Your use of the word "niggardly" reminded me of a story from 2002 involving a school teacher named Stephanie Bell. Bell, a 4th grade teacher used that inoffensive word in context with her class only to have an ignorant parent take offense resulting in an apology by, and punishment for the teacher. I remember discussing the story with my grandmother (a retired elementary school teacher) and how upset she was at the ludicrous capitulation to ignorance. My grandmother, Zelda, was one of, if not the most intelligent human being(s) I've ever known. And her disgust with the lunacy of that situation and others likely led me to my own refusal to tolerate irrational stupidity. The short lived fascination with "Ebonics" being another example.
However, it is your assertion that hate crimes could be justified/needed but simply given a different term puzzles me here. After all, "hate" is merely one of many emotional states that sometimes plague human beings and lead to undesirable, even criminal behaviors or actions. Are we to criminalize feeling envy, sadness, anger, and even love next? After all, every emotion is capable of inspiring undesirable and/or criminal actions.
Though they are technically informal fallacies "slippery slope" arguments in this time of dynamic word definitions have proven to be correct more often than not. Capitulation to the irrational will in the dystopian future of thought crime find everyone spying on and informing on their neighbors, parents, children, &c...
The question is what newly created thought crime will you be guilty of?
Hard to predict. Pride has already gone from deadly sin to value. And, to quote Thomas Sowell: "Envy was once considered to be one of the seven deadly sins before it became one of the most admired virtues under its new name, 'social justice'".
At least you physicists use fancy Greek to name your stuff. We mathematicians misuse everyday words like field, ring, group, sheaf, space, scheme, fibre. We call things smooth, regular, natural, or normal. All this is going to come back at us with a vengeance...
Since you mentioned "emotional labour": I'll throw in "mental load" and "care work", and notice that there's an interesting concept creep. Why do we have to pull all human activities into the arena of economics? Seems to me an ugly child of postmodernism and neoliberalism.
I used to be a bastard mathematical physicist in that I liked physics but didn’t want to put in the hours doing experiments. But I gave all that up to trade markets which I found much more fun. And at the time entirely devoid of woke esg and other BS. And even then, I would have agreed with your remark about economics entirely. but in later life with more time to investigate more things to broaden my boring old fart knowledge base in order to make sense of the exciting times we live in, I now realise that you are only mostly correct. The “economics” touted daily by the global cuntocrats (un / wef / the greta and the good / and played on down for our useful idiot politicians to implement on the plebs) is only that promoted by the elitist communist academics like Keynes. Magic Money pretend economics. But I can thoroughly recommend everyone look into Austrian School economics as the uplifting antidote, via orgs such as the Mises institute, read Hayek and von Mises. These economic dudes had it right all along and thus you will never hear of them anywhere mainstream. It boils down to sound money (Austrian school) versus fake money (Keynes, mmt, esg etc) and we can see that whenever humans are obliged by their rulers to live with fake money it always ends with the SHTF. I believe that as a math guy you’ll appreciate what you find and thus may help orange pill more misinformed souls in your own circles
I agree (I have read some Hayek). My definition of economics: the subfield of sociology that is dealing with incentives.
My comment was more about the observation that some concepts that economists (of whatever kind, and in whatever way, and more or less reasonably) speak about (labour, work) are imposed upon human interaction (emotions, care). From there, the whole discourse is only about compensation, monetization, reparations.
The Hegelian manipulation of society, intersectional alphabet soup of labels and the willingness of seemingly rational people to self flagellate for "the good of others", are the most destructive weapons.
This virus of our minds has no vaccination and the path to herd immunity will be a difficult one.
What Morecambe said to Previn was: "I'm playing all the right notes, but not necessarily in the right order." I love musical comedy, especially when it involves pianos. Here's the whole sketch:
It is beginning to feel of late like language is being weaponized, and those on the side wielding the weapon are playing victim. So topsy turvy. By the way, I recognized the building in your opening photos - I live in the smallish city of Victoria, on the large island just across the Georgia Straight from Vancouver, where that building is. Quite an eye-catching edifice!
