Writes Caitlin Flanagan, in "Colleges Are Lying to Their Students/They aren’t teaching them 'how to think'" (The Atlantic).
Here's the Wikipedia article "Sympathetic magic." Excerpt:
James George Frazer coined the term "sympathetic magic" in The Golden Bough (1889)... Frazer subcategorised sympathetic magic into two varieties: that relying on similarity, and that relying on contact or "contagion":
If we analyze the principles of thought on which magic is based, they will probably be found to resolve themselves into two: first, that like produces like, or that an effect resembles its cause; and, second, that things which have once been in contact with each other continue to act on each other at a distance after the physical contact has been severed. The former principle may be called the Law of Similarity, the latter the Law of Contact or Contagion. From the first of these principles, namely the Law of Similarity, the magician infers that he can produce any effect he desires merely by imitating it: from the second he infers that whatever he does to a material object will affect equally the person with whom the object was once in contact, whether it formed part of his body or not.
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Can't understand how these stupid little children on our college campuses think their own fragile opinions and prejudices deserve to be sheltered from any and all challenges, but don't afford the same privilege to their non-leftist fellow citizens who are bathed in left-wing propaganda all day every day.
Indoctrination through consensus is a model of faith (i.e. trust logical domain). So much for the separation of organized religion (i.e. behavioral protocol) and State. That said, judge a philosophy by the character of its principles, not principals.
This is a new take?
This has been going on since I was in college (late '70s).
Keats’ “negative capability” is a worthwhile approach.
“Both Sideism” assumes there are only two sides. Both sides are often wrong.
The capability to live in doubt is the hallmark of a solid education.
1. Sympathetic magic: Consider this the return of rosaries and crucifixes and Virgin Mary statues to schools. With people ripped from traditional religions into modern pop culture chaos, they reinvented what comes naturally (i.e., superstition; protection from harm; infallible truths, etc.).
2. There's been a general decline in attention spans with the rise of film, TV, and social media. There's been a general decline in what constitutes "adult" behavior and "maturity." This was noted decades ago per the rise fights at Little League baseball games, the rise of road rage, the rise of "going postal" in revenge against coworkers, etc.
3. Universities consciously purged all opposition starting with the Civil Rights Movement and Vietnam War of the 1960s. And of course, they've gone hog wild with equal-outcomes diversity placements of dubious figureheads (Harvard's Gay). Without pointed opposition and critical feedback, rooms full of 'intellectuals' no longer have any intellect.
I've never had a teacher or professor present both sides of a case. They took the job in the first place to mold minds, and they want a student to see the world as they do. Flanagan is on drugs.
It's all magic: the unseen Keynesian multiplier; the cargo cults that reverse cause and effect in trying to raise people out of poverty, out of addiction, out of criminality by gifting them the trappings of the stable and productive middle class; the "speech is violence" and "silence is violence" spells; the Great Mystery of Intersectionality. I like this use of "sympathetic magic" - but I feel as if the chanting, the noisemaking, the refusal to see or hear what they don't want to see or hear are more precisely like the treatment of - hang on to your hats, old, hoary, and slightly embarrassing reference alert - Ayla in Clan of the Cave Bear when the the shaman declares her "dead."
How Do you learn, without reading things you disagree with?
You know how *i* learned that communism was stupid? by reading The Communist Manifesto
HOW can you dismantle someone's argument, if you won't listen to their argument?
If you're right, the more you learn about the wrong argument, the more you'll know you're right.
The ONLY Reason to be afraid of hearing the other position, is if *YOUR* position is the one that's wrong.
For that matter, you Should be able to argue the merits of the opposing view..
Aside from being good lawyer practice, by learning the merits of the opposing view, you learn the DIS-merits of that view.. Which come to think of it, is Probably pretty good lawyer practice too!
What ever happened to school debate teams?
Well. In my experience, all forms of magic include some kind of mechanical deception or slight-of-hand trickery in order to make the mark, or the audience, believe what they think they are seeing. All of it is based on the idea that belief systems can be gamed to re-order the thinking of others. Ricky J. could probably say a lot more, if he was still around.
As for 'sympathy', I remember working on a drilling rig that was run by an Exxon Company Man. He had lost an eye in some war, and it was said that, if you had a problem, you should look into that glass eye when telling him about it, because it was the only place you were likely to find any sympathy.
What any of this might have to do with a college education is quite beyond me, and the demands placed by these 'little children' confirm that they are really just Day Care Centers for spoiled kids that have, so far, been successful at gaming the adults to avoid having to work. That's where the real 'magic' is, if you ask me, that there are grownups out there still giving this crap the time-of-day.
It's more likely that they're contesting the premise of a lecture in general: "that there is a structure to the world, that this structure can be perceived and reported, and therefore, that speaking before an audience and listening to a speaker are reasonable things to be doing..." (Erving Goffman)
Their own counter-protest is by contrast an entertainment.
