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The End of the Scientific Culture

In the 1990s there broke out something we now call the “Science Wars.” Basically it pitted the bleeding edge of “Post-Modernism” against traditional scientific scholars, who were generally adherents of a naive sort of positivism. By the latter, I’m not saying that these were necessarily people steeped in Carnap, Popper or Lakatos. Very few scientists know anything about philosophy of science except for a few nods to Karl Popper, and more dimly, Francis Bacon. By “naive positivism” I’m just alluding to the reality most scientists think there’s a world out there, and the scientific method is the best way to get at that world in terms of regularities.

Probably the best reflection of this period and the arguments that were happening can be seen in Higher Superstition: The Academic Left and Its Quarrels with Science. Both the authors came at the topic from the political Left, like most scientists, and part of their project was due to worry that Post-Modernism might actually undermine the project of the Left.

By the 2000s these arguments seemed stale and tired. The arguments were over, and a sort of return to rationality seems to have fallen over the landscape. In the middle of the 2000s, one of the authors of Higher Superstition coauthored Creationism’s Trojan Horse: The Wedge of Intelligent Design. The academic Left’s critique of science was giving way to Creationism 2.0, Intelligent Design (as I have noted before, Intelligent Design did draw from the toolkit of Critical Theory).

But life is a circle. In 2019 skepticism of evolution is really not an issue, in large part due to the demographic marginalization of the Religious Right. Now the “academic Left” is on the march again. Though somewhat differently, and arguably more potently. The Left is self-consciously “science-based” and “reality-based.” Instead of the grand assertion that science is just another superstition, the bleeding edge of the academic Left now argues that science needs to be perfected and purged of oppression, white supremacy, etc. Who after all would favor oppression and white supremacy?

The problem is that to eat away at the oppressive structures the acid of critique has to be thrown at the pretention of objectivity of scientists and science as it is today, and as it has come to be, over the past few hundred years.

Of course, the idea that science is objective is somewhat a pretense. As a human enterprise, it has an element of bias and subjectivity because of the nature of the practitioners of science. But pretense is the tribute that bias pays to objectivity.

Consider the life of Srinivasa Ramanujan. The biography is well known, so I won’t rehash it. Ramanujan came from nearly nothing and became a glittering intellectual. It is notable that his period of activity was in the 1910s, arguably during the great plateau of white racial supremacist ideologies that flourished in the late 19th-century into the first decades of the 20th-century. Ramanujan was from a modest background at best (though from a Brahmin family, so he did have more resources than most Indians, though he was not of the upper-middle or upper class). He had no polish and pedigree. And he did experience some racism as a dark-skinned Indian in Britain, and one who was devoutly Hindu at that.

But math is math. G. H. Hardy reached out to Ramanujan because of the common language they shared, the truth of inferences from propositions. Though Hardy met with resistance, his entreaties to his colleagues to recognize Ramanujan’s brilliance were eventually accepted. The math spoke far louder than the man.

Despite the accusation that science was a tool for power, that it entrenched power, arguably science historically has been particularly open to outsiders. European Jews were very well represented, despite pervasive anti-Semitism in the broader culture. Poor and marginal individuals, such as Ramanujan or Michael Faraday, earned themselves a a place in the profession. Yes, it was harder for them, but at the end of the day, brilliance gave them a chance.

What protected Ramanujan from the full force of prejudice and the caprice of power was objectivity. The idea of objectivity.  Ramanujan was marginal. He was weak. And objectivity did not care. Objectivity does not care for power, it cares for truth.

Subjectivity is different. Subjectivity is a tool for power. Over the long-term, the arc of the subjective bends to the preponderance of feeling. In a world dictated and shaped by subjectivity, grasp power. Use it. Truth is irrelevant when you create your own truth. Truth is just a word, a label, nothing real.

Science, as we understand it today, is the outcome of intellectual currents that came together in early modern Europe. Today it is a profession, a culture. Most scientists find the skeptics of science’s objectivity silly. Bizarre even. But I see few standing up to speak for science in the way that Norman Leavitt and Paul Gross did in the 1990s. The reason is simple: anyone of similar stature that spoke for science’s special objectivity would be accused of racism, sexism, classism, etc. And such accusations, especially against white males, stick. Who wants to go through that? Better to keep conducting research and let the cultural currents exhaust themselves.

