Posted on 11/17/2015 7:57:52 AM PST by Kaslin
I'm often out of touch with our rapidly changing culture norms.
Here's one change I'm behind on: that so many are getting so easily offended by every perceived slight, real or imagined.
These days a fellow can't compliment a lady for wearing a beautiful dress without worrying that she might call him a chauvinist pig.
A fellow can't criticize a president, whose policies have doubled our government debt, without being called a hater and a racist.
He can't question whether climate change may correlate to natural phenomena without being called a climate Luddite, whose questioning will kill us all.
Across the country, critical thinking is being overcome by emotional thinking and this feelings-based approach is being institutionalized on college campuses, according to a fascinating article in The Atlantic by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt.
"In the name of emotional well-being, college students are increasingly demanding protection from words and ideas they don't like," write the authors.
This is a worrisome turn of events. As the authors point out, universities are not supposed to be in the business of teaching students what to think but how to think.
"The idea goes back at least as far as Socrates," they write. "Today, what we call the Socratic method is a way of teaching that fosters critical thinking, in part by encouraging students to question their own unexamined beliefs, as well as the received wisdom of those around them."
Critical thinking is hard work. Feelings are easy.
"A movement is arising, undirected and driven largely by students, to scrub campuses clean of words, ideas and subjects that might cause discomfort or give offense," write the authors.
Jay Leno explains how hyper-sensitivity is getting out of control. When one of his show's college interns asked if he wanted Mexican food for lunch, Leno told him he didn't like Mexican food.
"Whoa, that's kind of racist!" said the intern. Leno, telling the kid he had no idea what racism really is, said, "Being anti-guacamole is not racist!"
What is worrisome about the institutionalization of emotional thinking over critical thinking is that easily offended emotional thinkers are going to have a much more challenging time getting through their lives and solving their problems not to mention the considerable challenges our country is facing (debt, exploding entitlement spending, millions who don't graduate high school, etc.) Here's a simple example of emotions getting in the way of solutions: One day I heard two women screaming in a parking lot. One woman had slammed a car door on her elderly mother's finger; her finger was caught in the door.
I asked them to calm down, but they wouldn't. They were in a panic. So I shouted, "Shut up!" They stopped screaming. I reached my hand inside the top of the window, unlocked the door, then opened it. Problem solved.
Emotional thinking whereby you allow yourself and your feelings to be the center of your universe puts you at risk of being swallowed up by your problem.
Rational, critical thinking which helps you to step outside of your worries and prejudices gives you the liberty to evaluate and resolve the difficult challenges you will eventually face.
So how do we overcome our feelings-obsessed thinking?
The authors argue that universities need to get back to their original mission teaching critical thinking as stated by Thomas Jefferson, founder of the University of Virginia: "This institution will be based on the illimitable freedom of the human mind. For here we are not afraid to follow truth wherever it may lead, nor to tolerate any error so long as reason is left free to combat it."
Just simple thinking would be a good start.
Better late than never, I guess.
Some of the staunchest Conservatives out there were die-hard Liberals at one time.
Not that I'm anointing Leno a Conservative.
I haven’t watched him in some years though I would occasionally watch on Monday nights. The only time I recall his monologue truly being humorous was when the joke writers were on strike. Once the writers came back it reverted and declined.
We need a little humor.
Another point: I noticed that he never made jokes about Obama. The View gang were bragging about how they made jokes about everyone and that Fiorina should get a thick skin. I noticed too that they never made jokes about Obama.
"Whoa, that's kind of racist!" said the intern.
That is an example of postmodernist libtard deconstructionism.Deconstructionists believe that texts or utterances contain hidden meanings, and that the readers or listeners are perfectly free to make their own subjective interpretation or meaning of it, depending on how they feel, or their own past experience.After all, they believe that there is no single absolute truth.
These people are a bunch of poseurs. I watch occasionally just for the hell of it. I turn it off after a couple of minutes.
I guess I'm becoming an old fuddy-duddy. I don't know. I just don't find any of the late nights funny.
The only show I did like was Stephen Colbert's show on Comedy Central even though I knew the humor was directed at people like myself, I thought it was funny.
Kind of like my dad found Archie Bunker funny even though Bunker was a metaphor (whatever the hell that is) for himself. And me. I was too young to realize I was a Conservative. Or too even know what a Conservative or a Liberal was.
I just knew he sounded a lot like my dad but I will always remember with fondness my dad's busting up at the stuff Bunker said.
Okay. I'm going to stop now before I get all mushy.
Universities want their students to be brain dead libs though.
Welcome to the “new normal.”
Not in my world.
Universities want their students to be sheep, because they live well on the wool they clip off those same students.
And as long as they can avoid scaring off new sheep, they enjoy an occasional mutton roast.
Your taking offense offends me. Your feelings hurt my feelings.
He actually did make jokes about Obama. That was what set him apart from his competitors, such as that narrow-minded little ideologue Letterman.
I really wonder too if Obama would like people making jokes about him. He seems pretty thin skinned to use a View term.
He’d make them. They weren’t as frequent or as biting as his jokes about Republicans, but they would be there.
These days a fellow can’t compliment a lady for wearing a beautiful dress without worrying that she might call him a chauvinist pig.
= = =
The ‘lady’ might be a he.
He might like it. The fellow might not.
It is a bit difficult to believe if you haven’t actually the course syllabi, but the Left has expropriated the entire term Critical Thinking and now many of the courses offered at the collegiate level might better be entitled “Seeing The World Through The Lens Of Marx”. This form of “critical thinking” is largely what is responsible for such grotesqueries as Leno details above. Given - and it is a given, by the way, the underlying precepts are nearly never examined - given that all thought is distilled into class interests typified by race, wealth, sex, sexual practice, in short, the usual suspects, given all of that, practically anything can be pigeonholed as an act of oppression or the new buzzword “microagression”. That’s where this stuff comes from. This form of thinking is “critical” only insofar as it is intended to manipulate. It is no accident that self-criticism figures so large in communist re-education camps.
The good news is that only the really stupid students fail to realize this sometime through the first term. The bad, and the real lesson, is that they have to parrot it all anyway if they expect to succeed in the academic mill. Thought has less to do with this than power. And it is a power, that Theodore Dalrymple pointed out, whose purpose is not to convince, but to humiliate.
I’m with you. I don’t like the “new normal.”
All in the family is one of the last great sitcoms. I haven’t had the patience for any sitcoms in the last 20 years. I doubt I see even an hour of adult TV in a month now. I will see a few hours a month of carefully selected children’s shows with my young children.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.