What’s Your Sign? NASA wants To Add Ophiucus. And Change the Dates

NASA has declared war on the Astrologers. (“We just do the math” is their story. And they’re sticking to it.) They have added an extra constellation to the Zodiac and changed all the dates. The Zodiac is grounded in history more than science. In short, the Babylonians created the Zodiac as we know it some 3,000 years ago.  For their own reasons they left out the Constellation Ophiucus even though the Sun passes through it. Perhaps it was because the Babylonian lunar calendar only had 12 months meaning one of the 13 had to go. Perhaps it was because Ophiucus also drops below the horizon in winter months that it was most likely the prime candidate to be dropped. Whatever the reason, it was.

The dates we use today for the Zodiacal boundaries also do not translate to the stars properly any more because of the  wobbling of the Earth and the movement of the stars themselves.  So NASA has joined the long parade of groups trying to restore this missing 13th Zodiacal sign. After they “did the math” the came to the only conclusion they could. Ophiucus must be restored and the dates had to be shifted around as well.

So the NASA group has recalculated the proper dates for the various astrological signs. The Sun spends only three weeks in Ophiucus so it won’t be your Sun Sign unless you were born between November 29 and December 17. Virgo, by contrast, has a six-week window.

Ophiucus is the sign of architects and snake-bearers, snake-charmers, and so on.  If you’re one of them then your personality traits are: seeker of wisdom, flamboyant, and a builder.

The new (or more accurately “restored”) Babylonian Zodiac is:

Capricorn: January 20 to February 16
Aquarius: February 16 to March 11
Pisces: March 11 to April 18
Aries: April 18 to May 13
Taurus: May 13 to June 21
Gemini: June 21 to July 20
Cancer: July 20 to August 10
Leo: August 10 to September 16
Virgo: September 16 to October 30
Libra: October 30 to November 23
Scorpio: November 23 to November 29
Ophiuchus: November 29 to December 17
Sagittarius: December 17 to January 20

For all those people who take this astrology stuff seriously and now find themselves in a “different” sign, the distinct possibility of an “identity crisis” suggests itself. Over the years I’ve met a few psychiatrists who use astrology to diagnose their patients and there are numerous astrologers who advise their clients for a fee and more than just a few people who consult their horoscopes every day.  I can imagine what’s coming:

“I used to be a Scorpio. Now I’m something I can’t even pronounce. I don’t want to be a snake-bearer. I don’t even know what a snake-bearer is.” It’s going to be very traumatic. Therapists will have to clear their calendars.

Will the newspapers and magazines make the needed changes? Will astrologers set up help-lines and chat rooms to aid those making the transition?

The Astrological changes proposed by NASA will only be relevant to people following the Western/Babylonian Astrological signs.  There are many kinds of astrology. Every ancient culture had it’s own. These changes only really impact cultures with roots in Greece and Rome.

Identity crises seem to everywhere in  Western Cultures.

First gender-identity, now sun-signs, what’s next? Race? Ethnicity?

Race and Ethnicity are already being challenged by all those do-it-yourself DNA tests.  “I thought I was German but now I know I’m  Irish”.

Is there no stability left in the world? Will we finally wind up having to take some kind of test each morning to find out what identity we will have today?

Which reminds me of my long-languishing “Past Lives Horoscope” project. While teaching epidemiology I had to deal with many MDs including psychiatrists. One day at lunch two of them turned out to be hypnotherapists who did “past life regression” which sent people back into their previous existences to get to the “real roots” of their present psychological malaise.  One of the problems I recall was that of a woman who was still angry with her husband because when he was a Mongol warrior riding with Genghis Khan he had attacked her village and abducted her. On the other hand, they’re still together.

Another one of the psychiatrists, though, rejected all this and said he did astrological charts based on the (12 sign) Zodiac to determine what was the source of the problem. Misaligned stars and all that.

I should have been silent but instead I suggested people should just input all of the various astrological systems in the world into a software package, then put the daily tribulations and triumphs of all the patients into a database, and run correlations to find out which “past life horoscope” was dominant on any given day.

I waxed eloquent (or at least I thought I did) in telling them how they could use this to validate the horoscopes as well as determining which people had been members of what culture and in which previous life. Instead of a discussion about how to make sure of the correct birthday or other such important facts, they just looked at me. One of them said: “It only takes the signatures of three MDs to have a person committed for 90 days for psychiatric assessment.” Then the fourth of them — who had been quiet up to this point — said: “My husband is a judge. You won’t win your appeal to get out.”

Be careful what you say when you’re having lunch with psychiatrists.

And maybe it’s time we asked ourselves if all this “identity redefinition” anxiety which is the present rage is actually a form of distraction which is sucking our energy away from the real problems facing Western Culture in particular and the human future more generally. Will the future really be brighter if the culture that is trying to cure cancer, has almost ended Alzheimer’s, and Parkinson’s, put the Rosetta probe on a comet, is going to stitch the Cassini probe through Saturn’s rings 22 times, is preparing to colonise Mars starting in 10 years, and ended slavery (within its own borders)  gets taken over by ISIS instead?

I wonder what the new refinements to the Zodiac will tell us about that?

9/11 15 years On

All of us remember where we were on 9/11. I was teaching an International Relations class when two of the students came in late, stood in the doorway, and said we should all go to the cafeteria where we the big TV had been turned to CNN. They mentioned the WTC and that the first tower had fallen.

I wasn’t really sure what was going on. I frankly didn’t believe a single airplane could knock over a WTC tower. It all sounded a little far-fetched. But the students looked very distraught and were insistent so I elected to break early and we all got there in time to see the second tower fall.

We saw many reruns of the airplanes which hit the buildings in the hours which followed. Classes were not suspended but a lot of people at the university gathered around the numerous cafeteria television sets for the rest of the day.

It was obviously early in the term but ironically (or not) I was already discussing Al Qaeda, the Taliban, and Osama bin Laden. At that time I was already very worried about him.

Because of this I was quite quick to blame the whole thing on him. Even before North American air travel had been resumed I had been cautioned not to jump to conclusions about what still had not been officially determined to be a deliberate act.

We must not be too hasty. We must get in all of the evidence and then only judge carefully.

A few days after air travel resumed I found a newspaper article supporting the idea that bin Laden and Al Qaeda was responsible. I cut it out and put it on the bulletin board next to my office door (*my* bulletin board) and a day later it was gone.

I also note that Samsung has recalled 2.5 million Galaxy Note 7 phones because 35 of them worldwide have exploded.

That’s about 0.0014%

A recent opinion poll showed that 33% of US followers of Islam believe Sharia law should be given higher priority than the US Constitution.

If someone offers you a Samsung Galaxy Note 7, just take it. Don’t risk being called a Samsungphone-o-phobe.

BTW. There is only one kind of battery which explodes. Not all Note 7s have them. But this is the very first Note 7 which is sealed. Users can not remove the back and see if they have the funny battery.

There is no way for the “lay observer” to know if any particular phone is dangerous or harmless. There is no way to interrogate the phone’s “about phone” information to find this out. No app can do this. Only a factory-trained expert can make the determination.

They don’t have special cover-patterns or screen images or cases. They all look the same from the outside.

So some airlines have banned them from all their flights. And all of them have to go back to Samsung for inspection and replacement. Samsung is instructing the owners to turn them all off immediately and use other devices instead.

The perception of threat and reasonable risk appears to be contextual. As does the response to that perception.

Politically Correct Phone Ownership?

Burkini Bans: The Iconography of Attire

It’s all a matter of terminology.

