Language manipulation

A few weeks ago we learned the news that Stanford University had published a brochure specifying a list of words that should not be used because they are harmful. The news caused a huge uproar, as one of the forbidden words is American, which should be replaced by US citizen. Also on the list, of course, is abortion, as well as many other commonly used terms. A word whose exclusion caused a lot of rejection was victim, which according to the authors of this monstrosity should be replaced by a person who has experienced or a person who has been impacted. Among those who reacted to this absurdity, some media highlighted Elon Musk’s contribution, who published the following tweet:

This has gone too far, to say the least! @Stanford, what’s your explanation for this madness?

where, by the way, one of the forbidden words appears: madness.

Additional author rights

James H. Schmitz

In addition to copyright (the right of the author to receive a part of the profits from the sale of his work), other rights should also be guaranteed. The most important is the right to the integrity of the work, recognized by the Berne Convention:

The author shall retain the right ... to object to any deformation, mutilation or other modification of his [work].

The downside is that dead authors can hardly object. 

Unfortunately, this right is less protected than the copyright, as a few examples will show:

Equality or absurdity?

Read in Science News, issue of September 26 2020:

Charles Darwin

Charles Darwin. Carolus Linnaeus. Gregor Mendel. They’re all men. They’re all white. And their names appear in every biology book included in a recent analysis of college textbooks. According to the survey, mentions of white men still dominate biology textbooks despite growing recognition of the scientific contributions of women and people of color.

The good news, the researchers say: Scientists in textbooks are getting more diverse. The bad news: If diversification continues at its current pace, it will take another 500 years for mentions of Black scientists to accurately reflect the number of Black college biology students.

This article is one more example of the tyranny of political correctness and the degree of madness or folly in our society. That a serious high-profile magazine like Science News also makes these blunders shows that the situation is rapidly degenerating. So fast, that it is possible that I may well see the total collapse of our civilization, which I believed would take place long after my death.

The political correctness of animalists

John Maxwell Coetzee

In an article in the Spanish major newspaper La Vanguardia, the writer Quim Monzó recalls a campaign organized by the City Council of a Catalonian village to move people to collect canine excrements, with a poster where a pig-like dog appeared to tell its master: "I am your dog. Don’t make me look like a pig. Collect my excrements." The poster provoked numerous complaints from local animalists, who considered it an insult to pigs. Quim Monzó adds the following comment:

As expected... we are now hearing the slogan that the time has come to eliminate all phrases that trivialize the suffering of animals. [The animalist association] proposes that we stop using expressions like "kill two birds with one stone" or "be treated as a guinea pig”... We must not say "take the bull by the horns". There is also an English expression "bring home the bacon," which should not be used either.

Monzó has given his article a significant title: Idiots, idiots everywhere.

I would not dare to call animalists idiots, but I must accuse them of irrationality. Do they really believe that some pig was offended by the campaign for the collection of canine excrement, or that whenever we say don’t be a pig (or any of its synonyms) to rebuke a dirty person? I am afraid that pigs are not even aware of our use of language. The only ones who bother about this are animalists, and until proven otherwise, we must assume that they are human beings.

Ideology, blacklisting and censorship

In this post I will resort to my own editorial history by means of three anecdotes. As I have published about 50 books with 37 different publishers, I have accumulated many of these anecdotes. However, these three refer to publishers with whom I have never published anything.

First anecdote: One of my first works (Krishna versus Christ, 1978) was an essay, a comparison between two religions: Hinduism and Christianity. When I finished the book, I decided to look for a publisher and went to the headquarters of one of the best known, with the book under my arm, without trying to arrange an appointment. I was greeted in the lobby by one of the employees and explained why I had come and what kind of book I was bringing. The employee asked:

“Does this book attack Christianity?”

I answered it did not.

“Then do not bother to leave it,” he said, smiling. “If it attacked Christianity, it might have a chance, but if it does not, there is no way we will publish it.”

Of course, I left without leaving the book, and have never tried to work with that publisher again.

The origin of violence

Pitirim Sorokin

On the question of violence and evil in society there are three fundamental theories:

1. Every human being is a battlefield between good and evil and carries with him strong tendencies towards evil and violence. It is necessary to educate him in moral values, ​​to teach him to control his impulses.
2. Man is good by nature, society makes him bad. Education must try to keep us as much as possible in our original natural state, the good savage. This is the theory of Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
3. Man is good by nature, everything bad is a consequence of a poorly focused education. The solution is education in the gender ideology, which is dominant today.

What does science say (in this case, Sociology)?

One of the most important sociologists of the 20th century, the Russian-American Pitirim Sorokin, wrote the following in his book Society, Culture and Personality (Chapter VI, Factors of Solidarity and Antagonism):

Numerical equality or equal opportunities

It is common to hear concerns about the fact that women do not want to study technical careers and prefer to pursue other professions, such as in health sciences, psychology or the humanities, where they usually make the majority. In contrast, in technical schools there is usually a high percentage of male students. For example, at the Higher Polytechnic School of the Autonomous University of Madrid, during the 20 years between 1992 and 2012, in our degree in Computer Engineering, two-thirds of the students were male, just one-third were female. And between 2003 and 2012, in the degree in Telecommunications Engineering, the proportion of women was even lower: there were three men for each woman.

Political correctness attacks again

University of Bologna (1088)

Since the foundation of the Western universities, starting at the eleventh century, these centers soon became places for debate, where different topics of discussion were raised by two or more specialists who defended the different sides of the issue to be discussed, after which the audience could decide for one or the other position, or for both at once.

This debating function of the universities has persisted for many centuries (we are near turning a millennium). Now, however, political correctness, this new form of censorship, threatens to end this activity in the universities.

Consider the headline of the story:

Oregon State University Socratic Club Debate Cancelled

And the first paragraph: