Guest Post by Jim Kunstler
It’s worth checking out the YouTube video of this year’s semi-annual Munk Debate held in Toronto this spring. The proposition at hand: Be it resolved, what you call political correctness, I call progress…. For the pro position: Michael Eric Dyson, sociology prof from Georgetown U, and New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg; on the con side, Jordan Peterson, psychologist and U of Toronto prof, and Stephen Fry, British actor and screenwriter.
The debate quickly beat a path to identity politics, which make up the actual substance of PC, itself only a method of conveying the substance. PC acts as a filter for sifting out thought that doesn’t conform to orthodox ideology, and for punishing those who dare to express the filtered-out ideas. So, PC only allows for a narrow range of expressed opinion on identity politics. PC is literally thought-policing. It’s hard to imagine anyone being in favor of that, which is exactly why PC behavior so odious to those of us who value free speech.
The orthodox view in identity politics these days is that “white male cis-heterosexual patriarchal privilege” is responsible for the discontents of women and “people-of-color” — a squishy, mischievous category which obviously doesn’t count Chinese grad students at Harvard or the Asian-Indians in the Silicon Valley C-suites — and demands reparations of one kind or another.
Mr. Peterson laid it out nicely: identity politics assigns everyone to ethnic, racial, and sexual groups, and all the human relations among them amount to never-ending battles for political power. Nothing else matters. Individuals especially don’t matter, only the group. And no group has abused its power more than European white men.
This animating idea comes out of the mid-20th century “post-structural critical theorists” Jacques Derrida and Michel Foucault, whose Marxian views emerged conveniently at a time when women and non-white people were vying for departmental chairs in the college humanities and social science programs, and thus have two generations been indoctrinated.
Well, if human relations are solely about power, than exercising power over others is all that matters. Hence, the key to identity politics: it’s all about coercion, making others do your will by threat of force and force itself. These days, the main threat is depriving heretics and apostates of their livelihood. That’s what happened to Brett Weinstein at Evergreen U in Washington State last year, and to Jordan Peterson himself at the U of Toronto, when he objected loudly and publicly to a new Canadian federal law that sought to punish citizens who refused to use the new menu of personal pronouns for the rapidly multiplying new gender categories (e.g. ze, zir, they, xem, nem, hir, nir….)
Both Weinstein and Peterson refused to be coerced and found themselves inadvertently leading a movement against the pervasive, creeping coercion of our time — which has now spread from the campuses into corporate life, with the HR departments working overtime to enforce thought among employees, because company profits are at stake (e.g. Starbucks day-off for “diversity and inclusion training”).
Most of the sparks in the debate came off the friction between Dyson and Peterson. Dyson, who was ordained as a Baptist minister at age nineteen, relies on the tropes of the pulpit to entertain his audience (or his classes at Georgetown). That theatricality is well-suited to putting across dubious ideas with false authority. In the end, he resorted to plain old name-calling, branding Peterson as “an angry white man.” Peterson did appear deeply annoyed. I could certainly understand why. He’s been suffering the enmity of morons for a couple of years now. But he has them on the run. He’s onto their game and he’s unmasking their mendacious intentions. And offering a framework for understanding human relations that actually comports with reality. In what has been lately a reality-optional culture, that really hurts.
I work in the engineering / comp sci business. In 46 years, I’ve seen maybe six female programmers, and two female engineers. I know of one black engineer. It’s white and Asian males.
When it comes time to work OT, to push to get the job done – it’s white males.
And it always has been, in every field I have worked in, including law. Women always find an excuse to avoid extra work….
Women were the ones in my office begging for straight days, no weekends or holidays; or complaining about somebody; and they like to politic, go over heads, sulk, make trouble, etc. I love women but much prefer to work with men.
A good point deserving a response! There are Wo[mb]men at home and “career connies” / “fems” – another more appropriate four-letter “C-word” gets One immediately censored by “Disgusting Disqus”. When a Man finds Oneself in a work environment with such “C’s”, I suggest re-evaluating One’s circumstance and alternatives – perhaps even a “System D” enterprise. To he who feels that no other alternative[s] exist, . . . [financial] slavery is your CHOSEN state of “exisitence” so . . . deal with it.
