#i would say more kids are leftist then in other generations cause we have access to informal leftist stuff via the internet | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

cyberneticpeoplespolis · 6 years

Text

What Creates Radicals?

This was initially posted to the Wellington Socialists site with a foreword by Neil Ballantyne linking the concepts I raised to WelSocs goals. It can be found here.

Some leftists have coined the abbreviation “FDCKs.” This stands for “First Day Communist Kids” and it’s indicative of a kind of worryingly elitist and short-sighted current in modern socialism. Very rarely do we listen to people who are at the meeting for the first time, because if we did, we might learn a bit about what creates radicals in the first place. This piece is an attempt to analyse that process, and see what lessons we can learn from various theories of ideology and psychology. I will use some intentionally broad terms (ie. radical rather than socialist) as many of the processes here could equally describe a person’s descent into Fascism, as after all, every fascism is an index of a failed revolution.

The starting point of a lot of radicals is a sense of inequality. It’s usually only when we come into contact with the well-off (whatever that may mean) that we first start to think about radical solutions. This is where the concept of relative deprivation starts to become useful, it’s only when our position in society is implicitly questioned by the existence of people in higher positions that we start to get a sense of politics. As Marx says:

“A house may be large or small; as long as the neighboring houses are likewise small, it satisfies all social requirement for a residence. But let there arise next to the little house a palace, and the little house shrinks to a hut. The little house now makes it clear that its inmate has no social position at all to maintain, or but a very insignificant one; and however high it may shoot up in the course of civilization, if the neighboring palace rises in equal or even in greater measure, the occupant of the relatively little house will always find himself more uncomfortable, more dissatisfied, more cramped within his four walls.”

However there is much more to relative deprivation than mere economic inequality, indeed it’s often more of a psychological problem, and doesn’t have to reflect reality at all. A family that loses their home through war suffers from relative deprivation, so too does the rich caucasian male who doesn’t feel he can criticise minorities as much as he used to. Creating a narrative of inequality is more important than actual wealth differences, and the only real requirement is a real or imagined Other (including a past-Self) who is better off. This process of creating a narrative of inequality doesn’t explain why a person becomes a radical, but it does act as a gateway into exploring real or imagined root causes of problems in society. How that initial desire to critically look at society manifests is entirely dependent on the environment we’re conditioned in. This process is painfully obvious among teenagers, who often latch on strongly to whatever the first convincing explanation for deprivation might be. The language that a person is exposed to also impacts on how a person can express that explanation – for example without the word “capitalism” I would only be able to express an explanation for economic inequality using moralistic or vague words – in this way, people who are gaining political consciousness can have completely accurate explanations for deprivation, but lack the language to convey that explanation. Sometimes we can use morals as a substitute for material analysis, but this in itself doesn’t make the analysis incorrect – it just makes material solutions harder to see.

Normalising and encouraging these keywords, then, is one of the foremost tasks of propaganda. Often these words are the missing piece in a puzzle otherwise completed through lived experience. Attaching a word like Capitalism to problems, leads to solutions based on ending Capitalism. But this is a very dangerous time – without having access to the right words, all sorts of scapegoats can be substituted in for the real root causes of society’s problems. After all, most ideologies only need an Other to rally against. But if there is a radical solution presented to a person, there’s often a clash of ideologies within them. The ideologies that a society uses to reinforce and maintain its production are always in opposition to ideologies that offer material solutions to a society’s’ problems. Cognitive dissonance happens when a person has two competing beliefs and tries to overcome the contradictions between them – it’s an unstable time that’s often quite unpleasant, as it means re-evaluating a lot of ideas at once. Cognitive dissonance can lead to a person avoiding new information that reinforces one idea or another, or can lead to a person avoiding expressing their views because they believe them to be embarrassing or incomplete.

