so it's easy to think of brooks as an idiot, but i think he's sorta onto something. at least he's sniffing at it, even if he doesn't know what it is.
the difference between h.s. and college isn't so much the educational content as it is the socialization. can't quite put my finger on it since i've only been turning the idea in my head for a little while this morning.
i'm thinking (anecdotally) about the relationship between me (b.a., j.d.) with my mother in law (h.s., i think). thinking also about the relationship between my sister-in-law (b.a., maybe an m.s.?) and her mother-in-law-to-be (h.s.) similar cases.
there are just certain "immature" behaviors that don't really make sense to me. for example, my m-i-l has this need to be "queen bee". it's something i remember from h.s., but evaporated in college. i hypothesize that, when you've only had a h.s. education, there are certain things (like "acceptable" behaviors) that are sorta frozen in time--hence "immature".
anyway, just a thought.
-puppylander in our own comments
Oy and double-oy, to paraphrase a great American. I hope puppylander, who is a regular commenter here, won't be offended that we are offended by this ridiculousness. Anecdotally I'm thinking about the relationship between Barack Obama, B.A., J.D. and Pakistan which is full of certain sociopathically homicidal behaviors that don't really make sense to me, for example, swarms of killer robots murdering civilians and children left and right. I conclude that this has to do with the socialization one receives as a jurisdoctor.
I like to imagine that even as he wrote, our commenter was shaking his head in quiet disapproval at some big black lady screaming at a cop. What do they ever hope to accomplish acting like that? What he calls maturity and acceptable behavior, I call a learned culture of undue deference and self-subjugation. If I may again undertake a little paraphrasis, college is a slave mentality. Yes of course David Brooks is onto something; he understands that education exists to mold the free mind into an employable jelly mold. It strips and sandpapers your brain; you are a chair to be refinished, upon which time the Vikram Pandits of the world will sit their asses down upon you motherfuckers.
So it may be that your mother-in-law buzzes around because she never took Intro to Psychopathy and Principles of a Con; it may also be that the elder women in an extended kinship grouping are simply recapitulating a few hundred thousand years of genetic and cultural behavioral norms. The idea that the completely weird behaviors one picks up in the pursuit of a late-modern system of institutionalized mind control represent a sort of ordinary and baseline human maturity is, ahem, exactly what they want you to believe. But in reality the long view down your nose at your social inferiors is no different from the long gaze of a billionaire banker from his trading-floor aerie onto the massed rabble on the grass below.
184 comments:
Fucking bravo, Monsieur. Just, fucking bravo.
some big black lady screaming at a cop
Your admission to the Outer Party is contingent on your willingness to take shit from the Inner Party. This is one of those, "Yes, of course" truths that struck me late in life and merely required reframing.
The teenagers screaming at the bus driver for not stopping for them are holding up my commute. click The teenagers are acting like dicks to the bus driver who acted like a dick to them.
homonoietic, mrC, not homonoeitic.
http://lackadaisicals.blogspot.com/2011/11/two-homonoietic-riffs-on-two.html
(and comments therein)
[repost edited with corrected spelling]
While we're engaging in paraphrastic behavior, perhaps the social world inside and between each other's heads is something like what JBS Haldane said about the Universe:
I have no doubt that in reality the future will be vastly more surprising than anything I can imagine. Now my own suspicion is that the Universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose.*
Possible Worlds and Other Papers (1927), p. 286
And on the other hand, in his version of a famous anecdote, Robert Merton has Chuang Tzu say, "I know the joy of fishes in the river through my own joy, as I go walking along the same river."
*Before we get all homonoietic on it, keep in mind "queer" in its principal published usage in the UK in the 1920s did not have the same meaning as it does in some segments of the blogosphere here in the 21st century.
puppylander's comment is reflective of precisely the attitude that led me to drop out of college. indeed, my profession of musician won't lead to much money, and i certainly got the sense at the time that my behavior was "immature" in a way that didn't make sense to my college buddies. but seriously, this attitude is pervasive: an acknowledgment that what's going on is purely socialization, and somehow an exuberant embrace of being subjected to the process.
if maturity is achieved through four years at a drug-addled gated community/debt factory, i'd rather be one of the immature ones.
incidentally, puppylander's examples of immaturity are all women. unthinking misogyny is also bred at our institutions of higher education. it's another sign of enlightenment.
standing o(vation)
Ryan Leaf > Tebow > puppylander
technical college was different. training, hoop-jumping, a minor form of credentialing, a less august degree, and still all of the disdain reserved for the high schoolers. one goes there to pigeonhole oneself, you prove you can do a thing, rather than prove that you are educable.
lol @ 13 years of mandatory schooling that doesn't prove you're capable of anything beyond the most menial tasks, nor apparently, that you're a fully matured adult!
I only have a high school diploma and I find myself eating with my hands more often than my friends with college degrees.
Well, I'll go to college and I'll learn some big words
And I'll talk real loud
Goddamn right I'll be heard
You'll remember all the guys that said all those big words
He must've learned in college
well, shit. is it so terrible to say i liked college? we read a lot of cool books. i read faulkner, hemingway, pynchon, ellison, shakespeare, borges, blake, tolstoy, fielding. i read a lot of shit, too, but i learned to differentiate the quality from the shit. people passed around books, ideas, and weed. a lot of professors sucked, but a lot of them shared their ideas in a perfectly respectful manner. and it's true that college didn't make obama a less psychopathic dick, but i don't think it made him a more psychopathic dick either.
I must say, however, that both college and graduate school were where I nourished my anarchist leanings and came to see human 'civilization' for the travesty it is.
Then again, maybe it was just the drugs.
you guys really love some low hanging fruit. take it everywhichway !
of course people will experience college differently in mind. but even those who don't internalize cultural deference and self-subjugation, unless they were wealthy to begin with, will have sprung the debt trap and entered into a sort of financial deference and subjugation.
montag-
the debt trap is also an "of course." not everybody ought to attend college. not everybody ought to accept debt. not everybody can handle cocaine either, but that doesn't cocaine bad in and of itself.
Who cares if you liked college? I bet Barack likes being president. I bet the top 1% of income earners really like being the top 1%. Meanwhile, I'm smoking weed and reading books right now. Blissfully, I am not obliged to encounter that fraud, Pynchon; an Andy Warhol who, unlike Warhol, never realized that he was telling a joke. I have heard this before--well, at least in college, I got to read. I might accept "at least in college I had access to lab facilities," but this notion of There But for the Grace of English 201: the Invention of Modernism go I, well, it says a great deal more about the values of the collegian than the value of college.
There are 18 million people in college in the U.S. The U.S. correctional population -- those in jail, prison, on probation or on parole -- is 7-8 million.
