I find it baffling that there are people, in the real world, who somehow think that for unexplained reasons they have the right to not be offended or be made to feel uncomfortable.
Somehow they believe that their feelings are the responsibility of everyone else.
It seems completely contrary to the idea of universities, to challenge your beliefs, overcome your fears, expand your knowledge, and more.
That real threat is these narcissistic cretins who use intimidation and worse the courts to get their way will one day influence the laws we live under. We won't have any privacy if people who want all offensive ideas and actions curtailed and boxed. Instead of running away from 1984/V for Vendetta type worlds these kids are embracing it
These days college is just another motion to go through before getting a job. It may sound cynical, but these kinds of students couldn't care less about any of what you said. They just want to be in day care for four years and then leave.
You are right, but I just wanted to clarify that by no means are ALL college students there for a 4-year party and a safe room to run to when something upsets them.
Many are still there for academic and philosophical challenges and growth, and are appalled that this noisy minority is getting so much attention.
Really, if there's anyplace that goes above and beyond the call to be sure that all races, all sexual orientations/identites have equal access and opportunity, it's the modern public university. It's the last place you'd expect to see this kind of whinging.
A good friend of mine has a saying on this topic: "Avoid the fallacy of confusing the majority with the majority voice. The majority voice is controlled by people who have the time and energy to make their voice heard; a lot of people are too busy working on their passions to bother to join the discussion."
The article blames "our culture" - I'd be interested to know what exactly - the media, the internet, parents, schools, sports clubs, or a combination of each.
That's a strawman. Even the folks screaming at their residence hall master at Yale didn't assert an abstract "right not to be offended." Their beef was about an institution they pay money to not doing enough to police the conduct of other members of that institution.
What's equally baffling is Ivy-league frat boys thinking that "free speech" entitles them to engage in conduct that would get them summarily booted out in the real world.
"What's equally baffling is Ivy-league frat boys thinking that "free speech" entitles them to engage in conduct that would get them summarily booted out in the real world."
"A fraternity brother who was at the party gave an entirely different account than Petros-Gouin. Speaking on condition that his name not be used because chapter rules discourage speaking to the media, he said members of the house always ask for Yale IDs and let everyone in until a party gets crowded. After that, a line forms.
That night, no one with a Yale ID was turned away before 11:15 p.m., the member said. Yale and New Haven police had responded to noise complaints at the party, and brothers were told not to let anyone else in, to avoid crowding. He said numerous students have said a woman who was denied entrance angrily challenged the man who stopped her, screaming: “It’s because I’m black, isn’t it?”
It was uncomfortable, he said, in part because that brother is African American and others working the door at the time are Portuguese and Costa Rican; he described the chapter as racially diverse. He said some in Yale’s black community have called black SAE members “Uncle Tom” on Monday, making them feel like they are being forced to choose between siding with the fraternity or others of their race.
“It has become incredibly hostile,” he said.
He and another student who attended the party said the crowd inside was representative of the student body at Yale."
They turned away people from a party. From a PARTY. Not a job interview, not a restaurant, not a mortgage lender, not social services. A party.
Social discrimination happens all the time. As a nerd, I've been (back in a time when nerds were shunned) uninvited or turned away from parties plenty of times. Nobody protested on my behalf.
This entire brouhaha over people feeling not-as-popular-as-the-cool-sae-kids is ridiculous. Nobody has a right to social inclusion. The racial angle is a red herring. What happened to these women happens, often worse, to every socially-unpopular person on the planet.
For some reason it is not letting me reply to the answer. Anyway:
Definition of the strawman argument:
"A straw man is a common form of argument and is an informal fallacy based on giving the impression of refuting an opponent's argument, while actually refuting an argument which was not advanced by that opponent." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man)
The original article is put in a very specific context: a sermon about a very specific scripture on a theological university. It is not about Yale, it is not about free-speech. It is about the reaction of a self-centered student and how out of place he is; which I understand it is the point of lagadu, and it is why lagadu's comment is not a straw men argument.
The fact that the Yale argument is true has no relevance with the context of the original discussion.
While I sympathize with your viewpoint, perhaps I can shed some clarity on the other side. The concern is not feelings getting hurt, but rather physical security as a person of minority status.
This is something that a white heterosexual middle-class male (such as myself) can probably never fully appreciate, but I try to sympathize.
Imagine what it is like to be black in a country where just a few generations back you carried at all times in mixed-race race situations the possibility of being assaulted without recourse or lynched, or in present times accused and convicted of a crime you didn't commit or shot on sight for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Imagine what it is like to be Jewish and have 85% of your relatives systematically wiped out in living memory.
Imagine what it is like to be a woman on a college campus where statistically 1 in 3 suffer sexual assault over the course of a 4 year education, almost always with the assailant getting off without charges.
Most times such people take offense it is not about feeling uncomfortable, but rather feeling unsafe. It is about fear that what starts with words will inevitably turn to, or enable, or justify actions.
Not to mention all the (I think justifiable) talk currently about how violent rhetoric from politicians, in the media, encouraged the planned parenthood shooter and other recent domestic terrorists.
I'm not completely sympathetic toward that point of view, but it's clearly not "completely irrational".
What do you mean by "The concern"? What concern? The author's concern is about students complaining that they oughtn't to have their feelings hurt. I am sure that there are many other concerns out there - including physical safety - but I don't think they have anything to do with the concern raised by the OP.
But this explanation does not seem to match the facts. For example, many law professors are having to stop teaching rape law, because so many students say it makes them uncomfortable[1].
Surely college students are capable of distinguishing between the threat of rape, and the discussion of relevant law in a classroom environment? So what is the safety issue here? Indeed, the end result will likely be a net lowering of safety in society as a whole, as a lack of expertise in rape law will make it harder to enforce and successfully prosecute.
First of all, no one in that article is uncomfortable because they can't distinguish between "the threat of rape and and the discussion of relevant law." We're talking about survivors of sexual assault, for whom the often very explicit discussions of rape law can be emotionally taxing.
You're right that we do need to teach rape law, now more than ever, and we need to be able to have these nuanced and explicit discussions - but there's ways to do that with empathy for survivors of sexual assault. And honestly, I don't see how warning the class about the content of a discussion beforehand or a few people abstaining (one's that likely wouldn't be participating much anyway) will drag down the entire system.
You seem to be arguing from a premise that disagrees with the grand-parent's comment:
Grandparent: "Most times such people take offense it is not about feeling uncomfortable, but rather feeling unsafe."
You: "very explicit discussions of rape law can be emotionally taxing."
Why did you reply to parent? You should tell grandparent poster they're wrong. Otherwise you're just giving parent poster the impression they're in disagreement with a viewpoint that uses rhetorical shuffle and impossible to pin down.
Why do you think it's only been the last few years? It's always existed. The internet allows people to now convene to discuss these issues and establish acceptable behaviors.
I don't know how much actual discussion (vs preaching to the choir) occurs on the internet when anyone with a remotely differing view is immediately told that they are wrong for not agreeing 100% and shortly after has a Twitter mob doxing them.
Like other rises in sensitivity, technology. Ever-present smartphone cameras (and, more recently, police cameras) have made violent attacks on black men real and visceral. And social media has made reports of violence (even without video)that would have been buried in papers much easier to find - such as Charles Blow's son getting (mistakenly) apprehended at gunpoint on Yale's campus by campus police. Much like color news broadcasts made the carnage in Vietnam less palatable than past wars, and the broadcasts of the violence against Selma protesters created a swell of support for the civil rights movement, technology expands our circle of those we perceive as connected to us.
Agreed on technology. There does seem to be a disproportionate rise in sensitivity wrt what you mentioned (100% and incidents emphasized in the original post.
Its a virulent meme parasite that has as a necessary characteristic of its existence, internet based social media. Its a societal sickness or illness.
Much like you can't have the historical black plague without the specific species of flea that live on a specific species of urban rat, you can't have SJWs without social media.
"Nowadays, it is true, we are made so sensitive by the raving crowd of flatterers that we cry out that we are stung as soon as we meet with disapproval. When we cannot ward off the truth with any other pretext, we flee from it by ascribing it to a fierce temper, impatience, and immodesty." - Martin Luther, 1520!
Perhaps not so new, Twitter was just slower in the 1500's.
The generally rightward shift in the country post-Nixon, plus generational differences more than anything else. Most of these complaints have been bubbling under the surface for decades - what you call hyper-sensitivity, they'd call shining a light on these issues that are often ignored or (self-)repressed.
Because the conservatives whose formative years were during the heyday of right-wing complaints about "political correctness" in the 1980s are now at the age where they are the main body of the experienced leadership of the faction, and they lack the creativity to come up with different complaints than the ones they grew up marinating in.
To the extent that hypersensitivity is real, its always been there. Its "come to the forefront" because a certain political faction has chosen to cherry-pick, exaggerate, and sometimes outright fabricate examples of it that occur opposing them to characterize all opposition to their ideas, resurrecting a pattern (and label) that the same faction engaged used for the same purpose in the past.
Actually white heterosexual middle class males can totally appreciate these things.
Imagine what it is like to be white/asian in a country where a disproportionate number of crimes are committed by black men and where black on white crimes are 5.6 times more common than white on black crimes [1]. Imagine what it is like to be Christian when a disproportionate number of terror attacks are committed by Islamic types.
My father feels unsafe (on my behalf) when he watches various Islamic terror attacks on the news. I was in Amsterdam last week, which is sort of near Paris and Brussels (though the Dutch seem to integrate their Muslims far better), and he was worried about my safety. In reality I'm far more likely to die from drinking Belgian beer, eating a space cake and then falling into a canal.
I'm sure most of us agree that his feelings are completely irrational and entirely his problem. So why aren't the irrational fears held by various student groups treated the same way?
I'm asian. I don't feel threatened by black crime when it's also shown that police target black people for arrest more than whites and that the system is often stacked against black people. I'm more uncomfortable that white males are shooting up schools in my country several times a year because there's nothing being done pointing this demographic out.
Your experience doesn't reflect the experience of all others.
What gives you the right to invalidate my father's feelings? You don't understand his lived experience (he was present at a major Islamic terrorist attack) at all!
I believe that's the standard social justice retort to your claims.
Being a more logically minded person, I'll instead invert it; your retort to my comment is that one person in the aforementioned demographic (e.g. a white/asian male) doesn't agree with me. If I could find one person in your aforementioned demographic (e.g. a black female) who didn't agree with you, would that be a valid retort against your comment?
I don't understand why you are dismissing claims as social justice and then trying to claim you are a more logically minded person.
How is the claim that not all asian people agree with your father or had traumatic experiences with terrorism also invalidating experiences your father had? You claim to be a logical minded person but I'm not following the logic that your father's experiences are invalidated when someone says they don't share that view.
Perhaps I misunderstood your post - I thought you were disagreeing and attempting to contribute to the conversation. Perhaps you were just randomly sharing your feelings for no reason?
I'm saying in a time where you are taking the experiences of your father and attributing it to all white/asian middle class people, that isn't necessarily great.
I know you like to stay as close to the line as you can get without crossing it—which is far better than crossing it—but I wish you wouldn't. Your posts would be much better if you would show readers the respect of simply taking that edge out. They're literally edgy, and this acts as a low-grade provocation even when you're not technically saying anything abusive. This is not the way to bring the best out of your interlocutors and fellow users, and it's still a toxin in HN's environment, even if it's below the legal level.
Instead, you should optimize for overall thread quality, which I'm sure you could do if you wanted to. There's some variant of the principle of charity in here somewhere.
Damage, or balance? Yummyfajitas style of replies are IMO prefeble to letting the 'mood affiliations' go unchecked and to chucking walls of text back at them.
That's completely irrelevant. The data cited comes from the NCVS. It's based on a phone poll. "Have you been the victim of any crimes in the past year?" "Who committed the crime?"
The purpose of the NCVS is to track crimes and their characteristics without relying on (often biased, and frequently manipulated) police reports.
Living in Asia, I've seen a lot more news about "white males shooting up schools" than I have about other violent crime in the US, except perhaps police brutality. It's on major news pages / channels. Admittedly, most of what I find is through social media (US and Chinese).
Could be that one is more common than the other, therefore not as newsworthy. It's a sad state of affairs, but it seems most news is about sensationalism for purposes of generating revenue.
The news, even in America, vastly under reports minority murders, especially in high crime urban areas. 400+ people are murdered every year in Chicago, with black men being the victims at more than 10x the rate of white people in general, and more than double the rate of all other racial groups combined.
Most of this is gang related, and goes almost entirely unreported, even in Chicago itself. This trend is not unique to Chicago, either
Linking to a post on the website of a White Supremacist organisation such as AmRen (American Renaissance) will probably hurt your argument more than help it.
>Jared Taylor founded The New Century Foundation[0], a self-styled white supremacist think tank known primarily for American Renaissance, its online journal. The journal promotes pseudo-scientific studies that attempt to demonstrate the intellectual and cultural superiority of whites and publishes articles on the supposed decline of American society because of integrationist social policies. - [1]
I don't understand - a white supremacist took a quantity from the DOJ, then took a percentage from the DOJ, and multiplied them together to get a new quantity. Does multiplication become invalid when a white supremacist does it? Or do DOJ stats become false when a racist cites them?
Please, I would like to understand your logic.
I do find it a bit scary that when I google "black on white crime", only racist sites show up. Why are only white supremacists willing to discuss this data? (Or perhaps they are all just super good at SEO.)
You don't understand why when you google a complex topic such as "crime" and then apply a narrow, racial lens to it, mostly racist organizations show up? The term "X on Y crime" is suggesting that the relevant information about people who commit crimes and are victims of crime can be summarized by the color of their skin. That's as racist of a notion as it gets.
Correct. There is clearly something interesting happening in the data - it's very far from what you'd get by random chance. That seems to be worth studying, yet no one seems to be doing it. The point is not that it can be perfectly summarized by skin color, the point is that there is clearly something happening and it would be great to find out what.
Of course, as it relates to my original post, the only relevant fact is that indeed there is something happening that a white male might have reason to feel irrational fear of. (The table shows that most crime is intra-racial, not inter-racial)
Let me remind you of the original point: various people are feeling irrationally large amounts of fear but that fear is of a real thing (either historical, as in maaku's case, or real but exaggerated things in the case I described).
> There is clearly something interesting happening in the data - it's very far from what you'd get by random chance. That seems to be worth studying, yet no one seems to be doing it.
I think there are fairly straightforward explanations, simply deducing from books I've read about urban crime... Most crime is intra-racial because it occurs between people who know each other or live near each other and tends to be concentrated in areas of poverty which tend to be demographically homogeneous. Overall, blacks commit crimes at higher rates than whites, which partially correlates with higher poverty rates, but it's not distributed equally because it's also highly concentrated among small numbers of urban street gangs/groups who commit enormous amounts of crime (of which there's no poor white rural counterpart). These groups are mostly surrounded by blacks, so most of their victims will be black, but there are enough whites near them that the whites who are victims of these groups contribute to the black-on-white numbers being higher. Part of the irrationality and bigotry comes from interpreting these numbers as some kind of targeting going on specifically to whites because there's no reverse equivalent instead of understanding that it actually comes from an urban dynamic that overall causes black victims to suffer even more than whites.
In theory, we should all be able to evaluate the validity data on our own, so this tactic is dumb.
In reality, we have no practical way of doing this. So, whenever we cite a source of data, we are implicitly saying "This is a credible source for the statement is making. You can trust that they have done the work to make sure they aren't just repeating their own biases." And in the case of some organizations and people, you actually cannot say that.
If the American milk board makes a claim about the health benefits of milk, it is not a fallacy to be skeptical of that claim.
In reality we have no practical way to take the DOJ's data table to find the number of black on white crimes?
Let me introduce you to data science. First I'll read the numnbers in row 2 column 2 and row 2 column 5. Then I'll plug them into ipython:
$ ipython
...
In [4]: 4091971*0.137
Out[4]: 560600.027
Do the same for row 3 col 2 and row 3 col 4:
In [6]: 955800 * 0.104
Out[6]: 99403.2
Looks like the article was right after all.
Whew, that was hard. Took all the skills I learned in my math Ph.D. to finish the job. Just lucky I didn't have to break out Hadoop. If I wasn't a professional statistician I wouldn't have had a prayer.
That's not data science, that's middle school multiplication.
Data science would be trying to find out why and putting it into context, especially if there are variables in play that aren't shown by a cursory look. Which a white supremacist has little interest in.
Nobody wants to study why because they'd be labeled as racists and lose their job the moment any group of crybullies discovered what they were researching. So it goes largely untouched, which only does the actual racists more benefit because they can use and represent the data to fit their narrative because there is no other narrative because nobody wants to touch the data.
There's a difference between showing data or its interpretation is possibly incorrect versus just saying we don't need to inspect the data because of who referred to it. Being skeptical is one thing I can agree with, but not wholesale dismissal of the data because one is skeptical of the source.
Besides, often times the source isn't really the source. For example, if a publicly devout racist quoted FBI crime statistics, does that mean we can ignore the data because we heard it from the racist and not the FBI?
You can turn raw statistics into all sorts of false, misleading, or incomplete conclusions.
A white supremacist doing a statistical analysis isn't going to reach all that hard for stats that might contradict or weaken the conclusion they're trying for. If they find one accidentally, there's a pretty decent chance they'll "forget" to mention it.
I'm no expert in the field, but I'd wonder about things like encounter rates for the different populations, varying access to social services, things like lead paint being more prevalent in inner city housing, etc.
I claimed a white male might feel irrational fear of the disproportionately large number of black on white crimes, just as maaku claimed a black person might feel irrational fear of crimes that happened a few generations back.
I linked to a source showing that the number of black on white crimes is disproportionately large. Perhaps this white supremacist organization did make arithmetic errors when multiplying row 2 column 2 by row 2 column 5. Did they?
It's a bit surprising that with all this criticism, no one is actually claiming the number is wrong.
And the lynchings maaku described are less common today than drowning in a swimming pool. What's your point?
Note that I linked to it for the content of the first data table. My link is not an endorsement of every single viewpoint that someone at that URL might hold - I actually just spent 2 minutes googling for a fact I had seen before and pasted the first link that had the data table.
That isn't how they are being compared though - nor is it relevant.
You want to compare black on white crimes to white on black crimes. Not white on white crimes.
Across all races - they primarily commit crime against their own race. But some races receive more crime than they give.
Adjusted for population (there are far more white people than black people) there should be about equal white on black crime as black on white crime per capita. That isn't the case and is precisely what the data reads.
What is important isn't to jump to conclusions but rather investigate why. Which nobody wants to do unless they get labeled as a racist.
Clearly multiplying "number of white victims" by "percentage of white victims with offenders who are black" is easy to manipulate and misinterpret, as well as counterintuitive.
And detecting an arithmetic error would require significant effort. I'd have to open up ipython, copy&pasting the numbers, remove the commas and other formatting, and then press enter.
The problem is that they are highlighting a far less significant phenomenon (cross racial violent crime) to further their white supremacist agenda.
The vast majority of homicides (which the DOJ data excludes) committed against whites are committed by whites, and the vast majority against blacks are committed by blacks. The number of cross-racial homicides are an order of magnitude less in either direction. Don't take my word for it, look at the diagonal at the top left of this table:
According the DOJ data you posted, 44% of the victims of white offenders are not white. Should they all be terrified of white people? Probably not.
So the situation in the data is more complicated than the white supremacists would care to admit.
But more importantly, people's perception of safety is not a direct reflection of the data, but instead, a reflection of the way the data is presented, either by the mass media, or by choose-your-own-agenda websites like the kind you linked.
It also tends to be heavily skewed for the local crime situation in which they live, rather than national crime stats.
Where did I advocate that anyone should be terrified? This is what I said about such fears: "his feelings are completely irrational and entirely his problem."
You just cited a blog which has this on their About Us page: "If whites permit themselves to become a minority population, they will lose their civilization, their heritage, and even their existence as a distinct people."
Instead of allowing your father to fear for his and your safety based on his irrational and bigoted views, perhaps you could educate him not to accept data from fringe sources. Your reproduction of these titilating facts, completely removed from context, taken from a blog which has a White Power political agenda, is a curious tactic. Do you use this "evidence" to lend credence to your father's views? Do you think this justifies his ignorance? If you truly recognize his views as irrational, then you should not be dredging up wingnut blogs which are merely trying to incite hatred and divisiveness.
Please, educate your father so that his ignorance and bigotry do not permeate through to the next generation.
See my reply to EthanHeilman. Specifically, are you claiming the DOJ stats cited by this source are false, or that they made an arithmetic error when multiplying (# victims by race x) x (% of offenders of race Y)?
As for my father's feelings, it's really not cool to suggest he's bigoted. He's not - he's the epitome of a NY liberal and far more left wing than I am. E.g., he mostly accepts the tribalist fascism of the modern left, in comparison to my individualism. He's just unable to rationally assess the risk of low probability events that get lots of media coverage.
This is a logical fallacy that is unfortunately rampant on here. It's an ad hominem - the source may be a bunch of shitty people, but if we're arguing that we shouldn't accept something, attack the actual content of the message.
It's generally quite easy to do so when the source of information is biased, so dismantle the message if you want to argue about how it's incorrect.
It looks like these numbers posted were very low effort and lacking any real context whatsoever, so it shouldn't be too hard to rebut them.
It's not entirely an ad hominem. The original claim contains an implicit appeal to authority in citing the link to the blog. Saying that the authority cited is not actually a valid authority (due to a known bias) is not quite the same as ad hominem.
We resort to reputation to calibrate the burden of proof. If the source cited is not a valid authority, that doesn't make them wrong, but it does make it harder for them to establish a claim that merits rebuttal.
But the multiplication does not support the assertion. I am sure that many people biased by skin color can perform multiplication with the help of a calculator. The accuracy of the calculation is not at issue.
The issue is that the multiplication is not valid according to Bayesian probability analysis. It doesn't matter how valid the original numbers are if you interpret them incorrectly. The implicit appeal to authority is that a group known for social policy commentary is somehow expected to have greater credibility in the area of statistical analysis.
In reality, they are just as bad at it as everyone else.
So in exposing the appeal to authority, we see more clearly that the burden is on them to show that their analysis is mathematically correct. So tell me. Why does the multiplication support their claims?
Scroll up. I'm not claiming white people should be afraid of blacks. I'm claiming that they have a vague proximal reason to be afraid, analogous to maaku's "possibility of being assaulted without recourse or lynched...a few generations back".
My opinion on all of these vague feelings of fear: "completely irrational and entirely his [the person feeling it] problem."
The problem is that liberals, who are well aware of crime figures, don't publicize them because to do so would be "racist". That is, they don't think that publishing these figures would serve any purpose other than perpetuating so called racism. So only the (far) right talk about them. Note that you haven't actually shown the figures are wrong.
>Please, educate your father so that his ignorance and bigotry do not permeate through to the next generation.
Do you refer to the fear of men as being rapists as bigotry?
And what about issues of the credible source not actually being such, such as the CDC not being a credible source once you realize how they twist their numbers (picking definitions of rape which exclude most female on male instances)?
>These data cover all violent crimes except murder, but the number of murders is tiny compared to other violent crimes.
So, we've started by cherry picking our data, a really strong start.
Next we go on by comparing apples and oranges. You've reached the conclusion that as a white male you should be afraid of black people, but the data you linked shows otherwise.
While 13.7% of violent crimes against white people were committed by black people, 56% of violent crimes against white people were committed by other white people.
You are 4 times more likely to be violently attacked by a white person than a black person, if you are a white person. So if you are afraid of being attacked by a black person, you must be 4 times more afraid everytime you see a white person (that is, if you are being logically consistent, rather than using confirmation bias to support a worldview of racial superiority, though your link suggests otherwise)
In this light, it is completely irrational to have anywhere near the fear of black people (or any other race) than you do for white people.
Further, if you are of a race other than black or hispanic, you are more than twice as likely to be violently attacked by a white person (40.3%) than a black person (19.3%).
The only thing damning against black people these statistics show, is that black people are vastly more likely to be violently attacked by other black people than by any other race. This is the same case for all the other races included. People of any given race are much more likely to have a crime committed against them by someone of their own race, than by someone of any other race.
The data source is the NCVS, a crime victimization survey. The reason is that we aren't relying on racist cops to tell us who the perpetrator is, we are just asking the victims. The survey methodology also allows us to detect unreported crimes.
One unfortunate drawback of the survey methodology is that you can't track murder.
You've reached the conclusion that as a white male you should be afraid of black people...
I've reached the conclusion that you didn't read my post. Try again. If you get confused, look for words like "completely irrational and entirely his problem".
>I'm sure most of us agree that his feelings are completely irrational and entirely his problem. So why aren't the irrational fears held by various student groups treated the same way?
Oh, so you think being 4 times more likely to be killed by another white person, means that you have a similar cultural experience to the subjugated minorities who are complaining across university campuses.
And because you have a white supremacy blog that tells you that you have it just as bad as everyone else, you have decided to write off all the actual concerns of real people by saying they are just complaining too much?
Its really a fascinating argument. Good luck convincing anyone else who does not already agree with it.
>No one besides you is discussing a cultural experience.
Oh sorry, is that a trigger word for you? Let me instead say you are mistakenly claiming that the dangers faced by straight while christian males is of equivalent or greater danger than those faced by minorities.
>The blog doesn't claim this, nor does the DOJ data table which it reproduces.
No, but you are using that blog entry as evidence to support that claim.
Heres how the conversation went:
maaku said:
> The concern is not feelings getting hurt, but rather physical security as a person of minority status.
>This is something that a white heterosexual middle-class male (such as myself) can probably never fully appreciate, but I try to sympathize.
To which you responded:
>Actually white heterosexual middle class males can totally appreciate these things.
Using the source you linked as your evidence for that fact that straight white males have the same concern for physical security as minorities. You further explained that whites, asians, and christians are in a position to be equally fearful for their safety as blacks, women, and other minorities.
