Politics associated with academic subjects?

Page 2 of 3 [ 45 posts ] Go to page Previous 1, 2, 3 Next

Joined: 2 Mar 2009
Age: 56
Gender: Male
Posts: 6,613

18 Jan 2010, 8:29 am

My honest opinion based on personal observation....

Most teachers are "liberal" because while they work for a living, they have always had it easy and take comfort in academic models rather than draw on practical life experience.

It's easy to say an idea like Marxism or Socialism would be an ideal world. Try to sell that to anyone who has managed to run a successful business and see what they think.

Colleges are perhaps the most offensive caste systems in the world because they act like they are more evolved than other institutions but they are incredibly oppressive with an elite class and a group of "untouchables."

I knew one teacher who was a Marxist, and I never thought to ask her this question...."So, as a Marxist, are you agreeable to giving up X% of your paycheck, accept reduced benefits and give up your college-provided housing so that the woman who mops the floors in the physical plant department get equal compensation for doing her part in operating this college?"

I'm certain her answer would be one of two things. The first would be, "Hell no." That would make her an elitist and not a true Marxist. It would say that she thinks the forced equality of Marxism is good for everyone but herself and other like her. The other would be, "Well, no, but they should get everything I get." That would indicate her ignorance of the economics of both the college and the world at large that makes it impossible for everyone to be equally compensated so that everyone is wealthy.

She was a respected "educator" but so out of touch with reality that she couldn't understand the fundamental reason why Marxism/Socialism can never work in reality. Although I know a lot of people work hard to become college professors, most all of them didn't have to run a business (going hungry because the owner gets paid last...if there's any money left over). They were always someone else's employee and growing in an environment that sheltered them from the realities of life while exposing them to the "ideal" environment of academia.

It's a common pattern. Find a professor who had to run a business before becoming a teacher and they tend to be very conservative. Find a professor who never ran a business before becoming a teacher and they tend to be liberal.

Sand
Veteran
Veteran

Joined: 15 Sep 2007
Age: 98
Gender: Male
Posts: 11,484
Location: Finland

18 Jan 2010, 8:39 am

zer0netgain wrote:

It's great fun to set p straw men and knock them down.

zer0netgain
Veteran
Veteran

Joined: 2 Mar 2009
Age: 56
Gender: Male
Posts: 6,613

18 Jan 2010, 1:00 pm

Sand wrote:

It's great fun to set p straw men and knock them down.

Explain, please.

I was simply relating my experience.

Those who actually went out and made the effort to be an entrepreneur didn't buy into liberal philosophies because they knew they were impractical and unrealistic. Those who always worked for someone else seemed clueless about why "idealistic" worldviews were unworkable.

I'm certain it wasn't so 100% of the time, but that's what I saw.

Awesomelyglorious
Veteran
Veteran

Joined: 17 Dec 2005
Gender: Male
Posts: 13,157
Location: Omnipresent

18 Jan 2010, 8:20 pm

Goren wrote:

Not everybody who prefers some old ways of doing something is stupid. But people who prefer it without even considering any new approaches - most definitely are. And it is the only way one can be consistently conservative. Conservatism is basically a synonym for stupidity.

Um.... ok? The issue is that conservativism isn't something that one has to be consistent about anyway, but rather one takes a pattern that is described as conservative, that can itself also suggest non-conservative directions for change. I mean, most people that are considered "conservative" don't advocate the status quo for all things. In any case.... no. If conservatism is a synonym for stupidity, then you have removed any meaning from the term "conservative". What's the point of that? Either that, or you've replaced a meaningful term for a meaningless ideological hammer. Once again, what's the point of that?

Quote:

Most usually it is not. Most people are stupid, anyway, be it in groups or not. Actually, you could just point to random person in a street and say "this person is stupid" - and there's a 95% chance that you will be right. Just don't go and do this.

Well, the issue is that if this is true, then all groups of people are stupid, and if all groups of people are stupid, then no group of people is stupid relative to the rest of the groups. Obviously I am talking about something other than misanthropy but rather that it is doubtful that the relationship between a belief and IQ is any more than correlation.

techstepgenr8tion
Veteran
Veteran

Joined: 6 Feb 2005
Age: 44
Gender: Male
Posts: 24,487
Location: 28th Path of Tzaddi

18 Jan 2010, 8:56 pm

Goren wrote:

Awesomelyglorious wrote:

Umm.... even if we granted that conservatives prefer tried and tested ways, it still does not follow that they are stupid. One can be intelligent and lack faith in our understanding of social realities, our ability to effectively change them in the desired manners, and instead believe more in the intelligence of pre-existing order and how embedded it is.

