The revolutionaries are determined to destroy the economy in order to destroy capitalism. The large percentage of folks going along with it are what the communists like Lenin callied useful idiots, ie.....non-communists susceptible to communist propaganda.
That's right folks, It's all a communist plot to destroy capitalism. You heard it here first from Pelmet...who read it on a whole bunch of right wing whackjob conspiracy websites so you just know it has to be true.
You did hear it here first from Pelmet. I strongly suggest that people here read this article twice in order to fully understand it. It talks about critical theory which is very, very different than critical thinking. Do not mix them up. And read it twice because it is going to affect you in ways you never thought possible in your life.
Apocalyptic science: How the West is destroying itself
If you live in a Western nation like Canada in the 21st century, you have more freedom, prosperity and peace than most of the rest of the world at most other times in history. Yet these countries have never been at greater risk. The threat is not pandemics, climate change or war but something more insidious.
Modern Western civilization grew out of the Enlightenment of the 17th and 18th centuries. The ascendancy of reason in human affairs produced the scientific method and later the Industrial Revolution. Add in the rule of law, individual liberty, private property and capitalism, and you have the basic recipe that has raised most of humanity out of poverty over two centuries.
New academic doctrines are moving the world, or at least the West, from this triumph to decline. They dismiss science — real science — in favour of political agendas, in which theory trumps facts.
Few people are familiar with Critical Theory and its related doctrines, yet these ideas today drive government policies and shape public attitudes. Capitalism is oppressive. Private property rights cause environmental destruction. Prosperity causes climate change.
The most serious threat to the West is not China or Russia but its visceral disgust with itself. A growing proportion of people — in universities, the media, politics and corporate structures — now reject the premises upon which their own thriving societies are built.
Critical Theory opposes everything that makes the West work. Unlike traditional academic inquiry, which seeks to explain and understand with logic, analysis and the scientific method, these doctrines are less theories than programs. Their purpose is to condemn cultural norms, tear down existing orders and transform society.
It all starts with Marx. Between the two world wars, scholars at the Institute for Social Research at the University of Frankfurt began to investigate why Marxism was failing to catch on in the West. They broadened Marx’s tight focus on economic oppression of the working class and developed the doctrine known as Critical Theory, which is premised on the ideas that power and oppression define relationships throughout society, that knowledge is socially contingent, and that unjust Western institutions should be collapsed and reconstituted. As Marx wrote, “the philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it.” Critical Theory should not be confused with critical thinking. To think critically is to reason. Critical Theory’s imperatives are ideological assertions not based on scientific data or deduction.
In his seminal 1937 essay, “Traditional and Critical Theory,” Max Horkheimer, sometimes referred to as the father of critical theory, distinguished between the scientific or empirical tradition of enquiry and a critical approach that integrates numerous disciplines and incorporates historical and social influences in the enterprise of enquiry. Unlike the scientific method, which accepts observation as evidence and reproducibility as confirmation of truth, in Critical Theory, knowledge is contingent upon its origins and the social environment from which it comes. While Critical Theory shares Marx’s condemnation of capitalism and the power imbalances that define economic relationships, it rejects Marx’s essential empiricism in favour of melding science, philosophy, sociology and history into a single interdisciplinary enquiry.
Critical Theory is not a singular school of thought but a scholarly umbrella that consists of multiple approaches and variations that defy easy encapsulation. Like Critical Theory, they are activist and political. They lead with their conclusions. Embedded within them is the central tenet of postmodernism, a philosophical movement of the mid- to late 20th century. Postmodernism challenges the premises of Enlightenment reason, particularly the claim that observation and rationality can identify objective truth, whether moral or scientific.
The argument has merit: neither morality nor the scientific premise that what we perceive is real are capable of proof. Postmodernism’s Achilles heel is not its central thesis but its failure to follow it. If there is no truth, then no universal conclusions can be reached, and therefore all questions must be left to individuals.
