Posted on 02/12/2003 9:50:43 PM PST by Hobsonphile
I am not posting the complete article, because it has not made it onto the web as of yet (it should be at the link above in a week or two). Therefore, I will be pulling stand-out excerpts from the print version and making my own comments.
Last Thursday, an activist by the name of Derrick Jensen spoke at Worcester Polytechnic Institute here in Massachusetts (my old school and still frequent hang-out). The following statements, written in bold, are from the article reporting on the event. Bear in mind, this appeared in the news, not the opinion section, of the student newspaper:
Jensen began the presentation by commenting on how he came to the main inspiration of his book "A Language Older Than Words." He engaged the audience in his experiences with interspecies communication with an interesting example involving his problem with keeping coyotes from killing his chickens. Jensen finally solved the problem by asking the coyotes to stop killing his chickens. Emphasis mine.
And this wasn't met with any skepticism in the audience? My boyfriend talks to his cats as if they were his children (for that matter, I have always talked to my cats this way), and they still claw the furniture and kick the litter out of their box. Animals have intelligence and basic emotions, but no animal has the attention span or the cognitive ability to settle down for a chat about desired behavior. Anybody who has taken a good class in Animal Behavior would see something fishy in this speaker's claims right away.
Jensen begins to explain the essence of the problem with civilization and how it exploits members of society by first silencing them.
The Nobel Savage assumption! Steven Pinker, in The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature (a book I highly recommend), does an excellent job of debunking the Nobel Savage from a scientific perspective. He writes:
In 1978 the anthropologist Carol Ember calculated that 90 percent of hunter-gatherer societies are known to engage in warfare, and 64 percent wage war at least once every two years. Even the 90 percent figure may be an underestimate, because anthropologists often cannot study a tribe long enough to measure outbreaks that occur every decade or so (imagine an anthropologist studying the peaceful Europeans between 1918 and 1938).
Later, he writes:
It is, of course, understandable that people are squeamish about acknowledging the violence of pre-state societies. For centuries the stereotype of the savage savage was used as a pretext to wipe out indigenous peoples and steal their lands. But surely it is unnecessary to paint a false picture of a people as peacable and ecologically conscientious in order to condemn the great crimes against them, as if genocide were wrong only when the victims are nice guys.
It's a pity that this clear-headed thinking did not appear to be present in Jensen's lecture.
According to Jensen, grades exist as a reward because education itself is not enough of a reward. A school's role is to break children of the hobby of daydreaming and to give up their wills, which, as Derrick states, they don't do easily.
Now we hit a big hot button for me- education. The above is "progressive" claptrap. Again, the Nobel Savage rears its head, this time with policy implications that have proven over the past few decades to be disasterous for our children, particularly the disadvantaged whom Jensen claims to champion.
Yes, education does exist in part to reign in the natural impulses of children. Anyone who has had experience with children- and who has basic common sense- knows that no matter how adorable they may sometimes be, children are born barbarians with a capacity for empathy. They are not born with empathy fully formed. That has to be taught, by adults. Further, for the sake of mere survival, children must learn to be productive. A child who is lost in a daydream is not learning to hunt- or to read and write, to use an example that applies for our industrialized society. We can look to the inner city- or even to suburban high schools, where bullying runs rampant- to see what happens when children are left to their own devices without adult guidance.
And now, for the one moment in the article when Jensen made sense:
He discussed his confusion on why the rape of a woman by a man was not considered a hate crime when the rape of an African American or gay woman was.
Because the category of "hate crimes" is specious. Nobody deserves to be brutalized- and traditional law is most certainly clear enough on this fact. "Hate crime" exists as a category merely to implicitly privilege favored groups. As I believe in individual freedom, the ideology underpinning the "hate crime" concept is particularly noxious to me.
It amazes me that this student reporter did not attempt to seek out opposing opinions on the speaker, such as the ones I have touched on above. Is this truly what passes for journalism at my former stomping grounds?
Oh, wow, man. I remember him. He's that peyote dude. Far out.
And here I was thinking that you were referring to that Nobel Peace Prize winner, the savage Jimmy Carter. :=)
Heh. Perhaps that was in the back of my mind. ;) Actually, the fact that Arafat has won a Peace Prize offends me more.
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