If Mort Divine ruled the world

[Einherjar86]

My only potential reservations have to do with his comments on social media, which I think have achieved both good and bad effects in terms of social discourse. But he doesn't condemn social media as such, he just emphasizes that it's made it harder for him to teach. I can get on board with that.

 

[CiG]

He's saying very articulately what we've been saying for years at this point about SJWs.

 

[Einherjar86]

I agree, but I also appreciate his comments about snowflakes. I think he's on point there.

 

[CiG]

I disagree mostly with what he said about snowflakes. It's not some great mystery or grandiose theory, it's just a slur for people who have a meltdown over everything. SJWs absolutely are like that.

He also lost me when he said there are certain topics we don't need to talk about (slavery, genocide, women's liberation) and therefore absolute free speech on campuses isn't necessary. He already loses the game when he says that, because SJWs get everything done via a kind of creep, he even mentions it himself when he talks about how SJWs try to shut down topics or people with looser and looser interpretations.

Once you say certain subjects are off the table, the authoritarians will do what they can to interpret everything as being related to those blacklisted subjects. This is a problem with academics, they think everybody else is as nuanced as they are but they're not.

 

[rms]

Here's what I do have a problem with: He controlled, in a monstrous way, the manner of his professional return — and then he used the word "rape" in his set. For laughs. For a "joke" about how rape whistles are "unclean."

What the fuck? What the FUCK?

These chicks are really freaking out over Louis ck lol
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/l...-learned-nothing-im-done-guest-column-1138704

 

[Dak]

Louis ck isn't even outrageous. He's just a sad, sad little man.

 

[Einherjar86]

I disagree mostly with what he said about snowflakes. It's not some great mystery or grandiose theory, it's just a slur for people who have a meltdown over everything. SJWs absolutely are like that.

He also lost me when he said there are certain topics we don't need to talk about (slavery, genocide, women's liberation) and therefore absolute free speech on campuses isn't necessary. He already loses the game when he says that, because SJWs get everything done via a kind of creep, he even mentions it himself when he talks about how SJWs try to shut down topics or people with looser and looser interpretations.

Once you say certain subjects are off the table, the authoritarians will do what they can to interpret everything as being related to those blacklisted subjects. This is a problem with academics, they think everybody else is as nuanced as they are but they're not.

This is just something you and I will always disagree on. I do not believe that saying certain things are off the table grants power to some authoritarian mob. There are certain topics that, depending on the historical moment, need to be off the table. Otherwise anyone can raise any objection to any situation and it has to be discussed. That's part of the problem. If someone can just say "I know, but what about slavery???" as much as they want, then we can say goodbye to productive debate.

To put this another way: if authoritarian power mobs present a potential problem, then absolute free speech presents a problem that is just as bad. It's either socially controlled speech, or incessant repetition.

 

[CiG]

Disagree. When you take certain subjects off the table, anybody can extrapolate that until it means Ben Shapiro is a Nazi because he talks about conservative values. You get people who actively and obsessively try to draw parallels between acceptable ideas and what moral arbiters deem unacceptable in order to limit the scope of discussion.

Free speech has to be absolute IMO not because anybody wants to talk about stripping women of their rights but rather because any talk about women that isn't progressive will be silenced on the grounds that it fuels ideas like female oppression. This already happens to feminist scholars who question transgenderism like Germaine Greer.

Having things off the table might work for a round table of academics, but that's about it.

 

[Einherjar86]

Having things off the table might work for a round table of academics, but that's about it.

That's what McWhorter is talking about, though. I don't mean that speech needs to be policed in every aspect of society, right down to your local bar. There's a difference between speech happening in a university classroom and speech happening in O'Hara's Irish Pub.

 

[CiG]

I also don't think free speech absolutism means you have to listen to everybody who speaks.

I also unlike a lot of right-wingers don't give a shit about self-censorship. If you're too spineless to speak up about something, that's your own problem IMO. Don't blame others because you're a cuck etc.

