Obama and the Dems essentially own the mainstream media. Who, like it or not, still drive the political narrative in this country and frame the contours of debate, at least initially — though it’s true new media has made some inroads, particularly with talk radio, where the left just can’t seem to get a foothold.
An ill-informed or malinformed electorate is a dangerous one. So until we begin to look at reforming our media — which is nothing more, really, than a propaganda arm of the progressive movement disguised as neutral conduit for the information necessary to animate a system of workable self government — we’ll continue to allow 20% of the population, namely, those “progressives” whose ideology presupposes a kind of beneficent tyranny as its end game, to have an outsized, fraudulent, and malignant influence on our politics.
Which is to say, when we en mass finally awaken and work to take the country back from the statist left, we must deal firmly with a mainstream media complex that is peopled with the kind of leftwing ideologues routinely being spit out by academic “journalism” programs run by progressive political activists.
Or else we’ll be starting off yet again in the hole.
My solution? Refuse to buy into the allure of “objectivity” as the starting point. Demand instead that your news sources self identify their political biases. And from there, demand fidelity to the facts. A bias does not presuppose that one can’t at least strive for objectivity. That is, just because, say the WSJ editorial page, eg., skews conservative doesn’t mean it is entitled to its own facts; just as the New York times, because it is leftist, is entitled to its own. The problem arises when one is granted the mantle of objectivity upfront without having earned it, and without having to evince a fidelity to facts — relying instead on the proper “framing” of an issue to drive the trajectory of the narrative.
If we knew going in that a story were being framed from a particular ideological perspective, we’d read and react differently. And while it’s true most people know on a gut level that they shouldn’t really trust the mainstream press, when they’ve been conditioned their entire lives to receive information from that particular font, sometimes it is difficult to recognize the extent of the manipulation, or to what extent less obvious rhetorical machinations — from selecting a thesis to deciding what information to omit or bury — set the framework for how one looks at a particular issue.
Sounds like a great idea Jeff. How would you suggest that their biases be identified? Especially when they still, by and large, controll the narrative? Because it could easily be self-fullfilling, like that poll Jon Stewart referred to when asserting that Faux newz viewers were the worst informed-evar!
Would you suggest maybe openly declaring their campaign contributions, no matter how small? Or maybe identify their colleges, and examine the professors and curriculum? And who would do this “rating”, that all sides would accept it. Because as much as the lefties like to whine about wingnutz “trying to have their own facts”, it seems that truly objective measures of truth and fact could be hard to come by; realtivism and all.
It’s a shame, because I recall a time when most media outlets separated facts and opinion; before the need to maintain a carefully crafter narrative that was fake but accurate.
There is another step, one which I’m not certain is merely an optional additional step or a necessarily prior though insufficient step, and that is to study the origins of the whole mess, meaning by whole mess, not only the bases and antecedents of our own political philosophical stance, but those of our political adversaries as well. In any event, it’s a fuck of a lot of work.
we had a poll last november
please don’t bum me out
[ i might be paranoid but i think even c-span is turning liberal]
OT, but not really, as it’s always appropriate: Another degenerate pervert Democrat.
The idea is simply to change the baseline. It doesn’t matter that we can nitpick over the way one chooses to identify: the market can sort that out by separating the frauds from those who adhere to the ideology they proclaim up front. That’s precisely, for instance, how we’ve learned to separate out “conservatives” like Andrew Sullivan or David Frum or David Brooks or Peggy Noonan or Kathleen Parker, from actual conservatives.
No, what matters is that we begin with a baseline that each outlet has an ideological bias. This removes the inculcated / indoctrinated thinking about the “news media” being “objective” and concerned only with “taking on the powerful,” which by and large is what kids are taught is the baseline.
It’s a paradigm shift.
i think the use of “default” lately is dishonest framing
The New York Times works hard to fan the flames of panic from the fire that bumblefuck started in his news conference
you know who has lots of investments? Old people. President bumblefuck has a frightfully large and angry hard-on for fucking with codgers.
i am oftened amazed at my non-polital friends who
don’t-aren’t up to speed
my brother keeps saying to me ” matt taibii, matt damon, matt taibii”
i just laugh but he’s 6-5-280 and could beat the stuff out of me so i just reply
“yeah, rolling stones- gimme shelter”
we had a poll last november
i think the more this loser flails, the more desperate the msm will become
with all their spit flecks and agitation
i for one am enjoying it
it’s like one big reality show
can’t wait for the race card
vroom vroom!
Now I see what you’re getting at; dispensing with the phony idea that any of the major media outlets, personalities, and writers are completely objective. That way the low information voters may stop believing something a matter of metaphysical ceritiude simply because they saw it on 60 minutes, etc.
You realize that you’re asking the mushy-low-information-vote-on-emotion-almost-exclusively types, who’s votes count as much as each of ours, to actually think for a change? They won’t like that. You’ll have a bunch of them running around like something out of a Monty Pytopn skit shouting, “My Brain Hurts!”.
I’m going to venture into shaky territory here, shaky that is from my point of view as to my own capacities, but nevertheless, since I have a vague sense I’m seeing something I figure I may as well explore it.
So, if I may alter “each outlet has an ideological bias” to something closer to “each human being has a particular stance or opinion from which their individual political position emerges”, and thence to the further proposition that (at least for the most part) each human being finds his own political opinion within a horizon which includes other human beings within that same horizon, we come to the acknowledgement of the or an entire horizon, something like the whole simply — or the cosmos if we prefer — stands, and it is that horizon within which any one of us can attempt to understand anyone other of us. That is, with the ultimate horizon as our limit. So that ultimate horizon may not be precisely knowable as such, yet it does seem to serve as a unique kind of objective measure.
zombies say
send more brains!
That’s one way of putting it, sdferr.
Me, I just distinguish between things as they are and things as they are filtered through human perception. Recognizing the difference takes one a long way.
And they went from D+8 to R+2 from 2008 to 2011. Only age group to be in the R+ category.
Someone else has noted what you did ‘feets.
Not that I desire to get too far down in the weeds, but things as they are doesn’t point at the Kantian sense of things as they are or in his lingo, things in themselves, I’m guessing?
It appears to me that argumentation, open sarcasm, and truth telling are becoming fashionable amongst the GOP. A few pioneers have shown that it is the way to power.
I have a better idea: Turn low information voters into high information voters via a combination of civic literacy tests and minimal property qualifications. Or go the “no representation without taxation” route. Hell, I’m even willing to do something Heinleinesque.
Yeah, I know, none of it will fly.
I’m up for remote-control shock collars that are activated whenever they lie.
Gotta start somewhere.
I guess it would be too difficult for conservatives to raise high-achievers and then start to incrementally take back institutions.
Ernst none of it will fly specifically because politicians/congress operate much as the attorneys/courts do. They want, nay require, low information people that are easily swayed. Why are juries comprised of folks with little to no experience in firearms, finance, or whatever else the perpetrator is accused of doing? Cause we can’t have reality intruding on the carefully crafted narrative spun in the trial. That one juror that has experience with a revolver versus a clip? Not gonna be seated. Thus the defense is left to craft a story that the prosecution disputes and you are left with a he said/she said. Just one juror with a modicum of handgun operation tilts the scales. And in the court’s view that scale tipping is unacceptable. The same problem holds true for politicians. High info voters are a problem and it is best to coopt the most intelligent or useful into the system (academia, politics, govt workers) and leave the rubes to the oh! shiny! show trial.