The French are not banning “burkinis” but “Hijrakinis”.  Not all of them really know it yet but this is what is actually happening.

Banning the veil is not banning a “headscarf” it’s banning a “Sharia Shawl”

Banning the Islamic beard is not banning “facial hair” but “Jizya Beards” or “Believer Beards”.

Banning the wearing of headgear is not banning  hats, it’s banning “Submission Caps”

Manuel Valls, the French Prime Minister gave voice to the iconographic dimension of attire when he defended the depiction of Marianne – herself perhaps not actually a real person but an icon in her own right – as bare-breasted and a visible face. Her face is unveiled, Valls said, because she is free. Her breast is bare because the Republic nourishes the people of France.

“Vous parlez de Marianne ! Marianne, le symbole de la République ! Elle a le sein nu parce qu’elle nourrit le peuple ! Elle n’est pas voilée, parce qu’elle est libre ! C’est ça la République ! C’est ça Marianne ! C’est ça que nous devons toujours porter !”

 

The relabelling from “attire” to “symbol” is relevant. It moves the taxonomic location of the item out of the “individual choice” level of analysis and into the “cultural symbolism” level.

After all. The Swastika is banned in Germany not because it’s a Hindu/Buddhist Symbol (one culture on the cultural level) but because it was adopted by the National Socialists (a different culture on the cultural level) and was not therefore a simple and ancient way of drawing a pattern with straight lines.

The Secularists forget that they are not “generic secularists” but “Christian secularists”.

If the roots of an Apple tree are cut, the fruit remains “apples”.

If the roots of a Peach tree are cut, the fruit remains “peaches”.

Cutting the roots of the trees does not make apples into peaches.

But in time neither tree will bear any fruit at all.

Multiculturalism argues that since the roots of the apple tree force the fruit to be apples, and thereby discourage the kind of diversity which would allow peaches, pears, and plums to grow equally alongside — even after Affirmative Action Laws passed by the insects living on the tree-trunk mandated it — over the objections of the leaves, by the way, that it became obvious the way to the Ultimate Harmony of Diversity was to poison the roots.  To deracinate the tree.

Trees, once free of their dictatorial roots sunk as they were into some long-forgotten historical ground, could then be home to a Veritable Rainbow of All Possible Fruits. True Diversity at last.

And if the relabelling, the use of terms which appear to shift the level from “individual” to “culture” and by so doing bring into consciousness the possibility of “cultural displacement” produces unease and dismay – if this relabelling generates anxiety – then this response itself is confirmation of at least the subconscious awareness of the existence of these levels.

Responses which systematically exclude relevant levels, perspectives, and dimensions are known examples  of “systematically distorted communication”.

This term was introduced by Habermas in his analysis of political propaganda. Noam Chomsky makes note of this approach in his work on “manufacturing consent”. George Lakoff calls it “reframing”. Stage magicians and pickpockets call it “misdirection”.

Related forms are ‘trigger warnings’ and the many categories of ‘hate speech’.

When a culture has lost its icons it has lost its symbolic connection to its own history. To deracinate the icons and make them mere “personal fashion choices” or expressions of “individual preference” is to forget the cultural ground in which these very ideas  — the idea of “personal choice” and “individual preference – are grounded. Our iconography is a daily reminder of our commitment to these values. Other icons depict other values and other commitments.

If all we see is “personal choice” and if we cannot see or appreciate the iconography and the values that iconography symbolises then we are deracinated.

Our loss of cultural foundations is echoed in our growing fascination with finding our biological roots.  Those of us who have no icons to use to tell us about our roots instead have the option of having DNA tests to find out what percentage of our genome belongs to what racial group.  That this should be taking place in a population of people more and more inundated with the ideology of “self-identification” a certain irony is obvious.

Some cultures naturally die out. Others evolve gradually. Still others are subjected to assaults from without and treachery from within. Such assaults are best understood as cultural genocide.  Assaults from without have been seen in Palmyra, Bamiyam, Timbuktu, and

A culture which forgets its icons and has lost its iconography is deracinated. Deracinated cultures are dying cultures. 

When a culture’s rulers are unable or unwilling to deal with the “cultural level of discourse” with the members of that culture, when those cultures whose elites systematically engage in denying the iconographic roots of the culture even as the mass of members wish to preserve them are in danger of violent convulsion.

Here endeth the lesson.

Prophet Donald: Reframing the Narrative

Earlier today I was sent an e-mail link to an article by Victor Davis Hanson in which he describes Donald Trump as a “Post Modern” candidate.

http://m.townhall.com/columnists/victordavishanson/2016/08/04/donald-trump-postmodern-candidate-n2201514

Below is my e-mailed response with just a few of the infelicities of e-mail removed.

In it I offer an “alternative narrative” to that which is presently employed.

The idea of “Reframing” or of  “Reframing Narratives” is an idea which has political significance since George Lakoff advised the Obama campaign that the important thing was not “the message” but how the message was “framed”.

Trump’s message is almost never the topic of the discussion. What the media discussion does is focus on the rudeness and inappropriateness of the way he expresses the facts. It’s not about the message but the messenger. It’s not about the “values” but the way they are “framed”.

In the overarching spirit of this blog I offer a way to “reframe” the current Trump commentaries. The deeper reason for this is, as always, to reveal the techniques of rhetoric and manipulation so that when we reach a decision or a conclusion it will be the one we ourselves wanted to reach and not the one we were “sold” or “spun into believing”.

Now on to the comments of Victor Davis Hanson.

===

I think he’s basically correct in the appeal but he’s missing the real historical parallel.

Donald Trump is a recapitulation of the Hebrew Prophets.

For those who don’t remember them, the Hebrew Prophets were generally well known for telling everyone else exactly what was wrong and for being detested for doing so. All of them were hated. Some of them had to run for their lives.  Others did not run fast enough. 

Trump is Prophet Donald. I only came to this conclusion yesterday.  It came to me when President Obama called him “unfit for the presidency” and thereby did something that no US president has ever done – get involved in the re-election campaign to replace him. This has never been done in any civilised country. It is the hallmark of a dysfunctional political system.

I was also aided in seeing the problems when I asked myself why it was that the Democrats appear to be on the one had highly confident of victory and yet they are acting as if they had a great deal to hide and their chances were less than good.

We are also told that Julian Assange is planning to release some more files which will fill in the missing blanks on the Clinton Cash and Libyan military intervention against Gaddafi which resulted in the present disaster in Libya. Both of these could provide information highly damaging to Hillary Clinton’s election chances.

This would account for the timing of the furious attacks against Trump: Get rid of him now so he’s already gone if Hillary has to be dumped as well.

The overriding desire seems to be to make sure that no matter what happens Trump does not get elected. If Hillary is fatally compromised in September or October then it will be necessary to have Trump gone by then.

Why does Trump inspire so much unvarnished fear in some people while others (including  his children) see him as someone who is reasonable and conciliatory?

Is it because he is brash, outspoken, and “post modern” as Victor Davis Hansen says, or is it because he fearlessly speaks what he believes to be the truth and is sufficiently insulated from the indirect methods of censorship (he’s rich, after all) that he can actually exercise his rights to free speech fully?

As I suggested in an earlier post, Trump and at that time Sanders both had one thing in common: they attacked the “puppetmaster” of the “political establishment” and they could do it because they were both outsiders and not beholden to the existing power brokers for their political survival.

The recent revelations of the DNC’s furious plotting to derail Sanders produced the destruction of Debbie Wasserman Schulz as collateral damage but Sanders was stopped.