My main issue is just all the deplatforming and silencing going on. I've never liked moral busybodies, pearl-clutchers and soft-censorship creeps and that doesn't just automatically become okay conduct because the left are doing it now. Fuck them.

 

[Einherjar86]

I'm not sure where the middle ground is here, or if we're nearing it. I don't think McWhorter saying that certain topics should be prohibited in public spaces between like-minded individuals who want to have the discussion. I don't even know how you censor that.

He's saying that there can't be absolute free speech in the classroom because then we'd never get anything done.

 

[CiG]

That's pretty autistic. Absolute free speech doesn't mean certain subjects won't be dismissed due to relevancy and time constraints etc. Is censorship the only alternative to always addressing all subjects all the time?

 

[Einherjar86]

Absolute free speech doesn't mean certain subjects won't be dismissed due to relevancy and time constraints etc.

This is precisely the issue we're dealing with in American education though, specifically higher ed. Students (both SJWs and right-wing contrarians) are complaining that teachers are censoring them by telling them their subject isn't worth discussing in the classroom. Then word gets out that academics are imposing censorship in the classroom!!! *gasp*

For my part, I always leave the door open for a student to talk to me in person (either after class or during office hours); but so many students want the limelight and get upset when they're not allowed to talk about contrarian and/or irrelevant issues in class. Then they accuse teachers of censorship. That's the problem we're dealing with. Very few academics are playing the "moral busybody" in the classroom; they just want to teach their subject matter. But that's difficult when students accuse you of censorship for trying to stay on topic.

That's why I feel the whole free speech issue is being misconstrued, and why I think McWhorter is on point.

 

[CiG]

Never heard of that scenario until now. Mostly what I hear about is that self-censorship stops people from giving honest answers and views during a discussion or that snowflake teachers and students obsessively have guests censored even though they were invited to speak.

The scenario you're using as the main example sounds like a non-issue to me. I don't even know a single person who considers free speech their main issue that has ever brought that up.

 

[Dak]

https://quillette.com/2018/08/25/the-dangers-of-ignoring-cognitive-inequality/

This means that having a low IQ doesn’t only make you more likely to get killed or fall victim to an accident. It also means you’re more likely to undergo difficulties in progressing up every ladder in life. You’ll often feel permanently ‘stuck at zero’—unable to improve or change your position. Most of us will experience this feeling at least a few times in our lives, whether encountered in school (being unable to break the ‘A-grade’), in our social lives (being unable to establish or maintain a successful romantic relationship), or in comparatively trivial areas. Yet most of the time, it is transient—passing when we switch our efforts to a new endeavor, or after devising a way to solve the problem. Very few of us know what it is like to have that feeling almost all of the time—to have a large proportion of one’s attempts at self-betterment or advancement frustrated by forces that seem to be beyond our control. Being trapped in such a dismal psychological state for only a brief interval can lead to anxiety, depression, or dependence. In some, this feeling of ‘being stuck at zero’ (that the world is manifestly unfair and against them) will lead to resentment—and resentment can turn into murderousness.

 

[Dak]

Imagine the levels of reee in response to showing this video in a Gender Studies class.

 

[rms]

tattoos being equal to fat/single mom is worthy

 

[Dak]

tattoos being equal to fat/single mom is worthy

I'm obviously not speaking for everyone but....if I were suddenly a widower and back in the dating market looking for someone with the qualities of being intelligent, stable, good company at home, and possessing of homemaking skills, tattoos do not tend to signal the confluence of those qualities. Note I said tend. I also said nothing about the attractiveness of the tattoos.

 

[no country for old wainds]

depends on the design tbh, to me some tattoos indicate dumbshit rednecks/chavs and some tattoos indicate an intelligent/interesting person

 

[Dak]

depends on the design tbh, to me some tattoos indicate dumbshit rednecks/chavs and some tattoos indicate an intelligent/interesting person

I'll tentatively agree with this. I will say that sheer volume of tattoos, no matter how interesting, tend to signal against any interest in some traditional mothering etc. Obviously, some guys aren't interested in that, but then those aren't the guys that vlogger is assumed to be talking to - or the kind of guys women she's talking to are looking for.