The New University

 

Canada's most photographed building

Jordan Peterson, who should know, has joined a chorus saying that our current university system is unsalvageable, and needs replacing. This is true even purely on technological grounds.

Here is what we need:

First, no funding from any government for the social sciences. If fortune telling is illegal, the social sciences should also be illegal, for the same reason: fraud.

No legal recognition should be given, and no public money spent, for academic qualifications in education, journalism, or art. These degrees do harm and no good.

All universities must have a charter of first principles, and be required to adhere to them in all courses. Without such principles, the humanities, based on deductive reasoning, are impossible. This indeed used to be the case: St. Michael’s was Catholic, McMaster was Baptist, Queen’s was Presbyterian. These charters need not be religious; the US Declaration of Independence, for example, would work. These charters must vary to ensure diversity and justify the existence of different institutions. No two institutions with the same or very similar charter in the same state or province.

Professors cannot be selected by existing faculty, as now happens. Once the existing faculty is corrupted, this system cannot work. Instead, professors establish their credentials as was originally the case, by attracting students. They offer video lectures, and see how many students sign up.

Students must therefore be allowed their choice of professors and lecturers online, from anywhere in the world, given that they are approved as doctrinally sound by the given institution.

To prevent corruption, we need to separate the job of teaching from the job of evaluation. Marking can be done by AI, which can plausibly now create challenge tests by auditing the lectures and the course materials, together with the university’s charter. 

Sitting for an evaluation will have to be done in person at the institution—so that the students cannot, for their part, resort to AI. The institution can also offer “study pods” and tutors, including residence if desired, so that students studying the same field can discuss matters and socialize.

And it would all be much cheaper than what we are doing now. And it would be far easier to upgrade and learn throughout one’s career, necessary when technology is changing so fast.

Here's the Leading Candidate to Replace Harvard

 

As where the best and the brightest go to learn. And around which the university system might be rebuilt.

Arendt on Education

 

Hannah Arendt

“In her 1954 essay The Crisis in Education, Hannah Arendt says, 'Education is the point at which we decide whether we love the world enough to assume responsibility for it.' How does your view of education compare to Arendt's?”

The question is taken, following our series here, from McMaster University Department of Medicine admission tests.

It seems to me to expect the student to endorse the notion that the formally educated have the inherent right to rule the world. Presumably the uneducated do not get to love the world, nor to assume responsibility for it. What is their role? 

Conversely, is it enough to “love the world” in order to be educated? Don’t you need some knowledge or skill in some field? Medicine, say?

The implications of this attitude are troubling.

Born with the Gift of Laughter, and a Conviction that the World Is Mad

 

Most of the world is mad. Most of the world is in denial of reality. 

I have lived in more than a few cultures now, around the world. As an outsider, it is easier to see collective delusions. Koreans think all evil comes from foreigners, especially Japanese. Arabs commonly believe the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Americans, whether conscious of it or not, tend to think the rest of the world does not really exist. Chinese think the current authority is always, necessarily, right. Don’t ask me about Canada. That would take too long. 

All the countries I have lived in are insane except for the Philippines. I suspect from visits that Ireland and Italy are also sane. Although, counter to this, Italy did go with fascism not that long ago.

I spent many years in higher education, naively thinking that there I would find truth, or at least the search for truth. But, as with most things in this fallen world, the reality was the reverse of the claim.

Example: in first year philosophy, the lecturer discounted this or that philosophy with the statement that, by this premise, one would have to believe that unicorns are real. “But of course, unicorns are not real,” Case closed.

Wait a minute, I thought even at the time. That’s begging the question.

How about that: a philosophy lecturer teaching a logical fallacy.

But then, the philosophy class never taught us to detect logical fallacies of any kind. No class I ever took did. Why not? 

Unicorns are, of course, real. They are not physical. That is not the same thing.

Example: when I formally studied the New Testament, all scholarship began with the premise that any miracles in the New Testament were lies and inventions; our goal was to get to the “real man,” Jesus of Nazareth, an ordinary carpenter. And when I studied the life of the Buddha, the premise was the same: the goal was to recover the “real” historical man behind the supposed legend.

But this is tautological. If Jesus is divine, miracles are to be expected. The miracles are recorded to prove his divinity. And the same for the Buddha.

Example: in the history of philosophy, there are dozens of proofs of the existence of God. Nothing could be more firmly established. Yet these proofs were never directly addressed in philosophy classes, nor in nine years of formally studying religion. Instead, they were literally ignored even when they were plainly present in the texts being studied, and the existence of God was presented as a highly dubious and arbitrary matter of “faith.” One was supposed to look down on anyone who so professed as an intellectual weakling. As someone who rejected “reason”—even though reason evidently required the opposite, the admission of God’s being.

Example: William Blake’s religious ideas are essential to understanding his poetry. They were his core interest and intent. Understanding his religious beliefs is essential to understanding Yeats’ poetry. These two are arguably the greatest poets in the English language. Studying literature for nine years, I noticed that Blake and Yeats seemed to be largely avoided, at least in comparison to their merits. And when they were discussed, their religious beliefs were ignored. What, I wondered from an early age, was going on?

The case was most obvious with Blake and Yeats; but it was also obvious with other poets. Gerard Manley Hopkins was given short shrift, and when his “terrible sonnets” came up, the conventional claim was that his suffering was no doubt due to his being a devout Catholic. Shakespeare’s religious views were generally ignored, even though it is impossible to make sense of Hamlet without them. Instead, that play was just declared a “problem.” Oscar Wilde’s Catholicism was ignored. And on and on.

Similarly, the curriculum always seemed to concentrate on poets’ early work. The Romantics conveniently tended to die young; but we also rarely looked at the later poems of Eliot, or Auden, or Blake, or Ginsberg. I assumed for a long time this was because poetry was a young man’s game, like mathematics; that the gift usually faded with age.

But this makes little sense. Poetry is mostly about insight, into the human psyche and the human condition, and in the natural course, insight into life and human nature expands with age. It’s a thing called wisdom.

Rather, I come to conclude that the later writings of the greatest minds have generally been avoided because in our later years we become more concerned with metaphysical insights and speculations. In youth, we are biologically driven to focus on sex and reproduction. In age, these distractions lessen. We start to speak truth; people do not want to hear it. Aged poets become awkwardly religious. We’d rather talk about sexual longing.

