Thursday 18 March 2021

Voting Without Fear, With Open Eyes.

All Those In Favour: To raise your hand, more or less alone, in opposition to a forest of hands raised in favour, requires considerable courage. Going against the will of the majority in public risks incurring its wrath, and in the workplace that can be rough – very rough. That’s why calling for a show of hands is the preferred method of those anxious to secure a quick and favourable outcome - especially when careful, private, consideration might easily produce the “wrong” answer. It’s the tactic of demagogues, not democrats.

IT’S ONE OF THOSE STORIES that illustrates vividly the robust working-class culture of the trade union movement that was. An “all-up” stop-work meeting has been called to decide whether or not to take strike action. The union secretary makes it pretty clear that without strike action the members’ demands have bugger-all chance of success. The more militant members line up to support the secretary’s recommendation – treating their workmates to that old-time “shed oratory” that is so very rare today. After all their fiery rhetoric is spent, the call goes out for speakers against the motion. Silence. The union president prepares to put the motion. A hand goes up. “Yes?”, responds the president, eyebrows raised. “Um, I was just wondering,” came the hesitant reply from the mild-mannered union member on his feet, “Will this be a secret ballot?” The union secretary, famous for his uncompromising temperament, leaps to his feet and snarls: “If you want a fucking secret ballot, close your fucking eyes!”


It’s easy to laugh at the story, and hard not to secretly admire the brutally effective politics of the union decision-making process. It is also important, however, to acknowledge the anti-democratic tactics at work. The secret ballot effaces the essentially collective character of a strike. Writing “Yes” or “No” privately, on an anonymous piece of paper, allows you to put your interests above those of your fellow workers without fear of discovery. It’s an individual – not a collective act.

To raise your hand, more or less alone, in opposition to a forest of hands raised in favour, requires considerable courage. Going against the will of the majority in public risks incurring its wrath, and in the workplace that can be rough – very rough. That’s why calling for a show of hands is the preferred method of those anxious to secure a quick and favourable outcome - especially when careful, private, consideration might easily produce the “wrong” answer. It’s the tactic of demagogues, not democrats.

We take the secret ballot so much for granted, at least in the context of electing our parliamentary and local government representatives, that imagining any other way of voting is difficult. Many are astonished to discover that the introduction of the secret ballot dates back only to 1870 in New Zealand, and 1872 in the United Kingdom. In the United States where such matters are left to the individual states, the secret ballot only became universal when finally adopted by South Carolina in 1950! Interestingly, the secret ballot was originally referred to as the “Australian Ballot” on account of Victoria, South Australia and Tasmania being the first jurisdictions in the English-speaking world to legislate for secret voting, in 1856. On this democratic reform, at least, the Aussies beat us to it.

In a world where challenging official orthodoxy is, increasingly, considered career-limiting, the opportunity to register one’s opinion away from the basilisk glare of the ideologically overbearing not only de-stresses the decision-making process, it also allows the true feelings of the majority to be revealed.

The free-speech battle waged last year at Cambridge University in the UK bears out the virtues of voting in secret. Outraged by the University Council’s attempt to limit its staff and students freedom of expression, philosophy scholar, Arif Ahmed, proposed a number of amendments to the proposed regulations – all of which the Council rejected. To overturn their decision a positive vote by the Regent House (composed of all the Cambridge “dons”) was required. To trigger a meeting of the Regent House, Arif and his supporters had first to secure the votes of 25 of its members.

This was easier said than done, as Arif recalls:

In March 2020, when the University first proposed this policy, I couldn’t find anyone willing to challenge it in public. Not because they all had other things to think about (though of course at that time everyone did) but because they feared the consequences.

The same thing happened when I and a few colleagues tried to gather signatures to force a vote. You would have thought 25 signatures would not be difficult to extract from more than 4000 dons; but again, I asked probably 50 people who said that they supported me in private but felt afraid to do so in public. They had just applied for promotion, or for a grant, or their head of department might be hostile, or their colleagues might ostracize them…

You see it in meetings too. Everyone here knows what I mean. Some meddlesome but trendy reform gets proposed by the departmental ideologues; it is tiresome nonsense; everyone knows that it is nonsense; everyone knows that everyone knows that it is nonsense … and yet nobody speaks or votes against it, it goes through, and the darkness thickens. Why don’t you speak or vote against it? – because you are afraid that nobody else will, and you will end up isolated, and you are on a temporary contract… If you had left Cambridge as a student in, say, 2011 and returned to academic life here today, you would be astonished and depressed at the rapidity with which, and the extent to which, fear has now penetrated people’s minds.