Postmodernism embraces Critical Theory and vice versa. Progressives are apt to insist that truth is relative and subjective when they encounter facts that they do not like, but otherwise eagerly enforce “truths” that they prefer. There is no truth.
The term “social justice” has been used for centuries to mean various things, but the modern version is Critical Social Justice, in which people are not unique individuals but members of identity groups. Power, privilege and oppression define the relationships between groups, which are either victims or perpetrators. The concept of “intersectionality” takes account of historically oppressed traits that intersect in any one person and the groups to which the person therefore belongs.
As political tools, Critical Theory and its variations are brilliant. Any challenge to their legitimacy can be interpreted as a demonstration of their thesis: the assertion of reason, logic and evidence to justify oppression is a manifestation of privilege and power. Thus the challenger risks the stigma of oppressor. They conquer civilizations by harnessing human weakness: fear, guilt, resentment and righteousness. A little boy can say that the Emperor has no clothes, but adults are too afraid to speak. James Lindsay, an independent American critic of Critical Theory and Social Justice, who along with his partners Helen Pluckrose and Peter Boghossian, masterminded the “Grievance Studies Hoax,” in which they managed to get seven academic papers of critical theory and identity studies nonsense accepted for publication in scholarly journals, calls Critical Theory a “kafkatrap.” If you deny that you are a witch, then you are a witch. And if you do not deny it, then you are a witch for sure.
Indoctrination works. Hear something often enough from people in authority and you begin to believe it. In the decades following its birth at the Frankfurt School, Critical Theory and its variations made an inexorable march through universities, influencing such disparate disciplines as sociology, literary criticism and linguistics, infiltrating professional schools like teachers’ colleges and law schools, and dominating “grievance studies” such as women’s studies, gender studies and media studies.
The final conquest is now in progress inside science, technology, engineering and medical faculties. Generations of graduates, taught to believe in Critical Theory rather than how to think critically about it, now populate governments, corporate boards, human resource departments, courts, media outlets, teachers’ unions, school boards and classrooms. Critical Theory is embedded in elementary school curricula. Children carry the guilt and resentment of living in a society that they are taught is fundamentally unjust. No coup is more effective than one committed by a people against itself.
Evidence of the ascendancy of these new doctrines is everywhere. To reason, to rely on evidence, to seek consistency, and to insist that individuals have ownership of their own lives are features of an oppressive culture.
Do not expect bedrock principles of Canadian law and society to withstand this subversion. The ground began to shift long ago, and a kind of cultural apocalypse is well underway.
Rockie wrote: ↑Wed Jul 08, 2020 6:13 am
You heard it here first from Pelmet...who read it on a whole bunch of right wing whackjob conspiracy websites so you just know it has to be true.
Just a few years ago, who would have thought that little coverage would be given to Americans tearing down statues of George Washington. The day is coming soon that anybody questioning climate change will be a racist due to who it will be said is affected most, and you will therefore silenced. Yes, you heard it here first and you will pay for it as someone in aviation...a soon to be racist industry full of privileged people waiting to be torn apart.
By by the way, I don't go to the so-called right wing whack job websites. I use critical thinking to conclude the obvious.
OK...back to the border. Happy to keep it shut so both our economies can open up based on the implemented policies of the respective countries.
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Last edited by pelmet on Wed Jul 08, 2020 5:59 pm, edited 2 times in total.
Here's another little chart using data from Worldometer. It shows deaths from most of the major causes worldwide.
Screen Shot 2020-07-08 at 09.16.50.png (30.51 KiB) Viewed 1961 times
And just for fun, here are the causes - covid, cancer, smoking, seasonal flu, alcohol, malaria, hiv/aids, traffic accidents.
All of them (other than covid) repeat year after year at very similar levels. All of them are pretty much associated with human behaviour that could be changed/modified through massive and disruptive adjustments in societal norms. But they aren't. Apparently they aren't significant enough to warrant that level of disruption and are viewed as acceptable, recurring losses.