We deny the “supernatural” or metaphysical out of hand. This is illegitimate. You have not demonstrated that it does not exist: you have just closed your eyes and stuck your fingers in your ears and begun to sing loudly to yourself. You are in denial.

And denying the supernatural is not honestly possible. Man is supernatural in his essence: “nature” is, literally, what exists where man is not present.

All along, through my years of academic study, I knew perfectly well that there were metaphysical realities. That is why I wanted to study religion and literature in the first place: because these realities were denied everywhere else. Yet I was compelled by the pressures of social authority to hold my tongue. If I said unicorns were real, would I be declared mad? Was I, in fact, mad? This used to be a real fear, causing me immense anxiety. Chronic anxiety, for which I had to take tranquilizers and anti-depressants.

Why is everyone in denial of the self-evident? 

Guilt. We must control and deny reality, because reality is dangerous to our self-esteem.

Everyone is aware of their sinfulness, even if we are sinful to greater and lesser degrees. And there are two approaches to an awareness of guilt. Deny and be damned, or repent and be saved.

The majority choose denial.

The State of the Academy in Indiana

 

How to speak good English...

One of my Korean students has just started classes at the University of Indiana. He is confused that all international students from countries in which English is not the official majority language must take an extra course in English as a Second Language. He accepts the need in his own case, but notes that some of these students speak impeccable English; some seem, to his ear, to have better English than the professor. And no entrance test was administered: all must take the course, depending only on their place of origin.

This seems to be discriminatory, and to make no sense.

But it makes more sense when we see the topic for his first homework assignment. It is to summarize and compare two short essays. One is by a Chinese-American lamenting that her father is foolishly proud to have lost his Chinese accent. She considers that he has thereby lost part of his ethnic identity, and it is due to cruel social pressure from the majority population. The cruel social pressure being, in part, his being complemented on speaking English well. The other is by a woman of Ojibwe ancestry, who laments that her ancestors had the language taken from them, by having learned English. None of her relatives speak to her in Ojibwe; it has been reserved for prayers. As a result, she must learn it as a second language, in order, in her mind, to reconnect with the thinking of her ancestors.

So the point of the course is apparently not to improve the students’ English. It is to discourage them from improving their English. English, although the course is given entirely in English, is the enemy.

Political indoctrination is plainly the point of this course. But this is actually secondary. The problem in the academy actually goes beyond political indoctrination. To justify their existence, many academic fields and many academics must spend their time in teaching nonsense. If they stuck to the sensible and true, there would be nothing to teach in many fields. Everyone knows, for example, that learning something new is a good thing, to the student’s benefit. If you spend a year simply teaching that it is useful to learn English, you have no course, and no job. 

So why not teach actual content? Why not teach how to write better?

To quote a certain plastic doll, “math is hard.” This requires that the field actually knows anything; and that the professor has learned it. The expansion of the academy into new fields has meant the creation of many new fields without substantial actual content. And in many other fields, the academy is not the proper venue.

In homeschooling my own kids in Canadian history, I read them a sequence of reports from the Kingston Standard of 1832, on the arrival of cholera from Europe. I thought it was especially interesting to compare it with our own recent experience of covid. But the comparison prompted a different response from them:

“How come the writing in newspapers then was so much better?”

This for what was a small-town newspaper, by modern standards.

It is because in those days, people were hired to write for newspapers because they could write well. In our day, people are hired to write for newspapers because they have graduated from journalism school.

Writing cannot be taught in the classroom. This is equally true of other fields: the arts in general, and even teaching itself.

At the same time, teaching correct English, at this level, it is only too likely that students will know more than the professor. That is a frightening prospect for a professor. Best to steer clear of that subject.

So you have to invent something to teach that nobody is likely to know. It therefore has to be something so absurd nobody would have thought it.

And so we get so many of our lunatic “woke” ideas, generated in the academy.

It is wrong to point to a problem without pointing to a solution. The solution is probably already spontaneously in progress. The conventional academy must die, and be replaced by open competition among online courses. The Harvards and McGills may survive by offering comprehensive testing to certify knowledge in a field.

Getting an Education at OCAD

 

OCAD's appropriately postmodern architecture.

Noticed recently: a job ad for OCAD University’s English Department. It is jarring to see the courses for which they want instructors. English lit is no longer about what you think it is.

COURSE TITLE: ENGL-2003 POSTCOLONIAL LITERATURE

COURSE DESCRIPTION: This course looks at national and transnational literatures in a comparative perspective, focusing particularly on constructs of nation, gender, colonialism, and difference. Its aim is to imagine multiple literary times and spaces grounded in different parts of the world and in their different histories. That is, rather than creating a snapshot or conducting a literary tour of the world, this course seeks to refuse an easy commodification of Literature as a global product. All texts will be studied in their original English or in English translation.

To look at “postcolonial” writing from non-Western cultures is to severely limit one’s exposure to foreign culture and foreign ideas. These are necessarily drawn only from the postwar period, and are in the Western idiom, written by authors educated in the West.

Students should be exposed instead to Rumi, Li Bai, Basho, the Ramayana, and the like. That would give them a non-Western perspective. That’s the last thing they’ll get here.

And the focus is to be on “nation, gender, colonialism, and difference.” Only contemporary concerns of the political left. No new ideas or new cultural perspectives to be risked here. 

COURSE TITLE: ENGL-2011 LITERATURE AND SOCIAL CHANGE

COURSE DESCRIPTION: This course takes a close look at the relationship between literature and concerns for equity, sustainability and social justice, focusing on the ways writers, artists and intellectuals work as agents for social change. The course discusses representations of topics such as dis/ability; gender, sexual and racial equity; labour activism; demands for Indigenous sovereignty; critiques of settler colonialism; postcolonial struggles against empire; and calls for environmental preservation. Texts are disciplinarily diverse and may be performative as well as written. Forms include comics, nonfiction, fiction, poetry and more.

All politics, no literature. “Texts may be performative.” 

COURSE TITLE: ENGL-2012 TRANS AND QUEER LITERATURE

COURSE DESCRIPTION: In this course, we explore the ways in which sexualities, gender identities and sexual politics are addressed in literature. Texts will be by transgender, lesbian, gay, bisexual, two-spirit, queer and asexual creators, and will reflect the complicated nature of queer life. Intersectionality will be a guiding principle, as we examine ways race, gender, language, culture and disability justice intersect within representations of queer life across a variety of literary forms, such as fiction, nonfiction and memoir, poetry, drama and comics.