The crisis in education is the left’s attempt to dumb down the electorate to the same functionality of a low information juror. You’re gonna believe what we spin for you and you’ll buy it! If, God forbid, the jurors or the voters fail to do their job – no problem. Hustle a few more dumbasses in and do it over again. Hence the long march leftward.
Our stupidity is in thinking that these folks (courts/congress) want the system to improve. They don’t. They like controlling the narrative. That is where their power derives. Is it any wonder that lawyers flock to politics like bees to honey? Same system at work in both cases.
As far as the MBM goes, they are useful in crafting narratives and should be seen as no more nor any less than contract players for show trial/show congress. They are the jury experts whose prime job is to figure out which narrative/juror combination results in control of the outcome.
Neither side in the courts or in congress wants that to change.
I think it might also be helpful to point out the media, like government itself, is going to have a natural leftist, statist type bias because of its attractive nature and utility to those types of people.
Abe
The issue isn’t high-achieving conservatives are scarce, it’s high-achieving conservatives that are willing to/or have already pretended NOT to be conservative in order to get into Left-dominated institutions.
The issue isn’t high-achieving conservatives are scarce,
Bullshit.
Abe – the problem with that is that it took 50 years for the left to take over our institutions, and they didn’t have to fight too much to do it. The left will NEVER give up their hold on the institutions that easily, and conservatives don’t have that will to fight. If they did, it’d take 100 years at least.
We don’t have that kind of time.
So Abe, you’ve got numbers? And a definition of “high achieving”?
Are we going to define what we mean by high-achieving? Or are we going to equate a liberal/left worldview with high achievement?
Not bullshit Abe, just a different idea of what constitutes “achievement”.
For example, I think liberals are not achieving anything, they are destroying what conservatives have built.
The problem is, most institutions have always been Left. Hilton Kramer’s Long March through the institutions is the march of the New Left against the Old Left,
High achieving conservatives are scarce? Really?
Also, it takes a whole lotta college degrees to decide the “Creator” mentioned in the declaration of Independence isn’t really God.
Well, high-achieving would be getting into very good schools and putting yourself in a position to get good jobs. But that may be a lot more obvious when you’re a professional in NY than when you live at a more physical remove, and thus depend on the internet for perspective.
There are plenty of statistics out there on the political self-identification of students at top schools. And regardless of the tendency toward liberalism in youth, it’s kind of obvious that the left wing cultural enclaves do a hell of a lot better job of positioning their kids to avail themselves the opportunities which come from attending the right schools than do conservatives.
The problem with y’all’s supposition in #21 – #27 is in thinking that conservative high achievers would end up in ‘institutions.’ High achieving conservatives end up as entrepreneurs and doctors and anything else that affords or used to afford autonomy. Leftists end up in ant piles for a reason. And that same reason is why conservatives avoid them like the plagues they are. Sadism is not usually a character trait of conservatives and not an -ism that a conservative would willingly adopt.
The problem is, most institutions have always been Left. Hilton Kramer’s Long March through the institutions is the march of the New Left against the Old Left,
That’s true in academia. Then again, something resembling the old left would be preferable to the vermin currently ensconced there by orders of magnitude.
Yeah, but Stephanie, what do you think this post is about? The options are to either retake established institutions, build competing ones from scratch, or bend over and bark like a dog.
I don’t know whether I’d prefer the Old left as over against the New, at least insofar as I might count FDR and LBJ as among the Old left. Those two guys and their compatriots put one hell of an achieved hurting on the US running down to this day and not to be rid of in any time certain that I can see. Whereas, the New left look by comparison as incompetent bumbling wreckers, wreckers to be sure, but relative simpletons by contrast.
But that may be a lot more obvious when you’re a professional in NY than when you live at a more physical remove, and thus depend on the internet for perspective.
From my perspective, what’s obvious is you’re stuck looking out from a fishbowl that’s distorted your own. I’d link the New Yorker cover of “injun country” beginning at the Hudson, but we all know it, so why bother?
That was meant to be mildly sarcastic, with the emphasis on mild, (mostly).
I agree with that sdferr. But still, I think I’d rather be a minority among the likes of Lionel and Diana Trilling than among the likes of William Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn.
I thought some of y’all were ruminating on why the left was able to come to this pass. Granted the ‘institutions’ need new blood and a serious bloodletting, but the reasons that the long march was so easily made are not going to disappear. No conservative is going to subject himself to shackles, even little ones like those in ‘institutions.’ It is a waste of good initiative and stifling. Why the fuck do most who attempt to do so get out so soon? Jeff is a good example.
These monoliths will disappear as soon as new options appear (paradigms, yuck I hate that word) that replace those institutions. Distance learning/on line schools or the Internet for example. A conservative would not be setting about to conquer a crumbling edifice, but smashing them to smithereens and building their replacement and barring the door to the usurpers. It’s not that they have outlived their usefulness, we all need academics and journalists. They are crumbling edifices; because, it is the ‘structure’ itself that is irrelevant. And anything that can accelerate that is a good thing. Without the structure, the ants will stray.
Academics and Journalists are the 21st century buggy whip makers. And they and those that are enabled by them will not go quietly.
I have to go buy water for in case the terrorists attack the water supply.
It was on drudge.
And I will add, to avoid the upcoming comparison, that the reason it is more beneficial to transform the republican party is that the structure is sound. That structure being that which was laid out by our founders of a basic two party system. Whereas, academic institutions and broad sweeping news organizations are structures that are not sound. Their time is past.
I guess it would be too difficult for conservatives to raise high-achievers and then start to incrementally take back institutions.
Some of us are working on that Abe but it’s slow, slow, slow.
Since we’re all division-of-laborists now (and have been for over 5,000 years or more, give or take) lemme throw out another tacit definition of high achiever for our consideration?
In whatever art, science, craft or profession our high achiever may reside, at minimum, I’d expect him or her to have mastered to the greatest degree possible all the techniques commonly practiced or habitually known to the general population of practitioners of said art, science, craft, etc., but, having mastered those techniques, finds him or herself capable of transcending them into new or exploratory territories — territories possibly even in defiance of those habitual practices — yet able to proceed without too great a falter, on account of knowing just where the edges are. Or something like that.
Why the fuck do most who attempt to do so get out so soon? Jeff is a good example.
Jeff is a good example of what we need a lot more of. Your point is pretty silly because if he’d have taken the path which you suggest is more naturally the domain of conservatives, he’d just be a much smarter version of most everyone else who composes the right wing blogosphere – if he even blogged at all.
I’m pretty sure high achievement is when you get your money for nothing and your chicks for free.
The anniversary of First Manassas was just the other day. The outcome of that battle told the American people that what they expected was not what they were going to experience.
