EDI commissars are trained to notice who are under-represented in positions of privilege – Blacks in the US, Indigenous in Canada – but not the logical complement, namely the over-represented. Who are the latter? Well, white males certainly. But also… Read More ›
Why My Colleagues Are Idiots
MANDATORY EDUCATIONAL OPPORTUNITY
On the surface this latest addition to woke Newspeak would seem to be an oxymoron. But this might be too quick. A conscript is a conscript, but he does have an opportunity to learn a trade. And compulsory education –… Read More ›
DIVERSITY AND ORTHODOXY (Repost from Nov 28, 2020)
Scene One: Five friends walk into a bar. Each is a fundamentalist pro-Life Trump-supporting Republican who’s never disagreed with the other four about anything. But one is white, another black, one brown, one yellow, and one red. Scene Two: Five … Read More ›
THE BANALITY OF …
I’m a hypocrite. I criticise others for opining on what they merely hear-tell someone has said or written, and I’ve been doing the same vis a vis Critical Race Theory. So the other day I girded my loins and actually… Read More ›
INTRODUCTION TO MY INTRODUCTION TO PHILOSOPHY
When we had to spend 24/7 defending the mouth of our cave, we didn’t have a whole lot of time to wonder about anything, save where the next predator, be it man or beast, might be readying to pounce. And… Read More ›
WHAT GOES AROUND …
People like Caroline Hodes like to complain about people complaining about “the indoctrination of their children in our schools”. But school just is indoctrination. There’s no such thing as value-free education. So what she really means is she likes the… Read More ›
YOU CAN’T TRUST YOUR FEELINGS
Apparently I harbour a whole lot of hate I didn’t know about. I’d have thought hatred is a sufficiently powerful emotion that I’d feel it. But the fact that I don’t feel it doesn’t mean it’s not there. For example,… Read More ›
UNWOKE U
Jonathan Haidt has argued that a university can seek truth, or it can pursue justice, but not both. He’s right about the dichotomy, but I’m not sure he’s best identified the two choices. Getting the truth is far above anyone’s… Read More ›
FANTASIES
If you think about it – my advice is don’t – the lion’s share of our lives are lived not in the world but in our heads. By this I don’t mean the now banal observation that our experiences of… Read More ›
HACKLES
Jonathan Haidt has argued that a university can seek the truth, or it can pursue social justice, but it can’t do both. This is not because the two are never one. As often as not they are. But that means… Read More ›
Paulosophical Vimplications 