When science becomes just politics, it won’t be science as we know it. The institutions and cultures that are made can be unmade. Most societies have not had a major scientific scholarly contingent (science happens, but not a full-blown culture). There is nothing eternal or inevitable about science.

This post is not an appeal. Or a warning. History marches on. I believe the time of wolves is at hand. Science will become magic. Prepare yourself. Who has the power? Shelter with them.

15 thoughts on “The End of the Scientific Culture

  1. It was all set forth in the Little Red Book two generations ago. Better Red than expert.

    That motto will rule science departments in American universities in short order.

    The liberals who thought that their enemies were conservatives will be horrified to discover that their real enemies are the identity politics radicals.

  2. There is a long tradition of the unscientific rebellion from the left. Just read what Rousseau was saying.
    That doesnt mean they are completely wrong with all they say, but their conclusions are twisted.

    Talking about the toxic left, its always about Cultural Marxism. Talking about Cultural Marxism, its always about the Frankfurt School. Talking about the Frankfurt School, its about Max Horkheimer and Herbert Marcuse. Unfortunately one predecessor of Horkheimer died and Grünberg got a stroke. Who knows, without the institutional power behind his back Horkheimers concept of the “Critical Theory”, of radical, but unorthodox and strictly Feminist Marxism with Freudian “logic” wouldnt have ever made it.

    But question is, how could these two outsiders, secular Jews which were not supported by orthodox Marxists and hated by most of Europe ever make it at all?

    The answer is that they went to the United States. They cooperated with the secret Service during World War 2 and they offered a Marxist based theory which could be tolerated, even supported by the American Capitalist Oligarchy.

    Because their focus was more in the individual and they saw hedonism as a tool for freeing the individual from the Bourgeois constraints.
    They had excellent contacts to all the “intellectuals” which followed Freudian concepts. Even maniacs and charlatans like Wilhelm Reich could become “moral authotities” in that climate.

    The “Critical Theory” with its anti-authoritarian critique on European conservatives, Fascism and Communism of the Eastern kind alike was just an ideal Tool to feed the own Western youth with something which was no threat to the Capitalist system, but a catalysator fot its course of societal destruction and corporate power over helpless individuals.

    The Frankfurt School guys already said, Western Capitalism is more Marxist, in the sense of anti-European, anti-Bourgeois than Eastern Socialism, which is much more conservative in the 1970s and 1980s.

    They really hated European civilisation, they hated it so much. When they saw the German worker was satisfied with his middle class life, with the chance of his children becoming academics and rise, they exploded.

    They realised that they cant overcome the occidental world by teaching the “working class”, but they had to destroy the man, install a Bachofen matriarchy (Fromm said it) and if necessary “storm the white fortress” (he meant Europe, Fromm again) – implicitly justifying anti-natal policies and mass immigration. Or even devaluate human moral by lifting up animals and nature above the human, the “anthropocentric” perspective (Fromm and Marcuse).

    Nothing you can hear from the students now is that new, the Frankfurt School developed this Agitation decades ago.
    When Marcuse talked about the advantages of female ruled political systems, he had still three (!) slips of the tongue and two laughs.

    But he was dead serious nevertheless because he knew that their destructive policy to ruin the occident would never be accepted by the majority of white males. So they needed an independent female movement, split society in half and introduced ethnic, social, sexual etc. diversity to all societies they wanted to turn. So they can play the game of the “privileged vs victim” endlessly and can get the interpretative authority. Only with this societal dominance you can proceed with social engineering on the next level.

    The first level was from the 50s to 80s, when they got dominant in the academic, educational, popculture (again a joint venture with Capitalists) and Art.

    With the first generations completely raised under the dominance of Cultural Marxism, they faced the end of the Cold War.

    Immediately the alliance reacted by increasing simultaneously the pressure of Capitalist and Cultural Marxist authority. That was Neoliberalism in the 1990s, with the great victory of political correctness in society and “there is no alternative” in economy.

    Again, they marched together.

    Hillary Clinton represented yet another acceleration of Cultural Marxist onslaught on the remains of conservative, non-turned Western people. But who was financed big time by most financial institutions and corporations? She was.

    She proclaimed the next wave of Feminism and “minority powee” while risking a third World War for giving Sunni Islamists Syria.

    What is this? Cultural Marxism is a tool, an ideology Capitalists can sponsor as long as it helps their business and getting an even harder grip on individuals stripped from all social networks of importance they don’t control.

