Category: Student Posts

I personally liked the concepts in the power and purity readings from Mark Mitchell. They really made me think hard about Nietzsche’s theories and concepts. I thought the opening that he chose was perplexing since I do remember when the California congresswomen publicly told people to harass members in trumps cabinet on the news. Its one thing to hold up signs and do a peaceful protest while someone is giving a speech but harassing people in the public domain while their not in work (such as a restaurant) is going way too far. 

All of these examples that Mark Mitchell provides only strengthen the ideas of Nietzsche. Politics is definitely mixing with everyday life. 

When Mitchell says “we have lost faith in the very ideals that made us who we were.” that got me thinking about the constitution since even though its outdated those are our ideals and people keep saying we need to change them. We may have talked about this concept in the Wood reading from last week in class. Mitchell goes on to say that America is a Puritan at its heart.

I thought that the Nietzschean will to power concept was interesting and how he links it to Puritanism and Christianity.  The ideas of truth, or how we once thought about it reminded me of some of the concepts that Gad Saad talked about in his book. 

When Nietzsche declared that God was dead in the sense that the idea of God was no longer plausible, I did not quite know what to think, but it started to make more sense the further i got into the reading. If I’m understanding this correctly, Nietzsche believes that life is the will to power and not the will to truth (and the will to morality plays a part in that). 

A question that I had was since Nietzsche saw Christianity and Christian morality as the mortal enemies of life itself, Why was that the case? Was it because the ideals of Christianity are confining and therefore not allowing our liberal democratic society to produce the one powerful individual who will ascend above everyone else? (then again liberal institutions are confining for those reasons (page 47) 

Other connections that I made from the other readings were on victimhood and the 1619 project, one talked about in Gad’s book and the other in Peter Wood’s book. I also thought the concept of identity politics since Mitchel describes it as a politics that unites to divide. 

(page 54)

Peter Wood’s 1620, addressed the goal of the 1619 Project which was to essentially reframe the country’s history through the publication of newspapers. The aim of this was to put slavery and the black American experience at the heart of our country’s political identity and origin. Rather than incorporating and adding the black experience into our education of American history, it strived to entirely replace our traditional understanding of American history. The proponents of 1619 further argued that America began with the arrival of slaves. They view the planation system and slave market as the origins of modern day capitalism. They also wanted to revamp our entire perspective on Abraham Lincoln. They claim that he was not a hero to the salves and did not have the slaves’ best interest at heart. I personally think that this claim is too extreme to make. I agree that there were still injustices and formal laws in place that prevented the equality of citizenship that slaves should have been granted during his presidency. However, I think that their claim is too extreme and undermines the progress that Lincoln did make in aiding slaves. I further thought that it was interesting that the 1619 goal aligns with the perspectives of the New Left. This is because it promotes the radicalization and transformation of society. Yet, I think there are many complications with claiming that America began with slavery. On one hand in can make it wrongly seem like we have moved on from slavery and that racism is in the past. On the other hand it can make it seem like racism is ingrained in the roots of our history and is something that is inescapable. Woods agrees more with the later conclusion. He says that even though we should create laws in society that are “colorblind” we will always have the tendency to congregate within certain racial groups. His reasoning for this is that we have shared qualities and cultural affinities which result in these group formations. This makes me wonder; however, is the bonding of racial groups an example of racism? Or is it just us expressing our identity with like minded individuals? This leaves our interpretation of how racist and oppressive American society is and has been in the past ambiguous. Surely we should work to create laws in society that offer equality for all races of citizens, yet it is difficult to tell how much of these oppressions are the direct result of the American government itself. To determine the start of American history and how it should be taught we have to evaluate the facts themselves. Although, plantation systems have many correlations with how we operate modern day capitalism in turns of production and exploitation, we must also recognize that slavery arose in British Northern American colonies, but it did not arrive in Virginia until nearly half a century later. It is difficult to pinpoint a specific year of American history’s origin if we try to use slavery as the start of the timeline. The dates can get very messy so I think we should proceed with caution before proceeding with the 1619 Project.