Judeo-Christian-based policy in the U.S. is about creating parity between these two forms of institutionalization. Those in the middle reside in a kind of limbo of the infants, a hair's breath from hell.
education as an ideal, isn't bad in and of itself. but as higher education stands, as an institution, it is set up to reinforce and perpetuate a fucked-up system reliant on compliant minds and wage slavery.
any literate person can read interesting books, and any person with a bright mind can nurture other minds through teaching. that the mechanism society employs to account for these things is an inaccessible and costly collegiate one is more reflective of a fucked-up society than it is of a desire to allow people to to realize their potential.
Drugs ftw, but even the most magical afterglows couldn't quite purge that acrid, academic funk from my noggin. Still lingers, in fact, like something died in there. Ditto the debt. Never let your schooling interfere with your dissociation.
Burn a college to the ground.
Them - especially the middle class white ones looking to secure a merit aura for their children - that gnash teeth and tear garments over the loss of a "treasured institution" are the same sort as will clutch the cell phone, fingers itching to dial nine one one, when they pass poor being poor in the wrong public spaces.
They're also the types who decry the rising tide of anti-intellectualism every time the poor, when they just can't take it anymore, do the angry things that poor people do to the clerks who lord it over them on behalf of their paymasters.
"I have heard this before--well, at least in college, I got to read."
i often encounter, "they gave me so much freedom", which i also adore. um, they WHAT you freedom?
This seems pertinent to this, and past conversations here.
yeah that's what I'm saying yo! I work part-time in a coupla laidback bluecollarish evening jobs and I can read all day if I want---and not just Tolstoy! Of course all the educated, salaried, lower upper middle mgmt, I'm-thinking-of-going-back-to-school types think I'm nuts: basically: WHERE'S THE FUCKING MONEY SHITHEAD?!?
Wait, so we've gone from "college isn't the antidote to economic inequality" to "college is inherently evil because Pynchon"?
College is a great American preserving agent for inequality.
I got her number. How do ya like them apples?
for fuck's sake. yes, you can read anywhere and you can fuck anywhere and get high anywhere and do anything you want anywhere, but the idea that the place you read and fucked and got high is better than the place i read and fucked and got high is bullshit (the same goes for present tense reading, fucking, and getting high). that i enjoyed the shit and you didn't doesn't speak to high and mighty values any more than whether or not i liked your gnocchi recipe speaks to values. you want to drop out and join a band and few pure, go ahead. but don't pretend it's so much better than going to college or going galt, especially when you never were going to drop out. There are only a couple people commenting on these here blogs even posing as full dropouts. The rest of us are making out the best we can, and we're all hypocrites.
feel pure, not few pure.
feeling puree works too
For one, I'm going to drown my headache/inner emptiness in CaboWabo ... after following an Algebraic Topology lecture on utube ...
mdphd bitcheeez!
Capt'n Obvious
Ioz - I was making a poor joke. I think there is a reason why I only keep in close touch with a couple of friends from college, and why I decided against a career in academe.
But, in all seriousness, you and I went to very similar institutions [I almost went to Oberlin but couldn't bear the midwest any longer]. And while I fully sympathize with your philosophical position on the value and function of what the contemporary world calls 'education', I don't harbor any ill will toward the fact that I was raised in that system [family of academics] & while being raised in it, once contemplated perpetuating it. Rather, it actually brought me to study with an absolute genius who permanently changed my perspective on the world [Johannes Fritsche]. Perhaps I would have come to those positions on my own, but I don't regret the time spent studying with him - in fact his abrupt dismissal from the US academy drove me from it as well.
the idea that the place you read and fucked and got high is better than the place i read and fucked and got high is bullshit
that's the whole fucking point! the fucked-up society reserves richer rewards for those who did, their reading at least, in college. which isn't so surprising, considering most of the people running this shit have diplomas on their walls.
I never went to college because I didn't want someone staining my thoughts with the 'correct' ones. I don't need a tutor to tell me when I'm thinking right. I've got as much gray matter as the next Henry Higgins. And smoking weed and reading books is where it's at! Plus, I can stop and whack off whenever I want!
montag-
agreed. society is fucked up.
"you want to drop out and join a band and [feel] pure, go ahead. but don't pretend it's so much better than going to college or going galt, especially when you never were going to drop out."
yes, i made a value judgement. (i'm the "full dropout" you mentioned). it occurred to me that college was designed to produce docile, deeply indebted managers, while simultaneously sheltering rich kids from the perils of law enforcement while they experiment with dealing drugs.
aside from protecting your enjoyment of your own late adolescence, i can't see that you're making any argument at all.
besides, your school was really just a mutual fund. and you, while you got high and read (and fucked?) were just a revenue stream.
IOZ, I remember you said years back you read Gravity's Rainbow for some pomo class, which I can imagine was very obnoxious. The Warhol comparison is just baloney, though, & I really do think you'd dig the new one. Could be wrong.
you've (all) read way too much (and at the same time, not enough) into my comment. (i'll take a part of the blame for leaving a lot unsaid. but be aware that i'll still have left a lot unsaid after this comment.)
you don't think that obama learned a thing or two about how to be a more effective sociopath in school? (to reiterate, i thought i took pains downthread to clarify that i didn't say college made people "better", just different.)
as for your imagination, i'll say first that there's a reason why i put "immaturity" and "acceptable" in quotation marks. but moving on... if it doesn't tax your imagination too much, try this on for size:
my mother-in-law isn't the loud, obnoxious, red neck trailer trash you're imagining. what she is is a woman who, since birth, was acculturated to be as inoffensive, demure, non-threatening, and as easy to get along with as possible, which attitudes were all later reinforced in high school. the pressures to popularity from peers (and adults) who don't know any better are a huge part of high school socialization. and this (i suggest) is a goodly portion of why my mother-in-law engages in queen-bee/attention-seeking behavior. (like what? all of the "misogynistic" mundane stereotypes that are running through your imaginations right now, but there's more. like shopping. um, let me clarify, like shopping for doctors for imaginary ailments. taking enough prescription drugs to kill a large horse. oh, i forgot. drugs aren't entirely objectionable to this crowd. how about extreme mutilation? you folks into that? i don't mean labial piercings or hooks or split penises. i mean, the woman has gone out to convince doctors to cut her open for surgeries she doesn't need. eight times in ten years: wrists, knees, shoulder, back, elbows. and lest i forget, a partial lobotomy too. any of you as hardcore as she is?) all for the oohs, poor-yous and sympathies that come with convalescence. i didn't believe this either when i first heard it, but it's true. i read it all as a form of self-indulgence, immediate gratification, following one's bliss, whatever you want to term it--i.e., adolescence. so yes, i consider it (in its totality) an "immature" attitude. (oh yeah, in case i forget, a giant fuck you to anon 1:01) you see, i'm not talking about being prim and proper and subordinate. i'm talking about being an adult and knowing what's healthy/unhealthy, what's right/wrong, what's good/bad, and acting accordingly.
college doesn't fix these kinds of problems. it doesn't prevent them. but do i think a women's studies course could have done a little good? yeah, maybe. the point is that the college experience can re-orient you if you're pointed the wrong way out of high school. you're all coming at this question of the value of college from an almost absolutist perspective. i'm looking at it in terms of the alternatives. am i being a little too know-it-all-y what with my fancypants letters after my name? maybe, and yet, i think you'll all agree that personal growth is a part of the college experience in ways that aren't available on other avenues. and i think you'll all agree that not going to college hasn't worked/isn't really working for my m-i-l.
do i think she could have gotten a little insight with just her high school education? in the real world? you all testify yes. but the fact is, she didn't, and she didn't. so you'll pardon me for even thinking that i might be proposing something other than "ridiculousness" here.
and please, continue to mock my hemming and hawing and qualifying language. we agree that college isn't the transformative end, it isn't even a transformative cure. but i'd say "slave mentality" is too facile a critique to be serious.
