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Prof. Ferguson, Harvard, Discusses the rise and potential fall of Western Dominance
I found this TED excerpt to be quite interesting. Ferguson has a few very interesting remarks, though no epiphanies.
I take some exception to the argument that Westerners as a group, particularly North America, have lost the Puritan work ethic; since much of what Ferguson contends seems to hinge on this opinion. I work a good 60+ hours a week, and while I have most weekends off and the plethora of federal holidays, I'm always on call except when physically on vacation (where I still get plenty of work email). I work my ass off.
I'm currently stationed in South Korea (Ferguson's example of hard workers), and I agree that the average Korean professional works very close to 12 hours a day, six days a week--but there's this interesting cultural norm in Korea called the Easy Lunch (two hours long) and the Business Dinner (sometimes as long as three hours of nothing but drinking and talking about work): to say Koreans work an average of three to four hours longer than Americans each day is a bit disingenuous.
Plenty of Korean professionals--and I'd guess professionals the world over--bring their work home and continue to type away (just like me) well past 10 PM. But professionals are a class of worker, an echelon is what I mean. Professionals the world over aren't the bulk of the national workforce, rather the laborer makes up that bulk, from commerce to service. The average laborer is working their ass off for less money than professionals but for specific work periods; and they don't tend to be on call 24-7. My point is that professionals are working long hard hours and laborers are working shorter hard hours, but everyone's working their asses off. The part-time teen at the Qwick-e Mart isn't and shouldn't be representative of the total workforce.
I was on call last weekend.
I'm on call this weekend.
I'm off next weekend.
THEN,
I'm on call the weekend after that, and all of Thanksgiving.
I'm sorry, what was the Professor guy saying? He's kinda up there in an Ivory Tower, and my hearing's kinda jacked from the generators I used in the National Guard 10-20 years ago, so I can't make him out.
I take some exception to the argument that Westerners as a group, particularly North America, have lost the Puritan work ethic; ...
How did he justify this stance (i.e. what is his data?) Did he
blame illegal immigration? Or some other political hot-potato...The reason I ask is a lot of guys have ideas and guesses, but offer up no
real data from observation; or even a coherent model for that matter.
I have always been interested in Models of the "Rise and Fall" of
civilizations. The trick is to come up with an actual model that can be
tested based upon data (i.e. using real world observations). Then, use
the model to make predictions, and then *wait* to see if that is how the
world actually turns out.
The waiting part is probably the hardest part as the experiment's duration
can span 100's of years. Oh well, there is always computer simulation.
.
My favorite "working" model of Civilization is from an anthropologist
who studies food. No matter who you are, human or monster, it takes
calories to grow an empire.
This thread looks like it has plenty of opportunities to troll, but I'll stick to brevity:
Most people I know work like dogs. There's not a single family that I interact with where both partners don't have jobs--sometimes multiple ones for one or both partners.
EDIT: Not true, come to think of it. I do know one family where each partner only has a part-time job.
In my capacity as a shop steward, I was in the office yesterday with a member who was issued a suspension for chronic tardiness. Typical lazy Teamsters, right? Well, no. The guy works two full-time jobs, 16 hours a day, Mon-Fri.
Me and Spanky don't usually agree, but, yeah, the idea that the American work ethic has deteriorated flies in the face of my everyday life experience.
Followed by TED having such great mental insights such as: Does democracy stifle economic growth?
My current working theory is capitalism stifles economic growth. How's that??
...
However, one point where I do think the Western world (or, at least, the United States) is falling behind is the quality of their education - which I blame on the Vietnam war.
Did the GI Bill fix this? (I don't know.)
People may be working long hours, but they're not spending long hours doing hard manual labor on the cheap.
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However, one point where I do think the Western world (or, at least, the United States) is falling behind is the quality of their education - which I blame on the Vietnam war.
Did the GI Bill fix this? (I don't know.)
Interesting question.The problem in education was that many left wing people avoided the draft by going into schools while right wing people were more likely to go to war. This left a very politically skewed "intelligentsia" in the Universities which gave us such charms as "all sex is rape", politics and academics are tied together, postmodern "critical theory", "feminist studies", and other such nonsense. Actual scholarship - hard scholarship - shrivelled up and blew away.
Did the GI Bill restore the needed dialectic? I don't think so. The reason I don't think so is that we've still got nonsense like postmodern "critical thinking" and "feminist studies" and so forth in the University.
The needed dialectic will eventually be restored, but I don't know how long it will take for this to happen.
