Monday, December 31, 2007
HAPPY NEW YEAR
the voice of humility wishes everyone a happy and politically incorrect 2008 Anno Domini.
Thursday, December 27, 2007
Fear of Knowledge
The iSteve blog has a post about Anthropology titled Almost makes you feel sorry for Jared Diamond ...
. It is interesting enough, but is important to the voice of humility for providing a new definition for our ongoing Short Dictionary of Politics project. Herein we quote Mr. Sailer,
But there's another reason cultural anthropologists love ethnographic dazzle: political correctness. PC is essentially a fear of knowledge. The cultural anthropologists wallow in data and despise generalization and reductionism for fear that somebody might turn data into information, knowledge, and, God forbid, wisdom.
The voice of humility is an accomplished enough thief to work it into our dictionary thus:
Political Correctness: A fear of knowledge. Under the regime of political correctness as practiced in the United States and some other nations, any evidence disproving accepted doctrine must be denied, if not suppressed.
As we have stolen from Mr. Sailer, we will go against normal practice and link to his fundraiser, Panhandlemania. The voice of humility does not solicit money for others, but if you are not going to endow us with vast generosity, we would rather you donate to Mr. Sailer than NPR.
. It is interesting enough, but is important to the voice of humility for providing a new definition for our ongoing Short Dictionary of Politics project. Herein we quote Mr. Sailer,
But there's another reason cultural anthropologists love ethnographic dazzle: political correctness. PC is essentially a fear of knowledge. The cultural anthropologists wallow in data and despise generalization and reductionism for fear that somebody might turn data into information, knowledge, and, God forbid, wisdom.
The voice of humility is an accomplished enough thief to work it into our dictionary thus:
Political Correctness: A fear of knowledge. Under the regime of political correctness as practiced in the United States and some other nations, any evidence disproving accepted doctrine must be denied, if not suppressed.
As we have stolen from Mr. Sailer, we will go against normal practice and link to his fundraiser, Panhandlemania. The voice of humility does not solicit money for others, but if you are not going to endow us with vast generosity, we would rather you donate to Mr. Sailer than NPR.
Monday, December 24, 2007
The Acception That Proves the Rule
My kids got the movie, Accepted, out of the library. It is not much. Minimalist plot summary: Goofy kid can't get into college, starts one of his own and succeeds. In watching the movie accepted, it is obvious why “hero,” Bartelby, has not got into college. Stupid parents beget stupid kids. It is one long unending not so funny vulgarity. I don't know what it is about golf and college movies, but it appears de rigeur that there be an anti Anglo-Saxon jibe about anti-semitic blackballing. Hey, it's almost 2008, someone has to get the script writers of worthless movies a life.
So why do I waste time on something I think is complete dreck. The truth is, I'm not sure it was a comedy. Oh, it definitely wanted to be a comedy with nonstop lame jokes. Unfortunately, there was just a tad too much reality. The plot line of kid sets up college that is all things to all youth, well, is that not a lot of what college is sold as?
Lets take a look at a admissions web page for one of New England's popular colleges where cool kids go for a serious but fun four years (at least),
Imagine yourself at Middlebury College, with four years to try new ideas and explore the subjects and pursuits you feel passionate about. Four years to explore a liberal arts curriculum so diverse and interdisciplinary that it would take over a century to experience it all. Four years to act in a student production, do research with faculty scientists, join a relief mission to a third-world country, hike the Long Trail, or play left wing on the hockey team. Where would you start? No matter where you choose to begin, Middlebury offers abundant opportunities for learning and growth—and opens doors to the future you envision.
Ah well, I'm sure no catalog ever said something like, you will spend hours in the library doing term papers and we expect you to toe the line and if you don't, maybe voke ed is for you.
In a prior post, I told how I was required to read Newman's The Idea of a University the summer before I attended a papist undergraduate institution. To my utter shame, I remember so little of it. I vaguely recall some of it in that an undergraduate curriculum at a Liberal Arts college should be knowledge for its own sake. Well, I guess the fellow in the film was pursuing the goal of blowing things up with his mind for its own sake, but that is hardly a liberal art. No matter, we want you to grow and learn at Middlebury while we open doors for that future you envision.