    I recently heard that you can get banned from Whatsapp for no reason, just like that.
    You can lose your bank account the same way.

    People can fight, individuals can just hurt other individuals when in rage, but they cant fight the system.

    Those students and even most of the “intellectuals”, celebrities are just puppets anyway, are just extras. The moving background to what really happens. Like the Red troopers during the Chinese “Cultural Revolution”.

    If the upper tanks wouldnt like what they do on the ground, they would stop them, if necessary shoot them.

    Even if one rich & powerful plutocrat might get hunted down by the mob. Who knows what he planned to do? Its not like Stalinists and Maoists didnt execute upper ranks if the ones in charge needed a scapegoat or get rid of a competitor.

    These media scense in the West are like witch hunts or pogroms, with bishops and priests heating up the tempers for their young followers to do what they want.

    Its so many things, but one big thing is “the climate change”.

    Since the Club of Rome they wanted to get rid of “anthropocentrism” and birth rates down, especially in the West. Again Fromm and Marcuse said this clearly.

    In effect its again just a big hoax and joint venture of big money and Cultural Marxism.
    Not because of science or scientific results for man made global warming primarily, even though the debate lost objectivity long time ago, but the political-economic real policy!

    Its being used to push the middle class down, make life more expensive, birth rates in the West even lower, people “ashamed of being human”, doesnt go for the really big CO2 emitters, which would hurt the corporations, and result in huge profits for big corporations and financial institutions.

    So, like in the 60s, even if parts of the protests and demands are justified, the real policy is still all corporate interests.

    This is the kind of “left” corporate America keeps like a puppy, because they can ally with it and uses it against internal and external enemies as a political weapon.

    If one of these leftists takes the idea of oppression and power relations seriously, instead of directing it just against white males and destroying social structures above the individual, he suddenly nein marked as “radical” and “dangerous”. Wont ever be a promising candidate blabla…

    As if any of te candidates would be more relatable if the media would uncover whats in their program and whos behind it.

    Its simple, the Oligarchy sacrifices a lot of the soft parts of power to Cultural Marxists for keeping up the alliance and usingthe ideology as a weapon for the American-Capitalist dominance in the “moral sphere”.

    If they would be more just “Cultural” and attacking the banking sector, Fonds and corporate structures of really power, how fast would the media turn on them. That would get blood very fast.

    But like Marcuse said, American style Capitalism is the better and more advanced method to deconstruct European civilisation and create the “new truly Marxist society” anyway. It doesnt matter whether he believed it or was just lying, but it should be obvious why American Capitalists preferred “that kind of Leftism” as a “social movement” in their country.

    Idiots which think society is more just and fair if you have a certain portion of “minorities” in the Management of a big multinational Corporation which exploits millions worldwide.
    Banning meat from the table and raiding Taxen for the middle class while there are still cargo ships on sea which produce as much emissions as a city and no effective storage for Green electricity.

    But who cares, if its good for corporate America.

    Science is just another victim of this alliance, because neither want or need them. The Cultural Marxists see it just as a threat to their interpretation of the World and the Capitalists want no criticism or really critical thought.
    They just want idiot savants which “do their job” and create more tools for profits and power.

    Who cares for the truth if it would be a threat to them?

    Like “economic science”. What kind of “science” is that with 90 percent justifying corporate power and Capitalism with fantasy models which are not based on reality ar all?

    Do they need te truth up in the corporate power? No, they prefer to be defended from Criticism with ideological nonsense and give their little helpers gender and post colonial studies. They cleanse the internet from “fake news” so only their allies are allowed to talk to the dumbasses out there.

    Science became a caricature already. Real science persists only where it is politically irrelevant or can be interpreted “correctly” by the dominant narrative.

    The rest of free science being Alibi Action (“look how free we still are”), or gets even ridiculed and attacked by the media to show people what is not allowed!

    I really hope a true left comes up in the USA because the debate about corporate power is overdue. A real debate with real arguments from left an right.

    Not this fake debates about “soft politics” which ruin the World but never touch those in charge laughing about so much nonsense being taken seriously.

    People like Marcuse still had to refrain from laughing very hard when talking about the Future of the West in a matriarchy. But like so often, the disciples take the greatest nonsense dead serious and forget the main gospel.
    They are a Capitalist create like in the worst descriptions of Marcuse, but they still hate European civilisation so much…
    Probably no coincidence, because they might hate, using Freud, what they have become. This disrooted and distorted people. That’s what “Critical Theory” made of Western people.
    Most have just their consumption and jobs, like in Capitalist dream.

