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.
To a certain extent, you have to go with your gut. Intuition. Of course, that's a partial answer and you could see me as fudging it. But that's what a lot of psychiatrists and social workers say: their diagnoses are subjective, there is bias, all they can do is fight against it - constantly.
You're ignoring the expertise that is ascribed to psychologists by the media, public perception, and most importantly, the courts.
How many headlines have we read that begin with "Psychologists Say..."
How many stories have we read about unsuspecting parents at their wits end who go to psychologists looking for "expert help"?
Psychologists make a living, and a good one, based on this inaccurate perception.
So while I agree with your sentiment, it's utterly false to say that "a lot" of PsyDs, PhDs and MSWs advertise their bias. They should, but they don't.
Psychology would normally be an entertaining form of pseudo-science, but sometimes it wields enormous power over people's lives. Only Psychiatry is worse, because it can also medicate people out of their minds irreversibly...
Unfortunately, I don't think so. Most people act according to their primary and secondary socialization; basically, pre-programmed to live a life according to set standards and real or imaginary expectations. Conditioning is a powerful tool; sometimes it's used for "healing," too (I'm thinking about "cognitive therapy"), but the results cannot last...
Nowhere in the article does Forgas declare the entire profession woke. One can be concerned about increases in anxiety without thinking "everyone has anxiety." One can be concerned about misinformation online without thinking "everyone believes every piece of bad info they see online." And one can be concerned about creeping collectivist authoritarianism in social psychology without thinking the whole profession has gone woke.
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!
The idiocy of the DSM speaks for itself. No two "experts" can agree on a "diagnosis," but they can surely destroy lives...
Mass manipulation is perhaps the most spectacular achievement in Psychology; it works. However, it's a lot more simple than most "experts" would like to admit. The gist of it can fit into a pamphlet or two:
Calling Social Psychology, Psychology, is like calling Ptolemy’s epicycles Astronomy and then getting mad at Ptolemy for being wrong, without even knowing what the correct—heliocentric—view of Copernicus is.
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.
My lab too. And some other places. But they are, I fear, becoming refuges where it is welcome to do so, insulated from the type of developments Joe highlights. Do you follow Jerry Coyne's Evolution is True blog? Highly recommend it. He has a slew on the (mostly) absurd adoption of "Maori ways of knowing" in science in NZ.
Not until now, but thank you ... as that will likely be an issue I will have deal in my near future - especially given I am part Maori. I would go as far to say, it is probably the most taboo topic on New Zealand campuses right now, over and above other more general Western controversies.
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. "
I feel like that about my own field. (Moral/political philosophy). Only the entirely abstract/formal branches that can remain detached from concrete political disputes will remain.
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 don't have *the* answer, but the answer is to ... experiment! (I do not actually reject the fundamentals of social psych, just a lot of the nonsense that is more scientism than science). So here are my best answers, however imperfect they may be.
1. Fight selectively. Do not be afraid to fight the bastards. Be willing to be bloodied. Short of, say, being truly canceled (fired, unable to get work), a lot of courage goes a long way. You can't fight *all the time* (pick your battles!) and you can't fight at all if you are unable to work and have no platform.
2. Build new organizations. This is happening all over the place. Academic Freedom Alliance. FIRE's mega-expansion. University of Austin (which, among other things, has a summer program of Forbidden Courses!). And my personal fav (only because I was involved in its founding, not because it is better than the others, is SOIBS (see my earlier entry on The Society for Open Inquiry in the Behavioral Sciences and also my report from our first conference). Coming soon: Essay here announcing our new journal (Journal of Open Inquiry in the Behavioral Sciences; JOIBS), of which I am Editor in Chief, and which (imho) draws on the best aspects of peer review but rejects about 75% of what is "normal" for academic jorunals. Case in point: After a social justice mob successully pressured the journal that published Diaz&Bailey's paper on Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria (see my previous entry on that), I *invited* Bailey to resubmit it to JOIBS. He did. It is under review but I am about 99% sure we will be publishing it soon, and that is without any special treatment -- it is inherent to our publishing model.