Using this evidence, you closed your argument by saying:
>I'm sure most of us agree that his feelings are completely irrational and entirely his problem. So why aren't the irrational fears held by various student groups treated the same way?
A dismissal of the complaints of minorities which you have written off by attempting to make an argument that straight white males have it just as bad as minorities, and thus if straight white males arent complaining, minorities have nothing more to complain about and should therefore shut up.
If you have a different argument to make, i would love to hear it.
EDIT: I see you instead decided to downvote each of these comments, so i'll just assume you indeed did not have a different argument to make. Thanks for the discussion anyways, have a good one!
"People of any given race are much more likely to have a crime committed against them by someone of their own race, than by someone of any other race."
Is there a correction factor for housing and employment segregation? The analysis seems to rely on a large municipal area with overlapping cultures rather than the usual situation on the ground which is highly segregated for a variety of socioeconomic reasons.
So given that, it is extremely likely that, say, home domestic disturbances or workplace violence will be extremely highly correlated with victim and attacker having same race.
However whats behaviorally relevant is the totally different statistics of "I'm a X and I see a Y walking down a dark street toward me, how should I react based on X and Y crime statistics?"
"you must be 4 times more afraid everytime you see a"
That whole clause is a statistical error as the odds of becoming a victim of a X have a lot more to do with the odds of a given X being a criminal, than they do with relative ratios of X on Y violence vs Y on X violence. Outside of really weird situations like active race riots or race based protests or similar lawlessness.
There is the meta question of "how do I need to signal to others in public to remain politically correct" vs "how do I actually need to act to survive" and discouragingly that gulf has been widening over past years mostly by changes in required political signalling behavior despite a remarkable drop in actual crime rates. Or at least reported crime rates.
And you're doubling down by comparing whole apples to orange sections.
If I'm going to use statistics to rationally calibrate my fear emotion, I should ensure that I am using the appropriate statistic.
I'd start off with the assumption that most violent crimes against me will be committed by another person that is both aware of my presence and able to make a credible threat of force against me. I'm probably not going to get punched in the face by anyone who cannot reach my face with their fists.
And I can further break that down by the fraction of time any given person presents me with the threat of violence. I may, perhaps, use risk of violence per minute of exposure as my metric.
It immediately becomes obvious that the publicly-available published crime statistics are useless for my purposes. They do not contain sufficient information to allow me to determine how much more or less likely I am to be attacked by a person of a given skin color for each minute of exposure to that person in public. I would have to know detailed social habits for everyone within the crime statistic reporting area.
It may be that for every 100000 opportunities to punch someone in the face, the conversion rate is higher for one skin color than for another, and I should therefore rationally calibrate my fear accordingly. But I really have no way of accurately determining that useful statistic from published crime data.
But even with that hanging over us, I still have to object to your misuse of statistics. You said:
> You are 4 times more likely to be violently attacked by
> a white person than a black person, if you are a white person.
And this does not follow from the previous paragraph. Given a randomly selected white person who was attacked in the last year, it is 4 times more likely that the attacker was white than black. Manipulating that conditional probability to find the ratio of probabilities that a randomly selected white person was attacked by a white person compared with a randomly selected white person being attacked by a black person requires additional Bayesian calculations that you did not perform. You would also need to know population sizes and overall violent crime rates.
But really, this is all moot, because fear is not rational.
This makes absolutely no sense. Plenty of Jewish people went to college in the last 50 years and did not request that the Holocaust be left out of history classes because it 'triggered' them.
Please stop extrapolating from wherever you are getting these examples from. As a minority, I do not need anyone speaking for me and I especially do not need someone who has no idea what I go through trying to educate people. Stop stereotyping minorities and women.
I understand what you're saying but I feel that equating "I fear for my physical integrity" to "someone is talking about something I dislike" is a bit of leap.
> Imagine what it is like to be black in a country where just a few generations back you carried at all times in mixed-race race situations the possibility of being assaulted without recourse or lynched, or in present times accused and convicted of a crime you didn't commit or shot on sight for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
> Imagine what it is like to be Jewish and have 85% of your relatives systematically wiped out in living memory.
I think you're taking a devils advocate position here, but this is interesting if true. I'm not sure how the actions of people 60-80 years ago should affect how we view ~20-year-olds today? For example, how is the behaviour of white germans in 1945 related to white americans or british in either 1945 or 2015? I think we were on the opposite side of that war.
As for black lynchings in the american south, again this is a localised issue. But lets say your university is in an area where it happened, how likely is it that someones grandfather was involved in a lynching? Pretty small. But even if they were, should someone today be associated with their grandparents criminal behavior? I don't see how.
These things get carried forward culturally. The modern Jewish experience is very much rooted in the Holocaust, and the fear that it might happen again at any time. The Holocaust was not the first, or even the largest such pogrom -- note that there is a word coined precisely to describe genocide events targeting jews -- it was just the closest to the current generation of jews in western countries. It's hard to explain politics regarding present-day Israel without this context, for example. So yes, many Jews can relate with growing up being told that there were exterminators around every corner and that does have consequences..
Likewise, although I have less personal experience here, even if lynchings were not everyday events or impacted every black American family, the cultural impact carried forward can still be profound.
And yes, I am taking a devil's advocate position. In many cases such as those described in the OP and other comments here political correctness has been taken way, way to far. There is a difference between incitement and a listener's general uncomfort with subject matter. Especially in the context of a university there must be a free exchange of ideas and the ability to have discourse on any subject matter without fear of academic retribution or censorship.
> It's hard to explain politics regarding present-day Israel without this context, for example.
Not really. The Holocaust wasn't a factor in deciding to build a wall along the West Bank. The suicide bombers that would drive from Ramallah to Tel Aviv and blow themselves up in restaurants were.
Europeans and liberals have constructed this narrative that you are espousing. They want to believe that the Holocaust is the key to understanding Israeli policy. This allows them to dismiss Israeli policy decisions in the face of geopolitical events as simply an irrational and tragic response to their cultural trauma.
As to women on campus, NCVS, the agency of the United States Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) reports around 0.4% rape rate, two orders of magnitude less from the numbers you quote (and if you look at the chart, decreasing over the past 20 years)
From Wikipedia:
A 2014 assessment by Sinozich and Langton used longitudinal data from the NCVS to measure rape and sexual assault among college aged U.S. women from 1995 to 2013. Their findings indicated that rape, a subset of all sexual assault, had an incidence of 1.4 per 1,000 female students (0.1%) in 2013[6] during the period studied. The study also found that college aged women (regardless of enrollment status) were assaulted at a significantly higher rate than non-college age women, 4.3 per 1,000 (0.4%) per year versus 1.4 per 1,000 (0.1%) per year, but that women who were not enrolled in college were 1.2 times more likely to be assaulted than college aged women who were enrolled.
> owever, results reported by the NCVS are consistently lower than studies using other methodologies, and researchers have charged that the question wording, context, and sampling methodology used on the NCVS leads a systematic underestimate of the incidence of rape and sexual assault.[5][14][15] A recent assessment of the NCVS methodology conducted by the National Research Council pointed to four flaws in the NCSV approach: the use of a sampling methodology that was inefficient in measuring low-incidence events like rape and sexual assault; the ambiguous wording questions related to sexual violence; the criminal justice definitions of assault; and the lack of privacy offered to survey respondents (phone interview vs. completely anonymous survey). The authors concluded that these flaws make it "highly likely that the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) is underestimating rape and sexual assault."[5] The NCVS also differs from other studies by including off campus students among its statistics. Since the risk of assault is higher for students living on campus, the 0.6% reported assault rate is lower than rates reported for campus environments.
Other studies used completely unscientific methods (starting with VERY small sample size, also, extending the definition to include sexual assault, which could be verbal abuse, or anything really).
Relevant quote:
"The one-in-five estimate, on the other hand, comes from the federally funded Campus Sexual Assault Study (CSA), a 2006 web survey of more than 5,000 women and 1,000 men attending two unnamed, large public universities.
As Yoffe points out, two campuses is an awfully small sample.
Christopher Krebs, a senior researcher at a non-profit research group, RTI International, who led the Campus Sexual Assault Study, acknowledges that. “The one-in-five statistic is not anything we trotted out as a national statistic,” he says. “But it has certainly been used in that way” — most prominently by President Obama. "
I think the main issue here is the difference between physical discomfort and emotional/intellectual discomfort.
I think we've see so much physical discomfort forced on people and minorities that we try to overcompensate by making them COMPLETELY comfortable in every way. But feeling comfortable isn't always a good thing.
Pain from working out isn't a bad thing, it's actually a sign of something good, but many people avoid it. Pain from a beating is bad for two reasons, it strikes both the physical body and the emotional psyche of the recipient.
I think this is at the core of why people want to get rid of emotional damage, they don't realize that some pain teaches, and some harms. Something my football coach used to say to us. If you are hurt, get up and keep going. If you are injured you better get off of my field and rest.
The same is true for emotional damage. Some hurts but is good for you, and other injures a person. It is a thin line to tread but I think we are well past the point where people are mistaking hurt for injury.
As a Jew I can tell you that most of the physical danger I feel and, empirically, that Jews experience comes from politically correct liberals (especially Europeans) who whitewash and fail to acknowledge the danger of Muslims and Islam.
Political correctness has done a lot to harm Jews and is used as a tool of anti-semites to further their cause.
While i sympathize with suffering, suffering is not a heritable condition. Only a small percentage of old people in the americas correlates black with slavery, and another small fraction of the US/northern europe has a beef with jews. For a large majority of humans who don't hate, these are things that baffle you when you read history books .
In any case i don't see how 'safe spaces' are helping. In dealing with an enemy you first have to know your enemy. I 'd rather have someone telling me they hate me openly so i can do something about it, rather than keep it in hiding and be ambushed.
Imagine what it is like to be a male, which per CDC reports have an almost equal chance to be raped within the last year as a woman, but who no one takes the assault serious even when you have significant evidence. Imagine what it is like when even the CDC report, from an official government agency, decides to specify a definition of rape that purposefully excludes you, and then leaves that fact out of the summary.
We can play this game, but I'm pretty sure there are no winners.
>This is something that a white heterosexual middle-class male (such as myself) can probably never fully appreciate
Why not? What exactly is "white" anyway? The reality is, you can come up horrible historic circumstances for pretty much any human division. Sure, some have had it worse than others, but where do you draw the line? I have Irish ancestors; they weren't exactly well treated.
>Imagine what it is like to be a woman on a college campus where statistically 1 in 3 suffer sexual assault over the course of a 4 year education
You have to really stretch the definition of "sexual assault" to arrive at that metric.
If people actually consider a University campus "unsafe", then the world at large is going to feel unsafe. What is the plan to deal with that?
I believe it's because this people haven't actually experienced the "real world". They might try to persuade some people in following some political correctness or whatever, but the world itself wont care.
Dr Piper's other public statements show that's very uncomfortable about and offended by many things - not least of which is majority support for gay marriage. Or any kind of homosexuality at all.
He's so incredibly uncomfortable with both he'd rather they simply didn't exist.
I have very little patience with anyone who runs the kind of moral racket that Dr Piper runs - which is making a career out of pretending to be a moral examplar by relying on appeal-to-authority and a lot of noisy rhetoric, and using both to justify social privilege for his beliefs.
I don't care if they're religious types, economists, or any other kind of ideologues. In my world their opinions get no respect at all.
So you don't agree that the process by which someone reaches a moral position is open to question?
The simpler argument is that Dr Piper is really in no position to act like anyone's external conscience. He has no basis whatsoever to claim that he's either qualified or competent to act in that role.
Now, clearly he believes otherwise. That's very much his prerogative.
It's everyone else's prerogative to decide whether or not they agree.
I'd suggest that anyone who claims to be promoting genuine independent thought is going to be willing to engage in an open debate.
"You're acting like a child and you shouldn't feel the way you do about the things I say" is neither an open position nor an honest one. It's an attempt to shut down debate about an ethical position, not an attempt to encourage it.
> So you don't agree that the process by which someone reaches a moral position is open to question?
Only if you agree that it has nothing to do with the intrinsic value of the proposed ideas.
> "You're acting like a child and you shouldn't feel the way you do about the things I say" is neither an open position nor an honest one.
Nor is it the position of the author. When somebody tells you to grow up, they are not telling you how to feel, but how to act based on those feelings.
Can't we analyze both the opinion and the man? I think it's legitimate to point out that this person complaining about how students can't handle dissent also wants to impose his own opinions on the entire country through force of law, even if he may have a point in this particular case.
Per Wikipedia, Oklahoma Wesleyan University serves about 900 students and is an evangelical Christian university of the Wesleyan Church located in Bartlesville, in the U.S. state of Oklahoma. Their motto is "A university where Jesus is Lord." In this article, conservative OKWU president Dr. Everett Piper seems to dismiss the concerns of one student, calling for more sermons full of guilt and shame, as a tool to get confessions of sins.
I honestly don't think he was being dismissive. I think he was acknowledging that the student's uncomfortable feelings were legitimate, even deliberately provoked, and offered a prescription for how to best handle them. This is (one) Christian message, and presumably one that the students at that school knowingly signed up for (well, their parents did, at any rate). I'm not a huge fan of self-blaming guilt, it tends to be just as self-indulgent as feeling violated by some sermon, but a sense of shame at one's shortcomings can be a useful guide for self growth and development. I am neither conservative nor a Christian but I find that I generally agree with his sentiment.
Thanks for taking the time to share these thoughts; I appreciate it. His comments resonate with a non-trivial number of people. Since they discuss human values we all share, that makes sense, to me. With respect to feelings of guilt and shame, I'm completely in agreement that they can represent a wake-up call to further self growth--but only insofar as we can link them to the human needs they are telling us to pay attention to. That's where the self growth occurs. I'm not in agreement with using guilt and shame, as tools to get people to obey or submit, because doing so focuses our attention on what we want people to do, not why we want them to do it. They're both important; without the latter, it's just obedience training. I think we're pretty close in our assessment, so I'll leave it, at that. Thanks again.
That says a lot about the US zeitgeist. The only one brave enough to call a spade a spade is an untouchable evangelical president from a tiny university.
You live in fear, and some of you think that fear is good, as long as it protects those that don't want to grow up. I hope this convinces more valuable students to come study in Europe. It's about time for the brain drain to reverse its course.
I think that this article is fantastic. It highlights what is wrong with all the political correctness going on. To an extent, it is necessary. People shouldn't be made to feel bad about race, gender, or sexuality, but once you start to coddle them, you aren't helping them grow as individuals. People in the real world will treat you like crap, no matter what.
We shouldn't and don't. In fact, if someone is making you feel unsafe at work (especially if it's because of your gender, race, etc), HR has a responsibility to address it.
Please define "unsafe" --- because I feel plenty unsafe as work due to my race and gender, and I feel that going to HR would only exacerbate this risk. If I may be so bold, I don't think, however, you would consider the danger I feel, the eggshells I have to walk on, real problems. I feel like only members of certain groups get to use the "unsafe" card, and as a proponent of equal treatment and fair rules, this feeling bothers me.
>Any person capable of angering you becomes your master; he can anger you only when you permit yourself to be disturbed by him.
-Epictetus
To answer your question, we should accept it because that is the way reality is fundamentally. Go ahead and try to eternally fight to erase all darkness so that there is only light. Spoiler alert: it's impossible. If there were no darkness there would be no such thing as light because light implies the presence of darkness and darkness implies light.
I sincerely believe our society would be improved if people could live how they want, provided they harm no one else. While I agree it's a lofty goal, I don't think we have to voluntarily shackle ourselves to a life of hard knocks.
> Go ahead and try to eternally fight to erase all darkness so that there is only light.
I will, thanks! Why do you think people try to impede me?
Good point, I've been phrasing that poorly. Maybe something like I don't think people should be required to walk around with a shell of emotional armor to participate in modern society.
I'd call it emotional strength rather than emotional armor. In any case I wholeheartedly agree with standing up for people who are having a hard time. But simply censoring and covering up the darkness will only cause it to fester and grow stronger while the emotional strength of the supposed victim atrophies.
This reminds me of a passage from MLK's Letter From a Birmingham Jail:
>Actually, we who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive. We bring it out in the open, where it can be seen and dealt with. Like a boil that can never be cured so long as it is covered up but must be opened with all its ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must be exposed, with all the tension its exposure creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured. But though I was initially disappointed at being categorized as an extremist, as I continued to think about the matter I gradually gained a measure of satisfaction from the label. Was not Jesus an extremist for love: "Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you." Was not Amos an extremist for justice: "Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever flowing stream." Was not Paul an extremist for the Christian gospel: "I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus." Was not Martin Luther an extremist: "Here I stand; I cannot do otherwise, so help me God." And John Bunyan: "I will stay in jail to the end of my days before I make a butchery of my conscience." And Abraham Lincoln: "This nation cannot survive half slave and half free." And Thomas Jefferson: "We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal . . ." So the question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be. Will we be extremists for hate or for love? Will we be extremists for the preservation of injustice or for the extension of justice?
And under the same amendment, my associates and I are free to shun you for your speech. You seem to be under the mistaken impression that the US constitution applies to private citizens. It does not. It specifies what the US government is allowed to do. I'm not an agent of any US government, so it does not apply to me.
I've been seeing you post throughout this entire thread and it offends me highly. Should speech like yours also be banned because I'm offended? Or do I tolerate it because I know it's your opinion?
This is the problem with your argument: being 'offended' is highly subjective. To some people, simply existing means you are offended...which is why it will never work.
'safe spaces' and trying to make everything a 'safe space' is a huge disservice to these students and will only put them that much further behind the rest of the world when they go out into the real working world and can't handle an opposing view point.
We should be concentrating on creating strong adults that can discuss any view point intelligently and stand their ground when needed. Instead, we have students that never learn these skills (which should be taught in college) and crumble at any hint of opposition. I feel like this is a a weakness and a step back in terms of societal evolution.
I started seeing it a few years back in many open source projects. Rather than try to win on the merits of an idea, many people would rather spend time destroying a person on Facebook, Twitter, and other social media to gain support.
I have since sworn off all open source projects and stick to my own private repos.
I think the world would be better if, before you're allowed to respond to someone being wrong, you have to first be able to express their position in a way that they agree represents their view.
Because 'political correctness' isn't the cancer at the heart of social politics, it is straw-manning. On both sides of every issue.
I'd be surprised, perhaps even amazed, if Dr Piper had represented the complaint in any way recognisable to the person who'd made it. This just smells of tendentious reporting.
Having spent far more than my fair share of time around University students (11 years), I can assure you that the complaint is likely what the student said. It smells very much like what students today are saying.
Remember the other professor who had students call the police because there were mice in their apartment?
"Having spent far more than my fair share of time around University students (11 years), I can assure you that the complaint is likely what the student said. It smells very much like what students today are saying."
I guess I have different students because I've been teaching college since 2000 and have never had any complaints like this and neither have any of my friends.
What subject do you teach? I was talking to an old physics professor of mine and he said the same thing, but my former psych professor was completely the opposite. Maybe it's a subject-related issue?
Could also be related to the person. A prof who's being racist will receive more criticism for being racist, and will have more cause to complain of "political correctness".
I gotta say, anecdotally, this is what I often find ... the people complaining about political correctness, are those that have in the past been openly racist, or at a minimum, fond of racially charged jokes (ie. "black people are great, everyone should own one"). They are chafing against a cultural change that no longer appreciates and/or tolerates behavior like that.
I totally agree. I have had people blaming me for making them depressed when I was refuting someone saying 'you get out what was put into it', which I thought was complete bullshit the way he was saying it.
I was saying that a lot of success is due to chance, and that a lot of life events are due to chance. This got people some people saying that what I was saying was horribly depressing. The guy then proceeded to lecture me that my attitude was what was letting me down in something that I never did, and was irrelevant anyway. And that 'I may not have intended it, but that my actions are causing misery' (because I did apologize to people that saying that they were horribly depressed by me saying that life has chance in it, because I felt the need to be conciliatory).
That is what happened when I tried to be honest and disagree with someone spouting feel good bullshit or whatever else made him look good. A complete frigging cesspool.
That sounds like a tragic case of shooting the messenger. The sad outcome is that people learn to keep their mouths shut rather than tell unpalatable truths - and it's the whole group that loses out in the long fun.
If I hear someone expressing a view that I dislike, I'm well within my rights to do any or all of the following things: a) stop associating with this individual b) let them know that I dislike the view they've expressed.
Choosing to do both a) and b) is a normal social response, and the individual that finds themselves expressing views that go against the cultural majority will find themselves in an awkward position. If this view being expressed is worth expressing, then unfortunately the individual will have to endure hardships in order to get the message out and convince the masses ... much like MLKjr being willing to go to jail to communicate the idea that civil rights were for all.
So if someone wants to share racist jokes, then toughen up that skin and let the vitriol fly! They should be proud of what they are and let everyone know ... if it's a worthy viewpoint, they'll find others will rally to their cause; and if not, they'll find themselves awkwardly cast out by their social circle (or at least, their social circle's kids/younger generation).
Yeah. As a white guy, I get that our current loss of privilege feels like a loss. Change is always uncomfortable, so I can see why people would be inclined to push back. And I get that we all learned to express privilege partly through behaviors that conveniently just happen to maintain privilege (behaviors like those racist jokes).
But still, it's frustrating how many people who supposedly pride themselves on their incisive intellects refuse to even consider that there might be something going on besides "political correctness". This Wondermark cartoon captures the dynamic for me:
And it makes me pretty uncomfortable when people express "fear of being attacked for doing something that's okay", and other people turn that into "fear of being attacked for doing something that's not okay", and attack them for it.
A smart, capable community manager like Josh Olin should have no problem finding work with another game studio--one that would be OK with his public defense of the bigoted views of that basketball team owner.
Maybe there aren't a lot of employers around who want to hire someone who promotes the view that "bigotry is OK," but surely there's at least one.
I've said that someone shouldn't have been fired for what they said, and you've said they can get another job. That is not reassuring.
You've also turned a defense of a person into a defense of their views. You've turned "someone shouldn't be fired for bigotry" into "bigotry is okay". That is not reassuring either.
Again, you've turned "someone shouldn't be fired for bigotry" into "bigotry is okay". You've turned "someone shouldn't be fired for saying someone shouldn't be fired for bigotry" into "no one should ever be fired for anything".
As it happens, I'm okay with Donald Sterling being fired. I'm not okay with Josh Olin being fired for saying Donald Sterling shouldn't have been fired.
Would you support me being fired, for saying Josh Olin shouldn't have been fired?
My problem with this line of argument is that people who aren't well-off straight white guys like myself are already scared of expressing opinions. They have been for centuries. The only thing that has changed is that people with privilege, on rare occasion, can no longer say certain things without any consequence.
As Popehat writes, freedom of speech does not mean freedom from consequences. There's an important question of what consequences should or can legitimately flow from speech. But when this "people shouldn't be scared to express opinions" line gets trotted out only to defend white guys, it's a tell. The nominal principle might be freedom of speech, but if the only people defended are the privileged, the actual principle is maintenance of societal privilege.
Let's be clear. You're saying it's okay to fire people for saying "it's not okay to fire people for bigotry". Yes? If you're not okay with that, if you think Josh Olin should not have been fired, please say so.
I can see your argument, here. I disagree with you, but that's not what I want to get at here.
What I want to get at is this: it's one thing to be scared of making racist jokes. It's another thing to be scared of expressing opinions like "Donald Sterling should not have been fired".
When people say "I'm scared to express opinions", and then you attack them "ha ha, look at the white people complaining that they're afraid to make racist jokes, how sad for them" - and then you also say that it's okay to fire people for the opinions that they say they're scared to express...
I am not in fact saying that particular incident is or is not ok. (I also don't think his tweets are fairly characterized by your summation.) As I mentioned, I am addressing the line of argument, not the case.
What I amsaying is that when the "freedom of speech" flag only gets hauled out for pro-bigotry straight white guys, I think it's not really about freedom of speech but instead defense of privilege. If defenders of free speech want to convince me they're serious, they'll be just as vigorous in defending unpopular opinions of people not in their demographic.
That may even be you, in which case, congrats. But unlike you, I don't think it's unconditionally bad that some people are afraid to express opinions because they may face social consequences for them. E.g., if some of the Donald Sterlings of the world are now afraid to express their bigotry, that's ok by me. And if some people are afraid to publish something because they aren't sure whether or not it's bigoted, I also have a hard time seeing that as bad. That seems like a fine opportunity for them to consider their opinions before publishing them.
In fact, I think that's what most people do. The only thing that's different is that straight white guys now have to do the same sort of self-managing that everybody else has always done, because they're now slightly less insulated from the consequences of their actions.
You're addressing a line of argument about which I said "that's not what I want to get at". And you're ignoring the actual thing that I've been talking about. The thing about which I said "it makes me pretty uncomfortable when..." and "I don't have a polite term for this".
I disagree with some of what you're saying, and I agree with other bits of it. But I strongly disagree with the thing that you're doing and not even acknowledging.
Just so we're clear, your complaint is that I'm talking about the thing I want to talk about, rather than me talking about the thing you want me to talk about? I'm not immediately seeing my obligation here.
I have multiple complaints! For one, you're a bully. For two, you're changing the subject when I point out your bullying. And now we can add three, you're changing the subject when I point out your changing the subject.
Are you trying to paint me as some kind of tyrant here? Who said anything about obligation? Feel free to ignore me, feel free to talk about whatever you like. Meanwhile, I will feel free to point out when I don't like the things you say.
Like so: it is a shitty tactic to pretend you're talking to me, to reply as though you have a reply to what I said, and thus to obscure the fact that you're presenting no defense for your actions.
I don't know if this is malice or incompetence on your part, but it's bullshit.