"Serious." Aaaaaaaand scene.
I get it now. Maybe instead of college she could have watched "Thelma and Louise".
College cured my Münchausen syndrome!
nony 4:24--
you're proof that college isn't the exclusive producer of sanctimony and condescension.
I for one think Puppylander is on to something. But it's not about a correlation between college education and maturity (in academia! as if!). Rather it's about networking. Colleges don't offer much useful learning, but they do an excellent job of promoting hookups. The more it costs, and more exclusive they can make it seem, the better quality your hookups are likely going to be.
That by the way is presumably why they artifically inflate the cost by providing such completely unnecessary luxuries. As if you wouldn't rather pay $15k a year rather than 40k with an option for $250 in gym membership fees and $600 in healthcare premiums!
Anybody who argues that the earning power of a college degree stems from having surpassed some Piagetian developmental stage is snowing you or themselves or both. They introduce you to the right people, and teach you the right lingo.
Sounds like Puppylander's mother in law may just not like him very much!
hey, i don't know guys, college couldn't have hurt, could it? after all, if there is a group of institutions more costly, inaccessible and divorced from its purported goals than higher ed, it's the mental health system.
life in a fucked-up society messes with people's heads, man. a bachelors degree ain't no cure-all. maybe she coulda tried some night classes down at the community college to start out...
"healthy/unhealthy
right/wrong
good/bad"
Aside from generally being the sorts of false dichotomies which fuck up otherwise human persons for life, if the defense of the merit and credential racket falls back upon providing a safe place for learning right conduct, it's just time to hand the schools back to the Churches Triumphant and Militant. They, at least, have a better track record producing the kind of people who hoot it up over good behavior.
And really now, when you get into the subjects which have any applicability to staying alive and not having a totally shitty life - say the so called hard sciences, mathematics, et cetera - these are both the least dependent upon moral value judgments and the most likely to be directly funded by the corporate financing pool upon which academia depends and towards which it sends its most accomplished.
I wouldn't trade my experience at the University of Phoenix for anything. I lived off-campus the whole time, but at UOPX non-trad students really are treated the same as everyone else. I pledged Farmhouse and we stole the Dean of Students' password! My final year our stadium made the BCS national championship game. I agree with those who've cited socialization---my General Studies degree (magna cum laude) aside, what I learned most were people skills.
Give up all hope of peace so long as your mother-in-law is alive. ~Juvenal, Satires
Yes Zoz - but how about your Munchausen by Proxy syndrome ... ?
The kid wuz sick with symptims i swear!
is there another responder here who isn't a white male? (i.e., is there someone in here who understands what i'm talking about when i say "socialization"?)
My mother-in-law has a doctorate in alternative medicine and finds it amusing to mention that, back in the day, brazil nuts were called nigger toes.
I'm a white male and I have nothing to hide! Socialization is obviously what Marx wrote about.
Hey wait a sec there, puppylander.
It's actually more difficult for the homonoietic than the homoerotic to socialize into "this man's world", regardless of their gender or race.
Because you don't have to "stand at a slight angle to the universe" to be homoerotic - you merely have to stand at the right angle to something more local ...
Apropos?
Every day in this ... election season, I hear two kinds of comments. First, I hear, "If only X or Y candidate were warmer, and friendlier, I would vote for him/her."
Second, I hear, "I like the candidates who address the issues. This is a serious election, and we need a president who truly gets our problems and will help solve them."
Which of those attitudes, do you think came from America's Ph.D.'s? The one focused on personality, or the one focused on issues?
The Ph.D.'s, believe it or not, are all about personality.
Believe it or not, It gets stupider from there. Gawd save the queen!
Favorite thread for a goodly while. Inkbro even said funny shit! & while I'm not into self-mutilation personally, watching others topple their own wobbly arguments around this joint is my favorite spectator sport. & I still blame Oberlin for our host's antipathy for Pynchon. Read, dose & fuck debt-free, 4evr!
You guys are such dicks.
Weeble--
Louis C.K. got a whole episode out of an old lady saying "nigger toes." Louis C.K. did not go to college. Coincidence?
Wow, some of your commenters. I love the latest entry. I guess I don't care if they're slow ones down the middle if you're hitting them out of the park in a funny way like this.
i think i just expected better than a misread of brooks, given that you're all such great "readers". but if ioz has been reduced to attacking straw, i suppose that's fine. i don't understand this new game.
One man's misread is another man's parsin', puppylander ...
What do you expect Andrew S, it's a blaaaawwwrrgg.
Wait just a fucking minute! You mean feeling superior wasn't the whole point of going to college?? What. The. Fuck!
yr throwin rocks tonight, dude.
learnin books r loser.
Some escape The Matrix and some don't. I got out after a long trip through suburban privilege, the UAW, the Army, college, law school, professional life, marriage and children. Then finally the door opened. Just got lucky I guess.
dear .. . doodling on the desk while not paying attention in class .. . diary, ..i love paul alexander .. . fleur
One thing I didn't realize before I went to college was that when people say "college" they don't mean "college", they actually mean "a relatively good four year college offering a variety of near-useless liberal arts degrees"
My experience at art school, in terms of what we're taught and how we socialize, has been pretty different from the experience of my other friends who went to art school. And it's different from my community college experience.
And I suspect people who are going to schools that actually offer English lit courses are getting a pretty different experience in terms of "socialization".
@PaulAlexander I like the jib of your cut man. Shit I dropped out of High School got my GED. and joind The Navy. I can say that I'm just as lazy and unemployable as if I had attained a higher education.
Andy Warhol is from Pittsburgh, is he not?
I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.
Mark Twain
US humorist, novelist, short story author, & wit (1835 - 1910)
for more info
http://www.thegreatcourses.com/tgc/courses/course_detail.aspx?cid=2567
http://learning.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/09/30/a-american-wit-approaching-mark-twains-life-and-works/
Buncha fuckin' arts graduates... Of course college is bullshit if you study a bullshit subject. Some subjects involve the acquisition of actual knowledge, rather than mere opinion. Your computer doesn't work by magic.