3. Seek allies. People do not have to be likeminded on any specifics; but they have to be committed to truthseeking and the values of striving for objectivity and neutrality on both theoretical and political issues, no matter how imperfectly we actually get there.
Are these "good" answers? I have no f'ing clue. They will all be implemented imperfectly. Maybe I will pick fights with some people who do not deserve it or who might have been won over by diplomacy. JOIBS has had a rocky launch (I am fine on the academic side, but I never launched a journal from whole cloth before, so I knew I did not know wtf I was doing, and to expect this and it was true).
So what? A bad plan, implemented is usually better than surrender. A good plan imperfectly implemented is even better, despite its imperfections. And, once in a while, we might even score a complete bullseye.
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.
Heh. Funny you should ask. Next week, I am going to a mini-conference on misinfo. My talk is titled Academic Misinfo. However, the first thing I plan to do is point out that misinfo is (mostly) just a fancy way of saying something is false, untrue, or unjustified. So why has it gained such a grip on discourse? Because it is a powerful rhetorical tool for delegitimizing one's opponents. "That's misinformation!" shortcircuits debate and discussion and critical thinking about some topic, especially among one's tribal/sectarian allies by derogating and dismissing one's opponents as liars or deluded fools. Of course some things really are false or unjustified. Essays here often point such things out in the academic literature, but, hey, the world is not run by a conspiracy of pedophiles (Qanon), the 2020 election was not stolen, and "systemic racism" is a catch-all term that is often used in a meaninglessly vague, amorphous manner, and, when done so, it fails the falsifiability test for something to be considered science. Interestingly, all 3 (Qanon, stolen election, systemic racism) can be seen as having *some* elements of truth under them. Powerful pedophiles? Jeffrey Epstein, Catholic Priests, etc. Stolen election? Not with respect to vote counting, but the capture of many MSM outlets by left activists absolutely biased some election reporting. Systemic racism? Well, sure, slavery, Jim Crow, etc. But I begin to rant, so I will stop here.
Disheartening that this kind of superficial and tendentious discourse is fully endorsed in academic research, and then used to justify all kinds of authoritarian measures.
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
Good description. What shall we do to stop these tyrants? Alternative education could be an answer. For instance if these dissidents organized unenrollments and disenrollments and began new educational mentorships, the beast would eventually starve. The forced bioweapon mandates are another impetus. The time is now. Let's get a mass movement going for the fall semester.
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…?
Heh. Indeed. I always viewed my own stuff revealing how political biases distort social psych part of meta-science, but so much of the meta-science community went hyper-woke that this was the last thing they were interested in taking seriously.
However, see the recent paper by McNamara et al -- it was a systematic review plus multiple meta-analyses showing that, after controlling for publication biases and research COI's, there was no there there to Growth Mindset interventions. https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2023-14088-001
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.
Your first two sentences are fine. Wrong, imho. I've read most of The Sacred Project and I think it is pretty on target. But its fine to express your disagreement. Your third sentence is not fine. You are welcome here, if you behave more or less professionally. I am leaving this up for all to see just how a self-declared sociologist engages in this sort of discourse. Happens again, though, I will delete your comment.
ha! enlightened discourse! nothing gets the blood flowing like being cursed at by a sociologist! have your second meet my second and we shall duel at dawn...thanks for making my day!
Okay, I apologize. But I think you mean Social Work. One of my personal jobs is debunking stupid ideas, particularly in health care. As much as I don't like Trump and Americo-fascists, many of the really dumb ideas seem to come from the left. I think much of what we consider progress is bureaucracy-facilitation or virtue-signaling or just dumb. I have a great deal of respect for the early not the late Foucault. he was on to this. A current case is gender reassignment. The vast bulk of it is going to turn out to be fraudulent.
I apologize for the harms I've caused to the metaphor community. I will show myself out and into the loving arms of the Bias Response Team. A chance to Be Better!
