Culture: March 2019 Archives
Mountains Are There to Be Climbed: The Next United Methodism - Juicy Ecumenism
"Our critics have effectively framed the debate in terms of inclusion and exclusion. This is a godsend because it allows them to run a narrative about slavery and women in ministry that puts us on the defensive. It allows them to exploit the natural opposition to any idea of exclusion, for the default position will always initially be in favor of inclusion. It also allows a virtuous narrative about the moral arc of history which requires that we be identified as obsolete and out of step with the times....
"This whole way of thinking needs initially to be seen for what it is, namely, a toxic combination of persuasive definition, virtue-signaling story-telling, and fallacious reasoning. The ultimate issue for the conservative is none of these moves, much less a combination of them. The crucial issue at the end of the day is one of faithfulness to our Lord and to the tested tradition of the church. The failure to recognize this is an egregious error. It is the old game of Sein and Schein, much practiced by the mode of thought beloved of the Frankfurt School of philosophy, so that what seems to be true is not true....
"...Witness the aggressive repudiation of any distinction at this stage between one's person and one's behavior. Failure to accept the behavior, in this case, gay marriage, is interpreted and experienced as a rejection of one's gender expression and one's moral identity and thus as a deep act of hostility to the deep identity of the persons involved. Unless one fully accepts the gender expression represented by gay marriage (and ordination), then one is in effect rejecting the personhood of gays and lesbians. One is automatically pronounced guilty of causing harm....
"Psychologically, we are dealing in some instances with an adult form of adolescence. Of course, there is pain when we run into folk who disagree with us at the various levels of identity that I have just charted; yet in the current debate, all this is forgotten. The only way conservatives can avoid causing pain is to agree with the moral and ecclesial agenda of our critics. However, to insist on this is intellectual madness; it is a case of cooking the books by means of moral and emotional blackmail. Frankly, we have had enough of this verbal bullying; it is time to confront this form of intellectual malpractice and refuse its assumptions."
A few noisy students at the dorm Sullivan oversees have protested his involvement in the case, and the Harvard administration has focused on placating them rather than backing the faculty member and the legal traditions of presumption of innocence and the right to counsel.
"[Q.] Is this on the dean of Harvard College, who launched this survey, or is this in response to student pressure? Do you blame the administration, or do you think that the students forced his hand?"
"No, students have every right to protest. It's in the nature of students to protest. The adults in the room, however, do not have to react in the way that they have."
....
"[Q.]" There's been a lot written about political correctness running amok on campus the last few years. Do you consider this an example of it? Has this incident changed the way you think about that larger issue?"
"To the first part of your question, the term political correctness has so much freight that I'm going to choose my own term and say that this situation is a particular instantiation of a larger threat to both academic freedom and the norm of open and robust exchanges of ideas that have typically characterized universities. It has not changed my thinking, because I have long been concerned with forms of silencing that go on in the university space with respect to people who have different ideas. I have gotten scores of notes from students who very quietly give strong support to me, and I appreciate those notes. But one constant is that they say that they feel as though they cannot say anything publicly because they will be tarred and feathered as 'rape sympathizers' and that they're disinclined to step out publicly. This sort of thing has no space in the university. People have to be able to exchange ideas, even ideas with which they disagree, freely and openly. That's that."
Colorado Springs wrestler refuses to wrestle girl, knocks self out of tournament
High school wrestler Brendan Johnston, a modern-day Eric Liddell.
'"I'm not really comfortable with a couple of things with wrestling a girl," Johnston explained. "The physical contact, there's a lot of it in wrestling.
'"And I guess the physical aggression, too. I don't want to treat a young lady like that on the mat. Or off the mat. And not to disrespect the heart or the effort that she's put in. That's not what I want to do, either."
'Johnston is forever a part of Colorado state tournament lore now. He's cool with that. His decision to forfeit twice at the 2019 state tourney -- effectively eliminating himself from a competition he had a solid shot at winning -- on personal and religious grounds rather than wrestle two girl competitors, may divide your inner circle right down the middle. He's cool with that, too.
'"Wrestling is something we do, it's not who we are," Johnston told The Denver Post before forfeiting to Rios on Saturday in his final match as a high-school wrestler. "And there are more important things to me than my wrestling. And I'm willing to have those priorities."'
The secret lives of Facebook moderators in America - The Verge
"The fourth source [of guidance for moderation decisions] is perhaps the most problematic: Facebook's own internal tools for distributing information. While official policy changes typically arrive every other Wednesday, incremental guidance about developing issues is distributed on a near-daily basis. Often, this guidance is posted to Workplace, the enterprise version of Facebook that the company introduced in 2016. Like Facebook itself, Workplace has an algorithmic News Feed that displays posts based on engagement. During a breaking news event, such as a mass shooting, managers will often post conflicting information about how to moderate individual pieces of content, which then appear out of chronological order on Workplace. Six current and former employees told me that they had made moderation mistakes based on seeing an outdated post at the top of their feed. At times, it feels as if Facebook's own product is working against them. The irony is not lost on the moderators."
