I’ve just finished reading Douglas Murray’s book The War on the West. Despite there being many good laughs along the way (Murray does have a wicked, and understated, sense of humour) it is, overall, a thoroughly depressing read.
Not Murray’s fault - it’s the subject matter and the endless litany of examples of human stupidity that are highlighted.
What are we to make of one example in the book where Murray talks about the Canadian history professor1 who asserts that “a backyard with a big lawn is like a classroom for colonialism”? Yes, lawns, for some reason, are problematic.
Seriously, what is going through the minds of people who can say these kinds of things with a straight face?
Not very much, it would appear.
The book is replete with many, many, such examples of absolute, and supreme, moronicity.
Perhaps the thing that struck me most about the examples in the book is that they are assertions made by some individual or organisation and presented as if they were self-evident. They are, of course, nothing of the sort.
One of the examples that interested me was the movement in music to categorize the ‘western’ system of musical notation as (yet another) example of white supremacy in action. I’ve played the piano for several decades now2 and I’m not sure how I would have learned to play stuff without some form of musical notation - or how I would have communicated to others the songs and pieces I wrote without that notation. The problem is that, whilst not perfect for all styles of music, the ‘western’ system is actually the best for the most styles that we currently have. TAB, for the guitar, is another form of notation that I’ve found useful - is this ‘racist’ and ‘white supremacist’ too?
Murray highlights the attitude that has been expressed that in teaching music we should be fighting existing power structures, and we should seek not just to teach hip-hop but to “be” hip-hop. As Murray dryly notes
. . . precisely how hip-hop can a white man hope to be? Without getting into trouble?
But why should music be about ‘fighting’ existing power structures at all?
Why should everything be about fighting these mystical “existing power structures” these days?
Can’t we just enjoy shit for what it is? What’s wrong with that? Do I have to examine my privilege and ruminate on how my bowl of Coco Pops upholds structures of white dominance and colonialism every morning?
What kind of a twisted and joyless world do these woke freaks live in?
In a previous article I talked about how this assumption that the job of educators is to fight (and dismantle) these so-called ‘oppressive’ structures and how this has extended into perhaps the purest of all subjects; mathematics.
It is simply stated as an assertion that something called “ethnomathematics” should be centred and that something called “Eurocentric” mathematics upholds capitalist, imperialist and racist views.
Where’s the evidence for this?
Furthermore, it is assumed that it is the job of teachers to challenge these “power structures” rather than, you know, just teach stuff.
I remember one interview in which some “academic” was arguing that maths is “racist” because it generated the techniques of accounting - and accounting was used in the slave trade. I’m not kidding. This was the standard of evidence used to assert that maths is racist, which is to say no evidence at all.
The whole field of “critical” studies is based on these kinds of assertions, or as I would like to say, a bunch of asses making ertions.
Without this assumptive and assertive foundation the whole edifice just crumbles.
But there is not the slightest shred of evidence that the entirety of ‘western’ civilisation has been built upon these assumed foundations. Some things were - the practice of slavery wasn’t exactly one of the high points in the development of the ‘west’, but neither is it the only, or even the most important, thing about how the west developed and flourished.
Mozart wasn’t sticking it to the noble People of Alternative Hue when he wrote The Magic Flute. He was just writing good music intended to be enjoyed, not analyzed and endlessly picked apart for ‘evidence’ that it upholds some white power structure.
This reductive and destructive program of demonizing everything about the west is only possible in the broadly liberal and tolerant societies created by the west. Other ‘non-western’ societies and systems would not allow it. Try criticizing the CCP whilst living in China, for example. In the country I worked in, I would have been jailed or expatriated (depending on the severity of any comment) for criticising the culture or the leaders.
The next time someone makes some assertion about how something or some ‘structure’ or institution is steeped in white supremacist thinking, we should really ask “and where’s your evidence for that assertion?”
There won’t be any. It’s just a statement of belief that rests on ‘evidence’ that is no more sophisticated than “it was created by white people”.
It would be probably be too mischievous of me to suggest that this attempt to blacken the reputation of the west is built upon nothing more than a feeling based on revenge for an admittedly sometimes unpleasant history.
I think Murray’s book is essential reading. If nothing else, it paints a picture of just how far and how deep this woke rot goes.
It’s time to stand up and to praise the things we in the west got right and did well - and there are so very, very many of them.
Yes, really, a professor. There’s a reason why we pay them big bucks, you know 🤦♂
Obviously not continuously
I think I’m right in saying that Indians (or “South Asians”) pretty much invented mathematics - they gave the Arabs Arabic numerals, so much more useful than those silly Xs and Is that the white Romans came up with), and invented 0. Also they had made a pretty good estimate of the age and size of the universe before AD 0. They liked thinking about very big numbers when we were still counting our cows. I’m pretty sure Indians are not generally considered to be white colonialists.
I took a sociology class back in 2002 or so, while considering the possibility of becoming a nurse, and -- about half way through the course -- was privately asked by the professor to quit raising my hand and remarking to her that the various sociological 'theories' (including Marxism) that the course covered weren't -- from the perspective of the various physical and biological sciences I'd already studied -- really theories, but only preliminary working hypotheses backed by very little, if any, evidence. She said I was confusing the younger students with my remarks. Sociology = Wokeism = magical thinking (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magical_thinking) = assertion. She, of course, was the one who was doing the confusing.