The subject matter is of obvious interest to, at a maximum, three percent of the population, in aggregate. The texts are also limited to that same three percent. Realistically from only the last couple of decades as well, because before that there was no market for gay lit. Yet this course is apparently offered every semester. One suspects the primary objective is to give sexual adventurers of various types an opportunity to meet, identify their preferences, and hook up.

Then finally something that almost looks sensible. They want someone to teach a course in Children’s Literature. An important and neglected field.

But you have to know that critical theory has a special focus on Children’s Literature. For the obvious sinister reason: they want to indoctrinate, and they think the best approach is to get them as young as they can.

COURSE TITLE: ENGL-2010 CHILDREN'S LITERATURE

COURSE DESCRIPTION: This course aims to answer the question: What is children's literature? The course will survey children's fiction, poetry, and picture-books to introduce students to a wide range of children's literature. We will examine different cultural and critical approaches to this field in relation to cultural interpretations of childhood and gender. As we discuss the social and political visions put forth in these texts, we will consider the effects of publishing and the media (for example, the Harry Potter films) on the field of contemporary children's literature. Our analysis of genre will include the study of the relationship between text and illustration. Course readings may include works by Carroll, The Brothers Grimm, Lewis, Rowling, Seuss, and others.

“As we discuss the social and political visions put forth in these texts.” The important thing about children’s literature is its political vision. Obviously, children and their own interests are of no concern here.

And OCAD is not unusual; I have seen similar course descriptions at Queen’s, for example.

The very least we can do is pull all taxpayer funding.

New Great Books Program

John Henry, not Alfred E.

There is good news out there. Newman Theological College in Edmonton has begun offering a Bachelor of Arts in Catholic Studies on the Great Books and Socratic model, similar to that of Our Lady Seat of Wisdom in Eastern Canada.

For most practical purposes, "Great Books" means "real Humanities."

And Nothing to Get Hung up On...

I am walking one of my students through her applied linguistics textbook. After giving a history of the modern discipline of language teaching, the survey chapter concludes with this statement:

“The cyclical nature of theories underscores the fact that no single theory or paradigm is right or wrong. It is impossible to refute with finality one perspective with another. Some truth can be found in virtually every critical approach to the study of reality.”

This is a strikingly false statement. It summarizes the fatal problem with social science generally, and how it has poisoned the wider society.

It is impossible to refute any theories?

This is exactly counter to Karl Popper’s definition of science. Science proceeds by refutation: theories are tested by experiment, and falsified.

Would a scientist be content with the statement that the theory of gravity, or of relativity, is neither right nor wrong?  That they are in the end no more accurate a description of reality than geocentrism or the flat earth concept?

The problem is that, in the social sciences, no theories have ever passed this test. Everything gets refuted within about twenty years, and no progress is ever made.

The proper conclusion to be drawn is that the scientific method cannot grasp the human mind. Unfortunately, too many careers, too many institutions, entire industries are based on the fallacy that it can.

Therefore, instead of conceding the error, the field blames reality and the human mind for failing to conform to its demands. And has chosen to dispense with both; or to deny they exist.

So hey, let’s just burn it all down.

Extraordinary Academic Delusions and the Madness of Crowds

That Shakesperian rag--
Most intelligent, very elegant,
That old classical drag
Has the proper stuff
The line, "Lay on MacDuff"
Desdemona was the pampered pet
Romeo loves his Juliet
And they were some lovers
You can bet, and yet
I know if they were here today
They'd Grizzly Bear in a different way
And you'd hear old Hamlet say
"To be or not to be"
That Shakesperian rag...

The New York Times published an op-ed by Senator Tom Cotton suggesting President Trump should invoke the Insurrection Act if the rioting continues. An obvious point. Other Times columnists immediately branded the piece “Fascist,” there was apparently a general staff insurrection, and the paper apologized for allowing it into print. They promised never again to host such reprehensible opinions. In Canada, Stockwell Day, former leader of the Alliance, patriotically insisted on a CBC panel that there was no systemic racism in Canada. He was apparently promptly thrown off several corporate boards for this heresy.

If opinions someone in power disagrees with are going to be aggressively censored like this, democratic government will not be possible, because political discourse will not be possible. Especially if it includes opinions, like those of Day or Cotton, that are held by a majority of the people; especially opinions expressed by active politicians.

Tim Pool seems convinced this must now end in civil war; that civil war has already begun. It seems to me that is an optimistic scenario. It is more likely, at least in Canada, to end in either totalitarian government or social chaos and a “failed state.”

A bit more hopefully, it also seems to me likely that this latest extreme intolerance is a matter of mass hysteria. Calls to defund the police? That seems almost self-evidently irrational. That means, in effect, no government, and social chaos in one easy step. And how about this for tight reasoning: a week ago, it was deliberate murder to allow businesses to reopen. But now it is Fascist to break up gangs of tightly-clumped people getting physical and touching things in the streets. Words are violence, just as they were a week ago, but looting and destroying property is not violence?

War is peace? Assault is “peaceful protest”?

This is hysteria. People are acting out of blind emotion, without thinking things through.

Everyone saw the video of George Floyd being killed. Anger is a natural reaction. I felt it too. Finding someone to blame and punish is also a natural reaction, but an unworthy one. That is how scapegoating starts. A large proportion of the population is now a lynch mob looking for someone to hurt. Many others are going along and miming the slogans, spraypainting “BLM” on their boarded-up storefronts and publicly kneeling, for fear of the mob turning on them.

But here’s the big new problem: this time around, the mob isn’t only in the streets. It has taken over the newsrooms, the boardrooms, the government offices, the legislatures, even, it seems, the military. There is almost no leadership left taking that sober second look, weighing the facts, keeping it all within the established systems, and urging the mob to calm down. Only a small and embattled minority, themselves in danger of being lynched: the Tom Cottons, the Trumps, the Rand Pauls, the Candace Owens, the Stockwell Days.

The Ralphs are dangerously outnumbered by Jack and the choir.

This is what we have leaders for; this is the justification for elites. To see above the crowd and its passions. With their greater education, intellectual training, and demonstrated mental gifts, they are supposed to be able to deal with such matters calmly, without becoming hysterical.

