Fear of Woking

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Queequeg
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Fear of Woking

Post by Queequeg »

Interesting opinion piece about the exaggerated fear of cancellation in the Academy. Goldberg uses the recent Netflix series, The Chair, as the pivot to say that academics are having "histrionic" fits over so called, "Cancel Culture".

In the article, she makes reference to Joy Division. As a GenXer sort of adjacent to the world of "The Chair", I gotta say that I'm gleaning some long lost pleasure knowing that my music has become rebellious again.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/20/opin ... lture.html

Thought this might offer a nice bookend to the conversation about right wing paranoia about wokeness.
There is no suffering to be severed. Ignorance and klesas are indivisible from bodhi. There is no cause of suffering to be abandoned. Since extremes and the false are the Middle and genuine, there is no path to be practiced. Samsara is nirvana. No severance achieved. No suffering nor its cause. No path, no end. There is no transcendent realm; there is only the one true aspect. There is nothing separate from the true aspect.
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Re: Fear of Woking

Post by Malcolm »

Queequeg wrote: Tue Sep 21, 2021 12:24 pm
Thought this might offer a nice bookend to the conversation about right wing paranoia about wokeness.
As I have been saying all along, who is afraid of the opinions of freshman in college?

The whole hysteria around CRT and wokeness has been manufactured by the right, in order to limit the free speech of the left, as the article cogently points out.
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Queequeg
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Re: Fear of Woking

Post by Queequeg »

Malcolm wrote: Tue Sep 21, 2021 2:32 pm As I have been saying all along, who is afraid of the opinions of freshman in college?
Insecure college professors.

To an extent, it's exacerbated by administrators who evaluate professors based on student ratings and comments. Freshmen are given inordinate power on campuses that affect everything from spending on lavish student accommodations to grade inflation. Don't underestimate the power of an 18 year old at an elite university.
There is no suffering to be severed. Ignorance and klesas are indivisible from bodhi. There is no cause of suffering to be abandoned. Since extremes and the false are the Middle and genuine, there is no path to be practiced. Samsara is nirvana. No severance achieved. No suffering nor its cause. No path, no end. There is no transcendent realm; there is only the one true aspect. There is nothing separate from the true aspect.
-Guanding, Perfect and Sudden Contemplation,
Archie2009
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Re: Fear of Woking

Post by Archie2009 »

NY Times is part of clown world.

When students search the campus with baseball bats in hand for supposed racist professors something is off. This happened to Bret Weinstein at Evergreen State College in 2017 literally because he refused to take a day off.

Image
Last edited by Archie2009 on Tue Sep 21, 2021 4:24 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: Fear of Woking

Post by Malcolm »

Queequeg wrote: Tue Sep 21, 2021 3:44 pm
Malcolm wrote: Tue Sep 21, 2021 2:32 pm As I have been saying all along, who is afraid of the opinions of freshman in college?
Insecure college professors.
They need to get over it.
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Re: Fear of Woking

Post by Malcolm »

Archie2009 wrote: Tue Sep 21, 2021 4:21 pm NY Times is part of clown world.

When students search the campus with baseball bats in hand for supposed racist professors something is off.
That did not happen: timeline here:

https://www.theolympian.com/news/local/ ... 61841.html

This happened to Bret Weinstein at Evergreen State College in 2017 literally because he refused to take a day off.
Only an idiot refuses to take a paid day off.

He was also engaged in performative silliness. It paid off. He and his wife also received 500K for their troubles. Now he is a major player in the Covid Antivaxx movement, so a total idiot. It's also telling that he blames "postmodernism" and "critical theory" for his woes. What a putz.


Image


More performative silliness.
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Queequeg
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Re: Fear of Woking

Post by Queequeg »

Malcolm wrote: Tue Sep 21, 2021 4:37 pm
Archie2009 wrote: Tue Sep 21, 2021 4:21 pm NY Times is part of clown world.

When students search the campus with baseball bats in hand for supposed racist professors something is off.
That did not happen: timeline here:

https://www.theolympian.com/news/local/ ... 61841.html

This happened to Bret Weinstein at Evergreen State College in 2017 literally because he refused to take a day off.
Only an idiot refuses to take a paid day off.

He was also engaged in performative silliness. It paid off. He and his wife also received 500K for their troubles. Now he is a major player in the Covid Antivaxx movement, so a total idiot. It's also telling that he blames "postmodernism" and "critical theory" for his woes. What a putz.