Those who use the jargon of the woke want us to believe that we-- not being experts and not aligning with the theories coming out of academic departments-- are not qualified to parse and critique it. It would be silly for me to question the definition of a photon, and likewise, they suggest, any difficulty I have with words like "cisgender" or "microaggression" or "nonbinary" is due to my lack of expertise. Just as I must feel out of my element (stupid) and trust the experts around terms like "massless boson" and "massive fermions,"*** I must trust and accept the jargon coming out of the Studies departments because they describe real phenomena I live with but am too dumb too understand without significant hand-holding.
***Does all physics jargon lend itself to jokes as easily as these terms? Or are these actually code words you use when referring to your colleagues in the queer studies department?
Jun 17, 2022·edited Jun 17, 2022Liked by Rudolph Rigger
Thanks for the great article. 👍🏽 That's so cool that you got to be around highly intelligent people. It seems like you got a lot from it. 😊
It occurs to me that this younger Western generation is growing up in a time of great instability. In the past 70 years in the US, many people have had some level of personal security. Our society has been relatively stable, safe and secure for many. There's been an invisible holding environment people have had, giving them a basic level of security and stability. The younger generation doesn't have this. They believe that our world is going to end from climate change, they're in massive college debt with useless degrees, end-stage capitalism is looting their government and citizens, they are influenced by more information than they have evolved to deal with, and they have few previously proscribed social paths to security, and happiness. And now they're adding bioterrorism to their plate.
I wonder if this social instability has something to do with their incessant need to "identify as" .... all these different words. Our personality identity gives us psychological consistency and stability. We know who we are, and as a result we act and relate in a patterned, fairly consistent, stable way. Maybe our younger woke generation is trying to compensate for the current lack of social and world stability. If they can't find some kind of psychological stability, internal or external, they would simply freak out and commit suicide, which they've been doing in high numbers for the past 10-15 years.
So are children of more traditional conservative families and areas of the country doing better? Unfortunately NAFTA took away many economic prospects, and a good chunk of conservatives have been suffering for a long time, ignored. But maybe they've been better off in other ways. I don't know. The liberals might say conservatives are getting more traditional and set in their ways to deal with social instability.
I suppose wokesters need to name all the things that are wrong in society could also be a compensation. If they can't name and define it, can it ever be fixed!!? 🧐
Btw, I'm gay and I don't know what the word queer means. I think I know it when I see it though, but isn't that your point. I don't know what half those words mean in your Wikipedia quote! 😅
I think that systemic racism exists because of White people's unconscious bias and minor and moderate prejudices. It's not the only thing that affects the success of black and white people though. I've written enough, I won't say more unless anyone's interested.
Another wonderful and thoughtful post Nova - thank you
Things are definitely different for young people today - and maybe some of that is a good thing. I remember the existence of quite explicit racism and homophobic attitudes in society (UK) when I was growing up. My own kids grew up in a very different environment where, at school, there were different ethnicities and openly gay students - and nobody batted an eyelid.
As it should be. The whole point of the early pride marches was to get to the position where we could be like "You're gay? Cool. Did you see the match last night?" A point where being gay was as wholly unremarkable and accepted (both socially and legally) as being straight.
I kind of feel we've taken several big steps backwards over the last few years. Of course there were horrible, horrible injustices in the past - and we're never going to get rid of assholes in our society - but, for a time, I thought we'd almost "cracked it" - or at least were quite a way down that road and heading in the right direction.
But up popped these woke wankers who cry over pronouns and whether words like blacklist are 'offensive' - and much of what they're doing is creating a negative impression and making things worse. I appreciate the race situation in the US is a bit different because of the legacy of things like slavery and Jim Crow etc - so maybe there are some issues that will take a bit longer to iron out.
My daughters came round to my place last night and treated me to a take-out curry as a sort of early Father's Day thing (Sunday I will be helping older daughter and husband tidying their garden after some building work). One of the interesting things they said was that if they had kids there would be no way they'd allow them access to social media or a smartphone until they were into their teens. They both felt that social media, and the easy access to pornography, had had a deep and damaging impact on kids. I think I might be more liberal than them haha (although not on the porn thing - which I think can give a very twisted perception of what human intimacy is all about).
But I wonder whether some of the 'woke' stuff is about trying to create hope where much of what they see is hopelessness. I bought my first house (3 bed terrace) when I started work - and it was a helluva struggle, particularly when interest rates skyrocketed. I had towels and bits of cloth for curtains, didn't have a TV, had a mattress on the floor and a borrowed 2 ring cooker which sat on the kitchen worktop. I lived like that for about 2 years before things started to ease up financially.