The debt ceiling debate is a battle occuring in and for media battlespace. It’s outcome will likely prove just as shocking to the public at large.
So, if I may alter “each outlet has an ideological bias” to something closer to “each human being has a particular stance or opinion from which their individual political position emerges”, and thence to the further proposition that (at least for the most part) each human being finds his own political opinion within a horizon which includes other human beings within that same horizon, we come to the acknowledgement of the or an entire horizon, something like the whole simply — or the cosmos if we prefer — stands, and it is that horizon within which any one of us can attempt to understand anyone other of us. That is, with the ultimate horizon as our limit. So that ultimate horizon may not be precisely knowable as such, yet it does seem to serve as a unique kind of objective measure.
What would you make, sdferr, of those like RAF stalwart Horst Mahler, hard core and hard left, who made the jump to hard core anti-semite fascist, or the neo-Nazi “Prussian Blue” Gaede sisters, who claim to be born again liberals? These horizons seem pretty wide for some folk.
Damn earwig
fun though
I’m pretty sure high achievement is when you get your money for nothing and your chicks for free.
Ace had some thoughts along the same line the other day.
I don’t know those folk outside your sketch of them Silver Whistle, but how about coming back with the sense in which I’m to “make of them” something? And how in turn that “making” will relate to the horizon encompassing the whole, as opposed say, to the sort of “horizon” made of the wave from the point of view of the ant on the pebble thrown into the pond?
Earwigs? Entschuldigen Sie bitte?
Earwig
Heh, synchronicity, Ernst. Yeah, definitely the same thought. (I assume, I sorta skimmed it.)
I now have a remarkable desire to crack open a beer and listen to Joe Walsh, btw.
Jeff was in academia and couldn’t stomach the crap. Most conservatives would do the same. A conservative academic is not an oxymoron, he just finds the current stricture incompatible with the free pursuit of knowledge and the trial and error of experimentation. That academia now seeks to stifle knowledge to ‘acceptable’ thoughts and seeks to excommunicate those who notice that the experiment ain’t working (Marxism, GW) are precisely the reasons that conservatives don’t pursue that field. It is not a fault. It is a sign that the structure is rotten and that a new structure is needed. I suspect that the Jeffs of the world will be (and are) quite busy constructing it. It is not for nothing that he keeps repeating in his posts “As I have always taught” “Haven’t you guys learned X” or some variant thereof. This here blog is Jeff’s academic school of learning. Structure be damned.
Princess Bloomberg feeds the panic
omg we’re all fucked
sell sell
I was wondering about the ideological limits within us, and what takes people from one extreme to the other (as, for example, Mahler), and some from the extreme to the ordinary, like the Gaede twins. I thought that’s what you were aiming at with your comment.
Your earwig video was banned to me as I’m an undesirable alien. Or something.
Dire Straits, “Money for Nothing”, sw.
crack open a beer
Yes, perhaps I need to get up, crack open a beer and throw a big chicken on the grill, guins.
(Btw, I just watched a documentary and learned that there was this guy called Harry Nilsson and he was a rather high achiever.)
Ah, I see now SW. I for one, anyhow, don’t wish to ascribe to ideological limits as such, certainly not ideological anyhow, whereas limits simply are much more copacetic.
On account of “ideological” itself being crazily derivative, from my point of view.
Anyhow, my bumbling stab up there in the first place is best understood as a sketch of the Cave simile in the Republic, aiming at our recognition that our opinions, indeed, precisely the variations in our opinions, force us to look outside conventional accounts of our situation toward something more comprehensive, and that any recognition of that “something” more comprehensive remains a kind of horizon of objectivity, so to speak. Or that it’s the locus of the “truth” at which science is aimed.
Thanks, sdferr, I have been trying to piece together some sort of understanding of developing “ideology”, at least as it applies to the recent tragedy in Norway.
Arthur Koestler wrote the book about that.
George Orwell didn’t care for it; one of the few cases (the only one that comes to my mind) in which his power of percieving, or whatever he called it, failed him.
For starters, Stephanie, my argument is primarily about the media. And secondarily, whether Jeff is an actual professor or not is rather secondary to the fact that he didn’t do a bunch of bong hits as an undergrad and wake up one morning with the tools to attack the very discipline he studied for years afterward. Who do you really think adds value intellectually in the conservative movement, people like Jeff, Thomas Sowell and VDH who attack elitism from a learned perspective? Or the infinite blogging mouthbreathers who feed off them anecdotally, but betray their lack of sophistication in a myriad of ways? I mean, ask Jeff if he ever feels like he’s wasting his time around here because people nod in agreement until such time as it’s easy to throw everything he writes about aside for a convulsion of irrationality?
Here’s how the development of “ideology” has come down to me Silver Whistle, or at least what little I understand of its origins (from a transcript of a Leo Strauss lecture series):
Boehnerfag feeds the panic
sell sell
In the present case, sdferr, I am definitely in the cave regarding the shadows, as there are so many conflicting narratives in the ideologies supposedly embraced by the suspect. I have heard that he is a conservative, a neo-Nazi, a libertarian, a Christian fundamentalist. If we can describe ideology as a disease, then it is reasonable to assume some sort of pathology. I suppose things will become clearer in a few days.
Mouthbreathing, shallowness, groupthink and simplistic and/or irrational thinking is a problem of the human condition. More than enough of that to go around on all sides.
By definition, most conservatives don’t like government – not surprisingly, many avoid it for the private sector. Libs are far more entrenched in the media, NGO and government circle jerk, but to attribute this to some kind of innate talent is laughable. It’s just the role they choose and the path is greased through parental and social connections. Conservatives distrust this stuff and govern apologetically, feeling bad about messing with the “social work” idea of government.
As for the media bias, well, once upon a time each town had at least two newspapers and nobody pretended they weren’t biased. You took your pick and in a way showed your support for a party with your purchase. Then came the allegedly idealistic sixties where journalists pretended objectivity. We’re still suffering.
I’d take a prescription from Bernie Marcus over VDH in a New York minute. Even for something as rudimentary as economic policies, but I hear he makes a mean cocktail. A real cure-all.
I know Jeff loses patience with his readers/students, but then learned perspectives require trial by fire and guidance, no? Or am I misrepresenting the nature of ‘learned’ perspectives?’ The mouthbreathers may be slow learners but they are tuned in and learning. Their perspectives will improve by degrees.
As to media, it is a buggy whip. All that needs to be said of it except to finish erecting its replacement.
Hell, SW, I read earlier today that the Moonbats are calling him a tea-partier because he once linked Pamela Gellar, and she once spoke at a Tea Party event. CASE CLOSED!
That’s very true, Ernst. Unfortunately it’s also a – most assuredly unintended – exaltation of the status quo.
Hell, SW, I read earlier today that the Moonbats are calling him a tea-partier because he once linked Pamela Gellar, and she once spoke at a Tea Party event. CASE CLOSED!
As the source of that revelation is none other than Her Majesty’s former ambassador to Uzbekistan, I think I’m going to shoot the messenger, cheerfully.
Metaphorically, of course.
From that wiki:
Just another imperialist, this Mr. Murray. Heh.