Fuck, this place gets claustrophobic.
What's kinda funny here is the little bit of CP Snow "Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution" reprise goin on here between the panty-waist BA's and the manly men BS's like Dunc.
And to top off the beau geste, Carnegie Tech has always been known as both manly-man (BS engineering) and a painty-waist (BA arts) institution.
Plus ca change ... non?
My apologies to Pits-burg ... Carnegie-Mellon University, of course ...
ohh, i wonder if dunc is dating anyone .. . and if he remembers the band Neu ... i would like my lap' to be less magical.. but the bedding ..damn the bedding !ty,t'rip .. said ..oh so lovely ..looking about .. .
e.l.,
no, not this time. brooks' point was fairly clear to me: there's a cultural divide. he suggests that college is the difference. but read his op again. he doesn't go so far as to say that everyone should become college educated. in fact, he says just the opposite. explicitly, he says the solution is not so simple. so, for ioz to fail that acknowledgment, well, that's pure misread.
that's what's disappointing here. i read ioz precisely because he has great insights (because he doesn't need to resort to fallacies). you (as i) have probably been reading ioz since before they coined the phrase "weblog". in all that time, can you recall a single instance when he fell back on this kind of tack? i can't.
so if this is the new game after no revoir, well, no, thanks. ioz should've stayed gone.
am i being a little too know-it-all-y what with my fancypants letters after my name? maybe,
Wait. Puppylander uses "esq."? I know only two types of people who do that: people you would never, ever want as your lawyer, and people over 60 who grew up in relatively rural environments in which being a lawyer was meaningful.
since before they coined the term weblog
Wikipedia points us to a history by Rebecca Blood, dated Sept 2000, which states:
In 1998 there were just a handful of sites of the type that are now identified as weblogs (so named by Jorn Barger in December 1997). Jesse James Garrett, editor of Infosift, began compiling a list of "other sites like his" as he found them in his travels around the web. In November of that year, he sent that list to Cameron Barrett. Cameron published the list on Camworld, and others maintaining similar sites began sending their URLs to him for inclusion on the list. Jesse's 'page of only weblogs' lists the 23 known to be in existence at the beginning of 1999.
Suddenly a community sprang up. It was easy to read all of the weblogs on Cameron's list, and most interested people did. Peter Merholz announced in early 1999 that he was going to pronounce it 'wee-blog' and inevitably this was shortened to 'blog' with the weblog editor referred to as a 'blogger.'
m.c., that sounds about right.
Everything our parents said was good is bad. Sun, milk, red meat... college.
Late to the party, but one wishes this kind of hilariously open fraud would be revealed in all other degree programs:
http://io9.com/5855733/psychologist-admits-to-faking-dozens-of-scientific-studies
i love neu! especially the slow songs on neu 2.
I love you as well Anne...bouquet of carnations
And Demize!, I take a Navy man complimenting my jib very seriously.
I put letters after my name sometimes. They don't mean anything to anyone but me, but they look really cool.
la rana,
you're forgetting bill s preston, esq.
HAHAHAHAHA!!! "Put them in the iron maiden!" "GNARLY!" "Execute them!" "Bogus!"
Parchments are a pass to more sophisticated advantage-taking.
I win!
and off we go a-trundling with a non-seq. here and a non-seq. there. should this be unexpected?
Yinz know where people become anarchists like you, though, right? They become anarchists in college. Sorry, true. Your politics, like mine, is the delight of the educated elite. It's a tension you can't sneak out of.
The IWW wasn't formed in college, Freddie. Haywood and Red Emma didn't have much schooling. European anarchism, especially north of Italy and Spain, did have an academic flavor. But, American anarcism far less so.
And judging from this thread, most of the anarchists are drop outs, or never-wents.
Fuck, I ain't even got a high school diploma.
lander with pup, ioz's saying ..munch. syndrome .. was a good suggest ..to what your mother in L. ...may have better dealt with ..with some insight in to a better sense of the world ,of what is going on ..beyond .. her own .. ..but the workings of her own mind still come in to play in other ways .. . i've seen many go on with their schooling in all fields ..and their minds not being able to move away from something of that ..
anne, of course, it isn't so simple. so my original hemming/hawing.
there's a real critique of my comment to be had. namely, that it's dumb as tautology. "college" influences people. (not the courses, but the "experiences".) uhh derrrr.
but if you can't cop to a misread of brooks, if you can't admit there's good/bad, if you've gotta fall to ad hominem on a blue steak (because "half-baked" is too generous) insinuation of misogyny, and all at thunderous applause, then where are you? anywhere beyond obama bush cheney's sociopath-land? are you in a place where you can say that raining fire on brown folk is bad? i don't think so.
but that shouldn't surprise me as it does, should it? i mean, apart from the words that get thrown up here, what person watching what you do would know you were anything other than a self-absorbed, condescending, patriarchically-privileged, yoga-posing, tofu-munching, local-farm-shopping pwoggie fuckwit fraud?
puppy with , i'm assuming that you are only addressing me in the first line .. and the rest is back to ioz and others ..? ...because it wouldn't make sense any other way .. .
Your politics, like mine, is the delight of the educated elite.
WAT? you're trolling, right?
Holla if you're a douchy Vanguardist...
WOOT WOOT!
Reading this post, I remembered what it was like the first time I came upon this site.
I'm actually a little surprised by the extent to which rads and, at the moment, a large number of OWS participants take the cult of higher education at its word. At Zucotti Park, I have gingerly bounced the idea that the requirement for an unrelated degree for all but menial jobs is probably as worthy an object of attack as the cost of college itself. This invariably elicits blank stares and snarkiness from the middle class brat brandishing the poster announcing the extent of his debt. Too many of these people a still just want a meritocracy that values their dear sweet obedient selves as much as they do.
anne,
addressed to you, but not descriptive of you (as far as i can tell... for now).
"what person watching what you do would know you were anything other than a self-absorbed, condescending, patriarchically-privileged, yoga-posing, tofu-munching, local-farm-shopping pwoggie fuckwit fraud?"
Puppylender, I think you are absolutely correct on this -- cept IOZ is an unrepentant carnivore -- but it doesn't make your original comment less wrong.
Forgive me puppylander, but I've got to ask ... were you jilted by Monsieur at some point in the past?
Or if not jilted, then perhaps trifled with?
"Your politics, like mine, is the delight of the educated elite."
Montag: "WAT? you're trolling, right?"
I hope Montag, that your reply is based on knowledge that the elite don't give a shit about your politics and not some truly retarded idea that there is anything besides complete capitulation being recommended or practiced here.
far as i know i'm only truly retarded in the sense that i wasn't properly and fully socialized collegiately. ;-)
i was under the impression that NOTHING is recommended or practiced here. capitulation nor intransigence. it is what it is, mang.
