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Anthropology Food and Drink Politics

Already Broken

November 15, 2023 77 Comments

Margot, seen below, is a “nutrition counsellor.” She is “root-cause and system focussed.” Oh, and she has some questions:

What do we eat during the revolution?

Turns out you can’t smash capitalism and agitate the proletariat without a solid meal plan.

“We can fight with our food,” says she.

I wanna discuss and explore with you what, er, how we divest from capitalism while balancing, and, er, while getting adequate nutritional needs. We’re not gonna burn out this time. We’re not gonna let the resistance break us. 

Bridge crossed, methinks.

Update, via Mr Muldoon in the comments:

Apparently, the revolution will be fuelled by cashew milk and vegan pseudo-cheese. Because as capitalism is toppled, and amid the riots and burning cars, there will, it seems, be space for neurotic niche cuisine.

Update 2:

NielsR adds,

Sounds pretty bourgeois to be telling the proles what their nutritional needs are.

I suspect that the fantasy of being in charge and important, of correcting others amid some cosmic drama, is very much the appeal. It’s the standard pattern of the type. And Margot, dear Margot, is very much of a type.

And so, while her comrades “break capitalism” and “abolish” prison, and as violent criminals roam the streets unmolested, Margot will be instructing the little people on how to dry pepper seeds and how to wash foraged bin scraps in vinegar to remove any trace of those nasty pesticides. And I doubt that this fantasy, this contrived, absurd mindset, is amenable to realism or logic, or any kind of correction. It’s probably best considered as a case of bad wiring.

Margot and her peers, these psychologically precarious young women – all of a remarkably narrow social class – are, they tell us, the ones who will be “moving the world forward.” And they’ll bestow this gift, this glorious transformation, by “coaching people in how to eat from a revolutionary and resistance standpoint,” and by making endless TikTok videos about themselves and their cultivated mood disorders.

Assuming, that is, that the proletariat are tempted by the prospect of economic ruin, roaming gangs of muggers and rapists, and evenings spent washing other people’s bin contents.

Somewhat related.

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Written by: David
Anthropology Free-For-All Parenting Politics

She Should “Just Be Able To Have” Things

November 14, 2023 61 Comments

Via Mr Muldoon in the comments, umbrage is detected:

As this chap quips in reply,

Like, I get that someone has to work for society to function, but why does it have to be me?

And this one,

A lot of complaints about capitalism are more properly bug reports to God.

Update, via the comments:

Rafi adds,

I like that you tagged this ‘parenting’.

Well, addressing the matter earlier might have spared our unhappy madam a lot of pierced and tattooed grumpiness.

There is, of course, plenty of scope for grumbling about the seemingly endless range of things that can be taxed. And existential angst – or existential pouting – can be difficult to avoid, the human condition being what it is. See the aforementioned “bug reports to God.” But the emotional assumption that Things Should Just Be There For Me, Forever, In Unlimited Quantities™ is, I think, something best addressed before one’s children venture out into the world.

Children who, as adults, may then make TikTok videos of themselves bemoaning the fact that they aren’t simply being given a free house, and free food, and a free car, and free petrol for the free car. Children who, as adults, may then seem genuinely bewildered by the prospect of being responsible for the feeding and clothing of any children that they, in turn, might have.

Another thing occurs to me. If pretty much everything you need, or want, should just somehow be there anyway, on an indefinite basis, via some oddly unarticulated rearrangement of the universe, then it’s not obvious how gratitude might fit into such a mindset.

Also, open thread.

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Written by: David
Anthropology Politics Those Poor Darling Thieves

I Know, Let’s All Pretend That Behaviour Doesn’t Matter

November 8, 2023 30 Comments

Lifted from the comments, a difference of opinion:

As I posted in reply,

Flattening values, such that the criminal and their victims are somehow equal in moral worth, is a staple of progressive schtick. But it seems to me that the decision to try to steal someone’s dog is precisely how you know that that person’s wellbeing is of very low importance.

A slightly different perspective:

The better way to understand this is that the thief himself values your stuff more than his life. He’s the one who made that decision.