If you can keep your head when all about you

Are losing theirs, and blaming it on you…

Somehow, but for the odd seemingly self-educated exception, we have stopped producing such leaders, such an elite.

I think this general failure has to be traced back at least in part to the education system. It is the education system’s job to give us such leaders. Inculcating such a capability was always the essential aim of being schooled: to develop character and the ability to deal calmly and justly with whatever befell. In Tom Brown’s Schooldays, Tom’s father says this explicitly: he does not send his son to Rugby to learn to read Greek, but to become a decent Christian gentleman.

We lost this core of education at about the beginning of the 20th century, when the progressive ideal became instead to turn out useful employees in large numbers for industry. We have accelerated this emphasis over time, to the present concept that STEM is what education really should be all about. This was always in direct violation of Confucian principles: “a gentleman is not a tool.”

Over time, perhaps also in reaction to larger social pressures, we abolished religious and ethical education, those things that give the mind a reliable navigational system. We stopped teaching the humanities, the wisdom we had accumulated over the millennia. We say we still do in places, but instead, we teach “social science,” and simply call it the humanities. Social science produces nothing, and does not teach you how to think.

And now we are reaping what we sowed. We have no leadership, no elite, left. There is no one on the bridge. There is no one at the helm. Everyone is running around the decks waving their arms. And perhaps imagining someone else is in charge.

After a hundred years, after perhaps four generations wrongly educated, it is going to be magnificently difficult to rebuild amidst what is likely to be growing social chaos. Western Europe did it once before, in the medieval monasteries. Perhaps it is time for the Benedict option.

Or perhaps new light may come from the East, perhaps from East Asia or Eastern Europe. They too have been devastated by modernism; but at least, having recently known true hardship, having already hit bottom, they may be prepared to make the sacrifices and do the hard work of rebuilding civilization.

Scott Adams on the Future of Education

Critical Pedagogy and Jack the Giant Killer

One of my graduate students is taking a course in “Critical Pedagogy.”

The name does not reveal the true subject: it is the systematic assertion that teachers should devote all their in-class efforts to promoting revolution against the system, rather than teaching the assigned subject. What Jordan Peterson refers to as “cultural Marxism.”

My student cited a typical thesis in this subject: “Jack and the Beanstalk” told from the perspective of the giant.

Interesting, because I only recently saw the same trick in an assigned textbook for young learners: “The Boy Who Cried Wolf” from the perspective of the wolf.

This reveals a core appeal of such ideological approaches. They make it easy to write a thesis. You just take any classic text, and do a “feminist view,” or a “Freudian view,” or a “structuralist view” or whatever. It is purely formulaic, mechanical. It takes no talent or insight; it is like filling in the blanks on a form.

It also explains why these ideological fads fade: after a while, you need a new ideology, or you run out of thesis topics. They come, they go, and no new knowledge nor insight into the works is generated.

The idea behind reading “Jack and the Beanstalk” from the giant’s point of view is no doubt to subvert cultural norms and show the violence inherent in the system. Jack, after all, is a murderer and a thief.

But this is working from the false assumption that Jack was ever considered a hero.

There is nothing new or transgressive about seeing an apparent villain in a fairy tale as a hero, as the suggested thesis topic does with the giant. This is the basic plot, for example, of “Beauty and the Beast.” “Rumpelstiltskin” hinges on an apparent hero turning out to be a villain. The tales school us in trying to see things from all perspectives.

We see an example in “Jack and the Beanstalk” itself. A pedlar trades five beans for Jack’s cow. We as listeners of course assume, as Jack’s mother does, that he is a con artist. But it turns out the beans really are magic. He was a good guy after all.

Is the tale prejudiced against giants?

Clearly not; the giant’s wife, the giantess, is a sympathetic character.

So it is obviously part of the original story that one is supposed to see things from the giant’s viewpoint as well as Jack’s. Jack’s moral position is meant to be ambiguous. He is a “trickster,” a figure familiar in folklore of all lands.

Why there are such stories, in all cultures, is an interesting issue. It might make a good thesis.

It might also make a good thesis to consider the moral questions raised. They are not simple. Is Jack justified in stealing because of his need? Is Jack justified because the giant is a cannibal? Is the giant’s wife betraying her husband, or is it her duty to protect a stranger? What determines the real value of a bean or a cow? On what grounds can we judge a voluntary exchange either fair or unfair? Is Jack justified by self-defense in killing the giant pursuing him? Even though the giant is trying to recover stolen property?

All fascinating questions, that the story is skillfully and deliberately raising.

All missed by this “critical pedagogy approach,” which comes at the tale from the novel and rigid perspective that the giant must be supposed to be right in whatever he does.

Because, hey, he is the giant, he is rich and powerful. And might apparently determines right.

Nothing to Sneeze At

Following the progress of COVID-19 with grim fascination. It feels like watching a train wreck in slow motion.

Among the businesses and industries that are going to be disrupted by this: universities.

For a few past generations Canadians and Americans have more or less stopped having children. One might expect the universities to have been emptying out. The more so since they now face growing online competition.

Yet they have mostly been growing, while tuitions have been spiraling upward. I am amazed, on returning to Toronto after some years, at how Ryerson has expanded to take over much of the downtown. And new universities keep being founded.

Looks like another bubble bound to pop.

Until now, universities in Canada, the US, Australia, and the UK have been making their budgets by offering the traditional American/European university experience to international students. Especially large cohorts from China and Korea, where education is deeply valued. Walking through the Annex, the old U of T student shopping strip, I find mostly Korean stores and mostly Asian faces.

Now, suddenly, that finger is going to be yanked out of the dam, at least for a semester or two.

We’ll see how well the red tide will be contained.

In other coronavirus news, latest reports are that Israeli scientists think they have an oral vaccine, using new technologies, that might get through testing within ninety days.

It might fit well with a God-directed viral plague to have the hated Jews gallop to the rescue. Making it rather more difficult for a time to sustain the growing tone of antisemitism everywhere.

Culture Studies

Hungary has wisely decided to refuse government funds to “women’s studies” at their universities.

Let’s hope this is the beginning of a trend. Covering not just “women’s studies,” but “X studies” of all kinds, in which X represents some special interest group. These departments are rarely of any academic value. They do nothing to advance human knowledge, but rather spread politically motivated misinformation—propaganda.

