Wednesday, March 29, 2017

Humans are not rational

One of the main reasons I no longer have any respect for rationalism is that so much of life is counter-intuitive.  People's behavior, especially.  Perhaps it is only counter-intuitive to those of us of a certain age have been taught how important it is to be nice, turn the other cheek, do unto others, etc. This is why red-pilling was such a bombshell to many, because it revealed how animalistic people's motivations are, especially our own.

Even after being red-pilled, I am still constantly taken by surprise at how my fellow humans function.  Even though I know it is true, I still struggle with how I have to manipulate my students.  Here is an example:

In one class, my students are called upon to complete some legal forms.  The legal forms are not provided.  I know from long and bitter experience that if I provide the forms up front, the students will complain about all of the hard work the assignment requires because some of the forms cannot be simply filled out, and must be retyped.  If, however, I give the students the assignment without the forms, and only provide them less than 24 hours before the assignment is due, the students are grateful because I swooped in to save them in the last minute.  This seems counter-intuitive to me, because the behavior is not rational.  It is, however, predictable and observable. 

Monday, February 27, 2017

Smile!

I am preparing one of the final classes I will be teaching for an online for-profit university.  I say “one of the final” because the institution is circling the drain, and I was only offered two classes from them in the last twelve months.  This may well be my last class overall, and I cannot say that I am sorry to see this University go from my stable of schools.

Generally, as the student loan boondoggle has dried up and student enrollment continues to plummet, non-profits have consistently demanded greater performance from their instructors.  Their behavior makes perfect sense—online adjuncts are fungible and will do anything for the ever-decreasing paycheck. The pay per class is today slightly less than it was ten years ago, but the expectations for performance are much, much greater.

You may be thinking, “Well, that must be a good thing!  We should demand high performance from educators.”  You probably think the university expectations come from higher standards of, say, continuing education in the instructor’s subject matter expertise, or greater emphasis on academic rigor.  You would be wrong.

No, the high expectations come in the form of “student engagement,” which means making super-vapid and up-beat “welcome to class” videos.  Now, as an introverted sperg, I would rather be boiled in acid than try to be perky on camera.  I can talk for hours about my areas of concentration, but the schools do not want that.  They want me to “be encouraging.” And smile!

The purpose of these videos is to put at ease the target demographic of online for-profit universities—mainly women and minorities.  This demographic already eschews the written word for videos, so it makes sense from a marketing perspective that these schools want to project more a “World Star Hip Hop” rather than a “Project Gutenberg” vibe. It still rankles me, however.  While we may not be able to help them, we shouldn’t be actively trying to hurt them, and it hurts them to continually pander to their underclass vices instead of trying to (however imperfectly) inculcate in them middle class values. 

But I am not being paid to think.  I am being paid to pander, and pander I shall.  Yo, yo, yo, your best friend da professor in da house!

Wednesday, February 15, 2017

Tuesday, February 14, 2017

Just Another Day

A lot of folks have been talking about the recent retarded tweet from some BLM spokeswoman, who said that “white ppl are a genetic defect of blackness.”  Vox Day posted about this, Styxhexenhammer666 made a YouTube video on it, etc. Meanwhile, thousands marched in Milwaukee to protest Sheriff David Clarke’s audacious attempt to enforce existing laws.  It was billed as another “Day Without Latinos.”  

This event didn’t get much coverage from the alt-right, at least from what I can see. The reason why is that the United States is, at heart, the racist country that Latinos have always accuse it of being. In many ways, we have proven the point of all of those marching Mexicans—we just don’t see ‘em.  The American psychic landscape remains black and white. Everything is analyzed through the lens of white versus black American culture.

Wisconsinites probably did see safer schools and neighborhoods with all those criminal aliens and fellow-travelers clustered together away from people who had to go to work. I am sure that Milwaukeeans will enjoy the prolific trash heaps that they will have to clean up after the protestors are bused home to wherever they came from. But aside from the hassle of having yet another traffic jam, this protest was a dud. While Americans (white and black) do want illegals gone, Hispanics do not have much resonance in American culture, good or bad. They have contributed less to American culture per capita than would be expected, given that many Latinos have been living in the American Southwest since before there was a United States. 

For better or worse, Black Americans have had an inordinate impact on American culture, greatly beyond what would be predicted from their representation in the population (12%). While the footprint of Black culture is over-sized, the footprint of Hispanic culture is under-sized.  Where are the breakthrough Hispanics artists, scientists, civic leaders, or philanthropists, for example?  Aside from food, what impact has Hispanic culture made on American culture?  

Thus, when the alt-right considers pervasive threats, it makes sense to focus on some random social media bleat than on an anti-deportation march. What happens on a #DayWithoutAMexican? Apparently the same thing that happens with him—not much.

Monday, February 13, 2017

Sunday, February 12, 2017

They Always Double Down

Many of you have listened to the American Enterprise Institute panel hosted by Charles Murray, in which Bill Kristol made such memorable comments as, "If things are so bad with the white working class, don't you want to get new Americans in?"  As the Supreme Dark Lord could have predicted, of course, (((SJWs))) always double-down.  Did Kristol apologize and grovel in the way that all white heterosexual Christians do when they even inadvertently or obliquely insult a privileged group? No, of course not!  He doubled-down on Twitter, stating "I was on a panel w/ Charles Murray and neglected to bow before the conservative form of political correctness...."

I always enjoy watching people self-destruct in public. I think pundits like Kristol realize that they lived through a profound paradigm shift, and they missed it. They didn't see it coming, and they cannot describe it now that it is here.  It seems many of them are trying to blow themselves up before they go. I guess they think it is better to burn out than fade away.