23 Replies to “We Need A Famine”

  1. Is Safetyism Destroying a Generation?

    That is the purpose. It is not a bug, it is a feature of the Marxists.

  2. Entitlementism is the millennial coup de grace.

    Or so they think (imagine sinister laughter here).

  3. The Oprahfication of post-secondary education started some 30 years ago. I started teaching in the late 1980s and it didn’t take long before I was quickly made aware that everything I said during my lectures had to be “positive”.

    For example, during one session, I wrote an equation on the board and one had to be careful in reading it because of all the terms and exponents that it contained. Because it wasn’t simple like, say, y = mx + b, I said that it was a ghastly-looking expression. My department head at the time, who happened to be sitting in on it, chastised me afterwards for using the term “ghastly”, implying that it had negative connotations and the students would be discouraged from wanting to learn it.

    Later, I was often reminded that I had to create a “safe” learning environment, though I never found out what was meant by that.

    After I received my doctorate, I was reprimanded for having my students address me as Dr. Rupertslander, even though I earned the degree and associated title and was allowed to use it. Apparently, it might have “intimidated” the kiddies and they would be afraid to ask me questions, thereby preventing them from learning something, anything. (Those same “intimidated” students wouldn’t have hesitated to have me drawn, quartered, and hanged if I didn’t give them whatever they wanted when they wanted it. They felt that they were the ones in charge, not me, which, sadly, was supported by most of the administrators I dealt with.)

    One reason I eventually quit was the requirement to constantly treat them as delicate and fragile porcelain dolls that had to be wrapped in cotton wool, lest they be damaged for life.

    1. My mother in law saw an episode of Oprah (she never missed one) in which Oprah claimed wooden cutting boards were the most dangerous thing in our kitchens. Knowing my daily use of a *gasp* wooden cutting board … my mother in law began to BEG me to use a plastic cutting board to “save the lives” of her 3 grandchildren. And shall I mention how she insisted that I needed to have my (8yo top soccer athlete) child’s Cholesterol tested, and to consider a fat-free diet … again … to save his life!! Another episode of Oprah. He’s never been anything other than a healthy, fit, kid. And yeah … I fed him BACON! He loves it! He even showed me the “life hack” of baking bacon … not frying it.

      Oprah, and Oprah-like busybodies whose sole purpose in life is to generate viewers … is a disease upon our society. Her shallow, insipid, scare stories have caused great damage. Alar Apple scare … Mad-cow disease scare … etc.

      My food prep protocol is such that I would NEVER cross-contaminate raw chicken and chopped salad. And I am a fastidious cleaner … after every use, air dried and food safe oil resealed monthly (at the least). We have NEVER picked up any foodboure illness. Except! an egg based casserole that had gone bad … prepared and served by my mother in law … worst illness I’ve ever had in my life.

  4. I think extreme emotionalism as a social movement will soon reach its apex. How much further can it really go beyond microagressions and unconscious bias?

    Action leads to reaction. Just like gen x latchkey kids led to helicopter parenting of millennials. Helicopter parenting will lead to what you see in the quilette article – a re-evaluation of the importance of teaching resilience, self-control and independence to gen y children. There’s lots of sane middle ground between neglect and bubble wrap parenting.

    Who knows, the next generation might even rescue humour and entertainment from the social justice abyss. I’d bet academia and journalism are unrecoverable though.

    1. “How much further can it really go beyond microagressions and unconscious bias?”
      It won’t stop until our civilization is destroyed. It will only get worse. See Clio’s Bastards and where the Greek democracies of 2,500 years ago went. Author Curtis R. McManus, Professor of History, U of Saskatchewan.

      1. I’m just not a The End is Nigh person, Ken. Change happens even within a generation. The Baby Boomers went from free love and communes in their youth to consumerism and materialistic status-seeking adults in the span of a couple decades. Millenials could easily make just as big of an attitude change.

        1. I don’t disagree with you totally and I get where your coming from, but one thing is missing today and has been for quite sometime- the ability to work and EARN your wage. its hot as hell here today and the kids weren’t allowed outside during recess, but we worked in it all day.

          Who is going to landscape, install and fix sewers, carpentry etc e in the future? i’d like to know the percentage of useless t— we have coming down the pipes because there is a problem much bigger than anyone lets on.

          This year you could not help but see the SJW, helicopter parent mentality in the summer help. its wasn’t pretty.
          i think the intellectuals for the most part have missed the boat long ago but i think they are going to find out soon just what they missed.

          Government doesn’t stand a chance of changing much, its already gone to far.

          1. “Who is going to landscape, install and fix sewers, carpentry etc e in the future?”

            Mass immigration solves EVERY problem!

  5. A generation of moral and intellectual cowards.

    Weak as piss. The lot of them.

  6. So.very.many.ways.to.discuss.this.topic. … but I’ll choose one. Zero tolerance. Zero tolerance is mindless and idiotic. At its core, it demands that no child make a mistake. That such (zero tolerated) a mistake would be so heinous, so destructive, as to NOT ever be tolerated. One of the most fundamental ZEROS of tolerance is for physically fighting in our schools.