Thanks to the secret ballot conducted by the Regent House, Arif’s story had a happy ending. The Cambridge dons, unobserved (and, hence, unintimidated) by their “departmental ideologues” voted 4:1 in favour of Arif’s amendments – thereby preserving academic freedom at Cambridge and encouraging like-minded scholars in other universities to stand up and defend their rights.

In addition to upholding academic independence, the battle for free speech at Cambridge University revealed something else. It showed just how precariously the “Woke’s” political control is held. Put to a fair democratic test: where screaming crowds of protesters and collegial witch-hunters cannot influence the outcome; the pronouncements of “departmental ideologues” are shown to have derisory levels of support.

One is moved to wonder what the result would have been, right here in New Zealand, if our Parliamentarians had been permitted to vote privately on the recent legislation regulating the creation of Maori Wards. Indeed, it is fascinating to speculate upon which bills would and wouldn’t get passed if, instead of casting their votes in public, Members of Parliament were able to avail themselves of a secret ballot.

One can only assume that the reason they are forbidden from doing so is exactly the same as that of the apocryphal union secretary who made damn sure he got the decision he was looking for – by a show of hands.


This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Thursday, 18 March 2021.

42 comments:

John Hurley said...

Only 10% of Kiwis want to change our country's name

https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/sunday/audio/2018770794/only-10-percent-of-kiwis-want-to-change-our-country-s-name

However if our journalist lackey's pummel it over and over we may normalise it?

I noticed when Sean Plunket brought it up David Cormack called it a dogwhistle
https://twitter.com/David_Cormack/status/1356408312389009409

He who thinks "you don't do what the public wants you do what's right". The wisdom of a Green
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hq1u6OG-Hvk&t=43s

John Hurley said...

Timur Kuran Author of Private Truth Public Lies says that in one of the communist countries even the dissidents had no idea that the public were fed up. Then it just all burst out.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xzjqjU2FOwA&t=1188s

Last night there was a boom,boom (stereo) from somewhere. You can't block that out because your brain responds to pattern and I was trying to read. I thought it might be the students next door so I walked around their house and along the road a bit.

I didn't see where it was coming from but it must have been loud and I thought I'd add my voice to the complaints which were no doubt coming in.

I went on the CCC Noise webpage to find:

Impact on inequalities
As with air pollution, there is a body of evidence showing that lower-socio-economic groups are more at risk from vehicle traffic, including vehicular noise. Health effects are influenced by the number and type of vehicles per day, particularly vehicles with diesel engines, and the distance from the roadway to nearby homes, and other places such as schools where people may be exposed.
In Christchurch, more socially deprived neighbourhoods have a significantly higher level of exposure to traffic-related effects (including noise), and these areas have greater proportions of Maori, Pacific people, and migrant groups.4

https://www.healthychristchurch.org.nz/media/27195/noise.pdf

How comforting to know. I live in a area that was once full of young families (1950's). Instead of doing up the houses are knocking them down they extent them or add garage bedrooms and put in students.

They have been building a cycleway. One morning I got up at 5:30 went outside and everything had been pushed over and a sign telling people it was one way had been removed.

There was a party on down the street (and I guessed it may have been their attendees).

I walked down and spoke to them. They were young Pacific Islanders who said they were having a family gathering. One of them was rounding on me.

I'm not very big and knocking 70. Fortunately I had my White Privilege which always helps in those situations [sarcasm].

Some of those students have ski racks on their cars in the winter.

David George said...

Yes, The power of the mob is an intimidating beast and it takes courage to stand apart, unfortunately the young are increasingly lacing in that sort of resilience.
An excellent examination of the phenomena:

The Coddling of the American Mind:
How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure

Something has been going wrong on many college campuses in the last few years. Speakers are shouted down. Students and professors say they are walking on eggshells and are afraid to speak honestly. Rates of anxiety, depression, and suicide are rising. How did this happen?

First Amendment expert Greg Lukianoff and social psychologist Jonathan Haidt show how the new problems on campus have their origins in three terrible ideas that have become increasingly woven into American childhood and education: What doesn’t kill you makes you weaker; always trust your feelings; and life is a battle between good people and evil people. These three Great Untruths contradict basic psychological principles about well-being and ancient wisdom from many cultures. Embracing these untruths—and the resulting culture of safetyism—interferes with young people’s social, emotional, and intellectual development. It makes it harder for them to become autonomous adults who are able to navigate the bumpy road of life.