The Puppetmaster’s left flank was therefore protected.

Trump, however, still threatens the right flank.

Donald Trump calls ugly people ugly, stupid people stupid, dissembling people liars, dishonest people crooks, racist people racist, incompetent people incompetent and so on.

Even when these people are rich, famous, and widely admired. Even when it is “politically incorrect” to find fault with them as is Prof. Hanson’s major argument.

Hanson reminds us that the foremost advocates of all of the socially corrosive actions Trump so dislikes have veiled themselves in the shroud of Politically Unassailability by virtue of Victimhood.

Attacking them as Trump does is manifestly “politically incorrect” but that appellation only appeals to the faction of the population which agrees with him.

Those who advocate all of this destructive lunacy attack Trump for being rude and unkind and all manner of other “personal” rebukes.

Then I started asking myself “why do the people who say they hate him get so angry?” After all, as we have seen in the leaked emails, all manner of Politically Correct Luminaries have revealed themselves to be every bit as bigoted and thick-witted as those they denounce.

Once I asked this question, Trump started to remind me of the Hebrew Prophet Amos.

I’m not that up on my prophets so maybe another one will serve better.

But to suggest to the Politically Correct Party Establishment that they hate Trump for the same reasons the Ancient Israelites hated Amos then it might be possible to switch the debate away from Trump’s message and to the refusal of his attackers from asking if they themselves are in any way at fault.

Pope Francis in his comments on the martyrdom of Fr Jacques Hamel has revealed himself yet again as a “sentimental” Christian and an “ontological” Marxist. He doesn’t want anyone to get hurt and the root of all the world’s ills is to be found in economics.  All religions are inherently peaceful. All religions have violent people in their numbers. The root causes of such violence is always social and economic.

What would Amos say to him? What would Trump say to him?

For the more “spiritually inclined” people we can tell them “Trump is Channeling Amos”.

If Amos isn’t exactly right for this comparison my apologies.

But Trump is still reminding me of the Old Prophets.

Prophet Donald is reading the Riot Act to America.

Trump is only chronologically “post modern”. In terms of his own motivations — at least as far as I can discern them — he is a classical American Patriot who just can’t stand seeing his country destroyed. “He’s mad as hell and he just can’t take it any more.”

He’s not a capitalist. He’s not a communist. He’s not a protectionist. He’s not a globalist.

He’s an American.

It’s been so long I almost forgot what they looked like.

He’s also an American Prophet. Prophet Donald.

That’s why he gets all the free air time, all the attention, and all the acrimony.  Because he’s saying things that even those in the news media who detest him know will pull in huge ratings and make them massive profits.

Donald Trump. American Prophet.

Pokémon Go, Jihad, Multiculturalism, and Star Trek.

By now everyone in the world knows about Pokémon Go. It’s the new smartphone game which is not only changing how we think of gaming by making us wander around the great outdoors getting hit by cars and finding dead bodies and looking out for as-yet unclassified life-forms (some field biologists figure that if we’re out there wandering around anyway we should be doing unpaid ecological research as well).

But it’s also the first major experience most of us have had with “augmented reality”. This goes beyond the Oculus Rift form of Virtual Reality in which all of the visual information is computer generated or computer mediated. In VR the computer controls everything we see  and hear.

Augmented reality puts new sights and sounds into our “real” world so there is a blend of one set of experiences – those which are out in the world regardless of what the computer does – and those which are presented to us as if they were in the real, concrete world but are just digital projections.

In Star Trek terms it is similar to the Holodeck situations in which hologram bartenders can give real drinks to real people and – we suppose – digitally simulated drinks to the holograms we are mingling with.

Those of us who remember Next Generation, Voyager and Deep Space Nine will remember holodeck characters who became self-aware and wanted to get out of the confines of their prisons. Portable Holo Emitters allowed this for some like Voyager’s Doctor. Others, like Professor Moriarty – pace Descartes – had to be tricked into living in a Matrix-like world they assumed was real.

So what does this have to do with Multiculturalism?

To address this we really should accept the fact that the word is not “singular” but “plural”. It only becomes a “singular” when it is so abstract it is devoid of any coherent meaning.

There are numerous kinds of “multiculturalisms” and they correspond to different ideological and experiential traditions.  People in the far north of Sweden may understand multiculturalism as finding commonality with both Norwegians and Finns. People in Malmö understand it as seeing regions of their city turned into Sharia-law no-go zones where the “indigenous” or “aboriginal” Swedes (the ones who mostly have blue eyes and blond hair) are at risk and where Swedish law “no longer applies”.

The people who defend “multiculturalism” are usually imagining it as the “can Norwegians, Swedes, and Finns learn to live together in harmony?” variant. Those who regard it as a form of “cultural suicide” conjure up visions of Malmö, or of Nice on Bastille Day, or of the Eagles of Death Metal Bataclan concert, or of 40,000 Turks marching in Germany to demonstrate in support of Turkish President Erdogan.

The idea of Germany having several million followers of Islam conjures up “Islam’s Rule of Numbers” which was proposed as a cultural factor by Raymond Ibrahim. In general, Ibrahim is claiming that the way a culturally distinct group acts in a host population depends to some degree on how large a percentage of the population they make up.  When the percentage is miniscule the conduct of the group is exemplary and a credit to all. When the percentage grows over 10% then the group becomes more restive, more aggressive, less tolerant of difference, and more demanding of special accommodation.

To recall the words which have been attributed to many historical figures, not just Stalin and Napoleon,  it may be the case that “quantity has a quality all its own”.

In other words, we can’t define “multiculturalism” at all until we answer the preliminary question “what is culture?”

Some people regard “culture” as being confined to such things as national costumes, culinary traditions, language, and possibly the kind of building people attend for important life-transition events such as marriages, funerals, and the reception of newborn children into the community.

At this level of abstraction it is fairly easy to say  “all cultures are equal” just as it is easy to say “all plants are equal” after examining their need for sunlight, oxygen, and nutrients.

But this kind of “equality” does not make it reasonable to assume cacti can grow in Antarctica or orchids thrive in the Sahara Desert.  Some human cultures have “adaptations to the physical environment” which makes them very difficult to transplant.  Fishing societies won’t do well in deserts. Herding societies don’t belong in jungles.  The long-standing problems “aboriginal peoples” (more accurately “non-European aboriginal peoples” since it would absurd to suggest the Swedes are not “aboriginal residents” of their land) have had in adapting to European colonists and settlers is well understood in North America , New Zealand, and Australia.

Other definitions of culture include the patterns of social life, the concepts of roles – which are common to all cultures – are differently expressed in distinct societies. Relations between parents and children in some societies include the requirement of “honour killings”  — and sometimes they bring these “cultural forms” into their new host countries when they immigrate– while in others parents can face prison time for spanking their own children.  The “Swedish” laws of Sweden do not tolerate the hitting of children. The tribal laws of many of the newly arrived groups in Europe differ on this.

At this level of abstraction the idea of multiculturalism may not be a universal goal but rather a research question: Can these groups live together or should they dwell apart from one another? This is a research question of considerable importance and has not yet been confirmed well enough to allow it be treated as a politically correct platitude.

A third kind of cultural definition deals with how members of other groups – other cultures – are to be treated. Are they often seen as being in some way superior with useful lessons to teach? Are they equals? Are they out there to be exploited and otherwise left alone? Or are they there to be colonised and turned into the suppliers of slaves and resources for the conquering society? Or are to be exterminated as unclean?

