Via jude: Excerpts from Tom Wolfe's "Hooking Up." Wolfe is brilliant and one of the most under-appreciated thinkers and writers of our time. More discussion in comment section here.
Re: Deconstruction, as explained by Tom Wolfe in Jude the Obscure's comment down-page - the problem isn't so much the theory itself, which at root is self-obviously true, it's that people of a certain bent of philosophy/politics tried to use that tool in ways that cannot be supported by the theory.
As with "political correctness", which is a deconstructionally derived idea, the problem isn't that it's not a good practice, it's that it's taken too far by radicals.
As for the population explosion scare causing people to adopt, rather than procreate, I have to chuckle. Even if there were a problem with population growth in the U.S., I wouldn't restrict the number of children that I had personally - my ego is large enough that I'd figure that with such a huge problem looming, the human race would need more people of my caliber to help it pull through.
O. your large ego comes equipped with an equally large capacity for rational thought, so it's doubtful you would have bought into the Soviet led cultural revolution of the 60s and 70's when we "that" close to tumbling into the abyss of socialism.
I was living in the halls of academe during this period and it was then I developed the theory that in order to be a liberal, one has be able to really believe and reconcile two opposite and opposing opinions at the same time. To do so, twists the mind such that things like deconstruction seem to make sense.
The couple in the anecdote below are real, both are full professors, one in mathematics and the other in linguistics, yet they were able to convince themselves and everyone else that the child they adopted as an infant and who they raised broke faith with them, so they were justified to literally cast her out of the house. The college community, except for a few weirdoes, fully supported their action.
As for your children inheriting your brains, that wasn't the prevailing wisdom. Remember the blank slate was the theory in vogue then. We are all simply cogs to be placed wherever our masters see fit.
Continuing the discussion from the comments sections below
Deconstruction? Divining chicken entrails makes more sense. Yet the MLA (Modern Language Association) bought it hook, line and sinker. I had a passing relationship with some of them and reading the titles of the papers given at their annual conferences was quite hilarious.
In the early part of my life, the blank slate was in favor and no amount of empirical evidence to the contrary changed the minds of the "experts." Slowly, things changed and now, even experts can't deny heredity, although they still cling to the notion that nurture is primary.
Lots of funny stories in academe. During the population explosion scare, many concerned people opted to adopt and most of the kids adopted were minorities. The amount of status credits these folks got was incalculable. But guess what? The adopted kids, nurtured right along side the biological kids, couldn't cut it academically. Oh, the gnashing of teeth and rending of garments. They were stuck with kids who not only didn't get into the top colleges, they didn't even finish high school and ended up at menial jobs. I felt so sorry for one beautiful black girl who was thoroughly ruined by her seriously PC parents who finally made her a ward of the state and washed their hands of her.
3 comments:
Re: Deconstruction, as explained by Tom Wolfe in Jude the Obscure's comment down-page - the problem isn't so much the theory itself, which at root is self-obviously true, it's that people of a certain bent of philosophy/politics tried to use that tool in ways that cannot be supported by the theory.
As with "political correctness", which is a deconstructionally derived idea, the problem isn't that it's not a good practice, it's that it's taken too far by radicals.
As for the population explosion scare causing people to adopt, rather than procreate, I have to chuckle.
Even if there were a problem with population growth in the U.S., I wouldn't restrict the number of children that I had personally - my ego is large enough that I'd figure that with such a huge problem looming, the human race would need more people of my caliber to help it pull through.
O. your large ego comes equipped with an equally large capacity for rational thought, so it's doubtful you would have bought into the Soviet led cultural revolution of the 60s and 70's when we "that" close to tumbling into the abyss of socialism.
I was living in the halls of academe during this period and it was then I developed the theory that in order to be a liberal, one has be able to really believe and reconcile two opposite and opposing opinions at the same time. To do so, twists the mind such that things like deconstruction seem to make sense.
The couple in the anecdote below are real, both are full professors, one in mathematics and the other in linguistics, yet they were able to convince themselves and everyone else that the child they adopted as an infant and who they raised broke faith with them, so they were justified to literally cast her out of the house. The college community, except for a few weirdoes, fully supported their action.
As for your children inheriting your brains, that wasn't the prevailing wisdom. Remember the blank slate was the theory in vogue then. We are all simply cogs to be placed wherever our masters see fit.
Continuing the discussion from the comments sections below
Deconstruction? Divining chicken entrails makes more sense. Yet the MLA (Modern Language Association) bought it hook, line and sinker. I had a passing relationship with some of them and reading the titles of the papers given at their annual conferences was quite hilarious.
In the early part of my life, the blank slate was in favor and no amount of empirical evidence to the contrary changed the minds of the "experts." Slowly, things changed and now, even experts can't deny heredity, although they still cling to the notion that nurture is primary.
Lots of funny stories in academe. During the population explosion scare, many concerned people opted to adopt and most of the kids adopted were minorities. The amount of status credits these folks got was incalculable. But guess what? The adopted kids, nurtured right along side the biological kids, couldn't cut it academically. Oh, the gnashing of teeth and rending of garments. They were stuck with kids who not only didn't get into the top colleges, they didn't even finish high school and ended up at menial jobs. I felt so sorry for one beautiful black girl who was thoroughly ruined by her seriously PC parents who finally made her a ward of the state and washed their hands of her.
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