I am shocked, shocked, to read your description, bh. He is The Only Honest Man To Run For Parliament, a truth teller, and down with the struggle.
I spent a decade in MSM and it was no big deal, ideologically. 95% of everyone I worked with was Clintonite and left, but no one was really put off by my “classically liberal” politics. There is whole lot of support for me and my work there even now.
I was good at my job then and good at my job now so they left me alone.
Where politics–views, not internal–were at the fore was Time Inc. Even then, once I started writing big pieces, they got that I was different and left me alone.
To Abe’s point, no one gave a shit that I supported a military approach to the ME, was pro-life or had no real problem with Gitmo, because they saw someone who was doing what they could not do.
I tell that to everyone and no one believes me.
Conservatives, in my opinion, run from fights. Not that I ever really fought.
That thumping sound you just heard was Ludwig Wittgenstein rolling over in his grave….
While we’re on the topic of biases, objectivity, perception, and philosophical heroes:
I don’t run from fights. And I don’t allow individual anecdotes to blind me to what is patently obvious: the media runs left, and it an advocacy wing of the Democrat party. Or at best, they exist only to attack the right.
Roddy’s right though, generally speaking. Thus, we’ve been losing more slowly for decades now. The left has played the part of the most successful Jewish mother ever, and Conservatives have assumed themselves into hairshirts. They/we have played right into their lies.
No more. They want a fight, then let’s have one.
On topic, people are all biased. The truth has no agenda.
“By definition, most conservatives don’t like government – not surprisingly, many avoid it for the private sector. “
Conservatives don’t dislike government, they view it as a necessary evil. Something that is as inescapable as parents.
I mean, when I became an adult I wanted to make my own decisions, not have my parents tell me what to do like I was a child. Doesn’t mean I hate my parents.
“Conservatives, in my opinion, run from fights.”
Conservatives don’t run from fights, they mind their own business.
Fighting is serious shit, and when/if necessary, you eliminate the opponent as efficiently and permanently as possible. Until a fight is inevitable, avoiding one is wise. Once a fight is inevitable, a conservative acts like George Washington, not Mitch McConnell.
Unfortunately, too many claiming to be conservatives are really just high achievers more concerned with controlling things themselves, than sticking with principals that benefit society as a whole for their grandchildren’s sake as well as their own.
the dirty socialist Associated Press screams SELL SELL
Asian markets is the password of the day.
Welcome to my life.
Then I guess I’d better place a call to my broker in Hong Kong. If everything is going to go to hell
Monday morningSunday night, I’d better try and get out early, right?I mean, it must be true. The media wouldn’t lie to me, would they?
you haven’t sold yet?
Yeah, it’s an easy game to see. Flip a coin. Heads, the markets go down a bit. This will be explained by Republican intransigence. Tails, the markets go up a bit. This will be explained by Republican movement or Democratic heroics.
Also known as “heads I win, tails you lose”.
I think a good question to ask these assembled progressives is why they aren’t publicly going short all over the place.
Shit, it’s practically money for free. I assume they’ve each taken very large positions on this.
(Remember thor with GM? Same same. This isn’t a theoretical issue. You can actually go out and put your money where your mouth is.)
There is something to the notion that there are people who mind their own business, and people who think other people’s business is their business.
Just another bifurcation among many.
Lockeans and Rousseaueans
Aristotleans and Platonists
Gingerists and Mary Annites.
False choice!
Left handed Ravelian Wittgenstein is pretty good stuff, but there just isn’t any right.
the media is left, no doubt jeff. But I think there is something to Abe’s notion of surrendering the institutions too. Could have been a lot more conservatives in media but they chose not to. By default, we got what we have now.
Well, Lbascom, maybe they do mind their own business.
But in media, conservatives didn’t even show up and try.
It’s hard to detect the bias when they flat-out don’t report something that doesn’t support the narrative, and you never hear about it by other means.
How do you know what you don’t know?
Not really. The left gets a foothold and then starts self-selecting until they have a comfy majority, at which point they become a nest of complete groupthink that works to marginalize and delegitimize any threat to their nest.
The right thinks they are living and working under the ideals of the America they believe in, and that merit still wins out. The left is under no such illusion — save that they’ve learned to redefine merit based on the position they wind up in. Hence, Abe’s inverted cause and effect.
“surrendering the institutions too”
’cause conservatives are big proponents of gender/race/lbgt-studies. sometimes things are overrun by the barbarians.
What percentage of this comes from the idea that everyone should go to college?
Gender/race/lbgt studies, did these even exist before we started up with the silly idea that college is everyone’s best choice?
Is it possible that we cranked up demand to such a ridiculous level that college as a whole is now 51% bullshit because there are simply too many kids there looking to waste four years?
That’s why I always go back to a theoretical engineering program.
Is it possible that programs like that have stayed solid because the kids who should be pursuing options other than college aren’t very likely to go take those sort of classes?
They’re, on average, more likely to take a class where you could just regurgitate what the New Left moron is spoon-feeding them and pull in a decent grade without any work.
(This isn’t to say that everything non-science/math isn’t worth pursuing. But, what programs have greatly expanded since the 50s so far beyond their future earning potential?)
Looking to waste four years, or encouraged to waste four years bh?
And just what is it we’re supposedly looking to get out of college education? Technical expertise or something more character oriented?
Which is something government has proven itself capable to do, though not with genuine knowledge of what or where demand ought to be, substituting in knowledge’s stead, ignorance or fantasy. In a sense, we oughtn’t to blame government for its ignorance, since no-one and nothing has the sort of knowledge demanded. On the other hand, the ease with which ignorance is portrayed as knowledge is blameworthy.
Answered before it was asked!
I’d probably go with “both” on each of your questions, Ernst.
To flesh out the second answer, I think a common core (I’m a fan of the great books programs, obviously) in the first two years transitioning towards more specialized work makes a great deal of sense.
But, regardless of anything else, we have far too many kids who could make a far more secure living as a master carpenter or plumber taking worthless majors. Then they come out with $50k in debt and are looking at $22k a year starting jobs.
That’ll teach them some character, certainly. But, only in the aftermath.
Yes. Getting through Grade 16 with a degree in self-esteem is utter fucking waste of money and a recipe for a lifetime of disappointment. If it’s your money, have at it. If it’s my money, fuck you. Get a job.
You go to college to change the world, what I hear. Unless you’re in the hard sciences where you’re there to learn actual facts and stuff, and yet you might actually wind up changing the world, in a good way, with the stuff you learned.
Of course, if everyone who’d be better served in doing so went into carpentry or plumbing, the supply would greatly outstrip demand and it wouldn’t seem quite the good idea going forward that it does now, in hindsight.
Haven’t you heard Pablo, you have to get through at least Grade 14 to get one of those full time one’s. Hell, you have to show you graduated from Grade 12 just to work part-time anymore, and they give you that certificate just for showing up. Pretty soon, you’re going to have to have proof of post grade 16 work just to get an internship in your hoped for profession.
insty linked this story about khan academy. there’s a 5th grader doing trigonometry on his own. what’s some in the education majors reaction:
link
I have been trying to piece together some sort of understanding of developing “ideology”, at least as it applies to the recent tragedy in Norway.