"Too many of these people a still just want a meritocracy that values their dear sweet obedient selves as much as they do." Too many? hahaha. And the gall to desire a meritocracy that values yourself. Bastards.
Ryerson,
The thing with meritocracy is that it has to have a bunch of low-value people by which the high-merits can self-compare.
"Surrender is essentially an operation by means of which we set out explaining instead of acting."
"Surrender is essentially an operation by means of which we set out explaining instead of acting."
Jack Crow, Gee, ya think?
e.l.,
no, neither.
f.f.,
certainly nothing seems to help clarify my original comment--least of all, me. still, there's a particular johny-cum-lately lot in here these days who think the usual thoughtless interweb pile-on doesn't put the lie to their conceits.
Well of course I'm glad it's nothing personal, puppylander.
But I just have to check out one final possibility (I feel like the maiden querying Rumpelstilskin here ...)
Did his Fluffy White Kitten ever scratch you, perchance?
I hate it when acquaintances' pets do that ...
e.l., not that i recall. (just so you're clear, the animus on display isn't especially directed at ioz as much as the fanboys.)
When I was young I felt that college was something you should do when you had a midlife crisis, so I dropped out after a year. 20 years later, I had a midlife crisis, so I enrolled. Almost finished, at 40+ yo. It feels pretty wonderful, actually, though I agree with IOZ and am generally against the whole corporate college-consumer-edutainment-credentialized-debt-industrial complex (I actually inherited a little bit of money and am doing it on the cheap).
Where was I...oh yes:
I really, really enjoy school now, and I'm glad to be there. BUT--after years in the "real world" (??) I'm completely appalled at the prevailing anti-anything-resembling-an-emotional-response mindset. My advisor was tsk-tsking some media nonsense a while back, and I was saying that maybe smart people like him should be taking back the language and not allowing the extremist fucktards of the Grifter Belt or the Smooth Operators of the Slo-Jazz Rust Belt machine to define the language, TAKE IT BACK AND MAKE THEM CHOKE ON IT...and he was just like, "But...I...I...can't, it's not...right, it's would be stooping to their level, etc." Ach, sorry to ramble. Not good times. I will be glad to wear a dress and get my Wizard Of Oz moment on that stage, but really--it's just a fucking midlife crisis. And those people there have no balls.
Getting a degree from a Seven Sister college (one that no longer has an independent existence) didn't do my mom a bit of good when my father walked away leaving her holding the bag of four kids. We did poor as church mice for quite some time. I bailed into the military where I definitely didn't belong 3 weeks after high school graduation because I didn't want to be any burden. By the time I got out of the service four years later I was way too messed up to want anything but a revolution. But it was 1977, and there weren't any revolutions anymore. Thing is, growing up poor is what gave me the skills that make it possible that I'm still kicking now. Now can we have that revolution?
Hi dennis Perrin! Please keep writing on politics, I know your a comic now, but. And dont be such a prick on Twitter. Love you anyway ya big cockwallet.
In summary of the above, puppylander suggests that having experienced Americana high school as the final stage of formal education leaves one frozen in time, in comparison to those who have experienced "higher" education. Brouhaha ensues as he is accused of being an educational elitist. Puppylander uses the metaphor "immature" to describe the HS-only mindset, which term does contain an inherent value judgment.
Generalized American "high school" is awful; in its own way, perhaps more awful than generalized American college. Both institutions exist to transfer monetized labor from workers toward enforced state educations. In the case of high school, primarily state-run institutions transfer funds toward technology and publishing companies, where the enforcement is mandatory and the marketing so deeply embedded it's rarely questioned. Neoliberal lala-demo-exceptionalist history, useful for docile citizens of all castes, prances alongside state-subsidized remedial math- and science-prep for the next generation of weapons and consumer products designers. The "free" nature of the no-adult-legal-rights holding pens makes it, much like colonialism, a selling point for endless intervention. Those who emerge from it, and who swallow its necessary survival lessons, along with those it implicitly and insidiously teaches, are quite often molded into an unfortunate shape. As "immature," perhaps, as puppylander suggests.
By contrast, college's non-mandatory selling point is a refinement of the adult-legal-rights-possessing in-duh-vidual into an even more productive citizen, with even more resources to cite in support of demo-exceptionalism. The major difference with regards puppylander's point, however, is the socialization aspect. While being an adult in America is much like being a traditionally-raised or -schooled child, in the sense of constrained movement, violent enforcement of atrocious mores, and authority not possibly caring less about pain and misfortune, college teaches increasingly-sophisticated, out-in-the-open repression of horrors, leaving the underlying vulgarity of situation an unpleasant reminder best left in K-12.
That, in a way, is more terrifying than the honest brutality of childhood and inmate-run youth prisons. However, high school (and the rest of K-12) remains, literally, more "immature" than college, in the way that Michele Bachmann is less mature than Barack Obama. Yes, they are both terrible; yes, they are insane, and Obama is likely more dangerous.
This does not mean that Michele Bachmann, or the average product of American high school education, is not also insane and dangerous. Puppylander thereby retains an acceptable point, which could have been better refined to avoid offending the concept of not going to college--but then, that same refinement would be the very mature behavior he suggested college taught. The tragic irony is that he clearly should've paid more attention in PoliSci 412, or better yet, Advanced Trial Advocacy.
In the interest of balancing the scales, and while nonetheless retaining utter contempt for Americana's perfect ivory towers and their resultant Eichmanns, this one will find a value puppylander's underlying point about post-K-12 socializing. The tempering of intrasocial violence preached to often-newly-christened "legal adults" at college stands in contrast to K-12 violence. Consider, as an extreme anecdotal example, Aaron McKinney. Neoliberal voters and their college are scarier in the long run than neoconservative voters and their high school, but calling a fire hot and dangerous is not, in and of itself, wholly wrong.
A personal note: Like everyone, I wonder how I can be wise, good, and happy while living in a world of radical contingency dominated by stupid and evil people. The following recently came to my attention.
Practical Philosophy: The Greco-Roman Moralists
Classical Greek philosophers such as Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle are fine—if lofty thinking is what you want.
But philosophy means love of wisdom, not love of thinking. What about solid advice on how to be a good father or friend; or how to grow old gracefully, or know what true happiness is?
Where can you find philosophy that tells you not how to think well, but how to live well?
That practical philosophy can be found in the works of Marcus Tullius Cicero, Lucius Annaeus Seneca, Marcus Aurelius, Dio Chrysostom, and Plutarch of Chaeronea, among others. These Greeks and Romans of the early imperial period—from the 1st century B.C.E. to the 2nd century C.E.—devoted their lives not to metaphysics and epistemology but to the appreciation and practice of morality and virtue, values and character.