There is a real place for “culture studies.” In fact, it was always my own main academic interest. But frustratingly, you learn nothing about a culture by taking culture studies. You learn only about current Western politics.

Whom the Gods Would Destroy

Carl Benjamin (Sargon of Akkad)

YouTubers Andrew Klavan and Tim Pool are both saying, as I have recently, that the contemporary left looks as though it is going mad. It actually no longer seems possible to have a rational conversation. The latest evidence is the bizarre way the BBC and others are going after Carl Benjamin (Sargon of Akkad), as candidate for UKIP in the upcoming Euro elections. All they will talk about is how he is endorsing rape by having joked that he would not rape someone. His YouTube channel has just been “demonetized,” taking away his livelihood. On the same day, the NDP is making a public outcry because Jordan Peterson, internationally bestselling author and public intellectual, has been invited to appear before a Canadian Commons committee to express his views. In the US, YouTuber Gavin MacInnis reports that he must now stay up nights with a gun in his home, because of death threats. 

Yet these people are only making entirely reasonable—often humorous—comments on current politics. If it matters, if it justifies refusing to allow them to speak, there is not a whiff of racism or hate towards any identifiable group in anything they have said publicly. Unlike many other commentators on YouTube. But of course, refusing to allow them to speak ensures that nobody learns that what they are saying is reasonable. The approach, if it is not deeply dishonest, is insane.

The BBC seems to be getting aggressively more partisan. This almost looks suicidal in a public broadcaster committed to being non-partisan, and entirely reliant on tax dollars. See the recent shenanigans with Nigel Farage. Imagine a state broadcaster publicly dismissing a political candidate as an extremist just as he seems poised to win a nation-wide election. They are in open rebellion, it seems, against their viewership. They seem to be actually forcing their own demise.

CNN in the USA seems to have been behaving similarly. Facing stiffer competition every ratings period from Fox News and now MSNBC, in addition to the new media, they are getting less reliable on the news. They are doing this just as consumers can quickly double-check for themselves and see when they are lying. Chris Cuomo, for example, supposedly the neutral reporter, recently tried to shout down his guest Rick Santorum with the charge that he lied about something easily proved by anyone with access to YouTube. Again, this seems suicidal.

The same might be said of the mainstream press, the NY Times or Wapost. They are becoming less reliable on the news, more reckless about traditional journalistic ethics, and more overtly partisan, just as their audiences are shrinking through online competition, as they are losing ad revenue to online agents, and as their accuracy can be double-checked online with increasing ease. It looks like a death wish.

As for the left more generally, their recent priorities, supporting Islam and transgenderism, seem to be similarly self-destructive. It is not just that transgenderism literally requires the denial of external reality—the physical and biological differences between male and female. They also seem to demand that leftists take the reverse of stands they were expected to embrace only recently. It was the left, scant years ago, that was anti-Muslim, against the hijab, against supposed patriarchy, and against female genital mutilation. It was the left that, scant years ago, defended homosexuality with the slogan “born this way.” Transgenderism denies the validity of that premise directly, almost as though it were calculated to do so. It is as though being sane disqualifies you from the club.

Cognitive dissonance, illustrated.

At the same time, these two new causes, Islam and transgenderism, look like a direct assault on the left’s prior largest constituencies. Most obviously, and largest, women. Not to mention Jews—the left is now often openly anti-Semitic—and Catholics, who used to be loyally leftist, now openly treated with contempt. It is as though the left is daring their supporters to abandon them.

Why are they acting so irrationally? With transgenderism, for example, we are at the point at which the left is in full denial of obvious reality. That’s insanity by definition. It looks a lot like what used to be called hysteria.

We see it again on the abortion  issue. Just as soon as Trump successfully appointed Kavanaugh, giving the Supreme Court a possible majority to overturn Roe v. Wade, the pro-abortionist lobby doubled down by pushing legislation in New York and Virginia declaring a right to unrestricted abortion up to the moment of birth. It is as though they were daring someone to call them on it.

The image that comes to mind is that of a spoiled child. Called out, caught doing something naughty, as the MSM and the left are increasingly now by new media and newly heard conservative voices, instead of accepting their fault and striving to do better, they throw a tantrum. They start breaking anything in reach. Often their own toys.

But why does a spoiled child act like this?

It is, I think, the voice of conscience. A healthy conscience would accept fault, amend, and be better for the experience. Because a spoiled child has developed such a huge sense of privilege, they cannot find it in themselves to do this. They are perfect. To admit the slightest fault is unthinkable. It is reality that is being unfair. As a result, their conscience drives them to self-destruction. Their thought is no doubt to destroy the world, for not doing as they wish, but the practical effect is going to be self-destruction. And at some level they seem aware of this. It is like the serial killer who left the message in lipstick at the scene of one rape-murder, “For God’s sake, stop me before I kill again!”

We are watching an irresponsible, privileged elite in emotional meltdown. They are thrashing about madly, and the collateral damage may be awful.

Images of supposed hysterics

By watching for the signs of such hysteria, we can perhaps predict which current institution will be next to circle down the drain. They will start to act loony as they see the first signs of trouble appear. And then they will insist on dying.

We are now seeing such obvious insanity in the academy. They know they are doomed. With new technology, the traditional model of the academy is unsustainable. So they are all partying like there is no tomorrow on their arbitrary power, because there is no tomorrow. The Dean of the Harvard Law School was just fired by his university for doing his professional duty as a lawyer and defending the unpopular Harvey Weinstein. Lindsay Shepherd was censured by her department for showing her class a clip from public TV--without comment.

It ten or twenty years, it will all be gone. Now we know. Prepare accordingly.

We are seeing it too in the public schools. The now-abandoned new Ontario sex ed curriculum was an example. They know the el-hi model is also no longer justifiable. It can all be done better online by Khan Academy and the like. So it is time to pull out all the stops, riot, and smash windows on the way out.

Who’s next?

Does the most recent madness emerging from Silicon Valley, the fit of arbitrary deplatforming, mean they know something we don't know? Are corporate critters like Facebook, Twitter, Patreon, PayPal, and Google also seeking dazzling lights in the tunnel heading towards them? It may well be--they are in the best position to know first what new technologies are imminent, and the life cycle of a high-tech company can be especially short as new technology appears. I'd sell.