Image


More performative silliness.
To be fair, performative silliness is not just a right wing thing. There's plenty of performative silliness on college campuses. Actually, I think that's a big point of college... performative silliness is part of the promise of college campuses, though its patronized with much more noble descriptions. If one doesn't take a chance at college to be someone or something else, they've wasted an opportunity, IMHO.
There is no suffering to be severed. Ignorance and klesas are indivisible from bodhi. There is no cause of suffering to be abandoned. Since extremes and the false are the Middle and genuine, there is no path to be practiced. Samsara is nirvana. No severance achieved. No suffering nor its cause. No path, no end. There is no transcendent realm; there is only the one true aspect. There is nothing separate from the true aspect.
-Guanding, Perfect and Sudden Contemplation,
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Re: Fear of Woking

Post by Archie2009 »

The whole US progressive social justice movement pivots on performative hysteria.
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Re: Fear of Woking

Post by Malcolm »

Archie2009 wrote: Tue Sep 21, 2021 5:02 pm The whole US progressive social justice movement pivots on performative hysteria.
You mean like this?

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Last edited by Malcolm on Tue Sep 21, 2021 5:07 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Fear of Woking

Post by FiveSkandhas »

I believe one should consider intention to some extent when evaluating cultural items on the "cancellation" chopping block, as well as the individuals who are responsible for said items' existence.

It's not the whole story but it's part of it.

Did the person in question who created the offending artifact intend to be racist, sexist, etc. when giving rise to a hurtful or offensive result? If not, they should be cut some degree of slack.

That doesn't mean that the hurtful or offensive result isn't hurtful or offensive. And it doesn't mean that a hurtful or offensive result should be tolerated or accepted. By all means cancel it, but at the same time have some compassion for its perpetrator if they did not act with malicious intent.

Thus, one can cancel inappropriate cultural artifacts without necessarily demonizing the people who gave rise to them out of innocence, ignorance, thoughtlessness, or previously unexamined norms.
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Queequeg
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Re: Fear of Woking

Post by Queequeg »

Malcolm wrote: Tue Sep 21, 2021 5:03 pm
Archie2009 wrote: Tue Sep 21, 2021 5:02 pm The whole US progressive social justice movement pivots on performative hysteria.
You mean like this?

Image
I believe that takes the cake in terms of performative silliness.
There is no suffering to be severed. Ignorance and klesas are indivisible from bodhi. There is no cause of suffering to be abandoned. Since extremes and the false are the Middle and genuine, there is no path to be practiced. Samsara is nirvana. No severance achieved. No suffering nor its cause. No path, no end. There is no transcendent realm; there is only the one true aspect. There is nothing separate from the true aspect.
-Guanding, Perfect and Sudden Contemplation,
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Re: Fear of Woking

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FFS I go to Evergreen, they didn’t chase him down with bats, they cornered him and yelled a bunch of dumb, senseless crap at him.

The whole thing is really dumb. Evergreen used to have this tradition of a ‘day of presence’ where people of color or whatever wouldn’t show up one day as a protest. That year they reversed it and suggested white people don’t show up.

So it was this silly thing where Weinstein reacted like the weird intellectual type he is, in some way they perceived as racist, and there was a group running around campus screaming about racism.

Eventually they provoked the Neo Nazis nearby and the school got shut down for a week. Nothing really happened, it’s the kind of silly shit that passes for ‘activism’ and happens here all the time. ‘Per formative’ is an accurate word for all of it, including Weinstein.

Evergreen certainly had that kind of behavior, it also has anti-Vaxxers, TPUSA tables and all the other types you find at a liberal arts college in an insular ‘left coast’ college town.

This kind of thing actually ends up being much worse for the left than the right because any political actions taken there are run by a small group of activists who will shout anyone down who they disagree with *on their own side*, usually via vague accusations of racism.

To a degree this is what happened with Weinstein, but also, turns out he’s just a kook anyway. He could have handled the situation much differently, but he did what he did and joined The Intellectual Doofus Web or whatever.

So, fake wholeness and cancel culture are more an actual problem for the heterodox left than the right, by far. The right uses it the way you would expect, basically to pass an actually racist agenda but most of the ‘soft censorship’, (in fact nearly all of that I’ve seen) has been a result of this brand of juvenile wokeness within the discourse on the left.
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Re: Fear of Woking

Post by Malcolm »

Johnny Dangerous wrote: Tue Sep 21, 2021 5:53 pm but most of the ‘soft censorship’, (in fact nearly all of that I’ve seen) has been a result of this brand of juvenile wokeness within the discourse on the left.
Yes, because people are threatened by freshman in college. Give me a break.
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Re: Fear of Woking

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Malcolm wrote: Tue Sep 21, 2021 6:20 pm
Johnny Dangerous wrote: Tue Sep 21, 2021 5:53 pm but most of the ‘soft censorship’, (in fact nearly all of that I’ve seen) has been a result of this brand of juvenile wokeness within the discourse on the left.
Yes, because people are threatened by freshman in college. Give me a break.
Freshman in college canmake up a large part of whatever political activism goes on a campus. While I don’t think most professors worry about it much, college freshman can certainly sway the terms of debate within their own social groups.

