Higher Ed's Duty to Fight Monomania

[mahagonny]

https://www.persuasion.community/p/haidt-monomania-is-illiberal-and

[Parasaurolophus]

This is just another "I've had dozens of conversations and we all agree there's a serious problem" piece, presented without evidence. Indeed, it seems to shade into the monomaniacal itself.

More generally, it sounds to me like he's upset about literary theory and basically nothing else. Which is fine--there's a lot of bullshit in literary theory, and its bullshititude stems from its disconnection from the content of the work and its piss-poor derivation from other parts of the academy. But that's actually a pretty limited worry.



Also:

moral and political monomaniacs generally travel in self-policing groups

That's how all groups work.

The "prestige economy" is the network of values and meanings within which people compete for status. In monomaniacal groups, the prestige economy rewards those who are most committed to the object of devotion

Again, this is generally true. It's not at all unique to what he's calling 'monomaniacal groups'.

For example, one can gain points by interpreting glacier research and dog parks as manifestations of power structures.

Haidt is scoring Prestige Points+ in his own monomaniacal grouping by linking with approval to Boghossian's hoax studies in journals nobody in the fields satirized has ever heard of.

True believers exert pressure on the leadership of the school to bring race into every part of the curriculum, and anyone who expresses doubt or raises concerns risks being publicly shamed and possibly fired.

The hypocrisy here is galling, especially in light of state governments actually passing laws forbidding the teaching of America's slaveholding and genocidal history, to say nothing of the right wing troll machine and the pressures it exerts.

This brings us to the second major illiberal effect: the incentivization of intimidation and cruelty. Within a group of people competing for prestige on adherence to a belief, one can often gain points by publicly attacking outsiders. This creates an incentive for individuals in the group to attack not just their enemies, who are often out of reach, but innocent people who happen to be nearby.

Et tu, Brute.

In a 2009 TEDx talk titled "Be suspicious of simple stories" the economist Tyler Cowen warned that stories impose a structure on events that distorts them and blinds us to the distortion. He was particularly concerned about moralistic stories that divide the world into good and evil. He proposed that "as a simple rule of thumb, just imagine that every time you're telling a good versus evil story, you're basically lowering your IQ by ten points or more."

Too-doo-doo... *whistles nonchalantly*

In 1859, John Stuart Mill laid out the case that we need critics to make us smarter, and that we should have no confidence in our beliefs until we have exposed them to intense challenge and have considered alternative views:

...the only way in which a human being can make some approach to knowing the whole of a subject, is by hearing what can be said about it by persons of every variety of opinion, and studying all modes in which it can be looked at by every character of mind. No wise man ever acquired his wisdom in any mode but this; nor is it in the nature of human intellect to become wise in any other manner. The steady habit of correcting and completing his own opinion by collating it with those of others, so far from causing doubt and hesitation in carrying it into practice, is the only stable foundation for a just reliance on it.

There's a certain monomania involved in the uncritical fetishization of Mill's views on free speech. You know, a few things have been written on the subject since then. Especially in the wake of the second World War, when this felt like a particularly important topic to come to grips with.

Sure, Mill was a nice guy (perhaps the first genuinely nice historical figure), and real smart. That doesn't mean there aren't potential problems with his views, and that we should just ignore them. We can agree with Mill, sure, but we should do so knowing what the tensions and tradeoffs are.

We might even say that monomaniacal groups are likely to be wrong on most of their factual beliefs and their diagnoses of the problems that concern them. And if they are wrong on basic facts and diagnoses, then whatever reforms they propose to an institution are more likely to backfire than to achieve the goals of the reformers.

I just can't even. There's no reason to grant the premise. Worse, with respect to the kinds of things he's got in mind--e.g. racial IQ stuff or sex/gender stuff--his 'monomaniacal groups' are right about the facts.

I think that professors and leaders of educational institutions have a fiduciary duty toward their students that requires them to oppose monomania and lead students out of its stultifying embrace.