Why Marxism Survives in the Academy

Right: Marxism. Left: the proletariat.

Why, given the obvious evidence that it simply does not work, despite the revelations about Stalin, the collapse of the Soviet Bloc, Tiananmen, and China’s abandonment of Marxist economics, does Marxism continue to dominate the Humanities and Social Sciences in university, the academy generally, the education world down to pre-school, journalism, publishing, and to a lesser extent all the professions?

Here’s one possible reason: because it is so clearly wrong.

This can make it useful for the same reason the educational theories taught in teacher’s colleges are always wrong.

Nobody could arrive at the support of Marxism based on either evidence, logic, or common sense. You therefore must be “educated” into it. Like some secret handshake, it justifies the education, and certifies that you have it.

More than that, by systematically embracing something any reasonably bright person can see is wrong, you are proving your loyalty to the group. They can be confident, if anything untoward is going on in your sight, in that profession, that you will not be one to blow whistles, lose then their sweet positions, and get them all in trouble. If you can swallow Marxism without flinching, you will swallow anything you are asked or told to do for the good of your class. You are a good German.

This leads to a further conclusion that may be useful: the more Marxism dominates a particular field, the more corrupt it is. This is strong evidence that whatever else that profession or school or brand is selling, is snake oil. To survive, they need to enforce some code of silence and loyalty.

And a further conclusion: those fields that are most Marxist currently are those most likely to be disrupted by new technology. It strongly suggests they are serving no useful purpose, are only preying on their fellows, and so can easily be bettered by laypeople or machines, or by nothing at all.

How to Write Real Good

Kaia Shivers, as posted by herself on InDesign

Now this is chilling.

It has come to the point that not being able to write a grammatical sentence is no bar to becoming a writing professor. Skin colour and sex are what qualify or disqualify you.

This exposes, I think, a fatal flaw in the entire academic exercise. It is all based on “peer review”: which means, those who already hold the job get absolute discretion over who else gets the same job. This is true for academic publication, and even more so for hiring and tenure at universities.

This is an automatic conflict of interest. You get to choose your competition. What are your incentives to select the best? Aren’t they instead to select always and only someone clearly worse at the job than you? This also puts a premium on group solidarity and on not rocking the boat, saying nothing that is going to upset your colleagues. As in, no new or revolutionary ideas that might alter the field. This almost forces the creation of a class mentality: us against the outsiders.

This now manifests itself in the academy’s universal “left wing” ideology. It is the academy openly against the interests of those outside the academy, or its wider web of social allies. Against the interests of the economy, of the culture, of the average woman and man, of the nation.

The argument for it, of course, is that only “experts” can judge good work in their field.

This is true enough, I guess, so far as it goes, but it works only if you have some other reliable scheme for picking your first experts, who then pick all other experts. Otherwise, the whole thing rests on an infinite regression. And the experts you choose must also always be impeccably moral, an improbable assumption, with a devotion to truth and knowledge for its own sake, or they are not going to choose their successors well.

This might work if the whole thing rested on a sincere religious foundation—if professors were selected at least in part on their faith and moral character. Keeping pay for professors relatively low would also help: it means the job would tend to attract in the first place only those to whom knowledge and the pure pursuit of truth were more important than personal or material considerations.

Medieval scholars in debate.

Traditionally, our university system in the West indeed relied on both of these foundations. A university professor had to be an ordained minister or priest. Universities were confessional. Harvard and Yale were Congregational; Princeton was Presbyterian: Colombia was Church of England. Queen’s was Presbyterian; U of T had separate colleges for the various denominations; McMaster was Baptist; Western and Bishops were Anglican; and so forth.

The further back you go, the clearer the religious character.

And pay for profs was modest.

We have been systematically sawing off this branch on which we sat.

In the old days, too, the mettle of professors was established by public lecture, and by public debate. So there was some input from the general population.

If we are going to fix the crisis in our universities, we are going to have to go back to these practices.

Otherwise, we get writing profs who write like this:

Teaching Statement: Taking from Paolo Freire, “knowledge emerges only through invention and re-invention” with pedagogies that resist hegemonic regimes of knowing when those who are learning are as empowered and humanized as those who are teaching.

My philosophy is to offer a safe space for students to cultivate intellect, understand and develop personal and collective agency, connect with peers, and actively participate in their own learning. The two main objectives in teaching is to facilitate learning by helping students to gain the necessary skills to take control of their own learning — and eventually use their intellectual growth and skills as productive global citizens.

I focus on assisting students in developing critical viewpoints, while sharpening their skills of written and verbal analyses and articulation in current and historical themes; and employing multimedia and interactive pedagogical methods.

It is tiresome to translate this into English: it is language written deliberately to obscure meaning, which is a moral offense against language, and especially against teaching and learning, which it is designed to prevent. But the meaning is chilling:

Knowledge is something you invent yourself to suit your own purposes. My philosophy is to teach nothing. I give them assignments, then sit and judge. But I do teach them to be “critical” of current themes—in other words, I mark them on whether they share my politics.

There is No Western Civilization

Ngarjuna

Botheration. The students at London’s School of Oriental and African Studies have proposed that “the majority of philosophers on our courses” should be from Africa and Asia. This has caused a backlash in the press.

Powerline comments

“This is so pathetically stupid that it doesn’t really deserve a response. I take it that these people claim to be studying philosophy, right? So that means they need to study philosophers. What we call philosophy is a Western invention. I remember when Paul and I were taking a Greek philosophy class from Professor Duggan at Dartmouth. At one point in a lecture, he referred to ‘Western philosophy,’ then paused and said: ‘as if there were any other kind.’”

Bodhidharma

Here is an interesting case where I think both sides are wrong. It is an old problem, one that I have cared deeply about since undergrad days, and it seems we are never going to resolve it. The truth seems to have no voice. I majored in Comparative Religions, and went on to do grad work in the field, very largely because it was the only place in the academy where one might study the vast domain of non-European thought. Perhaps two thirds of the world’s knowledge, and all untouched elsewhere.

In principle, it seems to me that the students are absolutely right. What was the name of the school again? If you study philosophy at the School of Oriental and African Studies, you have every reason to expect that the philosophers you study will be primarily Oriental and African. Otherwise, your degree is a fraud.