You realize outside college, media and email jobs their Long March hasn’t gotten very far?
We’d love for these freaks to March into Appalachia for instance, or any number of heavily armed suburbs.
Now they didn’t and don’t dare, the woke and their professional family tragedies having ruined the urban areas are now like any predator seeking weak victims and it’s the 🇺🇸 Academy.
(I can’t wait for Harvard to go full Baltimore, with perfect justice).
I feel as sorry for the 🇺🇸 Academy as the average Ivan did when Stalin shot the Bolsheviks and Trotskyites- I don’t.
Mind you nothing against the Australian Academy, but you defend yourselves or perish.
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.
Your last line seems to say, the only thing we know for sure is that we can't know. If this is true, how do we know it?
How can anyone be sure of anything?
https://rayhorvaththesource.substack.com/p/dissecting-the-myth-of-science
To a certain extent, you have to go with your gut. Intuition. Of course, that's a partial answer and you could see me as fudging it. But that's what a lot of psychiatrists and social workers say: their diagnoses are subjective, there is bias, all they can do is fight against it - constantly.
You're ignoring the expertise that is ascribed to psychologists by the media, public perception, and most importantly, the courts.
How many headlines have we read that begin with "Psychologists Say..."
How many stories have we read about unsuspecting parents at their wits end who go to psychologists looking for "expert help"?
Psychologists make a living, and a good one, based on this inaccurate perception.
So while I agree with your sentiment, it's utterly false to say that "a lot" of PsyDs, PhDs and MSWs advertise their bias. They should, but they don't.
Psychology has always followed the path of bestsellers:
https://rayhorvaththesource.substack.com/p/a-crash-course-to-achieve-fame-and
The success of behaviorism proves that most people cannot use their free will:
https://rayhorvaththesource.substack.com/p/i-have-solved-the-question-of-free
Psychology would normally be an entertaining form of pseudo-science, but sometimes it wields enormous power over people's lives. Only Psychiatry is worse, because it can also medicate people out of their minds irreversibly...
Well, "cannot" is a bit much, but yes.
Unfortunately, I don't think so. Most people act according to their primary and secondary socialization; basically, pre-programmed to live a life according to set standards and real or imaginary expectations. Conditioning is a powerful tool; sometimes it's used for "healing," too (I'm thinking about "cognitive therapy"), but the results cannot last...
Nowhere in the article does Forgas declare the entire profession woke. One can be concerned about increases in anxiety without thinking "everyone has anxiety." One can be concerned about misinformation online without thinking "everyone believes every piece of bad info they see online." And one can be concerned about creeping collectivist authoritarianism in social psychology without thinking the whole profession has gone woke.
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!
The idiocy of the DSM speaks for itself. No two "experts" can agree on a "diagnosis," but they can surely destroy lives...
Mass manipulation is perhaps the most spectacular achievement in Psychology; it works. However, it's a lot more simple than most "experts" would like to admit. The gist of it can fit into a pamphlet or two:
https://rayhorvaththesource.substack.com/p/re-posting-old-articles-that-remain
https://rayhorvaththesource.substack.com/p/the-most-powerful-mode-of-manipulation
Mind control is not publicized so much, but it becomes even more formidable, when combined with physics:
https://rayhorvaththesource.substack.com/p/psychotronic-and-electromagnetic
It looks like the "science" is mostly good for evil.
Calling Social Psychology, Psychology, is like calling Ptolemy’s epicycles Astronomy and then getting mad at Ptolemy for being wrong, without even knowing what the correct—heliocentric—view of Copernicus is.
Actually, you just said it before me. :)
It really doesn't matter much which kind of pimentos are in the baloney.
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.
My lab too. And some other places. But they are, I fear, becoming refuges where it is welcome to do so, insulated from the type of developments Joe highlights. Do you follow Jerry Coyne's Evolution is True blog? Highly recommend it. He has a slew on the (mostly) absurd adoption of "Maori ways of knowing" in science in NZ.