"Teaching the controversy" when there is none is kowtowing to 'monomania'.

[mahagonny]

True believers exert pressure on the leadership of the school to bring race into every part of the curriculum, and anyone who expresses doubt or raises concerns risks being publicly shamed and possibly fired.

The hypocrisy here is galling, especially in light of state governments actually passing laws forbidding the teaching of America's slaveholding and genocidal history, to say nothing of the right wing troll machine and the pressures it exerts.

Really? The laws I've been reading about prohibit things like teaching that one race is inherently inferior to another.

I think that professors and leaders of educational institutions have a fiduciary duty toward their students that requires them to oppose monomania and lead students out of its stultifying embrace.

"Teaching the controversy" when there is none is kowtowing to 'monomania'.

[/quote]

There's a lot of controversy about what's going on in education lately, although certainly certain educators can afford not to give a damn about it.

[apl68]

Mahagonny, I have said several times before that I share some of your concerns about the amount of resentment-stoking and identity politics and borderline Orwellian Newspeak that has been going on in academia, and in our broader culture.  I'm the one who started the "Cancelling Dr. Seuss" thread that you've virtually turned into your own blog, you'll recall.  But you yourself have shown some pretty egregious symptoms of having a monomaniacal concern of your own with this issue.  Seriously, you've shown an inability to make a single post on a single thread, on any subject, that isn't about your detestation of the excesses of CRT and BLM and identity politics and the like.  Except once in a while, when you remember to sound off about your old hobbyhorse of how evil people with tenure are.

Are you really so lacking in self-awareness that you can't see how you are every bit as imprisoned by monomaniacal concerns about identity politics and race as those you are criticizing?  Your critiques would be more meaningful if you could somehow find it in yourself to make that no longer the case.

[mahagonny]

Mahagonny, I have said several times before that I share some of your concerns about the amount of resentment-stoking and identity politics and borderline Orwellian Newspeak that has been going on in academia, and in our broader culture.  I'm the one who started the "Cancelling Dr. Seuss" thread that you've virtually turned into your own blog, you'll recall.  But you yourself have shown some pretty egregious symptoms of having a monomaniacal concern of your own with this issue.  Seriously, you've shown an inability to make a single post on a single thread, on any subject, that isn't about your detestation of the excesses of CRT and BLM and identity politics and the like.  Except once in a while, when you remember to sound off about your old hobbyhorse of how evil people with tenure are.

Are you really so lacking in self-awareness that you can't see how you are every bit as imprisoned by monomaniacal concerns about identity politics and race as those you are criticizing?  Your critiques would be more meaningful if you could somehow find it in yourself to make that no longer the case.

I'm also fond of/intersted in boating, swimming, biking, cooking, Impressionist art, Alexander Technique, Zen Buddhism, pets. Does that help?
I posted the link because I am interested in what people think. So far we've got Para and you and all I can get from your posts is 'yeah, it's a bad habit, but lots of people do it.'

[mamselle]

Are you really so lacking in self-awareness that you can't see how you are every bit as imprisoned by monomaniacal concerns about identity politics and race as those you are criticizing?  Your critiques would be more meaningful if you could somehow find it in yourself to make that no longer the case.

+1

Also, a very good article in the New Yorker showed up last week.

   https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/09/20/the-man-behind-critical-race-theory

The basic takeaway is that anyone complaining about CRT is either a dupe of Rufo's (who set out to weaponize the term, using an intentional misstatement of its basic premise), hasn't read Bell's original work, or both.

In fact, those who complain about CRT are just proving Bell's original thesis...opus operans.

Tl;dr: Find another hobby horse.

M.

[marshwiggle]

Are you really so lacking in self-awareness that you can't see how you are every bit as imprisoned by monomaniacal concerns about identity politics and race as those you are criticizing?  Your critiques would be more meaningful if you could somehow find it in yourself to make that no longer the case.

