Typical academics, Chuckles would have said - did say - and I agree to a point. There is this mania to take adversarial positions, to form 'camps' and the camps battle it out, butting heads, such as the Single Bullet Theory Warren Reporters versus Multiple Gunmen Deep State Collusionists, allowing of no shades of truth inbetween.
The reality is that multiple positions on minor aspects have some validity and all need weaving into the 'debate'.
Chuckles used the example of a workplace 'discussion' at a meeting. There'll be four or five points on the agenda and each will have its proponents and detractors, people will bring in points on both sides to add to it, other points not in the actual debate. Focus more on brainstorming to find solutions.
That example was cited as a counterpoint to academia which automatically latches onto one major point and creates camps, then vehemently argues from the camps' entrenched positions, covering life, the universe and everything.
The issue is Wokeness today. There are actually adversarial positions in the workplace on everything - one is called the Woke, top down orthodoxy, the hegemony ... and the other is called real solutions. The former has 'influencers', the latter just makes points on this or that reality, as and when. The former is highly organised ... the latter disorganised and reactive.
An example is a meeting called to 'discuss' declining market share. The Official Woke Line is that it is puzzling but someone is going to be blamed and that person will not be one of the Woke.
The unWoke line, often coming from an old-school employee, is they should never have hired X, Y and Z gender-neutral person in the first place for jobs they could not do, no expertise at all, just university grad lines they take on equality and diversity.
And who recommended they be recruited, these particular non-comps? HR of course, home of non-comps steeped in Narrative. And HR control the management, otherwise they'll snitch.
The old employee, after the chorus of beating down has subsided, says, 'Look, you wanted to know why such and such a client cancelled the contract? It was because we did not deliver. Why did we not? Because we were so concerned about Woke things which don't matter instead of putting in the right person for the job in terms of being able to actually do it.'
He, of course, is then asked to see the manager alone for a dressing down.
And so to the ridiculous adversarial positions this so called debate here adopts:
... is a waste of time, unless of course they conclude that both positions have validity. Look at the blurb beneath it:
# The battle between two of the greatest dystopian novels Brave New World and Nineteen Eighty-Four is strikingly urgent ...
What 'battle'? Who made it a battle? Why not two perspectives on things happening?
# Reflecting the often dark mood of our times, Intelligence Squared are staging a contest between two of the greatest dystopian novels, 'Brave New World' and 'Nineteen Eighty-Four'.
Why? Why a 'contest'? Shalll we also have a 'contest' between who is 'better' - the Beatles, Stones or Elvis? What a waste of time, when each had a field they operated within and were aware of the other?
Why a contest? Why must there always be a red corner and a blue corner and they come out slugging?
# After Donald Trump was elected, it seemed as if 'Nineteen Eighty-Four' had clinched it. The book shot to the top of the bestseller charts. It felt so ominously familiar. In Orwell’s dystopia, the corporate state controls the news, insisting that ‘whatever the Party holds to be truth is truth’. That sounds very like Trump’s ‘alternative facts’...
No prizes for what this clown writing that thinks is reality.
# But Orwell’s critics say 'Nineteen Eighty-Four' is a dated dystopia, a vision that died along with communism. The novel that better resonates with our present, they say, is 'Brave New World'. Here Aldous Huxley imagined a plastic techno-society where sex is casual, entertainment light and consumerism rampant. There are pills to make people happy, virtual reality shows to distract the masses from actual reality, and hook-ups to take the place of love and commitment. Isn’t that all a bit close to home?
Yes but how the hell is one adversarial to the other? In the USSR, there was the Orwellian and there was also the Huxley thing going on. How does one preclude the other?
What a stupid debate, what stupid organisers in the first place.
[H/T haiku for the link]
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