Anyway, the dynamic here is older activist types with a following of kids usually. I don’t think it’s dangerous the way right wingers claim, but it does make the left wing landscape here amazingly ineffective and self-facing.
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Re: Fear of Woking

Post by Natan »

Malcolm wrote: Tue Sep 21, 2021 6:20 pm
Johnny Dangerous wrote: Tue Sep 21, 2021 5:53 pm but most of the ‘soft censorship’, (in fact nearly all of that I’ve seen) has been a result of this brand of juvenile wokeness within the discourse on the left.
Yes, because people are threatened by freshman in college. Give me a break.
You've obviously never been the reason for a college sit in. There are strength in numbers. And can change the policy of a University provost. Don't underestimate the degree to which changes in social mores now are radical. What's happening now is far more radical than anything pior, namely gender non identity. This changes what we call a species. It's fundamental. The Gen Zknow their power by way of numbers and social media. They are welding it.

There's a very insightful series on HBO called Hacks about a politically incorrect baby Boomer comedian mentoring a politically correct Gen Z comedy writer who expressed herself in vulgar terms. It's very interesting to see this dynamic. It's mutually destructive is the conclusion.

The human race is in a total death spiral. Also mentioned there.
Last edited by Natan on Tue Sep 21, 2021 6:58 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: Fear of Woking

Post by Malcolm »

Johnny Dangerous wrote: Tue Sep 21, 2021 6:28 pm but it does make the left wing landscape here amazingly ineffective and self-facing.
It's always been like that, as far as I can remember.
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Re: Fear of Woking

Post by Natan »

Crazywisdom wrote: Tue Sep 21, 2021 6:56 pm
Malcolm wrote: Tue Sep 21, 2021 6:20 pm
Johnny Dangerous wrote: Tue Sep 21, 2021 5:53 pm but most of the ‘soft censorship’, (in fact nearly all of that I’ve seen) has been a result of this brand of juvenile wokeness within the discourse on the left.
Yes, because people are threatened by freshman in college. Give me a break.
You've obviously never been the reason for a college sit in. There are strength in numbers. And can change the policy of a University provost. Don't underestimate the degree to which changes in social mores now are radical. What's happening now is far more radical than anything pior, namely gender non identity. This changes what we call a species. It's fundamental. The Gen Zknow their power by way of numbers and social media. They are welding it.

There's a very insightful series on HBO called Hacks about a politically incorrect baby Boomer comedian mentoring a politically correct Gen Z comedy writer who expressed herself in vulgar terms. It's very interesting to see this dynamic. It's mutually destructive is the conclusion.

The human race is in a total death spiral. Also mentioned there.
Considering how technology allows biological choice about everything hereditary, and the enormous force opposition by the religious activists, there will be amazing and overwhelming force brought to bear on both sides.
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Re: Fear of Woking

Post by Malcolm »

Crazywisdom wrote: Tue Sep 21, 2021 6:56 pm
Malcolm wrote: Tue Sep 21, 2021 6:20 pm
Johnny Dangerous wrote: Tue Sep 21, 2021 5:53 pm but most of the ‘soft censorship’, (in fact nearly all of that I’ve seen) has been a result of this brand of juvenile wokeness within the discourse on the left.
Yes, because people are threatened by freshman in college. Give me a break.
You've obviously never been the reason for a college sit in.
I have lived in college towns for my entire life. Ithaca, the Happy Valley (Western Ma), Cambridge, Burlington, VT., Boston, and back to the Valley again. I've seen more sitins than I can remember. Freshman come and go, get on with their lives, forget about their youthful political passions, get married, have families, etc.

What freshman in college think is just not a big deal.
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Re: Fear of Woking

Post by Tenma »

Johnny Dangerous wrote: Tue Sep 21, 2021 6:28 pm
Malcolm wrote: Tue Sep 21, 2021 6:20 pm
Johnny Dangerous wrote: Tue Sep 21, 2021 5:53 pm but most of the ‘soft censorship’, (in fact nearly all of that I’ve seen) has been a result of this brand of juvenile wokeness within the discourse on the left.
Yes, because people are threatened by freshman in college. Give me a break.
Freshman in college canmake up a large part of whatever political activism goes on a campus. While I don’t think most professors worry about it much, college freshman can certainly sway the terms of debate within their own social groups.

Anyway, the dynamic here is older activist types with a following of kids usually. I don’t think it’s dangerous the way right wingers claim, but it does make the left wing landscape here amazingly ineffective and self-facing.
Why else do you think the likes of Shapiro or pastors are more bent on debating and "destroying" mostly college students rather than the likes of Noam Chomsky or Angela Davis?
Malcolm wrote: Tue Sep 21, 2021 7:49 pm
What freshman in college think is just not a big deal.
Lmao, as a freshman here, duly noted!
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Re: Fear of Woking

Post by reiun »

Tenma wrote: Tue Sep 21, 2021 10:44 pm Why else do you think the likes of Shapiro or pastors are more bent on debating and "destroying" mostly college students rather than the likes of Noam Chomsky or Angela Davis?
Malcolm wrote: Tue Sep 21, 2021 7:49 pm
What freshman in college think is just not a big deal.
Lmao, as a freshman here, duly noted!
Right on young blood

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