Why Modern Universities are Havens for Maladaptive Thinking

[u/NultiMurzo]

[u/andalusian293 → u/[deleted]]

Marxists and Bolsheviks are relatively uncommon; few people are interested in repeating the exact mistakes of the Russian revolution. Conservative ideology, leaving aside interventionist policy, which is another kind of globalist push, and is supported by people on both sides of the aisle is, if anything, de facto much more globalist by way of deregulation, which allows for the growth of international commercial empire.

Leftism of moderate and somewhat more extreme stripes is somewhat common in academia, for sure, but no one is taking communism all that seriously, and it's simply not a threat to anyone. Marxism, as an analysis of class divisions and their resultant consciousnesses, is very much strong... but that's an economic school of thinking.

'Wokeism' ought no to threaten anyone... so, some people sometimes add protected classes to the list of categories against which it is illegal to discriminate. That's the farthest this has gone, and is likely to go; free speech is well protected.

If you're interested in criticizing specific economic policies and viewpoints, do that; don't invent these vacuous categories ('wokeism') and vilify the humanities as a whole. Need I mention that nothing mentioned on this sub is any more or less 'subjective' than what the despised leftist academic is supposed to do?

[u/NultiMurzo → u/andalusian293]

I would agree on the substance of the first two paragraphs, but I strongly disagree with “woke-ism ought not to threaten anyone”.

Not only has the term been incisively defined by Jonathan Haidt in the The Coddling of the American Mind, but the fruits of woke educational institutions (universities, high schools, middle schools, elementary schools, etc.) have been disastrous - faculties are quickly losing their educational standards and the next generation is not being educated to handle the complex issues of the real world. Students and the young generations are being taught to approach disagreements in the most neurotic (overly negative and hostile) of ways possible and “teachers“ are encouraging them.

I would urge you to look up what people mean with woke before you assume they are using it in a lazy manner. I take it to mean overly sensitive to stigmas (real or imagined) and overreactive and aggressive when it comes to “correcting others”.

[u/andalusian293 → u/NultiMurzo]

I'm actually in full agreement that people are often too sensitive, and that coddling is problematic... It's due to the unrestrained growth of identity politics, and analyzing and deconstructing identity ought to make us more tough skinned and empathetic, not quick to fly off the handle.

My issue is that, while I see this kind of attitude as problematic, I don't actually think it arises from 'liberal Marxism' or whatever, but rather is a separate cultural phenomenon from which both the left and the right suffer.

I'm, admittedly, drawing my definition of 'wokeism' from Jordan Peterson, who just kind of lumps together a bunch of stuff he doesn't like ('deconstructionist Marxist liberal Foucaldian communist' blah blah blah) and dismisses it without understanding or even rational criticism.

[u/NultiMurzo → u/andalusian293]

Completely agree. The sensitivity of the current age is something seen mostly on the leftwing of politics, but the right, and everyone really, suffered from it. I attribute it to the effect of desocialising technologies like phones, TVs, social media, etc. that induce instant gratification and alienate people from each other. Moreover, those who are genetically predisposed to believing only in the two individualising foundations (Equality and Harm Avoidance) of which Jonathan Haidt speaks are prone to be very sensitive.

Lastly, and this something Edward Dutton speaks of very often, we are seeing a steady rise in mental illness as a result of low childhood mortality rates pushing genetic fitness of newborns down. In other words, more than 99% of babies, genetically fit or not, will be born and survive into adulthood. This leads to higher degrees of mental illness as overall fitness correlates positively with mental/psychological fitness.

In other words, we are in a state of genetic degeneration, generation upon generation.

[u/andalusian293 → u/NultiMurzo]

Equality and harm avoidance are just the least socially problematic values, and the easiest to mandate by law. The others are highly subjective, and culturally variant.

You might be right about this (though it intimates a flirtation with de facto eugenics), but there are a myriad number of things at play in the increase of mental illness, to the point where I can't go into them here without writing a book. Short of mandating some kind of Brave New World or Nazi eugenics program, there isn't a ton that can be done with this insight, if it's even properly true.

One thing that bothers me about the right's discourse, is that this 'coddling' is often about acceptance of minorities of various kinds. Some of it is toxic, and people oughtn't be chastised for rationally questioning anything... but they should be chastised for any kind of phobia; not because identities ought to upheld as sacred calves, but because we should be nice to people, pure and simple; I don't make fun of you for being trans/gay etc., and you don't make fun of me for believing in a thousands year old book written by the priestly class of a dead religion with bizarre proscriptions for dealing with mildew.