Ideology? The man was a sociopath. End of story.
People like him and McVeigh might spout some ideology or other, but that’s not what motivates their violence. They want to blow things up first; then they come up with a lovely little justification for doing so, but it doesn’t matter what the ideology actually is or who else might believe it. The impulse to violence preceded any ideological alignment, and just about any ideology will do for people like them.
Some people just like blowing stuff up, or they like the idea of their own personal shooting gallery, with helpless victims scurrying for cover. This guy liked both.
Some people just want to watch the world burn. The scumbag in Norway is one of them.
“if everyone who’d be better served in doing so went into carpentry or plumbing,”
seems that the proggs have limited blue collar jobs like oil drilling, manufacturing et al by their regulations. so yea we need more queer studies grads
It seems to me Abe that it’s precisely in that revelatory insight and it’s punishment — should the judgment have been wrong — that we’ve (our society I mean) unhitched the causes and the effects. We can see this phenomenon all over the place. Take Barney Frank and the Fannie/Freddie complex, individually in his capacity as a lawmaker is just as much an example as the market design of the housing bubble itself, unhitching the loan originators from the loan pushers. So too with the health care system, unhitching the decision makers from the final bill payers. We seem to need to find a means to bring the pain of poor decision making to feed-back upon the poor decision makers, resulting, we would expect, in the aggregate in better decision making overall.
I’m not sure of that, Abe. You’re obviously right about the inevitable wage changes but I think we’d hit some… equilibriums.
Here’s a quick way to be sure that we’re currently doing it really, really wrong. If you’re an finance kid your starting salary is probably around $60k. If you’re a “find sexism in this inanimate object” kid your starting wage is probably $10 an hour.
If they go to the same school, their degrees still cost the same thing!
Imagine buying into another investment vehicle like this. You’d have grounds for a lawsuit.
And just like that, we’re back to Panem et Circenses for the Capite Censi. /sarc
And just what is it we’re supposedly looking to get out of college education?
I was enamored of getting an education for the sake of education. I wanted to know stuff: lots of stuff. Not so that I could parlay that into big bank but because I was fascinated by the enormous world of learning that was represented by the millions of books in university libraries. For me, it was an enormous, fascinating head rush.
I loved research for my class papers because it was like a treasure hunt, and I still enjoy research in my current career; the bigger the learning curve, the better I like it. The difference between technical writing and teaching being that in technical writing, I’m paid good money to produce stuff that’s actually useful to someone, rigor and accuracy count, and I’m not limited to learning about one narrow area but am better off the more different fields I tackle.
With teaching, I wrestled with bored students who slammed out their papers at 3am after having a few too many, and my comments and criticisms of their papers were utterly ignored in the second revision. (They’d just leave out the part that required them to develop an idea.)
Screw that. I’d rather write for “the man” and get paid to do it right than piss my life away with students who don’t give a rip.
“Ideology? The man was a sociopath. End of story.”
umm i think he’s a brutal killer but you might want to watch this you tube vid he purportedly posted and see if there is anything false about it
link
i’ll start worrying about what the left thinks of this situation when they start denouncing stalin, che, pol pot, mao or at least baracky’s friends billy and bernadine or even mumia
here is an article exploring how deeply deeply incapable Americans are of understanding debt
they’re goddamn retards
went to clown college but they kicked me out with their big shoes and stuff,then i went to barber college and they definetly kicked me out, said i was “too stabby”
whatever that means
That’s why the kids who are really good at finding sexism make $100k/yr consulting with your boss on how to get you finance kids to stop staring at his intern daughter’s tits.
Heh, they’ll never stop me, Ernst.
I do hear what you’re saying though. There are distortions here that I’m ignoring or downplaying.
(This is a polemic, darn it.)
@97. “51% bullshit”? I’m tempted to say you’re being overly generous. I value education for education’s sake, not just for what it can do for your personal bottom line, but I despair at the state of higher education these days. A goodly part of the problem derives from the confluence of the notion that everyone should go to college, the fact that a lot of people simply aren’t college material, and the commercialization of higher education, i.e. they’re not going to flunk anyone who’s payin’ his tuition — including Master’s and PhD candidates.
I know people who should never have been given a Bachelor’s who have been encouraged to become PhD candidates. They may never actually graduate but they make up a really cheap labor pool and you always need more teaching assistants and lab instructors because everyone is being encouraged to go to college so enrollment is up. It’s a vicious circle. People who shouldn’t be going to college are going to college and people who shouldn’t be teaching college are teaching college.
And the administration doesn’t care because the bucks keep rolling in. [Sigh]
@ 105. Thanks to the housing bubble the supply of carpenters and plumbers has outstripped the demand and you’ll find plenty of them flipping burgers. Still, thanks at least partly to regulatory issues I understand that McDonalds is the single largest employer of geologists, so there’s that.
@ 111. You’d think, but too often the “find sexism in this inanimate object” kid goes on to a lucrative government career enforcing the Equal Opportunity Act, bedeviling the business and finance kid.
There’s method in their madness, but it’s still madness.
bobby orr!
I’ve heard that, Ernst, but I also keep seeing that if you know what you’re doing and you’re good at it and can satisfy your customers they’ll give you their money.
What school did Bill Gates graduate from?
As I mentioned upstream a ways, Bernie Marcus actually got his degree in pharmacy. Damned if I know how he parlayed that into making Home Depot into the giant it is today, but I seriously doubt it was his educational background.
BTW, a batchelor’s degree is the new high school diploma if you wander through any classifieds on Monster or Jobs.net or where ever. Doesn’t seem to matter all that much that you have a degree – just that you have one. And that’s for entry level work. The new normal for any decent waged job is having a master’s degree. And they are making up new and amusing credentials for the 21st century to satisfy that requirement.
From Insty today:
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: The Master’s Degree As The New Bachelor’s Degree.
William Klein’a story may sound familiar to his fellow graduates. After earning his bachelor’s in history from the College at Brockport, he found himself living in his parents’ Buffalo home, working the same $7.25-an-hour waiter job he had in high school. It wasn’t that there weren’t other jobs out there. It’s that they all seemed to want more education. Even tutoring at a for-profit learning center or leading tours at a historic site required a master’s. “It’s pretty apparent that with the degree I have right now, there are not too many jobs I would want to commit to,” Mr. Klein says.
So this fall, he will sharpen his marketability at Rutgers’ new master’s program in Jewish studies (think teaching, museums and fund-raising in the Jewish community). Jewish studies may not be the first thing that comes to mind as being the road to career advancement, and Mr. Klein is not sure exactly where the degree will lead him (he’d like to work for the Central Intelligence Agency in the Middle East). But he is sure of this: he needs a master’s. Browse professional job listings and it’s “bachelor’s required, master’s preferred.”
Well, a bachelor’s degree has become the new high-school diploma, so that makes sense. But how much actual value is being added?