  3. Obs,

    Maybe it’s the tribute virtue pays to vice but you sound more Marxist than anyone I know: a shadowy elite (“corporate America”) runs everything and is screwing most everybody.

    Maybe we need a new category, a new Marxism with an adjective: Obs Marxism.

  4. And the greatest cynism I forgot: Marcuse always said that he wanted to save people from becoming mindless Capitalist creatures.
    But how did he wanted to do so? By tearing down everything he despised, the culture since the advent of reason, states, Western philosophy and ethics, heathen and Christian alike. I don’t make that up, the Frankfurt guys said so: People must deconstruct, get rid of the cultural burden of the last 5000 years to uncover the true matriarchy in harmony with nature once more.

    Doesnt matter that THIS is a construct and fantasy, much more than anything anybody else in the Bourgeois world ever said. Its the Rousseau-like image of “the good savage”.

    Doesnt mean they really believed that crap (Fromm might have though), but thats what they told people. That and Reichs insanity were at the base of the sexual revolution.

    So they stripped the individual from all non-material values, from the culture of the last 5000 years and embrace hedonism for saving people from Capitalist exploitation?
    How sick or mendacious must brains be to come up with such thoughts and even propagating it!

    If you strip people from every natural security and defense, allow them to become addicted to their most primitive emotions, while leaving corporate power intact…
    Freudian nonsense was bug in their logic, as of kids need their authoritarian parents to become Capitalist creatures. Capitalism feed on the most primitive of human inclinations. You can have a Capitalist based economy as long as you have healthy structures to prevent its Perversion.
    What they did is to blame and attack the healthy structures, if I might be conspirative. exactly because they wanted Capitalism to become worse or alternatively because they were so naive and plain stupid.
    Probably they were, as their kind has no idea of the human nature or at least pretends this naivety, like Rousseau, who wrote about ideal childhoods while letting his own children rot in a children’s home!

    But at least, if it doesnt work to overcome Capitalism, they destroyed the Europeans and threaten mankind. Probably that was their first priority anyway, because between the lines about a “better future” there was always this tangible hate. They wanted to overcome occidental civilisation. They didnt wanted to repair, but to destroy!
    That’s the general spirit of all those Marxist inspired true radicals, not repair, not better, not to help but to destroy.

    Many said that the workers living and working conditions were inacceptable or that colonial exploitation was not justified or at least was going too far.
    But was their focus the interest of the workers and colonials?
    In the same way, are focusing todays CM on what the majority of women, coloured ot the general populace wants and needs?
    No, they selling an Agenda for coming closer to the “new society” without threatening the alliance with big money too much.

    So they humiliate white middle class men, as the weakest in the hierarchy and list to the cause anyway (Marcuse) to male some cheap gain for their academic, female and “diverse” voters.
    Because economically, they can offer close to nothing, because the big corporate brother “said no”.

    If I look at the USA and e.g. the health care system, what people call “Socialism” or radical is like a bad joke. But oh well, masters in diversity and male bashing, but still people who are in debt at their bank because they got sick.
    You have to set priorities…

    And if I think that this toxic mixture of untamed Capitalism and Cultural Marxism is supposed to be the base of the “One World” system I might have to puke.

    If it gets tougher think about it. Its not the American people per se, its not Democracy, not even Capitalism, which can have many forms, but this corporate America and their abuse of everything, including “Critical Theory” adapted to US needs, which wont allow a peaceful one world system.

    With all the oppression and distortion, to many people worldwide dont want this.
    The next presidency Wright be big, because internet censorship us rising. The Oligarchy prefers a president which embodies both, corporate and Cultural Marxist American policy.

    They even threatened Google and Facebook to comply! What that means, imagine!

    As if they would be on the other side! But they were not one sided enough, like TV always was. Bad times ahead and if Americans really still think other people fight because they “hate freedom” after Americans lose their own, step by step, should make you think what this state Stands for abroad, where ots face and real policy is still much worse than at home.

  5. @Roger: When Horkheimer and Adorno wrote their main work on “Critical Theory”, they were advised, especially by their American friends, to avoid Marxism and Marxist terms as much as possible. But their main arguments, their way of thought is completely Marxist to the core. Even worse, it was a more modern (read postmodern) advancement. The Frankfurt School had all in it, everything you see today from “this left”. Orthodox Marxists are much less dangerous than this branch, but orthodox Marxism is dead anyway.