But at least it was (just about) doable. Today in the UK there is simply no way I could do the same thing if I was just starting out - I probably couldn't even afford a studio apartment. Kids today have it much harder than I did. I also wasn't saddled with student debt because, at the time, the UK paid for higher education (it was means-tested and my ma and pa were not very well off).
Maybe there's a sense in younger people that being 'traditional', holding to the 'values' of the past, hasn't worked out too well for them - so it all needs to be upended.
Interesting questions. Not all things 'woke' are necessarily bad - after all, it's (mostly) coming from a place of hope that people can be more tolerant and accepting and compassionate to one another. It's just that they're not going about it in the most productive way, I feel.
Thank you for this thoughtful and personal reply. I very much relate to and agree with all you say here. We have come a long away accepting different types of people, I think this younger generation really lives that. And I think you're right, much of the excesses comes from care and empathy for others, but perhaps it's embedded in immaturity too much of the time these days.
I love curry, I hope you enjoyed your early Father's Day meal. I'm leaving soon to visit my 5-month-old grandson, and stay with my son and daughter-in-law for a few days. Take good care. 💜
That was exceptionally brave of you Dr Rigger to admit to your Imperial years. You have my deepest sympathies Sir. Personally whenever I hear the name Imperial at any time over this last decade or more, since their deep capture into the climate crisis alarm promotion industrial complex via all the Grantham cash, then their eminent “physicist” Ferguson with his marvellous inability to add up any numbers to get the correct answer. Well I just think something like how the mighty have fallen. Commiserations are in order. I wish you every success in escaping that corrupt institution with your honour and integrity and intelligence and humour still intact, if you have not yet been able.
Your use of the word "niggardly" reminded me of a story from 2002 involving a school teacher named Stephanie Bell. Bell, a 4th grade teacher used that inoffensive word in context with her class only to have an ignorant parent take offense resulting in an apology by, and punishment for the teacher. I remember discussing the story with my grandmother (a retired elementary school teacher) and how upset she was at the ludicrous capitulation to ignorance. My grandmother, Zelda, was one of, if not the most intelligent human being(s) I've ever known. And her disgust with the lunacy of that situation and others likely led me to my own refusal to tolerate irrational stupidity. The short lived fascination with "Ebonics" being another example.
However, it is your assertion that hate crimes could be justified/needed but simply given a different term puzzles me here. After all, "hate" is merely one of many emotional states that sometimes plague human beings and lead to undesirable, even criminal behaviors or actions. Are we to criminalize feeling envy, sadness, anger, and even love next? After all, every emotion is capable of inspiring undesirable and/or criminal actions.
Though they are technically informal fallacies "slippery slope" arguments in this time of dynamic word definitions have proven to be correct more often than not. Capitulation to the irrational will in the dystopian future of thought crime find everyone spying on and informing on their neighbors, parents, children, &c...
The question is what newly created thought crime will you be guilty of?
Hard to predict. Pride has already gone from deadly sin to value. And, to quote Thomas Sowell: "Envy was once considered to be one of the seven deadly sins before it became one of the most admired virtues under its new name, 'social justice'".
Thomas Sowell is a genius. I've been a fan of his for 30 years. Along with the great Walter Williams, RIP.
At least you physicists use fancy Greek to name your stuff. We mathematicians misuse everyday words like field, ring, group, sheaf, space, scheme, fibre. We call things smooth, regular, natural, or normal. All this is going to come back at us with a vengeance...
Since you mentioned "emotional labour": I'll throw in "mental load" and "care work", and notice that there's an interesting concept creep. Why do we have to pull all human activities into the arena of economics? Seems to me an ugly child of postmodernism and neoliberalism.