Lukianoff and Haidt investigate the many social trends that have intersected to promote the spread of these untruths. They explore changes in childhood such as the rise of fearful parenting, the decline of unsupervised, child-directed play, and the new world of social media that has engulfed teenagers in the last decade. They examine changes on campus, including the corporatization of universities and the emergence of new ideas about identity and justice. They situate the conflicts on campus within the context of America’s rapidly rising political polarization and dysfunction.



This is a book for anyone who is confused by what is happening on college campuses today, or has children, or is concerned about the growing inability of Americans to live, work, and cooperate across party lines.

Ricardo said...

More than a scintilla of truth here. Does this mean anonymous polls are generally accurate?

John Hurley said...

What Kiwi Dave said

When I was at school I was bullied. One boy was a sadist. Looking back I'm appalled, not by them but by myself. I was a complete snowflake.

Later in life I was introduced to Cognitive Behavioral Therapy -which is now standard best practice unless you are trained in the dark arts like Dr Hinemoa Elder.

Catastrophizing is standard best practice in Aotearoa. The narrative is that if you have whakapapa you have an appropriate culture (it's who you are) but your problem is that white culture (white supremacy) is thwarting your development - is ruining your life.

The thing is that there is an element of truth to that as we evolved in pre-modern tribal societies where life out comes seem to have been very good and very bad depending on your luck but, as I keep pointing out, White children captured by Native Americans overwhelmingly preferred the Native American option.

The Barron said...

4 quick points -
1. The regulation of Maori wards by allowing a referendum was an inequitable part of the Local Government Act that was seen in 2002 safety valve. Maori were the only voting group subject to the tyranny of the voting majority. As a nation we have out-grown the need for such safety valves and have re-established equity within the Act.
2. Current Parliament has Labour 65, Greens 10, Maori Party 2, opposed to National 33 and ACT 10. Even if all the opposition MPs voted the same in a secret ballot, I do not think you could name the 34 MPs from Labour, Greens and Maori party who would not support the change to the Act.
3. The elected Local Government councilors have to have approved any move to Maori wards and are accountable on election to the voters.
4. Open democracy requires the accountability of our elected officials. I wish to know how my electorate MP votes, and I vote with my party vote as to which party I believe will be effectively aligned with my views.

Guerilla Surgeon said...

"Jeffrey Sachs, a political scientist at Canada’s Acadia University, put together a database of all incidents where a professor was dismissed for political speech in the United States between 2015 and 2017. Sachs’s results, published by the left-libertarian Niskanen Center, actually found that left-wing professors were more frequently dismissed for their speech than conservative ones."

And yet you people keep pushing the idea that the only people being silenced are conservatives.

"According to the Department of Education, there are 4,583 colleges and universities in the United States (including two- and four-year institutions). The fact that there were roughly only 60 incidents in the past two years suggests that free speech crises are extremely rare events and don’t define university life in the way that critics suggest."

“Most of the incidents where presumptively conservative speech has been interrupted or squelched in the last two or three years seem to involve the same few speakers: Milo Yiannopoulos, Ben Shapiro, Charles Murray, and Ann Coulter ,” Sanford Ungar, the project’s director, writes. “In some instances, they seem to invite, and delight in, disruption.”

And yet you people keep pushing the idea that it's a crisis.

Tom Hunter said...

Why don’t you speak or vote against it? – because you are afraid that nobody else will, and you will end up isolated, and you are on a temporary contract… If you had left Cambridge as a student in, say, 2011 and returned to academic life here today, you would be astonished and depressed at the rapidity with which, and the extent to which, fear has now penetrated people’s minds.

I laughed at contrasting this with the following piece of gaslighting submitted here a few weeks ago:
The "woke" won't debate? Bullshit! Not only do you see it in every post here, but you said all over YouTube. Except of course in the "non-woke" echo chambers of the Conservatives.

And now this rubbish:
... actually found that left-wing professors were more frequently dismissed for their speech than conservative ones."

The implication being that some cabal of conservative academics has pushed these left-wing professors out, as if we're still living in the 1950's and 1960's.

Conservatives are now a vanishingly small proportion of university professors in the Western World, but especially in the USA. In the so-called Liberal Arts departments they're outnumbered 10 to 1 nowadays.

No, the fact is that these left-wing professors have been dismissed by their woker-than-thou left-wing colleagues, as Lefty professor, Bret Weinstein, discovered at Evergreen State College in Washington State four years ago.

The Barron said...

Mea culpa,18 votes required from Labour, Greens and the Maori Party MPs to change under a secret ballot.

David George said...