South Harmon Institute of Technology, the name of the college in the film (yes, they meant that acronym) also wants you to grow and learn. The standards are undoubtedly looser than Middlebury's but the idea is really little different.
Now, do not get the idea the voice of humility is decrying this. After all, if we have a real system of liberal education, maybe one hundredth of one percent of the population might qualify. That is not on. The country would not stand for it and the thought of an aimless horde of seventeen year olds being unleashed on the country to search for work they are unqualified to do and probably does not exist is scary to say the least. No let them ferment for a few years and take jobs that the country needs like drug counselor or campus security worker.
Indeed, we have been marching toward this for well over a hundred years. No, it is not something that started with the post WWII GI Bill. Christopher Lasch, In the Culture of Narcissism wrote that The president of Princeton was hoping the success of the football team would lead to interest and applications to his college among Kentuckians well over a century ago. Princeton, that bastion of privilege, where the BA is a ticket to membership in the elite actually had to sell itself to rubes in the hinterlands?
The growth of college has probably been the most successful rent seeking enterprise in world history, putting the pre-christian pagan priesthood that it has much in common with to shame.
So why do I waste time on something I think is complete dreck. The truth is, I'm not sure it was a comedy. Oh, it definitely wanted to be a comedy with nonstop lame jokes. Unfortunately, there was just a tad too much reality. The plot line of kid sets up college that is all things to all youth, well, is that not a lot of what college is sold as?
Lets take a look at a admissions web page for one of New England's popular colleges where cool kids go for a serious but fun four years (at least),
Imagine yourself at Middlebury College, with four years to try new ideas and explore the subjects and pursuits you feel passionate about. Four years to explore a liberal arts curriculum so diverse and interdisciplinary that it would take over a century to experience it all. Four years to act in a student production, do research with faculty scientists, join a relief mission to a third-world country, hike the Long Trail, or play left wing on the hockey team. Where would you start? No matter where you choose to begin, Middlebury offers abundant opportunities for learning and growth—and opens doors to the future you envision.
Ah well, I'm sure no catalog ever said something like, you will spend hours in the library doing term papers and we expect you to toe the line and if you don't, maybe voke ed is for you.
In a prior post, I told how I was required to read Newman's The Idea of a University the summer before I attended a papist undergraduate institution. To my utter shame, I remember so little of it. I vaguely recall some of it in that an undergraduate curriculum at a Liberal Arts college should be knowledge for its own sake. Well, I guess the fellow in the film was pursuing the goal of blowing things up with his mind for its own sake, but that is hardly a liberal art. No matter, we want you to grow and learn at Middlebury while we open doors for that future you envision.
South Harmon Institute of Technology, the name of the college in the film (yes, they meant that acronym) also wants you to grow and learn. The standards are undoubtedly looser than Middlebury's but the idea is really little different.
Now, do not get the idea the voice of humility is decrying this. After all, if we have a real system of liberal education, maybe one hundredth of one percent of the population might qualify. That is not on. The country would not stand for it and the thought of an aimless horde of seventeen year olds being unleashed on the country to search for work they are unqualified to do and probably does not exist is scary to say the least. No let them ferment for a few years and take jobs that the country needs like drug counselor or campus security worker.
Indeed, we have been marching toward this for well over a hundred years. No, it is not something that started with the post WWII GI Bill. Christopher Lasch, In the Culture of Narcissism wrote that The president of Princeton was hoping the success of the football team would lead to interest and applications to his college among Kentuckians well over a century ago. Princeton, that bastion of privilege, where the BA is a ticket to membership in the elite actually had to sell itself to rubes in the hinterlands?
The growth of college has probably been the most successful rent seeking enterprise in world history, putting the pre-christian pagan priesthood that it has much in common with to shame.
Thursday, December 20, 2007
From the Sublime
Over on the Black Sea up until a few days ago there was a lovely picture picture of Hope Sandoval of the band Mazzy Star with the words, "I want to taste the breath that's true."