... Professor Johnson maintains that we in America have much in common with the practical philosophers' audience: the citizens of the Roman Empire. Like the Romans, we live as citizens of a superpower in a world where we are both loved and hated; we struggle daily with new and bewildering issues in our society, and we wonder how to live good lives when the world-at-large can seem so bad and so troubled.
http://www.thegreatcourses.com/tgc/courses/course_detail.aspx?cid=4473
Michele Bachmann has a law degree.
This is a free 38 page booklet, with large print and color photos
How to be Wise & Happy
Happiness strategies inspired by history’s wisest philosophers
http://www.happinessstrategies.com/Downloads/How_to_be_Wise_And_Happy/How%20to%20be%20Wise%20&%20Happy%20eBook.pdf
I think you're great IOZ, but you're full of shit here. Mentality comes from more than the institution. You're decrying puppylander's gross overgeneralization from anecdotes by giving your own gross overgeneralization and non-sequiturs. I agree that college has been used to make a management and management worship class, but this is fucking cultural too. It's not all because of college. You have a stick up your ass about college. Get the fuck over it and move onto the real problems. I mean it's David Fucking Brooks for Christ's sake.
What's your degree in, Anonymous @ 1:13pm?
Navel Studies... Ammiriigght?
@Jack Crow: Christ, why does it matter? It's in electrical engineering and applied math. And yeah, I liked learning things and getting laid! Btw, it was a great social outlet for dorks like me. Not all of us can be all sexy-cool-anarchy all the time.
Somehow kept my supposed inviolable individuality--fwiw, even suffering through depression as a result of going to school!--through it all.
So yeah, I get that it's not an ideal institution and that it's a factor in the pervading culture of management worship but some perspective would be nice...
to anon@ 2:41 - one of my true past mentors has a BSEE/MSEE from Dartmouth and a PhD in linguistics from MIT. When he went to Dartmouth, it was on Title VII Sputnik money, and he had a ball - motorcycles, women, everything. I would say that he was a pretty sexy-cool-anarchist, despite his choice of study ... I wish folks would stop stereotyping double-EEs ...
@Eerily
lulz, me too. I didn't mean to stereotype my own kind but I was just tongue-in-cheek about the sexy-cool-anarchist thing as I at least lean in the direction of the latter. The former I'm too embarrassed to talk about.
Who said it mattered, Anony? You were mounting a defense. Figured it was of what you yourself already had, since that's generally what people defend. So, yeah.
I don't necessarily feel it's a defense as I don't identify with the degree or titles. It bothers me though that in an already anti-intellectual society, people I think of as my confederates are downplaying the importance of learnins. And yes, my most profound learning has probably come from being an autodidact but structure can help.
,mounting ..what ,wher' , ..can you guys swear a little more while you are talking ..it sort of arouses me ..said she just came in from the sunny .. ,trip
And there it is: "anti-intellectual."
I guess it ought to be at expected, but typing only for myself at least, it seems that the only thing "anti-intellectual" about the criticism of academia is the reception it gets from people who confuse that criticism for a loathing for knowledge.
And, most often, if not always, that opprobrium comes from people who've had their brains reproduced by academia.
It's defensive. Natch.
More trifling overgeneralizations. It's interesting you criticize people for "confusing" things when I don't think I've said IOZ or you were anti-intellectual. Did I?
"Colledgumucation done did this to you. It made you say I was anti-intellectual (yessir I know defensiveness when I seez it!) because you were 'produced by academia' although I was 'produced' by no such causes and conditions because I am just That Cool. You obedient corporate whore!"
Glad I can fit your expectations, Jack, by saying one word. You've got it figured out, glom onto a word and you've got an argument. Hurray.
Huh, nonny? I'm not responding as if you've called any respondent "anti-intellectual." In fact, re-reading my own reply, that cannot even be assumed.
I was, on the other hand, clearly responding to the term, and its relative charge.
Jesus H. Christ hasn't this fucking thing run its course yet? Fer chrissakes ain't it soo cool to disparage a college education and especially when you're degreed. Okay we get it, you're soo fucking cool. Personally I punched my ticket and it didn't hurt me a bit, can't imagine what the fuck I'd have done with those lost years otherwise. If you think you'd be less a victim of big-bad-bizness without a college education or more equipped to deal with a disinterested Federal government with no more than a high school diploma then you're a fucking dope. Christ, get a life, pick up a gun, go to Syria, camp out in Central Park, post the personal phone numbers of Goldman Saks management on the internet but stop jacking each other off over how fucking cool you are. cuz, you ain't.
I'm sorry how was your response relevant in the least to "culture of anti-intellectualism." America generally speaking is not anti-intellectual?
@Ryerson, but I like circle jerks!
she comes back in for a min. .. ,.. of michaelR. , wait ..what .. that is what this blog is all about .. read the fine print .. . ,why do you think i'm the only girl here .. i like to watch .. .
Anne darling, you're feeling frisky today.
.. . demize ,..no .. i really do like to watch .. . , but i need to go out for a while .. . no swearing til i get back .. and put on the Neu.. .
anon 1:13/2:41/3:38/4:03,
it goes to credibility. you don't recognize character assassination when you see it?
j.c.,
your exchange with anon sorta proves my point. there's a way that college-educated people talk and argue. i don't really know how to describe it, so i keep returning to the word "socialization". it's not better, it's not worse. but it's different, and it can be difficult for people who aren't similarly socialized/acculturated to access. (btw, make no mistake about it, the only sense in which ioz is an anti-intellectual is that he's an uber-uber-uber-intellectual.)
this is why i asked upthread whether any of the responders were other than white males. again, i don't know if there's a good way to explain it. it's like, when i was growing up, i wanted to dress like all the other kids in my school. you know, white. but no matter how hard i tried, something was always "off". or, like trying to talk like the kids at school. but that's not how my parents spoke. so something was always "off". and not just the sounds or phrases, but the kinds of things we talked about, the occasions when it was appropriate to speak (do you talk over someone? wait your turn to speak?) well, out of time for today. i hope i'm shedding a little light on things.
It's too bad Anne took off because I about to swear me a blue streak. Make them panties drop.
I'll be honest, I'm banding together here for two reasons:
1. I don't have a degree and I DO want that to be considered at least as cool as having one.
2. I'm at work, I hate it and I'm taking it out here. I apologize if I come off mean spirited. I love everyone.
Wait, no one cares what I think?
IOZ is so intellectual that it turns in on itself. It's like a M.C. Escher drawing!
,she/s'e comes back in to warm up a little .. . oH,paul, ... .are we alone in here now ..have the others moved on to the next post .. . ,i don't wear pant ies .. well i do ..but not all the time .. (i wish that there was something more of tonal .. .in punctuation ..then maybe i'd use it in my writing ..i mean i'd remember how to punctuate.. .if it had something more tonal ,suited . .. ) .. . but i always wear shorts under my skirt..and wooly thigh highs .. because i like to climb things while i'm out ../, so you're not a draftsman like my father then ? .. . .. /warm ag. ..out ag... .. for wine.. .