As to the claim that the only philosophy worth studying is Western philosophy, that is simply extreme chauvinism. It is pig ignorant. I tell you with some conviction, anyone who has not studied Buddhist philosophy, Ngarjuna, Hui Neng, the Tao Te-Ching, Confucius, Mencius, Chuang Tzu, Shankara, Ramakrishna, Ibn Khaldun, Ibn Arabi, Ibn Sina, Al-Ghazali, has missed important parts of the human argument and experience. He or she is only half-educated.

And they are understudied. If you are not going to find them in the School of Oriental and African Studies, then where?

Ibn Sina

One can argue, technically, that philosophy is a purely Western invention. But only technically. In the sense that the word is Greek. Yes, Eastern thinkers often dwell on different issues than the classic ones that have preoccupied the West. But that only reveals an artificial limitation on our viewpoint—a good reason in itself to study Eastern philosophy. One could similarly argue, and I have heard it argued, that comedy and tragedy are a Western invention, and there is no comedy outside Europe. This is true in the same sense: our definitions of the two genres come from Aristotle and the Greek ritual tradition. Nevertheless, it is absurd to suggest that we cannot find funny plays or sad plays in other cultures, and more absurd to suggest that non-Western drama is not worth studying because it does not fit into our categories. What in the end, is wrong with learning something? Why would we want to exclude it from a university?

This sort of chauvinism implies cultural relativism. Truth does not have a skin colour or an ethnicity. There is no “Western civilization.” There is only civilization. It is the human duty to seek truth and to seek the best. Wherever we find it, regardless of the “culture” that spawned it. Is something that is true in Toronto not true in Mumbai?

Shankara

That is, incipiently, what American culture and English-speaking culture is: taking the best wherever we find it. That is its genius. And, moreover, that is what Christian culture is. Might I point out that Jesus was Asian? St. Augustine, though, was African. We are building the world culture, those of us who are with the program. Take the best music, whether from Ireland or Africa; the best food, whether from Italy or China; and so forth. That is our project.

Unfortunately, while those who object to the student union proposal seem hopelessly misguided on this, this is in fact not what the students want either.

Here is the relevant portion of their “Educational Priorities”:

Decolonising SOAS: Confronting the White Institution: 

Decolonising SOAS is a campaign that aims to address the structural and epistemological legacy of colonialism within our university. We believe that SOAS should take a lead on such questions given its unique history within British colonialism. In light of the centenary and SOAS’ aims of curating a vision for itself for the next 100 years, this conversation is pivotal for its future direction.
Our aims are a continuation of the campaign last year:

To hold events that will engage in a wider discussion about expressions of racial and economic inequality at the university, focussing on SOAS.

To address histories of erasure prevalent in the curriculum with a particular focus on SOAS’ colonial origins and present alternative ways of knowing.

To interrogate SOAS’ self-image as progressive and diverse.

To use the centenary year as a point of intervention to discuss how the university must move forward and demand that we, as students of colour, are involved in the curriculum review process.

To review 10 first year courses, working with academics to discuss points of revamp, reform and in some cases overhaul.

To make sure that the majority of the philosophers on our courses are from the Global South or it’s diaspora. SOAS’s focus is on Asia and Africa and therefore the foundations of its theories should be presented by Asian or African philosophers (or the diaspora).

If white philosophers are required, then to teach their work from a critical standpoint. For example, acknowledging the colonial context in which so called “Enlightenment” philosophers wrote within.

Lao Tzu heading west 

In other words, their problem is that SOAS is not racist enough.

“ a wider discussion about expressions of racial and economic inequality”? It is hard to shoehorn either European or Asian philosophers into a discussion of economics or race. Not an issue most of them have been interested in. It is a good excuse to avoid having to deal with any of them. And not even really about politics, either. It is an excuse for saying “you owe me a degree without working for it.” Because oppression.

“present alternative ways of knowing.” Thank you, Carlos Castenada. As any proper philosopher, East or West, North or South, could inform them, there are no “alternative ways of knowing.” Epistemology 101. By definition—or it is not knowledge. If such cultural relativism is true, we are indeed wasting our time studying Oriental or African thought. This is just a way to reject any criticism of your own thinking. “It’s just my way of knowing.” How dare you mark me! Oppression!

“ we, as students of colour” This is presented by the Student’s Union. Are all students at SOAS really “students of colour”? If so, the school should be defunded. It is just an academic ghetto. Or is it that only students of colour are worth mentioning? Then we have extreme discrimination against whites. Either way, it further assumes that Oriental and African thought is of interest only to students of Oriental and African background. If so, again, studying it is a waste of time. And why should any Europeans be asked to fund it?

“SOAS’s focus is on Asia and Africa and therefore the foundations of its theories should be presented by Asian or African philosophers (or the diaspora).” I almost bought it, it almost was true, until that first parenthesis. “Or the diaspora”? That is, people of African or Asian ancestry living in Europe or North America? Outside of African Americans, there would be few of those more than a couple of generations back; among Africans in the US, only a few centuries. A small pool in which to find some of the world’s greatest thinkers. No; this is a fairly obvious claim by the “students of colour” that they themselves are, due to their ancestry, already authorities on Oriental and African thought. It I impertinent of their professors to suppose they know better. So stop annoying them with questions and give them their degrees. Racists.

Averroes

“ acknowledging the colonial context in which so called ‘Enlightenment’ philosophers wrote within.” Pardon the bad grammar; its probably correct in African or Oriental Diaspora thought. Again, there is a point here. The Age of Discovery was deeply influential in European thought. You could do a lot with that premise. But has it been generally unacknowledged? If so, congratulations! You just found a thesis topic!

One gets the feeling the authors never thought of that. That in itself is a chilling reflection on the state of the academic project. This is something the professors are supposed to do for them?

“Culture studies,” which is something we vitally need, has been co-opted everywhere. Instead of studying culture, they simply award unearned degrees on grounds of race or sex or sexual orientation.

I propose a rule: harsh, but perhaps necessary. If you are going to have a department of “women’s studies,” only men should be permitted to enroll. If you have a department of “queer studies,” only straight people should be allowed to enroll. If you have a department of African or Oriental Studies, they can accept nobody of African or Oriental parentage.

If such studies are of any value, they must be of value to those who are not themselves from the culture. On the other hand, follow the implied logic of the SOAS proposal. Students of the African or Asian Diaspora already know all this stuff. They are wasting their time pretending to study it.