I mourn the death of Classical Studies. I have a rather worthless PhD in English, and I still can't define "Critical Thinking" or "Feminist Studies" as majors, degrees, or areas of academic specialty. I think the liberal arts in general have suffered since the Vietnam era. Nonetheless, science and technology have exceled, despite the news reports to the contrary. I can't say I'd be able to agree that higher education today has womens studies and literary deconstructionism to blame for its arguably neutral-to-floundering state...
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However, one point where I do think the Western world (or, at least, the United States) is falling behind is the quality of their education - which I blame on the Vietnam war.
Did the GI Bill fix this? (I don't know.)
Interesting question.
The problem in education was that many left wing people avoided the draft by going into schools while right wing people were more likely to go to war. This left a very politically skewed "intelligentsia" in the Universities which gave us such charms as "all sexual intercourse is violent", politics and academics are tied together, postmodern "critical theory", "feminist studies", and other such nonsense. Actual scholarship - hard scholarship - shrivelled up and blew away.
Did the GI Bill restore the needed dialectic? I don't think so. The reason I don't think so is that we've still got nonsense like postmodern "critical thinking" and "feminist studies" and so forth in the University.
The needed dialectic will eventually be restored, but I don't know how long it will take for this to happen.
How are you sure it was all leftests avioding the war. Not all university is womens studies and other things. Not all liberals studied those things heck Al Franken has a math degree and he is a prominent liberal in the senate.
The problem in education was that many left wing people avoided the draft by going into schools while right wing people were more likely to go to war.
Yeah, I find this highly debateable as well. To the extent that there is an American left, much of it exists on the campuses, that is true. There may or may not be more left-centrist college professors than right-wing, I don't know. But the people who avoided the draft by going to college weren't necessarily motivated by left-wing political principals--they could very simply not want to have gone to war, regardless of their politics.
The flipside of the premise which I also find debateable is that the people who actually went to Vietnam were more likely to be right wing. The preponderance of Vietnam vets in all kinds of left-wing political movements during the 70s and 80s (anti-war, Black Panthers, etc., etc.) to me indicate that it wasn't political ideology that determined who went to college and who went into the army.
I have met plenty of communists who had previously served in the United States armed forces.
I also would like to echo Comrade jeff's comments above. I would recommend that people read Kurt Vonnegut's God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater which I think points to one of the big problems that's going to continuously face a technologically-innovative capitalist society: "surplus populations" or what Marx called the reserve army of the unemployed.
I thought my previous post was pretty clear. In it, I did NOT say that all the left wingers went to University while all the right wingers went to war.
I said that many left wingers avoided the draft by going to the University while many right wingers went to war.
I trust that repeating my comment here has helped to point out the distinction?The fact is that during the Vietnam era we saw a huge shift towards left wing bs trying to pass itself off as "academics" in the Universities. This is the time when all the crap like "feminist studies", "African American studies", "critical thinking", etc. was born.
And I thought that my post, and Lazar's post afterwards, was pretty clear: many left-wingers DID go to the war and many right-wingers DID go to college (or other alternatives, such as the National Guard).
I also think that your dismissal of women's and black studies as crap is pretty damning, though. While I certainly don't agree with every crazy idea that has come out of women's studies, for example, these fields have certainly contributed to our understanding of history and other subjects. Is everything they teach true? Probably not, but the same is true of older subjects like, say, economics.
And I don't understand the animus against "critical thinking". I assume that this is some educational reform buzzword.
First part:
I don't get it. You used the word "many", I used the word "many." I understand that "many" is not synonymous with "most," but thank you for the English lesson.
I also don't think you've "proved" any trends that I need to "disprove".
I don't think political reasons determined who went into the army and who went to college. Canada?, sure. I think Lazar was totally correct that there was more of a class determiner than a political one. EDIT: Or else an understandable impulse to avoid battle/cowardice, depending on your viewpoint.
Second part:
I don't think I'm being lazy or argumentative--I am unaware of any women's studies programs that aren't feminist. I am also unaware of any programs called "feminist studies". I've already said here and elsewhere that I am skeptical of many claims coming from feminist ideology and women's studies classes, but I do not think that the whole field of academic feminist/women's studies or black studies can be simply dismissed as crap.
Third part:
Maybe later.
Followed by TED having such great mental insights such as: Does democracy stifle economic growth?
Yes.
i.e. - Bread and circus's.
As for my wife and I, well... The wife works a part time job ranging from 25 to 40 hours a week, depending upon what is going on at work. Me, I work a full time job and try to get as much overtime as they will give me. As a matter of fact, I am on call this weekend.
I don't think I'm being lazy or argumentative--I am unaware of any women's studies programs that aren't feminist.I said "womens' studies", not "womens' studies programs". The study of women in anthropology predates the emergence of feminist studies.
This isn't as complicated as you're trying to make it. "Womens' studies" and "Feminist studies" aren't synonymous.
My bad, then.
However, as you point out, anthropology is a field that long predates the Vietnam war. Women's studies programs came out of the late-sixties/early-seventies women's lib movement. I assumed you were talking about the latter since you were talking about '60s-era campus leftists.
I'm a little confused. Is feminism studies an actual course or major at a university or a term for women's studies?
If the former, perhaps you could provide a link?
I was pondering this a bit and I think it's important to point out that this is by no means the first time that academics has been confused with politics.
--No matter where you stand politically, you can point to some school of economics.
--Racist and political assumptions have long infected any biological study of our own species, as well-documented in Stephen Jay Gould's The Mismeasure of Man.
--History, obviously. The most glaring example I can think of would be the historiography of the Civil War and Reconstruction. Again, no matter where you stand, you can point to a historian confusing academia and politics. I'd point to Ulrich B. Phillips and his school, but I'm sure others would point to Eugene D. Genovese during his Marxist phase.
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And, in full disclosure, I guess I should state I have never taken a women's studies class and I've only taken 1 and a half black studies classes: Invisible Man was very good, although overrated, August Wilson was interesting, but Zora Neale Hurston, Toni Morrison and Gloria Naylor were AWESOME and I never would have read these amazing writers if it hadn't been for that class. Pathetically enough, though, there weren't any black people in either of those classes.
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What I said is that the Vietnam era saw the emergence of "feminist studies" (which is not the same thing as "womens' studies" as "feminist studies" self-consciously confuses politics with academics). "Womens' studies" predates "feminist studies".
For the record: Womens Studies and Feminist Studies are the same thing (and no apostrophe is required for the term Womens Studies, but if you insist, at least place it between the n and the s, since we're intent on arguing annoying details).
I seriously doubt that Womens Studies (which chiefly explores the place of women in politics, history, philosophy, literature and art) has even an iota to do with the potential destabilization or subordination of Western culture and hegemony.
Let's move on, please.
Dang, beaten by the Duck! But here's another: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Cal-State-Fullerton-Womens-Studies/2431250251 1
National Women's Studies Association is supposed to support over 600 programs worldwide, 16 with PhD levels. Also try listings at the 'Seven Sisters', a cabal of elitist, all women colleges favored by the liberal elite (paraphrased from a graduate of Wellesley). All send a depressing number of grads to grad schools with such programs. Personally, I rate them as top notch 'liberal arts' schools that actually teach students to THINK (which every grad I've encountered can do, despite fuzzy headed notions). Had I a daughter interested in going (and the requisite funding) I would not hesitate in sending her there.
Wiki sez it best though: "Women's studies, also known as feminist studies, is an interdisciplinary academic field which explores politics, society and history from an intersectional, multicultural women's perspective. It critiques and explores societal norms of gender, race, class, sexuality, and other social inequalities."
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Just as an aside, to help understanding of the article.
Niall Ferguson is a determined self-publicist who likes to be 'shocking' by telling us, in an excited tone with academic flim-flam, the same stuff that my grandmother spouts over dinner: Things were better in the past, you people today have no idea, whole country gone to the dogs...
He used to specialise in criticising modern Britain, now he's got a post in the states and has expanded his inanity to say the exact same things about 'western society'.
Pathetically enough, though, there weren't any black people in either of those classes.That's because, for a very long time, feminism was synoymous with coffee talk white women had about rights while black women were busy pouring the coffee.
When feminism and minority politics started blending (which was fairly recent), it caused shock waves through "feminist studies". What did it mean for a "liberated woman" to wear the burka, for example?
Feminism has only recently started making progress figuring that out. So, it is behind in bringing minorities into the discussion and minorities know it.
There weren't any blacks in the blacks studies courses.
Really? Now that is interesting. Its not entirely surprising, but it is interesting.
There weren't any blacks in the blacks studies courses.
Hehhee. I saw enough "fight the power" white teachers and students to believe that.
Well, the classes were at UNH. We're pretty racially homogenous up here.