Plus this: “While many new master’s are in so-called STEM areas — science, technology, engineering and math — humanities departments, once allergic to applied degrees, are recognizing that not everyone is ivory tower-bound and are drafting credentials for résumé boosting.”
Because that’s what we need most: more credentials for résumé boosting.
UPDATE: Reader Kenneth Willis writes: “When I entered law school at the University of Denver in 1974 the Dean gave a talk to the entering class in which he said the J.D. was the new B.A. I don’t think he knew then that so many bartenders would have both those degrees.”
I think that sort of argues my point as well as yours, Steph. Whoever said there were lots of jobs currently available where a history degree helps get you in the door? For that matter, whoever said the College at Brockport was going to open any doors for you?
(You can’t get a job and you’re going to go deeper into debt for an advanced degree in Jewish studies? Guess what, you’re retarded.)
Some of this has less to do with college and more to do with this mass delusion that the market will absorb anyone as long as they have a degree.
We don’t pretend that we need a half million banjo players each year. Why do we pretend that we need so many lawyers or historians?
Ask me to deliver it tomorrow and here’s my inspirational high school graduation speech in full: You’re not a beautiful snowflake. No one cares about your hopes and dreams. Want to eat, make yourself useful. Want to eat well, make yourself really useful.
i think the price of big tits
, what they cost, implants etc
versus a 6, 8 year degree would be cost effective
just saying
We don’t pretend that we need a half million banjo players each year.
Don’t even get me started on midget plagiarizing lute players.
Heh.
“if everyone who’d be better served in doing so went into carpentry or plumbing”
Better served? What do you mean exactly?
I hope you don’t really think carpentry and plumbing require lessor skills and intellect than a college educated bureaucrat.
I think he meant better served as in the person in question would serve himself better, Lee. Earn money sooner, less debt, more future income. That sort of thing.
Umm, ok bh. Sometimes I get the feeling some believe people in the trades or services industry are there because they couldn’t possibly cut it in college.
Some high achievers find college a distraction from what they ultimately want to achieve.
What bh said, quite obviously.
I hate to admit it, but, as much as I am aware of them, the MSM DOES affect my thinking. It is hard to NOT be influenced by their baloney. It is incessant, and foolish, and yet it affects my thinking.
Cassandra Bullshit is a prime example, but at least she was thwapped.
It is very difficult to know that they are full of shit, because they are the MSM. A stupid poll of “adults” (as opposed to likely voters) is enough to make my heart sink, because I know if it affects me, it affects the Demo-Morons and those who have been educated in public schools since 1970 even more..
I’m here, and functioning, but how many times can you be shouted down for OFFERING A FUCKING OPINION?
Bye, bye, first amendment…
the shelf life of a college education is about 2 maybe 3 years without upgrades. its like ms-95 thru xp.
Certainly some people do. And, certainly, some in the trades actually couldn’t cut it in college. And, certainly, some that go to college… could never cut it in the trades. And, for another category, certainly some in the trades did go to college and did great there. (No idea why I said “certainly” so much there. I just got locked in for some reason.)
Absolutely couldn’t agree more. Myself, I think many, many more people should make this choice.
*some believe people those in the trades or services industry*
I see the trades as a good place for people who like to work with their hands, and in general be a bit more active. It’s also good for people who really don’t like school, and would rather just get out there and start doing stuff. It has nothing to do with intellect.
“Myself, I think many, many more people should make this choice.”
They’d starve. It requires maturity and a strong sense of responsibility.
“It has nothing to do with intellect.”
it is all about the proper credentials these days. intellect was tossed a long time ago ax baracky.
It’s really a bad idea to broadly categorize. I’ve known folks over the years who took up the trades and went to college at night; and folks that had degrees and then decided to enter the trades. I worked my own way through college as a tradesman.
I was in engineering college with many folks that could never hope to turn a screwdriver, and had aviators in my squadron who’s degrees were in history…
I think, though, that it can be said with some certainty that the value of a bachelor’s degree has been diminished, owing to the high throughput in the humanities side of college; which has allowed corporate businesses, by and large, to make a degree a pre-requisite for getting a job.
There has also been a concerted effort to foster the idea of a false equivalence between “grievance studies” and niche humanities degrees with technical degrees, such as medecine, engineering, etc.
Not that those kind of degrees are entirely worthless, but only they have a more limited, and mostly academic, application; unlike applied science and math based disciplines.
Upthread an observation was made that more conservatives take degrees in “useful” disciplines. I tend to agree, but can only say that based on my own experience in undergraduate and graduate level programs.
“It has nothing to do with intellect.”
Reminds me. I’m half way through Ric Locke’s book, and digging it.
And I’m not really into science fiction, so….
Then we’re pretty much just talking about overgrown children and college vs the trades is a distant secondary issue. These immature, irresponsible kids will do no better with those same flaws, a worthless degree, a ton of student debt and no skills.
I’ve mentioned it elsewhere before but I think lots and lots of people should grow up poor. It tends to focus the mind.
Less Playstation and awesome sneakers, more part-time jobs and holidays where you get school clothes.
(This is probably why they say the seed for our destruction was planted by our success.)
Well, with the daughter getting ready to go to school in 20 something days, this puzzle is weighing on me. She’s taking the scholarship so a $34K a year college is only gonna set us back about $4-5 K a year, but the school doesn’t have a graphic arts/web design department which is what she excels at, so she is going up there as ‘Undecided.’ She loves chemistry and they do have a boffo pharmacy school. Is it kinda crazy to look at a scholarship offer as a good way to get your core classes out of the way? I mean if she doesn’t like it there – Hey! it transfers. And if she does like it, maybe pharmacy is the way to go. Or not. Maybe get a 4 year degree in Bus Admin and transfer to an art school to get the necessary masters in graphic design.
She has an internship with a web design/graphics company this summer and they are throwing her more difficult stuff right and left and she is exceeding their every request, but apprenticeships are NOT what the field demands. The field demands a degree. Which is stupid; because, schools teach ‘theory of’ and bullshit classes that teach you everything but how to use dreamweaver, photoshop, illustrator and I know of no school offering classes in drupal (whatever the fuck that program is). So it’s off to college to get that credential and then back to internships in the summer to learn the real shit.
It makes no sense. ISTM that a really good apprenticeship in a design shop with awesome recommendations would go alot farther than a piece of paper signifying that you studied ‘the history of the computer,’ but it doesn’t. And that’s just screwed up.
Maybe the problem is that an examination of the criteria for what jobs truly require a college degree needs to be undertaken.
I mean, most accountancy nowadays is inputting shit in a computer and having it do the debits and credits and I seriously doubt 1 in 10 graduates could run a true double entry accounting system by hand. They don’t really teach it anymore – not as applied only as theory and well there you go. Plus they don’t teach a course in ‘inputting shit into a computer,’ either. A proper degree for accountants should at least included Peoplesoft and SAP and some inkling about the tools you are gonna be using.
I can’t count the number of accounting grads that I’ve interviewed for positions that have no idea how an accounting system works. But hey, they got a degree in Bus Management, so it’s all good, right? And don’t even get me started on those graduates that can’t figure out which table to pull data from to get a meaningful report. Damned jackasses don’t even know or care about the difference between pre post and post post and journals and ledgers. ‘But I used the field called ‘purchases’ isn’t that what we are looking for? /bangs head on desk….