The conversation from last week made me rethink a lot of the concepts we have discussed throughout the class thus far. I think discussing the idea of the 1619 project, and the troublesome false facts that were written brings up a lot of conceptual issues relating to the intellectual class. Something interesting that came up was the idea of someone’s morals being more important than fact. I believe that this is something troubling that happens a lot within the intellectual class. We talked about the moral reasoning behind the 1619 project, and how when intellectuals choose to use their morals in place of following facts it can completely discount their journalism, research, or whatever it is that they are expressing their thoughts through. I talked about the idea that the 1619 project opened the door for a bigger conversation, including allowing Black creators to be able to speak their truths about their ancestry including their experiences with slavery. After discussing this, I realized that even if this was the intention of the 1619 project, a lot of the intellectuals writing for this project stated that their intentions were to completely rewrite history. By stating this, it shifts the narrative, changing the intention of the project whether that is what they intended to do or not. It brings up the point of intellectuals realizing how important what they state is, and the impact it can have. The 1619 project is now being taught in schools, even though a lot of the information that is stated is wrong and incorrect. I think it is teaching younger generations that even if their morals are in the right place, and they want to expose something like the brutality of slavery and how it affected the United States, they are allowed to use false facts to back up their claims. I think this is the downfall of the 1619 project. It is true that there are many false facts taught in schools when younger kids are learning about history. We have seen this in the teachings of Christopher Columbus. This is an entirely different conversation, because there are intellectuals who are creating the textbooks taught to younger kids in schools. When there is false information taught, it allows for misinformation to spread. I believe that the reason why people do not talk about the 1619 project more and how the misinformation in it discounts the idea that more children should be taught about slavery, is because it is about such a sensitive topic. Black intellectuals should be allowed to speak their minds and what they believe on a matter such as slavery. As a country, we should allow for Black people to be able to speak their minds. As a white person, it becomes uncomfortable when having to discount someone on speaking on a matter I know nothing about. Similarly, that is why I believe the conversation was so difficult to have. I am not an intellectual, nor am I knowledgable on the beginnings of slavery, more specifically the factual evidence. This is exactly what harm the 1619 project can do, people like myself who do not know enough about the subject can be influenced easily by such a large news source such as the New York Times deciding to publish and share such an influential piece of information. This also points to another important idea, the fact that the average person trusts what intellectuals say even though the facts may not be correct. It begs the question, how many other sources like this are out there? How can one be sure that they are reading facts? Because this is a subject that people make out to be political, it also creates another problem. There are many people that just because a piece of journalism may suggest it leans a certain way politically automatically deem it incorrect or do not want to continue reading or understanding the work. This is something that has lead to the polarization in our country today. Even if there are certain works of journalism or research that do have some form of politics in them, that does not deem it incorrect. The 1619 project has to do with this. Since Republicans have been deemed racist by some groups of people, more specifically the far left, people do not care to understand if the facts in it are correct. It is just deemed correct because of the moral content that is in it. This is something hard to comprehend in the society we live in today. When reading content, it can be easy to comprehend that the person’s morals are in the right place, such as the 1619 project wanting to expose slavery and allow Black voices to be heard about an issue that is still so prevalent in today’s society. However, it is important to further understand the facts and whether they portray the correct historical evidence. Furthermore, it just goes back to my original point that because of the incorrect nature of the 1619 project, it just completely discounts the entire point of the project, whatever that point may be.

After reading the sections of Peter Wood’s book on the 1619 project, it made me think about our conversations of truths in class and also on the other readings that we have done. Woods shares the same upholding the truth idealogy that Saad’s book does and questions things that just are simply not correct (or supported by no evidence). Something that I found interesting (maybe that relates to what we talked in the beginning of the semester on Culture of Critical Discourse) was that the Times published the project even though a lot of the theories that were posed were questionable since they did not line up with historical facts. What is more prominent is that even when confronted on the issue, the New York Times simply said it was up to someone’s own interpretation and that history it is all a matter of interpretation. 

Another thing that bugged me was that even when the Times brought in a second opinion to check Hannah-Jones’s assertion, they still ran with it. If the first fact checker wants to bring in outside help and that outside help (Leslie M. harris) completely discredits it, saying its false, then why not change it? The whole situation actually makes me angry because this news platform is supposed to provide reliable information and not false statements. This then makes me question what is actually true and what is not. 