    As I’ve mentioned here before, I had a very shitty childhood (by all measurable standards). And by the time my man-hormones (the toxic ones don’chya know) were in full deployment … I started fighting. If anyone stepped on my toes … I’d start fighting. I couldn’t control anything the adults were doing to me in middle school … but I could control my own space. Is physically fighting a good thing? Usually (but not always) not.

    But the fighting … with willing opponents … was an important “phase” for me to pass through. I learned many lessons as both victor and vanquished. I learned that beating someone down usually left me with a hollow feeling of having accomplished nothing. I learned that some people are actually tougher than I was. I learned that words could often beat-down my opponent more effectively than a good right hand.

    And I also witnessed that in many cases fighting, confronted evil. Confronted bullies. Stopped bullies cold in their tracks. Fighting oftentimes restored order. I learned and grew out of fighting. If I were a student today … I’d have been expelled, exiled, and thrown-away as incorrigible. What a waste that would have been for society. Not just for me, but for every other red blooded boy who ever stood up for himself.

    And when I was a Senior in high school a friend of mine (bad influence) and I smuggled a couple 6-packs into my school locker (in the open halls of our school) for a dance later that night. It was about 6:30p and we thought we were alone in the hallways. As I am fumbling with the cans, stacking them on my books … one dropped and rolled behind me … as I turned on my knees to recover the beer, I looked up to see The HS Dean of Boys standing in his now-illuminated office across the landscaped quad. Busted! If this happened today, I’d have been expelled and finished HS with the hard core losers in the “alternative” HS. But the Dean KNEW me … as a good kid and a good student. He was able to use his JUDGEMENT, knowledge, and experience to give me a minor punishment stern-talking-to (he knew that expressing disappointment in my actions were humiliating to kid who was good at heart) and send me in my way. Yeah … pouring out every one of those beers while he watched was painful!

    Zero tolerance is a crutch for lazy people. For educators who are detached from their students. Who don’t know their students. It is a “legalistic”, not “humanistic” policy. And it cripples kids who could otherwise learn crucial life lessons in the sometimes uncomfortable hard knocks of life.

    1. Very well written Kenji and obviously heartfelt. What commendable teachers you had to recognize and foster that good soul and spirit that you obviously have. Choked me up a bit tbh.

  7. I doubt that a famine would be useful, because of the universality of safetiism.

    It is remarkable – I once walked into a friend’s laboratory, which had been newly “safety-ized.” I was struck by the safety labels on the burettes, which called for caution because the burettes contained 0.1 N hydrochloric acid. Caution, and safety gear, were called for. Safety gear for 0.1 N HCl – which I would ordinarily handle in street clothes and without gloves.

    The friend is an engineer working on corrosion, which is why the equipment is typical of a first-year chemistry lab and not a research lab.

  8. “Humans are what author and statistician Nassim Nicholas Taleb calls ‘antifragile’. We ‘benefit from shocks; [humans] thrive and grow when exposed to volatility, randomness, disorder, and stressors and love adventure, risk, and uncertainty’. ”

    Ehh that’s pretty iffy. PTSD is a real thing, and I would take a coddled generation over a traumatized one anyday.

    In any event, as LC says, this generation can change every bit as fast as the boomers. They will start to once they hit reality.

    1. We’re just fine, so what’s your point? Save your tears over our trauma. Go cry with the entitled to be coddled ones.

      I find often, in the private sector, PTSD is a faked thing, with disability pensions give to those who spent zero time in the military, police, fire department or other early responders, or even a day care.

      No, their work was too hard, or their parents made them follow the rules, or they had to start at the bottom rung.

      Poor babies. In short, they are coddled. I have all the time in the world for people who had actual trauma affect them.

      As for the malingerers and their coddled enablers, I say no thanks to their feigned trauma. I’m only for the real thing.

      I do have some advice to offer: get off your ass, stop feeling sorry for yourself, and get on with it like everybody else.

      1. I personally suffer from PTSD related to 21 years of police work. I don’t understand the rush to diagnose PTSD because someone got yelled at by their boss or some other relatively minor event. Mine was diagnosed in 1998 and it was a battle to get it accepted by VAC. General Romeo Dallaire was diagnosed around that time and I truly believe that his high position in the CAF helped every other lower ranking sufferer get recognition and compensation. Military personnel in Canada, the USA and Great Britain both serving and retired are dying of PTSD connected issues, suicide, homelessness, drug use etc and the rush to a PTSD diagnosis outside the DSM diagnosis criteria minimizes the actual horror suffered by military and first responders.

    2. go ahead with that plan dear unmebot.
      one coddled generation will be followed by one excetionally and severely traumatized one.
      ie NO ONE around to ‘deal’ with the trauma which the real world will pour on their heads like a biblical plague.

  9. Yeah, we used to be a bit tougher, in in Toronto:

    https://www.blogto.com/city/2017/09/adventure-playground-toronto-history/

    Proof that brats, helicopter parents and lawyers will eventually ruin everything:

    “An unfortunate incident occurred in the 1980s when a child broke into the grounds late at night and injured himself.

    His parents retained counsel, and the legal eagles descended like locusts. Not surprisingly, Adventure Playground was soon closed for good.”

  10. If these toddlers were around back in the Stone Age, we would have never left the caves until someone went out to see if the sabre-toothed cats had gone extinct yet.

    We need a famine.

    The famine can’t get here soon enough.

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