Looks Like Science

Is well on its way to becoming just like Social Science. Are the new dark ages upon us?

The Stripped Gears of Social Science

Photographed in an antique shop window. Is it live, or Memorex?

There are only two kinds of discoveries in the social sciences: those that do no more than confirm common sense, and those that are wrong. The latter is more common.

This study is probably correct. It suggests that bullies have high self esteem than the average person and are less likely than others to experience depression. So much, indeed, is common sense. Unfortunately, it goes directly against everything social science have been telling us for a generation or two. For at least that long, we have been told that bullies and abusers act as they do because they were themselves abused in the past, and because they have low self-esteem.

Teaching and parenting practice has, of course, been altered, sometimes forcibly altered, to reflect this for that same two generations, always sparing the rod in hopes of more perfectly spoiling the child. Everything a child does is now awesome. Nothing a child does can be punished in any meaningful way.

No surprise if we now have a much bigger problem with bullying in schools. We of a certainty also have it in the wider world of work, in society, in marriages, in life in general.

And we paid large sums to get screwed in this way.

What's worse, we've been told for about the same time to work on our and our children's “emotional intelligence.” Sounds good, put in that way, but it really means learning to falsify your own true feelings while manipulating those of others. In other words, training to be a proper psychopath.

Here's another instance of this academic game at work. Some time ago, a prominent paper came to the conclusion that there was never any significant discrimination against the Irish in America, and few if any “No Irish Need Apply” signs or ads. The Irish had simply imagined the whole thing. Now, a high school student—a high school student—has managed to disprove the claim comprehensively, simply with a bit of web searching.

A bit of web searching.

How, you might ask, is this possible? How can an academic paper become so widely accepted while making such extremely improbable claims, and on the basis of so little evidence?

It is really quite simple. Academia is set up to make this happen. Imagine if the original paper by the reputable history professor with the Yale Ph. D. had researched the record thoroughly and discovered that, yes, as everyone had always assumed to be true, discrimination against the Irish in America was widespread in past generations, and there were a good number of signs denying them employment. Would there then be a publishable paper, simply confirming what everybody already knew? Probably not. But if you can put out a paper that seems to show that what everybody thought was wrong—then you get it published, get tenure, get a lot of attention. You have discovered something!

All that really prevents this is the sheer honesty of individual academics. Unfortunately, morality has become unfashionable in such circles. Indeed, academics as a group, as a class, have a vested interest in promoting this kind of behaviour, rather than censuring or preventing it. If a field as a whole seems to produce no new discoveries, can produce nothing the general public doesn't already know, it is hard to justify its very existence. Why take a Ph.D. in it, if you learn nothing? Why pay someone to teach it, if he has nothing to teach? Thus, it becomes important for any field to consistently violate common sense. This is probably, on the whole, not a good thing.

Yes, there is the risk that someone will try to reproduce your results and find them wrong; as happened here. But the same problem applies: merely repeating and confirming someone else's study is not generally publishable. So others rarely do it. The high school student's paper made waves because the original paper, arguing that the Irish had not been discriminated against, had become so widespread among academics to have become, itself, a new received wisdom. At this point, “revisionism” begins to pay dividends. And the cycle begins again.

Just as a clock that has stopped dead will still be accurate about twice a day, so all these crazy ideas emerging from the academy probably get disproven eventually. However, what we are witnessing is not a quest for truth or knowledge, and alarmingly little get added year by year to the store of human knowledge. In the meantime, a great deal of damage gets done.

It is worst in the social sciences, because they are based on incoherent premises—primarily, an insurmountable observer paradox. But the same also applies in the humanities and in the hard sciences. The difference is that the social sciences emit nothing but this static; humanities and hard sciences do also sometimes produce valid results.

Even so, anyone who has lived long enough and made some effort over their lives to follow medical advice will surely have noticed the pattern. Sugar will kill you. It will make you fat. You must take artificial sweeteners. No, wait, artificial sweeteners will kill you and make you fat; you must take sugar. No, they are quite safe; sugar is bad and will make you fat. You must get more sunlight for vitamin D. You must stay out of the sun or get skin cancer. You must get more sunlight for vitamin D. You fools! Why have you not been listening to us experts? Cholesterol is bad for your heart; cholesterol is good for you. Eggs are healthy; eggs are unhealthy; eggs are healthy. Aspirin is dangerous; safer to take acetaminophen. Acetaminophen is dangerous; safer to take aspirin. Statistics at least tell us medicine does make some progress; technology proves that hard sciences make some progress; but there is obviously still a huge amount of static involved.

This is one reason why I love the Catholic Church. Of all human institutions with intellectual pretensions, it seems uniquely immune from this disease. All other human “knowledge” seems built on sand; it alone is built on rock.

Murder in the Ivory Tower

Minerva among the Muses. Thinking panty raid?

What this study primarily demonstrates is that students really don’t learn very much in college: “45 percent of students did not demonstrate any significant improvement in learning during the first two years of college; 36 percent of students did not demonstrate any significant improvement in learning over four years of college.”

The study evaluates only critical thinking and reasoning skills. But the knowledge gains are even worse. Other studies suggest that the typical student at an Ivy League college actually graduates with less general knowledge than when he entered—he forgets more than he learns over the four years.

But notice that there is one bright spot. “Students majoring in liberal arts fields see significantly higher gains in critical thinking, complex reasoning, and writing skills over time than students in other fields of study."

The bad news is, the liberal arts are dying everywhere. They are being taken over or replaced by the social sciences.

So which discipline scores the lowest skills and knowledge gains over four years of college?

You guessed it: social sciences. “Students majoring in business, education, social work and communications showed the smallest gains.”

Another interesting finding: “Students who study by themselves for more hours each week gain more knowledge -- while those who spend more time studying in peer groups see diminishing gains.” So why is it that current educational methods insist on group work at all times and under all circumstances?

It almost seems as though there is a plan to destroy education.

And I suspect that is exactly right. Not a conscious conspiracy. But somehow (and I suspect affirmative action has at least something to do with it), relatively stupid people have been given the reins of the educational establishment, and they have set out over time to destroy anything in it that might reveal their stupidity. It’s a matter of instinctive self-preservation, I suppose; but the effects on the culture are bound to be devastating. They will kill what they do not understand.