A very unfair perspective.
Consider first these two quotes (stolen from vdare.com) :
"[University training] is the education which gives a man a clear conscious view of his own opinions and judgments, a truth in developing them, an eloquence in expressing them, and a force in urging them. It teaches him to see things as they are, to go right to the point, to disentangle a skein of thought, to detect what is sophistical, and to discard what is irrelevant."
~ John Henry Newman, The Idea of a University, 1852.
"Citizens capable of contributing to the development of a sustainable society must first develop empathy. This empathy will be developed through an advanced awareness of oppression and inequity that exists at a local and national level. Students will become aware of inequities, examine why these inequities exist, understand the concept of institutionalized privilege, and recognize systematized oppression (e.g. individual, institutional, and societal). Students will also examine forms of oppression related to specific social identities (e.g. race, ethnicity, gender, sexual identity, SES, religion, and age) and will recognize the benefits of dismantling systems that support this oppression. By having this knowledge, students can then learn how to change these systems and other systems which impact equity of resources."
~University of Delaware, Residence Life: Competencies: Narritive [sic] 2, 2007.
Obviously, this is a very unfair comparison. The reason it is an unfair comparison is that it confronts some anonymous, faceless, witless bureaucrat of 2007 with Cardinal Newman. A more uneven contest could scarcely be devised, it's like organising a competition between a moonbeam and an earthworm to see which, if applied upon the hair, face and breast of your favourite concubine yields the best effect. What's the earthworm supposed to do, glare ?
Nevertheless, fair or unfair a contest, it shall be judged. Life isn't fair, and the one thing the universe most definitely lacks is empathy. It contains symmetry and agony, bankruptcy and gallantry, fallacy and family and all sortsy and mannery of thingy, but definitely no empathy. None at all.
Consequently : the first piece is a gem. It discusses its subject matter with the full, round elegance and the pleasant ease of self-aware mastery. Nothing could be removed to a benefit of expression nor could anything be added to an improvement of meaning. It's good enough to stand as the permanent definition of its subject in English, I'm certain that should I ever need to quote a definition of it I will use this and to be perfectly honest the entire reason I am even writing this article is that it seduced me.
The second piece is a butchered fetus with spina bifida mauled by a wolverine trapped inside the body of a bear. Its title is misspelled and each of its five sentences is factually incorrect. Let's go into detail :
As to Sentence 1,
- Citizenry is a concept of the state. The sentence otherwise discusses society, not statality. The author is ignorant of the difference.
- The structure of the sentence is incorrect with respect to its intended meaning. It really should read "Citizens must develop empathy in order to become capable of contributing to the development of a sustainable society.", inasmuch as we don't normally say "Deer in order to be eaten must first be hunted."
- A "sustainable society" is nonsense. Consider the following definition, (proposed by sustainablesocietyusa.com) : "A sustainable society is one that can progress without catastrophic setbacks in the foreseeable future." Such a thing is then a round cube in perpetual motion.
- Inasmuch as empathy is concerned with emotions, in has no place in any discussion of citizenship or society, as emotions are strictly private affairs whereas society and state are strictly public affairs specifically forbidden from touching on the private sphere in any way as a condition required for the allowing of their continued existence.
- The substitution of "must" for the the proper verb in context (should) is offensive.
As to Sentence 2,
- "This empathy" is stylistically awkward and formally incorrect, as it promises but fails to introduce a subset of empathy.
- Inasmuch as the sentence is a proposition as to the future, it is out of place in this discussion ; inasmuch as the will auxiliary is intended as yet another substitute should, the sentence is stylistically awkward and perhaps unintentionally gives away the hesitant footing of its author. This would be the exact opposite of elegance.
- The construction is dependent on externalities (inequity and oppression), with complex requirements placed on their presentation (must exist locally and universally). This makes it ironically unsustainable. Due to the conflict with Sentence 1 this would be also the exact opposite of elegance.
- Lots and lots and lots of buzzwords heaped upon wooden language (constructions such as "at the local and national level") are yet another exact opposite of elegance.
As to Sentence 3,
- Examples are promised but not delivered. Should one wish to clarify what they mean by "afafaclacas" through examples, it'd be unwise to then offer the examples of upper afafaclacas, lower afafaclacas and lateral afafaclacas. A much better example would have been something like "forcing university students to examine particular topics whether they're interested in them or not". The very definition is in fact its very own topic of study, neatly mirroring the universal tendency of socialism to create the very crises it supposedly is in the business of resolving.