Eventually though, most people need internal resolution of contradictions. This can happen in many ways, including simply denying evidence and sticking with preconceived ideas, or gradually incorporating new ideas into our personalities. Irony is often a gateway into the adoption of new ideas, and a way to test the water before committing to ideologies. Irony acts as a sort of buffer-zone between our ideas and other people’s potential rejection of them – a safe shield of plausible deniability that lets people express ideas without consequence. Unsurprisingly a lot of people in radical politics start as ironic radicals.

To be embraced, Ideologies still need to be reconciled with personality. Personalities under capitalism are very complex constructs, much more superficial than a person’s consciousness. A personality can be constructed out of our culture and how we look (aesthetics), our language, and an ongoing performance of personality (personality traits). All three of those things interact with ideology to create a political identity – we need to integrate all three separately and holistically with ideology. Political language can be understood through aesthetics, and political aesthetics need words to describe them. Both processes have to be constantly performed in order for a person to integrate into an ideology. This is often the hidden part of radicalisation, an unconscious process of testing the water in various ways – through subtle changes in sensibilities and language as a person seeks to express ideas in ways other than dry explanations.

Losing individuality, or deindividuation, is often brought up as a part of radicalisation. Individuality is a relatively new concept in human societies, and it’s no coincidence that the origin of the concept can only be traced back to the dawn of bourgeois thought, but it’s nonetheless an important part of living under capitalism. Individuality becomes our selling points in the labour market, which simultaneously homogenises the underlying traits that are seen as individual. A radical politics can often destroy the more superficial kind of individuality, but it can also lead to finding the underlying traits that make up a personality, and integrating them into ideology.

What can these processes teach us about radicalisation in a more general sense? It’s important to realise as socialists that adopting ideologies isn’t simply about selecting the best choices out of a “marketplace of ideas,” rather it’s an ongoing, sometimes unconscious process that we all go through – a tedious elimination of internal contradictions that keep arising. The development of a political consciousness is just a process of realising how contradictory our ideas are, which sometimes leads to a synthesis, but more often leads to further contradictions.

In addition, it’s not simply about making the better arguments, radicalisation is a holistic process that involves an integration of ideology into psychology on multiple levels. We need socialist art, socialist music, socialist language and socialist action just as much as simple discussion and reading. Culture needs to be drenched in socialist ideology in order for any message to be conveyed, and we’re not up to the task yet.

This is why an ongoing process of worker’s education can be so important – we’re all just as confused as each other, but through shared understandings and helping each other resolve contradictions, we might be able to work a few things out.

#socialism #education #pedagogy #radicalisation #cognitive dissonance

2 notes · View notes

go-redgirl · 5 years

Text

What Millennials Get Wrong About Social Security Fox Business ^ | August 29, 2019 | Liz Weston

Few issues unite millennials like the future of Social Security. Overwhelmingly, they’re convinced it doesn’t have one.

A recent Transamerica survey found that 80 percent of millennials, defined in the survey as people born between 1979 and 2000, worry that Social Security won’t be around when they need it. That’s not surprising — for years, they’ve heard that Social Security is about to “run out of money.”

The language doesn’t match the reality. Social Security benefits come from two sources: taxes collected from current workers’ paychecks and a trust fund of specially issued U.S. Treasury securities. This trust fund is scheduled to be depleted in 2034, but the system will still collect hundreds of billions in payroll taxes and send out hundreds of billions in benefit checks. If Congress doesn’t intervene, the system can still pay 77 percent of projected benefits.

In any case, chances are good Congress will intervene, as it did in 1977 and 1983, to strengthen Social Security’s finances. Social Security is an enormously popular program with bipartisan support and influential lobbies, including the immensely powerful AARP, looking out for it.

Still, millennials who believe Social Security won’t be there for them could make bad choices about their retirement Opens a New Window.savings. The worst outcome would be if they didn’t save at all, convinced retirement was hopeless. But any of the following myths could cause problems.

‘I can save enough to retire even without Social Security’

Good luck with that.