It is all screwed up…
Design is something she can learn on her own, Stephanie. I’ve worked with a lot of designers who are excellent, but so fucking stupid (and uneducated) that they have no value beyond being a pair of hands. Nobody in the known universe is ever gonna hire a designer for reasons other than the work that they’ve done, so a degree in it is essentially useless aside from providing an excess of time to build a portfolio at the expense of any other education.
“She has an internship with a web design/graphics company this summer and they are throwing her more difficult stuff right and left and she is exceeding their every request, but apprenticeships are NOT what the field demands. The field demands a degree. ”
she should start a business selling to her employer. no degree required just results.
“cranky-d posted on7/23 @ 8:53 pm
I see the trades as a good place for people who like to work with their hands, and in general be a bit more active. It’s also good for people who really don’t like school, and would rather just get out there and start doing stuff. It has nothing to do with intellect.”
Sorry. “The trades” Have been co-opted by illegal immigrants, who live in bee hives and work for ten bucks an hour.
I am in the “trades”, and as much as I like these guys, they hhave reduced my wages from $40-$50 per hour, to $10 an hour, if I am absolutely lucky enough to not have some Guac or porkchop undercut me.
But, HEY! Even though they are illegal, Harry and Barry give them blow jobs so they will (illegally) vote for the Marxists!
SWEET!
FUCK YOU AMERICANS!!!!
I’m worse than useless here, Steph.
I don’t work with any creative sorts. To be honest, they scare me and my people.
Well, I have to admit, that I am lucky enough to play for “All-Timers” patients (Thank you, O! for letting me know how to pronounce that). Good money, but very depressing.
Screw this. I am going to Williamsport to join the Little League Hall of fame. I have been hit in the face by more balls than Liberace. Paying attention is not my strong point.
OUCH! YOU HIT ME IN THE FRICKIN’ HEAD, YOU FAT FUCK!
I’m of two minds. One would be build off the internship, and when she feels ready, launch a company from the contacts made and skills learned. The other is the apprehension that not going for the degree will put her at a disadvantage should that not work out and she is forced into the market as just another ‘hire.’ I don’t want her to end up having to go to school in her late 20s or early 30s just to be marketable.
I abandoned my schooling with 40 credits to go (when I was 20 – overachiever ;) ); because, I was seduced by the easy money of the first computer bust in the 80s. The software companies were trolling the colleges looking for professors to recommend anyone with ‘aptitude.’ They got me. I was making three times as much as my friends with degrees who, by then, were just starting out.
Then the market for software programmers went into the toilet. It recovered about 10 years later, but by then I was competing against kids who had degrees in ‘computer science’ which BTW didn’t exist as such when I was in school unless you were doing binary shit or FORTRAN. Starting a family, I went a different direction and worked for my dad for about 10 years. I eventually got back into business by way of making myself really useful when I was contracting for clients and could show what I could do (and learn). I could go back and finish, but I would basically start from scratch now as far as credit go (they expire, who knew) and come out the other side a 50 something in an IT world populated with ‘young lions’. Yeah, right. They won’t touch me with a 10 foot pole.
I don’t want to see her in the paradox I am in. I have the skill set, just no degree. Won’t buy me foot in the door. And I stay current. Next language to tackle is PHP. Should be fun. But it’s not gonna do any good without the degree. So there ya go. It does provide something to do besides play golf, though.
“I have the skill set, just no degree. Won’t buy me foot in the door. ”
wage slaves mentality vs. entrepreneur mentality. america was the latter
“’ I don’t want her to end up having to go to school in her late 20s or early 30s just to be marketable. ”
and the shelf life of that “education” is what 3 years max? tell her to go find something useful that she likes to do for fellow american. they pay money for that.
I will disagree with Stephanie on one point. I don’t see colleges as places that teach you how to use certain software. I had many disagreements with my fellow computer science grad students on that. I saw us as teaching programming, not teaching how to use software (Visual Studio, for instance). I think that extends to other fields as well. Too often specialized software does a lot of work for you, leaving you ignorant on how to do it yourself with inferior tools.
YMMV, of course.
As for the daughter, I would encourage her to get a degree in IT or a scientific discipline, but I’m biased that way. You don’t get taught to bullshit when you do that kind of work.
Design is a rough business, Stephanie. I’d suggest that she keeps at it on her own while studying something else. Then, after college, if it’s still what she wants to do and she’s made progress, she can go to a school like this one in Atlanta. It’s a two year program, but nobody stays that long if they get a good job beforehand. All of the people/friends I know who went there are very successful. They’re much more well-rounded having first gone to college rather than art school, they’re stronger thinkers, and they have a very strong network.
NR: I had a thriving contracting business with contacts and contracts all over town and more work than I could handle til the 08 debacle. I had work subcontracted to others just so I could keep up with deliverables. Now the models have changed and the contracting has dried up. I completed my last deliverable in late 09 and have been SOL since. Most of those companies now use third party head hunters and many of my personal contacts have either been laid off or moved on. I was living the American Dream. I got back into contracting for software work after I sold my retail business in 1993. Don’t throw BS up to me about entrepreneurship. Been there..
And yes the shelf life of the ‘education’ is 3 years, but the shelf life of a degree is currently limitless…
Thanks Abe. It’s bookmarked. She was looking at SCAD as ‘finishing school’ if she stays with design. Excellent reputation, but $45K a year in tuition. She was unwilling to commit to student loans at this point to make it happen. The option is still open if she decides on it later.
Cranky: I don’t disagree. They have her doing her CSS html and stylesheets the old fashioned way at her internship. They have Dreamweaver (which she knows how to use thanks to a copy I happen to have), but they have the interns do it the old fashioned way. But it would be nice to be able to immediately use the tools of the trade upon graduation and know why they are designed to perform in certain ways.
I was referring to accounting grads and IT grads who come out of school with little understanding of the tools they will use AND the background involved in why those tools are doing what they are doing. I’ve had IT grads assigned to projects that had zero knowledge of accounting yet they were expected to produce accounting metrics and reports. That’s just insane. That’s what I was driving at.
“Don’t throw BS up to me about entrepreneurship.”
well in the baracky economy you better have friends not ideas dear.
@75 “conservatives, in my opinion, run from fights. ”
yea the dude in norway ran away and killed 90. might be fun to hear what caused this massacre in court. might be poverty noes? or oppression? me fry the cock sucker. but the leftiods own mumia , billy and bernie and chuck manson and che
we need a half million banjo players each year
Maybe that might balance things.
Or not.
Stephanie, I think you are correct that a degree will give your daughter more options. Since she has the scholarship, it seems like a good deal. My own view is that kids should learn as many different things as possible. The degree gives you some extra credibility, but it doesn’t necessarily get you a job. The skills in design would get her a job now but a degree-less designer might have a harder time finding a job in the future in some settings. If she wants to be the head of the design department at an agency, for example, or rise to vice president of communications at a big firm.