Fuck anne, I don't understand the reference to 'draftsman'! No panties for me either, only Saran Wrap.
i haven't gone back out yet .. .are you teasing somehow .. architectural ,of my father ..that is what he was .. but i guess it is atease ..or means something different on your blogger short...,(have you seen mine by the way ..i'm occupying france .. ) . now off for wine and fences .. . ,YeSH,immaturity .. hem,.,said she is so refined ..and so immature at the same time .. "beauty ".. .and haylage,haymow ..pile a hay ..
College-educated dialogue on the whole is worse, puppy; the dishonesty level gets scrolled upward a few notches with each additional class taken, until the worst Orwell wrote about has been not only surpassed, but surpassed so well that it claims to be Orwell's successor in truth.
hey, i'm a draftsman! w00t
i'm with Paul Alexander in all of this.
i've found it difficult on numerous occassions to carry on internet conversations with academic types semantically. so, yeah, there's some there there, but my criticism here isn't born of anti-intellectualism, or the merits of seeking knowledge. it's about the cultural value judgements to the benefit of those who jump through the right hoops. irksome semantic gainsaying aside.
also, you're not wrong, Michael Ryerson, just an asshole.
What's that point, puppylander, again? That people who haven't been to college don't have as refined a bull shit production system?
@MP
"going galt" ??
I think id like some drugs and fucking and to go galt as well. tell me more about how a working class stiff like me could get in on that.
I am glad jc can let us all know when we're being defensive while he's entirely not defensive at all.
Great great thread.
Like the sign in the men's room says, IOZ:
"We aim to please ... you aim too, please".
h.a.,
hmm. yeah, in a way, you're right (about dishonesty). and that may be part of the inaccessibility.
on the other hand, i'm not persuaded it's "worse". look to j.c.'s response. he's not open to trying to understand what i'm saying. (that is, as to my hypothesis, i might be wrong. or i might be right. or i might just have my hands on the elephant's ears or trunk or penis without realizing it's an elephant.) he argues like a streetfighter (not to say college folk don't--again, don't quite know how to describe it, but it's like the difference i feel between talking to another lawyer vs. talking to a layman).
so we could write j.c. off as emotional response, but i think that's a mile closer to ioz' screaming black woman. so i return to "socialization" as an alternate explanation. folks can judge for themselves which is more judgmental. as in your initial assessment, you're quite right that, had i thought about the audience, i could have chosen better language than "immaturity". and yet, what kind of assumption about human sensibilities/frailties would that calculation have entailed? (well, i'll try not to be dishonest here, and cop to not giving a ton of thought to it at all--beyond putting the word in quotes to signal montag's point on semantics.)
getting back to point, there's no discussion to be had--j.c. and i are not speaking the same language. contrast to anon 1:13, or contrast to you, if you want. there's a form to how we state our opinions: contingent concessions, sterile clinicality, etc. we can have the conversation that i can't have with j.c. for example, though i can't say for sure, but i think socialization has a lot to do with how you might read my concessions (see original thread, "don't get me wrong", "yes, i agree", or right here "though i can't say for sure", etc., whether as an open door to revision of hypothesis or as acknowledgment/respect for differing opinion) vs. how j.c. reads concession (i leave it to him to explain how he reconciles these phrases, whether he thinks it's fake concession [read "cockiness"], a weakness signal, or whatever).
maybe there are some discussions that shouldn't be had. fair enough. on the other hand, is this without consequence? (see brooks' recitation of comparative divorce rates. is that an accidental correlation?) so, which is really "worse"?
fwiw, i didn't set out to be as offensive as i apparently was. i was just ham-handed, like a white male trying to understand racism in 2011.
"Immaturity" was an appropriate evaluation toward the generalized by-product (or at least, intended by-product) of American high school. While understanding the source of the tribal offense, "immaturity" remains appropriate; by the same token, it would be appropriate to term American bachelors of the sciences and arts (or acquirers of whatever other degrees) as immature in a different way, in whatever pejorative sense one wishes to use.
Returning to the point of "it's still understandable that they took offense," the particular tribal way of taking offense, as demonstrated in this dogpile thread, smacked of too much Anglo college-time. I.e., they read your article, then immediately began citing all the sources it didn't cover, as though every viewpoint ever expressed should be critiqued for not being an additional one thousand pages long. So, yes: you could have chosen better words, but it seems that the hair-trigger group response is to immediately opportunize the slightest hint of "non-college bashing."
Which, in all fairness, is fair, given current cultural context. But in another way, isn't fair. Just have fun with it!
As this one views with high indignation the Anglo ivory tower, and its associated pomp and circumstance, this one is perfectly able to join the critique of your original post without enjoying the resulting groupthink.
And, as aforementioned, the most enjoyable irony here is the largely academic form which the critiques took. It might as well have been scripted on CNN, in tandem with appropriate shots of you driving your Porsche home from work, cutting off a day-laborer and laughing into your bluetooth.
In closing, IOZ, if you ARE Paris, can this one get a date? Or at least a few hundred thou? Promise, this one'll make it worth your while!
at least you don't have me driving a prius.
[cut to 5 minutes from now, as puppylander climbs into his suv by bmw to pick up breakfast ingredients at whole foods.]
Montag, not to put too fine a point on it, fuck you.
Curious division, puppylander. What makes the replies "academic"? That they don't conform to your idea of how people without college educations should reply?
It's not the division that's curious, jc ...
Think Lewis Carroll's take on the four branches of arithmetic: ambition, distraction, uglification, and derision ...
Still a propos lo these many years later ...
(JC, this one used "academic" most recently, not puppy; did you question the right one?)
in my back and forth with eerily .. . quote -"..but he also talked about something to do with spending a lot of time tending .. .didn't he ? .. .fitting for this post .. in how it goes in to how he deals with all of us now .. . , and also fitting as a job , that requires little schooling .. . " a teasing .. in my suggest .. that dealing with .. others.. in such settings .. .is not of some schooling .. ,it is of some back home , and in living and other .. . of schooling very... beyond ..in knowing ..of someone's suggest ../. . as i've said before here somewhere ..i am in bar/cafes very little compared to most .. but .. . i know through some gatherings that some of us .. .have in an antique shop near by .. . one must be at some near peak ..of knowing ..of socializing .. ..of the fugue .. . of this fine balance .. to tend .. .well ..in a live setting .. . not of this shutter,shuffle .. but another .. .
(On a separate note, puppylander, you lose two points for the BMW [and an additional three for the SUV, nach]. Why is it that every yuppie, three years post-grad, buys a BMW 3 series, then upgrades to an X a few years later?
In mature closing, benz pwns ju!)
'arka, high on something , ..i thought that he was joking with that .. the hORROR lights up in her eyes .. and of that awful chain whole not .. please tell me that he was teasing .. .