Currently, the average Social Security benefit is just under $1,500 a month. You would need to save $400,000 to generate a similar amount. (That’s assuming you use the financial planners’ “4 percent rule,” which recommends taking no more than 4 percent of the portfolio in the first year of retirement and adjusting it for inflation after

(Excerpt) Read more at foxbusiness.com

TOPICS: Business/Economy

KEYWORDS: ponzischeme

_____________________________________________________________

INDIVIDUALS: COMMENTS/POSTS:

To: rintintin Millennials, lol. Too many have no clue how to save. It’s spend, spend, spend right now.

29 posted on 8/31/2019, 9:21:15 AM by bgill ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- To: rintintin Oh, good grief. I just saw the Austin, TX loony liberals, aka millennials, have to have an app to remind them to take the garbage to the curb. If they can’t think ahead a week for garbage pick up, they certainly can’t think ahead to retirement.

30 posted on 8/31/2019, 9:50:48 AM by bgill ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- To: rintintin In any case, chances are good Congress will intervene, as it did in 1977 and 1983, to strengthen Social Security’s finances. i take it that means raising both the retirement age and SS "contributions"

31 posted on 8/31/2019, 9:56:33 AM by Chode (Send bachelors, and come heavily armed!) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- To: Sequoyah101 “SS is already income indexed just as medicare is. Just so we get that straight. The “rich” have already paid in more to both programs by a long shot and will already get less out after taxes and medicare premiums than anybody else. I know the urge to eat the “rich” is overwhelming to most.”

Business owners and individual contractors pay double SS and medicare $’s/taxes.

I took early retirement at 56 years old. I didn’t work for a year. Then, I consulted as an independent contractor. I made great gross pay and no way to shelter it except via and IRA.

Our CPA told us that I needed to deposit every other pay check into an escrow account to pay for my quarterly US/Cali pay roll taxes and my doubled SS and Medicare taxes as an independent contractor.

When I turned 62, she told me to quit work and work on our 401k’s and IRA’s and take SS. 19 years later, I’m still drawing SS and still alive.

My wife worked until she was 70 something and past the SS penalty age. She made all types of deals re not having medical insurance as my policy covered her. Also, she was able to pay more into her 401 K and SS.

Both of us started paying into the SS program when we were teenagers. She paid SS for about 60 years and medicare whenever it became a taxable item. I maxed out on my SS payments every year after I was 20.

We are not by ourselves.

32 posted on 8/31/2019, 10:20:25 AM by Grampa Dave ( Here's the Formula: Hatred +ut Government + Disarmed Civilians = Genocide !) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- To: genghis I don’t know any 22 year old people making $100k/yr.

Saving 14.5% a year is hard but doable - just don’t have any kids.

No one is making 10% on savings.

33 posted on 8/31/2019, 10:21:11 AM by 1FreeAmerican ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- To: Chode It would take 60+ GOP senators in 2021. Amazing how you get a room full of people and the looney-bins get their chance to speak out.

34 posted on 8/31/2019, 10:28:31 AM by DIRTYSECRET (urope. Why do they put up with this.) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- To: 1FreeAmerican “I don’t know any 22 year old people making $100k/yr.”

Computer programming fields. Lots of 22 year old making $100+k.

Lots of people also saving over 14.5% when it is pre-tax 401k. I know people putting away 46%, the limit.

35 posted on 8/31/2019, 10:42:26 AM by CodeToad ( Hating on Trump is hating on me and Americans!) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- To: CodeToad; 1FreeAmerican A four year degree in Logistics can easily pay a newbie $100k.

36 posted on 8/31/2019, 10:48:39 AM by mad_as_he$$ (Beware the homeless industrial complex.) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- To: mad_as_he$$ OK, ya got my curiosity.. What job in logistics pays $100k? Not doubting you, I’m just not familiar.

