On the Kerfuffle In Re: Jill Biden's Degree...

 ... I think something I wrote three years ago is the only appropriate response:

"Having a College Degree - Even a PhD - Is NOT the Same Thing as Being 'Educated'

Once upon a time, a college education at least tried to expose you to the very best that has been thought and said about the human condition and our place in the universe. It can be argued - validly - that the former 'canon' was in some respects too narrow, but it was still good that there were campus-wide standards and that every collegian was expected to meet them. Unfortunately, after the rise of the New Left, all the trappings of just this sort of liberal education were thrown right out the window. Granted, many colleges still have general education requirements, but even with these, one can still earn a bachelor's without ever taking a traditional course on our country's history, political structures, or literary heritage.

Now let's add on top of this the fact that, in recent decades, academia has grown ever more intolerant of dissenting opinion (to the point that students and professors are now demanding they be shielded from ideas and experiences they find even remotely upsetting) and what you get is a perfect storm of ignorance about the things that really matter when it comes to good leadership. Our elites basically know fuck-all about human nature and have no clue that their supposedly brilliant, forward-thinking, progressive ideas have often been tried before without success (and to be sure, I'm putting that very charitably).

Actually, the increasing political correctness of our universities (and all other spaces where our elites congregate) is a good example of just what I mean when I say that folks like Barro know jack about - well - people. People, in reality, are anti-fragile; by this, I mean that they thrive best when their lives are not without adversity. Young people especially need the opportunity to test their physical and cognitive limits, bump up against obstacles, and - both literally and metaphorically - hang upside down on the monkey-bars hands-free. But our elites have decided that risk of emotional and bodily injury must be stamped out completely -- and predictably, the people under their oh-so-compassionate charge have now been trained to be, essentially, mentally ill. Indeed, even among our young children, we're seeing a rise in the incidence of attention-deficit disorder, sensory integration disorder, and other maladies -- and at least one occupational therapist has argued convincingly that this is because our elites are micromanaging our children's play in the name of their great safety crusade.

And hell, I haven't even addressed the fact that not all degrees are created equal and that, in many fields, all that's required to earn a credential is the ability to sling bull with panache. The rot is so widespread in the humanities and the social sciences in particular that a lot of students in these concentrations who have real native talent have no chance to develop and hone their intellects. Why? Well, here's something else the elites don't understand about human nature: people may be anti-fragile, but many will choose the easy path if it's offered to them. If one can earn a degree and the associated social status that comes with it by skating through courses that require little effort or accountability, many students will embrace that option -- and among our elites, many people have. Ask me what it was like to be misrepresented by lazy journalists covering the pop-culture beat for more information.

One last point: The shadow curriculum of lower and higher education isn't just - or even mostly - about using your intellect to suss out the truth. There are fields of study out there - generally in the hard sciences - that do demand results, but as a teacher with over a decade of experience guiding students through the K-12 system and beyond, I also know there are numerous wholly non-academic expectations that stick to our educational enterprise like barnacles on a ship. Based on what's usually asked in a college admissions essay, our schools privilege sociable youngsters who are comfortable talking about themselves. They also privilege the obedient and the verbally adept. Not that there's anything necessarily wrong with any of these traits (I've been identified as verbally adept myself - at least in writing), but this weeding process does overlook many legitimately brilliant Odds -- especially my rambunctious, scribbly boys.

TL;DR: You're going to have to do more to convince me of your fitness to lead the rest of us than to reference your 'college education.'

But even if you were a freakin' Einstein, with all the tangible intellectual achievements that entails, I'm still not going to grant you the license to judge me or to control my life. Which brings me to my third and final point:

You and Your Exclusive Clique Are Not Smarter Than EVERYONE Else

Remember that episode of The Simpsons years back in which the brainy folks of Springfield took control and tried to make their town more functional and efficient? Remember how this ended in disaster? I loved that episode because it conveyed a very important truth: Even a group of very, very smart people don't - and can't - know everything about a phenomenon as complex and unwieldy as a human culture or a human economy. That's why the outcomes of state economic planning range from stupid to downright horrific (see also: Venezuela). That's why, post-Sexual Revolution, we're faced with widespread unhappiness among women and equally widespread social pathology. 

Society is weird. There are many rules, traditions, and institutions lying around that, on the surface, don't seem to make sense. But those rules, traditions, and institutions cropped up for a reason. In many cases, they solved real dilemmas that our human ancestors encountered on their evolutionary journey out of the savanna. For instance, every culture previous to ours had strict codes to govern sexual conduct because, among other things, that was the only way to ensure that responsibility for the consequent children could be established. And, no matter how gosh-darned exceptional you are, you can't just take those codes apart without understanding and solving the problems they were meant to address.

So Barro and his ilk might be smarter than one working-class Trump supporter -- but are they smarter than all the Trump supporters and all the generations who lived before us combined? Not a chance! 

But, obviously, they think that they are -- and that's why many ordinary Americans rightfully hate their guts."

Fancy-pants degrees are often worthless. Jill Biden's certainly is. The senior honors thesis I wrote for my lowly BS is a more rigorous piece of scholarship than the garbage Mrs. Biden calls her "dissertation." I had to do multi-variable statistical analyses and a serious literature review -- neither of which I flubbed. Biden, on the other hand, passed despite making ridiculously basic errors in her arithmetic. Genuflect before her mighty sheep's skin? No, I don't think I will.

Note: This is my last post before the new year. I shall return on January 17, 2021!

I Can't Recommend The Glenn Show Enough

Glenn Loury's moral indignation here - and in his other podcasts - is glorious.

Irrational Fear of COVID-19 Is a Mark of Privilege...

