Not Boldly, Then
With space exploration, we have to consider how we are using language, and what it carries from the history of exploration on Earth. Even if words like “colonisation” have a different context off-world, on somewhere like Mars, it’s still not OK to use those narratives.
In the pages of National Geographic, Nadia Drake and Lucianne Walkowicz competitively fret about how terribly problematic the language of space exploration is:
I think the other [word not to be used] is “settlement.”
I’ll give you a moment to process that one.
That comes up a lot and obviously has a lot of connotations for folks about conflict in the Middle East. I think that’s one that people often turn to when they mean “inhabitation” or “humans living off-world.”
Apparently, notions of our species expanding into space are “born from racist, sexist ideologies that historically led to the subjugation and erasure of women and indigenous cultures,” and must therefore be corrected by the lofty and woke. And so, “government agencies, journalists, and the space community at large” are “revising the problematic ways in which space exploration is framed.”
Numerous conversations are taking place about the importance of using inclusive language, with scholars focusing on decolonising humanity’s next journeys into space, as well as science in general.
You see, any attempts to colonise other worlds, or to explore and exploit astronomical objects, will have to be pre-emptively “decolonised” and purged of gender by the neurotically pretentious. Lest our astronauts and astronomers instantly start oppressing their black or female colleagues, rendering them tearful with the words unmanned probe, while spitting on the floor and shouting about the merits of Arcturian poontang.
Needless to say, the word frontier is also deemed “problematic,” due to “narratives… based around European settlement.”
I suppose the above is what happens when otherwise clever people are encouraged to cultivate worldviews that depart from reality, often quite dramatically, but which nonetheless convey in-group status, which they choose to value more. The implication that referring to, say, a populated outpost on the Moon as a colony or a settlement will somehow be “harmful,” resulting in distress, or the raping and pillaging of all that indigenous lunar dust, is somewhat comical and contrived; but evidently that doesn’t matter. What matters is letting your peers know just how woke, and therefore statusful, you are, at least compared to the heathen rabble.
We’ve been here before, of course. Via Orwell & Goode.
My apologies, I was distracted and hit post instead of preview.
I blame Angela Merkel and the EU regulations.
@Farnsworth
David has now employed someone who’d like to have a word.
Reality corrects, and harshly, when it’s time approaches.
And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,
As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return
David has now employed someone who’d like to have a word.
I’m not skeered, I have Arcturian poontang for protection.
Redeemed solely by the cape, I think.
David has now employed someone who’d like to have a word.
Not the “wingless trans dragon” that works at Google. So there is more than one of these oddballs walking around.
So there is more than one of these oddballs walking around.
You better sit down. I’m afraid that I have some very bad news for you…
Dear Dragon Thing,
Nope, still not shocked; you’ll have to do better. Frankly, you’re kinda ordinary these days.
“Arcturian porn and their Bootes…”
Groan. 20 lashes with the wet noodle for Farnsworth!
The surgeons who agree to mutilate these poor disturbed people ought to have their licenses revoked.
I liked National Geographic better when it had pictures of topless black chicks.
More space stuff:
https://www.nbcnews.com/mach/science/ancient-super-earth-exoplanet-discovered-orbiting-nearby-star-ncna936396
Last time I checked there’s no native culture on the moon.
Several people have replied to the ladies via Twitter, pointing out that, for instance, when someone uses the words “unmanned mission,” they don’t mean – and aren’t understood as meaning – “a mission with no white males on board.” People by and large understand the term as “an automated mission with no human beings on board.” And that to feign outrage about such language as somehow oppressing women and minorities is rather silly, and indeed patronising. But the ladies’ only response to criticism that I’ve seen, from Ms Drake, is a casually patronising GIF. Perhaps they imagine themselves above mere correction.
[ Added: ]
It’s possibly worth noting that an earlier article along these lines resulted in an avalanche of correction, all of which was dismissed by the author, another “social justice” enthusiast named Marcie Bianco, who chose to view the pointing out of her errors as proof of her own feminist righteousness. She did this by denouncing her critics wholesale as “the menz,” and therefore wrong by default, on account of being male, while simply ignoring numerous replies from women, including women who actually work in the industries in question, and who appeared to be rather more knowledgeable, and more realistic, than Ms Bianco.
