Except for the ‘subtle’ part, yeah. Seems to me that all institutions of civil society from The Roman Catholic Church to the Boy Scouts do that, taken broadly. That I believe such institutions are important and good is why I’m a conservative and not a libertarian I suppose. That I prefer organizations that don’t have the legal power to tax, imprison or execute dissenters is why I’m not a liberal. Do you mean it in some more sinister way that doesn’t apply as broadly as what I describe? The good instututions that do this sort of thing are straightforward about their goals, and are working for the good of the people they are influencing.
For example here and here. And they are not disturbing because they are very important, Gib.
B.t.w: Why are you insulted, boy? Is that the reason why you are compelled to insult? Are you a member of a party?
By “subtle”, I mean influence that is unknown to the person, thereby causing their will to become what the influencer wanted without the person knowing why or who. Unconscious, unaware influence is more commonly known as “hypnosis”.
A young child has no choice but to be influenced by things without his awareness. Atheists complain that churches do that intentionally (as though governments don’t). Propaganda is specifically aimed at that purpose.
For a democracy, or any democratic assembly such as a simple jury, to function free of coercion, the members must be free of subtle influence. A governance trying to obtain and maintain complete control is too tempted to avoid engaging in subtle influence. Just about all politics these days is entirely a competition of subtle influence. The media does nothing else. An unaware populous is preferred by totalitarian governance, “liberal/communistic/socialistic”. And thus the democratic process is dysfunctional.
If there is any use in trying to “reform democracy”, it would have to entail a freedom from subtle, hypnotic influences, enhancing public awareness rather than media subterfuge and mainstream propaganda. That is why the media in the USA was to be free and uncontrolled in the USA. Unfortunately, in the USA, media is not at all free, nor film making or school teaching. Thus in the USA, there isn’t anything close to true democracy, but rather merely the attempt to be the greater devil of influence (just as Europe was before constitutionalism).
People in the USA want for only what they have been subtly influenced into wanting, these days. And the intention is to make it far more so such that literally no one wants for anything that hasn’t been designed before hand for them to want. And that includes a specific amount of dissidents to give the impression of uninfluenced will. That is what socialism is really all about, “the power to cause popular passion in chosen directions”.
And thus reproduction choices, ARE being controlled. But a part of controlling them is giving the impression that they are not controlled and in need of more governing. The arguing between the Yin and Yang of Liberal vs Conservative, Democrat vs Republican, is a passion-engine used to feed and create a subtle “god”. It is very largely mere distraction to allow for subtle influences to go undetected and thus effective.
Yes, those are the same videos I linked to in my last post. Glad we’re on the same page.
Oh, they’re disturbing all right–I had one of those it-can’t-be-real moments when I watched the Swedish Feminist blow a couple of caps into the guy’s skull.
I went to a party the other day… it was pretty wild and crazy, got really hosed… does that make me a “member” of it?
To start: I am sorry for the lengthy delay in response… School, both for my daughter and I restarted, it’s been taking up my time…
Ok, so if this is not passed as a law, that we simply get rid of the tax credits with for people with multiple children, then leave people along. I can live with this and I would see it as the free market, possibly, working to reduce the amount of children people have. If this is what you mean, I guess I’m on board.
If a law is passed, I’m against it…
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e7cry-4pyy8[/youtube]
The only real problem I’ve seen is that you have not really explained clearly what you mean… Bogging us down in attempting to understand what you mean…
Yes, and that is a lot of innuendo… What kind of parties do you go to?
Oh, yeah. That tendency is my primary criticism of the left- they lie like dogs and deny what they really want because they need popular approval and their agenda wouldn’t sell if it was straightforwardly presented.
Mostly kids parties, actually. The only sense I got “hosed” was getting sprayed by the sprinklers.
I think I might be willing to join The Kid Party… As long as their policies were along the Conservative lines. How does your Kid Party feel about the second amendment?
Well, they do like their water pistols.