It sounds like you're not speaking for what conservatism means in the America's - its the force that usually prefers some semblance of tradition, in an informed pick and choose manner, as opposed to American progressivism which doesn't sound like 'liberalism' by your definition (which sounds very libertarian) but rather our brand that is much more of an elitist disease which would prefer to take the power from the people and then dictate to the people what's good for them.

_________________
The loneliest part of life: it's not just that no one is on your cloud, few can even see your cloud.

Orwell
Veteran
Veteran

Joined: 8 Aug 2007
Age: 35
Gender: Male
Posts: 12,518
Location: Room 101

18 Jan 2010, 10:52 pm

ruveyn wrote:

The Founding Fathers of the United States who constructed the Constitution were among the most brilliant people of their time. Almost all had a dread and loathing of Democracy and Equality. They wanted the brightest and the best to govern. Which is why our President is not chosen by the People, but by a group of electors. In those days only property owners could vote. By any reckoning these folks were conservatives.

ruveyn

No, they absolutely were not. With the exception of Hamilton and his followers, the Founding Fathers were extremely liberal for their time. The whole Revolution and the Republic set up afterwards was based on Enlightenment liberalism.

_________________
WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH

NeantHumain
Veteran
Veteran

Joined: 24 Jun 2004
Age: 44
Gender: Male
Posts: 4,837
Location: St. Louis, Missouri

18 Jan 2010, 10:58 pm

zer0netgain wrote:

It's a common pattern. Find a professor who had to run a business before becoming a teacher and they tend to be very conservative. Find a professor who never ran a business before becoming a teacher and they tend to be liberal.

I wouldn't say running one's own business is more "real" than a professorship. People who start their own businesses tend to be more conservative or libertarian in the first place. It's the reverse for professors (of some subjects at least): See "Professor Is a Label That Leans to the Left" (NYTimes.com).

Goren
Yellow-bellied Woodpecker

Joined: 6 Nov 2009
Age: 42
Gender: Male
Posts: 68

22 Jan 2010, 12:16 am

ruveyn wrote:

The Founding Fathers of the United States who constructed the Constitution were among the most brilliant people of their time.

That is probably true. But it was "of their time", the 18th century and around. What was brilliant back than is either bloody obvious or completely stupid now in the 21st. And on their time, they were very progressive - back then, conservatives were royalists and patriots of the Empire.

ruveyn wrote:

Almost all had a dread and loathing of Democracy and Equality. They wanted the brightest and the best to govern.

And that is exactly an example of what is, by the level of of political theory and historical experience of the 21st century, an obvious and indisputable stupidity.

Sand
Veteran
Veteran

Joined: 15 Sep 2007
Age: 98
Gender: Male
Posts: 11,484
Location: Finland

22 Jan 2010, 12:20 am

Goren wrote:

ruveyn wrote:

The Founding Fathers of the United States who constructed the Constitution were among the most brilliant people of their time.

ruveyn wrote:

Almost all had a dread and loathing of Democracy and Equality. They wanted the brightest and the best to govern.

And that is exactly an example of what is, by the level of of political theory and historical experience of the 21st century, an obvious and indisputable stupidity.

Faith that either the most viciously stupid or the most intelligent leaders will result in good government seems to lead to disasters in human affairs. Humanity is probably ungovernable.

Goren
Yellow-bellied Woodpecker

Joined: 6 Nov 2009
Age: 42
Gender: Male
Posts: 68

22 Jan 2010, 12:37 am

Awesomelyglorious wrote:

Yeah, and it also happens that stupid people suggest some not entirely stupid things for a change. Granted, it's always up to certain probability. If some person says and does stupid things, like, 75% of the time, we call them stupid, wouldn't we? Accordingly, if someone has conservative opinions 75% of the time, we call them conservative.

Awesomelyglorious wrote:

If conservatism is a synonym for stupidity, then you have removed any meaning from the term "conservative". What's the point of that?

Okay, if you want to be completely just and precise - maybe the use of the word 'synonim' was inappropriate in this context. Let's use the terms of naive set theory instead: the set of conservatives is a proper subset of the set of all stupid people. All conservatives are stupid, but some stupid people are not conservative.