Trawling the net to find someone or some thing, anything, to support your a priori assumptions that A/ there's no free speech/cancel culture crisis and B/ it applies equally to left and right so that's alright then, is not good faith arguing GS. Gaslighting? as Tom points out above.
I can agree, however, that its not just conservatives that are the target, principled liberals that question the narrative are now in danger. How long before the mob comes for our Chris?

The outrageous attacks from the trans lobby are relayed in this essay. Excerpt:

"As noted above, there is a certain ruthless logic to the way progressive mobs choose their targets. Singal attracts uniquely vicious lies because he is seen as a uniquely high-value target: His bylines have been featured in publications that mob members themselves grudgingly admit as influential and prestigious. He is not some Tucker Carlson type, speaking to conservatives within their own silos, but rather a liberal whose words are read by other liberals. Like all cults, this one despises the learned apostate far more than the ignorant unbeliever.

Yet Singal is also properly seen as a vulnerable target—because he is a freelancer whose most widely read work is commissioned at the pleasure of editors who have their own reputations to protect. And like most of these editors, Singal is sensitive to the lies that now pollute every Google search of his name—for he knows that at least some of his friends and colleagues will believe them.

The trolls know that if a strategy of character assassination works against Jesse Singal, it can also work against every intelligent, principled liberal who dares speak out in favour of a balanced approach to gender dysphoria—no matter what platform they use to publish their work. And on this one point, I am prepared to admit, they are one hundred percent correct."

https://quillette.com/2021/03/18/the-campaign-of-lies-against-journalist-jesse-singal-and-why-it-matters/


Mike Grimshaw said...

It is very common in many university meetings for people to not vote rather than signal their disagreement with what line managers have put foward. The result is nonvoting is taking as endorsing those who do vote for something rather than support for those who signalled opposition. Yet the non-voters tend to always say afterwards that they did not want to be seen to oppose line managers.
So universities call for 'conscience and critic' action- except within the institution...
It is not a left vs right issue but rather managerial power vs the rest...

Barry said...

Everyone should see this video. Its made by the Race relations guy who worked for Tony Blair. Hes totally changed his attitude to the "Truth about race"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h-kFzzPtHsE

Anonymous said...

Good grief Chris, you are now suggesting that the "people's representatives", members of the colonialist parliament, should be allowed to vote in secret.
At present their constituents have very little idea about what their candidate might actually do when in parliament, but at least they get to know what measures they have voted for, and what laws they have enacted, after the event.
A secret ballot would be the end of parliamentary "democracy".
An open popular ballot will be the genesis of genuine democracy.
Your arguments against the open ballot are specious. When people are afraid to take a position in public, then the spirit and essence of democracy is already gone.
Well, it may have gone from the institutions of the colonialist regime, but thanks be to God it is still alive and well on the marae, where there is no place for bullies or cowards.
Kia kaha.
Geoff Fischer
Kia kaha.

Nick J said...

Weinsteins case certainly demonstrates the cost of running foul of the high priests of wokery.

Here at Bowalley I see you have fallen foul of our own ideological Puritans. Myself I might not agree with you but without open truthful conversation nothing good is created. Maybe that is why puritanism acts as a form of incipient cancer that erodes its own good intentions by insisting in a vengeful way its own veracity. Sort of punish people into adherence, thereby driving them into opposition.

Guerilla Surgeon said...

". actually found that left-wing professors were more frequently dismissed for their speech than conservative ones."
Rubbish? You provide one contrarians example? A group of nutty students in an "edgy" university in the States forces out a Professor, one Professor and his wife – and that's your answer – Christ on a crutch, you're obviously not a statistical genius then.
Not to mention that Weinstein himself has some pretty nutty right-wing ideas. I'm not sure that he is quite so "flaming liberal" as you Conservatives believe. He goes on about "cultural Marxists" as if they actually existed, and weren't just a figment of the anti-Semitic Nazi imagination, and he clearly doesn't understand critical theory – but then neither do any of you conservatives...

And if university professors "especially in the social sciences" are more liberal it's possibly because facts have a liberal bias, but even so the liberality of professors depends very much in the US on where they teach, and what department they are in. Far fewer liberals in the economics department, the engineering department, the physics department perhaps. And close to half of lecturers in the US describe themselves as moderate rather than left. And I suspect that the moderate US position is pretty close to our national party.

And if all these cultural Marxists are so prevalent, I would ask again, why the fuck can't Jordan Peterson named more than a handful? I can't help it if social scientists use big scary words. You could try looking them up in a dictionary and finding out what they actually mean is that a bitching about them all the time.

Guerilla Surgeon said...