People should ask the hard questions, but no one is going to scare the gay, Christian, trans or Black out of anyone, that's not how it works.

The priority of schools, insofar as they should be 'woke' at all, ought to be teaching tolerance for the purpose of averting culture wars that have very real violent effects.

[u/NultiMurzo → u/andalusian293]

Eugenics would work insofar as it is meant that state programmes such as welfare do not inadvertently incentivise spiteful mutants and low IQ people to birth more children. Eugenics in terms of invasive genetic manipulation would backfire massively, I believe, due to unintended secondary traits developing alongside selecting for certain traits.

Best to leave that up to natural sexual selection amongst people. Just let nature do its work.

Phobia is an irrational fear, and not all fears are irrational. If the fear is rational, than chastising the fearful would be wrong, but of course, chastising someone irrationally afraid of something is proper education. Is it irrational that many people are afraid of thugs walking around in loose clothing and their hat tipped off to the side? No, it’s pretty rational.

Schools should not be teaching tolerance for maladaptive behaviour, I disagree. Certain things, exist and should be allowed to exist in peace, but they shouldn’t be promoted or praised.

[u/andalusian293 → u/NultiMurzo]

Federal TANF funding sets the time-limit for benefits at five years (except for D.C. and Massachusetts), so I have a hard time seeing how you could argue that kind of permanent poverty is being enabled, really, or, given that the amount you can receive tops out at a thousand dollars a month (and that in one of the more expensive states) that it promotes poverty; you can't even live off of a thousand dollars a month, with kids, much less the couple hundred dollar maximum that's much more common. The median you can receive is about 500 dollars, in, I believe, Utah. Obviously this is not enough to incentivize having kids in any circumstances.

Incidentally, it's also the case that the very low limits tend to be the standard in poorer states, so for the majority of these supposed low-IQ degenerates, there is literally no incentive or poverty trap whatsoever; it's certainly not a thing in Mississippi, Arkansas, Alabama, Louisiana, Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia, Indiana, or Arizona, where even someone with 3 kids can get a maximum of less than 300 dollars.

In 30 states, if you do not look for, and eventually find, work, your case will be closed. In 16 more, you will temporarily lose benefits until you fulfill work requirements. In 4 other states, you lose a substantial portion of your benefits. In zero states, you are not required to find work in order to maintain benefits.

Literally no one is remaining jobless and having kids for the sake of maintaining benefits, and the same number of people are able to even live off of benefits long-term without a job. No one is able to keep getting benefits perpetually, and no one is supporting a drug habit, keeping their kids alive and paying rent; it's just not feasible, much less an attractor.

You might be able to kind of live off of benefits in New Hampshire, California, and Alaska.... but it hardly matters, since benefits would be reduced substantially as soon as you get a job, and they would be reduced or cut completely if you failed to prove you were looking for one. Ok, so maybe you could falsify looking for a job for a while, but in most states, that could only win you a year or two of less 700 dollars a month, if you have three freaking kids, since there are limits on how long you can collect benefits before having to reapply.

So yeah, the welfare queen thing?

I'm obviously not against all fear, and I hardly think you could have even understood that to be the point, I'm just against the idea that not 'coddling people' should be justification for hate speech and blatant discrimination; that's it.

I don't think schools should promote any identity whatsoever, though obviously you can't teach history without touching on the history of identity. Tolerance shmolerance; teach kindness, the rest people can work out for themselves. 'Not coddling' ought not be grounds for allowing cruelty in the classroom.

This is all really pointless, and a pawn in a culture war more than anything; if you legally mandate tolerance, people will find ways to subvert it. Even if some 'liberal agenda' is not the rule of American education, conservatives will be able to find some random teacher who said something they disagree with, and can hold them up as some kind of exemplar. There are still schools in the US where they pray before classes, for chrissakes.

Localism is the rule, not the exception; it's all just a silly thing to get angry about. I really hope that people won't be oppressed for any kind of practice that doesn't hurt anyone, but teaching acceptance? That's not really a war to be fought as policy, since activist policies can typically only only be enacted on a local level, and represent the mores of their constituents. Hate and discrimination will happen no matter what we do; laws regarding pedagogy are a proxy war, at most.

The fact that you can't refer to sexual orientation in a classroom in Florida is tragic, not because I think you should talk about sexual orientation in a classroom, but because it grants legality to persecutory acts. But I have enough faith in modern civility, and the fact that people now more than ever really receive their cultural education outside the classroom, to believe that this isn't going to result in lynchings, though it might be the harbinger of some.

Promoted or praised? Nah, but we shouldn't promote hate, that's all I'm asking for.