I used to be a bastard mathematical physicist in that I liked physics but didn’t want to put in the hours doing experiments. But I gave all that up to trade markets which I found much more fun. And at the time entirely devoid of woke esg and other BS. And even then, I would have agreed with your remark about economics entirely. but in later life with more time to investigate more things to broaden my boring old fart knowledge base in order to make sense of the exciting times we live in, I now realise that you are only mostly correct. The “economics” touted daily by the global cuntocrats (un / wef / the greta and the good / and played on down for our useful idiot politicians to implement on the plebs) is only that promoted by the elitist communist academics like Keynes. Magic Money pretend economics. But I can thoroughly recommend everyone look into Austrian School economics as the uplifting antidote, via orgs such as the Mises institute, read Hayek and von Mises. These economic dudes had it right all along and thus you will never hear of them anywhere mainstream. It boils down to sound money (Austrian school) versus fake money (Keynes, mmt, esg etc) and we can see that whenever humans are obliged by their rulers to live with fake money it always ends with the SHTF. I believe that as a math guy you’ll appreciate what you find and thus may help orange pill more misinformed souls in your own circles
I agree (I have read some Hayek). My definition of economics: the subfield of sociology that is dealing with incentives.
My comment was more about the observation that some concepts that economists (of whatever kind, and in whatever way, and more or less reasonably) speak about (labour, work) are imposed upon human interaction (emotions, care). From there, the whole discourse is only about compensation, monetization, reparations.
The Hegelian manipulation of society, intersectional alphabet soup of labels and the willingness of seemingly rational people to self flagellate for "the good of others", are the most destructive weapons.
This virus of our minds has no vaccination and the path to herd immunity will be a difficult one.
What Morecambe said to Previn was: "I'm playing all the right notes, but not necessarily in the right order." I love musical comedy, especially when it involves pianos. Here's the whole sketch:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7GeKLE0x3s
Ah yes - thanks for the correction. I knew I hadn't got it quite right.
And thanks for the link too - it's probably about 4 decades since I saw that sketch 😊
It is beginning to feel of late like language is being weaponized, and those on the side wielding the weapon are playing victim. So topsy turvy. By the way, I recognized the building in your opening photos - I live in the smallish city of Victoria, on the large island just across the Georgia Straight from Vancouver, where that building is. Quite an eye-catching edifice!
Those who use the jargon of the woke want us to believe that we-- not being experts and not aligning with the theories coming out of academic departments-- are not qualified to parse and critique it. It would be silly for me to question the definition of a photon, and likewise, they suggest, any difficulty I have with words like "cisgender" or "microaggression" or "nonbinary" is due to my lack of expertise. Just as I must feel out of my element (stupid) and trust the experts around terms like "massless boson" and "massive fermions,"*** I must trust and accept the jargon coming out of the Studies departments because they describe real phenomena I live with but am too dumb too understand without significant hand-holding.
***Does all physics jargon lend itself to jokes as easily as these terms? Or are these actually code words you use when referring to your colleagues in the queer studies department?
I fear the function, if not the object, of this insanity is to gift authorities the power of determining definitions and "appropriate" responses.
When subjectivity becomes the standard by which conflicts are adjudicated, irrationality rules and we are taught to accept arbitrary authority.
Thanks for the great article. 👍🏽 That's so cool that you got to be around highly intelligent people. It seems like you got a lot from it. 😊
It occurs to me that this younger Western generation is growing up in a time of great instability. In the past 70 years in the US, many people have had some level of personal security. Our society has been relatively stable, safe and secure for many. There's been an invisible holding environment people have had, giving them a basic level of security and stability. The younger generation doesn't have this. They believe that our world is going to end from climate change, they're in massive college debt with useless degrees, end-stage capitalism is looting their government and citizens, they are influenced by more information than they have evolved to deal with, and they have few previously proscribed social paths to security, and happiness. And now they're adding bioterrorism to their plate.
I wonder if this social instability has something to do with their incessant need to "identify as" .... all these different words. Our personality identity gives us psychological consistency and stability. We know who we are, and as a result we act and relate in a patterned, fairly consistent, stable way. Maybe our younger woke generation is trying to compensate for the current lack of social and world stability. If they can't find some kind of psychological stability, internal or external, they would simply freak out and commit suicide, which they've been doing in high numbers for the past 10-15 years.
So are children of more traditional conservative families and areas of the country doing better? Unfortunately NAFTA took away many economic prospects, and a good chunk of conservatives have been suffering for a long time, ignored. But maybe they've been better off in other ways. I don't know. The liberals might say conservatives are getting more traditional and set in their ways to deal with social instability.