Dyson is a racist pure and simple. To him, in his little nigger world, all that matters is race and all he can talk about is race. He has no argument save that of name calling and he is lucky that Peterson didn’t get up and smack him in the mouth for his racist screed. I have not seen any other monk debates but if they are as vacuous as this one then they are not worth the time to watch them.
With 30 years in semi-conductor engineering in silly-con valley, I assure you there is discrimination in the valley, just not the kind lefties think. There are boat loads of H1-B engineers working either full time relatively cheap or the newly preferred (by greedy corporations) the 25% of the workforce contractors who are disposed of routinely as their project finishes. There are races of all kinds in every position, with an overall sense race does not play a role in the larger averages, but within small groups somehow the hiring manager seems to be “hiring their own” especially in production groups (entire shifts of one race or another), but also in small engineering groups. It has been this way for a really long time. The work is difficult, the competition real, the bullshit deep. I never worked for the new age leading edge companies like Goggle or Apple which I assume are at another more evolved level of bizzare, just the “steel mill” variety semi companies producing the nuts and bolts of technology. I would agree woman are less so now but still scarce in the engineering parts of engineering. They don’t apply so much but the ones that do are as killer abstract smart play the game skilled as any men are (and they are or don’t make it). Semiconductor companies were some of the very first globalists where it was openly known everyone was working toward a blank future where every job that could be shipped out of the country would be as fast as practical. To put a layer of PC and socialist bullshit ON TOP of that must make it now one of the strangest place on earth to function and what it does to peoples minds cannot be good. I am SO fortunate I became 100% good with retiring out of that mess when I did.
As to the subject of the post, it is in my face every day in the left most city. UCSC is the MIT of Jordan P’s alarming threat to our culture these socialist indoctrination factories produce.
Greetings,
Over the weekend, I was asked to speak at a pre-production meeting of a theater group that is putting on a play whereas the lead character is an Anarchist. They wanted to know how the Anarchist thinks and speaks. Well, it was rather interesting for me because I could speak directly to millennials without any censor what-so-ever. After all, they wanted to know what Anarchists thought about, right?
I suspect that they were expecting liberal drivel or outright communism and were in no way expecting what this Anarcho-Capitalist had to say. I’m sure that they did not know that Socialism is the opposite and mortal enemy of the Anarchist and that if we ever turned violent then it would be against the Socialists whom we hold nothing but scorn and contempt for. I explained that Nazi Germany was a socialist enterprise hence the anti-fa wing of Anarchy. I explained that we value Freedom over Equality in all instances and that attempting to legislate outcomes is anathema to us. So is taxation and all of these redistribution schemes. I explained that our world view hinges on meritocracy and volunteerism and that in a truly free world you would have inequality because some are better, stronger, faster, smarter, etc but that it was necessary for our species to evolve. After all, the only way to make everyone equal is to grow the state to astronomical proportions and legislate every action.
We’ll see if they take any of it to heart or present the anarchist in their play as some soy boy liberal that hates Trump which is what I think they were waiting for from me.
Fun times.
This Marxist agenda and it red headed step child PC, along with gender misappropriation, and plans to launch rockets to mars, and automate cars, etc is not the future.
It is clearly a sign of too much capital, chasing after to little yield. It is also yet another sign that we are quite close to the top of yet another bubble, that has run it’s course and is set to deflate.
Soon, we will not give a rats ass about what sex or color anyone is, we will be far to busy trying to make a living, and these alleged issue will be delegated to the waste bin of history.
we can only hope this next burst will be followed by public hangings of bankers and politicians, and cause the next generation to start thinking about a not working as a parasite.
Dyson the black Baptist preacher? I remember what my grandpa used to say about black Baptist preachers. He used to say, ” Black Baptist preachers are always running around with a Bible in one hand and their pecker in the other.” It seems like in our home town that when black ministers would leave their church it was usually all of sudden and none of the parishioners would say why or talk much about it.
hey; good laff at that
Meanwhile . . . the informed repentants of the Remnants quietly continue to go about the Lord’s biz of preparing/provisioning on inland, rural, UNencumbered portions of arable soil – grouped, gunned and gardened – ready to vet/accept others ready to repent and humbly contribute/collaborate in productive enterprises. And . . . said not only VOTE but regularly notice their political reps accordingly.