Some believe that the ultimate objective of Islam is World Domination. If this is so then what kind of multiculturalism can arise from such a cultural group? 

Islam also permits the taking of sex slaves from the ranks of those who are outside their cultural group – the kafirs or kuffars who must either submit (convert) or live in a state of permanent cultural inferiority. We are told there is no compulsion in Islam but one must interpret that with an eye to how such people as the Yazidi sex-slaves interpreted their own freedom to choose when they saw others burned alive for refusing to submit.  Recall that while 40,000 Turks demonstrated in Köln at the end of July to show their support for the Turkish government, there were not similar demonstrations to insist that those who take sex slaves or burn them alive are “misunderstanding” Islam.  Is it the mission of Islam to rule the world whether the rest of the world wants to be ruled by them or not?

Other cultural groups are a bit more benign: “As long as you are good for us you can live your own lives as you see fit”.  Such an attitude is condescending and exploitative but allows for the colonial cultures to survive as long as the correct forms of tribute are paid.

There are many more such asymmetries which will arise. Each one of them presents its own challenges to the definition and implementation of “multiculturalism”.

This brings up the most fundamental kinds of cultural differences – those based on the culturally held beliefs regarding the meaning and purpose of life and of creation and of existence itself. They reside at the level of religion or metaphysics or whatever you want to call it but it is the infrastructure of all cultures and the final source of all cultural conflicts and possibilities for reconciliation.  Disagreements at this level may not appear in daily life where the routines of mundane survival occupy so much time and effort but it is at this level the most basic Sources of Self Identity are formed. It is here that the Confucian, the Hindu, the Buddhist, the Christian, the Moslem, the Jew, and the myriad others such as the Baha’i, the Mormon, the Shinto, the Taoist, the Lulik, the followers of The Gods of Olympus, the Soldiers of Odin, and so on find their ultimate origins.  The list of  “Creation Stories” are echoes of these cultural differences. As time passes these stories migrate from “explanations” which give us our “identity” into “myths” which amused our less sophisticated ancestors. 

Those who are not yet willing to regard their own ancestry as just another form of superstitious and ignorant folly clung to by lesser beings will have objections. Those who see human history as a march towards the “right side of history” are generally understood to be “cultural marxists”.  For those who consider themselves to be Cultural Marxists – and those who use the admonition “get on the right side of history” are certainly candidates for this appellation – who find the slanders against the term too much to bear, the virtuousness of your identity is protected by the Wikipedia Entry which regards those who oppose cultural marxism in highly unfavourable terms and treat those who use the term “cultural marxism” at all as “conspiracy theorists”. 

The deepest part of our identity is the part that gives us our sense of worthiness, of virtue, and of moral rectitude.

And here then is the final challenge of multiculturalism.  Our culture either gives us or embodies externally for us our most fundamental understanding of virtue, morality, duty, obligation, rights, and so on. And it is even relevant to know whether we got these understandings from out cultural ancestors or if our ancestors got them from “somewhere else” and part of their obligation was the transmission of these truths to us.

Are we here to “seize the day” – carpe diem – and just have as much physical pleasure as possible? Are we here to participate in an ongoing tribal identity which demands the subservience of the individual to ancestral traditions and which assures us that only as long as our names are spoken and we are remembered will we continue? Are we here to gather knowledge and to explore, to “go where no-one has gone before” and hopefully find friends out there in the galaxy but otherwise have no transcendent or permanent meaning at all? Are we here to submit to the will of the creator of the universe and to pay endless homage to that creator because of our inferiority and powerlessness while enjoying Earthly Delights forever? Are we here to attain some kind of enlightenment in which all of the illusions of this existence fall away and only wisdom remains? Are we going to retain, somehow, our individual uniqueness in an eternal afterlife which will be one of joy and growth in an incorporeal form?

Does the universe exist because “it just does” and we are all just cosmic accidents with self-awareness and no purpose whatever? Are we the creations of a detached deity who really doesn’t care one way or the other about us as individuals? Are we all computer simulations running in the laptop of some hyperintelligent alien being as an experiment? Is the creator one who demands absolute and unquestioning obedience and will forever be unknowable? Is the creator one who cares about us as “individuals” and has arranged things so that we may be “free” to follow our own pathways? Is there an ultimate meaning to the ideas of “good” and “evil” and are these meanings beyond the reach even of the Creator?  “Is it good because the gods like it or do the gods like it because it is good?”

Are these only “academic questions”? Has anyone in the “multicultural advocacy community” actually asked if cultures which are organised around one or another of these options are fundamentally different in the way they treat each other, view progress, embrace diversity, and so on?  Has anyone in public life today actually asked if cultural worldviews which differ at these levels should actually not be cohabiting in the same state?

Dostoevsky asked in the Brothers Karamazov if we could be good without God. This debate has evolved into several strands which include reframing as “what would goodness mean without a divine standard” and the more pointed: do different gods have different standards of virtue? The first one gives us something which ranges from the National Socialist as well as Marxist  “survival of the fittest”  up to the only marginally less offensive “the altruistic are more likely to survive” while the second one depends entirely on the nature of God. Neither of these is amendable to “scientific resolution” – regardless of anything Richard Dawkins may say – because the answers will eventually be determined by our untestable assumptions regarding the nature of ultimate reality. And those assumptions are, for all of us, embedded in the deepest parts of our culturally-informed identities.

To do so would be a crime against political correctness, an invitation to being charged with “hate speech”, and a career killer in academia or politics.

And again.

What has this got to do with Pokémon Go which is, incidentally,  considered Haram (unclean) by the clerics of Saudi Arabia?

Pokémon Go allows us to see again the role of “socially constructed metaphors” in our all-too-concrete world. They are distractions which can get us killed if we fail to see the difference between the fantasy/fiction world the characters represent and the reality of the world of minefields, cars, cliffs, and wild animals which cannot be escaped just by turning off our phones.

Our pundits, media gurus, politicians, teachers, and spiritual leaders all populate our “real” world with their own cast of “characters”. The characters all fill in voids of action, interpretation, meaning, and causation which we must accept as true if we wish to belong to the group that follows them but otherwise may not have any independent existence at all. And if we aren’t careful we may encounter a real lion next to the digitally projected one which cannot really eat us.

Our “reality” is constantly augmented all the time by concepts which are never fully defined, relations which are never clearly explicated, and creatures which possess attributes and intentions which are never fully revealed to us.

Is Jihad the fiction and Multiculturalism the coherent reality? Or is it the other way around?

And isn’t it time we had this conversation honestly and without name-calling?

Brexit: The Monday After The Vote

This is written on the first Monday following the Brexit vote in which the “Leave” side garnered 52% to the 48% of the “Remain” supporters.

All of us who are reading the material of the pundits are being given one of two major themes: the first is the great loss to Britain because it will have serious financial and scientific decline in its future. This theme continues by pointing out that the UK (which may not be “United” much longer) is now in the hands of  the “Leave” voters who are mostly racist, xenophobic, inadequately educated, and nostalgic for the days of Empire,

The second main theme is the punishment the EU is preparing to inflict on the UK for this referendum result. Even though the result is not legally binding — and Nicola Sturgeon has reminded us all that Holyrood could simply refuse to allow Brexit to happen which would present yet another opportunity for the UK to show it really does adhere to the “Rule of Law” despite suggestions to the contrary – some of the EU administrators are demanding the removal of the UK from the EU be done as quickly as possible and with as much damage to the UK as possible to make an object lesson to any of the other ‘Exiteers” out there. The Auxit, Frexit, Nexit, all come to mind.