37 posted on 8/31/2019, 10:54:09 AM by CodeToad ( Hating on Trump is hating on me and Americans!) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ To: a fool in paradise "There are even Leftists saying that 401k plans should be grouped together and shared." That, would be the beginning of a second overt civil war. However, if they want to play that game, then let's go after all their sacred cows:

Take away ALL government/public pensions and share that money with the general population - particularly with all people who have no pension.

Take away ALL university endowments, and share that money with the population and to pay off all student loans.

Levy a 60% tax on ALL 'entertainment' profits - including a 60% tax on all money paid out to 'entertainers' after the first $800,000. This money will then go into a general fund to share with all 'aspiring artists' - to 'promote the arts'. Surely all those in the 'arts' who keep talking about how important supporting the arts is will be happy to be taxed heavily for this.

Levy a similar tax on all 'sports' profits, using the money to promote youth sports and women's sports etc. This would include a 60% tax on all athletes salaries over $1 million/year. I'm sure those who are taking a knee in the NFL, for example, would be very supportive of taking their salaries for the greater good.

Declare that in order to ensure all people receive equal 'justice', all deserve equal quality legal representation. Thus call for 'single payer' national legal insurance, and make it such that everyone gets an attorney chosen for you (sorry, if you can't keep your doctor, you can't keep your lawyer). In order to 'make it fair', we will have to also do away with all 'private' legal services. ALL attorneys would thus work for the 'single payer' legal system.

Declare that 'being informed', and having access to 'news' is a basic human right, and that to ensure we have enough independent people collecting the news, and to promote a diversity of news sources, all news 'anchors' should have their salaries taxed at 70% after the first $800,000/yr. Also, to ensure that the news is truthful, laws should be passed that make it easier to sue news agencies and their individual employees if they pass along unverified or false 'information'. The 'single payer' legal insurance will help with this.

This is just for starters, because hypocrisy is almost unlimited on the left.

38 posted on 8/31/2019, 10:55:07 AM by neverevergiveup ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ To: CodeToad It’s weird if you search the pay for a specialist they are listed at around $50k. But I recently had to try and hire a GOOD logistics person that was a NCG. They were all sucked up by the big internet companies with packages that totaled around 100k. My area is hot for this skill so that maybe a driving factor. The ones from the local universities were recruited as college Juniors and awarded scholarships etc. Crazy stuff.

39 posted on 8/31/2019, 11:00:33 AM by mad_as_he$$ (Beware the homeless industrial complex.)

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

0 notes

channelnewswire-blog · 5 years

Text

BREAKING News Out Of Kentucky, This Is BAD

It is time to fight back America! Chris “Badger” Thomas AMERICA’S FREEDOM FIGHTERS –

A vandalized billboard with the message “Kill the NRA” has popped up along a major highway in Kentucky following last week’s deadly Florida high school shooting, according to images circulated on social media, FOX NEWS reports.

Once again the “tolerant” left is showing by their actions, that they are anything but tolerant and are so mentally unstable that they break laws to endorse their hate.

take our poll - story continues below

Whom do you consider to be the most corrupt Democrat Politician?

Dianne Feinstein

Maxine Waters

Adam Schiff

Chuck Schumer

Kamala Harris

Kirsten Gillibrand

Keith Ellison

Cory Booker

This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

Completing this poll grants you access to AFF updates free of charge. You may opt out at anytime. You also agree to this site's Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.

Just outside of Louisville, Kentucky, on Interstate-65, a billboard has been vandalized with, ” KILL THE NRA” on it as well as “Resist 45”.

ADVERTISEMENT - STORY CONTINUES BELOW

Resist 45 is a small but growing movement against the 45th president of the United States Donald Trump.

The group had a Facebook page, but it seems to have been removed, though a quick search shows a few very small sub-groups.

The National Rifle Association has responded to the billboard:

ADVERTISEMENT - STORY CONTINUES BELOW

“Here’s an image from Kentucky, this morning, To all American gun owners, this is a wakeup call. They’re coming after us.”

“Resist 45” message also has been vandalized other billboards in the Louisville area over the last year, including ones near the Kentucky Exposition Center and University of Louisville campus.