- The sentence leaves the unpleasant impression that the later curricula fail to include a discussion of "because people like the teacher could not find employment otherwise" under the topic of "why do these proposed problems exist", and that students are not encouraged to make up their own minds but instead are required to conform to logically shoddy and intellectually shallow prefabricated answers, much in the manner of Trivial Pursuit. This is dishonest and disqualifies the proponents from participation in Academia.
As to Sentence 4,
- The absence of the drawbacks to go with the benefits makes the structure unsteady.
- It would be extraordinary that processes or phenomena (it's unclear from the text which kind this "oppression" is intended to be) attach to specific social identities. A comparable notion would be that there's an illumination process for spheres and another for cubes. While this may be the case in computerised simulations of reality it nevertheless isn't the case in reality, and one would hope this deranged view of the world is limited to some sort of Metaphysics programme.
As to Sentence 5,
- "By having this knowledge" is atrociously awkward an expression, betraying a very uneasy relation between the author and reflection.
- There can't be such a thing as "equity of resources" any more than there can be an "agreement of glass". Equity is a property of phenomena (when they in any way impact at least two agents), and not of things. This taking the most favourable construction of equity, otherwise the word principally works as a noun in both law and finance, rendering the construction completely nonsensical.
- The proposition that learning how to change systems is not a subset of system design, but some sort of secret alchemy stemming from ethical considerations is so barbarous as to, again, exclude the proponent from Academia. Might as well learn how to turn walking sticks into snakes if anyone says Jahveh wrongfully.
Sad, isn't it. Well, time for a short
So, about fifty years ago there existed somewhere towards the tip of Africa a small country called Rhodesia. This small country was a British possession, inhabited by about ninety-six black people for each four white people. Rhodesia of the time had a yearly income per capita of about a thousand dollars, practically no voting or land ownership rights for the black people and a roughly stable government.
That Rhodesia no longer exists, but you know the same place today under the name of Zimbabwe. The Zimbabwe of today is an independent, democratic state with ample rights for black people, including the right to vote and to own land, as well as to rape and murder (if they're friends with the president) or else the right to enjoy being raped and murdered (if they aren't). The right to vote doesn't work very well in practice, in the sense that the last time the opposition won, announcing the election results was delayed by five weeks and the winners soundly beaten up by the army-police thing they have.
The economy also doesn't work very well in practice, as you've probably heard about their one gazillion bills and whatnot. Moreover, the average income is about five hundred dollars per capita, so half what it was fifty years ago. With the caveat, of course, that $500 in 2013 could perhaps buy as much as about $70 fifty years ago, so the economy was rather cut in 13, not just in two. And of course the US GDP grew about 25x in the interval, and the US is a developed country which by that fact grows slower than developing countries which are well managed. So we could say that the economic difference between Zimbabwe as it stands today and a Rhodesia as it could have been today is about 500 : 1. Instead of growing 30x or so, it shrunk 13x.
How did all this happen ? Well... this is where it all gets very unfair. So, fifty years ago the Brits decided they're granting independence to their old colonies in Africa, but they didn't want to grant Rhodesia independence unless it introduces a democratic system. Rhodesia didn't want to introduce a democratic system, figuring that its undemocratic, strictly white representative bodies are doing well enough and certainly better than any alternative. You know, just like Churchill's democracy. A decade with this, until eventually the Rhodesians had enough waiting and declared their independence unilaterally.
This had two effects. On one hand, at the hands of the British and foreign black lobby, the independence was not recognised, and moreover the UN imposed sanctions upon Rhodesia, making it really difficult for their trade. On the other hand, armed mercenaries started pouring in through the North border, to try and la revolucion hasta y per siempre. Two local socialist insurgencies also formed. The white government, still enjoying the support of the tribal chiefs, as well as the population generally fought the would-be revolutionaries and kept them at bay for about a decade. Eventually it got so bad that the average citizen would spend six weeks campaigning and then six weeks on his farm. You know, sort of like how the Jews in Israel have been faring for the past... oh, fifty years.
Anyway, after a decade of war, with the situation at the borders deteriorating, Ian Smith agreed to switch to a democratic system. This started cordially enough, and so in 1980 Rhodesia-Zimbabwe seemed poised to recoup the time lost, rebuild and come out a great nation. And this is where things get really very unfair. Democracy didn't work out for Rhodesia. After thirty years of being ruled by black people for black people, Rhodesia is in much worse a shape than it was at the begining. It's not that it stagnated, it's that it collapsed. In point of fact, thirty years of Mugabe, supported by the international community and with peaceful borders have been worse for Rhodesia than twenty years of Smith, isolated by the international community and with foreign mercenaries pouring over the borders. Not a little worse. Much, much worse.