A theme which is not appearing in the mainstream media is a discussion of why people who are themselves deeply committed to a “United Europe” may not like this particular incarnation of this objective.

No discussion at all appears to be given to the question of whether the EU itself  is too bound up with needless rules, if it is too insensitive to the unique and historically ancient cultures which define “Europe”, and if it has actually lived up to all of its promises.

The idea of ‘subsidiarity’ is enshrined in the EU Constitution but it seems as if ‘uniformity’ is more important.

When we look at the question of national borders we normally put them into two categories. The first kind of border is designed to keep invaders out. The second kind is designed to keep prisoners in.

Israel’s borders, generally, fall into the first category. North Korea’s are in the second.

The EU has failed rather miserably to protect its continental borders from the “migrants” who appear in growing numbers every day. When people complain that this influx is going to bankrupt the welfare system, almost certainly lead to higher crime rates, and displace the traditional (dare I say “Aboriginal”?) European cultures with an alien one, the response is not a reasoned and rational dialogue on these matters but vituperation.

Instead of any attempt to examine objective evidence these questions are denounced as evidence of selfishness, racism, cultural insensitivity, and xenophobia.

Those doing the denouncing are usually if not always able to return to their very safe homes which have adequate police protection. Often they can return their in vehicles driver by chauffeurs.

Angela Merkel, whose policies have displaced many of her fellow Germans, has bodyguards and servants and will have a generous state pension waiting for her when she is defeated next year in the general elections.

She, and many like her, demand sacrifices from others. Sacrifices they themselves will never have to make.

After the New Year’s Eve string of sexual assaults all over Europe (Cologne was just the most widely known) the general reaction of many of the leaders – including the female mayor of Cologne, Henriette Reker – was to tell German women they would have to adapt to the new realities of living in a multicultural society.

The phrase “blaming the victim” recommends itself here.

When the migrant influx to Sweden is now predicted to bankrupt that country in the next five years – a country which now has the highest rape-rate in Europe – is mentioned, the standard response is to call those who bring this up “bigots”.

The European Elites seem to be describable with a number of shared traits: They know they are morally correct in what they do, they know there is no better approach to achieving their objectives than the ones they have enunciated, and they know that any alternative set of social arrangements will lead to some kind of major social disaster. The EU was created, let us remember, in large part not only to make trade and business more efficient but to prevent the ruinous wars between France and Germany which began after the French Revolution blessed the world with Napoleon.

The Elites – if it is permissible to treat them as a homogeneous whole as if they were as undifferentiated as the “Euroskeptics” they so routinely ridicule – are much more able to remove themselves from those parts of the world which are less safe or less prosperous.  They are in the country but not of the country. They are not going to share the fate of those who are less affluent should their policies and utopian dreams go sour.

Such a group of people was first directly described in the 1995 book by Christopher Lasch, The Revolt of the Elites. While Lasch was drawing most of his evidence from the USA he was describing a group of people who were increasingly “global” in their networks and their lifestyles.

One feature such elites seem to have is an unwillingness to see themselves as being in error. In a way which is now reflected in the youth coming out of education systems dedicated to political correctness, we no longer debate. We “share”.  Then we return to our individual bubbles.

In a world where young people are told that “self-identification” can form the basis for a coherent and integrated society it is little wonder that our immediate feelings are all we really need to know in order to make appropriate decisions.

In this world, anyone who disagrees with our sincere feelings is a “hater” or some other kind of enemy.

Dialogue is gone. Only monologues remain.

So. What should we hope for?

We should hope that Nicola Sturgeon and her Scottish Parliament veto the Brexit bill.

Why?

That way the “Leave” campaign will be able to retain its “moral victory” and demonstrate it is fully committed to living within the legitimate constraints of the Rule of Law in a Europe which represents to legitimate homeland of Western Culture, the European Parliament will not be able to purge itself of the inconvenience of a full-throated democratically elected opposition, and many failures of the EU to live up to its earlier promises can be fully and honestly addressed in public and the other “national parties” in Europe will be empowered to move towards a meaningful set of reforms.

From the ashes of this system a phoenix can rise. EUv1 can give rise to EUv2, a new union which pays scrupulous attention to the realities of the Indigenous European Cultures, protects its common borders, and goes into the future not with a grand plan drawn up by elites who are on the right side of history, but by honest if flawed citizens who are muddling through.

Why not?

Reflection on a TED Talk. II. Juan Enriques and Intelligent Design

On March 28 of 2016 the PBS network broadcast the “Science and Wonder” TED talks.

One of these was given by Juan Enriques. His talk was about Lifecodes.

Depending on where you are you may be able to see it here.

His major focus is on the impact of our emerging biotechnological capabilities and how we are now, as a species, able to direct and control our own evolution.

Enriques presented us with the idea of two kinds of evolution as now being seen on Earth. The first, the Darwinian kind, was the only kind possible until human science and genetics made it possible for us first to understand and more and more to control conception and reproduction.

For Darwinian evolution, the entire process is almost always about sexual reproduction. Two sexes are needed for an offspring. The “naturalness” of heterosexuality was not a central theme for him but was easy to infer.  The social conventions of heterosexual marriage and familial stability for at least the length of time needed to allow the next generation of the species to be able to live independent and successful lives was crucial to the survival of the species. Failing to get the next generation properly launched dooms the species and the community.

We see this today in many advanced Western countries with birthrates well below the “replacement” level.

Enriques did not mention these directly but he did advise the audience that if we are going to have to embrace “Intelligent Design” … and in this he means we humans must become the “intelligent designers”.  Whether we like it or not our science has given us the power to determine what kinds of humans will be in the next generation. Will we breed ‘happy slaves’ to look after the needs of “The 1%”? And if we do will they not be happy because we made them that way?

I’m reminded here of Deep Space Nine, the Dominion, and the Vorta who were genetically engineered by the Founders to see the Changelings as “gods”.

These are the challenges which Enriques puts before the audience.

If I have any basis for criticism it is to say he did not go far enough.

The digital/big-data/supercomputer phase of human existence will not only give us the ability to make ourselves in our own image, it will also require us to discover and implement new modes of finding personal meaning and techniques of social control.

Why?

Because so many of the jobs we presently do will be gone.  Done by robots controlled by machines. Just as Uber has made taxi dispatchers redundant, so soon the self-driving car will eliminate taxi drivers, bus drivers, and those who transport lettuce from the countryside to the city.

What will structure our lives if we are not required by the need for survival to go to our jobs and carry out tasks others have invented for us?

And if the next generation is more and more an engineered entity with a design committee to thank for its existence, what will become of social systems based on “filial piety” or “tribal loyalty”?

At the present time we see literally millions of people flooding into Europe in hopes of finding a better life for themselves and their children. They do, in some ways, seem to regard European countries the same way those in the 19th Century looked at “Mother Nature”. A source of endless bounty which could never be exhausted and which would never need to be “sustained” or “kept pristine”.

Today we are endlessly told about an environment’s “carrying capacity” and “sustainability” and “pollution”. We are warned of the dangers of “invasive species” destroying the delicate ecological balance which has taken countless generations to emerge. We are told the complexities of the environment are too great for our science to dominate. We are told to tread lightly.

What we are not told is that our “social environment”, our “economy” and our “reproductive patterns” are also ecological realities.

When non-human animals cannot find what they need for their physical or social survival in an ecological setting there is much concern. When non-human animals are unable to attain the reproductive rates needed for “replacement” (another kind of “sustainability”) we are told this is cause for alarm.

