In the early 80s I was a graduate student at Berkeley working on my Ph.D. in statistics. One of my housemates was a graduate student in English. One evening she had her friends over to discuss the new hot topic in their field, which was that everything was an expression of power. What about reason, I asked? "No such thing!" I was informe…
In the early 80s I was a graduate student at Berkeley working on my Ph.D. in statistics. One of my housemates was a graduate student in English. One evening she had her friends over to discuss the new hot topic in their field, which was that everything was an expression of power. What about reason, I asked? "No such thing!" I was informed (patting me on my naive stats guy pointy head): it's all about power. Reason is a just mask that tries to cover up this fact. And, for the first time, I learned the word "deconstruction". I wasn't drawn into their enthusiasm, but I did come away with a degree of sympathy. After all, what was a Ph.D. student in English supposed to do that hadn't been done a million times before? I had no idea. A lot of idle minds needed a new cat to chase up a tree. Well, they found it.
My point here is that a lot of these fields like the humanities fell for postmodernism, neo-Marxism, CRT, etc. because they ran out of gas and were eager for the next big thing to come along and energize them. That left them vulnerable to capture.
In the early 80s I was a graduate student at Berkeley working on my Ph.D. in statistics. One of my housemates was a graduate student in English. One evening she had her friends over to discuss the new hot topic in their field, which was that everything was an expression of power. What about reason, I asked? "No such thing!" I was informed (patting me on my naive stats guy pointy head): it's all about power. Reason is a just mask that tries to cover up this fact. And, for the first time, I learned the word "deconstruction". I wasn't drawn into their enthusiasm, but I did come away with a degree of sympathy. After all, what was a Ph.D. student in English supposed to do that hadn't been done a million times before? I had no idea. A lot of idle minds needed a new cat to chase up a tree. Well, they found it.
> One evening she had her friends over to discuss the new hot topic in their field, which was that everything was an expression of power.
The right reply to that is: "So you admit everything you say is just a power play, in that case why should anyone listen to anything you say?"
people defend half truths the most insanely
My point here is that a lot of these fields like the humanities fell for postmodernism, neo-Marxism, CRT, etc. because they ran out of gas and were eager for the next big thing to come along and energize them. That left them vulnerable to capture.