Carolyn > Books: Read‎ (466)

"This ideal liberal subject can move to wherever the jobs are because she has no connection to anywhere in particular; she can do whatever labour is asked of her without any moral objection derived from faith or tradition; and, without a spouse or family to attend to, she never needs to demand rest days or a flexible schedule. And then, with the money earned from this rootless labour, she is able to buy consumables that will soothe any feelings of unhappiness, thus feeding the economic engine with maximum efficiency" (9).

"And the liberal feminist appeal to consent isn't good enough. It cannot account for the ways in which the sexuality of impressionable young people can be warped by porn or other forms of cultural influence. It cannot convincingly explain why a woman who hurts herself should be understood to be mentally ill, but a woman who asks her partner to hurt her is apparently exercising her sexual agency. Above all, the liberal feminist faith in consent relies on a fundamentally false premise: that who we are in the bedroom is different from who we are outside of it" (131).

"I’m a lifelong Democrat. I turned 18 in 2003 and have never voted for a Republican. But over the past decade, and especially the past five years, I’ve watched my party distance itself from the values and principles I hold dear.
People on the left once viewed free speech as sacrosanct and championed speaking truth to power. Now they disparage open expression as a danger to democracy and minorities. The aspiration of judging individuals by the content of their character rather than by the color of their skin has given way to identity politics and “equity” initiatives that prioritize group interests over individual rights. Women’s rights, previously understood as relating to their oppression on the basis of sex, is now viewed by the left through the lens of gender identity, which gives priority to men who declare themselves to be women. Today’s progressive can’t even tell you what a woman is. The right may be inconsistent in its support of free speech, individual rights and women’s rights, but the left is consistent in its opposition to all three."

"There's something about the woke politics inside these companies, the way they think of themselves as not really American companies. And it's somehow very, very difficult to...have a sharp anti-China edge of any sort whatsoever" (177). "You know, I criticized Google a few years ago for refusing to work on its AI technology on Project Maven with the U.S. military, but working with Chinese universities and Chinese researchers. And since everything in China is a civilian- military fusion, Google was effectively working with the Chinese military, not with the American military. And there was sort of this question, “Why Google was doing this?” And one of the things that I was sort of told by some of the insiders at Google was they figured they might as well give the technology out through the front door, because if they didn’t give it – it would get stolen anyway.

"I had a set of conversations with some of the Google people in the deep mind AI technology, “is your AI being used to run the concentration camps in Xinjiang?” and “Well, We don’t know and don’t ask any questions.” You have this almost magical thinking that by pretending that everything is fine, that’s how you engage and have a conversation. And you make the world better. And it’s some combination of wishful thinking. It’s useful idiots, you know, it’s CCP fifth columnist collaborators....But I think if you think of it ideologically or in terms of human rights or something like that, I’m tempted to say it’s just profoundly racist. It’s like saying that because they look different, they’re not white people, they don’t have the same rights. It’s something super wrong. But I don’t quite know how you unlock that." (Ycombinator).

"One of China's leaders who explained this concept to me told that the word 'country' consists of two characters, state and family, which influences how they view their role in looking after their state/family. One might say that the Chinese government is paternal.

For example, it regulates what types of video games are watched by children and how many hours a day they play them. As a broad generalization, when the interest of the country (like the family) is at odds with the interest of the individual, the interest of the country (like the interest of the family) should be favored over the interest of the individual.

Individuals are parts of a greater machine. As a result of this perspective, the system seeks to develop, promote and reward good character and good citizenship. For example it gives people a social credit score that rates the quality of their citizenship. And each person is expected to view themselves as parts of the greater whole. I'm not saying which system is better." (206)

"If poor Black families lived in a respectably middle-class way, then whites would have to recognize their full citizenship. And even if that didn't happen, educated African Americans would have gained the knowledge, self-determination, and financial independence to choose their own path as bet they could in a deeply unjust world" (18).
Later: "In the 1929 book Americanization through Homemaking, a Southern California home economics teacher portrayed the Mexican American diet as leading to crime" (99).

"The common good is about how we live together in community. It's about the ethical ideals we strive for together, the benefits and burdens we share, the sacrifices we make for one another. It's about the lessons we learn from one another about how to live a good and decent life. This may seem a far cry from what we see in politics these days. But the common good, like all ethical ideals, is contestable. It's always open to debate and disagreement."

1. Genetics is a matter of luck. 2. Genetics influences one's educational trajectories," and "The educated are rewarded not just with more money and more stable employment, but with better health and well-being" (194) and better behavioral choices that "shape life trajectories." 3. "Emphasizing the role of luck increases support for redistribution" of freedom, resources and welfare. In a survey in Norway, half the respondents stated that "inequalities that stem from factors outside of a person's control should be eliminated." People believe that unearned advantage is unfair and should be corrected. Ergo, we must reorganize society to compensate for luck or lack thereof.

"Perhaps the most powerful belief teachers absorb during their training is that education should be a natural, pleasurable process and that learning or (heaven forfend) memorizing is inherently boring and soul-destroying. And if teachers directly impart information, progressive and constructivist educators argue, they will produce automatons who can regurgitate disconnected facts but are unable to think critically about them" (142).

"Some progressives are loath to acknowledge...that students from less-educated families have different needs or less knowledge of the world than other students, fearing they'll be labeled racist or reactionary. But ignoring or denying that fact puts them in the position of ascribing the undeniable gab in test scores--and in educational achievement generally--simply to 'poverty,' as though it were poverty itself that prevents poor kids from achieving at the levels of their wealthier peers" (146).

"There is another class of coloured people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs, and the hardships of the Negro race before the public. Having learned that they are able to make a living out of their troubles, they have grown into the settled habit of advertising their wrongs — partly because they want sympathy and partly because it pays. Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances, because they do not want to lose their jobs.”

Great quote from Freud, "If you wish to expel religion from our European civilization, you can only do it through another system of doctrines, and from the outset this would take over all the psychological characteristics of religion, the same sanctity, rigidity, and intolerance, the same prohibition of thought in self-defence" (70).