Once influencers of that type enter the game of democracy, “democracy” becomes no more than a smoke screen or veil. Society becomes no more than a competition of influencers; hypnotists, advertisers, and evangelists, aka “serpents”.
Truth becomes irrelevant and undesirable from all sides because Truth bows to no one’s wishes. The freedom to fight for one’s cause is lost in the sight of Truth. Thus Truth is turned against by all parties yet the populous is kept under the illusion that the Truth is near and identifiable despite the clouds caused by “those bad guys”. The truth is that even the influencers couldn’t identify the truth even if it favored them. On rare occasion, one speaks the truth inadvertently but quickly recovers. The society is no more than a pit of snakes and sheep, cons and marks and cons who are themselves marks.
Through all of the confusions of deceit, even the influencers lose track of Truth without knowing it. They too become influenced by the cloud, remnants of their own doings. In effect, all people become blind yet unaware that they are, impassioned by the misguidance of believing that the Truth is reasonably clear to them, “just not to other people”. Such is the state called “Dark Era”.
So what does “democracy” really mean when those of influence love the darkness? And being of influence, they can easily ensure that everyone else loves the darkness such that it is sustained for many generations. For democracy to work, Truth must be reasonably clear to those doing the “voting” so they can truthfully choose which candidate actually favors their concerns. But in darkness, they know nether their true concerns, nor which candidate would help them more.
Socialist societies fear Truth and thus forbid democracy. There is actually no such thing as “Democratic Socialism” other than a socialist system pretending to be democratic while they each blind themselves and others as much as possible in their competition to coerce the future into their chosen image.
What laws do you imagine could be made to change all of that, especially when those of influence in making laws are enamored with their freedom to subtly deceive, often using laws to do it? It’s a bit hard to step down from being a “god”.
I couldn’t agree more, James. It’s our inner motives (often unconscious) which determine what we will accept as “truth” and what we won’t, and those motives, though sometimes to seek the truth for its own sake, are not always aimed at truth.
I had a thread a while back that touched on something similar to this: What I got out of Nietzsche.
How do we find uncontaminated information? That’s what we really need–a clear, reliable way for the people to get trustworthy information, and to have good solid reasons for knowing that the information can be trusted.
That is almost the entire point of philosophy. And my answer is through a broader yet more restricted form of Science, a more honest form, more reasoning and less ego. It is the ego issues that give rise to subtle deceptions, whether political, religious, or ideological. It hasn’t been because they were stupid, but rather because they have been clever.
When they tell you that a certain object is yellow, how do you know if they are right? You can see that the color is the color you call “yellow”, but perhaps they got it wrong long ago and “yellow” really refers to what you were taught is “blue”.
How do you know if they got the names right? With certainty, how do you know that you and they are not being fooled about such things?
Though I think you’re right, I’m going to be a bit more of a pragmatist: let’s take the study Eric linked to. Now, how will philosophy help us determine whether Scott Atlas is right or not?
(I still haven’t read through the whole thing; I think I will this weekend.)
Perhaps, but so long as we both mean the same thing now, it shouldn’t matter what the term came from.
Gib asked me to post up some personal stories of leftist bias in academia. These stories are all from my experiences with the Philosophy department.
1.) In my Environmental Ethics course, when we’d take a test there was always a question of the following sort: “Defend or criticize the practice of X using our course readings.” Where X would be something like factory farming, nuclear power, genetically modified food, or what have you. Sounds like an objective question- you can answer it either way you want. The problem, of course, is that you have to use the readings, and there were never any readings defending the practice in question. So if you wanted to defend nuclear power, say, you couldn’t complete the assignment.
2.) I have a friend that took the Marxism course. We were talking about it one day over lunch, and he was tell me about Chairman Mao and all the great ideas he had, and how the Little Red Book really opened his eyes to some stuff. I asked him about the Great Leap Forward, Thousand Flowers Campaign, stuff like that. My friend had no idea what I was talking about. Turns out, the Marxism course has a two-weeks section on Mao that doesn’t even mention what happened when he got into power.