    And, Roger, what kind of country do you think you live in? You live in a Plutocracy which plays Democracy. If you didnt realise this until now, its about time.

    Cultural Marxism spread in institutions financed by the Oligarchy. If they would have made a witch hunt on Cultural Marxism, at the start of it, it would have been dead in 5 years.

    Instead they made music, TV and movies for “the change’, printed papers and books, financed programs in “science” and education.

    Do you even realise how much money and efforts were put into one generation after another to “turn it”?

    How much money was going into conservative movements and especially media programs and education? And I’m not talking about strict evangelicals, because they are so irrational, you can let them do, they are cannon fodder in the greater scheme.

    There was one big mistake when what was left of conservative America had to compromise with the CM: That was how the Vietnam War was led and when Nixon was destroyed.
    After that, it was all just gone completely.

    But even that was just possible, this situation could only be exploited because CM was already so deeply rooted on Campus.

    Yes, Corporate America is behind all this. I’m not saying the Oligarchy controls everything, of course not. But just a few control too much and they want Cultural Marxism to succeed and to spread to the World.

    For gods sake thats American policy for decades! That’s the “Modernity’ the USA are trying to sell to the World: Politically Correct Capitalism.

    On the past of an European claimed an Island for his kingdom, it was to make this heathen Christians and save their souls while searching for Gold and planting sugar.

    Now the USA claims to save poor females, children and all kind of “suppressed”, wants to free them from oppression by bombing them to hell and ruin their state. So they can introduced corporate and financial power, get their grip on the people and a foothold in the region.

    Is the average Navy Seal a Cultural Marxist? No, he is not. Is he a big supporter of corporate control?
    No. But these are the two main goals of, even violent, US foreign policy plus strategic support for Israel. Then you have it all.

    The Cultural Marxists always talk about privileges, but they should talk about real world interests and who profits from this policy the most.

    Just one tip, its not the middle class, not the average woman and not the majority of African Americans.
    Hillary Clinton is really the perfect representation of this sick hypocrisy. That’s why Trump won. Not because he is that great, but her lies were much worse.

  6. Ignore obs. The precedent for the radical anti-science campaign is not in European theorists, it is Stalin (Lysenko) and Mao (cited above).

    BTW, the Coen Brothers used Marcuse as a character in the movie Hail! Caesar. The movie guts, skins, fillets, and barbecues the sacred cows of the left. But, it got good reviews, leading me to believe that the dull humorlessness of radical leftism has rendered them deaf and blind.

  7. So, I’m pessimistic but not as pessimistic as Razib.

    The whole academic structure reminds me of the pre-Reformation Church. Universities, the modern temples of post-modern theology, have become fat, lazy and continue enrich themselves through a modern form of tithing (government subsidized loans and grants).

    However, being religiously sure of its mission, academia has made many political enemies and diverted its eye from its core mission. It is ripe for a Reformation – a modern Luther who “rectifies the name” of science.

    I will pray for such a messiah! (irony on purpose, btw)

  8. @Walter: You don’t need “a precedent” like Stalin or Mao. It was done all the time! Free science was truly exceptional in world history.

    Look what the Christians did to science and philosophy. Stalinism is harmless in comparison.

    There was a time in Europe where scientific freedom could go very far and many things could be explored, especially the decades before the First World War. Then it declined already, also because of scientists became normal paid employees. Professionalism means nothing but that: You get orders and do your job. If your job is Astronomy and the generations before you defined what to do, most will just proceed. New disciplines created, old discarded.

    That way alone those who finance Universities did influence them, be it the state or privates.

    So what’s special about Cultural Marxism is not that they want to erradicate opposing views, but what they consider to “be bad”.

    And there you come to Horkheimer and Marcuse, worse than Stalin and Mao, or as bad just in a different way: Bad is the whole background and every structure of the occidental civilisation.
    It is beyond repair, it must be deconstructed, even destroyed, so the paradise new society can emerge from its ruins.

    Stalin was not like that at all. He wanted total control, was reckless and brutal.
    But blowing up churches and shooting people might seem as it is the most radical you can get, but he kept a lot of continuity and conservative European traditions nevertheless.

    Cultural Marxism of the Frankfurt School was much more radical and the best expression of their mental state in comparison to that of Stalins is art.

