Posted on 11/29/2015 7:31:47 AM PST by Kaslin
"There was truth and there was untruth, and if you clung to the truth even against the whole world, you were not mad," Winston Smith clandestinely wrote in his diary. Smith, the protagonist in George Orwell's classic dystopian novel, 1984, fought against a totalitarian state, against Big Brother.
In our own maddening, modern, non-fiction world, you are not insane if you cling to truth.
But you might feel awfully alone.
Even if you practice yoga.
What? Yes, yoga. The stretching exercise/meditation practice that is said to help bring spiritual peace to its practitioners is under assault, at least in Canada.
Yoga began in the Indus-Sarasvati civilization in Northern India over five millennia ago. We find its first mention in the oldest sacred texts, the Rig Veda. It has been one of India's most popular cultural exports. In Ottawa, Ontario, one Jennifer Scharf has been offering free weekly yoga instruction to students since 2008. She's one of many thousands of westerners to teach and propagate the discipline.
But in September Scharf's program was slated for suspension. Her college caved to student leaders who charged that the free on-campus yoga class could be seen as a form of "cultural appropriation."
Well, the student leaders aren't wrong. It is cultural appropriation. And some folks might indeed see this as a horrible form of racism.
The short response the one any rational person would marshal is simple enough:
The long response? Well, I am not going to make it. There are some things I won't do. I'm not going to expend eight hundred words and certainly not several thousand explaining why the new anti-racism and cultural obsessions with "marginalization" and "micro-aggression" and all the rest are wrong-headed. By their fruits we know them. These activists demand to be coddled, intellectually and emotionally; they demand censorship; in the name of respect for all, they respect only those who kowtow to them. (Just look at the way student activists shout down their administrators even administrators who have done everything they can to cater to their cause.)
This problem is not a Canadian problem of course. Recent stories from Berkeley and Mizzou and all over the Ivy League have shown just how idiotic the situation has become.
I doubt this starts in homes. Perhaps it started with the New Left taking over colleges as the Baby Boom went through the Academy like a pig through a python. But these kids come to college from high schools, where these ideas have been inculcated. And over at Common Sense, my daily blast online, I've been regaling my readers with the idiocies of public school administrators for years.
So let's solve this problem. Public education in America is obviously a disaster now politically, ideologically, and in the realm of manners. The federal government should immediately defund it. And stop regulating it. And sending out mandates. (Much of this nonsense does indeed come from Congress and the President most certainly including President Obama.) And then, state by state, let competition come up. The hidebound parasites that have hijacked public education must be stopped.
Before their "best students" ruin civilization and overthrow freedom and responsibility for generations to come.
Today, yoga took the hit. What will be next? The Constitution, for its appropriation of political practices of the Iroquois Confederacy? Christianity, for its Mid-East origins? Orwell'sAnimal Farm, for its making fun of pigs?
I dunno, I kind of like the one where the broad is eating pizza and sharing it with her rugmate.
Many do not realize just how racist today’s progressives are.
I demand #blacklivesmatter stop using English to communicate. English is not indigenous to Africa. Therefore its use by Blacks is clearly cultural appropriation, and therefore offensive.
Bump!
That should be easy. Many haven't used it in years, if ever.
Yes! Love this!<p
The problem is, what they speak is hardly English to begin with. It’s some maddening kind of ghetto-academic bafflegab.
When did they ever start?
BINGO I enjoy it when logic is in use.
Made my morning!
They don’t speak English anyway — they speak Ebonics (AKA, Jive).
“There are some places where English completely disappears. In America, they haven’t used it for years.” — Professor Henry Higgins, “Why Can’t the English” (My Fair Lady)
Pygmalion.
The idea that you are insulting another culture by learning and practicing some aspect(s). I’m not talking about ridicule or inaccurate claims. I’m not into yoga are meditation, but I find food from many nations. In high school everyone participated in different Mexican dances which failed to provoke any more outrage. The same was true for Mexican clubs where food and music was fun. I guess I’m guilty of micro aggression when I ask my wife to cook her Thai food.
And yet, those perpetually offended by whites will move on to further offenses. What is left to provoke outrage is left is unclear when blacks are now deeply angered and offended by the sight of a white person.
They should also stop using flush-toilets, electricity, and food not grown on fields plowed by oxen.
None of those are indigenous to Africa, either.
Indians are happy that Westerners try to follow yoga -- it shows India as a source of something good and that is extremely flattering. Ditto for kung fu from China or a BBC accent from the UK.
I had always been told, "Imitation is the highest form of flattery."
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