If an example of the aforementioned schtick is needed, this comes to mind:

To recap. According to Mr Ford, our “proud SJW,” the lone woman being attacked at a bus stop on her way to work shouldn’t have defended herself – because, we’re told, “If she had let him rob her, even at gunpoint, both likely would have survived.” And apparently, the well-being of the mugger – who was mugging while on probation – trumps any desire for self-defence, even if the victim fears for her life.

At which point, I think one has to ask an obvious question. In the case of the mugger, survived to do what? Continue mugging women, presumably. Which, in turn, raises the question of exactly how many assaults and armed muggings, or worse, a mugger’s survival is worth.

Answers on a postcard, please.

In the archives, you’ll find many variations on this theme. As when we were told – by Minneapolis City Council President Lisa Bender – that a dislike of having your home invaded by feral, malevolent predators, and having the lives of your family put in mortal danger, “comes from a place of privilege.”

Or, this rather nightmarish example of antisocial liveliness:

Following which, I added:

It’s perhaps worth noting that egalitarian assumptions don’t exactly help on this front – say, the belief that such creatures are just like us, only more oppressed, and that their wellbeing is somehow a matter of great importance. A conceit that is not only wrong, and insulting, but which is often disabling when it really matters.

If, for instance, someone with a big, shiny knife is breaking into your home in the middle of the night, you should not, ideally, be distracted by any great concern for whether or not your attempt at self-defence results in them getting injured or ceasing to be. Not least because their ceasing-to-be would be a very good thing. A gift to the world.

Among our betters, however, all manner of contortions can be performed:

Readers may wish to ponder the implicit conceit that the burglars – the ones brandishing carving knives – are the real victims and should therefore be spared any meaningful consequence of their own chosen actions, their own sociopathy. Because, apparently, one should sympathise with the people breaking into one’s home and driving off with one’s stuff. In one’s own car. 

Though perhaps these are skills only available to more elevated beings, including, obviously, Guardian columnists.

Update, via the comments:

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Written by: David
Anthropology Free-For-All Politics

Our Betters At Large

November 1, 2023 44 Comments

Incoming plot twist:

A woman who organised the Black Lives Matter protest that toppled the statue of Edward Colston has been jailed after spending more than £30,000 donated to a youth charity on Ubers, an iPhone and computer, beauty products and takeaways.

I’ll give you a moment to steady yourselves. What with the shock and all.

Ms Xahra Saleem, formerly Yvonne Maina, is a co-founder of the activist group All Black Lives Bristol, and was hailed by Rife magazine as one of Bristol’s “most influential under-30s.” Ms Saleem’s merry band of megaphone-waving statue-topplers have been the subject of endless gushing and deferential commentary, with the local university subsequently promising to “decolonise” All Of The Oppressive Things.

Discarded placards and assorted detritus from the group’s protests were fondled reverentially by staff of the local museum and stored for later worship as holy artefacts.

Ms Saleem’s trajectory of righteousness will, one assumes, also be a subject of study by tomorrow’s progressive devotees:

Alistair Haggerty, for the prosecution, told Bristol crown court that £32,344 was raised by the GoFundMe page from 588 donations. He said the youth group was unable to open a business bank account during the pandemic, so a decision was made for the money to be held in Saleem’s personal account. “It was a sign of how much she was trusted,” Haggerty said.

To borrow from Father Ted, the money was just resting in her account.

Between July 2020 and June 2021 Saleem spent the money on a new iPhone and iMac computer, hair and beauty products, Amazon purchases, clothes, taxis, takeaways, and general lifestyle expenses.

Those general lifestyle expenses included Uber taxi rides totalling £5,800, spent in a mere eleven months, and a remarkable amount of hairstyling. Readers may wish to ponder the degree to which disparities in life outcomes, which so animate Ms Saleem’s organisation, may be explained by Ms Saleem’s own frivolous spending choices and the mindset they imply.

In April 2021, the other directors of [Bristol youth group] Changing Your Mindset asked Saleem to transfer the donated money into a new business account they had set up.

At which point, as you’d imagine, some awkwardness ensued:

Saleem told them various lies about why she could not transfer the money, including that Black Lives Matter had advised her not to because “some of the people the charity had worked with had made homophobic comments.”

No laughing at the back.

Subsequently quizzed on her prodigious appropriation of other people’s money, Ms Saleem explained,

my brain spent it.