Dude, you replied to my comment. I am not "changing the subject". I was agreeing with CodeCube and extending his point. To the extent there is a subject here, it is covert and overt racists chafing that they can no longer be quite as racist as they are used to.
It's not my job to address whatever hobbyhorse you've ridden in on, one I still only find half comprehensible. HN discussion is a recreation for me, one I do on my terms. If you would like to make dealing with you my job, feel free to book me at my consulting rate, $300/hr, cash in advance. I have open slots starting in mid-January. Otherwise, please march back on out of my mentions. Thanks.
HN discussion is a public forum, and you don't get to dictate who replies to you. If you don't want to talk to me, that's up to you. You can simply stop talking to me. I'll get bored and wander off and you won't see me replying to you. If you don't understand what I'm saying, you can also choose to ask clarification. But I'm not asking any positive action of you.
What I do ask is that if you choose to reply to me, you reply to the things that I actually say. Instead, you repeatedly chose to say things which sounded like replies, but weren't. You tried to hide your lack-of-response - first, by talking about something unrelated to what I said, and second, by being all "I don't need to talk about what you want to talk about". Of course you don't! But if you're not going to talk about it, you don't get to pretend you replied to me.
I replied to the portion of your comment I thought relevant. Stomp your feet all you want, but I don't owe you anything further, and acting entitled to interaction on your terms doesn't incline me to take you seriously.
Of course you owe me nothing, and of course I'm not entitled to interaction from you, on any terms. I've said twice, and now I say a third time, that you can stop interacting with me any time you like.
But while you choose to interact with me, I am free to point out when you're violating conventions of discourse.
I am not entitled to your words, and you are not entitled to my silence.
In civilized society, yes, people are entitled to be left alone when they ask to be left alone. I am not entitled to your general silence, but you are not entitled to keep bugging me. Please go away.
I consider that I'm entitled to keep talking to you, as long as you keep talking to me. It chafes to be told otherwise. On top of that, you're asking me to do something that you could have accomplished yourself, by simply not asking me to do it. That feels like some kind of bizarre power grab.
These things make me want to push back and do the opposite of what you want, just to annoy you.
However, very well: I will not reply to you again in this thread, even if you choose to reply to me.
I don't intend to deliberately avoid replying to you in future.
The difference being, of course, that you approached me. I believe I have the right to be let alone when asked. You believe that you have the right to approach anybody, petulantly insist that they talk about what you want, and then hang around bothering them after being asked to go away. Assertion of boundaries only seems like a bizarre power grab to the irrationally entitled.
I think the proper response is to not silence or discourage any speech, but to make sure non-straight white (non-){0,1}guys have no fear of speaking just like their straight white brethren.
I agree almost entirely. I think there's a fair bit of speech that's worth discouraging with other speech. (For example, my part of California is dense with anti-vaxxers. To the extent that they're capable of rational discussion of the topic, I prefer that. But I'd rather have them afraid of pushing their nonsense then let them make other people afraid of vaccinating.) But I definitely think we should be striving for a standard that's equal with respect to things like race and gender.
I teach cultural studies-related things and nearly all of my friends who are college profs are as well. I talk about race and gender regularly. The only non-grade related complaint I've ever gotten was that I used swear words in class - which would be hard not to do when one of the readings was about swearing...
I'm not trying to be glib but in my experience it's cutural studies mentalities applied to hard science courses (like biology for non-majors) or artistic roundtable formats (like creative writing workshops) where issues of race, gender, and feelings are inappropriately applied as 'arbiters' of "how" things are to be discussed. My apology if not totally clear, but the jist of what I'm getting at is my impression of cultural studies is that the inherent inclusiveness of 'perspectives' doesn't really challenge students, but predominately allows an arena for affirmation. I suppose what I mean is that based on the nature of the subject matter, an excellent rhetorical essay framing genocide of a certain culture can't really be criticized as 'bad thinking' if the structuring of the argument and included reasoning are sound, though the very concept itself is abhorrent in its premise.
I graduated last year, and I can assure you that I never heard anything remotely similar to this during my 4 years in an undergrad business program.
I discussed this exact topic with my close high school friends while we were home over Thanksgiving weekend, so I also got perspectives from recently-graduated students in the liberal arts and business at Columbia, WashU, Vanderbilt, and Cornell to fill out my sample.
None of them had ever directly heard or seen any comparable behavior during their time in school. We had all heard of isolated incidents of intolerance in the news, and had the sense that such sheltered students could be found on campus, but we didn't personally know or associate with anyone who could be so extreme or intolerant in their beliefs. Which caused us to ask: how does a student like this get a spot at a decent university? Who raises their child to be so intolerant?
So I have to disagree with your claim that such intolerant and childish comments "[smell] very much like what students today are saying." There is a vocal minority of students who say and do things that do not represent the larger body of students as a whole. There always will be. The average college student is still too busy meeting people, playing sports, dating, drinking, traveling, doing internships, interviewing for jobs, and (occasionally) going to lectures to make a big fuss out of anything that might offend him/her.
Current college senior at a liberal arts school, and I agree. There's a decent chunk of people who could be described as rubidium does but ultimately they are a minority. A very vocal one though.
Most people are just too busy with life to care, even if they sympathize.
I like it, similar to what they do in some pre-marital or marriage counseling sessions. One side lists a grievance, then before the other side responds they have to repeat what they heard and get confirmation before responding. "So if I'm hearing you right, you don't like it when I... Did I understand correctly?"
It feels ridiculous when you do it at first but it becomes an incredibly helpful tool.
... and then, once we've clarified what the request is all about, and I'm sure about what's going on, only then can you move in to help, offer advice, or crush their souls with a series of devastating blows.
No, don't do the latter. Show your side of the story and get them to say it out loud. "Okay, you're right, putting a Perl 6 interpreter in the interrupt handlers of the network stack does sound kind of crazy now."
Doing this makes you a lot easier to work with, or at least that is the perception. :-)
While I definitely agree this doesn't always work because ego gets involved, at least in my experience. Stating what you understand the situation or question to be back to the other party can often be interpreted as a challenge of their personal judgement on something that should be considered objectively.
Indeed. Either the complainant is a troll, or doesn't exist.
No normal person would attend a sermon at the chapel of a given faith, and complain that the sermon victimises them for being a poor practitioner of that faith. This is doubly true when its about something universal like love, rather than how well you practice some specific ritual.
Do you have any evidence of this claim (that it's a troll or "doesn't exist"), other than just your assertion that no normal person would do this?
I can assure you that I know plenty of young people who would do something like this - heck, I'm a young person (and also a Christian), and whilst I probably wouldn't be brave enough to actually approach a lecturer and voice such thoughts, I am sure that in a moment of weakness I could certainly think such things internally (which in some sense, is nearly or just as bad). So my assertion is based both on knowing my own peers and being honest about myself.
When somebody calls us out for something, it's only natural to want to blame somebody else - it takes an incredible amount of self-awareness and discipline to immediately jump to self-reflection, without trying to pass the buck. Sure, we may get there in the end, but it's often a journey of various emotions to get to that epiphany.
Are you saying you are one of those people? Or that you believe most people are like that?
> When somebody calls us out for something, it's only natural to want to blame somebody else - it takes an incredible amount of self-awareness and discipline to immediately jump to self-reflection, without trying to pass the buck.
Well, this goes both ways.
Like most HN threads on this topic, this discussion is largely full of reactions against perceived "victimization", devoid of any self-reflection about what merit the complaints might actually have.
No, I have no evidence at all. It's just my assertion.
Would you really attend a sermon at the chapel of either your own chosen faith or someone else's and lodge a complaint that the cleric's commentary on love made you feel bad for not showing love? What, exactly, would motivate you to do such a thing?
Surely, in the context of a religious sermon, either you're a believer and you should feel bad for not obeying the precepts, or you're not and it's all irrelevant?
Sure, there are things we know we should do - whether because of familial duties, social duties, or as in this case, our belief system, or our religion/creed.
Then there are the things we want to do.
Sure, we may know they're wrong, or know we'll regret them afterwards - but that's not to say we weren't tempted.
And the human mind is wonderful at trying to justify doing "bad" things (where bad is whatever your own faith/belief system is). So I may be like, I'm a awesome Christian, I'm going to attend bible college, then when I get there, I hear a sermon that strikes a nerve and reveals some sin that I'm committing - I may try to justify myself, by saying, well, that doesn't really apply to me because of XYZ, or I may be like, that lecturer has it out for me, why is he targetting me when there's so many other sinners, I'm going to have a word with him! etc.
But that's the thing about it. A sermon does not hit the same topic every time. Take homosexuality. As I was growing up, homosexuality was not a topic that was often covered. In most biblical circles (at least of the denomination that I attended) homosexuality was a black-and-white issue: it's wrong 100% of the time regardless of circumstances.
In my high school years, I knew of 3 closeted gay people that attended my church. Since homosexuality was rarely talked about, you could reasonably assume that it may get talked about once a year - if that. On those days, however, I'm sure it felt as if the were being publicly lambasted for something they had no control over. I have never even considered myself bisexual, but it always made me extremely uncomfortable listening to sermons about homosexuality. I can only imagine how those people felt.
This is a situation in which I feel that someone who otherwise attends a service regularly would feel the need to speak out.
I don't know about your definition of 'normal' but I've seen plenty of videos recently (they tend to surface when things like the recent Yale activity happen) that have reminded me that there are people with views so irreconcilably far from my own that there's no point trying to second-guess what views anyone would or wouldn't hold.
Except at religious schools, generally chapel is not voluntary, but required. People tend to pick churches where they are NOT uncomfortable, versus in a college chapel they will be more edgy for just this reason - to get their students to actually think about issues.
But the schools themselves are voluntary. I utterly fail to understand people who attend them and complain. (In fact, also those who don't complain, but that's another rant for another day...)
> you have to first be able to express their position in a way that they agree represents their view.
This habit is extremely powerful. There's no way to require people to do it, but people who do it, at least know the arguments of their opponents, are in such a better position to get what they want that people who don't are left standing, mouths open wondering what happened.
And it's extremely timely as just two weeks ago, President Obama gave this quote:
"I don't want you to think that a display of your strength is simply shutting other people up. And that part of your ability to bring about change is going to be by engagement and understanding the viewpoints and the arguments of the other side."
People don't realize that college already is the safe place where they can develop the habits of empathy and conflict-management. Getting called "bitch" and seeing mice are the least of their problems. Those are going to happen in the real-world no matter what. College isn't a place to preserve themselves from these inevitable, superficial insults, it's a place to develop leadership, contribution and cooperation abilities to get big things done like feeding, improving, healing, leading the world, etc.
I agree it is powerful but it is also just effective communication. I try to do it a lot with my girlfriend on things we don't necessarily agree. I'll paraphrase her position to ensure that my response is correct. ...Sadly, that is sometimes met with "No, are you even listening". But hey, at least at that point she rewords it to get her point across.
I have an Aunt who thrives on disagreement -- and in particular, she will not let me agree with her. Some time ago I believe she irrevocably decided that our views are too different and we can never agree. I literally have had the exchange with her: "I completely agree with everything you just said." "Then you must have misunderstood me."
heya if you are talking about communicating with a woman - or rather feminine energy - sometimes it can be even easier than that! 95% - 99% of the time, feminine energy works out its problems through saying them out loud and being heard. (Masculine energy works out its problems by pondering in a man cave).
So often, all you have to do is keep your lips closed and listen. It can be hard, but that's the way it works, by sometimes introducing an uncomfortable air. Your calm, attentive, silent response to the discomfort is how the energy is resolved. Shortly after the discomfort, you'll feel a mood change and when she says, "Thank you for listening!!" you'll often get a big hug. I sincerely hope this helps you and everyone else big time.
No, not at all. It's something I learned from Corey Wayne [1], a dating and success coach. He says only 3% of men really understand women. Judging from my downvotes, he's right. Although I really hoped the population here would be skewed toward top-tier social skills or at least receptive. But I don't care about the down votes... Everything I quoted from Corey Wayne is working out extremely well for me. I'm miles beyond my previous relationships before I discovered his material.
Along those lines, I think formal debate should be required in secondary education, and students should be required to defend the position they disagree with.
That would be nice, but is "formal debate" taught anymore? What I've seen lately (finished grad school 5 years ago) that is called "debate" at a university is far from what I remember when I did undergrad in the '80's.
Not sure...never had any debate as a part of my education (through grad school). I think they should start in high school though because if you're going to be a participant in an informed electorate you need to be able to process and articulate both sides of an argument. A casual glance at a few facebook timelines and twitter feeds suggest this is a horribly rare skill these days.
In my experience "formal debate" (in the vein of forensics competitions, etc) is essentially heavy "research" in which you cherry pick any study or paper or blog you can find that supports your position and then spit out all those citiations as quickly as possible in an 8 minute 'speech' -- there's very little debating or discussion going on, just a war of citations which quickly shows all the participants that citations mean nothing -- no matter your view you can find plenty of "evidence" for it, it's an even playing field whether you're affirmative or negative after all.
So all in all like the real debate we see on television I suppose.
I did formal debate in high school and university, and agree with wfo - formal debate is possibly one of the worst things to teach if your goal is understanding and critical thinking about topics.
Keep in mind that in a typical formal debate you don't get to pick your sides - you are assigned a position on an issue and must successfully argue in favor of that position. Formal debate is about the art of rhetoric, and explicitly part of the expectation - and the skill taught - is the deliberate distortion/reframing of fact in order to support your case. Anyone who's done formal debates will have learned this, since you're frequently asked to argue positions you personally disagree with.
Formal debate is a craft of being convincing, not of being right.
Not to mention the structure of formal debates means there is a winner and a loser, and so compromise is impossible. The goal isn't to reach an understanding or middle ground, but to completely obliterate your opponent rhetorically. This fits poorly with real life.
A little research will produce a vast number of examples of political correctness with real consequences and not just "straw-manning".
Here is a recent example: A Canadian university cancels a yoga class because yoga comes "from a culture that “experienced oppression, cultural genocide and diasporas due to colonialism and western supremacy,”
In a world that can do that, I don't find it surprising that a student could express the view in the original article and actually mean it.
Just to add some more info; it was the student union that was running the yoga class and cancelled it, the university administration had no part in its cancellation. This was wholly done by students.
Nope, it's more ridiculous, I think. I'm used to misguided administrations; that's par for the course. But students policing themselves, and it's worse than any misguided administration could do? Unbelievable.
For some reason I am strongly reminded of the book "Interesting Times"
“The Empire's got something worse than whips all right. It's got obedience. Whips in the soul. They obey anyone who tells them what to do. Freedom just means being told what to do by someone different.”
And honestly, I'm fine with that. Universities are for learning, and real learning comes from doing. The questions the students were grappling with are real ones. I expect they misapplied them here, as the yoga traditions I'm familiar with are mostly conscious Indian exports, their effort to share something with the world. But students should frequently get things wrong, because that's how real learning happens.
Learning only happens when there are consequences for being wrong. Aside from being ridiculed by people they disagree with and thus don't care about being ridiculed by, they have faced no consequences.
Aren't the bugs the consequence? Or it not working correctly? The framerate being to low? I taught myself WebGL by making planet sized spherical terrains. There were consequences just about every single moment I was doing this.
The consequence is your toy project won't work, and you'll have to find a solution. In doing so, you probably won't make the same mistake again, hopefully having learned something.
I would argue the act of debugging it is the consequence. You assume something to be correct (or make a stupid mistake), you face the fact that it's not, you adjust your behavior and gain insight into facing the problem again. Same thing applies to social experience, the difference is in WebGL there is something approximating a 'right way.' I never thought Yoga would be contentious, some people do, now I'll think about it and try and understand why they feel that way.
It is impossible to prove a yoga class at a university harms a culture. It is easily provable that forcing these people not to meet on campus as a group does real actual harm. And I don't care about their feelings, I care about fairness and justice.
I think the argument would be more along the lines of: "You're calling this Yoga, but here is what Yoga has meant historically in my culture, which is actually quite different." I think the types of behaviors people attribute to PC nazis or similar are understandable responses by groups of people who are usually ignored by the mainstream so they raise a stink (read: pay attention to us or else!). Conversely putting people into that box usually comes from groups who are (like myself) historically highly empowered and have the luxury of intellectualizing things that are more in the corporeal/emotional realm for the groups they're critiquing (ie. stereotyping, mockery, physical abuse). I think fairness and justice are highly subjective and can only be gleaned by carful consideration of both sides, which is to say understanding why they have their "feelings" and why you don't care about them.
> I think the argument would be more along the lines of: "You're calling this Yoga, but here is what Yoga has meant historically in my culture, which is actually quite different."
This argument was actually made in the case of the University of Ottawa. The yoga instructor even offered to rename the class to "mindful stretching" so as not to associate it with the spiritual and cultural aspects of yoga / Yogi Practice, but was still shut down by the student's union because they felt that it was gentrifying and demonstrated cultural appropriation.
Personally I think the vast majority of culture has been stolen or replicated from older cultures and I don't think that having a stretching class really constitutes some kind of injustice just because it is derived from traditional yoga.
There's nothing understandable, and certainly not mindful, about a bunch of childish students telling someone they can't do Yoga because it might hurt someone's feelings. Especially when the argument devolved into "You can't even have a stretching class (no longer associated with yoga), because it might hurt someone's feelings." That is ripe for hurtful, deserved, mockery.
One, international ridicule is a notable consequence. Two, you have no idea what else has happened to them, so you have no grounds for suggesting they have experienced nothing that might aid them in learning. Three, most useful motivation for learning is intrinsic, not extrinsic, so what matters most for their learning is their own opinions on what happened, another thing you don't have access to.
Anyone who has worked in student organizations should be able to attest that students don't have full autonomy from administration/faculty/university governance. I have no idea what role, if any, that any of these influences played on this situation, but I think it's a bit simplistic to assume students made this decision solely on their own.
What is the "real" consequence here? And is it still straw manning, in a sense, to make judgements based on an incomplete story, and jump to conclusions about someone else being wrong, without the whole story?
I don't know about the yoga class incident, but I don't automatically see the ridiculousness the rest in this sub thread appear to -- it seems pretty reasonable to me for a group of students to check their assumptions about what they're doing when they learn about something related in history. Yes yoga is now a trendy healthy way to stretch and exercise, and how could history have anything to say about stretching, but it does not seem silly to me to wonder out loud if yoga may have originated as a symbol of oppression or death, or of submission to it.
For every example of absurd political correctness - of which there are many, particularly in universities - there's an equal and opposite example of absurd bleating about political correctness from somebody upset that a private website barred them for sending out racist memes.
I would throw it out there that Evangelical Christian university with rigorous behavioural standards are on average considerably less likely than average to attract rent-a-cause campaigning/complaining types and considerably more likely than average to deliver a "sermon on love" full of dire warnings and animosity towards people that don't love in the correct university-prescribed manner...
> Because 'political correctness' isn't the cancer at the heart of social politics, it is straw-manning. On both sides of every issue.
I don't think they were saying that political correctness was straw-manning, but that it was straw-manning that was the cancer at the heart of social politics.
You're being generous to the author. I'd be amazed if anyone at all had complained to the university president about their sermon.
"The complaining student" is now a trope along the lines of the cab driver who always speaks to New York Times columnists in a way that is convenient for their column.
Except, in this scenario, the cab driver is OKWU and the new york times is also OWKU.
It's reasonable for OWKU to make this announcement. They are laying out their expectations for their student body. It is inconvenient but students who dislike their position are free to transfer.
OWKU is a private institution and also a religious one (even greater protection). They are well within their means and rights.
I'm starting to think that feelings are being hurt on HN; hence all the controversy.
> It's reasonable for OWKU to make this announcement. They are laying out their expectations for their student body.
It may be reasonable for OWKU to make an announcement of their expectations of student receptiveness to uncomfortable sermons, the particular details and manner in which Dr. Piper did so in this case, however, taken as presented, shows a lack of both the general adult ability to maturely deal with uncomfortable situations and the specific Christian virtues it pretends to be concerned with.
> OWKU is a private institution and also a religious one (even greater protection). They are well within their means and rights.
I don't think anyone has argued that OKWU's actions here were either unaffordable (outside of the University's means -- not sure why that would even be relevant) or illegal (outside of the University's rights).
The negative responses I've seen have all be skepticism about the accuracy of the presentation of the situation and arguments that, even if the situation was presented accurately, the piece is a poor response to the situation it describes. (The comment you responded to was explicitly the former -- raising the idea that the "complaining student" has become a common fictional foil to set up rhetorically, whether or not a real complaint exists.)
Not that it is outside of the University's "means and rights".
>the particular details and manner in which Dr. Piper did so in this case, however, taken as presented, shows a lack of both the general adult ability to maturely deal with uncomfortable situations and the specific Christian virtues it pretends to be concerned with.
Can you not judge the student under the same criteria? If the student had been pursuing Christian virtues, the student would have taken the time to see how the sermon could better him/her as a Christian, and not immediately taken offense to it.
Yeah, pretty much. The likelihood of a student at a private, conservative, Oklahoma, evangelical, religious school going up to the school president/religious leader after a sermon and making a supposed left-wing, liberal, "I'm so easily offended that I get offended by your sermon about love" complaint is zero.
People on HN are taking this straw man attack and running with it, though. It's meme-licious.
You should attempt to re-express your target’s position so clearly, vividly, and fairly that your target says, “Thanks, I wish I’d thought of putting it that way.
You should list any points of agreement (especially if they are not matters of general or widespread agreement).
You should mention anything you have learned from your target.
Only then are you permitted to say so much as a word of rebuttal or criticism.
Dennett definitely has some experience with criticism and his opinion is worthwhile to listen to, so I agree with your addendum. Thanks for the link, I did not know this. However, Dennett and Rapoport list three further steps after re-expression.
2. You should list any points of agreement (especially if they are not matters of general or widespread agreement).
3. You should mention anything you have learned from your target.
4. Only then are you permitted to say so much as a word of rebuttal or criticism.
From experience, this often works with essentially reasonable people but occasionally is prone to spectacular failures. Some people have difficulty accepting the possibility that a human being can both understand their position and not be in perfect agreement with it.
I believe this might be your bone of contention. The speech was a mission statement, more or less, with an introduction that is very catchy and exciting and clickbaity, but overall irrelevant to the main argument. This is not a response of right or wrong. Obviously the leader thinks people who oppose him are wrong, but the main thrust of the argument past that intro is "where is what we are going to do here".
For example, obviously a long cultural time ago, although it was only a bit more than a decade, all the seniors at the school I finally graduated from (I was a part timer) took the same giant Holocaust class. It was a required interdisciplinary liberal arts survey class, of a topic that changed every year. I believe they had "death" as the topic another year. They were obviously kind of a downer phase. For cultural change reasons they don't do this anymore, which is a shame. Anyway the point of an interdisciplinary liberal arts class isn't to debate philosophically if the topic is right or wrong, but to teach the students how to actually apply the full spectrum of liberal arts, all of them, because you're all well rounded individuals now, to a topic.
Someone who disliked the idea of confronting a rather foreign culture and world view could fight against the class by demanding that you're not allowed to respond to the Holocaust intellectually unless you can first express Hitler's position in a way that modern Nazis would agree accurately represents their view. Why yes I did just "Godwin" you. But of course that logic is total bunk. The real purpose of the class is to teach the students how to observe then analyze the inter-related whole of the topic, across multiple disciplines. That requires application of intellectual skills, not right or wrong judgments. You don't need to express agreement with the text of mein kampf to see how the economic situation dovetailed with the political situation dovetailed with the cultural situation etc. My term paper was how architecture related to the other liberal arts in the reich WRT to propaganda and scale and form etc.
Really the only reason why they gave us the Holocaust as a study topic was to scare the hell out of us, if we fail to learn the skills of cross disciplinary observation, analysis, and synthesis skills taught in the class, maybe something that bad will happen again. Now for over sensitivity reasons, or more likely profound lack of courage, we can't get that reward, can't learn to avoid evil by intellectual analysis. That opens a whole nother can of worms where the campus is now a safe space free of gas chamber triggering, but the whole country overall is far less of a safe space, because the current grads are emotionally coddled, less intellectually skilled, and far more cowardly unless acting in mob actions. Luckily mob action historically has always been effective and rational, correct? And we can make up for personal cowardice with more drone strikes, correct? And the politician that proposes the simplest sounding solution is probably the best because we no longer have the intellectual rigor to analyze, correct? I mean, what could possibly go wrong?
> before you're allowed to respond to someone being wrong, you have to first be able to express their position in a way that they agree represents their view
While we're at it, let's stipulate that everyone is only allowed to be honest and logical and to base their reasoning on valid premises! :)
It's a nice thought, at least at first glance, but it's just not going to happen.
Besides, the real problem with debates is actually willful dishonesty.
There are vast hordes of sociopaths playing games and overcomplicating things to no end, arguing for positions they don't actually hold, and basically just preventing discussions from ever getting anywhere.
The smart ones are like firehoses of sophistry and misdirection, the dumb ones just (fake-)rage and call people names, and I guess somewhere in between you'll find militant feminists and race baiters and people calling for "safe spaces" and whatever nonsense they come up with.
Some sociopaths have come up with a fun new game: trying to convince people that the earth is actually flat. Yes, sadly that's actually a thing. Look them up on YouTube or something.
But these "people" are the real reason why we can't seem to have a reasonable discussion on anything.
Apparently it's enjoyable for them to fuck everything up, and to prevent mankind's progress towards enlightenment as best they can.
That seems like self-destructive behaviour, but they do it anyway. A bunch of them will see this post, but not one will sincerely help us understand.
It's not obvious to me that the militant feminists/race baiters/safe space people are sociopaths bent on willful dishonesty. I think it's reductive to assume they all have bad intentions.
I disagree with many of their points of view, but it doesn't mean that they are being dishonest. For all you know, I could be the willfully dishonest one here.
