We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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Becoming more widely noticed Political correctness is like HIV: after you’ve caught either, something that you could otherwise deal with easily can kill you.
Somewhere after 9/11, with Bush having informed us all about the fundamental and undeniable peacefulness of Islam, I began to think of our own governments as the HIV virus, preparing the welcoming ground for pneumonia that usually follows and eventually kills you. Islam is just one particular strain of bacteria causing common and normally non-lethal pneumonia.
– Alisa, commenter of this parish, two months ago
And note that one guy, by triggering internal SJW craziness, has done more PR harm to Google than has been done since its inception. It’s like an autoimmune disease.
– instapundit today
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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Google “strongly supports the right of staff to express themselves” – but will fire you for wrongthink.
It all is a distant and purely contractual echo of Mao’s Hundred Flowers campaign.
Those historians I have much respect for are not divided. Jung Chang’s autobiography (and the book on Mao she wrote with her husband) is in no doubt. Long before it happened, Hannah Arendt (Origins of Totalitarianism) had already analysed the “method of provocation” adopted long before the Russian revolution, and suitably evolved when the communists were in charge of the state instead of trying to overthrow it. After silencing people, how do you find the ones whose minds are not as silent as their mouths: by tricking them into thinking that mild criticism will be allowed, of course.
Good post and good comments.
Of course if their is no such as objective truth (let alone objective moral right and wrong) then the SJWs are correct.
There is direct line between the American Pragmatists “the right is only the expedient in our way or thinking” and the SJW thinking that dominates Google and co today. So it is NOT just from Frankfurt School Marxism (although that has been incredibly influential), this is the logical development of mainstream American philosophy, the road that America has been on since the defeat of Common Sense by the Pragmatists in philosophy and the Progressives in politics (normally the same people) that was underway as far back as the 1890s.
Indeed a popular attack on the principles of objective truth can be seen in David Hume in the 18th century – although it is only in the 19th century that the darkness of Hume (what J.S. Mill called “the light of Hume”) became popular – and, at first, only with a small group of people.
Indeed, good post and comments. In addition to what Paul wrote, I think that feminism has been a factor. Women are (on average) much more concerned about feelings. For many, the truth is less important than the fact that it makes someone feel bad, and now that they have social and political power, they are enforcing their priorities. The Google kerfuffle is a perfect example. I have seen no-one refute the points of the memo. They simple declare it wrong and hurtful.
PapayaSF (August 8, 2017 at 4:51 pm), while you may for all I know be right that support for firing the Google-be-sane guy was e.g. higher in the HR department than at the coding coalface, and the gender ratios conform, be aware that Google’s CEO is a ‘diverse’ (Indian American) but male individual, and he wrote that the guy had to be fired because “… Our co-workers shouldn’t have to worry that each time they open their mouths to speak they have to prove they are not like the memo states …” Writing that to justify firing someone for what he politely said requires a degree of insolence and calculation that says the CEO is very with-the-programme.
I think the company being in California probably has more to do with this than its gender ratio – and the fact that SJWs collude has even more still.
I never meant to imply that the “feelings first” attitude was exclusive to women. It’s common to all SJWs.
Google is guilty of corporate cowardice.
The memo writer exposed a paradox in its strategy. He trusted both his and his employer’s moral compass to be able to express and explore the issues honestly and fairly.
They totally screwed him and it makes me feel sick