Not until now, but thank you ... as that will likely be an issue I will have deal in my near future - especially given I am part Maori. I would go as far to say, it is probably the most taboo topic on New Zealand campuses right now, over and above other more general Western controversies.
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. "
I feel like that about my own field. (Moral/political philosophy). Only the entirely abstract/formal branches that can remain detached from concrete political disputes will remain.
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 don't have *the* answer, but the answer is to ... experiment! (I do not actually reject the fundamentals of social psych, just a lot of the nonsense that is more scientism than science). So here are my best answers, however imperfect they may be.
1. Fight selectively. Do not be afraid to fight the bastards. Be willing to be bloodied. Short of, say, being truly canceled (fired, unable to get work), a lot of courage goes a long way. You can't fight *all the time* (pick your battles!) and you can't fight at all if you are unable to work and have no platform.
2. Build new organizations. This is happening all over the place. Academic Freedom Alliance. FIRE's mega-expansion. University of Austin (which, among other things, has a summer program of Forbidden Courses!). And my personal fav (only because I was involved in its founding, not because it is better than the others, is SOIBS (see my earlier entry on The Society for Open Inquiry in the Behavioral Sciences and also my report from our first conference). Coming soon: Essay here announcing our new journal (Journal of Open Inquiry in the Behavioral Sciences; JOIBS), of which I am Editor in Chief, and which (imho) draws on the best aspects of peer review but rejects about 75% of what is "normal" for academic jorunals. Case in point: After a social justice mob successully pressured the journal that published Diaz&Bailey's paper on Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria (see my previous entry on that), I *invited* Bailey to resubmit it to JOIBS. He did. It is under review but I am about 99% sure we will be publishing it soon, and that is without any special treatment -- it is inherent to our publishing model.
3. Seek allies. People do not have to be likeminded on any specifics; but they have to be committed to truthseeking and the values of striving for objectivity and neutrality on both theoretical and political issues, no matter how imperfectly we actually get there.
Are these "good" answers? I have no f'ing clue. They will all be implemented imperfectly. Maybe I will pick fights with some people who do not deserve it or who might have been won over by diplomacy. JOIBS has had a rocky launch (I am fine on the academic side, but I never launched a journal from whole cloth before, so I knew I did not know wtf I was doing, and to expect this and it was true).
So what? A bad plan, implemented is usually better than surrender. A good plan imperfectly implemented is even better, despite its imperfections. And, once in a while, we might even score a complete bullseye.
Best I can do.
Do not participate. I propose this become our battle cry for posters, flags, online memes etc.
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.
Heh. Funny you should ask. Next week, I am going to a mini-conference on misinfo. My talk is titled Academic Misinfo. However, the first thing I plan to do is point out that misinfo is (mostly) just a fancy way of saying something is false, untrue, or unjustified. So why has it gained such a grip on discourse? Because it is a powerful rhetorical tool for delegitimizing one's opponents. "That's misinformation!" shortcircuits debate and discussion and critical thinking about some topic, especially among one's tribal/sectarian allies by derogating and dismissing one's opponents as liars or deluded fools. Of course some things really are false or unjustified. Essays here often point such things out in the academic literature, but, hey, the world is not run by a conspiracy of pedophiles (Qanon), the 2020 election was not stolen, and "systemic racism" is a catch-all term that is often used in a meaninglessly vague, amorphous manner, and, when done so, it fails the falsifiability test for something to be considered science. Interestingly, all 3 (Qanon, stolen election, systemic racism) can be seen as having *some* elements of truth under them. Powerful pedophiles? Jeffrey Epstein, Catholic Priests, etc. Stolen election? Not with respect to vote counting, but the capture of many MSM outlets by left activists absolutely biased some election reporting. Systemic racism? Well, sure, slavery, Jim Crow, etc. But I begin to rant, so I will stop here.
Jim Crow 👨🏿has been replaced by Jim Snow ⛄️ for some time.
