Isn't it funny how things like this are never written by the boring types? It's always those wild, maverick, enlightened types seeking to describe themselves and, along the way, describe others, but mostly to describe themselves in flattering terms, with just a light veneer of modesty. (The self-assessed MBTI INTJs are just fantastically entertaining at this.)
"All great ideas come from us," beams the self-described aggressively-independent-minded, "and if we aren't allowed to champion horrible ideas, why, the world just won't be able to get on without us."
There are so many coarse assertions in this argument, without any solid foundations or evidence or even thoughtful observation. Right from the first sentence:
> One of the most revealing ways to classify people is by the degree and aggressiveness of their conformism.
"Arbitrary" ways. It's spelled "arbitrary". There are a plethora of categorical little boxes that people can try to fit other people into, and some of those have value sometimes, but they often also cause people to see other people as only their boxes. [1]
> Imagine a Cartesian coordinate system...
Imagine never having seen /r/PoliticalCompassMemes [2]. As gross as it is, this kind of quadrant-categorization isn't new.
> There are more passive people than aggressive ones, and far more conventional-minded people than independent-minded ones. So the passively conventional-minded are the largest group, and the aggressively independent-minded the smallest.
This is a setup for seeking minority status for free-thinkers. The problem with this is that "free" thought -- or "aggressively independent-minded" in PG parlance -- has no defined, characteristic ideas, by definition. A simple thought experiment here is the current political divide in the US. Are Trump voters the "aggressively independent-minded"? Are Democrats? Progressives? None of the above? If the definition of "aggressively independent-minded" contracts to, "me and a few people I like", then it's meaningless. Everyone with a strongly-held political belief in the US right now sees themselves as belonging to the rebel outgroup.
> Since one's quadrant depends more on one's personality than the nature of the rules, most people would occupy the same quadrant even if they'd grown up in a quite different society.
This had to be the most astoundingly bad line in the whole essay. It rests upon a supernatural notion of some sense of "self" that is somehow independent of time and place; that the powerful formative forces of culture and society, especially throughout early childhood, would somehow not transform each and every one of us into utterly different people. There is no more polite way to say this than that that notion is, as far as I know, entirely unfounded in the field of human development.
> Princeton professor Robert George recently wrote...
It's long, and it's historical, and it's forthright, and it's introspective. It also includes many quotes from educated opponents to abolition that, if you squint just a little bit, sound suspiciously similar to a lot of the "unacceptable" ideas that so many people right now are crying that they're no longer supposed to talk about outside the komfortable konfines of their klans.
Try and keep that Princeton article in mind, full and fresh, and then read this next part from Graham:
> For the last couple centuries at least, when the aggressively conventional-minded were on the rampage for whatever reason, universities were the safest places to be.
Princeton themselves disagrees. At length.
This essay does not add to or resolve today's cultural conflicts in any amount. When the last thing you have left for an idea is that it's special because you're special and it's your idea, then it's time to consider the possibility that other people might have some pretty strong arguments against it.
One essay written by one graduate on a contentious contemporary issue and the whole place is evil. The tone of the essay indicates it was a rhetorical exercise in dissent from a popular opinion. The modern judgement that such a thing is now abhorrent, is exactly the point.
I think perhaps this criticism suffers from a lack of imagination. People that cannot understand another person’s ideas are quick to label them evil.
> Joseph Yannielli received his PhD from Yale and was the Perkins Postdoctoral Fellow in the Princeton Humanities Council. He is an expert on the history of slavery and abolition, with a special focus on America, West Africa, and the wider world during the nineteenth century. His other areas of interest include political and social movements, missionaries and religion, capitalism and globalization, and the United States in the world. At present, he is completing a book about the Mendi Mission and the role of Africa in the American abolition of slavery. He is the founding manager and lead developer of the Princeton & Slavery Project website and several other digital history projects.
There are four other individuals involved at an organizational level for this project, and over 50 other students, advisors, and organizations involved in creating it.
It is absolutely an official statement from the institution of Princeton University.
But, please, continue to offhandedly dismiss things you don't like as lacking imagination and assume that other people simply lack the comprehension to understand the grand ideas in this essay. It's just such a compelling position to put yourself into, not having to defend bad ideas at all, because hey, only stupid people could think they'd be bad.
Seems to me like you made your mind up before even reading it.
> "Arbitrary" ways. It's spelled "arbitrary". There are a plethora of categorical little boxes that people can try to fit other people into, and some of those have value sometimes, but they often also cause people to see other people as only their boxes.
I'm sure PG would agree with your last sentence. But your point is irrelevant here.
> Imagine never having seen /r/PoliticalCompassMemes [2]. As gross as it is, this kind of quadrant-categorization isn't new.
Imagine assuming someone has never seen something just because they use an appropriate example to introduce a reader to a concept.
Also I don't see what's gross about the political compass.
> This is a setup for seeking minority status for free-thinkers. The problem with this is that "free" thought -- or "aggressively independent-minded" in PG parlance -- has no defined, characteristic ideas, by definition. A simple thought experiment here is the current political divide in the US. Are Trump voters the "aggressively independent-minded"? Are Democrats? Progressives? None of the above? If the definition of "aggressively independent-minded" contracts to, "me and a few people I like", then it's meaningless. Everyone with a strongly-held political belief in the US right now sees themselves as belonging to the rebel outgroup.
Whoever is loudly saying something that is unpopular is part of the "aggressively independent-minded" group. I think that should be pretty easy to understand. Note it does not mean they are right.
> This had to be the most astoundingly bad line in the whole essay. It rests upon a supernatural notion of some sense of "self" that is somehow independent of time and place; that the powerful formative forces of culture and society, especially throughout early childhood, would somehow not transform each and every one of us into utterly different people. There is no more polite way to say this than that that notion is, as far as I know, entirely unfounded in the field of human development.
Fair point, but I think one can assume that the probability of a person changing from one group to the other is symmetric, so in the end you'd get a similar distribution across the population regardless of where the individuals end up. The point he ultimately makes is still valid, most of them would have supported slavery.
> It's long, and it's historical, and it's forthright, and it's introspective. It also includes many quotes from educated opponents to abolition that, if you squint just a little bit, sound suspiciously similar to a lot of the "unacceptable" ideas that so many people right now are crying that they're no longer supposed to talk about outside the komfortable konfines of their klans.
The main similarity to today I spotted was young students being violent towards people with opposing views.
> Princeton themselves disagrees. At length.
One counterexample does not disprove the point. Do you really disagree with the idea that independent thinkers tend to go to university?
> This essay does not add to or resolve today's cultural conflicts in any amount.
> Whoever is loudly saying something that is unpopular is part of the "aggressively independent-minded" group.
Okay then.
I hereby loudly proclaim that, in the interests of the health and well-being of society at large, we must establish strong governmental oversight of online forums and communications, and immediately ban anything judged to be disinformation.
You are, as you note, free to disagree with me. But you must now respect my idea, and by extension me, because now I too am "aggressively independent-minded", and without people like me, the world would not have any great new ideas.
Furthermore, according to the larger point of PG's essay and your defense of it, you must not in any way interfere with my attempts to spread this message far and wide and enshrine it legislatively. If you do, you'll be showing yourself to be one of the conventional-minded people, standing in the way of my great idea and true progress for society, and the world certainly does not need more of those.
"All great ideas come from us," beams the self-described aggressively-independent-minded, "and if we aren't allowed to champion horrible ideas, why, the world just won't be able to get on without us."
There are so many coarse assertions in this argument, without any solid foundations or evidence or even thoughtful observation. Right from the first sentence:
> One of the most revealing ways to classify people is by the degree and aggressiveness of their conformism.
"Arbitrary" ways. It's spelled "arbitrary". There are a plethora of categorical little boxes that people can try to fit other people into, and some of those have value sometimes, but they often also cause people to see other people as only their boxes. [1]
> Imagine a Cartesian coordinate system...
Imagine never having seen /r/PoliticalCompassMemes [2]. As gross as it is, this kind of quadrant-categorization isn't new.
> There are more passive people than aggressive ones, and far more conventional-minded people than independent-minded ones. So the passively conventional-minded are the largest group, and the aggressively independent-minded the smallest.
This is a setup for seeking minority status for free-thinkers. The problem with this is that "free" thought -- or "aggressively independent-minded" in PG parlance -- has no defined, characteristic ideas, by definition. A simple thought experiment here is the current political divide in the US. Are Trump voters the "aggressively independent-minded"? Are Democrats? Progressives? None of the above? If the definition of "aggressively independent-minded" contracts to, "me and a few people I like", then it's meaningless. Everyone with a strongly-held political belief in the US right now sees themselves as belonging to the rebel outgroup.
> Since one's quadrant depends more on one's personality than the nature of the rules, most people would occupy the same quadrant even if they'd grown up in a quite different society.
This had to be the most astoundingly bad line in the whole essay. It rests upon a supernatural notion of some sense of "self" that is somehow independent of time and place; that the powerful formative forces of culture and society, especially throughout early childhood, would somehow not transform each and every one of us into utterly different people. There is no more polite way to say this than that that notion is, as far as I know, entirely unfounded in the field of human development.
> Princeton professor Robert George recently wrote...
Okay, do yourself a favor, and read Joseph Yannielli's really excellent article, hosted on Princeton's site, on Princeton's role in opposing abolition: https://slavery.princeton.edu/stories/princeton-and-abolitio...
It's long, and it's historical, and it's forthright, and it's introspective. It also includes many quotes from educated opponents to abolition that, if you squint just a little bit, sound suspiciously similar to a lot of the "unacceptable" ideas that so many people right now are crying that they're no longer supposed to talk about outside the komfortable konfines of their klans.
Try and keep that Princeton article in mind, full and fresh, and then read this next part from Graham:
> For the last couple centuries at least, when the aggressively conventional-minded were on the rampage for whatever reason, universities were the safest places to be.
Princeton themselves disagrees. At length.
This essay does not add to or resolve today's cultural conflicts in any amount. When the last thing you have left for an idea is that it's special because you're special and it's your idea, then it's time to consider the possibility that other people might have some pretty strong arguments against it.
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wmVkJvieaOA&feature=youtu.be..., the whole video is good though.
[2]: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/10/Po..., for the fortunately unaware.