Most Americans do not know much about the NRA and what they do, other than what mainstream media reports, which is usually very anti NRA.

NRA Website, some history about the NRA:

Dismayed by the lack of marksmanship shown by their troops, Union veterans Col. William C. Church and Gen. George Wingate formed the National Rifle Association in 1871. The primary goal of the association would be to “promote and encourage rifle shooting on a scientific basis,” according to a magazine editorial written by Church.

ADVERTISEMENT - STORY CONTINUES BELOW

In 1990, NRA made a dramatic move to ensure that the financial support for firearms-related activities would be available now and for future generations. Establishing the NRA Foundation, a 501 (c) (3) tax-exempt organization, provided a means to raise millions of dollars to fund gun safety and educational projects of benefit to the general public. Contributions to the Foundation are tax-deductible and benefit a variety of American constituencies including youth, women, hunters, competitive shooters, gun collectors, law enforcement agents and persons with physical disabilities.

While widely recognized today as a major political force and as America’s foremost defender of Second Amendment rights, the NRA has, since its inception, been the premier firearms education organization in the world. But our successes would not be possible without the tireless efforts and countless hours of service our nearly five million members have given to champion Second Amendment rights and support NRA programs. As former Clinton spokesman George Stephanopoulos said, “Let me make one small vote for the NRA. They’re good citizens. They call their congressmen. They write. They vote. They contribute. And they get what they want over time.”

As previously reported by AFF News, the shooting at the Florida High School has caused the anti-gun groups to lose their collective minds, to the point now they are manipulating and abusing the shooting victims for their agenda.

The website:

Women’s March Youth EMPOWER is calling for students, teachers, school administrators, parents and allies to take part in a #NationalSchoolWalkout for 17 minutes at 10am across every time zone on March 14, 2018 to protest Congress’ inaction to do more than tweet thoughts and prayers in response to the gun violence plaguing our schools and neighborhoods. We need action. Students and allies are organizing the national school walkout to demand Congress pass legislation to keep us safe from gun violence at our schools, on our streets and in our homes and places of worship.

Students and staff have the right to teach and learn in an environment free from the worry of being gunned down in their classrooms or on their way home from school.

Parents have the right to send their kids to school in the mornings and see them home alive at the end of the day.

We are not safe at school. We are not safe in our cities and towns. Congress must take meaningful action to keep us safe and pass federal gun reform legislation that address the public health crisis of gun violence. We want Congress to pay attention and take note: many of us will vote this November and many others will join in 2020.

Join us in saying #ENOUGH!

It is clear that these groups desire hate and violence and are not even above using and abusing the student victims for their own sick desires.

This has to stop, We the People need to unite and have a collective voice and send the message that we are done allowing these hate groups to use media propaganda and lies to push their hate onto civilians.

I truly hope that people will start uniting and organizing to shut this garbage down, I am sick and tired of the lefts agenda enforcing their new “rules” go against our freedoms and rights, down our throats.

Chris “Badger” Thomas is a Veteran who served our country as an Army Combat Medic.

TOGETHER WE WILL MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!

Please like and share on Facebook and Twitter!

Facebook Has Banned Us!

The leftists at Facebook decided they didn’t like our message, so they removed our page and are censoring us. Help us fight back and subscribe to our newsletter so that you can stay up-to-date with everything Facebook doesn’t want you to see!

Email *

0 notes

friend-clarity · 6 years

Text

Missing context at Columbia 1968

Mark Rudd provides a rosy picture (below) of the student protests in the 60′s. Here is what Wikipediea has to say about this gentleman.

Mark William Rudd (born June 2, 1947) is a political organizer, mathematics instructor, anti-war activist and counterculture icon most well known for his involvement with the Weather Underground.