Wood says that when the Times says its all a matter of interpretation is a postmodern claim. I like that he goes into detail about postmodernism and what its role is in the 1619 project. Postmodernism, how I understood it from the reading is that it favors people who are oppressed. 

An overall question I have is: does this mean that Postmodernism, those ideas and skepticism that its producing is shaping the whole 1619 project/movement? 

The reading for this week was on 1620, a book written in response to the 1619 project published by the New York Times. As stated in the 1619 project, it is an attempt to reconstruct American history. It claims that, instead of the currently recognized founding year of the united states, 1619 should be the actual founding date, as that was when slavery was first brought on America. As we understand it, the 1619 project is not merely presenting an alternate view on history, but rather actually trying to persuade people that America was founded in 1619 with slavery being its core foundation.

However, from our analysis of the intellectual social class and the rise of wokeism, we see that the 1619 project is yet another example of wokeism. It fits into what we have learned and defined as wokeism. The reading – 1620 – points out its problems, and we learn more about why wokeism is problematic.

The most crucial problem is that the 1619 project is filled with historic errors. Aside from the oversight in the fact checking process and ignoring professional historian advice before publishing, the 1619 project cited little actual material historic evidence in presenting their argument.

The author responded about the factual flaws with “history has many and changing interpretations.” However, this is also precisely a huge part of the problem here, and about wokeism. History should be based on fact. But if you are just trying to present another interpretation of history, then it shouldn’t be published in the New York Times with the attempt to reconstruct American history and to persuade people that America was founded on slavery. 

Furthermore, the 1619 project falls into the postmodernist framework, which denies the existence of definitive truth and asserts that truth is provisional. This approach is problematic because it allows for multiple interpretations and privileges certain perspectives over others. It also has a Marxist edge, seeking to liberate the oppressed.

Another issue with the 1619 project is its use of the term dehumanization. The term emerged in the 20th and 21st centuries in the context of the civil rights movement. However, in the case of slavery, slave owners were not attempting to dehumanize their slaves, but rather to extract labor from them. In fact, slave owners often tried to convert slaves to Christianity and understood that they were human beings, not property.

• It has many historical errors
  • The author’s response:.
  • Fact checker for 1619: historian opinions were ignored on incorrect historical facts.
  • This theory was not published in peer-reviewed scientific journals, but rather in media with prominent publicity and influence.
  • In 1619, slavery was not what we later know it as.
    • Slaves could own properties
    • Slaves have holidays and only work 5 and half days every week
    • Slave owners often go to court to settle problems
    • White and black Americans had often married each other
    • Slaves could buy for their own freedom
    • Once enslaved people had owned slaves themselves too
• Main claim
  • In 1619, settlers arrived at North America and brough slaves with them.
  • The current historic understanding on the founding of the United States is wrong.
  • The 1619 project tries to change that.

Postmodernism

• How it pertains to intellectuals (reliance on fact and truth)
• On truth
  • Truth is provisional; there is no definitive truth.
  • There can be multiple interpretations. Some are more “privileged.” 
  • One interpretation can be used by those in power to oppress others.
  • Has Marxist edge – to liberate the oppressed.

Dehumanization

• The term emerged in the 20-21th century, in the civil rights movements.
• Slave owners had incentives to extract labor from slaves
• Using the term dehumanization is incorrect.
  • Slave owners tried to convert slaves to christians.
  • Slave owners understood that slaves were people, rather than property
  • We should recognize that the problem is about how people are understanding and recognizing status differences or hierarchy in people. It is even worse, that these slave owners knew perfectly well that slaves were people, but still had chose to treat them in brutal ways.

Problem

• New York Times is a really popular magazine, and its reader base will take its writings seriously.

After our discussion with Peter Wood on his book, 1620: A Critical Response to the 1619 Project, I was really able to see the parallels between that of the 1619 Project and the Communist Revolution and the Cultural Revolution of the 60’s. As we discussed in class, the main parallel goal between these movements is the fact that their followers believe there is something inherently wrong with our society and world and it needs to be altered in some way. Marx’s point that the lower class in a society is being oppressed by the upper class is being altered in a way to fit the narrative of the 1619 Project. They claim that our whole society and the polity of the United States was built on the basis of slavery. That the two boats that arrived in Virginia carrying ~30 slaves is the base starting point of America making our society incredibly racist and ridden with white supremacist language and ideas. However, Wood attempts to clarify and disprove much of the already false arguments that Nikole Hannah-Jones makes in her statement.

