One hour video: Prager gets a lesson in cultural marxism
Posted by Solver 6 years ago to Philosophy
Revealing discussion between Dennis Prager and two UC Berkeley students about sex, gender, race, marriage, parenting, etc.
The two students are devoted followers of cultural marxism, which preaches that everything is just a social construct. Prager, having Christian values, has a hard time understanding the complex backtracking cultural marxist critical theory metaphysical answers given by these students.
It is interesting to see how these cultural marxists operate their thinking.
The two students are devoted followers of cultural marxism, which preaches that everything is just a social construct. Prager, having Christian values, has a hard time understanding the complex backtracking cultural marxist critical theory metaphysical answers given by these students.
It is interesting to see how these cultural marxists operate their thinking.
SOURCE URL: https://youtu.be/JlSlnqlNYV8
'If you jump off the roof of a 20 storey building,
you may believe from the bottom of your heart that gravity is a social construct,
but you still end up a hamburger'.
Or,
Nature will not be fooled.
First, I have to congratulate the audience for being respectful even though they disagreed with the two guests. You would not have seen that if this were a leftist forum.
Regarding professors and free speech: "It's not that these professors are liberal, but they are very intelligent and they've spent time crafting their arguments and showing their research..." Uh, you just realize that all you did was admit that they are inherently biased and presenting only a biased viewpoint. To me, that isn't the sign of intelligence at all, but merely idealism.
Same topic: "the student just needs to go in to the professor and explain their views." This student is making to fundamentally flawed assumptions, the biggest is that the professor is intellectually honest. That simply isn't the case or the professor wouldn't be pushing his/her viewpoint on the class in the first place! The second flawed assumption is that an ideologue is going to be rational and tolerant in a private setting where they weren't in a public setting! He's got that one exactly backwards - people are usually reserved in public.
Regarding Political differences: "So the ideological right is very focused around families as the base unit of society, while the progressive left is more focused around communities of similar ideology." All you did was there was admit that leftists want to make their entire societies ideologically homogeneous - i.e. that they don't allow political dissent. You just proved Prager's point.
"Regarding gender" "honeybees perform three separate genders." Uh, no they don't. They have two genders, but the vast majority of the female gender are sterile (only the queen can mate). The student is conflating sex and gender here where he went to such great pains earlier to try to claim they were distinct.
I think the other aspect of the debate that Prager failed to point out here is that first graders are not and never have been considered stewards of themselves for the simple expedient of maturity. The only way the argument of the two students holds water is if one abandons completely the notion of maturity - either physically, emotionally, or otherwise.
"I think you are misunderstanding the concept of sex and gender. Gender is in how you perform your gender." Huh? So in other words you invent for yourself what you want and I have to adhere to your concept? Is that not coercive? I also loved how when asked how he would address his niece he dodged the question.
I also love how he tried to assert an authority of knowledge by bringing up the term epistemology as an excuse to push the actual argument under the rug, even while admitting that the purpose of epistemology is to question the roots. He used it to suit his own argument, but when challenged with his own statements had to turn to ignoring the statement. Classic leftist style of debate - create rules that apply to one side but which don't apply to the other.
"When you are the face of an institution, you can't adhere to your personal values." And there is the heart of it right there and it leads perfectly into the next segment on tolerance. It is a completely false narrative that one can hold two sets of values - one in public and one in private. It is an outright lie. It is also sheer hypocrisy from the leftists who are continually saying that corporations can't speak - only individuals can! They are creating an impossible conflict here because on the one side they are saying that one must adhere in public to some formless, nameless "opinion" while on the other side saying that these very same formless, nameless entities can have no public opinion!
Regarding race "There is no biological distinction between race and if you don't believe that you have been grossly misinformed." For all your reading, you obviously have never studied medicine or biology to go with your geology. It is medical fact that sickle cell anemia is a condition almost exclusively found in blacks. Skin pigmentation is a quality stemming from one's racial heritage. So is hair texture. I think it is you who are grossly misinformed.
"Before we get to college, we have to address the fact that black communities get disproportionately lower amounts of funding..." This is patently false. Maryland is the primary case study of this, where they are spending fortunes on education in the inner city, yet the literacy and graduation rates are below average. The fundamental fallacy is that money = education, while studies have shown time after time that the biggest correlating factors to a child's education are the mother's education, the active presence of a father, and the combined parental emphasis on the importance of getting education. This can be seen quite easily by looking at Utah, who spends very little in comparison on education yet still produces above average graduates.
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I wish that liberals did think that. To the contrary, it seems that the pin everything to gender or race bias. I would be quite happy if they stopped doing this.
In real terms, the GFR (Glomerular Filtration Rate) is different for men and for women; and for African-ancestry patients vs non African-ancestry. Most of the time, however, what is reported to the physician is both the African and non-African reference ranges. This lets us skirt nicely around the problem that, depending on 'how much black ancestry' an individual has, his muscle fibers (and hence Creatinine elimination rate) may more closely resemble African - or not.
What really matters is not if you are African or not, what matters is if you have the particular genes that code for a denser muscular structure. Right now, there is a valid positive association of that gene set with a blacker skin, but as intermarriage continues that will be less true. There is nothing genetically incorrect with postulating an introgression of the genes for increased muscle density into someone who otherwise looks Nordic. (And that is not even taking genetic engineering into account.)
Jan
There’s No Scientific Basis for Race—It's a Made-Up Label - National Geographic
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/ma...
At the end it concludes,
“That race is a human construction doesn’t mean that we don’t fall into different groups or there’s no variation,” Foeman says. “But if we made racial categories up, maybe we can make new categories that function better.”
