What laughable nonsense. How can you speak of the entire profession as "woke"? Sure, there are some excesses, but this is downright hysterical propaganda. Psychology, being about "us" and "human nature", has always been subjective and as much art as science. We don't have, have never had, and won't have definitive answers.
Let's just make this real clear to the Psychologists: The credibility of your entire profession is at stake.
YOU were supposed to be the experts.
You were supposed to be the firewall against this insanity. It's your area of expertise. Your wheelhouse. Your topic about which, when you clear your throat to speak, everyone in the room is expected to listen.
Well....What Happened? What's your explanation for this, this utter collapse of competency, integrity, adherence to the basic tenets of your profession, your science, your ethical guidelines that has taken place amongst nearly all of your colleagues?
I really, REALLY would prefer not to hear a single peep from a Psychologist about anything other than Getting Our Own House In Order So As Not To Cause Even More Damage Than We Already Have, until sanity has returned to your world, and ours by virtue of your influence, should it still exist at that point.
In that light, I am glad for this article, since it is a first step. Not nearly humble enough nor self-reflective enough nor circumspect enough, but a start. Your prestige currently rests at zero, but there are great opportunities ahead to increase it!
My man, I do research in social psychology lab, all the way down under, in New Zealand. There, every Friday, we debate, about topics that would be forbidden in those places where the righteous moralist rules. Social psychology still lives on, and still has much hope. Perhaps though, it needs to be fueled by places other than the academy - like here, on substack for instance - where truth, not activism, is be the guiding principle.
In America we observe our tormentors of decades being devoured by their own creations and choking on their own hypocrisy.
I have nothing against the Australians or their Academy, so let me give you the same caution I give anyone in America;
Stay away from DC.
DC has long been getting sicker and more evil and ruinous to the good intentioned who mistakenly went there, now it plunges into Der Bunker levels of Depravity as they know they are Doomed.
So now it’s not stay away from DC, which for you means America; Get Away from DC if you want to survive.
We are, and knowing our elites has driven Americans to arm themselves far more than Crime or any other reason given.
It does help they’re sniveling cowards.
You have to break it off with DC if it means ending all alliances and diplomatic relations, expel at least all American Academics and NGOS (the latter are State Dept and CIA operatives) and the former poisonous Doom.
Reminds me of the take over of Christianity of the pagan world, or the religious push back of Islam after the loss of Spain. Ideology creates a true dark age of ignorance where doctrine supplants observation
"If the current trends continue, our discipline may have no future. Just as many of the humanities, we can become irrelevant, completely detached from the realities that rule most people’s lives. "
How do we fight back? I watched in despair on Facebook as ordinary people were questioning this and being put in their place by authoritative sounding activists. They literally believe all the guff about gender ideology- and they are such good proselytisers - boy oh boy - all that kindness and tolerance who’d want to be against that really??!!!
I'm curious if any of you have thoughts about the recent trend of studying "dis/misinformation" in social psychology (or other branches of academic psychology). Thanks.
Great article. Social psychology is morphing into a bureaucratic beast, its belly swollen with the indigestible weight of homogenised thought and crushed dissent. The golden age of free inquiry? Now lost in the labyrinth of the enforced 'correct' way of thinking.
The elephant in the room of Western 'democratic' liberalism - is that power gained at the ballot box is no match against the permanently entrenched power of a ‘progressive’ elite that has been drawn - for three or more highly impressionable college years - through a kind of intellectual sheep dip. The academy’s pied-piper hold on the ambitious young minds of the future ‘opinion-forming’ elite – including crucially the teaching profession - has proceeded unchecked, such that its seductive virtue-signalling mentality has now taken hold in most graduate-entry professional walks of life. And an Academia-Media Complex - a feedback loop between an overwhelmingly left-wing academy and a largely left-wing MSM – has softened up enough of what used to be called ‘the workers’ to keep the Progressive show on the road. As Orwell said it “the public will believe what the media tell them they believe”. https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/invasion-of-the-virtue-signallers
Sad, but very well put. Key question is what to do. Yes, yes, yes, speaking up is fine, protest is important, but then what? How about more meta-science? Aren‘t these worrying developments good topics for social-psychological analysis (were it only more mechanistic than it currently is!)? Shouldn’t we be in the position to explain how all that went and how it worked? Couldn’t that be a great and interesting study field that unfolds right before our eyes? Could that not be a so much more exciting version of, say, political psychology than simply comparing liberals and conservatives…?
