I have read this twice and still have no idea what is being complained about or clarified.
Have we truly run out of real problems to solve? How is this an actual effort by someone at a prestigious university?
Have we truly run out of real problems to solve? How is this an actual effort by someone at a prestigious university?
> there has been much discussion of a website that provides advice for the IT community at Stanford about word choices in Stanford websites and code.
Ideologically driven language manipulation under the guise of "inclusiveness" is a real problem too.
It's like the folks read Orwell and took it as an instruction manual rather than a warning.
If doing X instead of Y costs me nothing, yet doing Y causes someone else to suffer, why should I continue to do Y?
> But deeper than this lies the original motive, the never-questioned instinct that first led to the seizure of power and brought DOUBLETHINK, the Thought Police, continuous warfare, and all the other necessary paraphernalia into existence afterwards. This motive really consists...
That motive is not explicitly stated in 1984, but it is in (the posthumous) Such, Such Were the Joys.
https://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks03/0300011h.html#part49
Is this not the origin of Big Brother? of O'Brien saying it is not enough for Winston to accept; he must love?
> Flip and Sambo had chosen to befriend me, and their friendship included canings, reproaches and humiliations, which were good for me and saved me from an office stool. That was their version, and I believed in it. It was therefore clear that I owed them a vast debt of gratitude. But I was not grateful, as I very well knew. On the contrary, I hated both of them. I could not control my subjective feelings, and I could not conceal them from myself. But it is wicked, is it not, to hate your benefactors? So I was taught, and so I believed. A child accepts the codes of behaviour that are presented to it, even when it breaks them.
This an oversimplification of something more complex and critical. Because the more you keep trying to avoid hurting or offending others as your first thought or action, you interrupt flow of thought and living. It becomes increasingly harder if the offending word list grows each day. What was X is now Y.
Too much effort to pre-filter everything all the time. If someone is offended I try to adjust my word or action choices, but only after, prophylactically, not pro-actively, which can lead to overthinking day-to-day living. That is not to say that I haven't put my foot in my mouth as the words left my mouth, but slips happen.
That said, unless one lives one's life with elbows permanently out, there are really not so many Y's as to be intellectually taxing. Even Gen. Robert E. Lee, whom I suppose very few would accuse of being woke, recommended that gentlemen avoid Y.
> What was X is now Y.
When in Rome, tempora mutantur.
The Minority Rule, where a very small minority by being loud and inflexible, can win and have the flexible majority bend to their demands. This is evident in how far right and far left minorities have achieved more sway than more moderates of each party, or more innocuous, why almost all milk has the U or UD symbol to signify it is a kosher dairy product.
I am flexible, but not complacent in accepting all changes especially in today's culture. Drinking Kosher milk is not forbidden, and poses me no harm or inconvenience. My company asking me to choose pronouns for my email seems a bit out of place, and I miss nuts on my flights even though people with nut allergies are the minority.
(I miss the days when one could, without ID, walk out of the gate, across the tarmac, and up the ramp into a plane like it was a more expensive bus. But I'm not going to fool myself that times haven't changed, or waste mental bandwidth trying to bring those times back.)
As far as your poll goes, it had only 79% respondents, 10,682 to be exact. I would say most people in this culture would respond with what they are being told is the socially acceptable response when being asked by a pollster, not what they really think - the silent majority of the exhausted to quote someone I forget at the moment.
I grew up in the 70s in NYC, and there were the FALN bombings and skyjackings in the US at the time. Still OJ Simpson ran to the gate! Do you miss not having to take off your shoes? Do you really think this is a valid thing to ask people to do in the name of their personal safety because one guy tried unsuccessfully to light his show in the bathroom? Meanwhile, your laptop goes through a scanner that simply shows a dense square that should be your battery, but could be anything they would not pick up anyway?
I don't waste mental bandwidth trying to bring things back, but to halt the progression of unfounded ideas being turned into social and public policy unnecessarily curbing my liberties under the guise of the good and making the world less open for my children. What do you spend your bandwidth on?
cf https://www.tandfonline.com/na101/home/literatum/publisher/t...
Yes, defo, to the shoes. (On the rare occasions I fly now I wear mocs specifically due to this, but lost a nice knife a decade ago because I'd forgotten I had it in my pocket) And you and I both know that booting the laptop proves nothing.
I spent my mental bandwidth on learning a new language (~2 years) and acclimating to the local culture (~5 years) in emigrating to a polity whose social and public policies more closely align with my notions of liberty (in particular, the state motto doesn't just go one way, like e pluribus unum, but also emphasises that the many conversely have their obligations towards the one) and good and openness.
Merry Christmas (or whatever you all celebrate) to you and our threadmate!
Laziness breeds tyranny.
It takes active energy to constantly resist and push the ball back up the hill.
Many people just don't have it until something completely egregious drives them to take action.