But you bring up an interesting point I've been wondering about lately - is the world complicated and full of nuance to be debated ad infinitum? Or is truth actually quite simple, with the source of complexity being only those who would cloud the truth with bias and/or willful dishonesty?
Your comment made my Spidey-sense tingle, so I looked at your history and found out you "like crime movies/drama for the allure of ruthless power" and work in the financial industry..
You're an interesting case though. Your HN comments are clean - no sophistry or trolling - so I guess you have your fun elsewhere.
I've been wondering if there's such a thing as a "benign sociopath", but it's not like I could trust you even if you claimed to be one. I hope so, but so far I'm leaning towards "No".
Because mobs like these are totally open to intellectual discourse and reason. If only the professor had done more to be courteous and empathize with the students' desired ends /s
OK not that I'm excusing it, but there's quite a difference between someone in 1933 (who died in 1940) supporting Hitler (who, at that time, had quite a bit of popular support), and an institution in 2015 being "pro-Hitler."
This may be the very definition of hyperbole. Taking something that is barely technically accurate and distorting it to the point where it doesn't mean even close to the same thing anymore.
EDIT:
From the link:
> The Daily Mail, devised by Alfred Harmsworth (later Lord Northcliffe) and his brother Harold (later Lord Rothermere), was first published on 4 May 1896.
> Lord Rothermere was a friend of Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler, and directed the Mail's editorial stance towards them in the early 1930s.
Yeap, fair enough (I thought the same). It's still a pretty bad newspaper though; I think it would be fair to say it hasn't gone far uphill since then.
The Ideological Turing Test is inteinteresting. I wonder how applying it to the content of The Colbert Report, and the character Colbert played on the show, would result. IIRC, someone had done some impromptu, unscientific person-on-the-street interviews to determine his political affiliation, and he came off as sincere to those who self-identified as conservative and mocking conservatives to self-identified liberals.
I suspect this was completely honest. You will not believe what comes out of the mouths of some of these students. Straw-manning is necessary; do you think either participant or the audience has the patience to sit and thoughtfully and carefully consider all sides of any issue in any debate? If that debate were publicized nobody would watch it. And it's a prisoner's dilemma. If you try to be respectful and thoughtful and the other person screams and yells and abuses and strawmans then you will lose the 'debate' by any metric not implemented by a philosophy professor. Look at the presedential debates. Nasty quips and attacks win, thoughtful consideration and long policy dialogue loses. It's not a coincidence.
This is a classic trap. Some positions are simply not worth discussing thoughtfully. Not all positions are equal. When you say "both sides" you have already lost; plenty of people use this tendancy to give both sides to every issue equal credence and carefully consider both, so they inject some absurd ridiculous view as the other side and abuse your tendancy to respect them to gain credence for it. Then the overton window is shifted and they have already won before the debate begins. If you even accept the premise that a student should be able to tell a professor what they are and are not allowed to discuss in their class you have already lost the debate, there's no use respecting that view, it's far too extreme.
>plenty of people use this tendency to give both sides to every issue equal credence and carefully consider both, so they inject some absurd ridiculous view as the other side and abuse your tendency to respect them to gain credence for it.
>And it's a prisoner's dilemma. If you try to be respectful and thoughtful and the other person screams and yells and abuses and strawmans then you will lose the 'debate' by any metric not implemented by a philosophy professor.
Absolutely, and it's one of the most frustrating things I think a lot of reasonable, polite people come up against.
I don't think there's any reason to assume honesty or good intentions. If the hostility publicly expressed by the president of the university is common amongst the staff during class I wouldn't be surprised if there was something legitimately offensive in the sermon. He even said that's the point of it: "An altar call is supposed to make you feel bad. It is supposed to make you feel guilty." Kids probably expected the school to be a more modern, peace and love christian style and less ancient, hate yourself style.
Well, if you're going to advocate that everybody just believe whatever they want without facts or reason, don't be surprised if people tl;dr your comment and ignore you.
In fact, there's really great data on this same effect. Shankar Vedantam from the Hidden Brain podcast recently talked about this in relation to political arguments and experimentation related to it: http://n.pr/1uL0RAe
One takes offence, one does not give it. It's an idiopathic condition.
I'm a white male, but I grew up being called Gwailo, Gaijin, Auslander, and when I finally returned to the anglosphere in my early teens, I was still an outsider as I spoke with a weird accent and was by that point a through-and-through third culture kid. I got the crap bullied out of me, and eventually figured out that it only hurt if I took it to heart. I learned to pity those whose worlds were so small that they could only take satisfaction from being cruel to me. It was their problem, not mine.
Folks need to have thicker skin, and realise that not everything is about them. In fact, very little is ever about you, most of what people say and do are manifestations of their own thoughts and emotional issues. Physical violence is of course something that needs to be fought against (and this is why we have criminal justice systems which typically take this sort of thing perfectly seriously), but you can only be the victim of "verbal violence" if you choose to take the position of victim.
Congratulations on being such a paragon of excellence. Why should we require such virtue of all humans? Instead of expecting you to develop a thick skin (are you sure this is a good thing?), why can't we try to reform your aggressors in the first place?
Because reforming all possible aggressors ever is an uphill battle you'll never solve.
Imagine you have an API that receives a POST with some JSON. Every time your API receives a malformed POST, your application crashes or hangs. Do you a) try to do your best to make sure no one ever POSTS to your uri with malformed data, or do you b) rewrite your API to be more robust and send back an error code when malformed input is received rather than crashing?
Does that analogy make any sense or is it too far fetched?
> Because reforming all possible aggressors ever is an uphill battle you'll never solve.
I don't believe this is true. Human behavior can change. Relative to its levels 500 years ago, we've all-but eliminated physical violence in first-world countries. I don't think it's much of a stretch to believe we can all-but eliminate emotional violence as well.
We're dealing with human beings, so I didn't read your JSON analogy, sorry.
> We're dealing with human beings, so I didn't read your JSON analogy, sorry.
Unreliable, unpredictable, illogical, making no sense and you never has exact idea which rules they obey at the moment and what output they will generate.
So human beings indeed sound like Javascript or PHP ... [1]
> why can't we try to reform your aggressors in the first place?
Because someone somewhere defines something about another group of people as aggression and we can go "reforming" them with impunity. Take a wild guess what the ranges of something could be ...
> I grew up being called Gwailo, Gaijin, Auslander, and when I finally returned to the anglosphere in my early teens, I was still an outsider as I spoke with a weird accent and was by that point a through-and-through third culture kid. I got the crap bullied out of me
I don't see any value in accepting this behavior. What harm is there in trying to eliminate it?
Because someone somewhere will use the framework and legal precedents you create to eliminate other behavior. Which may happen to be behavior you approve of.
> Congratulations on being such a paragon of excellence. Why should we require such virtue of all humans?
Because modern society and civilization rests entirely on the ability of people to tolerate being offended. It's what made the enlightenment possible. It's what makes scientific inquiry possible. It underlies every improvement to the human condition, because any new idea is offensive to someone.
If you can't do that then we will try to help you improve yourself if you can (and you want to), and try to give you a place to have a comfortable life if you can't. But there isn't and can't be a place for you at a university, where accommodating you would disrupt important work that will ultimately improves everyone's lives.
Outside of those that are controlled by right-wing Christian extremists, I'm not aware of any government in the US passing laws to restrict first amendment rights. Care to elaborate?
There are, but violent offences are at an all time low, and things like assault and battery aren't looked upon kindly in any semi-civilised corner of the planet.
This is good advice to a friend or a loved one who is going through bullying or other nastiness. It is not a good policy prescription for making our world a more equitable place - and yes, that's a goal we should all be striving towards.
I agree that in the face of bullying or racist speech, we should try to thicken our skin and move on with our lives and understand that the problem is on the part of the perpetrators, not with me. But that doesn't mean I don't think we should try to get rid of bullying and racism in our society..
"Oklahoma Wesleyan is not a “safe place”, but rather, a place to learn"
Exactly, I don't get why people are trying to make universities, workplaces, clubs, or anywhere else "safe places". They should not be safe places, they should be places where you feel confronted, challenged and threatened by different ideas and points of view.
>> challenged and threatened by different ideas and points of view
That is one the problems I think. Some people (seems like the majority of young students nowdays) feel "challenged and threatened" personally, and not intellectually.
While I agree with your fundamental point, I'm pretty sure that Everett Piper's Oklahoma Wesleyan is a very safe space for a particular kind of hard-shell evangelical. You don't go to that kind of school to be "confronted, challenged and threatened," but to have your worldview confirmed.
That will means that there is 1 single theological theory, because then everybody that goes there will have their worldview confirmed since there is only one. Unfortunately, looks like it is also what the student in the article expected.
My experience shows me that there are as many theological points of view as believers. Everybody gets their own personal variety.
Yeah, its kind of sad isn't it. It takes right-wing fundamentalist christians to point that out, because the so called "liberals" have lost their ability to understand and respond to critique.
Yeah I agree. Now, in my opinion, a student who goes to a strongly evangelical school and expects to not get bombarded with sermons saying they aren't being Christian enough really has no one but themselves to blame.
However, you can can bet Piper's teachers would have their worldview being very challenged if an atheist or agnostic student started long discussions about the nature of their mission (http://www.okwu.edu/about/).
The opposite of "safe" is "risky". If we're responsible, we do a risk assessment. So, if a place is not safe, what sort of risks does it contain, who is exposed to them, and what mitigation can be put in place.
>Exactly, I don't get why people are trying to make universities, workplaces, clubs, or anywhere else "safe places".
I'm not directly disagreeing with you here or putting words in your mouth. I realize you are not saying safe spaces should not exist. Instead I want to make the argument that having safe spaces is reasonable.
People make safe spaces _within_ universities and other institutions for the same reason some combat veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder put up signs asking neighbors not to set off fireworks[0]. It is to avoid triggering people that have have experienced serious trauma[1].
For instance using the combat veteran example, it would be unreasonable for a veteran to attend a fireworks show and then complain about the fireworks, but if this same combat veteran was attending University and it would be reasonable to ask the University to provide a safe space away from fireworks or other triggers -- sound proofed dorms if students are constantly setting off fireworks.
There is a big difference in intention between 'safety from conflicting points of view' and safe spaces. Although a safe space sometimes requires limiting certain discussions (a person who was sexuality assaulted might be triggered by discussions and depictions of sexual assault).
I agree with most of the points you made, specially that there must be safe spaces, but I don't think an university classroom should be one of them. Your home? Yes. A doctor's office? Yes. The student counsellor's office in the university? Yes. And so on.
"Although a safe space sometimes requires limiting certain discussions"
That makes no sense in a university IMHO. Students could be excused of classes due to previous traumatic experiences, not the other way around.
No discussion should be silenced because the topic triggers or bothers someone. Sure, we can be sensitive about it, and take precautionary measures (warn the students in advance of the topic, etc.), but at absolutely no point, IMHO, should a discussion in an university be limited because it bothers, annoys, disrespects or triggers someone.
Yes, that opens room for some awful, violent and disrespectful points of view, but so many pillars of modern society were once those same awful, violent and disrespectful POVs.
The cases where people are asking for classrooms to be "Safe Spaces" the way you're describing them are the minority. Most people are asking for exactly what you're suggesting - provide warnings for people that might need to remove themselves, but have uncomfortable discussions in the classroom. The whole idea of a "trigger warning" doesn't work any other way.
At Mizzou, they demanded a separate "safe space" because they were literally being sent death threats, which is a separate way to use the idea, and which, in the light of the past week's events, were not unwarranted.
There is a big difference between having a problem with fireworks and having a problem with religion, like in the OP. Asking for a "safe space" where you don't have to deal with your conscience is horribly absurd.
Agreed, that is why I said I wasn't disagreeing with the OP.
My concern is that silly things which people do, like say complaining about being made to feel guilty, will be used to paint safe spaces as 'silly' or 'unnecessary' when in fact safe spaces provide a very valuable function.
> Asking for a "safe space" where you don't have to deal with your conscience is horribly absurd.
You act as if "conscience" is an objecively good thing, and not just the result of a bunch of totally arbitrary social expectations.
Gay people who grew up in conservative families often have a conscience that makes them feel bad about being gay. Gay people looking for safe spaces where they aren't reminded that they spent 18 years being told they are bad people is imminently reasonable.
Abused wives often feel guilty about leaving their husbands. Finding safe spaces where they don't have to feel guilty about doing the right thing is imminently reasonable.
So, no, it's not unreasonable to find places where you don't have to "deal with your conscience"
> Asking for a "safe space" where you don't have to deal with your conscience is horribly absurd.
Asking for safe space where you don't have to worry about others trying to manipulate your conscience, OTOH, is not unreasonable.
At the same time, expecting formal services at the on-campus chapel of what is overtly an evangelical Christian university to be that safe space is somewhat unreasonable.
(Which is not to say that Dr. Piper's letter is itself a reasonable response to the scenario it describes.)
Veterans actually did something. Students are being used to nannying while acting as adults.
Actually this behavior is just because of peace time in todays western world. If students were afraid of actually being in danger, they wouldn't bitch about these things.
Universities shouldn't be safe spaces, I quite agree. That's why I'm so glad my alma mater had packs of lions roaming the campus.
Obviously there are all kinds of things we do to ensure that universities are safe in different ways, and we find ways to try and ensure this safety doesn't interfere too much with learning. Why shouldn't this concern for safety extend to the mental health of students? Chanting "universities are not safe spaces" is a way of avoiding thinking about what kinds of safety we already provide or could provide, and how we can combine these kinds of safety with the challenging education that everyone recognizes is an important part of higher education.
"If you’re more interested in playing the “hater” card than you are in confessing your own hate; if you want to arrogantly lecture, rather than humbly learn ..."
I agree with the fundamental point about mistaking being offended (or made to feel guilty) for victimization, that being said:
There is such a thing as opression and the sidelining of the concerns of groups within society that are already marginalized. This veers dangerously close to being dismissive of that fact, and the author seems to nearly (if not outright) mock perceived "political correctness" and a set of working vocabulary that has been established around speaking about such marginalization.
I'm not sure that's particularly humble or self-reflective of Dr Piper. Although I'm also sure that such language can be abused (just as any discourse can be misused in favor of the person weilding it). "We don’t believe that you have been victimized every time you feel guilty" may be true, and may even be particularly true for the group of people he is adressing (OKWU students), but I hope it is tightly coupled with a belief in and an understanding of the very real forces of inequality that exist in society today.
This needs to be said more often, and louder. Myself, I find it disconcerting that the only counterweight to the "Friendly Spacers" are found on the far right.
To be clear: I am not in any way opposed to the creation of safe spaces and contexts where people can be free of the shit that is heaped upon them by the culture at large.
The fact is, the world can be pretty freaking hostile if you're gay, trans, a woman, from a minority ethnic group, or otherwise part of a group that is not mainstream. The hair-raising experiences related to me by friends of mine have made it utterly clear to me that I live an awfully privileged life in that regard (specifically, going about my daily life never for a moment worried that I would be sexually harassed or discriminated against).
There are people that mistake "not being pandered to" with "being victimized", but there are also a lot of people who experience these things in an absolutely genuine fashion.
So I'm not trying to act as a "counterweight" to anything, except the extreme cynicism of the author, and people who mistake being challenged in their views for being attacked.
Outstanding article on many counts. It also reminds me of a recent article I read on Psychology Today [1] that talks about fragile students:
"Students are increasingly seeking help for, and apparently having emotional crises over, problems of everyday life. Recent examples mentioned included a student who felt traumatized because her roommate had called her a “bitch” and two students who had sought counseling because they had seen a mouse in their off-campus apartment. The latter two also called the police, who kindly arrived and set a mousetrap for them."
Decades of pat advice to "seek counseling" rather than deal with it as the answer to every problem, from the schoolyard fight to any other kind of interpersonal problem, from "Dear Abby" and any number of more recent pop psychologists, helecopter parents, to school and workplace policies, etc. Funny to see that complaint in Psychology Today, as they are probably as guilty as anyone in bringing about this state of affairs.
Yet another post for HN to one-up each other decrying the "PC culture" with plenty of "kids these days" rants, while completely avoiding taking the charitable position and putting ourselves in their shoes.
The amount of hypocrisy that comes with the claims that these students should "learn to cope with uncomfortable ideas" is staggering. Guess what: these students are presenting us with an "uncomfortable idea" and the response has been nothing but knee-jerk.
The idea that people's feelings should come first (especially before truth/understanding of reality) is not uncomfortable, but a dangerous, misleading, childish posture.
As soon as you claim they are, they scurry away claiming that's not what they mean, but as soon as you say "OK then" and move on, they turn right around and it's all about their feelings again. It is very much a part of the modern PC platform that if someone "feels" assaulted, they are, and you must believe them or you are blaming the victim. This is why accusations are as good as conviction in places where PC reigns supreme, because the fact of accusation is itself proof of feeling, and that's it, case closed.
Don't fall for this transparent rhetorical ploy. Arguments that only appear transiently to dismiss one point, then disappear into the ether immediately after, are not arguments, just rhetoric. (This is a general point that applies in many places, actually.)
In fact it's being very openly argued all over the place in US culture today. The recent famous video of the Yale professor that was trying to talk rationally to the irrational students around him - it was all about the students claiming they had a right to not be offended, and the notion that their feelings trumped freedom of speech.
I'm sorry, I don't know what video you're referring to. What rational point was the professor trying to make? That white people dressing in racially-charged costumes should not be shunned?
This issue of students complaining about trigger warnings and the need for safe spaces certainly seems to be increasingly prevalent, but that could just be due to the media giving it more attention.
Interesting that according to that NYTimes link, offensive speech is considered protected "free speech," while people objecting to offensive speech does not qualify. I have just as much a right to tell you you're an asshole and not welcome near me as you do to say offensive things to me.
Are you saying you believe that another person can only be near you because you give them implicit permission to? And that at any time, and for any reason, you could remove that permission?
Separately, please note that "freedom of speech" is a term which refers specifically to the government using force to prevent or compel speech from private citizens. In the context of university student conduct, I'm not aware of any law or court case which impinges on this freedom. Being expelled from a university for your conduct does not qualify as an infringement of your freedom of speech.
"The Freedom of Speech," the legal right defined by the constitution only applies to the government because the constitution only applies to the government.
Indeed, you are free to make your offensive speech. And I also have the freedom to tell you your speech makes me uncomfortable, and to convince those around me to do the same and shun you while you continue to speak it near us. Now both our freedoms of speech have been preserved and any appeal to "Freedom of Speech" is vacuous and we can never use the term again in this context. Great.
> Separately, please note that "freedom of speech" is a term which refers specifically to the government using force to prevent or compel speech from private citizens.
Oh really, so university students are able to consume alcohol, right?
edit:
noun: adult;
- a person who is fully grown or developed.
- a person who has reached the age of majority.
edit 2:
"Longitudinal neuroimaging studies demonstrate that the adolescent brain continues to mature well into the 20s. This has prompted intense interest in linking neuromaturation to maturity of judgment."
So what? University still remains a place for adults. All sorts of odd laws and regulations pertain to institutions and other organizations notwithstanding.
The dominant American culture is not one with a single consistently-applied rite of passage to adulthood. Over about a decade, people go though multiple transitions (age of majority, voting age, drinking age---heck, a lot of people even recognize the age at which rental car companies stop applying a "You're probably a dangerous driver" surcharge, at 25 years old).
Yes, adulthood is a continuum. That's why it's wrong to say that college is for "adults". Some of students are very immature, some have more wisdom than older people. So I am not disagreeing with your point of view.
Meant adult as a contrast to toddlers (whom feelings and sense of security we do care about, for good reasons) and as a status that you target, grow into and nurture, especially more at the university (and hopefully after as well).
I don't get your point. The (US) drinking age is not tied to the age of majority or most other societal indicators of "adulthood."
Unless your post means to say we should probably drop the drinking age. I'd agree it's pinned higher than maturity curve of youths, and personally find the illegality to encourage a debauched form of underage drinking. But I don't really see how that's here or there.
re, your edit: Are you saying that by some developmental model 17 year olds should not be asked to rise to the standards of behaviour expected of adults? Please elaborate.
College students are, on the overwhelming majority, fully grown and physically developed. While they are not fully mentally developed, I don't think you could make the case that anybody below the age of death is incapable of further mental development.
The article on age of majority makes it clear that it is a distinct concept from age of license, which can cover things like buying alcohol and running for elected office.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_majority
Honestly, your edit seems to put the nail into the coffin of your entire point.
This argument is basically "You belong to social group X. You cannot opt out." Then followed by "because to social group X, you have to behave in Y way. Because that's how X people behave."
Depending on the surrounding culture, with that argument you can justify: why men have to wear ties, why young men should be sent to war, why women should wear burkha, etc. Anything conservative goes.
I'm not disagreeing with your actual point. I'm just trying to point out that your argument is bad.
Also known as "wishful thinking". There's no room for charity when reason is called upon. Be as charitable as you want when talking about the weather with your neighbor, but when you're debating something serious you can not look for imaginary excuses for your opponent's mistakes.
Nobody is proposing that these people should be silenced, or not allowed to express the view. We are just saying that their view is wrong, and childish, and a danger to civilisation.
Not one person. It's a prevailing attitude. And the idea that we should renounce freedom of speech in order to prevent hurt feelings - if it ever gains legal force - absolutely is a danger to civilisation.
When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me.
Are you suggesting people should not learn to cope with uncomfortable ideas? This is a pretty ridiculous comment you're making here. Freedom of speech and expression has, is, and always will be more important than one's personal comfort.
That said, these people are just as free to voice these small minded, selfish complaints as I am to ignore them.
I agree that teaching suicide to children is going to be difficult, and that most of the reason is about actual harm, not feelings - the increased risk of death or harm to the students from the Wurther Effect or stigmatising views.
But all of that can be worked around. You provide a mix of comprehensive support of different types to students; you promote a culture of inclusion an sharing in that room.
Suicide is really important. It's the leading cause of death of men aged between 15 and 49 in the UK. Rates are increasing. NHS cuts mean it's harder to get good quality support. Appropriately talking about suicide probably doesn't raise risk, and may well lower risk.
So, it's a shame that this topic got cut from the syllabus.
There are other examples in this thread of law students not learning about rape law because it's too distressing to hear.
That shows a misunderstanding of what PTSD survivors want when they talk about trigger warnings. The point is not "I should be able to live my life and avoid every mention of this thing that causes me significant distress", but "I am currently vulnerable, but getting support, and I need a little bit of warning not so I can avoid the subject, but so that I can make sure I have the little bit of extra support I need to keep me safe".
However: the people on the other side are mostly fucking hateful cunts who scream "What about my freedom of speech?" while seeking to silence the people they're screaming at.
Insightful comment, and I agree that's a difficult problem. I think there's room for a conversation about that, and I'm not sure where I fall. If people made their arguments like this instead of "We must protect bullies/racists!" I'd find them much more convincing :)
Yes...actually they are. That's what a trigger warning is.
It's insisting that a declaration be given in advance to remove someone from the possibility of having to cope with something uncomfortable.
A safe space is an echo chamber.
If we really want to know the cause of these tendencies, we need only look to the internet. You used to need to find a group of people to hang out with in your area and in doing so you'd associate with the social norms of that group, whatever they may be.
Now you craft your friend's list on Facebook with people who agree with you and reinforce you. If you've ever clicked the "unfollow" button you're guilty of this. This reinforcement leads to an echo chamber.
As a culture, we're effectively putting canvasing over logic and reason in all areas. That's essentially what you get from a social feed that reinforces your views - constant news that agrees with you...which is just canvasing yourself.
Canvasing feeds on feelings and reaction over reason. You look at just about any socially convenient topic and you'll see this. Just as an example, let's look at diversity in tech since this is Hacker News.
We're more than willing to accost the entire industry for lack of diversity as if it's somehow their fault. Yet most of these companies are falling all over themselves to hire people and we aren't hearing stories about discrimination or people not getting jobs...we just see the numbers and assume something is wrong.
We're not allowed to consider that people might tend to just be wired a certain way. Men's brains work differently than women's. Certain problems might be interesting to certain types of people and not to other.
Instead we create a cause and a problem that must be fixed immediately. We look at it from an emotional perspective rather than looking at all of the factors involved to just see if it happens to just be a general tendency or a real problem.
A problem is more marketable...so we go with that instead.
No, a trigger warning is saying "heads up, this might be especially uncomfortable for some people." Not unlike "heads up, this video has graphic and explicit violence", or "heads up, we're meeting that ex you just broke up with for dinner in a few hours."
> It's insisting that a declaration be given in advance to remove someone from the possibility of having to cope with something uncomfortable.
That's a needlessly uncharitable portrayal of it. A trigger warning can be used just like a movie's rating is. I don't avoid R rated movies, but I appreciate knowing when I'm walking into one.
I appreciate the attempt to perform judo on this debate, but "the uncomfortable idea that it is my obligation to make sure they are comfortable" is not amenable to that treatment. They're still trying to assert that all discomfort needs to be localized in not-them, and that it's everybody else's job to carry the discomfort the world has so they are protected from it.
If this were naturally a world where all ideas were comfortable except for the influence of a few bad apples, it might not be a problem, but since the world does contain uncomfortable facts, opinions, and people in abundance, they're basically demanding that everybody else shoulder the burdens.
> completely avoiding taking the charitable position and putting ourselves in their shoes
No. I, or the world will not be taking a "charitable position". As any other human being living in society I'm often confronted with things that I'm not comfortable with. Would you like to know what I do about them? I step away because it's none of my business judging other people's beliefs and the integrity of my feelings is not their responsibility.
So, to reiterate: no, sir. I will not yield something that I do not ask for myself. I will also not be shamed into whatever you're trying to shame us for and I laugh at the notion that you believe you would be successful in that attempt.
I can't tell/understand this PC meme. I have heard older generations talk about minorities in a way I wouldn't. It was a different time, women there are people (very old) alive born before women could vote.