... and/or maleducation. It's also incredibly damaging to genuine human flourishing.

Because of my severe overlapping autoimmune conditions, I'm on high-dose immunosuppressive medications that leave me especially vulnerable to respiratory disease. MamaGeek, meanwhile, is stuck with a good chunk of nonfunctional lung tissue thanks to earlier infections and occasionally has to use supplemental oxygen to get through the day. We both, therefore, fall into that limited class of folks who actually are at significant risk for serious complications or death from COVID-19.

Weirdly, though, we've both remained incredibly Zen about this pandemic. Do we think it's nothing? No. We're taking precautions that we feel are commonsensical for our unique circumstances -- the same precautions, by the way, we take whenever any potentially nasty virus starts making the rounds. But we're simply not wracked with crippling anxiety over the Kung Flu -- and frankly, we find the over-the-top fear of our affluent suburban neighbors (or the young people on the trash reality TV shows MG watches nightly to relax) so profoundly bizarre that we can't quite wrap our heads around it. "You're healthy," we think. "More than 99% of you would get over this just fine if you came down with it. What the hell are you panicking about? Why are you screaming 'you're going to kill us!' at unmasked strangers? Why are you informing on your neighbors like good little Stasi puppets?"

Well, early this morning, the following thought suddenly occurred to me: maybe the reason why MG and I have managed to stay calm (and can consequently assimilate incoming information about COVID-19 in a balanced, skeptical fashion) is that we're not healthy. I've been dealing with chronic illness since my early twenties; MG is in the same boat. We've therefore been reminded our entire adult lives that the human body is a finite, fragile, imperfect thing that can fail on you at any time. And not to toot our own horns, but I think that experience has gifted us with a certain sort of wisdom that, for almost all of human history, was basically universal.

To put it simply: historically, virtually all people understood that sickness and death were unavoidable. That's because historically, virtually all people - regardless of socioeconomic status - encountered plenty of both throughout their lives. Only a century ago, for instance, nearly a fifth of the children born in the US failed to survive beyond age 5. That's a lot of parents tragically burying their offspring. And then there are people still alive today - like MG - who remember measles and whooping cough outbreaks in the days before widespread vaccination -- and remember how absolutely miserable they were. Is life catastrophe contaminated by malevolence, as Dr. Jordan Peterson frequently observes? Generations not far removed from the present would say yes -- for very good reason. 

Until very recently, evidence of our inherent biological frailty stalked us all -- so we looked for meaning not in the mere preservation of our physical beings but in something else. We poured our hearts into building legacies -- mainly by building families and communities, but also by building businesses or creating art or diving into serious intellectual pursuits. And we realized that sometimes, those legacies mattered far more than living one more minute -- that staying alive at all costs was not always the correct choice because we were going to die eventually in any case.

Today, on the other hand, there are many extraordinarily fortunate people walking around who have not really had a significant brush with their own mortality - or with any of the other more terrible consequences of human embodiment - and have therefore deluded themselves into thinking they can conquer sickness and death through the force of their own wills. Throw a little sensationalist media coverage of COVID-19 their way, and yeah: hysteria results. The upshot? What MG and I have been boggling at all this time is a symptom of privilege. People who are well-off are more likely to fall to corona madness because they haven't really suffered and therefore have no means to put this one Chinese virus into perspective. 

(A couple hundred thousand are believed to have died of COVID-19 if you believe the mainstream numbers. How many have died of heart disease in 2020 as of November? More than twice as many. How many have died of cancer? Also more than twice as many. Why the draconian public health measures for one but not for the others? Why are COVID-19 deaths being lifted above all other deaths in importance and official concern?)  

Don't get me wrong: I think it's wonderful that in the past 100 years, we in the US have knocked child mortality down to less than 1%. I also think it's wonderful that our life expectancy has climbed to formerly unimaginable heights, that people are now surviving with illnesses that would've killed them decades ago, and that "premature" deaths are far, far less common than they once were. Modern medicine is a miracle; I certainly wouldn't want to dispense with it for the sake of teaching people wisdom. And luckily, I don't have to -- because no matter how advanced our science gets, it's highly unlikely that we will escape the wages of entropy entirely. If common bacteria can outsmart our most powerful antibiotics, it seems stupidly obvious to conclude that nature will always find a way to kick our arrogant asses at precisely the moment we think we've "won". 

Yes: in the developed world, our lives are more comfortable and more healthy than they have ever been -- but that doesn't change fundamental realities. Life is still a terminal condition. The sooner we recognize that, the better off we will be -- because from where I sit, the 2020 status quo - in which our political and media elite are inducing what amounts to mass pathological OCD in half the populace - is completely destroying what makes life worth living to begin with.  Re-read what I said about legacies above. That list, disturbingly, almost completely overlaps with the list of activities our leaders are seeking to ban (or at least severely curtail). And it's all for the sake of an idol -- a utopia in which COVID-19 kills no one else. 

No: this impossible quest cannot continue. People need to spend time with their extended families. People need to have the freedom to provide for themselves through the work of their own hands. People need to assemble in worship communities and pray to God. We can't go on living in sanitized, climate-controlled bubbles as atomized, socially-distanced individuals. Asking this of your fellow citizens is inhumane. 

I remarked in the beginning that both my mother and I are "at risk." Well, as a member of the "vulnerable" population, let me state here and now that I want the country to open up. I don't want people cowering in their homes on government assistance, victims of the soft tyranny of "if it saves just one life" . I've been taking responsibility for my own well-being for more than two decades now and certainly can continue to do so without calling down the force of the state as an ally. 

And I suspect many people in my position would say the same.