3). I was in a Philosophy of Religion course. Really, we didn’t learn much philosophy of religion. We learned what a couple sociologists say about religion, and then the rest of it was a ‘ethics’ course- we’d read a paper against nuclear power, or against war, or in favor of racial reforms or whatever, but because the author was a nun or a minister or whatever, it qualified a Philosophy of Religion, I guess. The format of the class was, 3-4 people would assigned to lead the class presentation on the previous week’s reading, with the professor providing a few clarifying comments at the end. One week in particular, the subject was some guy criticizing Catholic just war theory. Catholic Just War theory has several criteria that must all be met for a war to be considered just, that involve the reasons it is fought, and how it is fought. The author went through the list and refuted each criteria by showing how a war could be clearly unjust despite meeting that criteria. What he failed to take into account is that all the criteria have to be present, so criticizing them individually in such a way is meaningless. He also criticized Just War theory on the grounds that it turns “Thou Shalt Not Kill” from absolute imperative into a matter of subjective interpretation. I pointed out in class that this can’t be a valid criticism because that commandment has been a matter of interpretation from the beginning- the very first thing Moses did after presenting the 10 commandments is have a bunch of people killed for worshipping the golden calf.
So anyway, I made these points in class, expecting that some more liberal classmates would disagree, because why not? That was just my take on the reading. But there wasn’t much commentary. At the end of the class, the professor stood up to make his comments as usual, but instead of commenting on the reading, he commented on me- spent those 10 minutes (felt like more) talking about how if people aren’t going to read attentively, they shouldn’t be commenting in class at all, and on and on and on. Now, the class discussion was light enough that it could only be me he was talking about. So, after being berated for 10 minutes for expressing an opinion he didn’t like, I didn’t participate in his class anymore. I showed up, but insstead of asking questions and giving opinions, I just had my nose stuck in my laptop through the lectures. This was a small class, a 101 class where most people were not interested. So without me, there basically was no class discussion. After two lectures of people awkwardly sitting around not commenting at all, theprofessor eventually recanted his early comments, declaring to ‘the class’ that he hadnt meant to stifle discussion altogether. After that, I resumed participating as normal.
4.) This same professor was a member of MPAC- Maine Peace Action Committe or some shit like that. Peace protest organizers. A friend of mine who was also a member at the time told me that during the above incident, the professor told MPAC all about me- what a barbarian I was, and how people like me had no business studying philosophy in the first place.
5.) This was also about the time I was told by a Political Science advisor that I didn’t have much of a chance as a philosophy professor, because I wasn’t a woman or a minority.
6.) I remember being told, by my ethics professor back in my freshman year that we were going to skip the chapter on gay rights and homosexuality, because the issue was settled and there was no longer any controversy to discuss. This was the same year that in Maine, the state in which she was teaching, a gay marriage bill was struck down by popular vote. So, she considered an issue non-controversial when, not only was it controversial, but her side of the issue was the minority.
7.) I had many courses on political philosophy- the philosophy department was based around political philosophy, that was sort of the focus of the longest-serving professors. Despite that focus, Edmund Burke was never mentioned, not even to be criticized. Not even in the vast, rambling sections on Rousseau. No conservative writer was ever mentioned in class. No MacIntyre, no Sowell, no Hayek, no Montesquieu. No Kirk, no Goldwater, no Chesterton. When I mentioned one of these people, none of my professors had ever read any of them, with the exception of MacIntyre.
8.) When I revealed, in my senior year, that I was considering working for a political thinktank instead of being a philosophy teacher, my advisor was upset. By this time, it was no secret that I was a conservative. He expressed concern that I wouldn’t really want ‘people with political motives’ to ‘exploit my intellect in that way’. He was saying this to me in his office, which was littered with flyers and other advertisments for the various leftist political organizations he was a supporter or member of. There was no illusion- if he knew I was going to be joining organizations he approved of, he never would have made a comment like that.