We touched on two topics that I thought were especially crucial to the argument and salience of the 1619 Project. One being the idea of post-modernism and its ability to spread false truths to the public. Post-modernism in itself is when facts are constructed by people to fit their own narrative. They often provide provisional answers to questions but are made up. The idea of post-modernism allows not just intellectuals but all people to be able to interpret “fact” and “truth” in whatever way they see fit. People that ascribe to this type of interpretation deny the existence of over-arching or undeniable truth in the universe. This can be quite detrimental to the way society functions. One person’s truth could be the ultimate truth to them but could be a complete falsehood to another and vice versa. How can there be trust of information or integrity within an intellectual community if all ideas are relative? Who does one believe in such a situation?

Another crucial topic discussed was the idea of dehumanization of slaves. Peter Wood began by stating that slaves were not dehumanized. Yes, slavery is immoral we can all agree but dehumanizing is something of a different nature. He writes that slaveowners knew their slaves were humans and they never pretended they were not. That they did awful things to them such as overworking and abusing them, I will not discount is unethical and wrong. However, Wood gave an example of the Soviet’s working their workers in the labor camps to near death and starving them as a similar phenomenon. The Soviet’s did understand they were humans and they never pretended they were not. There is a misuse of language here. One may think that in order to do such depraved things to other human beings they must acknowledge they are not human first, because how could they possibly do such evil things to another human being? Being property also does not preclude you from being human, it too is another depraved idea but is not dehumanizing. I thought these ideas were especially important for our discussion especially as it relates to intellectuals.

As I am writing the book review on this novel I wanted to keep my personal opinion and beliefs out of the review and use the blog as a place to voice those opinions so the review can be a way to flesh out the ideas, concepts, and quality of the writing. In our talk with peter wood about his novel 1620 and the response to the 1619 project, I asked him a question about the use of the word dehumanization in relation to slavery. Wood brings up that dehumanization can only go so far. This is a concept that I am confused by because I have always thought of slavery in the united states as a complete dehumanization of black enslaved people mainly because of how history has taught the concept and how slavery has manifested itself in other forms later in history. Wood points out what he says are contradictions in the 1619 project but I was more confused by his analysis and pushback of the project. While I have no problem with the critical analysis of the text some of the language and rhetoric behind what Wood is saying I do have problems with. Something that I struggled to understand is when he states that our constitution and laws should be colorblind. That is a very harmful viewpoint when it comes to race. The historical context of being color blind plays into race-neutral language with helps perpetuate the idea that if everyone is equal in the eyes of the law then there will be no race-related issues. The problem with this narrative is that based on the history of our country. People have been sorted and judgments have been passed based on race so having a colorblind way of looking at society would actually do more harm than good. Wood says that the reason he thinks being colorblind would be the most beneficial is because “our society should strive for the common good, which is best achieved by treating one another as individuals, not as representatives of identity groups.” This way of thinking in my opinion is not possible because when one’s entire existence has been based on that they are inferior to others because they are black then it is impossible to ask black people not to be representatives of an identity group because in our society that has been the majority of their identity. Wood does state that the concept of race will not disappear anytime soon so he does acknowledge that his idea of being colorblind is not easily achievable just based on how our society is structured. I do commend him for not wanting to have race be fundamental in terms of how people are treated in society the only thing is the concept of equality versus equity. Because we have not always treated people the same we can not start that now because of the systemic issues that have risen. 

A few questions that I would like to pose are: Does Wood see any benefits from the project or solely critiques? In what ways is postmodernism effective and harmful in the 1619 project, if at all?

