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In Defense of Amy Wax’s Defense of Bourgeois Values

heterodoxacademy.org

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Re: In Defense of Amy Wax’s Defense of Bourgeois Values

#31

Post by gras »

wildmusings wrote: post #13
chickenfries wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not attributing this to you, but you could deploy your argument against abolishing slavery. > How do you propose to raise up a culture that doesn't value diligent hard work Which culture? Don't be abstract. Name what culture you think doesn't value hard work and I will and we'll see if I can't find a counterexample.

I prefer positive examples. It's no secret that the Jewish people have done so phenomenally well, despite two millennia of persecution, because of their strong values of hard work, family, and creativity.

How is this at all controversial? The American Jewish minority of 6% of the population owns 25% of American wealth. They've done well.

Are the downvotes about attributing it to their values? What else?

Their skill at (((accidental))) eugenics? The selection pressure put on them by other groups?

Other theory: KGB or Mossad votebots that want to suppress discussions about Jews not only being victims.

Re: In Defense of Amy Wax’s Defense of Bourgeois Values

#32

Post by [deleted] »

rhizome wrote: post #27
taylodl wrote: post #7

If 'all cultures are not equal' is a false statement then we're stating 'all cultures are equal' which I interpret as saying there is no metric by which we can measure the 'goodness' or 'effectiveness' of a culture. So let's accept the statement 'all cultures are equal' at face value: all cultures are equal and therefore there exists no metric for measuring 'goodness' or 'effectiveness.' If C(now) captures my current…

I feel like this should all be short-circuited by the fact that cultures are not a fixed value that can be compared for equality. Congruence, perhaps, but there are too many moving parts in culture to be able to rank them, which is an implication of solving for a single (imaginary) term.

[deleted]

Re: In Defense of Amy Wax’s Defense of Bourgeois Values

#33

Post by [deleted] »

padseeker wrote: post #19

"Nor are the single-parent, antisocial habits, prevalent among some working-class whites; the anti-“acting white” rap culture of inner-city blacks; the anti-assimilation ideas gaining ground among some Hispanic immigrants" Already you lost me. There are plenty of single parents out of wedlock children in very white states like West Virginia, Kentucky, etc. How is rap culture or black people responsible for the action…

[deleted]

Re: In Defense of Amy Wax’s Defense of Bourgeois Values

#34

Post by ameister14 »

padseeker wrote: post #19

"Nor are the single-parent, antisocial habits, prevalent among some working-class whites; the anti-“acting white” rap culture of inner-city blacks; the anti-assimilation ideas gaining ground among some Hispanic immigrants" Already you lost me. There are plenty of single parents out of wedlock children in very white states like West Virginia, Kentucky, etc. How is rap culture or black people responsible for the action…

>the single-parent, antisocial habits, prevalent among some working-class whites

You quoted it

Re: In Defense of Amy Wax’s Defense of Bourgeois Values

#35

Post by cafard »

AdeptusAquinas wrote: post #11

A lot of the people who hold these sort of viewpoints in the US would benefit immensely from visiting and even living for a while in literally any other western democracy, or even just the English-speaking ones. I can't think of any country in the western world who has a social welfare system on the same low level as the US - and yet we don't have such a 'decline in social indicators'. Quite the opposite. And we are…

I think that had the Penn students used your first two paragraphs as the gist of their response, there would be less commotion. To be sure, I don't know how well off the average US citizen is or the average NZ citizen; but it is silly to ignore economics and their effect.

I think that your third paragraph could use some some work, though.

Re: In Defense of Amy Wax’s Defense of Bourgeois Values

#36

Post by AdeptusAquinas »

darawk wrote: post #22
AdeptusAquinas wrote: post #11

A lot of the people who hold these sort of viewpoints in the US would benefit immensely from visiting and even living for a while in literally any other western democracy, or even just the English-speaking ones. I can't think of any country in the western world who has a social welfare system on the same low level as the US - and yet we don't have such a 'decline in social indicators'. Quite the opposite. And we are…

It's hard to compare a country like NZ to the US in a fair and meaningful way. NZ is a small, ethnically (and therefore more importantly culturally) homogenous country. Now, it's not completely homogenous, but it is much more so than the US. Being a democracy, the policies of the country are inseparable from its culture and demographics. You say universal healthcare might stem the tide of cultural breakdown. But we c…

I'd be careful around claims about cultural identity and homogeneity. A lot of countries, like the scandinavian ones and NZ (and Australia) can look that way from the outside, but I think its a simplistic view. From our perspective, for example, apart from the obvious catastrophic partisan politics that have gripped the US, the US looks like it has a united cultural identity (e.g. a religious devotion to the founding fathers, patriotism, commitment to freedom of speech etc).

There was a recent article where a citizen of a Nordic country got upset at this common view, pointing out that perhaps it seems homogeneous to the US because in the US, today, you are white, black, hispanic, asian etc. There are not strong subdivisions in these categories, it seems, and subsequently they apply this view to other countries. But in Europe and Norway, Sweden etc, there are many flavours of 'white' with a long and recent history of animosity.