Since then, he has posted a picture of some specimens of what looks to be Underclass Caucasia and below has the words of Hank five before Agincourt, as written by Billy Lancerattle, "For he today that sheds his blood with me shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile, this day shall gentle his condition."
In looking at the picture, I am more reminded of the words of Wellington before Waterloo, "I don´t know what they do to the enemy but they scare the hell out of me."
I reflected on this picture in relation to my post on inequality, Watsonia Delenda Est just below. Anyone who thinks that if the other just disappears we will enter into a state of Nirvana need only look at the picture at the Black Sea and remember the words of JJ Walker,
Northern Ireland shows that when there are no Blacks or Jews around, people can improvise.
There is no society so poor that it will lack for an underclass. ergo inequality ergo conflict.
As to the couple in the picture at Black Sea, had he been at Agincourt, no matter how many acts of valor Baldie might perform, the only gentling of his condition possible was centuries away. If the battle took place today, Henry would not have knighted him, but would have given him leave to undergo electro shock with twice the voltage for Blondie.
Since then, he has posted a picture of some specimens of what looks to be Underclass Caucasia and below has the words of Hank five before Agincourt, as written by Billy Lancerattle, "For he today that sheds his blood with me shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile, this day shall gentle his condition."
In looking at the picture, I am more reminded of the words of Wellington before Waterloo, "I don´t know what they do to the enemy but they scare the hell out of me."
I reflected on this picture in relation to my post on inequality, Watsonia Delenda Est just below. Anyone who thinks that if the other just disappears we will enter into a state of Nirvana need only look at the picture at the Black Sea and remember the words of JJ Walker,
Northern Ireland shows that when there are no Blacks or Jews around, people can improvise.
There is no society so poor that it will lack for an underclass. ergo inequality ergo conflict.
As to the couple in the picture at Black Sea, had he been at Agincourt, no matter how many acts of valor Baldie might perform, the only gentling of his condition possible was centuries away. If the battle took place today, Henry would not have knighted him, but would have given him leave to undergo electro shock with twice the voltage for Blondie.
Monday, December 10, 2007
Watsonia Delenda Est
James Malloy quotes W.D. Hamilton on GNXP,
... [M]ight it be fair also to say that the champions of 'no difference' in race or sex, or intelligence ... are the guardians of a greater 'untruth' that allows people to live together in mutual harmony, implying that these critics really deserve to be praised as our protectors even when they are factually wrong? ... it is roughly how the self-appointed guardians choose to present themselves - leaving aside, usually, the step of frankly admitting that they are promoting factual untruths when they know that they are.
The problem with the quote above is that no matter what is said and done, we don't live in harmony. If there were real acceptance of each other, why rock the boat. Unfortunately, as there is no equality, it can not be glossed over with happy talk. Equality does not exist in nature and has never existed amongst men and women. If there is not equality then there can only be jealousy when the observation of group differences occurs. This is tragic. When members of Group A complain that a test was designed by Group B and thus benefits only Group B members and Group B members reply that Group C test takers had no part in the design of the test and outdo Group B it has no effect on the argument because the conclusion, if true is still felt as an insult. Do Group B members not feel jealous of Group C because Group C is relatively small here and intermarries at a high rate. If there were fifty million Northeast Asians swamping colleges would American Caucasia's attitude become similar to Black America's? No, I don't expect ranting about "Yellow Skin Privilege."
Our species is, in the main, nothing to write home about. We strut and brag and yet so few of us have ever advanced mankind. We are using the storage batteries charged by others. Let us read the words of Ralph Adams Cram, whose writings on the subject influenced Albert Jay Nock to abandon egalitarianism,
Yes, but there is another side to the question. However repulsive and degrading the general condition of any period in the past, there never has been a time when out of the darkness did not flame into light bright figures of men and women who in character and capacity were a glory to the human race. Nor were they only those whose names we know and whose fame is immortal. We know from the evidences that there were more whose identity is not determined, men and women lost in the great mass of the underlying mob, who in purity and honour and charity were co-equal with the great figures of history. Between them and the basic mass there was a difference greater than that which separates, shall we say, the obscene mob of the November Revolution in Russia, and the anthropoid apes. They fall into two absolutely different categories, the which is precisely the point I wish to make.