I suppose wokesters need to name all the things that are wrong in society could also be a compensation. If they can't name and define it, can it ever be fixed!!? 🧐
Btw, I'm gay and I don't know what the word queer means. I think I know it when I see it though, but isn't that your point. I don't know what half those words mean in your Wikipedia quote! 😅
I think that systemic racism exists because of White people's unconscious bias and minor and moderate prejudices. It's not the only thing that affects the success of black and white people though. I've written enough, I won't say more unless anyone's interested.
Another wonderful and thoughtful post Nova - thank you
Things are definitely different for young people today - and maybe some of that is a good thing. I remember the existence of quite explicit racism and homophobic attitudes in society (UK) when I was growing up. My own kids grew up in a very different environment where, at school, there were different ethnicities and openly gay students - and nobody batted an eyelid.
As it should be. The whole point of the early pride marches was to get to the position where we could be like "You're gay? Cool. Did you see the match last night?" A point where being gay was as wholly unremarkable and accepted (both socially and legally) as being straight.
I kind of feel we've taken several big steps backwards over the last few years. Of course there were horrible, horrible injustices in the past - and we're never going to get rid of assholes in our society - but, for a time, I thought we'd almost "cracked it" - or at least were quite a way down that road and heading in the right direction.
But up popped these woke wankers who cry over pronouns and whether words like blacklist are 'offensive' - and much of what they're doing is creating a negative impression and making things worse. I appreciate the race situation in the US is a bit different because of the legacy of things like slavery and Jim Crow etc - so maybe there are some issues that will take a bit longer to iron out.
My daughters came round to my place last night and treated me to a take-out curry as a sort of early Father's Day thing (Sunday I will be helping older daughter and husband tidying their garden after some building work). One of the interesting things they said was that if they had kids there would be no way they'd allow them access to social media or a smartphone until they were into their teens. They both felt that social media, and the easy access to pornography, had had a deep and damaging impact on kids. I think I might be more liberal than them haha (although not on the porn thing - which I think can give a very twisted perception of what human intimacy is all about).
But I wonder whether some of the 'woke' stuff is about trying to create hope where much of what they see is hopelessness. I bought my first house (3 bed terrace) when I started work - and it was a helluva struggle, particularly when interest rates skyrocketed. I had towels and bits of cloth for curtains, didn't have a TV, had a mattress on the floor and a borrowed 2 ring cooker which sat on the kitchen worktop. I lived like that for about 2 years before things started to ease up financially.
But at least it was (just about) doable. Today in the UK there is simply no way I could do the same thing if I was just starting out - I probably couldn't even afford a studio apartment. Kids today have it much harder than I did. I also wasn't saddled with student debt because, at the time, the UK paid for higher education (it was means-tested and my ma and pa were not very well off).
Maybe there's a sense in younger people that being 'traditional', holding to the 'values' of the past, hasn't worked out too well for them - so it all needs to be upended.
Interesting questions. Not all things 'woke' are necessarily bad - after all, it's (mostly) coming from a place of hope that people can be more tolerant and accepting and compassionate to one another. It's just that they're not going about it in the most productive way, I feel.
Thank you for this thoughtful and personal reply. I very much relate to and agree with all you say here. We have come a long away accepting different types of people, I think this younger generation really lives that. And I think you're right, much of the excesses comes from care and empathy for others, but perhaps it's embedded in immaturity too much of the time these days.
I love curry, I hope you enjoyed your early Father's Day meal. I'm leaving soon to visit my 5-month-old grandson, and stay with my son and daughter-in-law for a few days. Take good care. 💜
That was exceptionally brave of you Dr Rigger to admit to your Imperial years. You have my deepest sympathies Sir. Personally whenever I hear the name Imperial at any time over this last decade or more, since their deep capture into the climate crisis alarm promotion industrial complex via all the Grantham cash, then their eminent “physicist” Ferguson with his marvellous inability to add up any numbers to get the correct answer. Well I just think something like how the mighty have fallen. Commiserations are in order. I wish you every success in escaping that corrupt institution with your honour and integrity and intelligence and humour still intact, if you have not yet been able.
Haha - when I was at Imperial it was quite some time before the current trends. Tom Kibble was head of the Physics Department.
I think science should introduce a new concept : the Ferguson number
- which is basically a wild-ass guess that is usually at least an order of magnitude out