and to try to identity the landscape, and so if you write an article about evolution and the fact that the earth is likely 4 billion years old, a truly objective journalist will feel compelled to include the Creationists point of view, of a literal Genesis, and a 6000 year old earth as a competing scientific theory. <br /><br />And true believers in the Dogma of young earth creationism are convinced that their beliefs deserve equal attention to biology class, and then we can allow 15 year olds the luxury of deciding for themselves which science dogma they should accept. And some smart-alex 15yos might see some people are rigid and sensitive on the subject, and like might pretend to believe in a 6000 year old earth, just because it upsets his science teacher so much, and that's fun to piss off adults who think they know everything.<br /><br />Then we can also go to the idea that there are 3 subjects that shouldn't be discussed in polite company: religion, sex, and politics. And maybe we need to add science to that list, since science has become a religion to people. And Progress is also clearly a religion. Oh, Capitalism also looks like a religion, so that's out.<br /><br />I can see the problem of taboo subjects, if you limit discussion to whatever the most sensitive, and most rigid thinkers can handle, and you look at the intersection of the all categories of sensitive thought, common ground leaves home team sports and the weather as the only topics available of discussion within a "safe space".<br /><br />I also notice the primary argument against Muslim immigration is the belief that Islam prevents Muslims from complete integration to our secular society. And that might be true.<br /><br />And conservatives would prefer to end multiculturalism as a valid ideal, because as I've described above, such a society has no common ground to rally behind, and civic spirit sinks into professionalism, where people perform legal duties and nothing more.<br /><br />But if universities are supposed to be the "Liberal education" needed to allow professionals to gain the skills in dealing with diversity, but that liberal education is breaking down into illiberalism of sacred individual privilege of minorities to never be offended, then I agree we're lost.<br /><br />It does often seem amazing that civilization ever works at all. Perhaps it succeeds by the occasional conviction that all the alternatives are worse?Ares Olympushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09726811306826601686noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8078379512095504946.post-69345718453726195462016-03-17T14:44:34.708-07:002016-03-17T14:44:34.708-07:00I have a hypothesis about the increasing turn agai...I have a hypothesis about the increasing turn against free speech....hasn't gotten much agreement from those I've tried it out on so far, but anyhow...<br /><br />Key to free speech is the clear distinction between *speech* and *action*. This distinction is pretty clear if you're a farmer or a mechanic or an assembly worker or even an electrical engineer....but what if you're a lawyer or a consultant or an ad man or a professor (outside the hard scientists)...then your speech, in a professional context, *is* your action. Hence, the boundary becomes more fuzzy.David Fosterhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15464681514800720063noreply@blogger.com