Hassayamper said...Can't understand how these stupid little children...don't afford the same privilege to their non-leftist fellow citizens
That's easy. They're good people. And if they're good people, then the people who disagree with them are bad people.
Remember the old saw, "I will tolerate anything except intolerance"? The on-campus hatred and intolerance we see today is a natural outgrowth of that obnoxious phrase.
Based on my experience, virtually anything a person learns, they have to learn on their own. A teacher or instructor can provide information and feedback, but actual learning requires effort and practice on the learner's part. I remember when I was a student pilot early in my lessons. I'd get the plane in some unfortunate attitude and my instructor would seemingly just touch the controls to restore order. I asked him how he did that, and he said, "It's up to you to learn how the control the plane so you don't have to make a recovery." I did and soloed at 7.6 flying hours. I took a few programming classes, but I learned on my own how the be a programmer through countless hours of practice and experimentation. Today, my youngest grandson is learning to play the piano. His teacher listens and provides feedback, but in reality, my grandson is teaching himself through many hours of practice. He's beginning to get pretty good.
Many college professors don’t want to do that today. They don’t want to 'platform' a writer they think is wrong; they don’t want to participate in 'both sides-ism.' The same thing is true for the students who pound on the doors of lecture halls and pull fire alarms and throw garbage cans down hallways to protest the 45-minute speech of a visitor. They believe in sympathetic magic. They believe that words—even those spoken within a lecture hall—will damage them and their classmates.
I think the phrase is "chickens coming home to roost". The generation of teachers that were steeped in "fairness" and participation trophies is just paying it forward. Today's teachers are not, they are preachers and they only preach their gospel. Same as today's reporters don't report. They also preach their gospel. Today same job, different title. It is NOT like they don't want to hear an opposing view, it is that opposing views are illegitimate and hate and an evil "ism" that qualifies as double-plus ungood wrong-think.
I was informed by a parent last night that the men's restrooms at the University of Nebraska-Omaha have tampon dispensers.
My friend and mentor, Fr. John P. Schlegel, S.J., said, "A Jesuit education teaches you how to think; not what to think." And he meant it.
I've always thought of college as yet another place to learn how to learn. I studied engineering and later business, so the coursework generally didn't have another side ... however, there might alternative solutions to an answer. There are many ways to skin a cat! (Where the heck did that phrase come from?!)
The truth is that they’re scared. They don’t think their ideas can outmatch those of the hated speaker...
"We shall overcome" hath become "We shall overlook."
Unfortunately, to think you need a few prerequisites in your mental toolbox. You need to be able to read. You need to be able to understand some math. You need to know some science and some actual history of the world, or at least of Western Civ. You need exposure to the historic landmarks of literature and art and science that made our culture what it is today.
Then and only then you can be told that climate is changing, or Palestinians are being genocided, or communism is groovy, look at what evidence is presented, and decide something about it that makes any rational sense. Otherwise you're just a member of a mob raised by others for their own purposes, shouting their slogans and attacking their targets, not a thoughtful, informed human being.
Hey, guess which is easier to make: an ignorant mob or an educated citizenry?
But Althouse, you used to be a professor and now you just post this. Can you explain to us what you think of this? How are we to know if you don't explain to us? /sarc
It seems as though The Atlantic has finally seen a small dose of reality. It took long enough.
Caitlin Flanagan is a dinosaur. An honest liberal who still believes in free speech. And a fine writer too.
Who knew we were being raised with a super power when we learned
"Sticks and stones may break my bones, but word will never harm me".
The dependence, further, is shown in any attempt to produce thought. When a student has formed the habit of collecting and valuing the ideas of others, rather than his own, the self becomes dwarfed from neglect and buried under the mass of borrowed thought. He may then pass good examinations, but he cannot think. Distrust of self has become so deep-rooted that he instinctively looks away from himself to books and friends for ideas; and anything that he produces cannot be good, because it is not a true expression of self. This is the class of people that Mill describes in the words, "They like in crowds; they exercise choice only among things commonly done; peculiarity of taste, eccentricity of conduct, are shunned equally with crimes; until, by dint of not following their own nature, they have no nature to follow; their human capacities are withered and starved; they become incapable of any strong wishes or native pleasures, and are generally without either opinions or feelings of home growth, or properly their own." 1 Such people cannot perform the hard tasks required in study, because they have lost their native power to react on the ideas presented.
Just pathetic. Not sympathetic, or magical: fear of saying or presenting something that might cause students to question the woke gods of modern academe. I sense "sympathetic magic" is a term Ms. Flanagan is inclined to employ too quickly, maybe in lieu of harder analysis.
In teaching graduate (mostly) and undergraduate (occasionally), I make it important to teach within the boundaries of a given topic but not in ways that students know where I personally stand in most of the important debates. I share if asked, but I really do want to honor the intellectual journey, which is the only way students not only will really learn in ways that stay with them, but own the knowledge for themselves.