We do not behave like human beings because most of us do not fall within that classification as we have determined it for ourselves, since we do not measure up to standard. And thus:
With our invincible—and most honourable but perilous—optimism we gauge humanity by the best it has to show. From the bloody riot of cruelty, greed and lust we cull the bright figures of real men and women. Pharaoh Akhenaten, King David, Pericles and Plato, Buddha and Confucius and Lao Tse, Seneca and Marcus Aurelius and Virgil, Abder-Rahman of Cordoba, Charlemagne and Roland; St. Benedict, St. Francis, St. Louis; Godfrey de Bouillon, Saladin, Richard Coeur de Lion; Dante, Leonardo, St. Thomas Aquinas, Ste. Jeanne d'Arc, Sta. Teresa, Frederick II, Otto the Great, St. Ferdinand of Spain, Chaucer and Shakespeare, Strafford and Montrose and Mary of Scotland, Washington, Adams and Lee. These are but a few key names; fill out the splendid list for yourselves. By them we unconsciously establish our standard of human beings.
Now to class with them and the unrecorded multitude of their compeers, the savage and ignorant mob beneath, or its leaders and mouthpieces, is both unjust and unscientific. What kinship is there between St. Francis and John Calvin; the Earl of Strafford and Thomas Crumwell; Robert E. Lee and Trotsky; Edison and Capone? None except their human form. They of the great list behave like our ideal of the human being; they of the ignominious sub-stratum do not—because they are not. In other words, the just line of demarcation should be drawn, not between Neolithic Man and the anthropoid ape, but between the glorified and triumphant human being and the Neolithic mass which was, is now and ever shall be.
The higher beings amongst us are infinitesimally rare and for all practical purposes are a species above. The brilliant fellows at the right tail of the bell curve as measured by tests are so few. That they are almost never descendants of Sub Saharan Africa or are Women is seen as injustice before any reflection takes place.
Well, I am descended from a nation that has not had that many members of the intellectual elite. By intellectual elite, I don't mean senior partners in Biglaw. There have been some of those from amongst us and valued members of other overblown so called professions. No, I mean a Newton or Gallileo or Archimedes or Einstein. The color of their skin or gender is irrelevant as any of their achievements have benefited all. Still, there is resentment.
You know, I wish people of my ethnicity were top of the pops. I kind of resent that Jews score consistently better. I also remember the early fifties when parents would not let kids play together for fear of Polio. A relative by marriage spent the last few years of his life in an iron lung and was soon buried in his well decorated uniform. I played with his son at the beach where he could at least take off his braces to swim. One day we went to a building and waited in line. My sisters and I were given a shot. Soon, no parent stopped their kids from going off to play.
The point is, the scientist who conjured the vaccine may not have been Pythagoras, but he was no slouch. If the choice were my kid in an iron lung and a Jew getting a scholarship that obviates that, well, I hope I would not be churlish in the matter.
Ah, but the reigning egalitarianism denies there is anything special in any accomplishment. If only discrimination or prejudice were extinguished then anyone could be anything. In practice this means the game is rigged and we hope for the golden day when anyone can be the equal of Stephen Hawking in brainpower, and, only brainpower. Does anyone really believe this?
It seems about a thousand years ago, but I vaguely remember a Firing Line show with Malcolm Muggeridge and Germaine Greer and a bunch of Lefty Brits. At one point, Muggeridge opined about a doctrine that no one really believes and likened it to the Marxist idea of the withering away of the state. The implication was that even Marxist were not stupid enough to believe in such tripe anymore. All the assorted lefties tried to look as if they were not there. They could not say, "Quite right there, Malchie, old boy," but they hardly wanted to stupidly say how it was an article of their true faith.
Well Germaine, as a sub-mediocrity myself, I lead all in hailing your installation in the grand pantheon of the Gods of Mediocrity. She has had a good run in a life of self promotion but is like all the other deniers on Firing Line or the attackers of Watson. Down deep they know that inequality is all pervasive as was Marxism a crock. They also know their own limitations. As expressed in Fewtril #216 of Deogolwulf
Mediocrity tends to a tolerance of everything but excellence.