    The Art in Stalinism was crude, like the state, and it integrated avantgarde elements where it fit. But again, rather modest in form.

    But the home of Cultural Marxism was “postmodern art”. Like Horkheimer et al said, “art should be disruptive”.
    Again its not about repairing, but rupture and destruction. People should feel alienated from society and the Bourgeois way of life.
    American popculture is full of these codes, that aligns well with CM, but not at all with Eastern Communists.
    Dont blame Stalin for American shortcomings.

    Or the idea of women in power and destroyed families. Who spread that? Eastern Marxists just said women can and should work if necessary. If they are excellent, if they prove themselves, they can do the job they want.

    We can discuss that, but again this position is much better than Western radical Feminism which goal is Bachofen matriarchy (Fromm, Marcuse, Reich).

    The whole unscientific Freudian nonsense, so big in America, everything analysed by this fantasy theory (not to confuse with real science like in neurology, also psychological and psychotherapeutic methods are different) and brought into politics even. Do you see that in Stalinism?

    The Cultural Marxists even united, compare with the French like Derrida and Foucalt,against Eastern Communists. When the Bolshevist crimes came to the Western public, thats when many started to avoid Marxist terms.
    But the Frankfurt School became just even more important. Read the American proponents, they have all connections and quoted the Frankfurt School and French Marxists. That’s where they all came from.

  9. Of course science and, indeed, reality itself is based on “positivism”. Anything else is pure BS.

    If science goes “post-modern”, then we will be left with the only reality test of science. That is, any science that leads to demonstrable engineering is real. Any science that does not may be real or it may be fake, but it most certainly has no value on a practical level, and that is the acid test.

    Theoretical physics has already reached this point. Major theories such as String Theory and Multiverse Theories are not testable. Hence, to me these are not legitimate science. If Dr’s Woodward and Fearn are able to develop a space drive based on Mach’s Principle, then that would certainly be proof that Mach’s Principle is real.

  10. @Eric: Jan Hus was burned. Luther was relatively successful in comparison.
    The difference was not just their personality or the theory, but that Luther got support from the Oligarchy of his time.

    Do you see a Bill Gates, Rockefeller clan or Warren Buffet supporting with their full weight and influence something positive in that respect? Funnily Epstein might have done more than others.
    And this heiress which supported conservative thinktanks just indirectly, because she was against overpopulation. They wanted to desecrate her grave if going after press reports about her “awful person”.
    For sure a great motivation for anybody else to risk his business,”good name” and fortune for a higher cause.

    There are wealthy people out there which don’t just think like the cooperating oligarchy with their new world order, the problem in this scenery of political correctness mobs, they are afraid too!

    Some of them, same for corporations, are even afraid of refusing to support the CM cause.

    That’s like me as a student in a hurry and a handicapped activist wanted me to sign a Petition. I just went on, because I was in a hurra and he shouted whether I’m hostile towards disabled people. I don’t sign Petitions if I don’t have the time to read them. The reason however doesnt matter, if you don’t show support immediately, you are a suspicious person.

    Wealthy people and especially corporations don’t want to get troubles. Like if Google and Facebook don’t help with censorship and CM propaganda, they might get more troubles with discrimination and sexual harassment accusations out of a sudden. Who wants to be in the media as a “bad company” worldwide?

    That’s the job of the traditional mass media still, not better news, more facts, but channel led news and directed attacks and propaganda, like in the anti-Syrian campaign.
    Even something like “metoo” became that big only with the full support of the mass media.
    Or who would know about English universities students problem with clapping?

    On the other hand the newspapers are financially so exhausted, they do almost everything for money. Even more so if they are supposed to spread the same propaganda they know from Campus already.

    No, no Optimism.

    Only a political landslide could make a difference and I’m afraid for the whole world if the USA gets a president like Hillary Clinton. That might get apocalyptic out of a sudden, American universities are not the most urgent problem then.

  11. @Roger: I didn’t know LaRouche, but from what I can read about him and his “movement”, he was quite a personality.

    The problem with conspiracy theories and mainstream propaganda is, that they mainstream propaganda manages to bring justified suspicion and criticism close to completely irrational ideas about how the world works.

