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If you want to know what led us here, read: Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything about Race, Gender, and Identity--And Why This Harms Eve

If you want to know what led us here, read: Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything about Race, Gender, and Identity--And Why This Harms Everybody https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1634312023/ https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1634312023/

TheOtherHobbes 5y ago
Actually, no. The right has always prioritised irrational feelings over facts while pretending to do the opposite. The problem is more that Frankfurt School academia has buried that rather obvious fact under a blizzard of careerist Hegelian blather, which has left it with no response to tribal and irrational (and cynically manipulated) feeling-based "argument". Race and Gender critiques are perfectly valid, but they're not the only possible critiques, and this seems to have been forgotten. Certainly the fact that academia hasn't responded effectively to its own forced gig economy casualisation - when it might have a century or so ago - should give pause for thought.
js8 5y ago
I used to somewhat believe this too, but the fact is left is much more diverse than that. Some prominent left thinkers have always been in (rather vocal) opposition to this - from the top of my head, Noam Chomsky, David Graeber, Adolph Reed, Mark Fisher.. Anyway, I think the rise of emphasis on feelings is due to advertising technology, getting better at attacking feelings (and disabling critical thinking) in the recent decades. In some sense, the entitlement (frankly, everywhere on the political spectrum) is driven by the same "I am a consumer, so serve me" mentality.
- chillingeffect 5y ago
  I'm one who tries hard to interpret those texts into my own "common" comprehension. I would love it if academics could communicate in more down to Earth lingo. But I suspect they're obscuring much of it bc they don't want bad forces to utilize it. Agree with yr interp of feeling language. Hayakawa would too, re: poetry. Furthermore it's an expression of success... we've thought our way into awareness and can now practice "spirituality [...] forgiveness, [...] and healing." As well as just plain entertainment.... And all of this needs to bring in the media theory side that technical info has been moving out of books! I defy the authors to scan bound manuals, gopher, Usenet FAQs, IETF docs and github for signs of creeping "feminization."
ineedasername 5y ago
As a counterpoint, take a look at the GOPAC memo from 1990 titled "Language: A Key Mechanism of Control". Newt Gingrich made it a fundamental part of the Republican campaign playbook, and it's entire purpose was to use emotionally loaded terms to short circuit reason and control voters through their emotional responses instead. It's an initiative that began years earlier, but this memo with it's cynical and hypocritical title may be the biggest smoking gun. https://connectionslab.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/informationclearinghouse-info-a-key-mechanism-of-control.pdf https://connectionslab.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/inform... (This particular source is 1996, but the memo appeared as early as 1990.)

TheOtherHobbes 5y ago

Actually, no. The right has always prioritised irrational feelings over facts while pretending to do the opposite. The problem is more that Frankfurt School academia has buried that rather obvious fact under a blizzard of careerist Hegelian blather, which has left it with no response to tribal and irrational (and cynically manipulated) feeling-based "argument". Race and Gender critiques are perfectly valid, but they're not the only possible critiques, and this seems to have been forgotten. Certainly the fact that academia hasn't responded effectively to its own forced gig economy casualisation - when it might have a century or so ago - should give pause for thought.

js8 5y ago

I used to somewhat believe this too, but the fact is left is much more diverse than that. Some prominent left thinkers have always been in (rather vocal) opposition to this - from the top of my head, Noam Chomsky, David Graeber, Adolph Reed, Mark Fisher.. Anyway, I think the rise of emphasis on feelings is due to advertising technology, getting better at attacking feelings (and disabling critical thinking) in the recent decades. In some sense, the entitlement (frankly, everywhere on the political spectrum) is driven by the same "I am a consumer, so serve me" mentality.

chillingeffect 5y ago
I'm one who tries hard to interpret those texts into my own "common" comprehension. I would love it if academics could communicate in more down to Earth lingo. But I suspect they're obscuring much of it bc they don't want bad forces to utilize it. Agree with yr interp of feeling language. Hayakawa would too, re: poetry. Furthermore it's an expression of success... we've thought our way into awareness and can now practice "spirituality [...] forgiveness, [...] and healing." As well as just plain entertainment.... And all of this needs to bring in the media theory side that technical info has been moving out of books! I defy the authors to scan bound manuals, gopher, Usenet FAQs, IETF docs and github for signs of creeping "feminization."

ineedasername 5y ago

As a counterpoint, take a look at the GOPAC memo from 1990 titled "Language: A Key Mechanism of Control". Newt Gingrich made it a fundamental part of the Republican campaign playbook, and it's entire purpose was to use emotionally loaded terms to short circuit reason and control voters through their emotional responses instead. It's an initiative that began years earlier, but this memo with it's cynical and hypocritical title may be the biggest smoking gun. https://connectionslab.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/informationclearinghouse-info-a-key-mechanism-of-control.pdf https://connectionslab.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/inform... (This particular source is 1996, but the memo appeared as early as 1990.)