That makes sense. If all the gods we make are mediocrities, when a real one shows up he has to die.
I live in a nice enough house with many wonderful things. I drive a car that transports me great distances. All the arts and sciences that are in these, I had no part in creating. The smallest of the inventions were the genius of others. It is so with all but the tiniest fraction of humans. It has not been a bad life and I am grateful.
... [M]ight it be fair also to say that the champions of 'no difference' in race or sex, or intelligence ... are the guardians of a greater 'untruth' that allows people to live together in mutual harmony, implying that these critics really deserve to be praised as our protectors even when they are factually wrong? ... it is roughly how the self-appointed guardians choose to present themselves - leaving aside, usually, the step of frankly admitting that they are promoting factual untruths when they know that they are.
The problem with the quote above is that no matter what is said and done, we don't live in harmony. If there were real acceptance of each other, why rock the boat. Unfortunately, as there is no equality, it can not be glossed over with happy talk. Equality does not exist in nature and has never existed amongst men and women. If there is not equality then there can only be jealousy when the observation of group differences occurs. This is tragic. When members of Group A complain that a test was designed by Group B and thus benefits only Group B members and Group B members reply that Group C test takers had no part in the design of the test and outdo Group B it has no effect on the argument because the conclusion, if true is still felt as an insult. Do Group B members not feel jealous of Group C because Group C is relatively small here and intermarries at a high rate. If there were fifty million Northeast Asians swamping colleges would American Caucasia's attitude become similar to Black America's? No, I don't expect ranting about "Yellow Skin Privilege."
Our species is, in the main, nothing to write home about. We strut and brag and yet so few of us have ever advanced mankind. We are using the storage batteries charged by others. Let us read the words of Ralph Adams Cram, whose writings on the subject influenced Albert Jay Nock to abandon egalitarianism,
Yes, but there is another side to the question. However repulsive and degrading the general condition of any period in the past, there never has been a time when out of the darkness did not flame into light bright figures of men and women who in character and capacity were a glory to the human race. Nor were they only those whose names we know and whose fame is immortal. We know from the evidences that there were more whose identity is not determined, men and women lost in the great mass of the underlying mob, who in purity and honour and charity were co-equal with the great figures of history. Between them and the basic mass there was a difference greater than that which separates, shall we say, the obscene mob of the November Revolution in Russia, and the anthropoid apes. They fall into two absolutely different categories, the which is precisely the point I wish to make.
We do not behave like human beings because most of us do not fall within that classification as we have determined it for ourselves, since we do not measure up to standard. And thus:
With our invincible—and most honourable but perilous—optimism we gauge humanity by the best it has to show. From the bloody riot of cruelty, greed and lust we cull the bright figures of real men and women. Pharaoh Akhenaten, King David, Pericles and Plato, Buddha and Confucius and Lao Tse, Seneca and Marcus Aurelius and Virgil, Abder-Rahman of Cordoba, Charlemagne and Roland; St. Benedict, St. Francis, St. Louis; Godfrey de Bouillon, Saladin, Richard Coeur de Lion; Dante, Leonardo, St. Thomas Aquinas, Ste. Jeanne d'Arc, Sta. Teresa, Frederick II, Otto the Great, St. Ferdinand of Spain, Chaucer and Shakespeare, Strafford and Montrose and Mary of Scotland, Washington, Adams and Lee. These are but a few key names; fill out the splendid list for yourselves. By them we unconsciously establish our standard of human beings.
Now to class with them and the unrecorded multitude of their compeers, the savage and ignorant mob beneath, or its leaders and mouthpieces, is both unjust and unscientific. What kinship is there between St. Francis and John Calvin; the Earl of Strafford and Thomas Crumwell; Robert E. Lee and Trotsky; Edison and Capone? None except their human form. They of the great list behave like our ideal of the human being; they of the ignominious sub-stratum do not—because they are not. In other words, the just line of demarcation should be drawn, not between Neolithic Man and the anthropoid ape, but between the glorified and triumphant human being and the Neolithic mass which was, is now and ever shall be.