Awesomelyglorious wrote:

Well, the issue is that if this is true, then all groups of people are stupid,

Why? Not all the groups, only some of them. Some groups can have both stupid and smart people and some may only have smart people. And the groups that are not entirely composed by stupid people differ within themselves by the percentage of non-stupid people in them. Thus, if we say "liberals are smarter than conservatives", what we mean is "the group of liberals have more smart people than the group of conservatives". In fact, any group that has some smart people is smarter than the group of conservatives, because the percentage of non-stupid people in the latter is strictly equal to zero.

Goren
Yellow-bellied Woodpecker

Joined: 6 Nov 2009
Age: 42
Gender: Male
Posts: 68

22 Jan 2010, 12:39 am

Sand wrote:

Faith that either the most viciously stupid or the most intelligent leaders will result in good government seems to lead to disasters in human affairs. Humanity is probably ungovernable.

That is true. That's why the best governors are those that don't even try to govern.

Goren
Yellow-bellied Woodpecker

Joined: 6 Nov 2009
Age: 42
Gender: Male
Posts: 68

22 Jan 2010, 12:47 am

techstepgenr8tion wrote:

Yeah, I already said that I'm not using the American set of definitions, because it differs from the rest of the world (American definitions are often quite strange, consider, for an instance, the world "football", that most of the world uses to describe a game played with feet and a round ball - in US it means a game that has very little to do with feet or balls altogether). In fact, both of the things you mentioned here are quite conservative (and quite stupid).

Awesomelyglorious
Veteran
Veteran

Joined: 17 Dec 2005
Gender: Male
Posts: 13,157
Location: Omnipresent

22 Jan 2010, 3:26 am

Goren wrote:

Right.... so "conservative" isn't an essence. The issue is that this undercuts your previous notion of "essential conservatism being stupid", as essential conservatives are already denied.

Quote:

Goren. No, that is false. If one intelligent conservative exists, then conservatives are not a subset of stupid people. At least one intelligent conservative exists, therefore your categorization is false. You might dispute that, but I don't see this kind of dispute as any more worthy than disputing that a sky exists.

Quote:

You justified conservatives being stupid by saying that 95% of mankind is stupid. Your current justification is different than the past one. In any case, no, there aren't groups that are entirely comprised of stupid people.

Look, this is a game in your eyes. I don't like games such games. Go f**k yourself.

Magnus
Veteran
Veteran

Joined: 24 Jul 2008
Age: 49
Gender: Female
Posts: 2,372
Location: Claremont, California

22 Jan 2010, 3:33 am

It's always interesting to see AG blow up.

_________________
As long as man continues to be the ruthless destroyer of lower living beings he will never know health or peace. For as long as men massacre animals, they will kill each other.

-Pythagoras

zer0netgain
Veteran
Veteran

Joined: 2 Mar 2009
Age: 56
Gender: Male
Posts: 6,613

22 Jan 2010, 8:56 am

Goren wrote:

ruveyn wrote:

The Founding Fathers of the United States who constructed the Constitution were among the most brilliant people of their time.

ruveyn wrote:

Almost all had a dread and loathing of Democracy and Equality. They wanted the brightest and the best to govern.

And that is exactly an example of what is, by the level of of political theory and historical experience of the 21st century, an obvious and indisputable stupidity.

Not to be mean towards you, but your statements are amazingly elitist and ignorant.

The Founding Fathers weren't perfect, but they had a very deep understanding of many political models and how they have succeeded and failed in history. What they produced was brilliant, and what we are doing to it today is the foolishness and ignorance.

They worked to make a government that would provide maximum freedom and prosperity for the people. Democracies do not work...they always fail, and rather quickly. We might know more information than people in the 18th Century, but we do not have the intelligence or wisdom of those people.

Remember, these men came from a generation that fought and died to be free from oppression. We would gladly join back in to oppression for the promise of a personal benefit in this generation.

Awesomelyglorious
Veteran
Veteran

Joined: 17 Dec 2005
Gender: Male
Posts: 13,157
Location: Omnipresent

22 Jan 2010, 2:51 pm

Magnus wrote:

It's always interesting to see AG blow up.

Why is it amusing? Sorry if that's a question I don't want the answer to, but I am curious.

Page 2 of 3 [ 45 posts ] Go to page Previous 1, 2, 3 Next

Jump to:

Politics associated with academic subjects? Post Reply New Topic

Politics associated with academic subjects?