It would also be fruitful to examine whether the subjects students are studying correlates with their enthusiasm for this kind of activism. My hypothesis would be that students are far more likely to sign on to this kind of social status-seeking hysteria when they begin to realize that their choice of major has placed them on the express escalator towards downward social mobility.
As the horrible realization forms that today’s economy has little need for (and places a correspondingly low value on) certain majors, students desperately cast about for some means to justify their existence and bolster their social status and self-esteem. Social activist enthusiasms, especially when in the immediate local area and are producible from any ‘microaggression’ that comes to hand, offer an almost effortlessly convenient solution.
Mountaineer wrote:
That was the majority opinion .... until WWI came along. That may have been when the myth of coexist actually died - long before the love generation or the bumper sticker tried to resurrect the myth. As Cher says, and the beat goes on....., and the beat goes on.
What the hell are you talking about? I know you tinge and color everything with your religious mumbo jumbo, but you better explain this one.
Last I checked we're still in the Age of Enlightenment. Medicine is going evidence based, politics and social reform are slooowly going evidence based; new discoveries are being made every day in the macroscopic universe, the microscopic universe and technological breakthroughts. What reality do you live in, sir?
Turn on the news. Age of Enlightenment? - you must be kidding me. Looks like a major mess most days to me from "enlightened" man's perspective, always has been, always will be. However, I know where I'm going and it is all good - that my friend is the real enlightened view but I doubt that is what you had in mind.
Mountaineer wrote:
Turn on the news. Age of Enlightenment? - you must be kidding me. Looks like a major mess most days to me from "enlightened" man's perspective, always has been, always will be. However, I know where I'm going and it is all good - that my friend is the real enlightened view but I doubt that is what you had in mind.
Are you seriously going to conflate the media's hyberbolic exploitation of very infrequent negative events compared to the past (aka fear porn or doom porn) and let it color your entire worldview? Magnitude is not the same as frequency. In every respect in every fucking way, we are better off on every measurement than 10, 20, 50, 100, 1000, 10000 years ago. If you've got a death wish because of your religious Armegeddeon fantasies then you should be smart enough to recognize that you're letting your biases create your own reality. And that is not necessarily the one going on in the real world off the TV screen. Shocking, I know. But I expect that kind of thought process from a naive liberal Millennial addicted to various forms of media with limited real world experience, not a retired Baby Boomer.
Last edited by MachineGhost on Fri Nov 27, 2015 1:03 am, edited 1 time in total.
"All generous minds have a horror of what are commonly called 'Facts'. They are the brute beasts of the intellectual domain." -- Thomas Hobbes
Disclaimer: I am not a broker, dealer, investment advisor, physician, theologian or prophet. I should not be considered as legally permitted to render such advice!
MachineGhost wrote:
In every respect in every fucking way, we are better off on every measurement than 10, 20, 50, 100, 1000, 10000 years ago.
Ironically, the dogmatic temporal-parochialism underlying progressivism is itself founded on an act of faith. Were there less ICBMs a hundred years ago? Was there more open, arable land several centuries ago? Were there less latch-key kids in the generation of our grandfathers? The future is not necessarily better than the past and much of the angst directed against religion stems from something very much like a belief. The world is both better and worse than the past, and if Mountaineer is wrong in employing religion to highlight the evils of this age, could not the same be said of those using progressivism to idolize the present?
MachineGhost wrote:
you should be smart enough to recognize that you're letting your biases create your own reality.
MachineGhost wrote:
In every respect in every fucking way, we are better off on every measurement than 10, 20, 50, 100, 1000, 10000 years ago.
Ironically, the dogmatic temporal-parochialism underlying progressivism is itself founded on an act of faith. Were there less ICBMs a hundred years ago? Was there more open, arable land several centuries ago? Were there less latch-key kids in the generation of our grandfathers? The future is not necessarily better than the past and much of the angst directed against religion stems from something very much like a belief. The world is both better and worse than the past, and if Mountaineer is wrong in employing religion to highlight the evils of this age, could not the same be said of those using progressivism to idolize the present?
MachineGhost wrote:
you should be smart enough to recognize that you're letting your biases create your own reality.
Precisely.
On an objective nature we're better off on every measurement, including politics. But politics is like religion; it is subjective and has very little to do with real world facts and very much to do with hyperbolic emotional hallucinotions. People believe what they're predisposed to believe and facts are just ignored or hand-waved away since it is incongruent with their world view.
I'll throw Mountaineer a bone. The media definitely seems far worse off. Any pretense at objectivity has been cast aside for attracting eyeballs entertainment and corporate profit. Those who political proclivities endear them to the current media partianiship probably prefer it now than back when Cronkite was delivering the news. And from a broader economic perspective, giving people exactly what they want (not necessarily what they need!) is the essence of capitalism. Murdoch is not stupid or he wouldn't be a billionaire. You must give people what they want to get rich.
Last edited by MachineGhost on Fri Nov 27, 2015 10:33 am, edited 1 time in total.
"All generous minds have a horror of what are commonly called 'Facts'. They are the brute beasts of the intellectual domain." -- Thomas Hobbes
Disclaimer: I am not a broker, dealer, investment advisor, physician, theologian or prophet. I should not be considered as legally permitted to render such advice!
