hey academics out there ive got something on my mind and i wondered if you could help me out. question in next tweet
so what im wondering is if your so smart how did you end up seeing your control over your profession stripped from you by mere administrators and how did you end up in a position where speech and thought are more restricted on university campuses than anywhere else in society
thanks ill take my answer offline
follow up question can you say "im living the life of the mind" without wanting to hurl yourself from a precipice to escape the shame you carry and which briefly reemerges when you think abt your forebears before you shove it under the surface when you remember your mortgage
and do you ever think about the millennia of christians who would sooner die than falsify their beliefs and often did and how your profession is a continuation of the medieval clergy and how a high duty of fidelity to conscience might not be doffed quite as easily as a cassock
do you ever wonder about the blood price men paid over centuries to be able to speak and think freely and wonder further at your exemption from having to ever even theoretically make such sacrifices yourself in our enlightened age
no further questions
or perhaps all of this is in keeping with tradition
overall im not sure weve made a good trade here if we judge convictions by the courage with which men hold them
the only real scientists were socrates and archimedes
"what are you talking about robot? why IM an academic and IVE never felt unable to express my opinions"
this thread was actually spurred by recalling that time literally hundreds of economists in positions of national prominence turned on an eminent colleague and denounced him in droves for suggesting riots might be counterproductive archive.is/zDsNS
Challenge to professors who definitely face no limits on their expression:
Go ahead. Post a piece of paper by your office that simply says "It's Okay to Be White"
these are a few prominent examples off the top of my head
because of their prominence they are especially well-documented
i am aware of many other cases some of which i cant discuss because i know the people involved
and there are many, many others none of us have heard of
the other thing is that you dont need to get everyone who things Wrong Things to strangle discussions. you can just make examples of some people and if these heroes break publicly?
well. generally lesser lights will follow
every apology was a failure. better men would've never.
anyway, As You Know
all of this has led to faculty jobs requiring applicants to submit groveling statements affirming their conformity to an ideological regime
@browserdotsys @shieldfoss i was thinking about the problem of how martyrdom and responsibilities to children interact
for students . . . idk. you dont want to screw their careers but if you dont stand firm what lesson are you teaching them, and what kind of profession are you even passing on to them?
@browserdotsys @shieldfoss i dont think i could bear the idea of leaving my toddler without a father irrespective of any cost to my integrity though, so im not sure you should take anything i say seriously
@trivialanalyst and no one at wal mart CLAIMS to be pursing Truth or Knowledge. they are literally trying to make a few bucks
the only reason universities have any authority is that theyre devoted to doing something greater
want to add that this also fails because it doesn't actually match the Ghibli style. in fact, the character design is repellent; this is separate from the subject matter
its actually fairly good as a commitment device binding on future administrations because this decreases the value of illegal immigrants for all subsequent administrations and it removes the "they pay taxes argument"
i think its reasonable to call this a revolution in the sense that trump doesnt adhere to elite norms nor even middle class norms. and its not clodius pretending to be a plebe, its a pleb not even pretending to be a patrician
until the first trump term a surprising amount of the president's ability to influence the country was derived less from his potestas--that is, his formal powers--than from his auctoritas, which was closely tied to his dignitas
I'll pause and wait for you to read the screencaps
im not sure we actually have anyone, anymore, with sufficient dignitas to actually possess or wield the historical presidential auctoritas. we are all lesser men now and all our high institutions have debased themselves
specifically it seems like yeah you could probably come up with a strategic _rationalization_ for his behavior after the battle of france but the guy was clearly not working on that plane and had just been that way for decades at least
and this was not uncommon in that era. eg
my basic model of realism is that its retarded in the same way eg freudianism is retarded.
practically any policy can be rationalized as strategically "realist" under the right set of unfalsifiable assumptions about the game space and the beliefs of principals involved
turnabout is fair play and the old regime has richly earned it. but i wish we (america) hadn't become like this
what's the path to redemption where left and right aren't just basically competing to destroy one another rather than fulfill our manifest 1KYAE destiny?
i think this is probably the most obvious solution (one side needs an unambiguous and durable victory) but i haven't seen a coherent platform from the right about what that looks like in a positive sense