I read an excellent book recently on the same topic, "The Sacred Project Of American Sociology" (2014) by Christian Smith:
"Contemporary American sociology is, rightly understood, actually a profoundly sacred project at heart. Sociology today is in fact animated by sacred impulses, driven by sacred commitments, and serves a sacred project.
The project is fundamentally transformational, reformist, sometimes revolutionary. It is about “changing the world” to “make the world a better place.” The change that sociology’s sacred project seeks to effect is also dramatic. The problems of the social world are so big and deep in this view that mere remedial tinkering or prudent meliorism is inadequate. Change needs to be systemic, institutional, and sometimes radical—in the etymological sense of “going to the root” of things. So when the new world envisioned by this spiritual project is finally realized, it will be very different from the present world. Emancipation thus also centrally defines sociology’s sacred project. People need to be set free from everything external that oppresses, constrains, and dehumanizes them, whether that takes the form of ignorance, racism, poverty, patriarchy, heterosexism, or any other discrimination or obstruction, perhaps including the institutions of marriage and religion."
Looks like not a single sphere of the Humanities will be exempt from this religious-political takeover.
The Long March has been a smashing success, and proves once again that people with strong beliefs (no matter how stupid or demented) always defeat people with few strong beliefs. Sociologists really are a new priesthood, and their hearts are on fire for the cause of Social Justice.
American academia is more or less like a house that's been taken over by a termite infestation. At some point it all will need to be burned down and reimagined.
What laughable nonsense. How can you speak of the entire profession as "woke"? Sure, there are some excesses, but this is downright hysterical propaganda. Psychology, being about "us" and "human nature", has always been subjective and as much art as science. We don't have, have never had, and won't have definitive answers.
Let's just make this real clear to the Psychologists: The credibility of your entire profession is at stake.
YOU were supposed to be the experts.
You were supposed to be the firewall against this insanity. It's your area of expertise. Your wheelhouse. Your topic about which, when you clear your throat to speak, everyone in the room is expected to listen.
Well....What Happened? What's your explanation for this, this utter collapse of competency, integrity, adherence to the basic tenets of your profession, your science, your ethical guidelines that has taken place amongst nearly all of your colleagues?
I really, REALLY would prefer not to hear a single peep from a Psychologist about anything other than Getting Our Own House In Order So As Not To Cause Even More Damage Than We Already Have, until sanity has returned to your world, and ours by virtue of your influence, should it still exist at that point.
In that light, I am glad for this article, since it is a first step. Not nearly humble enough nor self-reflective enough nor circumspect enough, but a start. Your prestige currently rests at zero, but there are great opportunities ahead to increase it!
That should be "closeD-minded."
My man, I do research in social psychology lab, all the way down under, in New Zealand. There, every Friday, we debate, about topics that would be forbidden in those places where the righteous moralist rules. Social psychology still lives on, and still has much hope. Perhaps though, it needs to be fueled by places other than the academy - like here, on substack for instance - where truth, not activism, is be the guiding principle.
Dear Sir,
In America we observe our tormentors of decades being devoured by their own creations and choking on their own hypocrisy.
I have nothing against the Australians or their Academy, so let me give you the same caution I give anyone in America;
Stay away from DC.
DC has long been getting sicker and more evil and ruinous to the good intentioned who mistakenly went there, now it plunges into Der Bunker levels of Depravity as they know they are Doomed.
So now it’s not stay away from DC, which for you means America; Get Away from DC if you want to survive.
We are, and knowing our elites has driven Americans to arm themselves far more than Crime or any other reason given.
It does help they’re sniveling cowards.
