Rambling on trouble
Trouble behind, trouble ahead, oh trouble move from me
A conversation with someone new to me got me rolling yesterday. I am conscious that I overshared, but was grateful for the compassion shown in listening and the shared awareness of the shifts in society that increasingly frame what is “right” and what is “wrong.”
I awoke with this in my mind. Letting my partner remain in slumber until a more reasonable hour, I opened Substack and found Lee Jussim’s take on Orwellian Diversity (https://substack.com/home/post/p-146694453): more thoughtful provocation.
In that piece, the Oxford Dictionary definition of diversity is exposed and with it, in my view, was revealed the slide into a complacent, sometimes vociferously championed obligation to comply.
Compliance with the droit du jour is now the norm in many situations. The carrot is the cachet of joining the team (with a comforting dollop of self righteousness). The stick is the no longer veiled threat of exclusion and worse. So, there is security in conformity and risk in seeking a deeper understanding.
By keeping thought at the level of circular, self reinforcing positions, a longer term and far more dangerous risk is growing. This unthinking compliance is destroying us, both on a societal level as it is oozes into learning and governance systems, and on a personal level as individuals and families lose themselves, and each other.
Losing one’s sense of self has been come a willful act. We are to expected deny reality and affirm the angst that once was understood as a rite of passage required for emergence into independence, what used to be called adulthood. That passage draws from within ourselves, a process that offers growth and experience, a discovery of every individual’s capacity to be themselves in the world of reality.
I fear my sentences are too long here and my thoughts rambling, but already I feel the day approaching and like one awakened from a dream, desperate to hang onto that feeling of being on to something even as it palpably slips away, I want to be in this space. I know that editing will take me from it, into the day, away from this fertile territory. Rambling indeed. Back to it …
I spot a citation in a passage quoted from the dictionary. In it are circular references that have become ubiquitous in certain “learning” environments. Where does the balance lie in bolstering one’s ideas by citing agreeable references? When does this practice become a hedge against exposure to other ideas, an obstacle to the very learning that the exercise is supposed to be about?
This is how just about anything can be argued on the basis of a source, the act of sourcing being meritorious regardless of the merits of the source.
When one’s own ideas are referenced by those referenced “thought leaders,” the result is a self-satisfied frisson, an imagined gif, all streamers, approving applause with an unquestioning acceptance of the stated position.
That is not learning, more a form of borrowed celebrity. It drowns out the creak of a door closing on alternative ideas. It prevents a honing of ideas toward the best possible understanding and, thence, decision making.
Ultimately on a societal scale, it ensures that the best outcomes will be achieved through luck. That’s not an ideal way to run the world, luck.
Is that clear? Not stopping to re-read. But it resonates in that I see ideas being supported “definitively” through citing a source that few would actually investigate to determine merit. I don’t mean among the general public (it would be beyond naive to think that the general public investigates sources in letters to the editor or twitter/X posts. Checking sources is an academic expectation. But is it a practice? Yes…but. This question leads my early morning ponderance to reflect on an attitude observed among fellow instructors, that being an acceptance of students’ mediocre efforts. Their performance may be blamed on the post-secondary (sometimes elementary) school system. It may be tolerated in the hope that continued exposure to class readings will bring about some improvement. But, it is not the reading, but the thinking, that matters. In shared experience, there is a discernable diminishment in the capacity to think. That has too often brought about plagiarism. And here, I am back at the practice of citation. The circular citations of WPATH are heralded by activists, influencing institutions and governments alike while the Cass Report, challenging groupthink with substantial independent referencing, is dismissed,
Can ideas stand on their own? Rigour in the examination of ideas is generally believed to be the purview of “the Academy.” Many university departments seem to have veered far from teaching how to think, becoming profit centres that train students for employment. Seeking to avoid such a base motive, it is argued that the current mode is about “bringing change” to society. Surely higher education is to prepare students to emerge into society to develop and apply relevant knowledge, occasionally wisely, and thereby contribute to society. It is not for the university to change society, but for graduates to engage within society, drawing upon their collective capacity to shape the world they live in.
I note a distinct difference between the hard and soft sciences in this regard. Will a polarization split the Academy to mirror that seen in the general public? Is the credibility of an academic stamp of approval at risk? What else could suffice?
At last I am awake and on to the demands of the day. Perhaps I can get back to this exploration, later. Meanwhile, I wonder, does anyone notice? Are we hoping AI will compensate for a devolution in human learning?