Irritation

Alright, so in acquiescence to a personal request, I shall no longer mention a particular name in my posts.

Note: Scroll down to see the name in question.

Anyway, time to complain a bit. Recently, I have been getting very irritated with all these politically correct people. It seems to offend many sensibilities to note that there are differences between people on a fundamental level, that laws exist, and even if they do not make sense, they must be enforced, that privileges do exist, and can be restricted to certain groups of people, that not everything should be interpreted as a statement. It's ridiculous to raise the level of sensitivity to the point where you are constantly looking for attacks where there are none.

Ok, let's look at something I got on my email a couple of days back. The university is starting a pilot program to provide a shuttle for students, staff, faculty and anyone else affiliated with the school between the campus and the red line train station. Sounds like a perfectly good idea. But some people are apparently planning to protest it. Why? Let me paraphrase a bit. Basically, the exclusive use of the shuttle by the predominantly white student population will be viewed by the predominantly black population of Hyde Park as elitist and racist. I'm sorry, but that is just stupid and ridiculous. It is a school service and therefore should be restricted to persons related to the school. Simple enough reasoning. If you insist, you can view a great many things as being racist and exclusive when they are not. By that reasoning, the quads should be open to all the homeless black people, and don't argue here, the only homeless people I see around are black, and they should be free to wander the campus and bother the students as they please. I am glad for the presence of the UC police presumably keeping the campus free of these pests, for that is what they are. It is illegal to panhandle, and I have no interest in allowing such illegal activities to continue when they directly affect me. Anyway, stepping back to the issue of the buses, the university should then cancel all the school buses, the night buses and the free use of some day buses. After all, they could be construed as racist and elitist, right? Heck, allow the homeless people to come into Bartlett and beg for food, as I have seen some do. Am I elitist for thinking so? Maybe, but it is my right to be. It is also my right, paid for by something along the lines of $45000 a year, to expect the school to provide certain services for me that are not open any and all who have any vague interest in taking advantage of them. Hell, let the residents of Hyde Park come into our classes, then we would really be non-exclusive. Morons, the lot of these people.

Ok, then onto some extremely irritating behaviour that's a bit more general. Some people cannot seem to accept that a politically correct view can simply be wrong empirically. As a professor of mine said, you cannot disagree with an empirical claim simply because it is politically incorrect. We were reading Lev Vygotsky, and he claimed that the most fundamental way in which people make sensory perceptions is different between cultures due to the varying structures of learning. Essentially, people from different cultures really do have different ways of seeing the world and their brains really are wired differently. A horribly politically incorrect sort of claim. If any politician were to do that, he would be accused of being a Nazi equivalent. But is it true? Many people simply could not allow themselves to even consider that. They just kept saying that it cannot be true, because it's a "scary thought" that people are fundamentally different from each other. It seems a very racist thought, and therefore it cannot be true. Are these people stupid or what? A racist claim cannot be true? What is wrong with these people? It can be accepted that people can become smarter or more athletic or whatever throught training, but when the same idea is applied to a more general swathe of humanity, it cannot be true? Come on. Reason seems to have become secondary to sensitivity these days. A hundred years from now, people will look back and say we were fools for being so blinded to the truth by our cultural blocks. Just look at the way we look upon the extreme racism of the American slavery era.

Argh, the irritation is threatening to give me a headache. Enough.