Today our economy as well as our planetary environment are undergoing massive transformations. Either one of them would be challenging enough. But to this we add the additional options of transforming humanity itself into a different kind of animal.

That’s the part I found lacking. I am fully in agreement on the need to be aware of the breaking wave of genetic engineering, but the next fifty years of this planet will need our leaders to juggle three balls: The Environment, the Economy, and Biological Reproduction.

I’m not seeing any dialogues beginning. Instead our universities are worried about “trigger warnings” and “hurt feelings” and solutions which, to be generous, belong in science fiction movies and not in policy documents.

Reflection on a TED Talk. I. PIXAR and Propaganda

On March 28 of 2016 the PBS network broadcast the “Science and Wonder” TED talks.

One of these was presented by Danielle Feinberg of PIXAR.

Depending on where you are you may be able to see it here.  In case you’re blocked I’ll just mention briefly what part of her presentation made me think of “propaganda”.

While describing how the Finding Nemo movie was made she remarked at all of the careful attention to scientific details were taken into consideration in the underwater scenes. The way light ripples through the surface down to the bottom, how particles floating underwater wink in and out of the scene depending on whether or not they are illuminated by a lightbeam, and how light itself diffuses underwater so that in a very short distance only blues and greys remain, the other wavelengths having been absorbed.

At one scene a school of fish was swimming away in a long column, As the scene unfolded she told us the need to tell a good story made it necessary to abandon scientific accuracy in order to allow the audience to see the fish swimming off into the distance and disappearing because they got too small by being too far away. Not because the optics of the situation required only a blue-grey wall for us to see.

She commented that leaving scientific accuracy out of the scene allowed it to be a better and somehow more believable story.

I’m sure she was correct. I only wished she had added a remark about how our business and political leaders often do the same thing when they campaign for office and use some very solid evidence (even some science) to outline a problem or to describe a situation or environment which appears to be highly believable, and then telling us they have a path forward which is clear for us to see and will get us to where we want to go.

When they tell us about “how we are going to get from here to there” is where the science and logic are dropped and the story-telling starts.

Students who get to study rhetoric are few and far between. Before the 1960s it was part of every secondary school curriculum. Now people are lucky if they even know what the word really means.

A good source to learn about rhetoric online is at the site “Classical Rhetoric 101” which is on a website devoted to “Manliness”. In earlier times the ability to appreciate art, literature, and engage in reasoned discourse was apparently deemed to be “manly”.  Who knew?

Returning to Finding Nemo and Rhetoric now: The PIXAR approach was to use “science” to make the visuals as credible as possible until the audience was sufficiently engaged in  the story to be involved at the level of “emotional attachment” to the characters and to want a “good outcome” for them.

Rhetorical arguments use three major forms of argument: logic and evidence is the “science” part, emotional appeals are common enough, and finally we have appeals to what we think should happen.

The classical terms for these three appeals are ‘logos’, ‘pathos’, and ‘ethos’.

I’m not accusing PIXAR or storytellers in general of anything sinister here. I’m just making the observation that a good story often has to be more than rigidly logical. I’m also making the point that humans can switch from the “emotional” to the “ethical” to the “logical” frames of reference (or “modes of rationality”) effortlessly and without even noticing it.

When these human attributes are in the hands of storytellers who want to inspire and ennoble us there is no reason to fear (an emotional reference?) but part of our consciousness should probably always be aware of our susceptibility to be being rhetorically persuaded (an appeal to logic?) so we don’t wind up getting involved in schemes and plans which we will regret and wish we had not done (an ethical appeal?).

We can, if we wish, even learn to admire the artistry of those who produce the films even more by seeing how carefully they weave the narrative of the tale by combining these three strands.

Punch and Judy meet Donald and Bernie: A Metaphor

The primary votes in Michigan, Mississippi, Hawaii, and Idaho are now over.  Trump’s victories were everywhere other than Idaho where Ted Cruz was first.  The Trump victories make his clinching the nomination more likely but they have also caused the “Stop Trump” movement to redouble their efforts to make sure he is denied the opportunity to run for president as a Republican in November.

Bernie Sanders surprised everyone including himself by winning in Michigan. His campaign, re-invigorated, is heading on to Ohio, Florida, Illinois, and other states in which his chances of victory appear to be significantly improving.  Even so, the Hillary camp insists that her being the Democratic Party nominee is all but a certainty and Sanders is little more than an irritant.

The coming coronation of Hillary was anticipated many months ago, when almost nobody in the world had heard of Bernie Sanders. At that same time most people had heard of Donald Trump but the idea of him being a serious contender for the US Presidency was greeted by most of us (including myself) with laughter.

Bernie Sanders? Who’s he?

Donald Trump? President? You’re insane.

The situation is different now. Both Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders are shaping the debates of their respective parties. Both of them, for different reasons, refuse the financial assistance of corporations and wealthy individuals.

Donald Trump because he’s a billionaire and doesn’t need their money.  Bernie Sanders because he’s an old-school red-diaper-baby socialist who sees the class system as the root of all of society’s evils won’t take their money.

Both of them accept donations of about $200 from individuals.  Trump does not talk about how much he gets and he never asks for it. He just accepts it because he believes it represents the desire of his supporters to make an active statement of their endorsement of him. Sanders needs the money because he can’t run his campaign without it. He reminds us many times that the average donation is $27. He raised $47million in February.

In February, too, both Madelaine Albright and Gloria Steinem said there would be a “special place in hell” for women who supported Sanders instead of Clinton. They were no doubt alarmed  to learn that 90% of the Democratic Party women under 30 supported Bernie.  We should be sensitive to the fact that since Bernie Sanders is Jewish attacks against him have to steer clear of being seen as “anti-semitism”. We cannot know if this is why Albright and Steinem, both of whom are Jewish, were the ones who gave the condemnations.  What we do know is the attack was ill-advised. Women under the age of 30 are not accustomed to being told what to think. It was also ill-advised in light of the fact that Hillary is married to Bill and Bill – as a questioning woman asked back in February – has been accused of being a sexual predator for many years and Hillary never wavered in her defense of him.

Both Trump and Sanders are running against the “big money” players, most of them on Wall Street, who have controlled (or are seen to control) the US political system for years.

Now for the Metaphor

With billionaire donors like George Soros, Sheldon Adelson, the Koch brothers, the now incarcerated Bernie Madoff, Warren Buffet, Bill Gates, as individuals and firms such as Goldman Sachs and many of the drug, oil, technology, and financial companies on the corporate side, US politics was more and more seen to be a Punch and Judy show.

Yes, Punch is the violent one and Judy is the nice one, but they are both handpuppets and the hands – and the voices – belong to the same puppetmaster.

Both Trump and Sanders essentially accuse the other candidates in the contest as being so indebted to the Big Money interests, the infamous “1%”, that they are not their own people.

When Bernie Sanders points out (as he regularly does) that Hillary Clinton got paid $225,000 to give a speech and she gave it three times and was paid three times he wants to know what she said. She has so far refused to release the transcript of her comments.

He is still unlikely to thwart her triumph but his constant hammering on the corrupting influence of Big Money on the US political system will take its toll. Democrats have routinely painted the Republicans as the party of Big Money. Now Sanders saying there is no meaningful difference.

You can vote for either Punch or Judy but you’ll wind up with the same puppeteer.