Rudd became a member of the Columbia University chapter of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) in 1963. By 1968, he had emerged as a leader for Columbia's SDS chapter. During the 1968 Columbia University Protests, he served as spokesperson for dissident students protesting a variety of issues, most notably the Vietnam War. As the war escalated, Mark Rudd worked with other youth movement leaders to take SDS in a more militant direction. When the general membership of SDS refused to go in a more violent and pro-Communist direction, Rudd together with some other prominent SDS members formed a radical, violence-oriented organization, referring to themselves collectively as "Weatherman" after the lyrics from a famous Bob Dylan song.

Rudd went "underground" in 1970, hiding from law enforcement following the Greenwich Village townhouse explosionthat killed three of his Weather Underground peers. He surrendered to authorities in 1977, serving a short jail sentence. After serving as a mathematics instructor at Central New Mexico Community College, he is now retired in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and has since expressed some regret for advocating and using violence. ...

In 1969, as SDS membership grew rapidly, members' views concerning both goals and methods began to diverge widely. Rudd felt that SDS was not doing enough to protest the war in Vietnam. He was a leader of the Revolutionary Youth Movement (RYM), a faction of SDS, which advocated a more militant course of action while other factions within SDS were becoming concerned about Rudd's increasingly vocal calls for violent confrontation and hardline Communist sentiments. The 1969 SDS convention effectively splintered and ended the organization. Rudd and other former RYM members ultimately formed Weatherman, a self-proclaimed "organization of communist women and men." The new organization was intent on overthrowing the government through violent actions. Spreading communism was a priority for the members of Weather, as when Rudd told other members of SDS, “ Don’t be timid about telling people we’re Communist. Don’t deny it, be proud of it.”[9]Years underground[edit]Rudd and other members of Weatherman participated in an SDS National Action on October 8–11, 1969, an event which became known as the Days of Rage.[10]Charges filed against demonstrators following this action threatened the movement and its supporters. Rudd, along with other prominent members of Weather, went underground in March 1970 following the Greenwich Village townhouse explosion, an incident in which three members of the organization died when an explosive device, intended for a servicemen's ball, detonated prematurely. The dead were Terry Robbins, Diana Oughton, and Ted Gold, who was Rudd’s friend and partner in RYM and the Columbia sit-ins. Weatherman had already come to the attention of the FBI, but this explosion caused the members of Weatherman to take further precautions and to engage in more clandestine operations and according to some Weatherman members like Bill Ayers, build an underground revolutionary movement. After the townhouse explosion, the government actively sought to apprehend Mark Rudd and twelve other members of the Weather Underground Organization (WUO).[11] For seven years Rudd lived underground, although he was disengaged from the WUO for most of that time.

In the piece below we see no regret for his his Leftist based violence.

The Missing History of the Columbia ’68 Protests, April 22, 2018

Op-Ed Contributor, By Mark Rudd

Mr. Rudd was a leader of the campus protests at Columbia University in April 1968.

We entered Barnard and Columbia in the mid-1960s optimistic, eager to learn and proud of our new schools. By the end of May 1968, almost a thousand of us had been arrested, beaten or expelled (as I was) by our beloved university.

Beginning on April 23, 1968, in an act of protest against the university’s role in the war effort and its plans to expand into nearby Harlem, we had occupied five classroom buildings. The administration, after a week’s hesitation, called in hundreds of police officers, clubs and blackjacks swinging, including the dreaded Tactical Patrol Force, to forcibly remove us; they did it a second time three weeks later.

In popular memory, the Columbia protests were a high point of the campus movement against the Vietnam War, and a mile marker in its radicalization. But this history, which privileges the actions and concerns of white students like myself, is incomplete, and it misrepresents what made the protests so powerful — the leadership of the black students.

I arrived on campus in 1965 and immediately fell in with a group of campus radicals, who eventually formed the Columbia chapter of Students for a Democratic Society. For years we organized against the war as being unjust and illegal, a war of choice, and fought racism on campus in the form of the university’s refusal to allow mostly black and Latino cafeteria workers to organize a union.