    Its also a tendency in a group of people, once you said something which falls under the sphere of “conspiracy theories” by the current mainstream, even if you argue it well, you lose a lot of people which are otherwise reasonable, but are just conditioned to react apalled by their education. At the same time people will approach you, which think that, just because you said something “politically incorrect” or “conspiratorial”, they have an ally in you for all kind of nonsense, as if it would be all the same. Some are even lunatics and think if you agree with them on one issue, you have to buy their whole worldview at once. They question really everything, even the most basic scientific truths, like anti-evolution and flat earth fanatics.

    But that’s the problem, because the media and politically abused science villainise and categorise justified criticism, they become untrustworthy for everything else. They are no standard for what’s true and right any more, if they play the political game for their ideological masters or even try to become agitators themselves.

    For starters you should make clear what a conspiracy is about for me: A conspiracy means that a group of people make plans and decisions in secrecy, which have potentially huge effects on society and, if they were have been made public in time, would have much worse chances to succeed. To give an example: If you plan with your campaign team and supporters, that once you are being elected as president, you will raise taxes for the middle class and cut it for the big corporations, but say the exact opposite before, I would call that a conspiracy already.

    The political system we have right now, especially in the USA and the EU, means that lobbyism is officially recognised as a major political force. Politicians often just sign bills, which they don’t even understand, which their team doesn’t understand, but which their party leaders said is good and for which they might get a better job and more money after the vote. It also means, that if you are dependent from a media tycoon, you don’t say things which might make this person your enemy, because you don’t need bad press. Even if you lose just a few percentages.

    Now the internet made it possible to reach out to your electorate directly, with less money and bypassing the established mass media. So this is not in the very interest of the Plutocracy, because it might make politicians more independent from their influence.

    That’s the main reason why we will get censorship big time, especially after the election of Trump. This was a wake up call for them. They call what they want to ban fake news and hate speech, never call their own campaigns hate campaigns, even though they are nothing else, and cut down everything which opposes this speech control.
    Now if Google and Facebook, like I said everything else but an opposition to Cultural Marxism, but interested in all customers and they don’t want to lose credibility to a large portion of them by censoring their content too much, too early. But they CM feel the urge to proceed before next presidential election, to a prevent a president, even candidate, which wasn’t approved by their priests – from either major party, because independent candidates don’t make it anyway.

    So do you call that a conspiracy theory? Its just about observing reality and what happens. There are people which threaten Google and Facebook to be dismembered like the Standard Oil Company. Its not like they are invulnerable. First you make them bad looking with small things like “discrimination” and the “culture of the company” with supposed “insensitive policies”. Then they are portrayed as promoting radicalism and fanatism of all kind, abusing their power and so on.
    And form one day to the next, even though they are part of the Oligarchy themselves actually, just not the inner circle, if they don’t comply, they will be smashed. It can be done, within months.
    So they will follow the wake up call from the inner circle and the PC mob. You will see.
    Is this a conspiracy theory? I don’t care.

  12. I like to think about the theory of kids being released from studying classics or standard movies, books, music has something to do with it. When you can personally decide what the standard is rather than being told by an expert then standards will go down/get diluted. People used to get the paper in the morning or go get the new Charles Dickens book right when it came out, those were written by experts…the best. Now they watch youtube or log on to mercola.com. Good black musicians were Miles Davis, Nina Simone, Aretha…now it’s Beyonce, Kanye West, Jay Z. They’re learning from morons. Everyone watches TV for entertainment now instead of reading. My dad teaches film so he can see this happening in real time. A “good” movie used to be something everyone had seen: a standard. Now they haven’t even seen it but they did watch some lame Netflix movie they thought was pretty good.
    I’d go further by saying that journalistic standards for news used to be “normalized” 100 years ago but then Fox news, etc. came along.
    When reality doesn’t turn out to be what you’d like it to have been you make up your own reality. The Right doesn’t like what science did to their religion and the Left’s egalitarian vison has been violated by science in myriad ways. That’s when they made a religion of their own. Now the morons are considered experts. “Fantasyland” by Kurt Anderson talks about this phenomena a lot: left wingers matched right wingers and created their own reality.
    I like the idea that power isn’t concerned with objectivity. Pretty much the human condition in a nutshell.

  13. I’d like to add that perhaps because scientists used to more often be religious instead of secular like today they might have been more aware of what thoughts should count as objective.
    Also, before society “broke” 50 years ago and we ended the Great Compromise (both sides agreed that blacks would remain 2nd class) politics were less polarized and less zero sum. The power struggle stale mate that ensued seems to have taken objectivity with it.

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