"Trawling the net to find someone or some thing, anything, to support your a priori assumptions that A/ there's no free speech/cancel culture crisis and B/ it applies equally to left and right so that's alright then, is not good faith arguing GS."

Please point out where I said "it's alright then"? Because all I was saying is that you people insist that cancel culture is a left-wing thing. You never provide any conservative examples when you're bitching about it. And you often exaggerate and lie about the actual circumstances surrounding the so-called cancellation.

Someone refuses to let a neo-Nazi use their website because they think it will lose them money – that's cancel culture. (No that's unregulated capitalism.)

Someone loses a book deal because they support an insurrection in the US and the publisher thinks fewer people are going to buy it – that's cancel culture. (That's also capitalism.)

Well here's a list of things that you conservatives have cancelled in the past and are cancelling in the present.

Black people.
Jews.
Gay people.
Maori.
PI people.
Atheists.
Climate change.
Martin Luther King. (Wow, you people certainly cancelled him right?)
Kathy Griffin.
Bill Maher.
Taylor Swift.
Dixie Chicks.

Maybe you could include them next time you're bitching about cancel culture. Get back to me when you can be more evenhanded about the whole thing.

greywarbler said...

I like your style Chris ...the opportunity to register one’s opinion away from the basilisk glare of the ideologically overbearing not only de-stresses the decision-making process, it also allows the true feelings of the majority to be revealed.

I am glad of my opportunity of an assumed name, without being eviscerated. I have often been in a minority of one which is discouraging, and when you stir the pond the ripples can slap you. I remember an old cranky guy in a film saying if the vote was all in agreement, he'd vote against. 'I don't go with it all being u-nani-mous'. Some body should have a different thought, I think, or else maybe there is no thought at all.

Nick J said...

Watched it last week, fascinating. It spoke strongly to community and ethnic ties that the promoters of diversity completely under estimated. It turns out research and statistics revealed what we all know, that humans prefer to live amongst familiar faces, cultures and languages. That doesn't mean that diverse groups cannot live alongside each other, it means that we gravitate to the familiar. So in London despite years of imposed diversity and immigration you can pretty much guess which suburb a person lives in by their ethnicity or distinguishing features.

This is deemed a bad thing by people who have never experienced living in a suburb dominated by a different ethnicity, language or religion.

In reality it is how multi ethnic cities have always been and should be seen as a desirable way for different groups to manage their communities in their own way, rather than being forced to integrate.

Nick J said...

Yawn, really boring GS. I really wish you would do your home work and deal to the ideas and facts before the usual ad hominem rants. What is it that Weinstein and Peterson say that winds you up, what exact ideas? State that and you might surprise us all by saying something useful.

David George said...

A great example this week of the insidious device of manufactured offence in order to silence, unsurprisingly, from Marama Davidson.
MP Nicola Willis raised the issue of increasing serious crime and harassment in down town Wellington including serious concerns for her own and other women's safety. Instead of addressing the problems Davidson laid into her with accusations of racism. Fortunately Willis is made of stronger stuff than to be deterred by Marama's BS.

Guerilla Surgeon said...

Well Nick, if you got out of your bubble and actually did some research, particularly on Peterson you might find it less boring. I have explained my objections to his bullshit repeatedly. So I now have to do it again? And have you all ignore it again?

I once spent hours researching "conservative thinkers" at the request of one of you conservatives, constructed a pretty damning and detailed critique of all except one who actually was a thinker as opposed to a raving racist nut bag to get no substantive response, simply a metaphorical meh. Brandolini's law springs to mind. All you have to do is cut-and-paste a few of their boring and simplistic sayings, and I actually have to find out what they mean, the context in which they were said, and actually do some research. Maybe you should tidy your room.

Incidentally, as you can't post photographs or anything else on this creaky old website I'll just mention that Peterson can't even keep his own room tidy according to the Internet. :)

Anyway, maybe if you got off your arse and started naming all those thousands of "cultural Marxists" who are intent on taking over the universities and then the world, you might say something useful and I might have something to go on.

Guerilla Surgeon said...

Incidentally, if you want to listen to an actual real thinker rather than a showman, try this guy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gl--PhsYU9o

Guerilla Surgeon said...

Incidentally – you might like to read this from someone I follow who possibly explains Jordan Peterson much better than I could – at least more succinctly.

"Jordan Peterson who says women in the workplace are angry because they crave “infant contact”? Jordan Peterson who blasted the movie Frozen because, quote, its purpose is “to demonstrate that a woman did not need a man to be successful”? Jordan Peterson who says sex outside marriage is bad because it leads to, quote, “state tyranny,” since, again I quote, “the missing responsibility has to be enforced somehow”? Jordan Peterson who says gay marriage is bad because it’s pushed by “cultural Marxists” and is an “assault on traditional modes of being,” and then later says gay marriage is good because “it's a means whereby gay people could be integrated more thoroughly into standard society and that's probably a good thing”? "

Nick J said...

