How two incompatible sacred values are driving conflict and confusion in American universities

Jonathan Haidt

The ever insightful Jonathan Haidt at SUNY New Palz with the very excellent Eugene Health in the audience and who sits on convened the faculty task force on free speech. An aside: I was once told by an assistant professor climbing the greasy pole of tenure that she didn’t believe the PC-POMO tripe that is the prevailing culture but “played the game” in support of a tenuous career status, invoking any “identity” card that might have some currency and with the usual tick boxes to ingratiate themselves. After several years and eventual acceptance by the cabal who could make “things happen” (make or break), this prof came to become a believer with post-hoc reasoning to justify the cognitive dissonance. This is a sad blow to the teleology of veritism (or TRUTH) given the specific talents and interests of this person. Moreover, it’s sad how this person compromised their moral sensibility. At around 48 mins in JH talks about Taleb’s notion of anti-fragile and discussion of “free range” kids.

Disparate outcomes do not imply disparate treatments

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In Defense of Our National and Religious Traditions

religion

Interesting piece by Yoram Hazony in Mosaic.

How to shore up this collapsing front? Given the history I have described, it seems likely that there is now only one way: an alliance of Old Testament-conscious Protestants and nationalist Catholics and Jews who will seek to update the biblical and Protestant heritage of the West and restore it as the basis for a new era. Right now, this seems a distant prospect. But, realistically, I do not see anything else that can stave off what appears to be the rapid disintegration of the Western nations, caught as they are between the hammer of an aggressive and increasingly intolerant liberalism and the anvil of what Reno calls “a colonizing Islam confident of its sacred mission.”

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Heathenism is a state of mind. You can take it that I’m referring to one who does not see his world. He has no mental light. He destroys almost unwittingly. He cannot feel any God’s presence in his life. He is the 21st century man . . . It was an idea, a feeling, a sense of what 21st Century man might become if he’s not already: someone who’s lowered his standards spiritually, intellectually, morally whatever…someone who’s not even bothered searching for a spiritual life anymore but who’s completely existing on a materialistic plain — Pushing Ahead of the Dame

Walker Percy Wednesday 103

walker percy

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For two years I was caught between passionate liberals and conservatives among my fellow inmates at Fort Pelham. Most prisoners are ideologues. There is nothing else to do. Both sides had compelling arguments. Each could argue plausibly for and against religion, God, Israel, blacks, affirmative action, Nicaragua.

It was more natural for me, less boring, to listen than to argue. I was more interested in the rage than the arguments. After two years no one had convinced anyone else. Each side made the same points, the same rebuttals. Neither party listened to the other. They would come close as lovers, eyes glistening, shake fingers at each other, actually take hold of the other’s clothes. There were even fistfights.

It crossed my mind that people at war have the same need of each other. What would a passionate liberal or conservative do without the other?

. . .

Instead, I find myself wondering, just as I wondered at Fort Pelham, what it is the passionate arguer is afraid of. Is he afraid that he might be wrong? that he might be right? Is he afraid that if one does not argue there is nothing left? An abyss opens. Is it not the case that something is better than nothing, arguing, violent disagreement, even war?

More than once at Fort Pelham I noticed that passionate liberals, passionate on the race question, had no use for individual blacks, and that passionate conservatives could not stand one another. Can you imagine Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson spending a friendly evening alone together?

One of life’s little mysteries: an old-style Southern white and an old-style Southern black are more at ease talking to each other, even though one may be unjust to the other, than Ted Kennedy talking to Jesse Jackson—who are overly cordial, nervous as cats in their cordiality, and glad to be rid of each other.

In the first case—the old-style white and the old-style black—each knows exactly where he stands with the other. Each can handle the other, the first because he is in control, the second because he uses his wits. They both know this and can even enjoy each other.

In the second case—Ted Kennedy and Jesse Jackson—each is walking on eggshells. What to say next in this rarified atmosphere of perfect liberal agreement? What if one should violate the fragile liberal canon, let drop a racist remark, an anti-Irish Catholic slur? What if Jesse Jackson should mention Hymie? The world might end. They are glad to get it over with. What a relief! Whew!

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Stanley “Buckwheat” Dural, Jr.

music

I’ve held off mentioning the passing of Buckwheat Zydeco until I’d come across a decent obituary — here is the excellent Keith Spera doing just that.

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Philosophical Perspectives on Social Neuroscience

social neuroscience

I was the instigator of- and the action editor in support of- this special issue seen through by the very excellent Phil Robbins.

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Work, its moral meaning or import

Aristotle

Here’s a relatively recent piece from David Wiggins of course invoking the historical figure he is most familiar with — Aristotle:

One who agrees to speak about the ethical meaning of work might be expected to say something about its religious significance. Given limitations of time and competence, let me simply offer two remarkable utterances from the closing chapter of Simone Weil, The Need for Roots:

Death and labour are things of necessity and not of choice. The world only gives itself to Man in the form of food and warmth if Man gives himself to the world in the form of labour. But death and labour can be submitted to either in an attitude of revolt or else one of consent. They can be submitted to either in their naked truth or wrapped in lies . . . .

Man placed himself outside the current of Obedience. God chose as his punishment labour and death. Consequently labour and death, if Man undergoes them in a spirit of willingness, constitute a transference back into the current of Supreme Good which is Obedience to God.

If you prefer this over the quasi-Aristotelian account I have offered of the meaning of work – if you prefer to meditate here upon the person who undergoes labour and death in a spirit of acceptance – you arrive by another route at something not altogether alien to the conclusion that we reached before. On both accounts, the power and the possibility to do proper work is something that is central to the life and being of a human person. To have no work to do – to find nothing one can do that makes any difference to anyone or anything – is among the very worst things that can befall someone, even if he or she can escape starvation. There is, however, at least one notable difference between the Aristotelian and the Weilian outlooks. One who acts in the spirit thatWeil enjoins upon us has to accept whatever labour presents itself and be ready to adjust his or her expectations and putative satisfactions to the way things have to be. They must deploy their talents as best they can wherever it falls to them to labour. For others that may be more difficult. What these others may look for (in something of the spirit still of Aristotle, see Rhetoric 1367 a32) is work or occupation which, however hard it presses upon them, is not felt as any constraint or external compulsion upon them. In the world as it is they will often lament the shortfall between the work they find to do and the ideal we have described, according to which work at once reveals reality and places demands upon the their best powers and faculties. Something important will disappear from the world when human beings no longer even lament this shortfall but simply acquiesce in it.

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