Readers may remember Peter Boghossian as the power behind some of the best and funniest Sokal hoaxes (exposing academic journals that publish utter nonsense). One of his associates recently shone a light on the current war on math.
Anyway, Boghossian gets serious here:
“We can’t just keep funding people who are playing in make-believe-land, cranking out information to inform public policy that’s completely divorced from reality. It’s a recipe for cultural suicide,” says Peter Boghossian, assistant professor of philosophy at Portland State University and co-author of “How to Have Impossible Conversations.”
A lifelong liberal and critic of former President Donald Trump, Boghossian believes describing people as left or right is losing utility. It’s those who demand you think a certain way who are on one side, while those who do not are on the other.
JAN JEKIELEK, “Exclusive: ‘A Recipe for Cultural Suicide’—Peter Boghossian on Woke Ideology and the Case for Defunding Universities” at Epoch Times
He’s kinder to the Woke than some of us are. Some of us think that they’re mostly just wretched mediocrities whose only joy in life is to tear down anyone, anywhere, anytime who has ever achieved anything. They dread intellectual freedom because they could make no use of it.
Face it, if they could do something better than that with their lives, they surely would.
We cut our teeth here dealing with Darwin’s empowered mediocrities, an early version of the Woke. We could charge for lessons in dealing with the Woke but we prefer to guide and mentor people who value ideas for free. It’s more fun for everyone.
Yes, there is an intellectual life worth fighting for.
See also: In Big Tech World: the journalist as censor, hit man, and snitch. Glenn Greenwald looks at a disturbing trend in media toward misrepresentation as well as censorship.