So, match the cause to the line. Surely covid must stand out because it's the only one that has spurred extreme, worldwide response.
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Being stupid around airplanes is a capital offence and nature is a hanging judge!
“It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so.”
Mark Twain
5x5 wrote: ↑Wed Jul 08, 2020 9:05 am
Here's another little chart using data from Worldometer. It shows deaths from most of the major causes worldwide.
Screen Shot 2020-07-08 at 09.16.50.png
And just for fun, here are the causes - covid, cancer, smoking, seasonal flu, alcohol, malaria, hiv/aids, traffic accidents.
All of them (other than covid) repeat year after year at very similar levels. All of them are pretty much associated with human behaviour that could be changed/modified through massive and disruptive adjustments in societal norms. But they aren't. Apparently they aren't significant enough to warrant that level of disruption and are viewed as acceptable, recurring losses.
So, match the cause to the line. Surely covid must stand out because it's the only one that has spurred extreme, worldwide response.
In fact, dying of COVID-19 is not the problem. It is the tremendous burden placed on the healthcare system by those that will die or those that are severely affected by the disease that is the problem. If suddenly 10% of the population developed COVID and 10% of those needed hospital care, the healthcare system (and soon the economy) would very quickly grind to a halt and we would be immensely worse off.
Exactly. And keeping the healthcare system under control obviously requires some degree of economic sacrifice, to keep the virus from running too rampant. It’s a really simple concept to understand...the real trick is finding a balance. Hard to know if we’re jumping the gun on reopening, or going overboard with the restrictions.
This is why everyone is constantly arguing about it, and the pandemic puts us in a particularly shitty catch 22, with endless combinations of economic and moral arguments to be had. So...’round and ‘round we go! Keep up the amazing, well-researched, and ever-compelling posts everyone. I’m sure we’ll all come to an agreement soon, it’s an Internet forum after all.
If anyone cares, here's the legend for the chart I posted.
Screen Shot 2020-07-08 at 12.23.18.png (13.27 KiB) Viewed 1875 times
flyguy73 wrote: ↑Wed Jul 08, 2020 9:43 am
In fact, dying of COVID-19 is not the problem. It is the tremendous burden placed on the healthcare system by those that will die or those that are severely affected by the disease that is the problem. If suddenly 10% of the population developed COVID and 10% of those needed hospital care, the healthcare system (and soon the economy) would very quickly grind to a halt and we would be immensely worse off.
That would be very bad, no doubt. But is it reasonable to speculate on? Currently the infection rate is about .15% of the population at 12,000,000. So if somehow that would change (by 65 times greater) to 10% then it would mean 780,000,000 infected people. Other than simple fear, what would cause anyone to think that an increase of 65 times the number of cases could happen?
I would also suggest that if you're worried about the economy perhaps you should think about the real effect that is coming due to the current response and not what would happen as a result of an unrealistic "what if" scenario.
---------- ADS -----------
Being stupid around airplanes is a capital offence and nature is a hanging judge!
“It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so.”
Mark Twain
5x5 wrote: ↑Wed Jul 08, 2020 12:28 pm
If anyone cares, here's the legend for the chart I posted.
Screen Shot 2020-07-08 at 12.23.18.png
flyguy73 wrote: ↑Wed Jul 08, 2020 9:43 am
In fact, dying of COVID-19 is not the problem. It is the tremendous burden placed on the healthcare system by those that will die or those that are severely affected by the disease that is the problem. If suddenly 10% of the population developed COVID and 10% of those needed hospital care, the healthcare system (and soon the economy) would very quickly grind to a halt and we would be immensely worse off.
That would be very bad, no doubt. But is it reasonable to speculate on? Currently the infection rate is about .15% of the population at 12,000,000. So if somehow that would change (by 65 times greater) to 10% then it would mean 780,000,000 infected people. Other than simple fear, what would cause anyone to think that an increase of 65 times the number of cases could happen?
