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PaperclipPerfector  12d ago (text post)   24056 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 6, 2024

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MIT no longer requires diversity statements for faculty hires.

Allegedly. The only sources I’ve seen covering this are not exactly paragons of journalism, citing emails rather than anything public. MIT’s own website still describes the practice in glowing terms. I am curious whether the general population of MIT staff—the ones maintaining their websites—is in favor of this change, or if any of them were consulted.

Assuming this is credible, let’s make some predictions.

  • social media backlash: guaranteed.
  • news backlash, a la NYT: high. This is red meat for opinion columns, as evidenced by the fact that conservative outlets are already crowing about it. But maybe I’ve misjudged, and no one in the mainstream actually cares?
  • policy reverted: low. I predict a whole lot of nothing. The people who most care about this are less likely to have leverage over MIT. If it does get rolled back, I predict it’ll be downstream of administrative drama within the school.
  • policy spreads to other elite universities: medium? I have no idea which way the wind is blowing. Outlets are trumpeting their preferred conclusion. But I suspect this is going to be localized.

There is this ongoing bet between right wing intellectual influencers Neema Parvini and Auron MacIntyre over whether we'll see the "woke be put away" in a Trump presidency that signs a return of "fresh prince" 90s liberalism or instead a continuance of acceleration and radicalism.

Some part of the elites definitely understands that this isn't sustainable and that these beliefs are luxuries that are no longer affordable now that the West has to compete again for supremacy. Some have been made even more keenly aware of this by the recent Iraelo-Palestinian controversies.

But the outcome of the bet doesn't really depend on this, that's the premise, the outcome depends on whether or not this faction of the elites has the power to take a culture where DEI and somesuch have taken hold and purge it or make it marginal enough that it's no longer the constant center of attention.

Can they put the culture war back in the bottle? It's hard to say, but this looks like some people are really trying.

They already stuffed it back in the bottle in the 90s, and it just made it worse when it finally escaped. Acceleration to total war and the possibility of completely exterminating it for the rest of human existence is the only viable strategy.

There is no killing an idea for "the rest of human existence"

Tell that to the Albigensians!

Yeah, where else in history has a populist, vernacular, radically anti-clerical, vegetarian, dualist form of Christianity that denied the literal truth of the eucharist ever popped up? Clearly with the death of the Cathars all prospects for a pacifistic, gender-egalitarian Christianity died forever and for all time.

Eh Cathars still have a memetic presense, see how they were a pretty big story block in one of the recent MTG sets (and that card sees constructed play too, alongside a few other Cathar cards).

One could argue this is actually disproving the point. Opponents of Woke ideology are prompt to point out how it is iitself a gnostic dualism built in the shadow of Christianity the likes of Catharism and operates in very similar fashion. I remember even back in the early days people trotted out comparisons between the social organization of Tumblr and the Cathar Perfects.

Ideas abstract enough are immortal because they are mere reflections of tendencies inside of the human condition. They are modulated by technology, culture and other factors, but the patterns endlessly rhyme because we cannot escape our condition.

The elimination of anathema as a category requires the literal end of the world as we know it. This is no accident.

I walked right into that one didn't I!

If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?

Weren't they Gnostics? Gnosticism definately still exists.

I probably agree that it'd come back even stronger if they succeeded, but can they? Can we get another Reagan and postpone the total war a few more years? Because I'm sure all the people in charge would like to embezzle a bit more money and retire before it happens.

I don't think ethnic conflict theory will ever go away, because there's a share of the human personality space that are susceptible to it.

However, we are currently rolling out the first generation of commercial gene therapy. If we can postpone the next identitarian push until 2044, it will likely be happening in an environment where people default to the idea that genes can be changed. In that case, if something is genetic, that doesn't mean someone's entire line of descendants are doomed to suffer from it indefinitely.

I'm not keen on watching the billionaires all raise 12 little versions of "Chadius Maximus Esq. the IIIrd."

Recently found out that Zuck’s kids are named Maxima, August and Aurelia. The LARP is real.

Depends on the economy, but I’d say they can if it holds. Racial hostility in America today doesn’t seem worse than it was at the low point of the 90s, between the LA riots and the OJ trial. President Newsom can spout Bill Clinton 2.0 talking points (he has no ideological principles anyway) about unity etc.

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