Now Donald and Bernie have entered and in addition to telling us they are not controlled by the puppeteer they also tell us there are some very serious problems in the USA which neither Punch nor Judy is willing to discuss.

Illegal migration, the exporting of jobs to enrich the corporations, the need for a meaningful universal national medicare system, quality employment with good wages …. which one of them wants these things? Both of them.

As an aside, we should note that only in America is the idea of “National Health Insurance” considered unworthy of the support of “conservatives”.

Almost nobody these days knows that the world’s first welfare state was Bismarck’s Germany. Count Otto von Bismarck introduced it for two reasons: to make it impossible for the socialist opposition to use it to win power, and to help make Germany a great power.

Bismarck reasoned Germany could not be a Great Power if the working class was uneducated, improperly or inadequately housed, unhealthy, and so on.  A healthy country needs healthy citizens.

When most Americans who have seen their standard of living stagnate over the last few decades and who now live in growing anxiety of what shocks the global economy of the future has in store for them hear Donald Trump say he’s going to bring jobs home, stop jobs from being exported, and make America great again, they are doubly pleased. They will be released from their own individual social and economic uncertainties and will also be able to take pride once again in being American.

So when Texas Senator Ted Cruz attacks Trump for supporting universal medicare and therefore not being a “conservative” he is using the term “conservative” in its parochial American sense. Nobody in the 19th Century, nor any historian familiar with the 19th Century, would have regarded Bismarck as being “left wing”. Bismarck was merely trying to “conserve” Germany’s place in the world.

Sanders’ appeal is somewhat different. His appeal to young people is the appeal of someone who even in his mid-70s uses much the same analysis and worldview as the undergraduates and young adults of today. When he was 20 he spoke the way 20-year-olds speak today. The analysis is the same. The solution is the same.

Today’s young adults see in him a person who for 50 years kept the faith, never sold out, and keeps the same fire and optimism he had in his youth. He allows them to be hopeful about their own integrity lasting into old age. Maybe Hillary was once as passionate and clear-eyed as he is but now she’s a “pragmatist” who takes money from the “other side” and defends her actions as those of a grown-up who has learned the way the world works.

Bernie’s message is: We don’t have to sell out. We are correct. We can win.

An aside: When I watched Mitt Romney denouncing Donald Trump two days before the most recent (March 5, 2016) primaries it seemed to me that if he had shown even half as much passion when he was running for president four years ago he could well have been victorious.

Last August I thought the presidential election of 2016 was going to be a contest between Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush. Between Punch and Judy.

Donald may well remove Punch. It’s less likely that Bernie will overcome Judy but his victory in Michigan and his possible continuation of this streak into Illinois, Ohio, and Florida could change this.

If we look past the all-too-frequent vulgarities and direct our attention to what else is going on we see that this election season, like none other in the living memories of most of us, is educating the voters more than any other spectacle on the realities of American politics.

Both Trump and Sanders are running against the “establishments” of their respective parties. In point of fact however these two entities are more and more seen as being one entity. There is just one political “establishment” and it has the Democratic Party as the puppet on its left hand while the Republican Party is on the right hand.

If Bernie Sanders starts making serious inroads into the possibility of a  Clinton victory we can expect to see him given the Trump Treatment by more and more high-ranking Democrats.

This is the emerging narrative which the Punch and Judy metaphor addresses.  If Sanders does do significantly better and if the quality of the attacks against him are evaluated they may well support the “puppeteer” metaphor. Time will tell.

But if the attacks are unsuccessful and if – an astonishing thought to be sure – the November Election is between Trump and Sanders, then The Establishment will enter into the stages of Bereavement.

The writings of Elisabeth Kübler-Ross dealt with the stages of grieving following a bereavement or getting bad news.  Medical practice is always – one way or the other – involved in dealing with “bad news”.  Can we extend “dying” metaphorically to the loss of power and status?

There are well-defined stages through which people go when they get this kind of diagnosis:

1. Denial

2. Anger

3. Negotiation

4. Depression

5. Acceptance

The RNC is currently in the “negotiation” phase because they’re busily scheming out how to use Cruz (who is almost certainly less electable than Trump himself) and Rubio to stop Trump and then have a brokered convention to toss him out. After Trump takes Florida, Ohio, and Illinois they will enter the Depression stage.

If Bernie starts to pull ahead and eventually wins the Democratic Party nomination, and if he does the unthinkable and selects Elizabeth Warren as his running mate, then the DNC will join the RNC.

What we are watching is not pretty, but it’s more real than anything we’ve seen for years. And if the stakes, not just for the USA but the entire world, were not so high, the best entertainment since the Apollo Program.

A final comment on Metaphors.

The use of metaphors in any kind of evaluation is so common as to be almost always ignored as a technique which may have flaws. Those of us who attempt to undertake “persuasive communication” are always sensitive to picking the correct metaphor. Those who support the creative interpretation of written legal constitutions like to use a metaphor such as “the law is like a living tree”. Those who are hostile to such activities are more likely to regard such ventures into legal interpretation with a different “living” metaphor: cancer. Is the extension of “free speech laws” a “natural evolution of the living tree” or a “cancer” on a law which was only intended to permit citizens to challenge their political leaders? And in both of these cases the “intentions” are to be determined by some kind of trans-generational mind-reading.

History, after all, is also a metaphor. Heraclitus told us we cannot step into the same river twice. Pierre Duhem extended this argument to claim scientists could not even repeat experiments. The “lessons” of history are therefore ineluctably linked to what we really mean by “metaphors” and how they actually need to be understood. This topic is far too broad to follow further but it needs to be flagged here. After all, the entire point of this blog is to keep focussed on what we actually mean by the concept of “explanations” in the first place.

Back to Punch and Judy.

In conclusion I observe the current US Political Drama and am left with a question: In a country of 300 million people is this collection of candidates the best ones available? Is this the cream of the crop? Really?

Comments on a Recent Attack on White Privilege

The article which inspired the following comments is reproduced at the end of this post.

The title is  “PC Hysteria Claims Another Professor”

The original article itself can be found here.

===

I have a suggestion regarding “white privilege”.

Instead of having it as some kind of binary yes/no designation let us approach this from a methodologist’s standpoint.

While we know that “whiteness” is always rhetorically treated as a binary category we also know that Obama is half-white.

How are we to evaluate this?

Is he therefore “half-privileged”?

His American half is not Black and his Black half is not American.

Can we rank “whiteness” on a scale? 0-10?

Can we rank “privilege” on a scale? 0-10?

Is it possible for a person like Bill Clinton (the First Black President) to have both the status of “White Trash” as well as “White Privilege”?

In other words: are all those who are equally “white” equally “privileged” and in what circumstances would this be true?

Are those with Brown Eyes equally “White” as those with Blue Eyes?

Former President Lula of Brazil (currently detained by the police during a corruption investigation) has brown eyes and when he was president he blamed much of the world’s difficulties on people with blue eyes.

Since President Lula was widely regarded at the time as being “white” is it reasonable to assume his “white privilege” was of a lesser degree than other people who were also “white”?

Will the combined “WPI” (White Privilege Index) allow for predictive power regarding contexts? For example: how relevant would the WPI be in securing a spot in the starting lineup of the NBA? An executive position on the NAACP?

On a slightly tangential note: I wonder if the poor woman in this sad tale is one of those who detests Donald Trump? I suspect she is.

We all can imagine how The Donald would have responded to any suggestion that he owed anyone an apology in this matter.

So now we reach the final point.

She was attacked and will see her academic career derailed or perhaps totally destroyed because she was too powerless to fight back.