Maybe it is societal conditioning, but I think that is wrong and look back on older generations and think they must also have known.
I can not say the same thing for much of these PC causes. I find it iritating and bad for society, much like I am sure racists in the south found the gradual acceptance of interracial dating and increased equity irritating.
I find many of the causes championed, or at least incedents in the news, to be a mockery of a free society but I can't help wonder if I am the same as Jim Crow. I suspect he felt quite vindicated as well.
People absolutely sincerely believed that not giving women the right to vote was for the best both for society and the women themselves. There wasn't some malicious conspiracy involving a majority of the voting population.
Women were thought to be naturally uninterested in politics, and to not have the head for it anyway. Dabbling in politics was seen as an unwomanly thing ladies should be spared from.
Not unlike how people today think that the scarcity of women in tech is due to them naturally having less interest in it. It's easy to ascribe the status quo to the natural order of things.
Of writing of that era I like "Are Women People?"[1] It's written from a suffragettes point of view, but it includes some cherry-picked quotes from anti-suffragists, such as:
"The grant of suffrage to women is repugnant to instincts that strike their roots deep in the order of nature. It runs counter to human reason, it flouts the teachings of experience and the admonitions of common sense."—N.Y. Times, Feb. 7, 1915."
That was the kind of thing you could write in a newspaper of the time and have people agree with you. That should tell us something about how blind we can be to contemporary societal problems, and how silly we will look in hindsight.
I'm a student at a top 4 year university, and I find the lack of student backbone nauseating. The current trends in university culture go entirely counter to the reasons that we have higher education. Instead of encouraging expression, our culture deafens it with its constant concern towards avoiding offence.
When I was at university they had Prime Minister Farrakhan speak. Many people were very mad, uncomfortable, large protests ensued. Despite the protests it was packed. I was on the newpaper assigned to shoot the protest. There was also a debate about if a public university should pay someone that much who is that controversial (also brought up how much the basketball coach makes, often times they are the highest paid public employees in a US state).
It was a learning experience. Wonder 20 years later what would happen if they tried bring someone that controversial in.
"As an evangelical Christian university of The Wesleyan Church, Oklahoma Wesleyan University models a way of thought, a way of life, and a way of faith. It is a place of serious study, honest questions, and critical engagement, all in the context of a liberal arts community that honors the Primacy of Jesus Christ, the Priority of Scripture, the Pursuit of Truth, and the Practice of Wisdom."
This sounds to me more like a church than a University.
We treat our universities like sanctuaries of learning, and the best ones shield their students from many of the uncertainties and dangers of life while they (ideally) spend their time learning to be valuable members of society.
Some of the cries of victimization sound way overblown. I would agree that shutting down the process of learning itself, such as when students attempt to stop professors or others from topical intellectual discussions, runs counter to the primary goal of universities.
However, many of the attacks on these students as a group looks like attempts to de-legitimize the victims of racism and bigotry. The minorities who have been revealing systemic bias, bigotry, and racism at these universities are the students who started and sustain the current protests.
Do not conflate the cause of those fighting against campus racism, bigotry, and bias with those who seek to shut down the the process of learning at the sign of the tiniest challenging or upsetting idea. The core group of protestors desire to be accorded the same protections and positive learning environment that white students have. That some have used this movement as a vehicle for lending power to their own neuroses and anxieties should not in any way detract from us from paying attention and doing something about the systemic bias that these protests and subsequent reports have revealed.
This seems to be thrusting in two directions. One about trigger warnings and safe spaces and so on, and one about sermons and guilt.
One common narrative re safe spaces seems to be: "if something makes you uncomfortable, you should suck it up instead of trying to force everyone else to accommodate you". I think this is somewhat missing the point, but I can relate to it. I feel like this is the dominant narrative in this thread.
But the narrative in the article seems to be: "if something makes you uncomfortable, good! It's because you're a bad person. You should be a better person instead of asking us to tell you you're not bad".
And I pretty strongly disagree with that.
For example, if the sermon was all about how gay people are going to hell, and that made a student uncomfortable, that's not because the student is a bad person. That's because it was a terrible sermon.
From the description, this sermon was not obviously terrible. But that still doesn't make the student a bad person. Not everyone experiences or expresses emotions in the same ways. That's fine. When people start speaking about experiences as if they're human universals, and if you don't share those experiences, that can make you uncomfortable. That's fine too. It doesn't make the speaker a bad person, but it doesn't make you a bad person either.
> For example, if the sermon was all about how gay people are going to hell, and that made a student uncomfortable, that's not because the student is a bad person. That's because it was a terrible sermon.
Well, no - the proper response to that is not whining but saying:
"Since in hell are probably also Freddie Mercury, Voltaire and Oscar Wilde (and probably Mark Twain) - do I strictly have to be gay to go there or are there other ways I could take" and enjoy the show.
There is no greater weapon against powerful people that take themselves seriously than mocking them and their beliefs.
Their school cafeteria may be great. I am also not mocking their beliefs, but the beliefs of a single person with authority.
Generally speaking people need more mocking in their lives. For a long time the only people that could speak truth to power were the jesters. No matter if the power is the pope that could condemn to eternal afterlife in hell or a BreitBart/Jezebel writer that could unleash an internet pitchfork mob on you - you are obligated to take them down a notch whenever you can. Jokes are most efficient.
I pretty strongly disagree with that "because you're a bad person" too, if it were that.
But what I read in the article is more "because you're not perfect, as neither one of us is, so show a little introspection about you before complaining about others".
> An altar call is supposed to make you feel bad. It is supposed to make you feel guilty.
Maybe that's not quite "you're a bad person". But I feel like your reading is missing the "you should feel bad" aspect.
That chapter resonates with me too, because it's pretty much exactly the sentiment I'm disagreeing with. Supposedly it doesn't matter what you do, it matters what you feel.
No, that's exactly wrong. If you do the right thing, that's good. If you do the wrong thing, that's bad. It doesn't matter what you were feeling when you did it.
Love makes people do some really shitty things. "I love you and I want you to not go to hell, so I'm going to beat the gay out of you", for example. That love is genuine, and it doesn't redeem the action.
The opposite is true as well, where people do good while hating it every minute. (No good example comes immediately to mind, and I'm spending too long on this post.) They don't lose points for having unvirtuous emotions. They did good, and that's enough.
> Supposedly it doesn't matter what you do, it matters what you feel.
I think I see what you mean. But this is not how I read Corinthians; but I agree that this may not be shared either, and I won't make this about religion, I'm really talking about the text itself.
First, it does not put love before actions. It says actions/qualities (or that most of life, actually) is meaningless, nothing, without love (as an attachment to God/Truth)
Second, it defines what is definitely not "love", so one may not use it as a pretext for wrong doing (at least).
Third, it says that we will never see things fully, neither at once, until, that is, the end (provided it's not an ellipsis, he! :) ).
Plus, "love" as expressed in this text is not Philia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philia) but from Latin Caritas (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charity_%28virtue%29) (or Greek "agape"); which is not about a feeling, but about something way deeper, transcendant and, although not quite the right word, respectful, for one to an other. It's love as one of the three Christian theological virtues (fides, spes, caritas), that is, in an intimate relation to the Christian God (in this context) as a guide, a goal, an ideal for love/Philia too.
> That love is genuine, and it doesn't redeem the action.
I see your point. That love is, actually, deeply misled. Actually, that's not love, that's fear that supersedes love ("I fear that you [x] and I don't want to because this makes me [y] and I freak out and I don't think you can decide for yourself, so I'll do it and [z]").
Love (be it eros, philia or even agape) is no excuse to abuse. Good intentions don't make an excuse for incompetence.
He never once said the student was a "bad person". Saying someone should "feel bad" is not the same as saying someone is a "bad person".
1 Corinthian 13 is supposed to make us reflect on love and have some negative feeling when we remember that we've not shown our family, friends, neighbors and strangers love. We're supposed to "feel bad". It means we are alive and healthy.
Oh man, the amount of times I told students that maybe they don't belong in university is quite high. I used to teach (alongside a prof) Physics for Biologists. Constantly I'd get remarks like: "But what are we supposed to do all these hours between class and homework guidance hours?" (What am I, your entertainer??), "Why can't I use my graphical calculator, this is bull shit!", This is not why I choose biology!", and my favorite "Why won't you just let me fill in the formulas and work with the intermittent numbers?"
I'd tell them: You are an electron in it lowest possible energy and you want get to your highest excited state without adding energy. That simply does not work. If you can't handle it, perhaps you do not belong here where you are actually challenged and are required to meet that challenge.
It was also crazy how often they complained but turned out not to have even tried the homework on their own.
There is a lot of press about this "Yale problem" type of stories but I live in Europe where I find kids fearless and aggressive. I find this type of reasoning very hard to relate to.
Do you feel this type of behaviour is affecting a majority of NA youth ? Or is it more media looking at what could be the very beggining of a trend ?
Thanks for the links! Indeed I missed that :D
But Goldsmiths is an art school, and I guess it's fine if artists and creative have a more developed sensitivity and require more conforting environment.
In the case of the Yale issue, I understood that about 740 people from very different background signed an open letter... I feel it's very different than a handful of Union representant in an Art School.
I do find it a pity that people on both sides feel that their points are so "common sense" correct that they have no reason to educate, and that people who disagree are being somehow deliberately obtuse. I think sometimes they feel it justifies to people the use of strawmen, because it's almost not worth their time dealing with such obviousness.
The whole idea of "being yourself" has a lot of nuance that has been left unaddressed. Where do we draw the line between things that we should be expected to change, vs what the world must learn to accept? How much obligation does the world have on accepting us for who we are, and how much pressure are they allowed to put on us to change? Is "being yourself" even an ideal state vs chasing ones potential? How do you avoid crippling guilt if you're always chasing an elusive ideal? How do you learn to like yourself if you're never what you should be? If you aren't chasing improvement in yourself does it just end up turning into decay?
I think it's a really difficult subject while both sides are screaming "DUH!" at each other.
Of course every subject is incredibly difficult if you're drowning in moral relativism and are thus incapable of judicious thought.
This is not about "being yourself"-euphemism for doing as you please with utter disregard for everything including yourself-, this is about taking responsibility for your actions, about having the honesty and strong enough morals to judge.
The "being yourself" vs "chasing one's potential" you talk about is the difference between animal and human.
I Corinthians 13 is indeed a great and laudable passage. But I suspect there was something more in the sermon that triggered the complaint.
As for victimization and oversensitivity, I agree that it's a good thing to be subjected to challenging viewpoints when you're at a university. It's also important to have a platform for responding to viewpoints you don't like. I suspect that attendance at sermons is required at Oklahoma Wesleyan, and I further suspect that students are strongly discouraged from publicly espousing views contrary to the content of those sermons. This doesn't make for a healthy university setting.
That said, writing childish outrage screeds lambasting "victim culture" is not exactly a noble or loving response to the student's complaint. This essay sounds like it was written in about five minutes while in full rage mode about the "kids these days".
The "victim culture" accusation alwasy strikes me as sadly ironic coming from a political wing that claims victimization of the overwhelming majority relgion and culture due to the design of Starbucks cups, the use of the phrase "Happy Holidays", or the existence of mosques. I think the word is "projection"...
Edit/Update: After browsing some other articles in the OKWU "News" section, I'm sorry to see this overtly political screed was posted to Hacker News at all. This university appears to be a branch of Fox News, rather than an educational institution.
welcome to modern day USA. This Dr. Everett Pipper is probably living his last remaining days of employment and will soon be on food stamps thanks to the PC Cops. Just like the Yale guy. Just like any one who is not totally formated to fit in a system. A system weak, sterile, that fires teachers on the purpose of teaching "offending" thing to kids that wear the latest air jordans - Made by a famished third world kid in some sweatshop - that will file a complaint to the PC Cops, destroy a teacher life then quietly go home eat a peanut butter sandwich made by underpaid farmers and turn on the tv - soldered by low paid workforce - just in TIME to watch a disney POPSTAR totally naked on a wrecking ball singing sexual content pop songs on the purpose of defending feminism.
This is really fantastic. While I don't agree with religion in university (but if it works for you great!) I completely agree with the gist of her argument. Students are coddled too much. If you're not uncomfortable then you're not paying attention. If you need "trigger warnings" or "safe spaces" at a university then you're not ready for university, or at the very least, you have a lot of growing up to do.
This may sound harsh but it's reality, and the real problems in life won't be at university, they'll be out in the real world. There are no safe spaces and trigger warnings in the real world.
The defense to "you're being a jerk" can only be "I'm not".
This article says "I am, but it's okay, get used to it". There's a huge difference between telling someone that their beliefs are wrong to telling them that they are bad and should feel guilty, especially if the doctrine says that everyone is bad and should feel guilty all the time.
> The defense to "you're being a jerk" can only be "I'm not".
No, because the response is going to be "Yes you are", and we descend into a shouting match. The reply is "What is your standard for 'being a jerk', and is that standard a reasonable one?"
> There's a huge difference between telling someone that their beliefs are wrong to telling them that they are bad and should feel guilty, especially if the doctrine says that everyone is bad and should feel guilty all the time.
That seems like a fair description of how "victimhood culture" treats the rest of us.
No, because the response is going to be "Yes you are", and we descend into a shouting match.
I don't mean literally, the words you say must be "I'm not a jerk." I mean the defense must consist of a denial that the behavior was jerkish. If that's achieved by laying out standards for jerkishness, that's fine.
The OP read to me as not even achieving that. It wasn't "we aren't jerks, because what we did wasn't jerky", it was "we're going to be jerks, tough on you, shut up".
>That seems like a fair description of how "victimhood culture" treats the rest of us.
I'm not discussing victimhood culture. I'm discussing a specific defense to a specific complaint, which I think lacks value. The specific complaint was not trying to make people feel bad, it was to make themselves feel good. The response explicitly acknowledges that they're trying to make people feel bad.
> The response explicitly acknowledges that they're trying to make people feel bad.
Let's start here: The point of Christianity is to make you holy, not to make you happy.
When you teach something like I Corinthians 13, if it's going to help anyone's life instead of being merely an academic exercise, you wind up saying "Yes, you really are supposed to love like this. Do you?" If that makes someone feel bad, well, that's not actually the point. The point is that they recognize that they don't love in the way that they should, and therefore see the need to change.
And if you're going to say that changing your life in that way isn't the job of a university, well, this is a Christian university, and they think it is exactly their job. And if you're a student there, then presumably that's what you wanted, too.
You (ikeboy) seem to want this Christian university to be a secular one. That is not a reasonable expectation.
Now, I recognize that there are lots of ways that "making them recognize that they don't love in the way that they should" can be manipulative and even abusive, but it is not inherently so. And the fact that people feel bad (guilty) along the way isn't a flaw, if in fact they are guilty in terms of the biblical standard. To repeat, the point of Christianity is to make you holy, not to make you happy.
> Let's start here: The point of Christianity is to make you holy, not to make you happy.
Plenty of Christians would disagree with this (most, I suspect, would agree with the first part, but many of those would disagree with the second part, and perhaps more specifically with the idea that the ultimate achievement of true holiness and that of true happiness are separable.) See, inter alia, 1 Pt 1:8-9, Jn 16:22, Rom 14:17, Rom 15:13, Heb 12:2.
No, I agree that they are not separable. But the Christian position is that, if you chase happiness, you won't get it, but if you chase holiness (the right way, through God in Christ), you'll get happiness as well.
That is, if you want happiness more than God, you won't find true happiness. This applies directly to the university president's statement.
> But the Christian position is that, if you chase happiness, you won't get it, but if you chase holiness (the right way, through God in Christ), you'll get happiness as well.
I think a good case can be made that it is a validly Christian position pursuing holiness without an awareness of happiness (both one's own and that of others) is the root of blind ritualism like that Christ repeatedly condemns, and pursuing happiness without an awareness of holiness is hedonism (with Christ, also, repeatedly condemns), and that the Christian route rejects the separation entirely -- you can't pursue any of those (holiness, happiness for oneself, or happiness for others) properly while seeing them as separate things.
I agree with you that that is a valid position. I even can agree with it myself, depending on exactly what you mean by "pursuing holiness without an awareness of happiness".
Saying something is Christian does not imply it is fine. The proper response to "I'm a jerk because I'm Christian" is "fine, be Christian, but you'll face the consequences of being a jerk, one of which is public shaming for being a jerk".
There was a valid point made that the student chose to go to a Christian college. But note that the logic that that implies is precisely the logic behind trigger warnings: that people can choose what to associate with. Clearly, the student did not anticipate the content of the sermon, despite knowing it was a Christian university. So in that case, a warning for that lecture would have let the student know whether to go, and, depending on how important it was to them, possibly drop out.
Deliberately not having trigger warnings is deliberately deceptive.
That's not an argument. Could you explain why you disagree?
It seems that in the absence of a warning, there is no informed consent; asking for a warning allows for freedom of association.
If the OP had said "being open to guilt etc is an integral part of our university; as such, anyone refusing to go to this talk will be expelled. However, we will tell people in advance, so they can choose not to go, and then leave." I would support him. To specifically say "I'm not telling people about what will happen" means you don't want people to know in advance. How is that not deceptive?
As I noted above, the argument that the student chose a Christian college and therefore should know about it falls flat, because the student did not know about it. And if knowing was a good thing, then so would a trigger warning on the talk; it's literally accomplishing the task of making sure people know.
How does one argue with someone that has irrational and illogical views?
> If the OP had said "being open to guilt etc is an integral part of our university; as such, anyone refusing to go to this talk will be expelled. However, we will tell people in advance, so they can choose not to go, and then leave." I would support him. To specifically say "I'm not telling people about what will happen" means you don't want people to know in advance. How is that not deceptive?
The mere thought that this is what you expect says, "I'm not a rational person."
How does anyone respond to that? There's nothing to be said to you. You've made no indication (from the many comments I've read) that you're prepared to have your mind changed or that you're open to other points of view.
You have come to an irrational conclusion and that's it. You're finished. Everyone else (that doesn't agree) is a "jerk" and can take a hike.
Perhaps you should doubt the rationality of your own views, now that you've realized you don't have any arguments for them. I can give arguments for almost all of my beliefs, except for perhaps very basic ones (things like "I exist", and even those, I generally can give reasons why, just not full arguments). If you realize you have no arguments, you should ask yourself why you believe something and see if you get any answers.
Which part of my comments suggested to you that I'm not willing to hear out other views?
I've tried to lay out my arguments at length. Are there any premises I assume that you disagree with, or are there steps I take that are logically unjustified?
And specifically, why is my claim irrational? It's mostly a moral claim, so to be irrational it must conflict with other moral claims I hold, right?
(Also, it's a bit weird that you seem to have a dichotomy between "rational" and "irrational" people; nobody is perfectly rational, and classifying specific arguments as rational/irrational is often more useful. Especially when it leads you to refuse to argue for a position on the dubious grounds that they aren't interested in hearing it.
And perhaps reflect on the fact that by writing off a differing position as irrational without bothering to rebut it, you're creating the bubble you accuse me of being in.
I'd be interested in a robust defense of the claim that refusing to have a trigger warning, in the context of this post, is not deceptive.
The arguments I see for not having one are: too few people would care so it's not worth inconveniencing the many for the few; there's already informed consent and so it's useless; and the talk is not harmful to anyone. (I think I had another minor one in mind but can't recall right now.)
1 is possible, but is not the one made by OP. I've argued against the premise of 2 (which the OP did make); if you have a more deontological worldview, you might want to frame this as the student's "own fault" for not realizing, but I generally don't blame people for being dumb (in the sense of insisting on them bearing the consequences of being dumb), instead asking which course of action yields the best consequences. In this case, if we assume informed freedom of association is a value, then adding information is a benefit.
3 would be a good defense if done well, but again, isn't the OP. It would actually be the best example of "I'm not a jerk"-type answers. But it's not immediately obvious how we can view something that bothered someone as not harming them. At best, you'd probably need to invoke Christian beliefs and go back to "informed consent" as above. Presumably you concede that Christians shouldn't do this to outsiders, and so the issue is about what counts as informed consent.
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[ 39.5 ms ] story [ 1156 ms ] threadSomehow they believe that their feelings are the responsibility of everyone else.
That real threat is these narcissistic cretins who use intimidation and worse the courts to get their way will one day influence the laws we live under. We won't have any privacy if people who want all offensive ideas and actions curtailed and boxed. Instead of running away from 1984/V for Vendetta type worlds these kids are embracing it
You are right, but I just wanted to clarify that by no means are ALL college students there for a 4-year party and a safe room to run to when something upsets them.
Many are still there for academic and philosophical challenges and growth, and are appalled that this noisy minority is getting so much attention.
Really, if there's anyplace that goes above and beyond the call to be sure that all races, all sexual orientations/identites have equal access and opportunity, it's the modern public university. It's the last place you'd expect to see this kind of whinging.
What's equally baffling is Ivy-league frat boys thinking that "free speech" entitles them to engage in conduct that would get them summarily booted out in the real world.
"What's equally baffling is Ivy-league frat boys thinking that "free speech" entitles them to engage in conduct that would get them summarily booted out in the real world."
------------------
from your link:
"A fraternity brother who was at the party gave an entirely different account than Petros-Gouin. Speaking on condition that his name not be used because chapter rules discourage speaking to the media, he said members of the house always ask for Yale IDs and let everyone in until a party gets crowded. After that, a line forms.
That night, no one with a Yale ID was turned away before 11:15 p.m., the member said. Yale and New Haven police had responded to noise complaints at the party, and brothers were told not to let anyone else in, to avoid crowding. He said numerous students have said a woman who was denied entrance angrily challenged the man who stopped her, screaming: “It’s because I’m black, isn’t it?”
It was uncomfortable, he said, in part because that brother is African American and others working the door at the time are Portuguese and Costa Rican; he described the chapter as racially diverse. He said some in Yale’s black community have called black SAE members “Uncle Tom” on Monday, making them feel like they are being forced to choose between siding with the fraternity or others of their race.
“It has become incredibly hostile,” he said.
He and another student who attended the party said the crowd inside was representative of the student body at Yale."
--------------------
I see an incident of undetermined "real"(ness)
Social discrimination happens all the time. As a nerd, I've been (back in a time when nerds were shunned) uninvited or turned away from parties plenty of times. Nobody protested on my behalf.
This entire brouhaha over people feeling not-as-popular-as-the-cool-sae-kids is ridiculous. Nobody has a right to social inclusion. The racial angle is a red herring. What happened to these women happens, often worse, to every socially-unpopular person on the planet.
It smacks to me of, going back to my nerd example, blaming factors outside of my own social ineptitude for not being included for social event X.
http://yaledailynews.com/blog/2015/11/02/sae-denies-charges-...
http://features.yaledailynews.com/blog/2015/04/16/harassment...
http://yaledailynews.com/blog/2011/05/17/miller-announces-dk...
http://qz.com/546403/yale-student-protests/
Definition of the strawman argument:
"A straw man is a common form of argument and is an informal fallacy based on giving the impression of refuting an opponent's argument, while actually refuting an argument which was not advanced by that opponent." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man)
The original article is put in a very specific context: a sermon about a very specific scripture on a theological university. It is not about Yale, it is not about free-speech. It is about the reaction of a self-centered student and how out of place he is; which I understand it is the point of lagadu, and it is why lagadu's comment is not a straw men argument.
The fact that the Yale argument is true has no relevance with the context of the original discussion.
[1]http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2015/11/07/yale_stude...
This is something that a white heterosexual middle-class male (such as myself) can probably never fully appreciate, but I try to sympathize.
Imagine what it is like to be black in a country where just a few generations back you carried at all times in mixed-race race situations the possibility of being assaulted without recourse or lynched, or in present times accused and convicted of a crime you didn't commit or shot on sight for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Imagine what it is like to be Jewish and have 85% of your relatives systematically wiped out in living memory.
Imagine what it is like to be a woman on a college campus where statistically 1 in 3 suffer sexual assault over the course of a 4 year education, almost always with the assailant getting off without charges.
Most times such people take offense it is not about feeling uncomfortable, but rather feeling unsafe. It is about fear that what starts with words will inevitably turn to, or enable, or justify actions.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_violence_research
Not to mention all the (I think justifiable) talk currently about how violent rhetoric from politicians, in the media, encouraged the planned parenthood shooter and other recent domestic terrorists.
I'm not completely sympathetic toward that point of view, but it's clearly not "completely irrational".
Surely college students are capable of distinguishing between the threat of rape, and the discussion of relevant law in a classroom environment? So what is the safety issue here? Indeed, the end result will likely be a net lowering of safety in society as a whole, as a lack of expertise in rape law will make it harder to enforce and successfully prosecute.
[1] http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/trouble-teaching-rap...
You're right that we do need to teach rape law, now more than ever, and we need to be able to have these nuanced and explicit discussions - but there's ways to do that with empathy for survivors of sexual assault. And honestly, I don't see how warning the class about the content of a discussion beforehand or a few people abstaining (one's that likely wouldn't be participating much anyway) will drag down the entire system.
Grandparent: "Most times such people take offense it is not about feeling uncomfortable, but rather feeling unsafe."
You: "very explicit discussions of rape law can be emotionally taxing."
Why did you reply to parent? You should tell grandparent poster they're wrong. Otherwise you're just giving parent poster the impression they're in disagreement with a viewpoint that uses rhetorical shuffle and impossible to pin down.
Nowhere in your link does it say that any professor anywhere had to stop teaching rape law.
Much like you can't have the historical black plague without the specific species of flea that live on a specific species of urban rat, you can't have SJWs without social media.
Perhaps not so new, Twitter was just slower in the 1500's.
To the extent that hypersensitivity is real, its always been there. Its "come to the forefront" because a certain political faction has chosen to cherry-pick, exaggerate, and sometimes outright fabricate examples of it that occur opposing them to characterize all opposition to their ideas, resurrecting a pattern (and label) that the same faction engaged used for the same purpose in the past.
