thoughts in and out of season
[The eighth in a series on inclusiveness.]
What’s it like to live in a modern, diverse, tolerant, vibrant, inclusive, multicultural society? Everyday experience in early twenty-first century America is enough to sketch the situation in bold strokes.
Growing up absurd
Such a society lacks sustaining stories, symbols, and models of a good life, and … More ...
[The seventh in a series on inclusiveness.]
The Catholic view of the world has lasted a long time and supported many good things, so the Catholic view of antidiscrimination and inclusiveness ought to matter to anyone interested in those topics.
But what is “the Catholic view”? The phrase can refer to anything from the … More ...
While doing a Google search I ran into an abstract of a 2007 scholarly article by three French psychiatrists whose English title is “New society, new families: a new basic personality? From the neurotic to the narcissistic-hedonistic personality.”
The basic thought is that changes in education, family structure, social attitudes, and so on have led … More ...
[The sixth in a series on inclusiveness.]
A common leftist claim is that established social and moral principles serve the interests of the ruling classes. The claim isn’t applied to principles of which the left approves. In particular, it’s not applied to inclusiveness. That’s unfortunate, because it’s obvious that inclusiveness serves governing elites by … More ...
Here are some photos I took with my cell phone when I ran into a labor/immigrants’ rights demonstration while out for a bike ride yesterday. Lots of chants, lots of mass-produced signs and accessories, generally very orderly. (Sorry for the picture quality, click for a bigger image.)
Apparently the unions think it’s good for their … More ...
[The fifth in a series on inclusiveness.]
Inclusiveness and diversity help dissolve particular connections in favor of universal formal institutions like world markets and transnational bureaucracies. The effort is part of the general advanced liberal project, and its intent is to recreate human connections on a basis that is more rational and fosters freedom, … More ...
[The fourth in a series on inclusiveness.]
The demand for inclusiveness is often attributed to emotion, but something so systematic and persistent can only be based on principle.
No one explains very clearly what the principle is, so it’s evidently something taken for granted. The peremptory nature of antidiscrimination, together with the irrelevance of … More ...
They’re just side comments, but if you haven’t bought your copy yet you should consider what people are saying at Chronicles (“Mr. Kalb[‘s] … wonderful book”) and The Thinking Housewife (“thoughtful and absorbing … absolutely engrossing … long shelf life”). So everybody’s talking about it! Do you want to be the only one left out?… More ...
[The third in a series on inclusiveness.]
As I showed in my last piece in this series, prejudice and discrimination are natural, normal, and beneficial in the same way other basic principles that order human life—like private property and government—are natural, normal, and beneficial.
Here are some examples of prejudice and discrimination:
I’m usually too unsocial to participate in blogging memes, but the idea of listing the ten books I’ve been most influenced by caught my attention. In a carping world we should express gratitude now and then, and if you want people to read your stuff it seems civil to offer a little background on where … More ...