I would also suggest that if you're worried about the economy perhaps you should think about the real effect that is coming due to the current response and not what would happen as a result of an unrealistic "what if" scenario.
flyguy73 wrote: ↑Wed Jul 08, 2020 4:17 pmAre you familiar with the exponential function?
Of course.
Apparently, you're not.
If the infection rate is less than one, then the exponential function is an exponential decay: the outbreak dies out, and eventually kills nobody. All this hard work - is to try to reduce the infection rate to below 1.
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DId you hear the one about the jurisprudence fetishist? He got off on a technicality.
pelmet wrote: ↑Wed Jul 08, 2020 8:55 am
By by the way, I don't go to the so-called right wing whack job websites. I use critical thinking to conclude the obvious.
To quote the great Inigo Montoya, I do not think this means what you think it means.
Being obvious, by definition, precludes (or, hah, obviates) the need for critical thinking. What you are describing here is confirmation bias.
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Last edited by RedAndWhiteBaron on Wed Jul 08, 2020 8:03 pm, edited 1 time in total.
altiplano wrote: ↑Wed Jul 08, 2020 6:24 am
Where Marxism failed in the 20th century was that it grasped on to class, in the new post modern Marxist drive they grasp on to identity and intersectionality.
The "useful idiots" as you say eat it up.
Make no mistake that China and Russia are having a good laugh watching the unraveling of the West... they stoke a little here, inject some dissent there, and sit back and eat our lunch.
People from the most affluent, privileged society in all of human history don't think they have it good enough and are ready to burn it down... They wave Soviet flags and scream for socialism... Anyone check how LGBT are doing in Russia there days? How do minorities do in China? How are the underprivileged making out in Venezuela? Or Cuba? unbelievable...
flyguy73 wrote: ↑Wed Jul 08, 2020 4:17 pmAre you familiar with the exponential function?
Of course.
Apparently, you're not.
If the infection rate is less than one, then the exponential function is an exponential decay: the outbreak dies out, and eventually kills nobody. All this hard work - is to try to reduce the infection rate to below 1.
Isn’t that like being a little bit pregnant. ??
I think we are only dealing with postitive integers in this case.
Zaibatsu wrote: ↑Wed Jul 08, 2020 8:12 pm
Isn’t that like being a little bit pregnant. ??
I think we are only dealing with postitive integers in this case.
No (well, sort of, it is, actually) - it's an average, and a group metric, not an individual metric. If a group of 100 people infect 50 other people, the infection rate is 0.5.
If out of 100 women, 50 are pregnant, the pregnancy rate is 0.5.
A person cannot be a little bit pregnant, but a group can be. But nine women still can't make a baby in one month.
fishface wrote: ↑Wed Jul 08, 2020 9:43 pm
[quote=RedAndWhiteBaron post_id=<a href="tel:1121615">1121615</a> time=<a href="tel:1594268586">1594268586</a> user_id=71297]And never forget - 73% of statistics are made up on the spot.
I don’t believe you. Einstein said never to believe anything you read on the internet.
[/quote]
The first “internet” was built in 1983, Albert Einstein died in 1955. Maybe you’re talking about another Einstein.
fishface wrote: ↑Wed Jul 08, 2020 9:43 pm
[quote=RedAndWhiteBaron post_id=<a href="tel:1121615">1121615</a> time=<a href="tel:1594268586">1594268586</a> user_id=71297]And never forget - 73% of statistics are made up on the spot.
I don’t believe you. Einstein said never to believe anything you read on the internet.
The first “internet” was built in 1983, Albert Einstein died in 1955. Maybe you’re talking about another Einstein.
[/quote]
Didn’t Al Gore “build” the Internet? No wait, he’s just the guy who told us the polar ice cap was going to melt by 2014...