Imagine what it is like to be white/asian in a country where a disproportionate number of crimes are committed by black men and where black on white crimes are 5.6 times more common than white on black crimes [1]. Imagine what it is like to be Christian when a disproportionate number of terror attacks are committed by Islamic types.
My father feels unsafe (on my behalf) when he watches various Islamic terror attacks on the news. I was in Amsterdam last week, which is sort of near Paris and Brussels (though the Dutch seem to integrate their Muslims far better), and he was worried about my safety. In reality I'm far more likely to die from drinking Belgian beer, eating a space cake and then falling into a canal.
I'm sure most of us agree that his feelings are completely irrational and entirely his problem. So why aren't the irrational fears held by various student groups treated the same way?
[1] http://www.amren.com/news/2015/07/new-doj-statistics-on-race...
Your experience doesn't reflect the experience of all others.
I believe that's the standard social justice retort to your claims.
Being a more logically minded person, I'll instead invert it; your retort to my comment is that one person in the aforementioned demographic (e.g. a white/asian male) doesn't agree with me. If I could find one person in your aforementioned demographic (e.g. a black female) who didn't agree with you, would that be a valid retort against your comment?
How is the claim that not all asian people agree with your father or had traumatic experiences with terrorism also invalidating experiences your father had? You claim to be a logical minded person but I'm not following the logic that your father's experiences are invalidated when someone says they don't share that view.
I never did this.
I know you like to stay as close to the line as you can get without crossing it—which is far better than crossing it—but I wish you wouldn't. Your posts would be much better if you would show readers the respect of simply taking that edge out. They're literally edgy, and this acts as a low-grade provocation even when you're not technically saying anything abusive. This is not the way to bring the best out of your interlocutors and fellow users, and it's still a toxin in HN's environment, even if it's below the legal level.
Instead, you should optimize for overall thread quality, which I'm sure you could do if you wanted to. There's some variant of the principle of charity in here somewhere.
Now, about your feelings and uncomfortableness it's up to you.
And there's a reason there's a famous book titled "how to lie with statistics".
The purpose of the NCVS is to track crimes and their characteristics without relying on (often biased, and frequently manipulated) police reports.
Where do you get most your news?
Most of this is gang related, and goes almost entirely unreported, even in Chicago itself. This trend is not unique to Chicago, either
>Jared Taylor founded The New Century Foundation[0], a self-styled white supremacist think tank known primarily for American Renaissance, its online journal. The journal promotes pseudo-scientific studies that attempt to demonstrate the intellectual and cultural superiority of whites and publishes articles on the supposed decline of American society because of integrationist social policies. - [1]
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Century_Foundation
[1]: http://www.adl.org/combating-hate/domestic-extremism-terrori...
Please, I would like to understand your logic.
I do find it a bit scary that when I google "black on white crime", only racist sites show up. Why are only white supremacists willing to discuss this data? (Or perhaps they are all just super good at SEO.)
Of course, as it relates to my original post, the only relevant fact is that indeed there is something happening that a white male might have reason to feel irrational fear of. (The table shows that most crime is intra-racial, not inter-racial)
Let me remind you of the original point: various people are feeling irrationally large amounts of fear but that fear is of a real thing (either historical, as in maaku's case, or real but exaggerated things in the case I described).
I think there are fairly straightforward explanations, simply deducing from books I've read about urban crime... Most crime is intra-racial because it occurs between people who know each other or live near each other and tends to be concentrated in areas of poverty which tend to be demographically homogeneous. Overall, blacks commit crimes at higher rates than whites, which partially correlates with higher poverty rates, but it's not distributed equally because it's also highly concentrated among small numbers of urban street gangs/groups who commit enormous amounts of crime (of which there's no poor white rural counterpart). These groups are mostly surrounded by blacks, so most of their victims will be black, but there are enough whites near them that the whites who are victims of these groups contribute to the black-on-white numbers being higher. Part of the irrationality and bigotry comes from interpreting these numbers as some kind of targeting going on specifically to whites because there's no reverse equivalent instead of understanding that it actually comes from an urban dynamic that overall causes black victims to suffer even more than whites.
In reality, we have no practical way of doing this. So, whenever we cite a source of data, we are implicitly saying "This is a credible source for the statement is making. You can trust that they have done the work to make sure they aren't just repeating their own biases." And in the case of some organizations and people, you actually cannot say that.
If the American milk board makes a claim about the health benefits of milk, it is not a fallacy to be skeptical of that claim.
Let me introduce you to data science. First I'll read the numnbers in row 2 column 2 and row 2 column 5. Then I'll plug them into ipython:
Do the same for row 3 col 2 and row 3 col 4: Looks like the article was right after all.Whew, that was hard. Took all the skills I learned in my math Ph.D. to finish the job. Just lucky I didn't have to break out Hadoop. If I wasn't a professional statistician I wouldn't have had a prayer.
Data science would be trying to find out why and putting it into context, especially if there are variables in play that aren't shown by a cursory look. Which a white supremacist has little interest in.
It's a self-feeding loop.
Besides, often times the source isn't really the source. For example, if a publicly devout racist quoted FBI crime statistics, does that mean we can ignore the data because we heard it from the racist and not the FBI?
A white supremacist doing a statistical analysis isn't going to reach all that hard for stats that might contradict or weaken the conclusion they're trying for. If they find one accidentally, there's a pretty decent chance they'll "forget" to mention it.
I'm no expert in the field, but I'd wonder about things like encounter rates for the different populations, varying access to social services, things like lead paint being more prevalent in inner city housing, etc.
I claimed a white male might feel irrational fear of the disproportionately large number of black on white crimes, just as maaku claimed a black person might feel irrational fear of crimes that happened a few generations back.
I linked to a source showing that the number of black on white crimes is disproportionately large. Perhaps this white supremacist organization did make arithmetic errors when multiplying row 2 column 2 by row 2 column 5. Did they?
It's a bit surprising that with all this criticism, no one is actually claiming the number is wrong.
...(eyes roll). Anyway, on a completely different taboo topic, I wonder if you've read the Unabomber's manifesto...
https://archive.org/stream/IndustrialSocietyAndItsFuture-The...
Note that I linked to it for the content of the first data table. My link is not an endorsement of every single viewpoint that someone at that URL might hold - I actually just spent 2 minutes googling for a fact I had seen before and pasted the first link that had the data table.
If there are twice as many whites as blacks or 10 times as many whites as blacks would vastly change how your figure could be interpreted.
You want to compare black on white crimes to white on black crimes. Not white on white crimes.
Across all races - they primarily commit crime against their own race. But some races receive more crime than they give.
Adjusted for population (there are far more white people than black people) there should be about equal white on black crime as black on white crime per capita. That isn't the case and is precisely what the data reads.
What is important isn't to jump to conclusions but rather investigate why. Which nobody wants to do unless they get labeled as a racist.
* statistics are often counter-intuitive,
* they are easy to manipulate or misinterpret,
* manipulation requires significant effort to discover,
* they are sometimes correct in form but the data is biased,
* bias in the data might have been mentioned by the initial data collectors but the analyzers may omit it (either intentionally or accidentally).
And detecting an arithmetic error would require significant effort. I'd have to open up ipython, copy&pasting the numbers, remove the commas and other formatting, and then press enter.
Um, ok.
Government statistics may not always be perfect, but are you implying that the government is guilty of purposefully manipulating data? Why?
The vast majority of homicides (which the DOJ data excludes) committed against whites are committed by whites, and the vast majority against blacks are committed by blacks. The number of cross-racial homicides are an order of magnitude less in either direction. Don't take my word for it, look at the diagonal at the top left of this table:
https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2013/...
According the DOJ data you posted, 44% of the victims of white offenders are not white. Should they all be terrified of white people? Probably not.
So the situation in the data is more complicated than the white supremacists would care to admit.
But more importantly, people's perception of safety is not a direct reflection of the data, but instead, a reflection of the way the data is presented, either by the mass media, or by choose-your-own-agenda websites like the kind you linked.
It also tends to be heavily skewed for the local crime situation in which they live, rather than national crime stats.
Where did I advocate that anyone should be terrified? This is what I said about such fears: "his feelings are completely irrational and entirely his problem."
Instead of allowing your father to fear for his and your safety based on his irrational and bigoted views, perhaps you could educate him not to accept data from fringe sources. Your reproduction of these titilating facts, completely removed from context, taken from a blog which has a White Power political agenda, is a curious tactic. Do you use this "evidence" to lend credence to your father's views? Do you think this justifies his ignorance? If you truly recognize his views as irrational, then you should not be dredging up wingnut blogs which are merely trying to incite hatred and divisiveness.
Please, educate your father so that his ignorance and bigotry do not permeate through to the next generation.
As for my father's feelings, it's really not cool to suggest he's bigoted. He's not - he's the epitome of a NY liberal and far more left wing than I am. E.g., he mostly accepts the tribalist fascism of the modern left, in comparison to my individualism. He's just unable to rationally assess the risk of low probability events that get lots of media coverage.
(He's hardly the only one. See, for example, this post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10655349 )
It's generally quite easy to do so when the source of information is biased, so dismantle the message if you want to argue about how it's incorrect.
It looks like these numbers posted were very low effort and lacking any real context whatsoever, so it shouldn't be too hard to rebut them.
Edit: In fact, unprepare does so quite well in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10655743
We resort to reputation to calibrate the burden of proof. If the source cited is not a valid authority, that doesn't make them wrong, but it does make it harder for them to establish a claim that merits rebuttal.
I reproduced the multiplication myself, since so many people seem to think the white supremacists can't multiply.
The issue is that the multiplication is not valid according to Bayesian probability analysis. It doesn't matter how valid the original numbers are if you interpret them incorrectly. The implicit appeal to authority is that a group known for social policy commentary is somehow expected to have greater credibility in the area of statistical analysis.
In reality, they are just as bad at it as everyone else.
So in exposing the appeal to authority, we see more clearly that the burden is on them to show that their analysis is mathematically correct. So tell me. Why does the multiplication support their claims?
My opinion on all of these vague feelings of fear: "completely irrational and entirely his [the person feeling it] problem."
Do you refer to the fear of men as being rapists as bigotry?
And what about issues of the credible source not actually being such, such as the CDC not being a credible source once you realize how they twist their numbers (picking definitions of rape which exclude most female on male instances)?
>These data cover all violent crimes except murder, but the number of murders is tiny compared to other violent crimes.
So, we've started by cherry picking our data, a really strong start.
Next we go on by comparing apples and oranges. You've reached the conclusion that as a white male you should be afraid of black people, but the data you linked shows otherwise.
While 13.7% of violent crimes against white people were committed by black people, 56% of violent crimes against white people were committed by other white people.
You are 4 times more likely to be violently attacked by a white person than a black person, if you are a white person. So if you are afraid of being attacked by a black person, you must be 4 times more afraid everytime you see a white person (that is, if you are being logically consistent, rather than using confirmation bias to support a worldview of racial superiority, though your link suggests otherwise)
In this light, it is completely irrational to have anywhere near the fear of black people (or any other race) than you do for white people.
Further, if you are of a race other than black or hispanic, you are more than twice as likely to be violently attacked by a white person (40.3%) than a black person (19.3%).
The only thing damning against black people these statistics show, is that black people are vastly more likely to be violently attacked by other black people than by any other race. This is the same case for all the other races included. People of any given race are much more likely to have a crime committed against them by someone of their own race, than by someone of any other race.
One unfortunate drawback of the survey methodology is that you can't track murder.
You've reached the conclusion that as a white male you should be afraid of black people...
I've reached the conclusion that you didn't read my post. Try again. If you get confused, look for words like "completely irrational and entirely his problem".
Oh, so you think being 4 times more likely to be killed by another white person, means that you have a similar cultural experience to the subjugated minorities who are complaining across university campuses.
And because you have a white supremacy blog that tells you that you have it just as bad as everyone else, you have decided to write off all the actual concerns of real people by saying they are just complaining too much?
Its really a fascinating argument. Good luck convincing anyone else who does not already agree with it.
No one besides you is discussing a cultural experience. The rest of us are discussing irrational reasons for fearing for one's physical safety.
...white supremacy blog that tells you that you have it just as bad as everyone else...
The blog doesn't claim this, nor does the DOJ data table which it reproduces.
Its really a fascinating argument.
You have indeed invented an interesting argument.
Oh sorry, is that a trigger word for you? Let me instead say you are mistakenly claiming that the dangers faced by straight while christian males is of equivalent or greater danger than those faced by minorities.
>The blog doesn't claim this, nor does the DOJ data table which it reproduces.
No, but you are using that blog entry as evidence to support that claim.
Heres how the conversation went:
maaku said:
> The concern is not feelings getting hurt, but rather physical security as a person of minority status.
>This is something that a white heterosexual middle-class male (such as myself) can probably never fully appreciate, but I try to sympathize.
To which you responded:
>Actually white heterosexual middle class males can totally appreciate these things.
Using the source you linked as your evidence for that fact that straight white males have the same concern for physical security as minorities. You further explained that whites, asians, and christians are in a position to be equally fearful for their safety as blacks, women, and other minorities.
Using this evidence, you closed your argument by saying:
>I'm sure most of us agree that his feelings are completely irrational and entirely his problem. So why aren't the irrational fears held by various student groups treated the same way?
A dismissal of the complaints of minorities which you have written off by attempting to make an argument that straight white males have it just as bad as minorities, and thus if straight white males arent complaining, minorities have nothing more to complain about and should therefore shut up.
If you have a different argument to make, i would love to hear it.
EDIT: I see you instead decided to downvote each of these comments, so i'll just assume you indeed did not have a different argument to make. Thanks for the discussion anyways, have a good one!
Is there a correction factor for housing and employment segregation? The analysis seems to rely on a large municipal area with overlapping cultures rather than the usual situation on the ground which is highly segregated for a variety of socioeconomic reasons.
So given that, it is extremely likely that, say, home domestic disturbances or workplace violence will be extremely highly correlated with victim and attacker having same race.
However whats behaviorally relevant is the totally different statistics of "I'm a X and I see a Y walking down a dark street toward me, how should I react based on X and Y crime statistics?"
"you must be 4 times more afraid everytime you see a"
That whole clause is a statistical error as the odds of becoming a victim of a X have a lot more to do with the odds of a given X being a criminal, than they do with relative ratios of X on Y violence vs Y on X violence. Outside of really weird situations like active race riots or race based protests or similar lawlessness.
There is the meta question of "how do I need to signal to others in public to remain politically correct" vs "how do I actually need to act to survive" and discouragingly that gulf has been widening over past years mostly by changes in required political signalling behavior despite a remarkable drop in actual crime rates. Or at least reported crime rates.
If I'm going to use statistics to rationally calibrate my fear emotion, I should ensure that I am using the appropriate statistic.
I'd start off with the assumption that most violent crimes against me will be committed by another person that is both aware of my presence and able to make a credible threat of force against me. I'm probably not going to get punched in the face by anyone who cannot reach my face with their fists.
And I can further break that down by the fraction of time any given person presents me with the threat of violence. I may, perhaps, use risk of violence per minute of exposure as my metric.
It immediately becomes obvious that the publicly-available published crime statistics are useless for my purposes. They do not contain sufficient information to allow me to determine how much more or less likely I am to be attacked by a person of a given skin color for each minute of exposure to that person in public. I would have to know detailed social habits for everyone within the crime statistic reporting area.
It may be that for every 100000 opportunities to punch someone in the face, the conversion rate is higher for one skin color than for another, and I should therefore rationally calibrate my fear accordingly. But I really have no way of accurately determining that useful statistic from published crime data.
But even with that hanging over us, I still have to object to your misuse of statistics. You said:
And this does not follow from the previous paragraph. Given a randomly selected white person who was attacked in the last year, it is 4 times more likely that the attacker was white than black. Manipulating that conditional probability to find the ratio of probabilities that a randomly selected white person was attacked by a white person compared with a randomly selected white person being attacked by a black person requires additional Bayesian calculations that you did not perform. You would also need to know population sizes and overall violent crime rates.But really, this is all moot, because fear is not rational.
> Imagine what it is like to be Jewish and have 85% of your relatives systematically wiped out in living memory.
I think you're taking a devils advocate position here, but this is interesting if true. I'm not sure how the actions of people 60-80 years ago should affect how we view ~20-year-olds today? For example, how is the behaviour of white germans in 1945 related to white americans or british in either 1945 or 2015? I think we were on the opposite side of that war.
As for black lynchings in the american south, again this is a localised issue. But lets say your university is in an area where it happened, how likely is it that someones grandfather was involved in a lynching? Pretty small. But even if they were, should someone today be associated with their grandparents criminal behavior? I don't see how.
Likewise, although I have less personal experience here, even if lynchings were not everyday events or impacted every black American family, the cultural impact carried forward can still be profound.
And yes, I am taking a devil's advocate position. In many cases such as those described in the OP and other comments here political correctness has been taken way, way to far. There is a difference between incitement and a listener's general uncomfort with subject matter. Especially in the context of a university there must be a free exchange of ideas and the ability to have discourse on any subject matter without fear of academic retribution or censorship.
Not really. The Holocaust wasn't a factor in deciding to build a wall along the West Bank. The suicide bombers that would drive from Ramallah to Tel Aviv and blow themselves up in restaurants were.
Europeans and liberals have constructed this narrative that you are espousing. They want to believe that the Holocaust is the key to understanding Israeli policy. This allows them to dismiss Israeli policy decisions in the face of geopolitical events as simply an irrational and tragic response to their cultural trauma.
It's straight up paternalism and it's disgusting.
From Wikipedia:
A 2014 assessment by Sinozich and Langton used longitudinal data from the NCVS to measure rape and sexual assault among college aged U.S. women from 1995 to 2013. Their findings indicated that rape, a subset of all sexual assault, had an incidence of 1.4 per 1,000 female students (0.1%) in 2013[6] during the period studied. The study also found that college aged women (regardless of enrollment status) were assaulted at a significantly higher rate than non-college age women, 4.3 per 1,000 (0.4%) per year versus 1.4 per 1,000 (0.1%) per year, but that women who were not enrolled in college were 1.2 times more likely to be assaulted than college aged women who were enrolled.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campus_sexual_assault
Relevant quote:
"The one-in-five estimate, on the other hand, comes from the federally funded Campus Sexual Assault Study (CSA), a 2006 web survey of more than 5,000 women and 1,000 men attending two unnamed, large public universities.
As Yoffe points out, two campuses is an awfully small sample.
Christopher Krebs, a senior researcher at a non-profit research group, RTI International, who led the Campus Sexual Assault Study, acknowledges that. “The one-in-five statistic is not anything we trotted out as a national statistic,” he says. “But it has certainly been used in that way” — most prominently by President Obama. "
https://www.themarshallproject.org/2014/12/11/the-dueling-da...
I think we've see so much physical discomfort forced on people and minorities that we try to overcompensate by making them COMPLETELY comfortable in every way. But feeling comfortable isn't always a good thing.
Pain from working out isn't a bad thing, it's actually a sign of something good, but many people avoid it. Pain from a beating is bad for two reasons, it strikes both the physical body and the emotional psyche of the recipient.
I think this is at the core of why people want to get rid of emotional damage, they don't realize that some pain teaches, and some harms. Something my football coach used to say to us. If you are hurt, get up and keep going. If you are injured you better get off of my field and rest.
The same is true for emotional damage. Some hurts but is good for you, and other injures a person. It is a thin line to tread but I think we are well past the point where people are mistaking hurt for injury.
Political correctness has done a lot to harm Jews and is used as a tool of anti-semites to further their cause.
In any case i don't see how 'safe spaces' are helping. In dealing with an enemy you first have to know your enemy. I 'd rather have someone telling me they hate me openly so i can do something about it, rather than keep it in hiding and be ambushed.
We can play this game, but I'm pretty sure there are no winners.
Why not? What exactly is "white" anyway? The reality is, you can come up horrible historic circumstances for pretty much any human division. Sure, some have had it worse than others, but where do you draw the line? I have Irish ancestors; they weren't exactly well treated.
>Imagine what it is like to be a woman on a college campus where statistically 1 in 3 suffer sexual assault over the course of a 4 year education
You have to really stretch the definition of "sexual assault" to arrive at that metric.
If people actually consider a University campus "unsafe", then the world at large is going to feel unsafe. What is the plan to deal with that?
He's so incredibly uncomfortable with both he'd rather they simply didn't exist.
I have very little patience with anyone who runs the kind of moral racket that Dr Piper runs - which is making a career out of pretending to be a moral examplar by relying on appeal-to-authority and a lot of noisy rhetoric, and using both to justify social privilege for his beliefs.
I don't care if they're religious types, economists, or any other kind of ideologues. In my world their opinions get no respect at all.
You should try separating the opinion from the man and analyze the former without taking the shortcut of appealing to the authority of the latter.
The simpler argument is that Dr Piper is really in no position to act like anyone's external conscience. He has no basis whatsoever to claim that he's either qualified or competent to act in that role.
Now, clearly he believes otherwise. That's very much his prerogative.
It's everyone else's prerogative to decide whether or not they agree.
I'd suggest that anyone who claims to be promoting genuine independent thought is going to be willing to engage in an open debate.
"You're acting like a child and you shouldn't feel the way you do about the things I say" is neither an open position nor an honest one. It's an attempt to shut down debate about an ethical position, not an attempt to encourage it.
Only if you agree that it has nothing to do with the intrinsic value of the proposed ideas.
> "You're acting like a child and you shouldn't feel the way you do about the things I say" is neither an open position nor an honest one.
Nor is it the position of the author. When somebody tells you to grow up, they are not telling you how to feel, but how to act based on those feelings.
We can, if we keep them separate. Just like we can analyze Polanski's movies separately from his child-raping persona.
You live in fear, and some of you think that fear is good, as long as it protects those that don't want to grow up. I hope this convinces more valuable students to come study in Europe. It's about time for the brain drain to reverse its course.
Why should we accept this?
HR has the responsibility to protect the firm from legal dangers, so don't be surprised if their solution involves the plaintiff being fired.
Retaliation in response to a complaint exacerbates, rather than mitigates, the legal danger to the firm.
>Any person capable of angering you becomes your master; he can anger you only when you permit yourself to be disturbed by him.
-Epictetus
To answer your question, we should accept it because that is the way reality is fundamentally. Go ahead and try to eternally fight to erase all darkness so that there is only light. Spoiler alert: it's impossible. If there were no darkness there would be no such thing as light because light implies the presence of darkness and darkness implies light.
> Go ahead and try to eternally fight to erase all darkness so that there is only light.
I will, thanks! Why do you think people try to impede me?
That may be but an insult is not harmful unless you accept it personally. When you accept an insult you are the one hurting yourself.
This reminds me of a passage from MLK's Letter From a Birmingham Jail:
>Actually, we who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive. We bring it out in the open, where it can be seen and dealt with. Like a boil that can never be cured so long as it is covered up but must be opened with all its ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must be exposed, with all the tension its exposure creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured. But though I was initially disappointed at being categorized as an extremist, as I continued to think about the matter I gradually gained a measure of satisfaction from the label. Was not Jesus an extremist for love: "Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you." Was not Amos an extremist for justice: "Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever flowing stream." Was not Paul an extremist for the Christian gospel: "I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus." Was not Martin Luther an extremist: "Here I stand; I cannot do otherwise, so help me God." And John Bunyan: "I will stay in jail to the end of my days before I make a butchery of my conscience." And Abraham Lincoln: "This nation cannot survive half slave and half free." And Thomas Jefferson: "We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal . . ." So the question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be. Will we be extremists for hate or for love? Will we be extremists for the preservation of injustice or for the extension of justice?
This is the problem with your argument: being 'offended' is highly subjective. To some people, simply existing means you are offended...which is why it will never work.
'safe spaces' and trying to make everything a 'safe space' is a huge disservice to these students and will only put them that much further behind the rest of the world when they go out into the real working world and can't handle an opposing view point.
We should be concentrating on creating strong adults that can discuss any view point intelligently and stand their ground when needed. Instead, we have students that never learn these skills (which should be taught in college) and crumble at any hint of opposition. I feel like this is a a weakness and a step back in terms of societal evolution.
I started seeing it a few years back in many open source projects. Rather than try to win on the merits of an idea, many people would rather spend time destroying a person on Facebook, Twitter, and other social media to gain support.
I have since sworn off all open source projects and stick to my own private repos.
Because 'political correctness' isn't the cancer at the heart of social politics, it is straw-manning. On both sides of every issue.
I'd be surprised, perhaps even amazed, if Dr Piper had represented the complaint in any way recognisable to the person who'd made it. This just smells of tendentious reporting.
http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/03/all-in-all-another-bric...
Remember the other professor who had students call the police because there were mice in their apartment?
I guess I have different students because I've been teaching college since 2000 and have never had any complaints like this and neither have any of my friends.
I was saying that a lot of success is due to chance, and that a lot of life events are due to chance. This got people some people saying that what I was saying was horribly depressing. The guy then proceeded to lecture me that my attitude was what was letting me down in something that I never did, and was irrelevant anyway. And that 'I may not have intended it, but that my actions are causing misery' (because I did apologize to people that saying that they were horribly depressed by me saying that life has chance in it, because I felt the need to be conciliatory).
That is what happened when I tried to be honest and disagree with someone spouting feel good bullshit or whatever else made him look good. A complete frigging cesspool.
If I hear someone expressing a view that I dislike, I'm well within my rights to do any or all of the following things: a) stop associating with this individual b) let them know that I dislike the view they've expressed.
Choosing to do both a) and b) is a normal social response, and the individual that finds themselves expressing views that go against the cultural majority will find themselves in an awkward position. If this view being expressed is worth expressing, then unfortunately the individual will have to endure hardships in order to get the message out and convince the masses ... much like MLKjr being willing to go to jail to communicate the idea that civil rights were for all.