So much learning is about short term memory, especially in the humanities, and with this learning how to parrot the assumed interests and positions. This has been true so long, that a lot of academics themselves don't really own the knowledge they teach about, they go with the trends and fancies of the guild.
Of course, that's a good way to get tenure...
But it's not a good way to dance in the joys of learning that itself is contagious. Having fun with a topic, enjoying it and being passionate about learning and real diversity in opinions within it, embracing questions and encouraging different perspectives, really gets students to learn and be excited about learning more.
Caitlin Flanagan:
They don’t think their ideas can outmatch those of the hated speaker....
As Leonard Ferroni said to Henry Desalvo "You got that right."
The old churches are dying and the new ones are called schools.
Shouting down speakers at US collefes has been going on for well over 50 years with the blessing of the administrations of those schools. It's going to be years to muck out those stables even if the professors and administers wanted to, and I doubt they want to.
they don’t want to participate in 'both sides-ism.'
Joni Mitchell must be out of favor.
I suppose Caitlin hasn't taken many math classes.
"They don’t want to 'platform' a writer they think is wrong..."
Seems like a lost opportunity, to be able to demonstrate to your class that that writer you think is wrong is actually wrong. Unless, of course, you can't do that...
I was stricken when I realized as a teenager that some intellectuals are not intelligent.
There is no correct, there is no incorrect, no one has anything to teach you, you just must do your own research.
Which is it?
A) Modern conservative education philosophy
B) 50 years ago leftist education philosophy
Shorter version: conjuring vs. voodoo.
Conjuring is accomplished with brickbats, shouting, industrial grade fireworks and Molotov cocktails.
Voodoo is the stock and trade of the news outlets and the meme factories.
Yes, and it's really hard to breathe on the Moon, too. 'Cuz there's basically no air. I would not go to the Moon, if I were planning on doing any breathing.
The whole system is ripe for a preference cascade. Almost all the faculty are sick of the insanity and intolerance that has infected all of academia as a result of the insanity that took off in 2017 and reached its peak in 2020. Just one push and the whole thing will crumble, but it's not clear where that push is coming from. The economic collapse of higher education that is happening right now (though nobody outside is seeing it) SHOULD be the stimulus, but thus far all that's happening is doubling down on the conformity that produces the paranoid environment that everybody hates.
What the lack of students and the lack of parental money should have caused is a panic reaction, with leadership saying something to the effect of: "We cannot financially survive if we tell 40% of a shrinking demographic that we actively hate them and what they believe in. I know what you feel, but STFU and teach your subjects."
But what has ACTUALLY happened is that the ideological extremism and rigidity is being PUSHED by the administrators, not the professors. There are a variety of reasons, but the biggest is that, as is evident from the Claudine Gay case, a really large fraction of the administrators have gained their positions solely* through their use of ideological attacks against their competitors: in a competition in which any kind of objective evaluation has been eliminated, the race goes to whoever is most extreme and ruthless.
These people push ever-more-extreme politics to exercise power and to convert resources away from the professoriate to the administrative class. They recruit private armies of students and aim them at vulnerable targets. And the more miserable and attention-seeking students, or those who are struggling intellectually or caught up in various extremist causes, are encouraged by those administrators to take offense (often on behalf as others), file grievances, recruit their acquaintances online (sadly, they have very few real friends), and attack any professor or student who departs from the orthodoxy.
But I keep hoping that we'll see a massive preference cascade in which everyone turns to each other and says "You, too? I thought I was the only one who realized that this whole system is miserable and ridiculous.
*It used to be that the upper ranks of administrators were filled by distinguished faculty with serious accomplishments who had made a late-career switch to administration. Now there is an administrative "track": 25% of the people on it have wanted to be administrators from the beginning and only got Ph.D.s to start climbing the ladder (these are the ones whose dissertations will be found to be plagiarized in some way); 75% are failed professors or even semi-decent professors who have found themselves trapped in unpleasant situations due to the collapse of the academic job market. They won the lottery and got a t-t job and then tenure, but they are stuck in place wherever they are, have been getting no raises or less-that-inflation raises for the past 8 years, and have no prospects for advancement at their current institutions.
The truth is that they’re scared. They don’t think their ideas can outmatch those of the hated speaker.
Almost right. They know their ideas are inferior to those of the speaker.
Aggie
They mean shamen, witch doctors.
Many college professors don’t want to do that today. They don’t want to 'platform' a writer they think is wrong; they don’t want to participate in 'both sides-ism.'
They know their ideas are crap, and can't win in any sort of honest debate.
But they are garbage human beings, so instead of building better ideas, they fight to censor opposing points of view so the worthlessness of their ideas is hidden.
When you know your ideas are the best, you're happy to prove that. ESPECIALLY if you're the kind of person who wants to live "the life of the mind".
The only reason for the censorship is because they know they lose honest debate
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