Even being a woman did not save her.

But I digress.

Back to “methodology”.

Aristotle, in The Rhetoric, identified three forms of argument: Emotional, Tribal/Ethical, and Logical/Rational (these aren’t his words but they’re close enough).

This woman ran afoul of hate-fuelled tribalism. All white people, all men in Western countries, more and more heterosexuals, and Middle-Eastern Christians (in particular) do not have to “imagine” what this means. Feel free to modify the descriptions if you wish but you know what I mean.

Reason, and the scientific method which is the fusion of logic and evidence, is the weakest appeal in politics and in life.

It takes years for an individual to embrace this approach to living and it is virtually impossible for any people living in cultures which have not placed it at the very core of cultural life. Only Western Christian Culture has done this. Attacks on Reason (which is what this unhappy White Woman experienced personally) are attacks on the core of Western Civilisation.

The last time we collectively saw students attacking their instructors like this was in China during the Great Cultural Revolution. The people doing the attacking were called the Red Guards.

All the truth they needed was in Mao’s “Little Red Book” and all the power they needed came “from the barrel of a gun”.

I know a man who was a Red Guard in those days. He assures me he never personally participated in the killing of any of his teachers but he admits freely to being present when teachers were killed by others.

He eventually made his way to The West where he was able to find some kind of inner peace and become a senior academic in the field of Chinese history.

Is he a better person now than he was then?

Is this question just an inappropriate attempt to impose Western Values on a society which was subjected to Western Imperialism?

Is it Western Cultural Imperialism which is at the root of the Western opposition to Sharia Law? To Donald Trump’s desire for a wall and immigration controls?

In this presidential primary season Mitt Romney, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio and Hillary Clinton are all furiously attacking Donald Trump for not rejecting with sufficient outrage the endorsement of David Duke.

If they were asked about the fate of this sad academic how much outrage, if any, could they muster?

 

****

PC Hysteria Claims Another Professor

PC Hysteria Claims Another Professor

A University of Kansas professor was turned in by her students after using the ‘n-word’ in class to discuss her own white privilege.

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03.03.16 12:01 AM ET

PC Hysteria Claims Another Professor

A University of Kansas professor was turned in by her students after using the ‘n-word’ in class to discuss her own white privilege

Robby Soave

The movement to purge all offensive speech from American college campuses has claimed another scalp. Andrea Quenette, an assistant communications professor, was chased out of her own classroom—not because she was a bad teacher, but because her students said she wasn’t agreeing with them quickly enough.

For months, Quenette has been under investigation by the University of Kansas. She is on academic leave. Her students’ refusal to return to class left her no other choice but to take the semester off.

The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), which stood up for Quenette’s free-speech rights back in November when she was first accused of racial discrimination, is sick of waiting for KU to clear her of wrongdoing.

“The longer Quenette has to wait for what should be a fundamental affirmation of her rights as a professor, the more deeply speech will be chilled at KU,” FIRE Associate Director Peter Bonilla wrote in an email to The Daily Beast.

You would think that Quenette must have perpetrated an egregious act of harassment or obvious discrimination to provoke her students to publish an open letter demanding her immediate termination. The letter, written by five of Quenette’s students—some, but not all of them, black—alleges that Quenette violated the university’s policies prohibiting racial discrimination. Images of the professor disparaging minority students, or giving them lower grades, come to mind.

But Quenette did nothing of the sort. What she did was make the mistake of using the n-word—during a discussion in which she was admitting her own shortcomings about race.

She didn’t use the word maliciously: She was, quite literally, checking her privilege. Isn’t that exactly what far-left students want from their classmates, administrators, and professors?

Not unless one checks one’s privilege using carefully planned-out, politically correct language, it seems. Here was Quenette’s micro-aggressive remark—which she made during a discussion about how to talk about racial issues on campus—according to the students:

We students in the class began discussing possible ways to bring these issues up in our classes when COMS 930 instructor Dr. Andrea Quenette abruptly interjected with deeply disturbing remarks. Those remarks began with her admitted lack of knowledge of how to talk about racism with her students because she is white. “As a white woman I just never have seen the racism… It’s not like I see ‘Nigger’ spray-painted on walls…” she said.

Quenette later clarified in an email to Inside Higher Ed that “I did not call anyone this word, nor did I use it to refer to any individual or group. Rather, I was retelling a factual example about an issue elsewhere.” The exact phrasing she used is disputed.

But she did not use inappropriate language to describe any of her students—or to describe anyone else. She was describing her own blindness to racial animus. Could she have used different language? Sure. Should she have? Probably. But genuine self-reflection isn’t usually rehearsed. This wasn’t a public address—it was a classroom discussion about a controversial topic. Some imprecision should be expected, and tolerated.

One can hold the position, I suppose, that it is never OK to utter the n-word, even in a merely explanatory way. I would argue that doing so gives the word additional power to inspire fear, like saying “You Know Who” instead of “Voldemort.” Wendy Kaminer, a lawyer, feminist, and former board member of the American Civil Liberties Union, argues persuasively that there is an “obvious difference between quoting a word in the context of discussing language, literature or prejudice and hurling it as an epithet.”

In any case, given that Quenette’s intention was to shed light on her own lack of experience with racism, rather than to offend her students, it seems like a simple apology and promise to be more cautious with hurtful words ought to have sufficed.

Quenette’s use of the n-word, however, was not her students’ only complaint. She also suggested that students were dropping out of KU not because they were victims of racism or felt threatened on campus, but because of their low grades. Uh oh.

The students wrote:

This statement reinforces several negative ideas: that violence against students of color is only physical, that students of color are less academically inclined and able, and that structural and institutional cultures, policies, and support systems have no role in shaping academic outcomes. Dr. Quenette’s discourse was uncomfortable, unhelpful, and blatantly discriminatory.

The letter goes on to describe Quenette’s conduct as “morally abhorrent,” “dangerous,” and “racially violent.” The students demanded her immediate termination on grounds that her very presence was making the campus unsafe for persons of color. Again, Quenette is a communications professor—one making a good-faith effort to understand her students’ emotional pain—not the grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan.

Quenette’s remarks are defensible on the usual free-speech grounds: Public universities are bound to follow the First Amendment, and faculty and students have every right to engage in controversial and offensive expression. By launching an investigation into her behavior, KU is chilling her speech.

What’s more, even deeply disturbing statements can serve an educational purpose. If someone is saying something wrong, or offensive, on campus, the solution is to call them out for it. Everyone will walk away from the exchange a little smarter.

Quenette made statements about phenomena she had witnessed. That’s all. Those statements might be wrong, but how can anyone figure out if they are wrong if they are un-sayable in the classroom?

Furthermore, if it’s offensive and racially discriminatory to use the n-word in any context—even an observational, apologetic, I-don’t-suffer-abuse-from-this-word context—aren’t Quenette’s students guilty of the same crime? After all, they used the word, too: in their open letter.

Perpetually offended students are engaged in a campaign of repression against faculty members who bother them. Their victims include: Teresa Buchanan, an instructor who was fired used for using adult humor and language in class (gasp!); Professor Laura Kipnis, who was subjected to a witch hunt for disagreeing with modern feminists; Erika Christakis, whose indifference to offensive Halloween costumes provoked the mob; and countless others whose ordeals have inspired fewer headlines. What will happen when no one is left on campus to tell students they might just be wrong?

They will have gotten exactly what they want.

“KU students are demanding that the university end academic freedom in any meaningful sense of the term,” wrote Bonilla.