Ive watched Sapolsky before, and he says nothing there about Trump that I dont agree with. If you cared to read more carefully you might discover we dont live in a bipolar world where you either agree or diagree. You have started labelling me and others "conservatives", meanwhile you assume old style leftist as I identify are now right wingers. You really are dissappearing up your faux Lefty wokester backside.

Nick J said...

Yawn again, lots of cut and paste accusations, no detailing of the structure of Petersons argument, and why they might be wrong.

Incidently you lump me in with Peterson fans. Why? Im critical of some of his ideas, and I also recognise the genius of some of his work. You by contrast supply only bile and damnation. Peterson in his better moments councils individuals to take responsibility for making their life better. Is that so wrong? What have you done to make your life and those around you better? Im sure you have, so doesnt that rather prove his point.

greywarbler said...

Nick J at 21.38 19/3
I was interested in your coment about like being attracted to like in cities with diversity.
I remembered a bit from The Atlantic piece on Syria that I put link for. This is how Syria worked for centuries.

Syria also has historically been a sanctuary for little groups of peoples whose differences from one another were defined in religious and/or ethnic terms. Several of these communities were “leftovers” from previous invasions or migrations. During most of the last five centuries, when what is today Syria was part of the Ottoman Empire, groups of Orthodox, Catholic, and other Christians; Alawis, Ismailis, and other sorts of Shia Muslims; and Yazidis, Kurds, Jews, and Druze lived in enclaves and in neighborhoods in the various cities and towns alongside Sunni Muslim Arabs.

During Ottoman rule the population was organized in two overlapping ways. First, there was no “Syria” in the sense of a nation-state, but rather provinces (Turkish: pashaliqs) that were centered on the ancient cities. The most important of these were Damascus, which may be the oldest permanently settled city in the world today, and Aleppo. The concept of a state, much less a nation-state, did not enter into political thought until the end of the 19th century.

Inhabitants of the various parts of what became Syria could move without feeling or being considered alien from one province of the Ottoman Empire to the next. Thus, if the grandfathers or great grandfathers of people alive today were asked about what entity they belonged to, they would probably have named the city or village where they paid their taxes.

Quite an interesting article about humans living together and fighting at times, can't get finished with that in any human or animmal/insect group - applies beyond Syria.
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/12/understanding-syria-from-pre-civil-war-to-post-assad/281989/

Certainly after touring Europe for only a month it was heaven to get back to Brit and speak English again, without the hesitations and fumbling with a foreign language. Kiwis could fall on each others necks with glad cries when meeting in London. NZ House was a great taonga for the OE's in those days about 1970s. Inia Te Wiata poured out his feelings for home into his great carving work in the basement of NZ House before he died at an early age.
Te Wiata also had a long-term project carving five very large totara logs. He continued working on this project in between his professional obligations but was unable to complete the work Pouihi before his death from cancer in 1971. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inia_Te_Wiata#Formal_musical_training_and_career

greywarbler said...

Thanks GS for the bit about JP. He is such a chameleon that I have never found where he was holding forth about the things that have driven people to apoplexy. But your piece presented a good range of offences.

petes new write said...

What the hell is woke anyway?

David George said...

I came across this discussion on Czesław Miłosz’s ‘The Captive Mind’ and it's relevance for us today:

Excerpt:

"But it was also the unbearable lightness of life in the West (as they saw it) which made so many choose the harder route. “Isn’t Christianity dying out in the West, and aren’t its people bereft of all faith?” asks Miłosz. “Well then, what can the West offer us? Freedom from something is a great deal, yet not enough. It is much less than freedom for something.”

All accounts are agreed on one thing—the war-ravaged peoples of Eastern Europe looked around for who could best help them reconstruct a shattered world, and they wanted to Build Back Better. It took years and thousands of denunciations, arrests and imprisonments before they learnt the bitter truth of Pascal’s maxim: man is neither angel nor devil, and his tragedy is that he who tries too hard to play the first too often ends up as the second."

https://quillette.com/2021/03/19/the-enduring-relevance-of-czeslaw-miloszs-the-captive-mind/

Tom Hunter said...

Christ on a crutch, you're obviously not a statistical genius then.

There really is no excuse for such a pig-ignorant comment aside from .... well, pig ignorance.