In late 1967 we learned that Columbia was affiliated with a military think tank; the university was also moving ahead with plans to build a gymnasium in the city-owned Morningside Park that would have segregated the (mostly white) students from the (mostly black) local residents who would have access.

We had grown up in the wake of World War II and watched the civil rights movement take shape in the South, and the university’s support for the war and its institutional racism shook us to our core. We had often wondered whether we would have been “good Germans” under Nazism, or whether we had the moral courage of the civil rights protesters, many of whom were black students our own age.

By April 1968, S.D.S. had joined in a loose alliance with the Student Afro-American Society, comprising the more politicized of the few black students at Columbia. On April 23, both organizations found ourselves occupying Hamilton Hall, Columbia’s main undergraduate classroom building. For a time, we even held the dean of the college hostage in his office.

There was a difference between us, though. We white kids were ragtag, messy, arguing constantly with each other. We were unsure of what to do once we had occupied Hamilton. But the black students, inspired by the civil rights movement in the South and by their own parents’ lifelong struggles, were certain that they had to barricade the building as their own disciplined statement.

They saw themselves as representatives of the Harlem community. Local political leaders, black activists and revolutionaries, and elders bearing hot food all trekked to Hamilton in support. Their occupation, much more than anything we white students did, was “the pivotal act” of the Columbia protest, as Raymond M. Brown, a leader of the Student Afro-American Society, aptly termed it in a recent essay.

Because of their stand, hundreds and then thousands of students and local residents rallied to the cause, and within two days three more buildings were occupied. Thousands of other people stood vigil outside. “We can’t abandon the black students in Hamilton Hall!” was the universal battlecry.

The Columbia administration was terrified of what Harlem might do if the police were called. Administrators waited a week as the occupations and support demonstrations grew, and Columbia became worldwide news. Eventually, the police moved in, arresting the black students without violence. But at the other buildings they indiscriminately and brutally attacked not only the occupiers, but students, professors and even journalists who were outside protesting the police busts. In response most of the student body went out on strike, closing the university for the rest of the semester.

The central role played by the Student Afro-American Society has never been acknowledged in accounts of Columbia ’68. The story has been about the white kids of the New Left, the S.D.S. and myself, as a singular protest leader. Ray Brown called the media’s erasure of the black students’ role “strategic blindness.”

Ten years ago, about 50 former students who had occupied Hamilton Hall joined with 250 other strike veterans for a 40th reunion at Columbia. Alford J. Dempsey Jr., now a judge in Atlanta, stunned the white people in the audience when he said, “The time I spent here just about destroyed me.” The only thing worse than the alienation he felt as a black student on the overwhelmingly white campus “was watching my wife die of breast cancer.” The tears in our eyes attested to how little we had understood the lives of our black classmates.

Women were similarly written out of the history of the protests. Nancy Biberman, another S.D.S. strike veteran, recently wrote that of about 700 people arrested on April 30, about 200 were women. They provided leadership at crucial actions, in the occupied buildings and in the overall strike committee.

The events at Columbia became a symbol and a model of student rebellion for the next two years. I often run into people who tell me that Columbia ’68 changed their lives. As for myself, after a rocky few years pursuing the fantasy of anti-imperialist and socialist revolution, I settled into a lifetime of teaching and organizing. Most of us have spent our lives in professions committed to the common good such as health care, the law, education, social work and labor and community organizing.

I do not regret what we did that spring; I hope that young people today can draw inspiration as they design protests around gun control, mass incarceration, racist policing and climate change. But in doing so, it’s imperative that they learn from our mistakes as well.

0 notes

degrafa · 7 years

Text

What Does Science Mean To You?

As kids, we had to take science classes from first grade until high school. All these classes taught us all the basic science concepts and many other important things in life, from the origins of life, how the human body works, and other more complex topics such as chemistry and physics. The subject wasn’t always easy but many times we have enjoyed understanding scientific concepts come to life and understood by our simple brain.