I completely agree with his stance on social deviance as I believe that there are too many people in the world who simply let the higher powers dictate how they live their lives. When saying this I am not saying to not follow rules and to be a rebel in society. All I am saying is that people need to realize that the intentions of the people who are quote on quote in charge are not always what they make it out to be. I know many people who are close to me that allow the higher powers to dictate their actions and trains of thought to the point where they don’t know how to think for themselves and come up with their own ideas. I also know many people who live life the way they want to without letting anything or anyone else dictate that. I personally identify myself with those types of people. That does not mean I am out here breaking rules and causing problems in society. All it means is that I don’t listen to someone or something that comes from the higher powers without thinking about it myself and forming an opinion and my next actions based on that. A good example of this that I can use is when the corona virus first started and everything went into lock down. Since I am from Canada the mandates were a lot more strict than they were in the U.S. In Canada “authorities” said that you cannot leave your house unless it is for a reason you must like getting food, water, etc. Me being a basketball player getting ready to go into my first season in college, could not just sit at home without training. Because of people I knew who had private gyms I was able to get access to a gym to continue training. When I would go training I would take precaution by only going with my dad and making sure no one else would be there at the sametime. It was completely safe but, it was considered against the law based on what the “authorities” were telling us to do. My point is that there are the people who don’t listen to what the “authorities” say word for word and continue living life without harming others, and then there’s the people who would have literally stayed in their house for many months in a row because that’s what they were told to do. I believe that you have to find a fine line between doing your own thing as a person as well as following the rules. I just could not imagine living a life where I do what I am told for my whole life because most people conform to the norms of society. If everyone did the same thing as everyone else we would live in a pretty boring world so it is important to have your own thoughts and opinions. A lot of intellectuals could be mistaken for being rebels and non-conformist when all they are doing is something that most people don’t do.

After reading Gad Saad’s “Parasitc Mind” and following our class discussion with him I more further intrigued about his discussion of the pursuit of freedom and defense of the truth. I think that in order to truly pursue the truth that some social deviance is typically necessary. For instance, Gad Saad talks about growing up resisting confromtiy and being socially deivant from a young age. In his adut years he emphasizes how political correctness is a direct limitation of freedom of speech. In the pursuit of the truth, he argues that we should not modify our language of the truth. He also further goes on to claim that we don’t need to be politically correct in scientific research. While keeping this in mind he clarifies that we should not be unecsarily rude or disrepectful in our presentation of the truth. 

Today in society he claims that our pursuit of the truth is limited by what he calls idea pathogens. They alter our ability to think rationally and accept evidence based thinking. So how can we form an immunity against idea pathogens? Saad brings up the concept of homeostasis of victimology. This refers to the a mechanism in the human mind and body that tries to achieve an equilibrium state. Through reaching this equilibrium we are able to approach scientific data without biases or emotional influence. I think that Saad would claim that it is especially difficult to achieve this equilibrium status in today’s society due to the polarization of politics and strong influence that the media has.

I found the speaker to be extremely interesting. Through the discussion of his book, the Parasitic Mind, he brought up some points that confused me. Specifically, in relation to the class idea of the intellectual class. In his book, there were some sections that focused on applying his ideas of the parasitic mind to modern far-left ideals. He touched on these ideals during the discussion. One that stood out to me, was when he mentioned that he doesn’t believe social situations impact our society in the way that certain intellectual groups believe they do. He explained that believing this has to do with the parasitic mind, since people are not choosing to focus on biological science. He believes that biological science trumps social science in this sense. He gave another example explaining that, “He would not want his children to see a transgender person twerking on TV when they are young,” explaining that it is not because of homophobia, but just because he believes young children should not be exposed to that at a young age. This was something that was hard for me to understand, because I do not really understand how this has anything to do with the intellectual class or the parasitic mind that his book is about. To me, this seemed like more focusing on left ideals and how he believes they are infiltrating society and intellectuals. Especially since he used many more examples in his book such as focusing on the election of Donald Trump and how the intellectual class reacted, as well as Brett Kavanaugh being confirmed for the supreme court. He focused on the reactions of the intellectual class when discussing these national events, explaining that he believed they were uncalled for and further proved his point of the parasitic mind. When I asked about this and expressed my confusion on what he was trying to prove, he said that I had misinterpreted the chapter. This was confusing to me, because when giving many examples of leftist ideas existing and being taken to an extreme level because of the parasitic mind, it would only make sense that the author is trying to express that when discussing the parasitic mind he believes it is applied more heavily in leftist ideals.