I chose the Bret Weinstein incident simply because it was the first, notable incident four years ago. Since then it has reached escape velocity in the USA with people, including professors, being fired from multiple universities across the nation and from other institutions such as the NYT or having their careers trashed in ways short of being fired. If you're not aware of this I can only put it down to echo chamber ignorance, as even the Left have begun to worry about it (too late I say).

Go back to the link and look at the other examples I noted under heading "The Struggle Sessions". Multiple articles noting multiples of people in differing areas of society observing this phenomena and concerned about it as an attack on freedom and intellectual debate. As Andrew Sullivan stated in a New York Magazine column, We all live on campus now:

The reason I don’t agree with this is because I believe ideas matter. When elite universities shift their entire worldview away from liberal education as we have long known it toward the imperatives of an identity-based “social justice” movement, the broader culture is in danger of drifting away from liberal democracy as well. If elites believe that the core truth of our society is a system of interlocking and oppressive power structures based around immutable characteristics like race or sex or sexual orientation, then sooner rather than later, this will be reflected in our culture at large.

I must admit I'm looking forward to seeing Lefties devour themselves at some point in this Robespierrean nightmare, which will certainly include the likes of Guerilla Surgeon.

I wonder if he'll still dismiss it then? Probably be dumped into one of those nog-standard sneers like it's possibly because facts have a liberal bias,. Sheesh, what boilerplate.

Guerilla Surgeon said...

"Ive watched Sapolsky before, and he says nothing there about Trump that I dont agree with. If you cared to read more carefully you might discover we dont live in a bipolar world where you either agree or diagree. You have started labelling me and others "conservatives", meanwhile you assume old style leftist as I identify are now right wingers. You really are dissappearing up your faux Lefty wokester backside."

Maybe if you weren't quite so into facile insults we might have a better conversation. Maybe if you didn't consistently adopt conservative positions I wouldn't need to call you a conservative. Maybe if you tried substantial arguments, instead of Fox News talking points I might take you more seriously.

"Incidently you lump me in with Peterson fans. Why? Im critical of some of his ideas, and I also recognise the genius of some of his work."

Nothing wrong with trying to make your life better, but Peterson ignores the systemic problems that make it more difficult for some than for others. So do you perhaps? The man does actual damage with many of his ideas. That's why I criticise him. Maybe if you stop using such emotional words as "bile" we might stop talking past each other.

greywarbler said...

Tom Hunter you quote some comment using the name Christ but don't say who made it. If you are taking part in a discussion with a number of people you need to identify what you are talking about, where the comment you are engaging with came from. It's not just a face-to-face discussion here. The seriousness of the present situation of the country, humanity itself, means we have to find the thread of the argument so we can assess its relevance. So please can we show who we are replying to, name and date when there are many comments.

Guerilla Surgeon said...

"Christ on a crutch, you're obviously not a statistical genius then.
There really is no excuse for such a pig-ignorant comment aside from .... well, pig ignorance."
Maybe if you spent less time inventing insults and more time on research, you wouldn't be insulted yourself quite so often.
What you fail to realise is that wild professors tend to lean left – even in economics departments which I didn't realise – university administrations and the USA which you seem to be obsessed by lean heavily right. And it's them and the alumni I donors in the elite schools in particular who have the power and are using it try to suppress "leftist" ideas. All the more dangerous since government contributions to public universities have declined since Ronald Reagan. Plus of course much of the cancelling is done by private religious universities. You don't have to be very left at all to be cancelled by them.
Funny, when a John Birch Society member was threatened with disciplinary action for accusing Kennedy of being essentially a communist, not only was he not fired but prominent "liberals" actually came to his defence.

I'm willing to concede – have always been willing to concede that members of the extreme left are stupid and part of this whole cancel culture thing. If it is a thing. You on the other hand claim it's exclusively them.

"I must admit I'm looking forward to seeing Lefties devour themselves at some point in this Robespierrean nightmare, which will certainly include the likes of Guerilla Surgeon."

Oh well, the US right seems to be tearing itself apart at the moment, and I will take great delight in watching that, just as I take great delight in stories about "patriots" being arrested for insurrection, and your complete ignorance of reality. Sorry about the sneers, but you are and expert in the science of sneering and I tend to respond in kind. Perhaps if you canned them for a while and tried to argue in good faith?

David George said...

Pete: "What the hell is woke anyway?"
Woke is an exaggerated cult like obsession with concerns over ethnicity and gender among other things. It incorporates elements of critical theory BS and has developed it's own cultural taboos and language. Here is an online dictionary converting Wokish into normal English.
https://newdiscourses.com/translations-from-the-wokish/

I've tried altering my handle from Kiwidave to my actual name David George. Hope it works this time.