So if someone wants to share racist jokes, then toughen up that skin and let the vitriol fly! They should be proud of what they are and let everyone know ... if it's a worthy viewpoint, they'll find others will rally to their cause; and if not, they'll find themselves awkwardly cast out by their social circle (or at least, their social circle's kids/younger generation).
But still, it's frustrating how many people who supposedly pride themselves on their incisive intellects refuse to even consider that there might be something going on besides "political correctness". This Wondermark cartoon captures the dynamic for me:
http://wondermark.com/1k71/
Like, here's someone who was fired for saying someone else shouldn't have been fired: http://www.gamerevolution.com/manifesto/turtle-rock-communit...
And it makes me pretty uncomfortable when people express "fear of being attacked for doing something that's okay", and other people turn that into "fear of being attacked for doing something that's not okay", and attack them for it.
Maybe there aren't a lot of employers around who want to hire someone who promotes the view that "bigotry is OK," but surely there's at least one.
You've also turned a defense of a person into a defense of their views. You've turned "someone shouldn't be fired for bigotry" into "bigotry is okay". That is not reassuring either.
Or just "bigotry is OK, leave this bigot alone" is something someone should not be fired for?
As it happens, I'm okay with Donald Sterling being fired. I'm not okay with Josh Olin being fired for saying Donald Sterling shouldn't have been fired.
Would you support me being fired, for saying Josh Olin shouldn't have been fired?
As Popehat writes, freedom of speech does not mean freedom from consequences. There's an important question of what consequences should or can legitimately flow from speech. But when this "people shouldn't be scared to express opinions" line gets trotted out only to defend white guys, it's a tell. The nominal principle might be freedom of speech, but if the only people defended are the privileged, the actual principle is maintenance of societal privilege.
I can see your argument, here. I disagree with you, but that's not what I want to get at here.
What I want to get at is this: it's one thing to be scared of making racist jokes. It's another thing to be scared of expressing opinions like "Donald Sterling should not have been fired".
When people say "I'm scared to express opinions", and then you attack them "ha ha, look at the white people complaining that they're afraid to make racist jokes, how sad for them" - and then you also say that it's okay to fire people for the opinions that they say they're scared to express...
I don't have a polite term for this.
What I amsaying is that when the "freedom of speech" flag only gets hauled out for pro-bigotry straight white guys, I think it's not really about freedom of speech but instead defense of privilege. If defenders of free speech want to convince me they're serious, they'll be just as vigorous in defending unpopular opinions of people not in their demographic.
That may even be you, in which case, congrats. But unlike you, I don't think it's unconditionally bad that some people are afraid to express opinions because they may face social consequences for them. E.g., if some of the Donald Sterlings of the world are now afraid to express their bigotry, that's ok by me. And if some people are afraid to publish something because they aren't sure whether or not it's bigoted, I also have a hard time seeing that as bad. That seems like a fine opportunity for them to consider their opinions before publishing them.
In fact, I think that's what most people do. The only thing that's different is that straight white guys now have to do the same sort of self-managing that everybody else has always done, because they're now slightly less insulated from the consequences of their actions.
I disagree with some of what you're saying, and I agree with other bits of it. But I strongly disagree with the thing that you're doing and not even acknowledging.
Are you trying to paint me as some kind of tyrant here? Who said anything about obligation? Feel free to ignore me, feel free to talk about whatever you like. Meanwhile, I will feel free to point out when I don't like the things you say.
Like so: it is a shitty tactic to pretend you're talking to me, to reply as though you have a reply to what I said, and thus to obscure the fact that you're presenting no defense for your actions.
I don't know if this is malice or incompetence on your part, but it's bullshit.
It's not my job to address whatever hobbyhorse you've ridden in on, one I still only find half comprehensible. HN discussion is a recreation for me, one I do on my terms. If you would like to make dealing with you my job, feel free to book me at my consulting rate, $300/hr, cash in advance. I have open slots starting in mid-January. Otherwise, please march back on out of my mentions. Thanks.
What I do ask is that if you choose to reply to me, you reply to the things that I actually say. Instead, you repeatedly chose to say things which sounded like replies, but weren't. You tried to hide your lack-of-response - first, by talking about something unrelated to what I said, and second, by being all "I don't need to talk about what you want to talk about". Of course you don't! But if you're not going to talk about it, you don't get to pretend you replied to me.
But while you choose to interact with me, I am free to point out when you're violating conventions of discourse.
I am not entitled to your words, and you are not entitled to my silence.
These things make me want to push back and do the opposite of what you want, just to annoy you.
However, very well: I will not reply to you again in this thread, even if you choose to reply to me.
I don't intend to deliberately avoid replying to you in future.
I discussed this exact topic with my close high school friends while we were home over Thanksgiving weekend, so I also got perspectives from recently-graduated students in the liberal arts and business at Columbia, WashU, Vanderbilt, and Cornell to fill out my sample.
None of them had ever directly heard or seen any comparable behavior during their time in school. We had all heard of isolated incidents of intolerance in the news, and had the sense that such sheltered students could be found on campus, but we didn't personally know or associate with anyone who could be so extreme or intolerant in their beliefs. Which caused us to ask: how does a student like this get a spot at a decent university? Who raises their child to be so intolerant?
So I have to disagree with your claim that such intolerant and childish comments "[smell] very much like what students today are saying." There is a vocal minority of students who say and do things that do not represent the larger body of students as a whole. There always will be. The average college student is still too busy meeting people, playing sports, dating, drinking, traveling, doing internships, interviewing for jobs, and (occasionally) going to lectures to make a big fuss out of anything that might offend him/her.
Most people are just too busy with life to care, even if they sympathize.
It feels ridiculous when you do it at first but it becomes an incredibly helpful tool.
"You want to add feature X because ..."
... and then, once we've clarified what the request is all about, and I'm sure about what's going on, only then can you move in to help, offer advice, or crush their souls with a series of devastating blows.
No, don't do the latter. Show your side of the story and get them to say it out loud. "Okay, you're right, putting a Perl 6 interpreter in the interrupt handlers of the network stack does sound kind of crazy now."
Doing this makes you a lot easier to work with, or at least that is the perception. :-)
Letting someone fail is often good, too...
No normal person would attend a sermon at the chapel of a given faith, and complain that the sermon victimises them for being a poor practitioner of that faith. This is doubly true when its about something universal like love, rather than how well you practice some specific ritual.
I can assure you that I know plenty of young people who would do something like this - heck, I'm a young person (and also a Christian), and whilst I probably wouldn't be brave enough to actually approach a lecturer and voice such thoughts, I am sure that in a moment of weakness I could certainly think such things internally (which in some sense, is nearly or just as bad). So my assertion is based both on knowing my own peers and being honest about myself.
When somebody calls us out for something, it's only natural to want to blame somebody else - it takes an incredible amount of self-awareness and discipline to immediately jump to self-reflection, without trying to pass the buck. Sure, we may get there in the end, but it's often a journey of various emotions to get to that epiphany.
Are you saying you are one of those people? Or that you believe most people are like that?
Well, this goes both ways.
Like most HN threads on this topic, this discussion is largely full of reactions against perceived "victimization", devoid of any self-reflection about what merit the complaints might actually have.
Would you really attend a sermon at the chapel of either your own chosen faith or someone else's and lodge a complaint that the cleric's commentary on love made you feel bad for not showing love? What, exactly, would motivate you to do such a thing?
Surely, in the context of a religious sermon, either you're a believer and you should feel bad for not obeying the precepts, or you're not and it's all irrelevant?
Sure, there are things we know we should do - whether because of familial duties, social duties, or as in this case, our belief system, or our religion/creed.
Then there are the things we want to do.
Sure, we may know they're wrong, or know we'll regret them afterwards - but that's not to say we weren't tempted.
And the human mind is wonderful at trying to justify doing "bad" things (where bad is whatever your own faith/belief system is). So I may be like, I'm a awesome Christian, I'm going to attend bible college, then when I get there, I hear a sermon that strikes a nerve and reveals some sin that I'm committing - I may try to justify myself, by saying, well, that doesn't really apply to me because of XYZ, or I may be like, that lecturer has it out for me, why is he targetting me when there's so many other sinners, I'm going to have a word with him! etc.
In my high school years, I knew of 3 closeted gay people that attended my church. Since homosexuality was rarely talked about, you could reasonably assume that it may get talked about once a year - if that. On those days, however, I'm sure it felt as if the were being publicly lambasted for something they had no control over. I have never even considered myself bisexual, but it always made me extremely uncomfortable listening to sermons about homosexuality. I can only imagine how those people felt.
This is a situation in which I feel that someone who otherwise attends a service regularly would feel the need to speak out.
People will complain about ... well ... just about anything.
"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former." - Albert Einstein
This habit is extremely powerful. There's no way to require people to do it, but people who do it, at least know the arguments of their opponents, are in such a better position to get what they want that people who don't are left standing, mouths open wondering what happened.
And it's extremely timely as just two weeks ago, President Obama gave this quote:
"I don't want you to think that a display of your strength is simply shutting other people up. And that part of your ability to bring about change is going to be by engagement and understanding the viewpoints and the arguments of the other side."
People don't realize that college already is the safe place where they can develop the habits of empathy and conflict-management. Getting called "bitch" and seeing mice are the least of their problems. Those are going to happen in the real-world no matter what. College isn't a place to preserve themselves from these inevitable, superficial insults, it's a place to develop leadership, contribution and cooperation abilities to get big things done like feeding, improving, healing, leading the world, etc.
So often, all you have to do is keep your lips closed and listen. It can be hard, but that's the way it works, by sometimes introducing an uncomfortable air. Your calm, attentive, silent response to the discomfort is how the energy is resolved. Shortly after the discomfort, you'll feel a mood change and when she says, "Thank you for listening!!" you'll often get a big hug. I sincerely hope this helps you and everyone else big time.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/user/coachcoreywayne
So all in all like the real debate we see on television I suppose.
Keep in mind that in a typical formal debate you don't get to pick your sides - you are assigned a position on an issue and must successfully argue in favor of that position. Formal debate is about the art of rhetoric, and explicitly part of the expectation - and the skill taught - is the deliberate distortion/reframing of fact in order to support your case. Anyone who's done formal debates will have learned this, since you're frequently asked to argue positions you personally disagree with.
Formal debate is a craft of being convincing, not of being right.
Not to mention the structure of formal debates means there is a winner and a loser, and so compromise is impossible. The goal isn't to reach an understanding or middle ground, but to completely obliterate your opponent rhetorically. This fits poorly with real life.
Here is a recent example: A Canadian university cancels a yoga class because yoga comes "from a culture that “experienced oppression, cultural genocide and diasporas due to colonialism and western supremacy,”
In a world that can do that, I don't find it surprising that a student could express the view in the original article and actually mean it.
“The Empire's got something worse than whips all right. It's got obedience. Whips in the soul. They obey anyone who tells them what to do. Freedom just means being told what to do by someone different.”
― Terry Pratchett, Interesting Times
If I'm writing a toy project to teach myself WebGL, what are the consequences for doing something incorrectly and later having to debug it?
This argument was actually made in the case of the University of Ottawa. The yoga instructor even offered to rename the class to "mindful stretching" so as not to associate it with the spiritual and cultural aspects of yoga / Yogi Practice, but was still shut down by the student's union because they felt that it was gentrifying and demonstrated cultural appropriation.
Personally I think the vast majority of culture has been stolen or replicated from older cultures and I don't think that having a stretching class really constitutes some kind of injustice just because it is derived from traditional yoga.
Still ridiculous, but less so than it's being represented as.
I don't know about the yoga class incident, but I don't automatically see the ridiculousness the rest in this sub thread appear to -- it seems pretty reasonable to me for a group of students to check their assumptions about what they're doing when they learn about something related in history. Yes yoga is now a trendy healthy way to stretch and exercise, and how could history have anything to say about stretching, but it does not seem silly to me to wonder out loud if yoga may have originated as a symbol of oppression or death, or of submission to it.
Make of it what you will.
I would throw it out there that Evangelical Christian university with rigorous behavioural standards are on average considerably less likely than average to attract rent-a-cause campaigning/complaining types and considerably more likely than average to deliver a "sermon on love" full of dire warnings and animosity towards people that don't love in the correct university-prescribed manner...
I think this has more to do with Francophone people feeling marginalized as opposed to colonialism or caring for Indian people's feelings.
> Because 'political correctness' isn't the cancer at the heart of social politics, it is straw-manning. On both sides of every issue.
I don't think they were saying that political correctness was straw-manning, but that it was straw-manning that was the cancer at the heart of social politics.
"The complaining student" is now a trope along the lines of the cab driver who always speaks to New York Times columnists in a way that is convenient for their column.
It's reasonable for OWKU to make this announcement. They are laying out their expectations for their student body. It is inconvenient but students who dislike their position are free to transfer.
OWKU is a private institution and also a religious one (even greater protection). They are well within their means and rights.
I'm starting to think that feelings are being hurt on HN; hence all the controversy.
It may be reasonable for OWKU to make an announcement of their expectations of student receptiveness to uncomfortable sermons, the particular details and manner in which Dr. Piper did so in this case, however, taken as presented, shows a lack of both the general adult ability to maturely deal with uncomfortable situations and the specific Christian virtues it pretends to be concerned with.
> OWKU is a private institution and also a religious one (even greater protection). They are well within their means and rights.
I don't think anyone has argued that OKWU's actions here were either unaffordable (outside of the University's means -- not sure why that would even be relevant) or illegal (outside of the University's rights).
The negative responses I've seen have all be skepticism about the accuracy of the presentation of the situation and arguments that, even if the situation was presented accurately, the piece is a poor response to the situation it describes. (The comment you responded to was explicitly the former -- raising the idea that the "complaining student" has become a common fictional foil to set up rhetorically, whether or not a real complaint exists.)
Not that it is outside of the University's "means and rights".
Can you not judge the student under the same criteria? If the student had been pursuing Christian virtues, the student would have taken the time to see how the sermon could better him/her as a Christian, and not immediately taken offense to it.
That Navy SEAL was Albert Einstein.
People on HN are taking this straw man attack and running with it, though. It's meme-licious.
How to compose a successful critical commentary:
You should attempt to re-express your target’s position so clearly, vividly, and fairly that your target says, “Thanks, I wish I’d thought of putting it that way. You should list any points of agreement (especially if they are not matters of general or widespread agreement). You should mention anything you have learned from your target. Only then are you permitted to say so much as a word of rebuttal or criticism.
https://www.brainpickings.org/2014/03/28/daniel-dennett-rapo...
2. You should list any points of agreement (especially if they are not matters of general or widespread agreement).
3. You should mention anything you have learned from your target.
4. Only then are you permitted to say so much as a word of rebuttal or criticism.
(I tried to follow the rules with my comment)
I believe this might be your bone of contention. The speech was a mission statement, more or less, with an introduction that is very catchy and exciting and clickbaity, but overall irrelevant to the main argument. This is not a response of right or wrong. Obviously the leader thinks people who oppose him are wrong, but the main thrust of the argument past that intro is "where is what we are going to do here".
For example, obviously a long cultural time ago, although it was only a bit more than a decade, all the seniors at the school I finally graduated from (I was a part timer) took the same giant Holocaust class. It was a required interdisciplinary liberal arts survey class, of a topic that changed every year. I believe they had "death" as the topic another year. They were obviously kind of a downer phase. For cultural change reasons they don't do this anymore, which is a shame. Anyway the point of an interdisciplinary liberal arts class isn't to debate philosophically if the topic is right or wrong, but to teach the students how to actually apply the full spectrum of liberal arts, all of them, because you're all well rounded individuals now, to a topic.
Someone who disliked the idea of confronting a rather foreign culture and world view could fight against the class by demanding that you're not allowed to respond to the Holocaust intellectually unless you can first express Hitler's position in a way that modern Nazis would agree accurately represents their view. Why yes I did just "Godwin" you. But of course that logic is total bunk. The real purpose of the class is to teach the students how to observe then analyze the inter-related whole of the topic, across multiple disciplines. That requires application of intellectual skills, not right or wrong judgments. You don't need to express agreement with the text of mein kampf to see how the economic situation dovetailed with the political situation dovetailed with the cultural situation etc. My term paper was how architecture related to the other liberal arts in the reich WRT to propaganda and scale and form etc.
Really the only reason why they gave us the Holocaust as a study topic was to scare the hell out of us, if we fail to learn the skills of cross disciplinary observation, analysis, and synthesis skills taught in the class, maybe something that bad will happen again. Now for over sensitivity reasons, or more likely profound lack of courage, we can't get that reward, can't learn to avoid evil by intellectual analysis. That opens a whole nother can of worms where the campus is now a safe space free of gas chamber triggering, but the whole country overall is far less of a safe space, because the current grads are emotionally coddled, less intellectually skilled, and far more cowardly unless acting in mob actions. Luckily mob action historically has always been effective and rational, correct? And we can make up for personal cowardice with more drone strikes, correct? And the politician that proposes the simplest sounding solution is probably the best because we no longer have the intellectual rigor to analyze, correct? I mean, what could possibly go wrong?
While we're at it, let's stipulate that everyone is only allowed to be honest and logical and to base their reasoning on valid premises! :)
It's a nice thought, at least at first glance, but it's just not going to happen.
Besides, the real problem with debates is actually willful dishonesty.
There are vast hordes of sociopaths playing games and overcomplicating things to no end, arguing for positions they don't actually hold, and basically just preventing discussions from ever getting anywhere.
The smart ones are like firehoses of sophistry and misdirection, the dumb ones just (fake-)rage and call people names, and I guess somewhere in between you'll find militant feminists and race baiters and people calling for "safe spaces" and whatever nonsense they come up with.
Some sociopaths have come up with a fun new game: trying to convince people that the earth is actually flat. Yes, sadly that's actually a thing. Look them up on YouTube or something.
But these "people" are the real reason why we can't seem to have a reasonable discussion on anything.
Apparently it's enjoyable for them to fuck everything up, and to prevent mankind's progress towards enlightenment as best they can.
That seems like self-destructive behaviour, but they do it anyway. A bunch of them will see this post, but not one will sincerely help us understand.
I disagree with many of their points of view, but it doesn't mean that they are being dishonest. For all you know, I could be the willfully dishonest one here.
But you bring up an interesting point I've been wondering about lately - is the world complicated and full of nuance to be debated ad infinitum? Or is truth actually quite simple, with the source of complexity being only those who would cloud the truth with bias and/or willful dishonesty?
You're an interesting case though. Your HN comments are clean - no sophistry or trolling - so I guess you have your fun elsewhere.
I've been wondering if there's such a thing as a "benign sociopath", but it's not like I could trust you even if you claimed to be one. I hope so, but so far I'm leaning towards "No".
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/11/the-new-...
But to your point, passing the Ideological Turing Test is something that I think is worth aspiring to.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ideological_Turing_Test
The owner in 1933 at least was a strong supporter of fascism in general, and Hitler in particular.
This may be the very definition of hyperbole. Taking something that is barely technically accurate and distorting it to the point where it doesn't mean even close to the same thing anymore.
EDIT:
From the link:
> The Daily Mail, devised by Alfred Harmsworth (later Lord Northcliffe) and his brother Harold (later Lord Rothermere), was first published on 4 May 1896.
> Lord Rothermere was a friend of Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler, and directed the Mail's editorial stance towards them in the early 1930s.
> Born 1868; Died 1940[0]
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_Harmsworth,_1st_Viscoun...
So was the royal family at the time: http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/royals/6548665/The...
This is a classic trap. Some positions are simply not worth discussing thoughtfully. Not all positions are equal. When you say "both sides" you have already lost; plenty of people use this tendancy to give both sides to every issue equal credence and carefully consider both, so they inject some absurd ridiculous view as the other side and abuse your tendancy to respect them to gain credence for it. Then the overton window is shifted and they have already won before the debate begins. If you even accept the premise that a student should be able to tell a professor what they are and are not allowed to discuss in their class you have already lost the debate, there's no use respecting that view, it's far too extreme.
>And it's a prisoner's dilemma. If you try to be respectful and thoughtful and the other person screams and yells and abuses and strawmans then you will lose the 'debate' by any metric not implemented by a philosophy professor.
Absolutely, and it's one of the most frustrating things I think a lot of reasonable, polite people come up against.
Who decides which is which? I guess you?
It's bullshit to expect that people will seriously consider all ideas out there, no matter how weird or outright stupid they sound.
Well, if you're going to advocate that everybody just believe whatever they want without facts or reason, don't be surprised if people tl;dr your comment and ignore you.
Take the high road, will ya
> Some positions are simply not worth discussing thoughtfully
Like yours? Very humble.
> there's no use respecting that view, it's far too extreme
ideals, you should know what those are
I'm a white male, but I grew up being called Gwailo, Gaijin, Auslander, and when I finally returned to the anglosphere in my early teens, I was still an outsider as I spoke with a weird accent and was by that point a through-and-through third culture kid. I got the crap bullied out of me, and eventually figured out that it only hurt if I took it to heart. I learned to pity those whose worlds were so small that they could only take satisfaction from being cruel to me. It was their problem, not mine.
Folks need to have thicker skin, and realise that not everything is about them. In fact, very little is ever about you, most of what people say and do are manifestations of their own thoughts and emotional issues. Physical violence is of course something that needs to be fought against (and this is why we have criminal justice systems which typically take this sort of thing perfectly seriously), but you can only be the victim of "verbal violence" if you choose to take the position of victim.
Why?
Congratulations on being such a paragon of excellence. Why should we require such virtue of all humans? Instead of expecting you to develop a thick skin (are you sure this is a good thing?), why can't we try to reform your aggressors in the first place?
Imagine you have an API that receives a POST with some JSON. Every time your API receives a malformed POST, your application crashes or hangs. Do you a) try to do your best to make sure no one ever POSTS to your uri with malformed data, or do you b) rewrite your API to be more robust and send back an error code when malformed input is received rather than crashing?
Does that analogy make any sense or is it too far fetched?
I don't believe this is true. Human behavior can change. Relative to its levels 500 years ago, we've all-but eliminated physical violence in first-world countries. I don't think it's much of a stretch to believe we can all-but eliminate emotional violence as well.
We're dealing with human beings, so I didn't read your JSON analogy, sorry.
Unreliable, unpredictable, illogical, making no sense and you never has exact idea which rules they obey at the moment and what output they will generate.
So human beings indeed sound like Javascript or PHP ... [1]
[1] 10 years experience with php and JS.
It's also a lot easier to change yourself than every other human on the planet.
What gave you that impression?
> It's also a lot easier to change yourself than every other human on the planet.
I agree, but that doesn't mean it's the right thing to do.
Because someone somewhere defines something about another group of people as aggression and we can go "reforming" them with impunity. Take a wild guess what the ranges of something could be ...
> I grew up being called Gwailo, Gaijin, Auslander, and when I finally returned to the anglosphere in my early teens, I was still an outsider as I spoke with a weird accent and was by that point a through-and-through third culture kid. I got the crap bullied out of me
I don't see any value in accepting this behavior. What harm is there in trying to eliminate it?
Because modern society and civilization rests entirely on the ability of people to tolerate being offended. It's what made the enlightenment possible. It's what makes scientific inquiry possible. It underlies every improvement to the human condition, because any new idea is offensive to someone.
If you can't do that then we will try to help you improve yourself if you can (and you want to), and try to give you a place to have a comfortable life if you can't. But there isn't and can't be a place for you at a university, where accommodating you would disrupt important work that will ultimately improves everyone's lives.
Because "we" are not special. "We" are not better than anyone else. It's none of our business to try and change how other people are.
This is a synonyme for restricting free speech and the first amendment.
I hate to break it to you but there are some serious issues with the justice system. In usa at least.
I agree that in the face of bullying or racist speech, we should try to thicken our skin and move on with our lives and understand that the problem is on the part of the perpetrators, not with me. But that doesn't mean I don't think we should try to get rid of bullying and racism in our society..
Exactly, I don't get why people are trying to make universities, workplaces, clubs, or anywhere else "safe places". They should not be safe places, they should be places where you feel confronted, challenged and threatened by different ideas and points of view.
That is one the problems I think. Some people (seems like the majority of young students nowdays) feel "challenged and threatened" personally, and not intellectually.
My experience shows me that there are as many theological points of view as believers. Everybody gets their own personal variety.
However, you can can bet Piper's teachers would have their worldview being very challenged if an atheist or agnostic student started long discussions about the nature of their mission (http://www.okwu.edu/about/).
That's a lot easier to say when you're not much more likely to be a victim of violent crime, or of sexual violence, or of racist violence.
I'm not directly disagreeing with you here or putting words in your mouth. I realize you are not saying safe spaces should not exist. Instead I want to make the argument that having safe spaces is reasonable.
People make safe spaces _within_ universities and other institutions for the same reason some combat veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder put up signs asking neighbors not to set off fireworks[0]. It is to avoid triggering people that have have experienced serious trauma[1].
For instance using the combat veteran example, it would be unreasonable for a veteran to attend a fireworks show and then complain about the fireworks, but if this same combat veteran was attending University and it would be reasonable to ask the University to provide a safe space away from fireworks or other triggers -- sound proofed dorms if students are constantly setting off fireworks.
There is a big difference in intention between 'safety from conflicting points of view' and safe spaces. Although a safe space sometimes requires limiting certain discussions (a person who was sexuality assaulted might be triggered by discussions and depictions of sexual assault).
[0]: http://www.militarywithptsd.org/fireworks-triggers-ptsd-and-...
[1]: http://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/topics/post-traumatic-stress-...
"Although a safe space sometimes requires limiting certain discussions" That makes no sense in a university IMHO. Students could be excused of classes due to previous traumatic experiences, not the other way around.
