Wait, what the fuck? MSH, do academicians actually say "all white people should kill themselves"? Because I've been through the equivalent of a year or two of college, and I've never heard anything that seems... SJW-ish.
Of course, that was GE, so it could be that I'd need to major in Fem-studies or such... but I still find that unlikely.
It's just an example of the process. I did see somebody say that verbatim though, but I forget what their role was. They had a big enough twitter that it blew up immediately, I remember that much.
A more typical example would be the badly truncated thesis statement of critical race theory's view on structural racism, that being the oft-heard "Racism is Prejudice plus Power, therefore only black and brown bodies experience racism because they have no power." A short list of what this ignores when it is repeated by the average Facebook poster:
1. The original context is about structural racism. As in, the kind perpetuated by structures, and not people. That would be interpersonal racism.
2. This version is immensely generalizing and says that, for example, if a black cop with a hate-on beats up a redneck, that doesn't count because it's not common.
3. That any individual person with power over the structure, like say a cop or a politician, can turn it to inflict on whomever they want.
4. That it relies on accepting specific definitions of racism, prejudice, and power that all have their own assorted arguments first.
5. That it also relies on the legitimacy of Critical Race Theory, which is ultimately just an idea like any other and could be wrong.
6. That the originator is sometimes just trying to make a point about something like "racism is over because blacks can vote" rather than advocating the idea as a universal principle.
7. That the originator, being an academic, is probably able to see and account for holes in the argument instead of doing stupid shit like saying "So if a black person beats up a white person for going into their neighborhood, that's only prejudice not racism, but the reverse is oppression and the government needs to make it stop."
8. That the power derived from the state is not in the hands of a monolithic entity, but a dynamic and ever-shifting group of people with a variety of motivations and applications when making use of their monopoly of violence, thus making the idea that black people have zero power kind of difficult to justify.
Etcetera, etcetera...
A good example of how easy it is to misunderstand can be found in the philosophical divide of
Natalism vs.
Antinatalism. In short, natalists think making more babies is either good or at least not a problem, while antinatalists think creating new humans is a problem or actually even evil.
Now, do natalists by and large think we should abuse our utility function and have as many babies as possible, ban contraception, and drown in the morass of humanity even if it kills us? Or do antinatalists think we should sterilize people whenever we can or stop having children and go extinct? Well, some do. Just like there's probably some idiot professor out there who thinks genocide is a form of restorative justice. But by and large they're just trying to understand a specific moral dimension of the world, and going so far into it amongst others who do the same can lead to some very,
very strange and extreme-sounding conclusions.
If you look at the philosophy-based forums on ugh... *vomits slightly in mouth*
reddit, it won't take long before you see a sentiment along the lines of "educated philosophers appreciate the interest of autodidacts, but don't want to talk to them because they never have anything meaningful to say". This is basically why.
So yes, that does mean that college philosophy departments are the meatspace equivalent of containment boards.
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Topic: Things that made you go "WTF?" today o_O (Read 14944438 times)