Guerilla Surgeon said...

Further to the sneering thing Tom. You are the Sultan of sneer. You never post here without some reference to "lefties" or "liberal luvvies" or something like that. And yet you complain when someone responds in kind. Both of which make you look like a very bitter man. Did a Communist steely or toffee apple when you were a kid? I tell you what, stop sneering and argue constructively and I will do the same. I somehow doubt you can do it but you never know. So it's either grow up, or grow a pair and stop bitching about being sneered at.

David George said...

I wouldn't be outsourcing my opinions to GS's malicious gossip Grey. The hunt for a few out of context and incomplete lines isn't intended to present the truth, more a confirmation of an unreasonable hatred.
As a Christian I'm sure you will get a great deal from the Psychological Significance of the Biblical Stories series, I know I did.

Biblical Series I: Introduction to the Idea of God https://youtu.be/f-wWBGo6a2w

David George said...

GS: "Peterson ignores the systemic problems that make it more difficult for some than for others"

That's a misunderstanding.
He is very much aware of the drivers of inequality and openly advocates for equality of opportunity and education, state funded healthcare and income distribution as a counter.
He is, however, no fan of attempts to force equity; they are doomed to failure and require a tyranny to implement that is worse than the disease. He believes your best bet is to take on the burden of life, set some goals and strive for them.

Here's a short talk I'm sure you'll find interesting: The inequality of Marxism (Jordan Peterson & Bret Weinstein) https://youtu.be/LEGJYd_zjLI

“Inequality is the deepest of problems, built into the structure of reality itself, and will not be solved by the presumptuous, ideologically inspired retooling of the rare free, stable and productive democracies of the world.”
― Jordan B. Peterson, New Foreword to The Gulag Archipelago 50th anniversary edition.

Nick J said...

Is that really the best thzt you have got GS? My views are conservative just because they dont agree with unsubstantiated extreme Left positions? That I watch Fox... never ever seen it sorry. To criticise it however I hope you have.
Facile insults... really? Ever read your own rants?
Pot calling the kettle black.

If I call you out it is because you support uncritically views that do the Left great damage whilst damning any opposing evidence. I see that as either intellectual dishonesty or stupidity. Of course I could be wrong, others can judge.

Guerilla Surgeon said...

Interesting George, a little while ago I posed a question on free speech to which you gave a careful and considered answer without any insults. What happened? Of course, you're a Jordan Peterson fan and their go to for any criticism of him is always "context". The man says so much, and in such an obscure way, that of course he can get away with claiming "I didn't mean that" which he does very often. And of course he acknowledges the inequality in one sense, but believes we can't do anything about it because – lobsters.

Guerilla Surgeon said...

Nick. When I have been censored or censured by Chris, for "facile insults" I was almost always counter punching. And I did in fact resent it, not because I was censored, because that is Chris's right it's his blog after all. But because the first person to's fling insults always seems to get away with it.
I sometimes insult ideas, but very rarely the person unless they have first insulted me personally. Funny, I sometimes agree with what you have to say and have said so, but you have such uncritical views – if I may borrow a phrase – of people like Jordan Peterson....
You say you don't agree with everything he says. But I have constantly pointed out that he distorts other people's research to back up his ideas and has been called out by the originators of the research for it. Given that, how can you trust the rest of his ideas? I suspect they simply tell you what you want to hear.
David George(Jesus wept, I just found out that that was Kiwi Dave) gave me a considered reply to a question about free speech a while ago without any insults whatsoever – won't you try to find it and learn from him – although apparently in defence of Peterson no bounds are recognised. :)
See – a post without insults – aside from the one I borrowed from you.

greywarbler said...


David George I look at what is being said and who is saying it and why and if they say they are Christian I look closer. There are so many around using Christ as Authority that he wouldn't have a bar of them if he was here.

This is supposed to be one of his quotes - it's a beaut.
"Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of dead men's bones and everything unclean. Matthew:23

Tom Hunter said...

Well here's a list of things that you conservatives have cancelled in the past and are cancelling in the present.
...
Bill Maher


Well of course the implication of the Left who complained about the Blacklists of Communists in the 1950's was that, were they ever in a similar position of power they would not be like. Tolerance would reign.

And since Bill Maher somehow makes that list I thought you'd enjoy just one of his recent comments getting stuck into his fellow Lefties and their cancel culture.

Maher on Cancelling.

Clearly he knows that it's not just some fringe effort by a handful of Far Lefters, nor is it the Right that's pulling this garbage.