Meanwhile if she likes chemistry she might find out that there are careers even more exciting and lucrative, and that her creative side can be fed in other ways (art, hobbies…)
I say, learn as many things as possible, get exposed to everything you can, and specialize only when necessary.
Speaking of the next generation, I was very heartened that a college kid I know, who was raised in Marin County, CA by garden-variety leftists, said to me last year that it seemed to him–just from observing all the hoopla and thinking about it–that the prevailing idea that the government should be in charge of everything is clearly wrong, and that the private sector is clearly where the action is.
So maybe we just need to make sure we teach them to think for themselves (which, to their credit, this kid’s parents (and I) have done).
Oh fine. Just about the time I’m having some fun with Wittgenstein you’d have to ask a question like that! :(
The simple and obvious answer is to hang around with a lot of smart people and hope that between the bunch of us we won’t miss too much. The wonder that is the intertubes is making it harder all the time for would-be propagandists to shape the narrative. We can know a lot more now than we could 20 years ago. But there’s still a lot we don’t know because those in the know know that knowledge is power and one of the ways to maintain and exercise that power is to keep the knowledge to themselves. As you know. No?
But while that answer is simple and obvious, and perhaps the most pleasing — assuming we’re easily pleased — it’s not entirely satisfying, is it? How indeed do we know what we don’t know? And just as important, How do we separate what we know from what we know that ain’t so? Those seem to me to be important and difficult questions. [But then I once did graduate work in philosophy so I might have a somewhat skewed sense of what’s important! :P]
Yes, as you may have guessed I’ve been re-visiting Wittgenstein as part of my on-again off-again attempts to get rid of a couple dozen boxes of old books before the house collapses under the weight. “Fortan Watfor With Watfiv”? Should have gone straight to the paper recycler 35 years ago. “The Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus”? Well, so much for going through that box of books. Hours later I was still reading and going through the accompanying notebook full of notes. The volume of notes I’ve taken on the Tractatus exceeds the actual volume of the Tractatus.
And I don’t begin to understand the half of it. People have spent their entire lives studying the thing, because it asks just those questions: What can we know? How do we know for sure that we know something for sure? How do we separate what we know from what we know that ain’t so? A Logical Positivist, Wittgenstein starts out by asserting that “The world is everything that is the case.” There is, in fact, a world of objective facts out there and those facts are knowable. However, everything we know and everything we think we know, everything, is filtered through our perceptions which, being human, are fallible:
This is particularly a problem for the Media — who fancy themselves to be “journalists” — because for at least a couple of generations now Objectivity has been the Axis Mundi of the journalistic self-image. It is the thing without which, in their minds, they are not true journalists. Note how quickly they sneer at mere bloggers who are not only obviously biased, but even admit as much. Being journalists they’re made of sterner stuff so, you see, they can’t reveal their biases because by definition and through superior training they have none. Of course, in this belief they are the first victims of their deception.
Couple this with the fact that, well — J-school — it ain’t rocket science and they’re not rocket scientists. There was a time when higher education was supposed to teach one not what to think, but how to think. Clearly, it seems to me, that should include the admonition to be aware that we are biased by nature and must continually examine our biases. Just as clearly, it seems to me, the modern social sciences and J-schools have entirely turned that notion on its ear and are busily teaching people what to think while avoiding the very notion of bias, even going so far as to deny its existence. If you can accept the notion that you’re somehow unfailingly unbiased — by training no less — you can get your head around all sorts of Doublethink, particularly that “the People have a right to know” but for the sake of building a better world — our overarching agenda — we can’t tell them …
To be continued because we know what happens when we put more than one orange linky thing in a comment….
The rest of the story:
So.. How do we know what we don’t know? Obviously we can’t with any certainty, but we can raise a few hypotheses. One of my favorites is The Dog That Didn’t Bark. When something weird is going down and the Media aren’t barking you can bet that it’s in service to their higher agenda and bears further digging and watching. Their studied incuriousness toward Obama’s background is a case in point. We may never know what his college transcripts contain, but we can bet that if it were anything good — or even mediocre — they’d be barking.
It’s much like searching for Black Holes. We’re not looking for the shiny bits, we’re looking for the absence of light. What aren’t they telling us? While the blogosphere has made much of the fact that neither Obama nor the Democrats have offered any sort of concrete plan for dealing with the looming debt crisis, that’s just not an issue for the Media. Why is that?
Certainly a big part of it is that they don’t want to say anything bad about those who are furthering their greater agenda, but is that all there is to it? Or is it that when all roads lead to catastrophe it’s better not to take a step in any direction? By letting the Stupid Party come up with plan after plan and rejecting each out of hand could they be tacitly admitting that they know that no plan can save us but that anyone who puts forth a plan to avert disaster is going to own the disaster?
Could it be that they know full well the worst thing we can do is raise the debt ceiling again but that failing to raise the debt ceiling will bring pain now while raising it will put off the pain until later when the pain will be much greater? Thus, whoever authors a passable plan to raise the ceiling or votes for it would get scant praise now but full blame later — so better to let the other guys try to come up with a passable plan while maneuvering to avoid personally voting for it? Because if you don’t come up with a plan and you vote against the plan and it passes, you don’t own it. If it fails to pass, well those guys in the Stupid Party just couldn’t come up with an acceptable plan. Doing nothing and opposing everything is a win/win if all roads lead to disaster.
By which I take it that he means we can make ourselves crazy with this stuff but we must do it anyway. There you have a Media philosophy according to Wittgenswen!
And I’m sure we all have hypotheses similar to The Dog That Didn’t Bark. We can all tell when the Media and politicians are lying by commission — their lips are moving — but how do we tell when they’re lying by omission? Surely there are tells?
Stephanie,
Good luck to your daughter, and we all hope for the best.
She will be needing very good luck in this new version of America. Games seem to be the only future for programmers, regardless of how boring it really is.
Or hacking. If you’re good at hacking, the government will hire you for tons of money. Seems a little backwards, doesn’t it?
I built a computer in the 70’s (HeathKit), but when it came to Basic, I couldn’t unlatch “threads”. I think I was smoking a TON of pot back then.
No. I KNOW I was smoking a ton of pot back then.
Stupid, stupid, stupid.
If I try to smoke pot now, my head explodes and my lungs go on overtime. I think it’s called uncontrollable anxiety. If I smoke pot now, I can’t even walk out my front door, much less function as a human being. Which I am not all that good at to start with. I hate the fact that, even though I am way past my prime, my parents are gone. OH! How wonderful was it when, no matter what the screw-up was, they were there to help? It’s all mine now, and I’m not crazy about that fact.
Best wishes to you and your whole famn damily…
TLD
Notice the distinction here? On the one hand we have nature and on the other man-made error. So the implicit assumption is that man-made error is somehow not nature.
But that’s not the way we’re supposed to think it nowadays, or so I believe we’re taught. That is, there is simply nothing that is not nature, at least in the view of science. So there’s something hinky going on (something, that is, besides people’s general delight in being able to say the words “God particle”, that is) with the presentation here.
Be that as it may, it’s precisely the question what nature is that’s our puzzle.