And, somewhat belatedly, apologies were offered.

In the email she said: “I am so sorry. I am trying to understand my actions as well. I take full responsibility… as my actions have consequences, I don’t want to pardon myself from them.” Saleem told the directors she would go to the police that day.

Dramatic pause.

She failed to do so.

Ms Saleem can be seen here, suitably shrouded in piety, shortly before being sentenced to two and a half years in prison.

Also, open thread. Share ye links and bicker.

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Written by: David
Academia Policing Politics Problematic Competence

Elsewhere (320)

October 30, 2023 62 Comments

Emil Kirkegaard on schooling and intelligence, and their limited relationship:

These results should certainly not be interpreted as showing that one can easily boost learning by merely adding more schooling. In fact, there is no easy way to boost learning. Everything has been tried. There are more resources on the internet to learn from than ever before in human history, yet general knowledge hasn’t increased, and children and adults aren’t any better at arithmetic. Clearly, opportunity to learn isn’t an important variable in explaining differences between people. And dare I say, it never was?

From a cost-benefit perspective, more forced school for children means more teacher salaries to be paid. Since the effects of this on children’s actual learning seem to be somewhere between non-existent and minor, I suggest that this isn’t worth the price. 

And speaking of education:

Students At University of Augsburg Call For “Gloryholes” To Be Installed In Lecture Halls, Cite Benefit To Queer Community.

A group of students at the University of Augsburg in Germany have called for “gloryholes” to be installed in lecture halls in order to contribute to the “diversification” of the campus. Gloryholes are holes in walls or partitions created with the intention of allowing people to engage in anonymous sex acts in public. 

The specifications for said installation are quite detailed, including soundproofing, wall handles, and knee pads. For safety and comfort, one assumes.

Heather Mac Donald on progressive evasions and the consequent cultivation of anti-white sentiment:

We are tearing down the fundamental standards and values of western civilisation based on a lie. And that lie is that any racial disparity today is by definition and necessarily the product of racism and discrimination.

So any standard that has what’s known as a “disparate impact” on blacks, whether it is a teacher licensing exam, a medical doctor licensing exam, enforcing the law – if any of those standards have a disparate impact, resulting in either the underrepresentation of blacks in meritocratic institutions, or overrepresentation in the criminal justice system, the only public explanation that is allowable is that the standards resulting in that disparate impact are racist, and the next step is that they must come down.

I argue that that assumption of racism as the explanation for disparity is wrong, that the far more plausible explanations for any disparities in representation are the vast academic skills gaps, on the one hand, when it comes to meritocratic institutions, and vast gaps in rates of criminal offending, when it comes to the criminal justice system.

But as long as racism remains the only allowable explanation, we are going to continue tearing down ideas of excellence, of merit, and moving towards, at best, a state of mediocrity, and at worst, one of risk to people’s lives, stunted scientific and medical progress, a mediocre judicial system, and the inability to push young people to reach their highest achievements.

We see gifted and talented programmes being torn down across the country – not because they’ve been shown to be unsuccessful in cultivating our best young math talent, but simply because they don’t have 13 per cent black students in them. 

We’ve been here before, of course. More than once.

Helen Joyce on the perversity of wokeness:

For me, the revelation has been that when an institution enshrines a lie at its heart, that destroys its integrity and subverts its mission… Organisations that should have child safeguarding at their heart, such as the NSPCC and Girlguiding, now allow men who identify as women to oversee girls’ private spaces and intimate care. Gay rights campaigners press for children confused about their gender to be put on puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones that turn them into sterile facsimiles of the opposite sex. Since these children are statistically more likely than others to grow up gay, this is a form of gay conversion therapy. 

And finally, a thread on what happens when, in the name fostering progress and sensitivity, the police start hiring the sexually dysmorphic.

Apparently, these be-wigged individuals are bringing tolerance and understanding by harassing people manically, and repeatedly lying, and stalking women and sending them headless birds, and strangling people, and attacking a woman with a hammer. Oh, and hoarding explosives, obviously.

If that isn’t sufficiently bizarre, I do have more.

Feel free to share your own links and snippets, on any subject, in the comments.

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Written by: David
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