Much has changed today when it comes to science and technology. There are newer discoveries that have strengthened previous scientific theories or some that have entirely refuted them. It is likewise easier for us to gain access to a vast amount of knowledge on the web, something that we didn’t have access to in the past. It’s funny, though, that our understanding of what science really is about have become clouded regardless of how much we know about it now.

APOLOGIES TO MERRIAM, Webster, and everyone else who has ever assigned themselves the chore of cataloging how English speakers use words, but science is not a noun. I mean, yes, technically it is.1 But conversationally, most people use ‘science’ like Mark Watney did in The Martian, when he said he would “science the shit” out of the problem of growing food on Mars.

Science the verb is a process of questioning, hypothesizing, experimenting, and—so, so often—being wrong. Again and again and again. Until you get it mostly right. (Because no science [n] is ever complete.) Ideally, the process is democratic: Anybody can science the shit out of anything. In reality, most people “do” science vicariously—by reading about new discoveries and having faith that the discoverers aren’t charlatans. Though it’s not quite faith: We trust them because scientists argue in public.

These arguments happen all the time. Sometimes they last decades. Scientists curse one another out, hold grudges, and stop speaking altogether. But even in the nastiest of arguments, scientists generally tacitly agree that they are all Doing Science. Not Doing Science is an insult, usually reserved for fringe individuals who falsify data or host daytime nutrition shows. In terms of nerd fights, one mainstream scientist accusing another mainstream scientist of Not Doing Science is akin to Kanye West storming Taylor Swift’s 2009 VMA speech to imply that she didn’t deserve Best Female Video.

(Via: https://www.wired.com/2017/05/physicists-cant-agree-science-even-means-anymore/)

We may have a few misconceptions now on what science is really about because we have been bombarded with too much information we don’t really know what to believe anymore. Even scientists themselves are always in an argument but that is not entirely new because they have been bickering all throughout history and it’s what allowed them to make all these diverse discoveries and inventions, after all.

"Science" in the phrase "science is settled" is a misuse of the word. Science is a methodology – it is not a theory, nor is it a conclusion or result. Example: It would be an accurate statement to say the following: "many scientists agree that industrialized human culture is causing changes in climate" – this statement, although accurate, is not generally conclusive with regard to the question about human causation of climatic change.

The leftists are masterful at manipulating language in order to seem morally superior, and to quell any potential arguments against their narratives – "climate change" being one of their favorites. In reading the above statement, anyone who is predisposed to think human beings (especially Western industrialized human culture) are intrinsically harmful to the Earth would take that statement to be conclusive – to believe in a truly nonsensical way that "science is settled" on the matter.

The primary explanation for how and why the leftists are successful at manipulating massive numbers of people is that a very small percentage of the population is inclined to use critical thinking (logic) when presented with a narrative that "sounds" high-minded and of a higher level of morality.

(Via: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2017/05/settled_science_lets_settle_the_argument.html)

Human behavior likewise plays a big role in just about everything there is in this world. Even with complex yet age-old concepts like science, our opinions can get in the way of our experience and new learning. The main challenge here is the nature of science itself. While these brilliant scientists do their best in trying to understand the way the cosmos works, they are basically just sharing their well thought-out opinion on a certain topic they have studied in-depth for quite some time. It’s not always set in wood or stone. There are a lot of mysteries and contradictions all around us and it’s what makes science such an interesting yet frustrating field of study.

Whatever science means to all of us today are all a product of the brilliant minds of scientists of yesteryears and today who have dedicated their entire lives to understanding the world around us and where we fit in the equation. One thing for sure is that we’ll keep on discovering and learning new things and even debunk some old beliefs we had but we’ll never fully decipher the mysterious nature of science but we’ll live with that knowledge like our ancestors did in the past.

What Does Science Mean To You? was originally published to https://www.degrafa.com

from https://www.degrafa.com/what-does-science-mean-to-you/

0 notes