The higher beings amongst us are infinitesimally rare and for all practical purposes are a species above. The brilliant fellows at the right tail of the bell curve as measured by tests are so few. That they are almost never descendants of Sub Saharan Africa or are Women is seen as injustice before any reflection takes place.
Well, I am descended from a nation that has not had that many members of the intellectual elite. By intellectual elite, I don't mean senior partners in Biglaw. There have been some of those from amongst us and valued members of other overblown so called professions. No, I mean a Newton or Gallileo or Archimedes or Einstein. The color of their skin or gender is irrelevant as any of their achievements have benefited all. Still, there is resentment.
You know, I wish people of my ethnicity were top of the pops. I kind of resent that Jews score consistently better. I also remember the early fifties when parents would not let kids play together for fear of Polio. A relative by marriage spent the last few years of his life in an iron lung and was soon buried in his well decorated uniform. I played with his son at the beach where he could at least take off his braces to swim. One day we went to a building and waited in line. My sisters and I were given a shot. Soon, no parent stopped their kids from going off to play.
The point is, the scientist who conjured the vaccine may not have been Pythagoras, but he was no slouch. If the choice were my kid in an iron lung and a Jew getting a scholarship that obviates that, well, I hope I would not be churlish in the matter.
Ah, but the reigning egalitarianism denies there is anything special in any accomplishment. If only discrimination or prejudice were extinguished then anyone could be anything. In practice this means the game is rigged and we hope for the golden day when anyone can be the equal of Stephen Hawking in brainpower, and, only brainpower. Does anyone really believe this?
It seems about a thousand years ago, but I vaguely remember a Firing Line show with Malcolm Muggeridge and Germaine Greer and a bunch of Lefty Brits. At one point, Muggeridge opined about a doctrine that no one really believes and likened it to the Marxist idea of the withering away of the state. The implication was that even Marxist were not stupid enough to believe in such tripe anymore. All the assorted lefties tried to look as if they were not there. They could not say, "Quite right there, Malchie, old boy," but they hardly wanted to stupidly say how it was an article of their true faith.
Well Germaine, as a sub-mediocrity myself, I lead all in hailing your installation in the grand pantheon of the Gods of Mediocrity. She has had a good run in a life of self promotion but is like all the other deniers on Firing Line or the attackers of Watson. Down deep they know that inequality is all pervasive as was Marxism a crock. They also know their own limitations. As expressed in Fewtril #216 of Deogolwulf
Mediocrity tends to a tolerance of everything but excellence.
That makes sense. If all the gods we make are mediocrities, when a real one shows up he has to die.
I live in a nice enough house with many wonderful things. I drive a car that transports me great distances. All the arts and sciences that are in these, I had no part in creating. The smallest of the inventions were the genius of others. It is so with all but the tiniest fraction of humans. It has not been a bad life and I am grateful.
Saturday, December 01, 2007
Orwellian Language of the Year
Okay, I really don't like to do the W pile on, but sometimes I can't help it.
The radio is on as background noise in the kitchen and our pres is giving his weekly address. Most of what I hear is blah blah blah blah blah as that is what it is. I do hear one thing, "Congress needs to pass a bill to protect the middle class from higher taxes."
I'm down witcha, George. File a bill that reads, "Any tax that attacks a middle class citizen, either physically or with hate speech shall serve a sentence not less than three years or more than ten and shall pay a fine of not less than $10,000 or more than $250,000 or its equivalent in real money."
There mon president, as they say, mission accomplished.
The radio is on as background noise in the kitchen and our pres is giving his weekly address. Most of what I hear is blah blah blah blah blah as that is what it is. I do hear one thing, "Congress needs to pass a bill to protect the middle class from higher taxes."
I'm down witcha, George. File a bill that reads, "Any tax that attacks a middle class citizen, either physically or with hate speech shall serve a sentence not less than three years or more than ten and shall pay a fine of not less than $10,000 or more than $250,000 or its equivalent in real money."
There mon president, as they say, mission accomplished.
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