No discussion should be silenced because the topic triggers or bothers someone. Sure, we can be sensitive about it, and take precautionary measures (warn the students in advance of the topic, etc.), but at absolutely no point, IMHO, should a discussion in an university be limited because it bothers, annoys, disrespects or triggers someone.
Yes, that opens room for some awful, violent and disrespectful points of view, but so many pillars of modern society were once those same awful, violent and disrespectful POVs.
At Mizzou, they demanded a separate "safe space" because they were literally being sent death threats, which is a separate way to use the idea, and which, in the light of the past week's events, were not unwarranted.
My concern is that silly things which people do, like say complaining about being made to feel guilty, will be used to paint safe spaces as 'silly' or 'unnecessary' when in fact safe spaces provide a very valuable function.
You act as if "conscience" is an objecively good thing, and not just the result of a bunch of totally arbitrary social expectations.
Gay people who grew up in conservative families often have a conscience that makes them feel bad about being gay. Gay people looking for safe spaces where they aren't reminded that they spent 18 years being told they are bad people is imminently reasonable.
Abused wives often feel guilty about leaving their husbands. Finding safe spaces where they don't have to feel guilty about doing the right thing is imminently reasonable.
So, no, it's not unreasonable to find places where you don't have to "deal with your conscience"
Asking for safe space where you don't have to worry about others trying to manipulate your conscience, OTOH, is not unreasonable.
At the same time, expecting formal services at the on-campus chapel of what is overtly an evangelical Christian university to be that safe space is somewhat unreasonable.
(Which is not to say that Dr. Piper's letter is itself a reasonable response to the scenario it describes.)
Actually this behavior is just because of peace time in todays western world. If students were afraid of actually being in danger, they wouldn't bitch about these things.
Obviously there are all kinds of things we do to ensure that universities are safe in different ways, and we find ways to try and ensure this safety doesn't interfere too much with learning. Why shouldn't this concern for safety extend to the mental health of students? Chanting "universities are not safe spaces" is a way of avoiding thinking about what kinds of safety we already provide or could provide, and how we can combine these kinds of safety with the challenging education that everyone recognizes is an important part of higher education.
I agree with the fundamental point about mistaking being offended (or made to feel guilty) for victimization, that being said:
There is such a thing as opression and the sidelining of the concerns of groups within society that are already marginalized. This veers dangerously close to being dismissive of that fact, and the author seems to nearly (if not outright) mock perceived "political correctness" and a set of working vocabulary that has been established around speaking about such marginalization.
I'm not sure that's particularly humble or self-reflective of Dr Piper. Although I'm also sure that such language can be abused (just as any discourse can be misused in favor of the person weilding it). "We don’t believe that you have been victimized every time you feel guilty" may be true, and may even be particularly true for the group of people he is adressing (OKWU students), but I hope it is tightly coupled with a belief in and an understanding of the very real forces of inequality that exist in society today.
The fact is, the world can be pretty freaking hostile if you're gay, trans, a woman, from a minority ethnic group, or otherwise part of a group that is not mainstream. The hair-raising experiences related to me by friends of mine have made it utterly clear to me that I live an awfully privileged life in that regard (specifically, going about my daily life never for a moment worried that I would be sexually harassed or discriminated against).
There are people that mistake "not being pandered to" with "being victimized", but there are also a lot of people who experience these things in an absolutely genuine fashion.
So I'm not trying to act as a "counterweight" to anything, except the extreme cynicism of the author, and people who mistake being challenged in their views for being attacked.
"Students are increasingly seeking help for, and apparently having emotional crises over, problems of everyday life. Recent examples mentioned included a student who felt traumatized because her roommate had called her a “bitch” and two students who had sought counseling because they had seen a mouse in their off-campus apartment. The latter two also called the police, who kindly arrived and set a mousetrap for them."
[1] - https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/freedom-learn/201509/de...
The amount of hypocrisy that comes with the claims that these students should "learn to cope with uncomfortable ideas" is staggering. Guess what: these students are presenting us with an "uncomfortable idea" and the response has been nothing but knee-jerk.
Well done, everyone.
University is for adults, not toddlers.
No one is arguing for this.
As soon as you claim they are, they scurry away claiming that's not what they mean, but as soon as you say "OK then" and move on, they turn right around and it's all about their feelings again. It is very much a part of the modern PC platform that if someone "feels" assaulted, they are, and you must believe them or you are blaming the victim. This is why accusations are as good as conviction in places where PC reigns supreme, because the fact of accusation is itself proof of feeling, and that's it, case closed.
Don't fall for this transparent rhetorical ploy. Arguments that only appear transiently to dismiss one point, then disappear into the ether immediately after, are not arguments, just rhetoric. (This is a general point that applies in many places, actually.)
Along with some NYT coverage on this general topic: http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/11/02/when-a-gener...
This issue of students complaining about trigger warnings and the need for safe spaces certainly seems to be increasingly prevalent, but that could just be due to the media giving it more attention.
Are you saying you believe that another person can only be near you because you give them implicit permission to? And that at any time, and for any reason, you could remove that permission?
Where did you get that idea?
"The Freedom of Speech," the legal right defined by the constitution only applies to the government because the constitution only applies to the government.
There's a whole world outside US: http://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/
Stud 2: When it hurts me!
Stud 1: When it's offensive to me!
https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/3s5wz2/yale_adminis...
Oh really, so university students are able to consume alcohol, right?
edit:
noun: adult;
- a person who is fully grown or developed.
- a person who has reached the age of majority.
edit 2:
"Longitudinal neuroimaging studies demonstrate that the adolescent brain continues to mature well into the 20s. This has prompted intense interest in linking neuromaturation to maturity of judgment."
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2892678/
The dominant American culture is not one with a single consistently-applied rite of passage to adulthood. Over about a decade, people go though multiple transitions (age of majority, voting age, drinking age---heck, a lot of people even recognize the age at which rental car companies stop applying a "You're probably a dangerous driver" surcharge, at 25 years old).
Meant adult as a contrast to toddlers (whom feelings and sense of security we do care about, for good reasons) and as a status that you target, grow into and nurture, especially more at the university (and hopefully after as well).
Unless your post means to say we should probably drop the drinking age. I'd agree it's pinned higher than maturity curve of youths, and personally find the illegality to encourage a debauched form of underage drinking. But I don't really see how that's here or there.
re, your edit: Are you saying that by some developmental model 17 year olds should not be asked to rise to the standards of behaviour expected of adults? Please elaborate.
The article on age of majority makes it clear that it is a distinct concept from age of license, which can cover things like buying alcohol and running for elected office. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_majority
Honestly, your edit seems to put the nail into the coffin of your entire point.
This argument is basically "You belong to social group X. You cannot opt out." Then followed by "because to social group X, you have to behave in Y way. Because that's how X people behave."
Depending on the surrounding culture, with that argument you can justify: why men have to wear ties, why young men should be sent to war, why women should wear burkha, etc. Anything conservative goes.
I'm not disagreeing with your actual point. I'm just trying to point out that your argument is bad.
Also known as "wishful thinking". There's no room for charity when reason is called upon. Be as charitable as you want when talking about the weather with your neighbor, but when you're debating something serious you can not look for imaginary excuses for your opponent's mistakes.
Who is saying this?
From 1 Corinthians 13:
When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me.
That said, these people are just as free to voice these small minded, selfish complaints as I am to ignore them.
No one is arguing for this.
Suicide dropped from sociology lessons: http://www.theguardian.com/education/2015/jun/15/suicide-dro...
(A-level students are 16 to 18 years old)
I agree that teaching suicide to children is going to be difficult, and that most of the reason is about actual harm, not feelings - the increased risk of death or harm to the students from the Wurther Effect or stigmatising views.
But all of that can be worked around. You provide a mix of comprehensive support of different types to students; you promote a culture of inclusion an sharing in that room.
Suicide is really important. It's the leading cause of death of men aged between 15 and 49 in the UK. Rates are increasing. NHS cuts mean it's harder to get good quality support. Appropriately talking about suicide probably doesn't raise risk, and may well lower risk.
So, it's a shame that this topic got cut from the syllabus.
There are other examples in this thread of law students not learning about rape law because it's too distressing to hear.
That shows a misunderstanding of what PTSD survivors want when they talk about trigger warnings. The point is not "I should be able to live my life and avoid every mention of this thing that causes me significant distress", but "I am currently vulnerable, but getting support, and I need a little bit of warning not so I can avoid the subject, but so that I can make sure I have the little bit of extra support I need to keep me safe".
However: the people on the other side are mostly fucking hateful cunts who scream "What about my freedom of speech?" while seeking to silence the people they're screaming at.
It's insisting that a declaration be given in advance to remove someone from the possibility of having to cope with something uncomfortable.
A safe space is an echo chamber.
If we really want to know the cause of these tendencies, we need only look to the internet. You used to need to find a group of people to hang out with in your area and in doing so you'd associate with the social norms of that group, whatever they may be.
Now you craft your friend's list on Facebook with people who agree with you and reinforce you. If you've ever clicked the "unfollow" button you're guilty of this. This reinforcement leads to an echo chamber.
As a culture, we're effectively putting canvasing over logic and reason in all areas. That's essentially what you get from a social feed that reinforces your views - constant news that agrees with you...which is just canvasing yourself.
Canvasing feeds on feelings and reaction over reason. You look at just about any socially convenient topic and you'll see this. Just as an example, let's look at diversity in tech since this is Hacker News.
We're more than willing to accost the entire industry for lack of diversity as if it's somehow their fault. Yet most of these companies are falling all over themselves to hire people and we aren't hearing stories about discrimination or people not getting jobs...we just see the numbers and assume something is wrong.
We're not allowed to consider that people might tend to just be wired a certain way. Men's brains work differently than women's. Certain problems might be interesting to certain types of people and not to other.
Instead we create a cause and a problem that must be fixed immediately. We look at it from an emotional perspective rather than looking at all of the factors involved to just see if it happens to just be a general tendency or a real problem.
A problem is more marketable...so we go with that instead.
Which is different...how?
That's a needlessly uncharitable portrayal of it. A trigger warning can be used just like a movie's rating is. I don't avoid R rated movies, but I appreciate knowing when I'm walking into one.
Notice the response to your comment was "No one is arguing for this" instead of saying what he/she is actually arguing for.
Your time will be better spent picking the fuzzies off your favorite blanket.
If this were naturally a world where all ideas were comfortable except for the influence of a few bad apples, it might not be a problem, but since the world does contain uncomfortable facts, opinions, and people in abundance, they're basically demanding that everybody else shoulder the burdens.
No. I, or the world will not be taking a "charitable position". As any other human being living in society I'm often confronted with things that I'm not comfortable with. Would you like to know what I do about them? I step away because it's none of my business judging other people's beliefs and the integrity of my feelings is not their responsibility.
So, to reiterate: no, sir. I will not yield something that I do not ask for myself. I will also not be shamed into whatever you're trying to shame us for and I laugh at the notion that you believe you would be successful in that attempt.
Maybe it is societal conditioning, but I think that is wrong and look back on older generations and think they must also have known.
I can not say the same thing for much of these PC causes. I find it iritating and bad for society, much like I am sure racists in the south found the gradual acceptance of interracial dating and increased equity irritating.
I find many of the causes championed, or at least incedents in the news, to be a mockery of a free society but I can't help wonder if I am the same as Jim Crow. I suspect he felt quite vindicated as well.
Women were thought to be naturally uninterested in politics, and to not have the head for it anyway. Dabbling in politics was seen as an unwomanly thing ladies should be spared from.
Not unlike how people today think that the scarcity of women in tech is due to them naturally having less interest in it. It's easy to ascribe the status quo to the natural order of things.
Of writing of that era I like "Are Women People?"[1] It's written from a suffragettes point of view, but it includes some cherry-picked quotes from anti-suffragists, such as:
"The grant of suffrage to women is repugnant to instincts that strike their roots deep in the order of nature. It runs counter to human reason, it flouts the teachings of experience and the admonitions of common sense."—N.Y. Times, Feb. 7, 1915."
That was the kind of thing you could write in a newspaper of the time and have people agree with you. That should tell us something about how blind we can be to contemporary societal problems, and how silly we will look in hindsight.
[1] http://www.gutenberg.org/files/11689/11689-h/11689-h.htm
I'm a student at a top 4 year university, and I find the lack of student backbone nauseating. The current trends in university culture go entirely counter to the reasons that we have higher education. Instead of encouraging expression, our culture deafens it with its constant concern towards avoiding offence.
It was a learning experience. Wonder 20 years later what would happen if they tried bring someone that controversial in.
This sounds to me more like a church than a University.
Some of the cries of victimization sound way overblown. I would agree that shutting down the process of learning itself, such as when students attempt to stop professors or others from topical intellectual discussions, runs counter to the primary goal of universities.
However, many of the attacks on these students as a group looks like attempts to de-legitimize the victims of racism and bigotry. The minorities who have been revealing systemic bias, bigotry, and racism at these universities are the students who started and sustain the current protests.
Do not conflate the cause of those fighting against campus racism, bigotry, and bias with those who seek to shut down the the process of learning at the sign of the tiniest challenging or upsetting idea. The core group of protestors desire to be accorded the same protections and positive learning environment that white students have. That some have used this movement as a vehicle for lending power to their own neuroses and anxieties should not in any way detract from us from paying attention and doing something about the systemic bias that these protests and subsequent reports have revealed.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2015/11/...
One common narrative re safe spaces seems to be: "if something makes you uncomfortable, you should suck it up instead of trying to force everyone else to accommodate you". I think this is somewhat missing the point, but I can relate to it. I feel like this is the dominant narrative in this thread.
But the narrative in the article seems to be: "if something makes you uncomfortable, good! It's because you're a bad person. You should be a better person instead of asking us to tell you you're not bad".
And I pretty strongly disagree with that.
For example, if the sermon was all about how gay people are going to hell, and that made a student uncomfortable, that's not because the student is a bad person. That's because it was a terrible sermon.
From the description, this sermon was not obviously terrible. But that still doesn't make the student a bad person. Not everyone experiences or expresses emotions in the same ways. That's fine. When people start speaking about experiences as if they're human universals, and if you don't share those experiences, that can make you uncomfortable. That's fine too. It doesn't make the speaker a bad person, but it doesn't make you a bad person either.
Well, no - the proper response to that is not whining but saying:
"Since in hell are probably also Freddie Mercury, Voltaire and Oscar Wilde (and probably Mark Twain) - do I strictly have to be gay to go there or are there other ways I could take" and enjoy the show.
There is no greater weapon against powerful people that take themselves seriously than mocking them and their beliefs.
Generally speaking people need more mocking in their lives. For a long time the only people that could speak truth to power were the jesters. No matter if the power is the pope that could condemn to eternal afterlife in hell or a BreitBart/Jezebel writer that could unleash an internet pitchfork mob on you - you are obligated to take them down a notch whenever you can. Jokes are most efficient.
But what I read in the article is more "because you're not perfect, as neither one of us is, so show a little introspection about you before complaining about others".
And... it's about 1 Corinthians 13. See https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1+Corinthians+1... Seriously, go read it, it resonates in quite a peculiar way with this whole discussion.
(edited for missing word)
Maybe that's not quite "you're a bad person". But I feel like your reading is missing the "you should feel bad" aspect.
That chapter resonates with me too, because it's pretty much exactly the sentiment I'm disagreeing with. Supposedly it doesn't matter what you do, it matters what you feel.
No, that's exactly wrong. If you do the right thing, that's good. If you do the wrong thing, that's bad. It doesn't matter what you were feeling when you did it.
Love makes people do some really shitty things. "I love you and I want you to not go to hell, so I'm going to beat the gay out of you", for example. That love is genuine, and it doesn't redeem the action.
The opposite is true as well, where people do good while hating it every minute. (No good example comes immediately to mind, and I'm spending too long on this post.) They don't lose points for having unvirtuous emotions. They did good, and that's enough.
I think I see what you mean. But this is not how I read Corinthians; but I agree that this may not be shared either, and I won't make this about religion, I'm really talking about the text itself.
First, it does not put love before actions. It says actions/qualities (or that most of life, actually) is meaningless, nothing, without love (as an attachment to God/Truth)
Second, it defines what is definitely not "love", so one may not use it as a pretext for wrong doing (at least).
Third, it says that we will never see things fully, neither at once, until, that is, the end (provided it's not an ellipsis, he! :) ).
Plus, "love" as expressed in this text is not Philia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philia) but from Latin Caritas (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charity_%28virtue%29) (or Greek "agape"); which is not about a feeling, but about something way deeper, transcendant and, although not quite the right word, respectful, for one to an other. It's love as one of the three Christian theological virtues (fides, spes, caritas), that is, in an intimate relation to the Christian God (in this context) as a guide, a goal, an ideal for love/Philia too.
> That love is genuine, and it doesn't redeem the action.
I see your point. That love is, actually, deeply misled. Actually, that's not love, that's fear that supersedes love ("I fear that you [x] and I don't want to because this makes me [y] and I freak out and I don't think you can decide for yourself, so I'll do it and [z]").
Love (be it eros, philia or even agape) is no excuse to abuse. Good intentions don't make an excuse for incompetence.
1 Corinthian 13 is supposed to make us reflect on love and have some negative feeling when we remember that we've not shown our family, friends, neighbors and strangers love. We're supposed to "feel bad". It means we are alive and healthy.
I'd tell them: You are an electron in it lowest possible energy and you want get to your highest excited state without adding energy. That simply does not work. If you can't handle it, perhaps you do not belong here where you are actually challenged and are required to meet that challenge.
It was also crazy how often they complained but turned out not to have even tried the homework on their own.
Do you feel this type of behaviour is affecting a majority of NA youth ? Or is it more media looking at what could be the very beggining of a trend ?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/11573646/...
http://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/goldsmiths-student-div...
The whole idea of "being yourself" has a lot of nuance that has been left unaddressed. Where do we draw the line between things that we should be expected to change, vs what the world must learn to accept? How much obligation does the world have on accepting us for who we are, and how much pressure are they allowed to put on us to change? Is "being yourself" even an ideal state vs chasing ones potential? How do you avoid crippling guilt if you're always chasing an elusive ideal? How do you learn to like yourself if you're never what you should be? If you aren't chasing improvement in yourself does it just end up turning into decay?
I think it's a really difficult subject while both sides are screaming "DUH!" at each other.
This is not about "being yourself"-euphemism for doing as you please with utter disregard for everything including yourself-, this is about taking responsibility for your actions, about having the honesty and strong enough morals to judge.
The "being yourself" vs "chasing one's potential" you talk about is the difference between animal and human.
As for victimization and oversensitivity, I agree that it's a good thing to be subjected to challenging viewpoints when you're at a university. It's also important to have a platform for responding to viewpoints you don't like. I suspect that attendance at sermons is required at Oklahoma Wesleyan, and I further suspect that students are strongly discouraged from publicly espousing views contrary to the content of those sermons. This doesn't make for a healthy university setting.
That said, writing childish outrage screeds lambasting "victim culture" is not exactly a noble or loving response to the student's complaint. This essay sounds like it was written in about five minutes while in full rage mode about the "kids these days".
The "victim culture" accusation alwasy strikes me as sadly ironic coming from a political wing that claims victimization of the overwhelming majority relgion and culture due to the design of Starbucks cups, the use of the phrase "Happy Holidays", or the existence of mosques. I think the word is "projection"...
Edit/Update: After browsing some other articles in the OKWU "News" section, I'm sorry to see this overtly political screed was posted to Hacker News at all. This university appears to be a branch of Fox News, rather than an educational institution.
This may sound harsh but it's reality, and the real problems in life won't be at university, they'll be out in the real world. There are no safe spaces and trigger warnings in the real world.
Catholics invented the university. Secular universities are cultural appropriation. This is like saying you don't approve of Japanese in anime.
This article says "I am, but it's okay, get used to it". There's a huge difference between telling someone that their beliefs are wrong to telling them that they are bad and should feel guilty, especially if the doctrine says that everyone is bad and should feel guilty all the time.
No, because the response is going to be "Yes you are", and we descend into a shouting match. The reply is "What is your standard for 'being a jerk', and is that standard a reasonable one?"
> There's a huge difference between telling someone that their beliefs are wrong to telling them that they are bad and should feel guilty, especially if the doctrine says that everyone is bad and should feel guilty all the time.
That seems like a fair description of how "victimhood culture" treats the rest of us.
I don't mean literally, the words you say must be "I'm not a jerk." I mean the defense must consist of a denial that the behavior was jerkish. If that's achieved by laying out standards for jerkishness, that's fine.
The OP read to me as not even achieving that. It wasn't "we aren't jerks, because what we did wasn't jerky", it was "we're going to be jerks, tough on you, shut up".
>That seems like a fair description of how "victimhood culture" treats the rest of us.
I'm not discussing victimhood culture. I'm discussing a specific defense to a specific complaint, which I think lacks value. The specific complaint was not trying to make people feel bad, it was to make themselves feel good. The response explicitly acknowledges that they're trying to make people feel bad.
Let's start here: The point of Christianity is to make you holy, not to make you happy.
When you teach something like I Corinthians 13, if it's going to help anyone's life instead of being merely an academic exercise, you wind up saying "Yes, you really are supposed to love like this. Do you?" If that makes someone feel bad, well, that's not actually the point. The point is that they recognize that they don't love in the way that they should, and therefore see the need to change.
And if you're going to say that changing your life in that way isn't the job of a university, well, this is a Christian university, and they think it is exactly their job. And if you're a student there, then presumably that's what you wanted, too.
You (ikeboy) seem to want this Christian university to be a secular one. That is not a reasonable expectation.
Now, I recognize that there are lots of ways that "making them recognize that they don't love in the way that they should" can be manipulative and even abusive, but it is not inherently so. And the fact that people feel bad (guilty) along the way isn't a flaw, if in fact they are guilty in terms of the biblical standard. To repeat, the point of Christianity is to make you holy, not to make you happy.
Plenty of Christians would disagree with this (most, I suspect, would agree with the first part, but many of those would disagree with the second part, and perhaps more specifically with the idea that the ultimate achievement of true holiness and that of true happiness are separable.) See, inter alia, 1 Pt 1:8-9, Jn 16:22, Rom 14:17, Rom 15:13, Heb 12:2.
That is, if you want happiness more than God, you won't find true happiness. This applies directly to the university president's statement.
I think a good case can be made that it is a validly Christian position pursuing holiness without an awareness of happiness (both one's own and that of others) is the root of blind ritualism like that Christ repeatedly condemns, and pursuing happiness without an awareness of holiness is hedonism (with Christ, also, repeatedly condemns), and that the Christian route rejects the separation entirely -- you can't pursue any of those (holiness, happiness for oneself, or happiness for others) properly while seeing them as separate things.
There was a valid point made that the student chose to go to a Christian college. But note that the logic that that implies is precisely the logic behind trigger warnings: that people can choose what to associate with. Clearly, the student did not anticipate the content of the sermon, despite knowing it was a Christian university. So in that case, a warning for that lecture would have let the student know whether to go, and, depending on how important it was to them, possibly drop out.
Deliberately not having trigger warnings is deliberately deceptive.
facepalm
It seems that in the absence of a warning, there is no informed consent; asking for a warning allows for freedom of association.
If the OP had said "being open to guilt etc is an integral part of our university; as such, anyone refusing to go to this talk will be expelled. However, we will tell people in advance, so they can choose not to go, and then leave." I would support him. To specifically say "I'm not telling people about what will happen" means you don't want people to know in advance. How is that not deceptive?
As I noted above, the argument that the student chose a Christian college and therefore should know about it falls flat, because the student did not know about it. And if knowing was a good thing, then so would a trigger warning on the talk; it's literally accomplishing the task of making sure people know.
> If the OP had said "being open to guilt etc is an integral part of our university; as such, anyone refusing to go to this talk will be expelled. However, we will tell people in advance, so they can choose not to go, and then leave." I would support him. To specifically say "I'm not telling people about what will happen" means you don't want people to know in advance. How is that not deceptive?
The mere thought that this is what you expect says, "I'm not a rational person."
How does anyone respond to that? There's nothing to be said to you. You've made no indication (from the many comments I've read) that you're prepared to have your mind changed or that you're open to other points of view.
You have come to an irrational conclusion and that's it. You're finished. Everyone else (that doesn't agree) is a "jerk" and can take a hike.
Which part of my comments suggested to you that I'm not willing to hear out other views?
I've tried to lay out my arguments at length. Are there any premises I assume that you disagree with, or are there steps I take that are logically unjustified?
And specifically, why is my claim irrational? It's mostly a moral claim, so to be irrational it must conflict with other moral claims I hold, right?
(Also, it's a bit weird that you seem to have a dichotomy between "rational" and "irrational" people; nobody is perfectly rational, and classifying specific arguments as rational/irrational is often more useful. Especially when it leads you to refuse to argue for a position on the dubious grounds that they aren't interested in hearing it.
And perhaps reflect on the fact that by writing off a differing position as irrational without bothering to rebut it, you're creating the bubble you accuse me of being in.
The arguments I see for not having one are: too few people would care so it's not worth inconveniencing the many for the few; there's already informed consent and so it's useless; and the talk is not harmful to anyone. (I think I had another minor one in mind but can't recall right now.)
1 is possible, but is not the one made by OP. I've argued against the premise of 2 (which the OP did make); if you have a more deontological worldview, you might want to frame this as the student's "own fault" for not realizing, but I generally don't blame people for being dumb (in the sense of insisting on them bearing the consequences of being dumb), instead asking which course of action yields the best consequences. In this case, if we assume informed freedom of association is a value, then adding information is a benefit.
3 would be a good defense if done well, but again, isn't the OP. It would actually be the best example of "I'm not a jerk"-type answers. But it's not immediately obvious how we can view something that bothered someone as not harming them. At best, you'd probably need to invoke Christian beliefs and go back to "informed consent" as above. Presumably you concede that Christians shouldn't do this to outsiders, and so the issue is about what counts as informed consent.