There’s lots of others. It was a purely leftist-democrat political advocacy environment. Anyone that wasn’t on board with that was made to feel an outsider, made to feel (if not outright told) that they had chosen the wrong major. The treatment I recieved there was a big part in ‘radicalizing’ me- I’m a much more outspoken opponent of leftist politics now than I ever was before college. Five years of seeing how they act when they have power, or when they think there’s not a conservative in the room to criticize, will do that.
Thanks for taking the time, Ucci.
Do you think the atmosphere is similar to this in other state in the US? Or do you think it differs from state to state?
Wow. I read those stories. I understand better some of your reactions to posts here by people who are or seem to be liberals. I do think academia tends to lean left or liberal at least, but the shit you experienced was mindblowingly idiotic. I attended one of the most radically left colleges in the US, but the profile could also be seen as libertarian so it attracted a significant conservative leaning group - though, yes, libertarian types, for the most part - also. It could be tough on them in classes, but from other students, not from the professors, at least to my knowledge. Tough in the sense that they would be fencing on all sides and minority viewpoint representatives, with all that entails. I think it was generally seen as an opportunity, however by the professors. A lot of people sitting around and nodding in a discussion group, which every class that was not a more practical type course was, is a boring and near useless discussion group. What poor educators. Of course, I am pretty misanthropic so it shouldn’t surprise me but I still get surprised when specific instances come up.
Based on what I've studied, California at least is that way or worse. Other states, I cannot say- but I can say that the professors in my college showed no signs of understanding that what they were doing was in any way remarkable, and I don't think any of them were Maine natives.
I can say that people are[i] complaining[/i] about this sort of thing all over the country- it's not hard to find academic watchdog websites where people go to report similar incidents.
Statistically it does. The ratio of liberal to conservative professors is something like 8 to 1, and that's counting majors where it doesn't matter, like geology and business. If you just look at majors in which political views are most likely to inform the teaching- poli-sci, anthropology, sociology, philosophy, you're looking at closer to 20 to 1. I wrote my second capstone on that, after being exposed to all stories I told you. I wrote a lot of things that were subtle and not-so-subtle "This is why I am done with academia as soon as I graduate" papers in those days.
To be fair, I picked the most mind blowingly idiotic examples spread over 4.5 years. There’s lots and lots of littler ones I could mention. I remember one time the subject was euthanasia, and I suggested that people who want assisted suicide should be shot with a gun instead of a syringe. My point was that how you do it will affect how many people decide to go through with it- legalizing euthanasia doesn’t just provide mercy to X number of people who are seeking it when it is controversial, it creates it as a live option for some number of people X+Y. Anyway, the professor was incensed. She said something to the effect of, ‘What, you want some Billy-Bob guy all drunk missing and blowing half a patient’s face off?’ Salient point being that when I say ‘gun’, she immedately defaults to ‘rural white poor Southern alcoholic’. Bare in mind, this was my ethics professor. Also bare in mind that I’m rural, white, and poor myself. Other than that, it was basically the level of bias that I woudn’t even consider a serious problem- such as Rush Limbaugh or George Bush being the go-to example of a bad person every single time a hypothetical bad person needs to be referenced. That’s the kind of stuff you expect.
So that’s where I learned the leftist modus operandi: They talk about tolerance and diversity because it makes them feel beautiful to do so. In reality, though, if you wear the wrong clothes or vote the wrong way or pray the wrong way or listen to the wrong music or come from the wrong part of the country or have a certain accent, they wish you were dead and will do everything possible to write you out of history and write you out of their plans for the future as well. The degree to which they hide this is in proportion to whether or not they think there is a conservative in the room.
There was a lot of flak from the students too, but I don't see that as a problem. I suppose part of the reason I didn't see it as a problem is I went to college in my 30's, didn't see the other students as my peers and thus couldn't care less what they thought of me or my ideas. On the other hand, my age made what I experienced from the professors [i]even more[/i] infuriating- not because I felt like it was intimidating me, but because every time I had an experience like this, a part of me was thinking, "Imagine if this was happening to me when I was 18 and couldn't defend myself", and it filled me with rage.