Their’s that word “construction,” as in “human construction.”
If you add to that the fact that there has been tremendous gene flow amongst populations over the last 3,700 years we return to the point that - medically - what is important is if you have the gene in question, not whether your appearance matches a population norm. For example, "an incidence [of sickle cell trait] of 0.2% in white infants" was noted in the US in 2010. Being labeled as 'black' is not a prerequisite for having Sickle cell.
Jan
I have done a bit of research on the genetics of honey bees and it is more accurate to say that the sexual maturity of the female worker bees is suppressed by the pheromones of the Queen.
Those females that are physically more distant from the Queen in the hive may become assertive and even lay eggs - which are then destroyed by the other workers.
The most interesting thing about the sex of the honey bee is that the drones have no genetic identity - they are haploid. They contribute nothing to the content of the eggs. Drones are essentially 'bee shaped envelopes' that one Queen uses to impregnate another Queen.
Jan
"There is a massive underrepresentation of certain ethnicities at this university." So in other words, you do support Affirmative Action because you believe that college isn't there to help smart people become smarter, but to enforce your notion of an ideal racial mix - even though you don't want to call it a racial mix or admit that it exists. Question: if you don't believe race actually exists, how do you justify the thoughts that there are some racial communities which are underserved? How then do you turn around and justify entrance criteria based on the very identification you don't believe exists!?!
"If there really is a difference between kids who grow up with only one parent, we need to understand why that is happening." We do understand it. It has been studied. You just don't like what the studies conclude, so you advocate for more studies in hopes you can engineer one that better suits your narrative.
Prager: "So you don't want to admit that black communities have a higher crime rate?" Response: "Well you have to go out and interrogate why those crimes are happening... You have to wonder why violent crimes happen." Again, this is avoidance of reality. This is trying to deflect from the proven reality that it absolutely is an example of cultural values being the determining factor in societal issues when you want to make it about race. "It the result of certain circumstantial disadvantages..." They aren't circumstantial at all. They are resultative. It is choice and consequence - not random chance.
I also loved the debate over human goodness and Prager's final point: that if you have not lived outside the US, you have no idea how privileged you really are. Having lived outside the US, I can absolutely agree to this statement. The student's pretentious assertion that he could understand is the very arrogance that only comes with such privileged ignorance.
And that’s just one thing. The video provides a general understanding of their “logic” behind this.
He does not have "Christian values."
One of his left-collectivist and racist enemies called him a "professional Jew."
When they were talking about race I wanted to ask both of why were are correlating statistics on poverty and single-parent families with race. The answer is complicated, but the reason why we're looking at the correlation is related to the reason. The statistics don't seem that bad to me. We have come from race-based slavery to this in less than 200 years. I think we're doing well at dropping this fetish (or whatever the proper word is) for associating people's physical attributes with "race."
Prager brought up an interesting thing about viewing people as basically good or bad. What he says rings true. During naming ceremonies at my liberal UU congregation the minister always says we don't accept original sin and the water does not representing washing away evil. I would like to ask him why we tell our kids to be good and why we made the US, which he says is good, if humans are basically bad. I suppose he'd say we need a civilizing leviathan. It has me thinking.
When he says we never tell our kids to be selfish, I thought I do. I try to teach them reason, and maybe I'm just blessed, but I find they are good. They don't need to be bullied or guilted about putting other's needs ahead of theirs in order to treat people fairly and honestly.
I don't think anyone in that discussion think "cultural marxism" is something real or was something discussed.
I really enjoyed it.
An eye opening six and a half minute video clip where Professor Jordan Peterson summarizes the evolution of this ideology to the universities,
https://youtu.be/4zkBZyd2hVY
2. Many people are unaware of how horrible Stalin was. ---> Yes
3. Post-modernists were all communists but couldn't admit it. So they took the communist argument but made it about power rather than wokers vs owners. --> I do not know if this is true, but I know I reject post-modernism. I do not see why post-modernists' motivations matter.
4. This has led to an increase in identity politics. --> I think identity politics may have increased during my lifetime. I am not sure. I am almost certain the cause is manifold and not due to one group such as post-modernists.
5. Some of these thinkers are hell-bent on demolishing Western civilization. --> Extremists have always been with us. I think he's giving them too much credit.
6. Believers in identity politics have "infiltrated" "bureaucratic organization". --> This seems like a scary way of saying #4, that identity politics have increased. If they have, you'd find more of them in various job functions.
I'm not sure they've increased. I actually feel like we're seeing their dying gasp.
I do see the increase in post-modernist thinking. I'm not sure what to make of it. I do not sense it's driven by communists because I see it more from people claiming to be anti-communist.
It seems like Prager and the students agree there are male and female genders and people in between. I do not get why the student thinks saying "boys and girls" to a class is oppressive or why Prager thinks saying "boys and girls" is pillar of human civilization.
I agree with Prager that more people hide having voted for Trump, but is not the same thing as hiding they're conservative. President Trump has a lot of outlandish antics and traits that are not normally associated with conservatism. I suspect many people who would proudly discuss voting for Mike Pence hide their vote for Trump.
Also, it's natural that people get some negative reaction when they talk about politics. That's why people avoid the topic at work. Prager says Trump voters get more negative reaction. Even if setting aside Trump's antics and if we imagined Clinton voters and Trump voters were equally likely to discriminate, Trump voters would still face more discrimination because Trump lost the popular vote by nearing 3M votes. This is just the natural result of having a minority view. Being in the minority doesn't automatically make you a victim.