Consider the situation for yourself. Imagine that tomorrow, your country is no longer allowed to import anything, or export anything. Anyone that you know working in an industry that exports has a chance to lose his job. Any item you buy that's not produced locally will no longer be available. And the day after that, people with guns start coming in over the border to shoot shit up. Yo man, where's the party! And not one, or two, or ten. Let's say a hundred a year if your country is the size of Cyprus, a million or so strong. If not, scale up. And this state of affairs goes on for a decade or so. These aren't trivial problems, incidentally. Just one lone shooter can cause a lot of trouble in otherwise very advanced, rich and powerful countries, as you've probably seen on the news. Slight changes in international trade send whole cabinets into disaray.
And now imagine that after all this, peace is signed. The country can export again, it can import again, and there's no more pillagers with heavy automatic rifles pouring in, on the contrary, you get international support. The only caveat is that the country is to be run by democratic institutions. And the net result of thirty years of democratic institutions is that you're in much, much worse shape than you were after the war and embargo. You haven't stagnated, you've collapsed. This is the story of Rhodesia.
How does the story of Rhodesia sound to you ? Does it sound plausible or implausible ? This is important, because as implausible as it may sound, the story of Rhodesia is quite factual.
Now let's move on :
Untold thousands of people have their careers invested in this gibberish: not only outright babbling lunatics like Dr. Shakti Butler, but bland, cheerful middle-class careerists—pod people, whose nervous systems have been taken over by alien intelligences.
And don't think this is just once incident at one university. There are entire professional organizations with thousands of members building careers on this poisonous filth: N.A.S.P.A., for example, and A.C.P.A. They see themselves at the real educators of our young people.
They're not going away; they're not going to disappear; they're certainly not going to abandon the careers in "diversity" they have staked so much on and switch to more honest and socially-healthful lines of work—devising computer viruses, say, or running confidence scams on elderly widows, or selling crack cocaine to minors.
The question we never asked, but should have asked, is what exactly motivated those foreign mercenary fighters to come in and attack the Rhodesian government ? If you ask them, they will of course speak of principle. A desire for a better world, an earnest belief in "equity" as misunderstood by the nameless bureaucrat earlier, good stuff like that. Sustainable societies, an opposition to oppression, an end to evil.
These are however mere words, sprouted by people with very low literacy quotients. These words, while they may on occasion end up arranged so as to sound well (rarely, really), are meaningless to them. What drives these people is what drives primitive man since forever : a lust to rape and pillage. A desire to take for himself. An appetite for life. Good things, really, but sorely misplaced in the hearts and hairy arms of inferior degenerates. Inferior degenerates, such as the racist millitants attacking a peaceful country because they didn't like the skin color of its leaders. Inferior degenerates, such as the racist bureaucrats attacking intelligent people because they don't feel at ease in the company of intelligent people, because intelligent people contradicti their misplaced expectation of being equal with the world.
Obviously the educational system of the United States won't fare any better than the poor country of Rhodesia did. Once the career leeches have found a trickle of blood they're not about to give it up under any circumstance. This was in fact the justification for the very violent response after the September 11 attacks. The US suddenly saw itself about to become a sort of Rhodesia, and imagined for a brief decade that perhaps striking some mighty blows will discourage the vermin from ever trying again.
The decade is just about up, and by the looks of things it didn't work. The reason it didn't work, and the reason it will never work is contained in the “Why I am not a white nationalist” article :
And as to the “crime” angle, the question before each and everyone is, “how many criminals have you shot in the act”. If the answer is zero, you’re not one of the people discussing crime, you’re one of the people aspiring to be on TV. Get a gun, learn how to use it, shoot whoever attacks you and there you go, complete solution for the actual problem. What’s next, hanging around the tolerant Internets whining about how these whores of women prefer forward men who actually say something instead of gazing through your weird garb and repugnant affectation to see deep into your soul all about how you’d love her and cherish her ? The world belongs to the active, not to the thoughtful.
There isn't, nor is there going to be a way, manner, instrument or device through which to protect the passive from the active. If you're not prepared and absolutely willing to spend any amount of time up to the entire rest of your life seeking out and butchering leeches with only the satifaction of well applied, excruciating cruelty as your reward, you're not made for this world and you won't long have a place in it. This can't be delegated, it's a personal thing. Like citizenship. Like nationality. The only nation immune to the fate of Rhodesia is a nation of that kind of people, living in that kind of world.
Definitely a very unfair perspective.
———- Often enough involuntarily, which is why all the "privilege" hogwash was invented. If you're reasonably healthy, you don't need to do anything in particular to attract the envy of the ftizic hunchback. Your health is your privilege, n'est pas ? [↩]
Thursday, 14 November 2013
Citizenry is a concept of the state
Thursday, 7 August 2014
Yeeeees ?