(Nomenclature, here, possesses no psychotropic association.)
i didn't think that it did .. ,.. i just had this feeling of arka needing to come before the high .. .in not knowing you at all.. .something of just instinct .. ..of the high not being quite right .. could you quickly say what that naming is about for you ?that usually stops my play .. .
anne - High Arka is a goat-fucking hillbilly from the Ozarks ... he types with as many fingers as he has teeth left in his mouth ...
You win six telepathy points. Answers at high dot arka at gmail dot com.
,i'm not good with numbers .. ,of 6 ..from or out of what .. ? / eerliy..ops i almost typed lily ..i mean eerily , i have a thing for men with something of the character of sam shepard .. and ...of the ozarks mention ..i hear something of a fiddle and of hands on .. , .for me it's an opposites do attract in a curious way .. . this is nothing of whoever this person is in my saying that ..not knowing at all who he is .. just a response to your comment .. .
anne - I think if you had just left it at this:
"i have a thing for men"
you would have pretty much summed it all up ...
sam isn't quite right .. . i'm thinking of him in the film country,and of frances .. .and of some of his writing ..of plays .. .,he does play a banjo though .. .i was just trying to think of an american male ..of sort of like ,south of the border from me .. .
it's more than that eerily .. .all of my closest friends have been men .. because other wom'n can't seem to deal with something of my extreme of feminine .. . no make up,no shoes .. gentle .. .kind,loving .. .as i've said the "most feminine ".. . something of this feminine has been pointed out to me in so many different ways my life long .. . it has been very painfully for me at times .. . ..this strangeness of being somehow rejected by other wom'n
a telling ..i had a friend from banff..living here for a while ..relating to his job .. . of how we met ..he came in to the book shop where i was working at the time ... looking for some books for his son that he was raising on his own .. . ,we became friends ,not lovers ..even though the feelings were there for both .., only friends because he had a.i.d.s ..,from some drug use that began when he was very young .. .a wealthy family .. . a very handsome very early to mature of body boy .. . / .. one day i came in to a cafe where we were to meet .. i sat at the table .. silent streams of tears in my so very still , ..he said what is it .. i could not speak.. .something had come to some highest curve .. ..i could hear and feel something of the ocean of i'm faint,weak.. that i was feeling of a no longer bearable ..of what i was about to say to him .. .then with some time and his kind presence as we sat .. i started .. why ..do other wom'n not like me .. i was so afraid in asking but i had to .. . he said ..you really don't know .. i said no .. then he said ..have you ever seen yourself on film in motion ..i said no .. ..then he said .. .." you are the most feminine wom'n on this planet .. if they can not deal with that in some way .. .they will move away from you .. ." , i remember saying ..that's awful .. so unfair .. . and he said yes it is ..but sadly true .. /questions of nature and of nurtured are in my mind now here in the wee hours .. . /. , and to puppy needs to land , . ..it is all around me everywhere i go .. ., i have a wom'n doing yet another doctorate in the flat across the hall from me here .. one doing yet another phd in something else,she has a few .. in the flat next to mine .. and one doing,again back in school for more ..because they can ..of somehow funded.. . another doctorate below .. all the same ..
=]
I think all of you have a bias for maturity. Weren't Hitler and Genghis Khan mature?
aeo lus, .. "all" ?
Someone ought to ask The Crowbar just what exactly is his background, because he's argued three positions:
college scholarship attendee & graduate
community college sometime attendee
HS only graduate
Of course since The Crowbar is a fiction, he can be anything he wants... including a man, when the writer is a woman. Jacqueline Crowbar, this generations Jacquie Susann. Valley of the Ego-Dolls... always on the rhetorical defense!
karl,pen, ..he seems like a man from the little i've read of all his comments left and in looking at a couple of post .. ,if he is not.. he should be .. . ,
and of his education ..i have a sense of what it has been from the little i've read ..
Charles/Karl/Sean/J Thompson:
You lie. That is all.
Arka,
Yep. I confused your reply with puppylanders. Sorry.
Thank you kindly, Mr. Crow.
One of the stronger western academic traditions--established to the point of mandatory requirement in any respectable publication, speech, or casual hallway encounter--is to demonstrate intellectual superiority through fitting one's own work into an imaginary framework of predestined human development that draws all its elements from a supportive tradition. The inevitable "problem" this spawns, in any resulting interactions or evaluations, is that no work can possibly be connected in all ways to every single human activity done before, nor can every work devote the space to disavow everything bad that has come before (or been published concurrently). When acting as a critic, then, the western academic demonstrates intellectual merit by pointing out how any given work failed to connect itself to Text ZKXSI 6.432 and Social Meme 400989-B, and is therefore an imperfect work. Much discussion ensues about why no one connected it to Kevin Bacon, during which everyone involved can show intelligence for dropping other names that the work did not cite, or demonstrate political correctness by saying things in the vein of, "Yes, but what about the massacre of the Inuit in the pelt riots of 1412?"
That context being the background, Mr. Crow, the dogpile on puppylander was academic in that, for the non-infinite words he used in his original point to speculate about a nascent idea, he was criticized for not giving sufficient allowance to a large variety of memes regarding western class division and college attendance. To start it off, IOZ was interesting, appropriate and correct for bringing the subject up and wailing about it--said wailing being why these ones are all here--but as the conversation developed, it evolved into a group condemnation of puppylander having said explicitly something he did not say explicitly.
I just don't read it as a "dogpile," Arka. Mostly because, to put a blunt point on it, "puppylander" was the subject.
It's not like IOZ wrote something about cupcakes, and then "puppylander" got shitkicked for complaining that cupcakes are for college boys. "Puppylander" shot in guns blazing, doubled down, and got a bit of the mass reaction in reply.
I don't see how any of that is academic.
Re: yuppie postgrad large vehikls
Y'all just wait until trophy spouse starts churning out the shorties - and it's Odissey all the way!
Capt'n Obvious
(It is the behavior of critiquing any statement for not being infinitely comprehensive that is "academic."
And, dogpiling can still be a subject.)
Nonetheless, this one thinks the pseudo-anonymous Captain has it right: puppylander should be confined to a metallic beige Honda minivan for the duration of western civilization. You want an SUV? You got an SUV!
Oh, man. I knew anne was a sockpuppet. "Other women hate me, other women are crazy, amirightdudes?" That schtick is tired, son.
..i did not say that they ..hate ..,nor that they are the other word that you are using here ... ., ,i am speaking of the serious nature of what is nurtured in both his mother in law and her daughters and more .. ., and don't make light of my pain please ...i am not a wom'n that wears make up ,nor ...as i say above..shoes .. and so on .. /,and please get a name nony .. .all of you .. .
nor panties anne...?
...and stop droning on about nonnies, will ya? I think these nonnies are a hell of a lot more honest than all of you pseudonymous dipshits thinking that your cute little fictitious personae somehow make you more real. Get a life!
Somebody call Alanis.
non' 5:o6am , .. . i said pant ies
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