We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.
I thought the American campi were pushing hard for abundant and indiscriminate sexual experimentation and promiscuity. How can that animalistic utopia (aka "zoo", aka "monkey cage") come to pass if the Feds are trying to make every potentially-romantic encounter a crime?
Here are the new campus rules: Rape is illegal, a felony. That's a non-issue and a non-campus issue. But if she or he likes you, and wants to come to your dorm room for sexual fun, it's not harassment. It she or he doesn't like you, it's harassment. If he or she wants you at first, while half-drunk, but changes her mind, you're in big trouble. It's always safest to keep romance "50 miles from the flagpole," as they used to say. However, the primal urges of the young can not be suppressed, even by campus Thought Police and the Federal government.
At dinner Friday night I was chatting with a lady about all of the farm stands that were here in Connecticut when I was growing up. Every truck farm had one: a rickety structure on the roadside with a little dusty space to pull up on, with baskets of eggs, tomatoes, corn, eggplant, red and green peppers, cut flowers, potatoes, apples. melon, raspberries, blackberries, turnips, bundles of fresh herbs, honey, dried strawflowers, giant Sunflowers, squash, pumpkins, corn stalks for fall decorations - whatever was ready that day.
Business, if steady, was never sufficient to justify manning these roadside booths. They usually had the prices written on pieces of cardboard, and one of those large mason jars to leave your money in.
The nice lady told me that Holbrook Farm in Redding, CT still uses the honor system, but not during the height of the season when things are too busy. Hearing that cheered me very much.
No spy cameras either - just good old-fashioned American country-style trust in one's neighbor. I do not think I would like to live in a place where a shop could't have an honor system, but I guess credit cards and sales tax collection complicate things these days.
I believe that good writing is a talent, like music. You have a feel for it, or you don't. However, adequate, functional, expository writing ought to be within the grasp of most people who know how to talk and who read things. Clear writing requires clear thinking, but I often clarify my thinking by the task of writing.
However, this is High School training, not college.
Surely not by our bourgeois standards. Given the human brain and the human adaptability which is a gift from the most creative of us over the past 150,000 years, I think it's impossible to say what is "natural" for people other than to claim that it is natural for humans to make things and to live in cultures.
Are Savages Noble? The parts about war and sex (naturally) are especially interesting. So I guess war and sex are natural, too.
Several aspects of modern life seem to have been very accurately predicted by both Orwell and Huxley. Orwell’s idea of “New Speak,” for example, the deliberate remoulding and distortion of the English language by Big Brother, has been rightly compared to the politically correct manipulation of language that has become all too familiar in western societies over the past twenty to thirty years. The political purpose of “New Speak” is to control the thinking of the populace – not too different in aim from the new terms and words coined by political correctness. Huxley does not go into the language issue in the same way as Orwell, though we note too that in the Brave New World certain “offensive” words – such as “cross” – have been eliminated from public use. Thus for example Charing Cross Station in London has been renamed “Charing T Station” – after Henry Ford’s Model T automobile.
I spoke with a Mom yesterday. She mentioned that her daughter was a high school junior, intending to apply to college. I asked what the kid was interested in. She said "Well, she likes to watch movies. Not much else. She hates school and is not a very good student. She doesn't really study." I replied, "So, why college?" She told me that the kid likes her social life and "wants the college experience. She also wants a diploma."
If they hate fossil fuel, they should first set an example by giving up their cars, computers, cell phones, heat, and air conditioning. Nobody is stopping them from wearing pinwheels on their heads for wind power.
The Feds are always eager to stick their hands into places where they do not belong. I disagree with Mead that the intentions are good, but I agree that it's a nutty idea. For one thing, college is not job training. For another, the data would be meaningless.
By the way, what is Rubio's name doing on this idea?
We see in higher education something like what we saw in housing. Government programs aimed at increasing college education and homeownership, particularly among minorities, turn out to hurt many of the intended beneficiaries.
The intentions of the people who created these programs were good. The results -- well, not so much.
On reading the article, one might be left with the impression that California higher ed is afflicted with a crisis-sized epidemic of destructive racism and sexism. I would doubt that. From what I have seen and read, the U of C is mainly afflicted with a crisis of poorly-educated and ignorant kids whose four years of Fun 'n Indoctrination is largely thanks to the abused California taxpayer.
Already signs of big changes are appearing. Overall college enrollments fell last fall for the first time in years. Even law schools are struggling for students -the ABA is openly discussing possibly going to two-year training. Bond rating agencies are showing growing concern about indebtedness of colleges, and student-loan default rates are very high. Big changes are coming to American higher education.
"I had been brought up to believe the Left stood for altruism rather than selfishness, community rather than individualism, self- discipline rather than the law of the jungle and the survival of the fittest.
Instead, society was worshipping at the shrine of the self, and this was causing a rising tide of juvenile distress, crime, emotional disturbance, educational and relationship failure.
The fact that I continued to write along these lines regardless of all the abuse hurled to shut me up seemed to drive the Left nuts.
Yes, they espoused a doctrine of being tolerant and non-judgmental, but not when it came to me. I was branded a ‘moraliser’, which appeared to be a term of abuse.
Most of the time, those hurling insults provided no contrary evidence or even arguments, just blanket denials and gratuitous abuse..."
She imagined she was on the side of the angels until she began thinking for herself. It's a good story, along the lines of David Horowitz' excellent Radical Son and David Gelernter's Drawing Life.If a person's view of the world does not change between age 20 and age 50, they haven't been thinking or challenging their assumptions very much.
Most of us here have changed our views on things many times. It's called growth, accumulation of information, experience, and, one hopes, wisdom.
... college grads should forget the dream of stable, long-term jobs in the education, health care, or public sector (what he refers to as the “rentier cartel-state economy”), and instead adapt themselves to the realities of the freelance economy.
Good advice. The rentier economy is going nowhere but downwards.