[ Added: ]
Again, ostentatious wokeness is almost always status-driven. (See the second item here.) It’s an attempt to signal that one belongs to the enlightened caste – our self-imagined betters. A statement being proportional or realistic carries no in-group kudos, unlike fretful contrivance. And so, engaging with genuine criticism from those deemed less statusful – and being shown to be wrong, publicly – would only jeopardise that status. Hence the lofty silence that generally prevails. Does anyone here imagine that the ladies above are overly concerned with whether their quoted assertions correspond with reality? Or that, should an error be revealed, a comical mismatch, they would conscientiously rethink their pronouncements?
Why are Type I errors so common with leftists?
What’s a Type I error?
Pogonip, it is from stats. If you reject the null hypothesis (no relationship between whatever you are comparing), but the null hypothesis is actually correct, that is a Type I error, also called a false positive. The opposite is a Type II (false negative).
Hypothesis: Wypipo science oppresses POCs. Null hypothesis: Wypipo science does not actually oppress POCs. Type I error is believing the hypothesis, not the null hypothesis, and a Type I error.
Hypothesis: Neon hair, nose rings, and bad tattoos are highly associated with one being a barking moonbat. Null Hypothesis: Neon hair, nose rings, and bad tattoos are a marker of profound wisdom and level personality. Type II error is believing the latter.
Why are Type I errors so common with leftists?
Human beings are pattern-seeking animals, and we’re so good at it we’ll find them even where they don’t exist. It takes training in logical thinking and consistent intellectual self-discipline to avoid making Type I errors.
Which, I believe, answers the question at hand.
Which, I believe, answers the question at hand.
It does. Plus the added incentive that their egotism demands it, else they’d have to admit the truth: “oh dear, my philosophy does make my ass look fat.”
These “narratives” – a term used no fewer than 14 times – are actually the words colonise, settlement, (un)manned and frontier. These, then, are the spells with which Old Whitey can inflict devastating harm on the apparently tissue-like minds of women and minorities.
And they call the rest of us sexists and racists.
Numerous conversations are taking place about the importance of using inclusive language
Curiously, being “inclusive” means excluding white people, men, heterosexuals, and anyone who is not far-left.
The circle jerk is inclusive to all who are willing to participate.
In a subordinate role, of course.
Plus the added incentive that their egotism demands it
Vanity is a powerful drug. And as noted before,
Links aplenty in the original.
Vanity is a powerful drug.
Y’know, “woke piety,” “levels of wokeness,” “I’m so ‘woke,’ I won’t even lower myself to claim to be ‘woke,'” and all the rest of it wouldn’t bother me — in fact, it would only serve as a form of amusement — if those types weren’t also seeking raw, abject power over me and others to bend the knee and conform to their ever-shifting rules and self-asserted mores.
Meaning, if “political correctness” were only a positional good, I could ignore it, wave it off, and certainly be just as unimpressed with it as I am with the man wearing the $14,000 wristwatch (that I wouldn’t know was a $14,000 wristwatch unless you told me) or the woman driving the $100,000 automobile.
Mere status-seekers, just like celebrities, simply do not impress me. I DON’T CARE. What I do care about are these self-anointed, moralizing, social-justice cretins who believe themselves entitled (because of “muh oppreshun” or just because reasons) to force me to care about them and their first-world problems and to force me to just “shut up and comply, you wretched vermin!”
So, go ahead, signal your virtue to your heart’s content. Try to out-do each other in the SocJus Olympics. Write your sophomoric blog posts about how I talk about space travel or how my enjoying a hamburger or some rot reminds your fevered, delusional imagination about some historical injustice you can’t precisely define or draw a direct line to. I’ll just sit back and laugh at you, if I even notice you at all.
But don’t you dare try to impose, by law or mob, your twisted, immoral, shape-shifting virtues on me. Bugger off!
OK, I feel better. I think.
