I don't share this for the "LOLs", this being the now-deleted tweet of an unwell man.
I share this for the Great Big Cultural Sad of our discourse having been driven in recent years by people who never had the chops for anything more than "thought-leading" by playing into fear and hatred.
How do we come back from an era of "public intellectual" grifters? How do we recenter dialogue that encourages better critical thinking, knowledge exchange, and democratic practices?
And can we do it online?
I wholeheartedly agree.
That's precisely why so many have come so hard for public education as of late. Even though what we had was nowhere near where it needed to be, it was already a threat to many who prefer people easier to manipulate through fear.
Now, changes toward teaching emotions and using Indigenous methodologies are arising in lockstep with horrific bans on teaching whole subjects. A bitter push-pull.
Thank you Becca--and happy Monday, wherever this one finds you. 🤗
@MLClark I’m deep in southern Texas at the moment, and will be here for another week. I depart on the 19th for two days in Seattle then it’s off to Virginia.
Busy time, but it’s a joy to connect with you! You’re a truly groovy buddy!
@MLClark @NiveusLepus what also happened in the late '90s was that Wall Street suddenly realized they were missing potential profits in education.
@MLClark: It's strange how many people have not seemed to notice his rather pronounced departure from reality and into delusion. A very seriously marked self-aggrandizing and self-absorbed near-messianic delusion, I might add. Sadly but unsurprisingly, it's a fairly common and always very public but somehow overlooked behavioral slide.
his descent follows the Jungian analysis of having succumbed to one of the key dangers of investigating the unconscious. it's sad really. i started watching him way back when he was a respected prof. his analyses of mythology were very insightful. it's really a tragedy what's become of him. like golem from hobbit 😔
one thing we can do:
https://counter.social/@corlin/112074838103895919
and another:
We can nurture and grow public discourse, based around the humility of culture difference, and the interconnection of all life. Only if we teach this, over and over, at a young age. About the current generation? Change can happen, only if we socially incentivize it.
Ah, great minds, etc!
I was just reading Jessa Crispin's Substack reflection on Deresiewicz's piece! She notes the returning trend-cycle of hand-wringing around "elite overproduction": a broader point that doesn't detract from Deresiewicz's, but does note limits to solution-building from within such perennially concerned journalistic spheres.
https://theculturewedeserve.substack.com/p/culture-digested-elite-anxiety
Yep I like this, thanks.
"What this led to was “elite capture,” a phrase coined by Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò, where the top 1% of every marginalized demographic benefit from diversification efforts while the rest are supposed to be grateful for their “representation” in the culture"
@MLClark
@daniel
@thedisasterautist
You ask the elderly neighbor woman about this, and she just chuckles while hanging her laundry on the line. “Honey, don’t you pay no mind to all that.” and then just reaches for more wet clothes. So you try again to just get on with it. Ignoring the fact that your brain is rotting, that you feel stupider everyday. Lying awake at night thinking of tumors, and disability.
https://world.hey.com/corlin/the-howling-existential-smoothie-5505e021
When those in power ((i.e., the wealthy) only view school as warehousing for the offspring of their unskilled work force, we're fighting an uphill battle every step of the way, @MLClark 😦
@MLClark
@daniel
@thedisasterautist
a diagnosis of Jordan Peterson's decent into madness.
Jung says that rejecting the images of the collective unconscious spells a retreat into rationalism.
but,
identifying with them can cause mental illness, suggesting that this is what happened to Nietzsche. ego inflation.
delving into the depths of religious symbolism as JP was doing triggered an experience of the numinous, which JP then identified with.
what one thinks is ipso facto true then?‼️
it's going to require a cultural renewal from the roots. that's the energy pushing forward, which is being widely recognized subconsciously, the emergence of a new level of consciousness.
it's terrifying to those whose identity will have to be radically altered and who have everything invested in them.
that's why they're clinging to tfg. he's the devil they know.
online? we can talk about it, but the transformation is not in language first. so, no.
as a good philosopher once said, "there's always another hand", so here's one.
perhaps we can help online by passing along knowledge of what's occurring
as well as the mindfulness and other meditative methods for allowing the new expressions of the archetypes to be integrated into consciousness widely and rapidly?
You're hinting at something that builds on @NiveusLepus's point about education:
The current cultural models treat education as something that occurs at but one point of our lives - and then we're very much taught to see ourselves as more or less finished products (or failed products) after formal schooling.
But as you note, social change behooves us to be ready for paradigm shifts, too. Openness to relearning, unlearning, and general exploration are a must all throughout our lives.
And the Peterson depravity continues.
@MLClark In fairness, I don’t know how to fix all of it, but I feel it starts with how we educate. We need to return to the days of civics, social studies and history, and prioritize them. The primary goal of education must shift to encourage critical thinking, and the ability to work with opinions different than your own.
This would be groundbreaking, as it has never been done to full effect, but I feel the results would be seismic.