You have to break it off with DC if it means ending all alliances and diplomatic relations, expel at least all American Academics and NGOS (the latter are State Dept and CIA operatives) and the former poisonous Doom.
Good luck.
oooops, missed that one. Too bad, actually liked this stuff.
Good account. Time to move on to other subjects, such as polygenic risk scores
Dissident science often morphs into science.
Reminds me of the take over of Christianity of the pagan world, or the religious push back of Islam after the loss of Spain. Ideology creates a true dark age of ignorance where doctrine supplants observation
Well done, Joe.
This line was particularly haunting:
"If the current trends continue, our discipline may have no future. Just as many of the humanities, we can become irrelevant, completely detached from the realities that rule most people’s lives. "
How do we fight back? I watched in despair on Facebook as ordinary people were questioning this and being put in their place by authoritative sounding activists. They literally believe all the guff about gender ideology- and they are such good proselytisers - boy oh boy - all that kindness and tolerance who’d want to be against that really??!!!
Thanks so much for this.
I'm curious if any of you have thoughts about the recent trend of studying "dis/misinformation" in social psychology (or other branches of academic psychology). Thanks.
Great article. Social psychology is morphing into a bureaucratic beast, its belly swollen with the indigestible weight of homogenised thought and crushed dissent. The golden age of free inquiry? Now lost in the labyrinth of the enforced 'correct' way of thinking.
The elephant in the room of Western 'democratic' liberalism - is that power gained at the ballot box is no match against the permanently entrenched power of a ‘progressive’ elite that has been drawn - for three or more highly impressionable college years - through a kind of intellectual sheep dip. The academy’s pied-piper hold on the ambitious young minds of the future ‘opinion-forming’ elite – including crucially the teaching profession - has proceeded unchecked, such that its seductive virtue-signalling mentality has now taken hold in most graduate-entry professional walks of life. And an Academia-Media Complex - a feedback loop between an overwhelmingly left-wing academy and a largely left-wing MSM – has softened up enough of what used to be called ‘the workers’ to keep the Progressive show on the road. As Orwell said it “the public will believe what the media tell them they believe”. https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/invasion-of-the-virtue-signallers
Sad, but very well put. Key question is what to do. Yes, yes, yes, speaking up is fine, protest is important, but then what? How about more meta-science? Aren‘t these worrying developments good topics for social-psychological analysis (were it only more mechanistic than it currently is!)? Shouldn’t we be in the position to explain how all that went and how it worked? Couldn’t that be a great and interesting study field that unfolds right before our eyes? Could that not be a so much more exciting version of, say, political psychology than simply comparing liberals and conservatives…?
I read an excellent book recently on the same topic, "The Sacred Project Of American Sociology" (2014) by Christian Smith:
"Contemporary American sociology is, rightly understood, actually a profoundly sacred project at heart. Sociology today is in fact animated by sacred impulses, driven by sacred commitments, and serves a sacred project.
The project is fundamentally transformational, reformist, sometimes revolutionary. It is about “changing the world” to “make the world a better place.” The change that sociology’s sacred project seeks to effect is also dramatic. The problems of the social world are so big and deep in this view that mere remedial tinkering or prudent meliorism is inadequate. Change needs to be systemic, institutional, and sometimes radical—in the etymological sense of “going to the root” of things. So when the new world envisioned by this spiritual project is finally realized, it will be very different from the present world. Emancipation thus also centrally defines sociology’s sacred project. People need to be set free from everything external that oppresses, constrains, and dehumanizes them, whether that takes the form of ignorance, racism, poverty, patriarchy, heterosexism, or any other discrimination or obstruction, perhaps including the institutions of marriage and religion."
Looks like not a single sphere of the Humanities will be exempt from this religious-political takeover.
The Long March has been a smashing success, and proves once again that people with strong beliefs (no matter how stupid or demented) always defeat people with few strong beliefs. Sociologists really are a new priesthood, and their hearts are on fire for the cause of Social Justice.
American academia is more or less like a house that's been taken over by a termite infestation. At some point it all will need to be burned down and reimagined.