NZ is a country with a large indigenous population (the Maori), a lot of pacific island immigration, and increasing and accelerating immigrant population of Indians and Chinese (among others). These all assert social pressures of their own, and I would argue its partially our social safety net and maybe certain aspects of our culture and economic structure that have allowed it to be (mostly) harmonious, so far.

Not saying your entirely wrong, but that it is not (no pun intended) black and white.

Re: In Defense of Amy Wax’s Defense of Bourgeois Values

#37

Post by coldtea »

danfolkes wrote: post #18

Here is a follow-up article written by one of the 33 members of the University of Pennsylvania Law School faculty to sign a letter criticizing Amy Wax: Don’t Care if Amy Wax Is Politically Incorrect; I Do Care that She’s Empirically Incorrect https://heterodoxacademy.org/2017/09/03/i-dont-care-if-amy-w...

What hypocrisy.

All they care is that she is "Politically Incorrect" -- they could not care less about the facts.

Not to mention that when someone is wrong about facts you correct them, you don't fire them or ask for their condemnation. Professors are not supposed to be correct, just to probe for what's correct. In fact they should be encouraged to be boldly inquisitive and incorrect in that pursuit, and use dialog to sort out the ultimate answer.

And of course even "incorrect" ideas can be considered correct in an era -- in the 19th and up to the mid-20th century there were all kinds of facts and studies showing how some races were genetically inferior available to racists (that is: almost everybody).

Now we laugh at them, but how many similar (or even in the reverse direction) BS we take as fact because social "scientists" just put things under the rug and only give facts and statistics that are compatible with current cultural norms?

Re: In Defense of Amy Wax’s Defense of Bourgeois Values

#38

Post by chickenfries »

wildmusings wrote: post #13
chickenfries wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not attributing this to you, but you could deploy your argument against abolishing slavery. > How do you propose to raise up a culture that doesn't value diligent hard work Which culture? Don't be abstract. Name what culture you think doesn't value hard work and I will and we'll see if I can't find a counterexample.

I prefer positive examples. It's no secret that the Jewish people have done so phenomenally well, despite two millennia of persecution, because of their strong values of hard work, family, and creativity.

> It's no secret that the Jewish people have done so phenomenally well, despite two millennia of persecution, because of their strong values of hard work, family, and creativity

This is a commonly held hypothesis but the question of "why are the Jews successful despite being outsiders" is complicated and not in any way settled. What I know of it comes from reading some of "the origins of totalitarianism" Hannah Arendt. "The Jews are really hardworking" is a lazy and easy explanation for the question of how some Jews have flourished despite persecution.

It is not simply the case that culture is the proximal cause of (some) Jewish wealth than the particular material conditions of certain Jews throughout history that has lead to the affluence of and importance of some, mostly European Jews. For example, many Jews came to have a privileged position in European courts because of the rise of protestantism (a hardworking culture that doesn't value credit, something that Wax would probably say is "bad"). You're ignoring politics and history when you just chalk everything up to culture. It's survivorship bias at it's finest.

Edit: I butchered a sentence in the middle of my comment. Added a line break.

Re: In Defense of Amy Wax’s Defense of Bourgeois Values

#39

Post by baddox »

gras wrote: post #31
wildmusings wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I prefer positive examples. It's no secret that the Jewish people have done so phenomenally well, despite two millennia of persecution, because of their strong values of hard work, family, and creativity.

How is this at all controversial? The American Jewish minority of 6% of the population owns 25% of American wealth. They've done well. Are the downvotes about attributing it to their values? What else? Their skill at (((accidental))) eugenics? The selection pressure put on them by other groups? Other theory: KGB or Mossad votebots that want to suppress discussions about Jews not only being victims.

I'm not saying it's controversial, but I'd rather see strong evidence that just make assumptions based on general cultural stereotypes like "Jewish people work hard" or weak evidence like "they own a disproportionate amount of wealth."

Re: In Defense of Amy Wax’s Defense of Bourgeois Values

#40

Post by colanderman »

rhizome wrote: post #27
taylodl wrote: post #7

If 'all cultures are not equal' is a false statement then we're stating 'all cultures are equal' which I interpret as saying there is no metric by which we can measure the 'goodness' or 'effectiveness' of a culture. So let's accept the statement 'all cultures are equal' at face value: all cultures are equal and therefore there exists no metric for measuring 'goodness' or 'effectiveness.' If C(now) captures my current…

I feel like this should all be short-circuited by the fact that cultures are not a fixed value that can be compared for equality. Congruence, perhaps, but there are too many moving parts in culture to be able to rank them, which is an implication of solving for a single (imaginary) term.

Right. For example, there is no one "white culture". I'm white, and there are plenty of white people in my home town with whom I share little to no cultural values. Any conversation about relative values of "cultures" is probably better cast as a discussion about cultural memes (in the original Dawkins sense [1]), with the understanding that the flow of memes tend to follow social contours as clusters, and interact with one another.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meme

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