The far right express themselves through anti-intellectualism, violence or pissing on the memorials of policemen ...the left however have shown a growing trend of the same anti-intellectualism, and more concerningly an attitude opposed to free speech especially among the younger generation ...I am so glad I am not at university now with all this nonsense of micro-aggressions, triggers warnings and safe spaces...
This is wonderfully encapsulated by this car crash of a debate where two idiots debate talk about their feelings against a professor using research and statistics and a rabbi using anecdotes and philosophy ...
I am so glad I was born earlier ...
There’s a depressing article by Caitlin Flanagan on how comedians either no longer perform at universities or try to amend their sets to fit with what is deemed a ‘conservative’ audience ...and by conservative ironically they are referring to the left ...
Microaggressions are small actions or word choices that don’t have any malicious content but are what they are cos they cause offence such as ‘where are you from?’ ...ie I should get offended when people ask me this question because of course the person is trying to tell me I’m not really English ...
One quite amusing one was Asian Americans complaining of micro-aggressions as their university listed ‘are you good at maths?’ as a micro aggression ...so the prohibition of a phrase due to being a micro-aggression was itself a micro-aggression...the students were then all sent an apology by the university apologising to anyone who was triggered by the micro aggression ...
Saying things like ‘I believe the most qualified person should get the job’ is also a micro-aggression ...
Trigger warnings are just infantile ...ie to warn students before say a passage in a book describes something that could be distressing to some people ...it was originally pushed by feminists and has sadly moved to universities ...thankfully some feminists have argued that this is ridiculous such as Christina Hoff Sommers:
‘Women are not children, we are not fragile little birds who can’t cope with jokes, works of art or controversial speakers. Trigger warnings and safe spaces are an infantilising setback for feminism and for women’
And herein lies the big problem with all of this lunacy ...this movement of restricting speech is largely based around people’s emotional well being ...
The idea of safe spaces where young adults can shield themselves from words and ideas that make them uncomfortable ...
So why is this a problem?...Haidt the speaker in this rightly points out that anyone who interferes with that aim, even accidentally can be punished...
The consequence ...people will think twice before saying something lest they face charges of insensitivity, aggression or worse...
Not on here but where I have posted elsewhere someone quoted a statistic I used and said I was insensitive and racist ...I asked if the statistic was wrong ...and he said ‘no, but posting it is insensitive’
So he acknowledged that what I said was factually correct but that doesn’t matter because even if correct what I said might upset someone. Now is this healthy?
Lecturers lose jobs for expressing a position in some cases...apparently saying biology isn’t a social construct and trans-women entering women’s spaces is unacceptable is hate speech and transphobic and led to the professor losing their job...absolutely fine to disagree with her...but surely she should be allowed free speech?...nope, what she said hurt people so no...
Emotional reasoning assumes that your negative emotions necessarily reflect the way things really are. I feel it therefore it must be true. Let your feelings guide your interpretation of reality.
What’s absent is reason and facts. Ocasio- Cortez doesn’t even like facts. ‘I think that there’s a lot of people more concerned about being precisely, factually and semantically correct, than about being morally right’...why let facts get in the way ...
And you can’t blame the ‘victim’ ...so it’s offensive for me to say why are you offended?...it doesn’t matter what is actually said...what matters is how it is received...so if I said ‘I saw a monkey robbing a tourist in Gibraltar’ and someone black heard me...decided I meant a person...then it would be me in the wrong because...
Sexual harassment is defined as conduct ‘unwelcome’...and what defines it are the subjective feelings of the complainant ...emotional reasoning is evidence now ...
Coddled and hypersensitive...some lecturers have decided not to teach courses anymore ...what can be studied is becoming increasingly limited ...students busy complaining about material that ‘triggers’ them...
A student Omar Mahmoud wrote a satire mocking microaggressions and he was removed from the paper and then found his doorway vandalised with eggs and hot dogs...and a message that said ‘everyone hates you, you violent *****’
And that’s what scary ...some argue themselves that speech is violence...what Mahmoud had done by mocking this concept of microaggressions was deemed violence...
Students basically getting upset...and trying to seek punishment for anyone that offends them ...
A psychologist Burns has raised the issue of ‘mental filtering’ which he suggests is a result of this culture which is seeing negativity wherever you go...focusing almost exclusively on the negatives and seldom noticing the positives ...and that people ‘catastrophise’ ...they believe that what has happened or will happen will be so awful and unbearable that they won’t be able to stand it ...
And this rubbish has hit the UK...the man on the left talking about how he needed a safe space when he learned about European Enlightenment ...and herein comes another pertinent point that Haidt makes which is a consequence of this mentality which is you see oppression everywhere ...the two on the left display this with their talks of racism, sexism at their university with no anecdotal examples ...it’s simply how they view society and the people within in ...such a self defeating mentality ...
Quotes like ‘all men are predators’ ...’white people’...this viewing not of individuals but of collective oppressors ...
Thankfully in the question portion ...an ethnic woman made a point of the fact that she didn’t see oppression wherever she went ...she was an individual and saw other people as individuals ...and didn’t presume everyone viewed her by her race...another in the audience of mixed white and black heritage addressed the black man directly and said he didn’t see the disproportionate racial makeup of the audience as oppressive as the speaker himself had stated ...the word self fulfilling prophecy comes to mind and this toxic culture is producing just that ...
And this is the next generation of thinkers and workers ...if this was what academia was when I was 18 I would have passed and got myself a job ...thankfully my time at LSE was where I learned so much ...met many interesting people who I could debate with and learn from ...and most importantly speak freely too without fear...and where I didn’t get offended by whatever I heard ...
but hey I guess being overly sensitive, easily offended and policing peoples thoughts is what it means to be ‘woke’...