But don’t you dare try to impose, by law or mob, your twisted, immoral, shape-shifting virtues on me. Bugger off!
You identify the problem precisely. “Social Justice” is a means to an end, specifically control over the rest of us. One only needs to look at the shifting narratives of the #MeToo movement to see how it works, where it winds up as “Social Justice for me but not for thee.”
Vanity is a powerful drug.
Apropos of which, the Left has worked hard to persuade us that the Seven Deadly Sins are outmoded and those who regard them as important are hopelessly behind the times.
Seven Deadly Sins are outmoded
You mean the Seven Woke Virtues? They certainly seem to base their entire lifestyle (can’t really call it a “philosophy”) on exercising the Big Seven as much as possible. Wrath (mobs), Pride (woker-than-thou posturing), Gluttony (fat acceptance), Sloth (Free Shit for Everyone!), Lust (too many examples), Envy (Occupy Wall Street), Greed (Socialism, or what’s mine is mine and what’s yours is “ours”). Etc.
“Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!”
And woe unto the rest of us who have to endure it all.
The Long March Through the Institutions, explained, point by point:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rB8dxgFI0vg&t=0s
It’s snowing, so this Ephemera item from last winter seems appropriate:
“Social Justice” is a means to an end, specifically control over the rest of us. One only needs to look at the shifting narratives of the #MeToo movement to see how it works, where it winds up as “Social Justice for me but not for thee.”
SocJus politburo member wannabe: “My life is so completely out of control. If I could only control someone else’s life….”
Seven Deadly Sins are outmoded
You mean the Seven Woke Virtues?
Saul Alinsky tellingly dedicated “Rules for Radicals” to Satan (well, “Lucifer”) as the original radical.
A statement being proportional or realistic carries no in-group kudos, unlike fretful contrivance. And so, engaging with genuine criticism from those deemed less statusful – and being shown to be wrong, publicly – would only jeopardise that status.
That that-a that that that.
“Deemed,” by the way, is one of the key words here. The amount of unacknowledged sheer contrivance that goes into keeping up these “controversies” and “problematics.”
But don’t you dare try to impose, by law or mob, your twisted, immoral, shape-shifting virtues on me. Bugger off!
To paraphrase Trotsky:
” You may not be interested in Social Justice*, but Social Justice* is interested in you.”
* Social Justice
Curiously, being “inclusive” means excluding white people, men, heterosexuals, and anyone who is not far-left.
It also means excluding anyone who could actually get them to another planet, and keep them alive after arrival.
If there are any movie producers reading this, here’s my pitch: a sequel to “The Martian,” except instead of a lonely botanist trying to survive an unforgiving environment, it’s a half-dozen wokelings having an “inclusive conversation” about the dilemma presented when the only one of them with the technical knowledge to fix the oxygen generator is also a member of the least-privileged caste, who sees no reason why she should be obligated to shoulder the burden for the rest.
Set it in real time, and allow the audience to watch them bloviate until there’s literally no hot air left for them to blow. I can only imagine the silence at the end of the picture, as the most annoying alpha-wokeling tries in vain to collect enough air to finish his argument, will be most gratifying.
as the most annoying alpha-wokeling tries in vain to collect enough air to finish his argument
“It occurs to me that perhaps we should designate some off-world locale as a preserve for Nadia Drake and Lucianne Walkowicz and those of like mind.”
Ark-B from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy? Oh, wait I forgot – Earth is populated by the Ark-B passengers from another planet. This makes a lot of things now understandable.
Thank goodness for white males! Without them everyone would be at each other’s throats throwing out blame for every real and imagined wrong.
But the ladies’ only response to criticism that I’ve seen, from Ms Drake, is a casually patronising GIF. Perhaps they imagine themselves above mere correction.
Still nothing. 🙂
Still nothing. 🙂
It’s now been 8 days since the article – which doesn’t permit comments or corrections – was published. Again, I see no evidence that the ladies are overly concerned with whether or not their assertions correspond with reality. Presumably, they will continue to ignore anyone pointing out the various begged questions and ludicrous assumptions, and will then, after a time, repeat the same conceits.
It’s what pious people do, apparently.