Keep up Comrade.
Disheartening that this kind of superficial and tendentious discourse is fully endorsed in academic research, and then used to justify all kinds of authoritarian measures.
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
Good description. What shall we do to stop these tyrants? Alternative education could be an answer. For instance if these dissidents organized unenrollments and disenrollments and began new educational mentorships, the beast would eventually starve. The forced bioweapon mandates are another impetus. The time is now. Let's get a mass movement going for the fall semester.
Our Substacks seem to be broadly on the same page - culturally/philosophically-speaking - Old School Counselor. Care to swap (free) subs?
Academe is being eaten by the very beasts it created.
Imagine a Zek in Siberian GULAG meeting the new prisoner, the Chekist who sent him there... that’s the average American looking at this..
You don’t deserve to be saved.
No more just fate ever happened to a nicer bunch.
Yes. See my reply above to Alison White for lots of specifics.
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…?
Heh. Indeed. I always viewed my own stuff revealing how political biases distort social psych part of meta-science, but so much of the meta-science community went hyper-woke that this was the last thing they were interested in taking seriously.
However, see the recent paper by McNamara et al -- it was a systematic review plus multiple meta-analyses showing that, after controlling for publication biases and research COI's, there was no there there to Growth Mindset interventions. https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2023-14088-001
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.
I'm a sociologist. It is nothing of the sort. Shut the fuck up.
Your first two sentences are fine. Wrong, imho. I've read most of The Sacred Project and I think it is pretty on target. But its fine to express your disagreement. Your third sentence is not fine. You are welcome here, if you behave more or less professionally. I am leaving this up for all to see just how a self-declared sociologist engages in this sort of discourse. Happens again, though, I will delete your comment.
What do you mean "self-declared," Ponda?
ha! enlightened discourse! nothing gets the blood flowing like being cursed at by a sociologist! have your second meet my second and we shall duel at dawn...thanks for making my day!
I think my actual argument is with Smith. I read it too quickly.
Okay, I apologize. But I think you mean Social Work. One of my personal jobs is debunking stupid ideas, particularly in health care. As much as I don't like Trump and Americo-fascists, many of the really dumb ideas seem to come from the left. I think much of what we consider progress is bureaucracy-facilitation or virtue-signaling or just dumb. I have a great deal of respect for the early not the late Foucault. he was on to this. A current case is gender reassignment. The vast bulk of it is going to turn out to be fraudulent.
Smith meant Social Work. Paraphrasing TELOS reversing Marx from about 1970: "So far, men have only changed the world, the point is to study it."
Arson? You racist.
Its just the weekend 👨🏿
I apologize for the harms I've caused to the metaphor community. I will show myself out and into the loving arms of the Bias Response Team. A chance to Be Better!
I actually didn’t metaphor that one, they needed some real R .
And boy are they about to get it 🤣
You realize outside college, media and email jobs their Long March hasn’t gotten very far?
We’d love for these freaks to March into Appalachia for instance, or any number of heavily armed suburbs.
Now they didn’t and don’t dare, the woke and their professional family tragedies having ruined the urban areas are now like any predator seeking weak victims and it’s the 🇺🇸 Academy.
(I can’t wait for Harvard to go full Baltimore, with perfect justice).
I feel as sorry for the 🇺🇸 Academy as the average Ivan did when Stalin shot the Bolsheviks and Trotskyites- I don’t.
Mind you nothing against the Australian Academy, but you defend yourselves or perish.
Seems to excite you, as in "I was present at the revolution!"
If so, you're part of the problem.
ha! excite? i never said anything like that, and feel quite the opposite.
you issue denunciations based on nothing, and I'm "part of the problem" lol
The ITAYS haven’t had a revolution since Garibaldi , give this guy a break!
Duce was just common sense.
Poor Bastard. When Dolfruss was murdered (Austrian Chancellor) his friend and ally he almost went to war.
Then he had almost no choice but the Axis, they were right above him.