This is wonderfully encapsulated by this car crash of a debate where two idiots debate talk about their feelings against a professor using research and statistics and a rabbi using anecdotes and philosophy ...
I am so glad I was born earlier ...
There’s a depressing article by Caitlin Flanagan on how comedians either no longer perform at universities or try to amend their sets to fit with what is deemed a ‘conservative’ audience ...and by conservative ironically they are referring to the left ...
Microaggressions are small actions or word choices that don’t have any malicious content but are what they are cos they cause offence such as ‘where are you from?’ ...ie I should get offended when people ask me this question because of course the person is trying to tell me I’m not really English ...
One quite amusing one was Asian Americans complaining of micro-aggressions as their university listed ‘are you good at maths?’ as a micro aggression ...so the prohibition of a phrase due to being a micro-aggression was itself a micro-aggression...the students were then all sent an apology by the university apologising to anyone who was triggered by the micro aggression ...
Saying things like ‘I believe the most qualified person should get the job’ is also a micro-aggression ...
Trigger warnings are just infantile ...ie to warn students before say a passage in a book describes something that could be distressing to some people ...it was originally pushed by feminists and has sadly moved to universities ...thankfully some feminists have argued that this is ridiculous such as Christina Hoff Sommers:
‘Women are not children, we are not fragile little birds who can’t cope with jokes, works of art or controversial speakers. Trigger warnings and safe spaces are an infantilising setback for feminism and for women’
And herein lies the big problem with all of this lunacy ...this movement of restricting speech is largely based around people’s emotional well being ...
The idea of safe spaces where young adults can shield themselves from words and ideas that make them uncomfortable ...
So why is this a problem?...Haidt the speaker in this rightly points out that anyone who interferes with that aim, even accidentally can be punished...
The consequence ...people will think twice before saying something lest they face charges of insensitivity, aggression or worse...
Not on here but where I have posted elsewhere someone quoted a statistic I used and said I was insensitive and racist ...I asked if the statistic was wrong ...and he said ‘no, but posting it is insensitive’
So he acknowledged that what I said was factually correct but that doesn’t matter because even if correct what I said might upset someone. Now is this healthy?
Lecturers lose jobs for expressing a position in some cases...apparently saying biology isn’t a social construct and trans-women entering women’s spaces is unacceptable is hate speech and transphobic and led to the professor losing their job...absolutely fine to disagree with her...but surely she should be allowed free speech?...nope, what she said hurt people so no...
Emotional reasoning assumes that your negative emotions necessarily reflect the way things really are. I feel it therefore it must be true. Let your feelings guide your interpretation of reality.
What’s absent is reason and facts. Ocasio- Cortez doesn’t even like facts. ‘I think that there’s a lot of people more concerned about being precisely, factually and semantically correct, than about being morally right’...why let facts get in the way ...
And you can’t blame the ‘victim’ ...so it’s offensive for me to say why are you offended?...it doesn’t matter what is actually said...what matters is how it is received...so if I said ‘I saw a monkey robbing a tourist in Gibraltar’ and someone black heard me...decided I meant a person...then it would be me in the wrong because...
Sexual harassment is defined as conduct ‘unwelcome’...and what defines it are the subjective feelings of the complainant ...emotional reasoning is evidence now ...
Coddled and hypersensitive...some lecturers have decided not to teach courses anymore ...what can be studied is becoming increasingly limited ...students busy complaining about material that ‘triggers’ them...
A student Omar Mahmoud wrote a satire mocking microaggressions and he was removed from the paper and then found his doorway vandalised with eggs and hot dogs...and a message that said ‘everyone hates you, you violent *****’
And that’s what scary ...some argue themselves that speech is violence...what Mahmoud had done by mocking this concept of microaggressions was deemed violence...
Students basically getting upset...and trying to seek punishment for anyone that offends them ...
A psychologist Burns has raised the issue of ‘mental filtering’ which he suggests is a result of this culture which is seeing negativity wherever you go...focusing almost exclusively on the negatives and seldom noticing the positives ...and that people ‘catastrophise’ ...they believe that what has happened or will happen will be so awful and unbearable that they won’t be able to stand it ...
And this rubbish has hit the UK...the man on the left talking about how he needed a safe space when he learned about European Enlightenment ...and herein comes another pertinent point that Haidt makes which is a consequence of this mentality which is you see oppression everywhere ...the two on the left display this with their talks of racism, sexism at their university with no anecdotal examples ...it’s simply how they view society and the people within in ...such a self defeating mentality ...
Quotes like ‘all men are predators’ ...’white people’...this viewing not of individuals but of collective oppressors ...
Thankfully in the question portion ...an ethnic woman made a point of the fact that she didn’t see oppression wherever she went ...she was an individual and saw other people as individuals ...and didn’t presume everyone viewed her by her race...another in the audience of mixed white and black heritage addressed the black man directly and said he didn’t see the disproportionate racial makeup of the audience as oppressive as the speaker himself had stated ...the word self fulfilling prophecy comes to mind and this toxic culture is producing just that ...
And this is the next generation of thinkers and workers ...if this was what academia was when I was 18 I would have passed and got myself a job ...thankfully my time at LSE was where I learned so much ...met many interesting people who I could debate with and learn from ...and most importantly speak freely too without fear...and where I didn’t get offended by whatever I heard ...
but hey I guess being overly sensitive, easily offended and policing peoples thoughts is what it means to be ‘woke’...
