Worse than Mere Madness
One example of countless:
Elon University in North Carolina banned the word “freshman” from its website and student orientation, claiming it’s sexist and suggests that the young women might make good rape victims.
It’s replacing the term with “first-year.”
“The term has often been felt to refer to the vulnerableness of young women in college for the first time,” Leigh-Anne Royster, the school’s “Inclusive Community Wellbeing Director” told the College Fix.
“Given the rates of sexual violence perpetrated against women on college campuses, it is useful to examine any use of a term that suggests that a group of people just entering college might be targets for such violence in any way,” she added.
In fact, the word is apparently so dangerous that any orientation leader who dared to use it was immediately corrected.
“They engrained over and over in our brains that it was supposed to be ‘first-year,’ not ‘freshman,’” sophomore orientation leader Alaina Schukraft told the Fix. “They were very adamant . . . and stressed the importance of using language that would make the new students feel comfortable.”
Ironically, Schukraft said that multiple students approached her and said they were actually more comfortable with the word “freshman.”
But no matter. Greg Zaiser, vice president of admissions and financial planning, insists that it will make the school a better place for women — telling the Fix that people consider “freshman” to be a “sexist” word.
“As an inclusive community, Elon strives to incorporate language that is current and reflective of our student body,” Zaiser said in an e-mail to the Fix.
Please note how, step by step, Leftists go from a perfectly reasonable major premise (such as, for example, that every man in a free society should have license to speak freely, publish in the press freely, think as he likes and do as he likes, provided no one else is harmed) through a very dubious minor premise (such as, for example, that certain words influence the psychology as subtly as astrological conjunctions of malign stars, including words that use the word ‘men’ to refer to the race, not the sex; and this influence, in turn, leads or tends to lead to an environment where some real harm, such as rape or murder, takes place) to reach an utterly and screamingly bounce-off-the-rubber-walls insane (such as, for example, that no man in a free society has license to say or speak the word ‘freshmen’ lest the word curse him by bad magic).
To support the minor premise, all that is needed is a disbelief in human free will and moral agency, and a belief in elves, or other subtle and aery sprites that influence the souls of otherwise innocent boys and turn them into frogs, or, as the case may be, rapists. Knock wood. If we all agree not to say ‘freshmen’ or ‘manhole-cover’ or ‘fireman’ or ‘actress’ or ‘bully’ or ‘shrill’ then the subtle and invisible frogs that cause rape will vanish back into the soot and smoke of svartalfheim, where the bad sprites come from.
Since the minor premise is only doubtful — for it is possible, under the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis of Linguistic Relativity, that vocabulary does effect cognitive content indirectly — anyone scoffing at the gibbering bounce-off-walls copulation-bat-guano insanity of the conclusion can be directed to boring and inconclusive make-believe scientific studies garbed in arglebargle and jabberwocky that supports the minor premise. This will cow the meek, and those who are not weak can be denounced as obscurantists, luddites, and anti-science bigots.
The debate is over. The science is settled.
For topics where science has no authority to offer, any other authority can be proposed as a substitute in the minor premise. Instead of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis of Linguistic Relativity, make up anything, and pretend it is a consensus of right-thinking people. It does not matter who are what your pretend authority is, since no one ever actually checks the minor premise anyway, but rely on peer pressure, on social cues, to tell him which way the cloud of mob-opinion is moving, or is said to be moving.
So, once more: (1) start with a reasonable and obvious good, say, the moral good of charity to the poor, or equality between the races, as a major premise. (2) Without drawing attention to it, slip in a doubtful but not insane minor premise, say, the economists think inflating the currency will create demand which in turn creates meatpies falling from clouds, or that concerned and thoughtful people have concluded a strong central government armed with the power to read men’s hearts will abolish race hatred. (3) Derive an utterly Lovecraftian noneuclidean shrieking horror of insanity conclusion from it, such as that the you must surrender your liberty and dignity to achieve this obvious good in the first case, or, in the second case, that you must surrender your liberty and dignity to achieve this obvious good. I
n fact, in all cases, the conclusion is always the same: you are being asked to surrender your liberty and dignity, to adopt absurdities of speech and behavior, and invite halfwitted bureaucrats or perverted or crapulent politicians to pester, belittle, and rob you, in order to achieve some obvious good which has no possible cause and effect relationship to the liberties and dignities you are surrendering.
And when the obvious good allegedly being pursued is farther away than before, instead of re-examining the minor premise to see whether the cause and effect relationship alleged actually exists, one redoubles his efforts, and demands twice as many concessions from your life and liberty and happiness as before.
You would think so simple a trick would not work. Think again. No trick has ever worked so well and so entirely defrauded so many people into throwing away their minds, their liberties and the their self respect, yea, with both hands.
Leftism is not a mental disease. It is not merely madness. Madness is wholesome compared to this.
It is a mental act of blanking out reality so that one can say and do things as if one has a mental disease. It is playacting a mental disease; it is a make-believe mental disease.
The Leftists are addicts: they are addicted to unreality.
Reality makes them feel bad and bad about themselves. Reality wounds their self esteem. Unreality make them feel good and good about themselves. This addiction has its fishhooks deeply deeply wedged into the scrotums of their self esteem. They can no more unhook the addiction than they could drop their trousers in public to detach a cruel groin barb.
And to attempt to pull out the addiction would cause so much pain to their self esteem, they cannot attempt it; they cannot discuss attempting it; they cannot think about attempting it. They not only deny that they have a problem, they accuse all those around them of having the problem, of being oppressors, of lusting for power, of being greedy, or being misogynists, of being racists. This is merely a litany of their own crimes and failings.
And when they act and speak so as to prove that they are guilty of all they accuse the innocent of — that fact also is swallowed up on the make believe. It is blanked out. Something happens in their brain cells, and suddenly it never had happened. They don’t argue the point, they don’t even see the point, they just change the subject and launch another round of accusations, and accuse a bystander of the flaws they practice, but he does not.
Like a crack addict, they will do anything, anything, to feed their unreality addiction, sell their clothing, turn tricks, commit crimes, adore and worship Jihadists, protect and adore Communists, wear images of Che and Mao — anything.
Death or threats of death do not shock them back to reality, since reality is the one thing this whole elaborate addiction-behavior is attempting to avoid. They welcome death. They would like to die, but they would like you to die first.
The purpose of the make believe madness is to avoid real problems in life by inventing make believe problems (such as assuming badthink words have magic powers) that can be solved by nagging and petty tyranny, and, in extreme cases of Leftism, real tyranny.
Normal madness caused by normal chemical imbalances in the brain are wholesome compared to this.
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
