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causticusIt's quite simple: the branch of academia we call "the humanities" is the most subjective area of studies; it is the area most open to accommodating differing interpretations and even mere opinions. The humanities is the soft side of knowledge and inquiry. It's a fertile ground for both sophists and truth-seekers alike. When philosophical standards are done away with it becomes a fertile ground for ideologues and and radical elements to freely peddle their propaganda to young, impressionable minds.
Unlike in the hard sciences, it's all-too-easy to make unfalsifable truth claims in most of the humanities. Truth in the humanities is ultimately a matter of which philosophers, thinkers, schools of thought, and academia personae are currently in vogue. Truth in this sense is an appeal to authority rather than something that can be empirically tested and quantified.
I've stated before that I don't believe there has been any grand "Cultural Marxist conspiracy" that infiltrated and took over Western academia. I must add a caveat here: radical professors with Marxist sympathies have in fact been all over academia since at least the early 1970s and they have probably colluded with one another to some degree. But I don't believe it's been by any hyper-organized, top-down means. Rather, a potent organizational culture took hold after the massive cultural shifts of the 60s and 70s worked their way through general public's collective psyche. And university administrators were more than complicit in enabling this plague to incubate and spread. Administrators likely enabled this culture to proliferate, because in enabling crypto-Marxist departments like "Women's studies" to exist, they were scoring cheap and easy "diversity" brownie points that made for positive-sounding PR. As with most situations, incompetence and shortsightedness are much more sensible explanations for corruption than shadowy conspiracy theories.
And as we know quite well now, the corruption has infested the Social Sciences as well. Social Science is that murky middle ground between humanities and the natural sciences. Many social science fields rely on subjective metaphysical speculations as the basis for how to frame studies and interpret data within those fields.
The corruption is even trying to creep into STEM now, but I'm confident that will only go so far until it hits a big brick wall known as mathematics. You see, math couldn't give a damn about your feelings. Sophistry and emotional rhetorical cannot fudge numbers. STEM will be fine but it needs to detach itself from the rest of the festering rot academia has become.
In fact, academia itself needs to stew some more in its own poisonous juices until it completely dies. Parallel institutions must rise up in its place. Good riddance to the corrupted academia. The new institutional paradigm must first and foremost devote itself to truth-seeking. And by truth-seeking, I mean an uncompromising devotion to Natural Law. There is Natural Law and their is nihilism; we must choose one; we cannot serve two masters. Natural Law truth-seeking is done when we derive our philosophical and intellectual authority from the towering greats who existed long before the corruption set in. In other words, we should return to the classics and turn a sharply skeptical eye toward Natural Law-rejecting modern modes of inquiry like utilitarianism, positivism and blank-slate assumptions about human nature.
Once again I say, good riddance. The infected near-corpse known as modern academia shall die on its own terms.
Unlike in the hard sciences, it's all-too-easy to make unfalsifable truth claims in most of the humanities. Truth in the humanities is ultimately a matter of which philosophers, thinkers, schools of thought, and academia personae are currently in vogue. Truth in this sense is an appeal to authority rather than something that can be empirically tested and quantified.
I've stated before that I don't believe there has been any grand "Cultural Marxist conspiracy" that infiltrated and took over Western academia. I must add a caveat here: radical professors with Marxist sympathies have in fact been all over academia since at least the early 1970s and they have probably colluded with one another to some degree. But I don't believe it's been by any hyper-organized, top-down means. Rather, a potent organizational culture took hold after the massive cultural shifts of the 60s and 70s worked their way through general public's collective psyche. And university administrators were more than complicit in enabling this plague to incubate and spread. Administrators likely enabled this culture to proliferate, because in enabling crypto-Marxist departments like "Women's studies" to exist, they were scoring cheap and easy "diversity" brownie points that made for positive-sounding PR. As with most situations, incompetence and shortsightedness are much more sensible explanations for corruption than shadowy conspiracy theories.
And as we know quite well now, the corruption has infested the Social Sciences as well. Social Science is that murky middle ground between humanities and the natural sciences. Many social science fields rely on subjective metaphysical speculations as the basis for how to frame studies and interpret data within those fields.
The corruption is even trying to creep into STEM now, but I'm confident that will only go so far until it hits a big brick wall known as mathematics. You see, math couldn't give a damn about your feelings. Sophistry and emotional rhetorical cannot fudge numbers. STEM will be fine but it needs to detach itself from the rest of the festering rot academia has become.
In fact, academia itself needs to stew some more in its own poisonous juices until it completely dies. Parallel institutions must rise up in its place. Good riddance to the corrupted academia. The new institutional paradigm must first and foremost devote itself to truth-seeking. And by truth-seeking, I mean an uncompromising devotion to Natural Law. There is Natural Law and their is nihilism; we must choose one; we cannot serve two masters. Natural Law truth-seeking is done when we derive our philosophical and intellectual authority from the towering greats who existed long before the corruption set in. In other words, we should return to the classics and turn a sharply skeptical eye toward Natural Law-rejecting modern modes of inquiry like utilitarianism, positivism and blank-slate assumptions about human nature.
Once again I say, good riddance. The infected near-corpse known as modern academia shall die on its own terms.