+1

Also, a very good article in the New Yorker showed up last week.

   https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/09/20/the-man-behind-critical-race-theory

From the article:

Bell spent the second half of his career as an academic and, over time, he came to recognize that other decisions in landmark civil-rights cases were of limited practical impact. He drew an unsettling conclusion: racism is so deeply rooted in the makeup of American society that it has been able to reassert itself after each successive wave of reform aimed at eliminating it.

This is vastly different from the idea of systemic racism. The fact that people make choices which undermine goals of specific government policies is true in all kinds of areas; it's just human nature.

When the term CRT is used now, my impression is that "systemic racism" is seen to be an integral part of it, which makes it a different beast from what is described in that article.

[mahagonny]

OK, Mamselle... Your New Yorker (left-biased) Magazine piece wants us to think about George Floyd some more. You brought it up. No harm done. His example is relevant to what Marshwiggle posts.

Are you really so lacking in self-awareness that you can't see how you are every bit as imprisoned by monomaniacal concerns about identity politics and race as those you are criticizing?  Your critiques would be more meaningful if you could somehow find it in yourself to make that no longer the case.

+1

Also, a very good article in the New Yorker showed up last week.

   https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/09/20/the-man-behind-critical-race-theory

From the article:

Bell spent the second half of his career as an academic and, over time, he came to recognize that other decisions in landmark civil-rights cases were of limited practical impact. He drew an unsettling conclusion: racism is so deeply rooted in the makeup of American society that it has been able to reassert itself after each successive wave of reform aimed at eliminating it.

This is vastly different from the idea of systemic racism. The fact that people make choices which undermine goals of specific government policies is true in all kinds of areas; it's just human nature.

When the term CRT is used now, my impression is that "systemic racism" is seen to be an integral part of it, which makes it a different beast from what is described in that article.

point taken. As Dr. Shelby Steele says, you can't write laws that will make people love each other. Examples:
(1) If someone wants to integrate a public school so blacks have a better one in 1970 and some of the whites who have higher incomes move out, weakening the tax base, your law hasn't done what was hoped for.
(2) The same people who don't merely assume without conclusive evidence, but trumpet their view to everyone as though it were a settled question though it clearly is not, that the premature death of George Floyd was a clear result of individual and cultural (MN police) racial animus as opposed to a rarer but unsurprising sad result of how policing and urban crime intersect show no interest in the disproportionate rate of interracial homicide suffered by whites at the hands of blacks, and also show zero interest in white victims of police brutality. So while homicide is equally illegal when it is done to anyone, you can't use the law to make everyone care about every homicide equally with no respect to race.
Racism is legal, cultivated by some groups, and will never go away entirely. Still, people like Ibram Kendi are clearly promoting monomania and ruining the workplace for many CVS employees, just to name a few.

As for unpacking systemic racism, I trust Coleman Hughes.

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=systemic+racism+coleman+hughes&t=h_&iax=videos&ia=videos&iai=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DosOUjO9hX-Q

Then there's this: (no, it's not a comment on CRT and its founders; it's just interesting)
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=larry+elder+debunksmichelle+obama&t=h_&iar=videos&iax=videos&ia=videos&iai=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DtO8a6yAE63c

Michelle is an attorney, went to good schools, and certainly knows she's spinning the story. True to form.

[Wahoo Redux]

opus operans.

M.

One of the things I enjoy about the Fora is expanding my vocabulary and learning new terms and ideas that crop up.

You are so well read, mamselle.

[mamselle]

Merci bien!

M.

[mahagonny]

Wow, I like this writer....https://unherd.com/2021/10/critical-race-theorys-new-disguise/

The monomania is thinking everything has to be about race, or else people of a minority race are somehow being cheated. But the end result is they get cheated in other ways, and no closer to outcomes of equal success.

moral and political monomaniacs generally travel in self-policing groups

That's how all groups work.

Yes, but self policing corrects problems, except when you and your group have monomania. Then it compounds them.