First of all, if you are paying good money for someone to be taught the art of thought by Stanford University, on the premise that this institution is a pillar of mental development, you have been scammed. Or, as they say, you’ve been “FTX’d”.
To “coin” a phrase. Signs of intellectual bankruptcy abound.
Maybe things used to be different. And, hey, maybe, even now, you’ll pick up some marketable skills that land you in a comfortable tax bracket, equipped with a certificate of higher earning. To see recent policies in action, thought is not taught at Stanford University, and maybe it never has been.
It’s not simply a matter of “those who can’t do, teach”, or noting that “professor” also means one who pretends. The entire paradigm of education objectifies knowledge, leading to a flat mentality and dogmatic reflexes.
Indoctrination is incompatible with independent cognition. Maybe this could be ignored, but these students go on to make the rules for the rest of us, so it bears some wondering what the hell they teach in those schools these days.
Apart from the embarrassing headlines about Stanford law professors who raised a Ponzi schemer, the Silicon Valley Brain Trust has recently released a “Harmful Language Guide”, and they appear to have used 1984 as a reference text in compiling it. (Note: Library Science department is also suspect.)
The guide, produced by the IT department, is not policy at the school. Yet. But as the influence of tech on language grows, it isn’t difficult to see it growing in this direction. When people who see language as a set of commands take over the world, there is an accelerating trend toward using this backdoor power to control the speech of others.
If you have not seen this document, it’s good for a laugh. But there is something very unfunny about the level of stupidity emerging from expensive ivory towers these days.
Oh, did we say “stupidity”? No, that’s wrong. “Stupid” is on the blacklist.
After all, we wouldn’t want to offend the idiot-Americans among us. Oops! “American” is another banned word. Oh, wait. We’re not allowed to say “blacklist” anymore, either. Better to be on the safe side.
With elegant linguistic grace, the guide suggests that we use “boring” or “uncool” instead of “stupid”, which is easily one of the stupidest suggestions ever made along these lines. No longer will we say, “that law is stupid,”; instead, we’ll say, “that law is boring.”
And no one will have anything to say about it. Bummer. {THOUGHT POLICE: that word is verboten. It is insensitive to people we sweep out for Super Bowls.}
It gets worse, of course, much worse. For example, “black box” makes the list. Yes. So does “brown bag”.
Readers of Orwell will recall that this is exactly how Newspeak worked. The Party systematically sought to eliminate the lexicon that enabled thoughtcrime, forcing unorthodox ideas out of existence for lack of language to discuss them.
We used to do a routine, some years back, in which we wondered whether it would be racist to say “black hole”. Clown world has pulled into the fast lane and outpaced us. Stanford is now rubber-stamping that joke and declaring it to be the new normal, reality prime, no laughing permitted.
There is something to be said for tempering one’s speech, to be respectful with words. There’s even a place for a code of conduct, at a University, which prohibits certain hateful invectives in the campus context. Such rules may be necessary, but this guide goes far beyond the realm of reason.
Speech evolves. Culture evolves. There’s a difference between making these choices, as individuals, using our own values systems, and being bullied into it by academic authorities and corporate overlords.
There’s a Greta deal of power in deprecating disfavored speech, and no matter how it gets sliced, the result is mind control. Forbidden words, blasphemous expressions, heretical propositions operate in the part of the mind that questions authority.
If we can’t say that an idea is “stupid”, we have no defense against stupidity. It’s not a nice word. It’s not meant to be. It’s a word with a specific impact. The raw, uncompromising judgment implied cannot be politely replaced by some weaker, more “inclusive” term.
There are always ways to avoid this or that word, through euphemism or implication. It makes for constipated speech, stilted writing, and unclear thoughts. Avoidant phrases, making apologies for themselves, never daring to cross certain lines.
When this settles into the equilibrium consciousness, it sets boundaries for thought itself. Insufficiently exposed to commentary on stupidity, the ability to detect or recognize stupidity, as a quality, is lost.
Ugh, I married into a family of Stanford and Harvard alums. I thought they were so un-stupid at the time, but all, except my loving husband, has gone alone with the far left's dangerous and stupid fucking agenda. Is fuck on the list? Fuck You Stanford. Pardonnez-moi )my French).
"a Greta deal of power" love it - gonna steal that one