“The most disheartening trend is the spread of the mental disease of social justice addiction through all the major institutions of the publication and media industry. Not just written science fiction, but films and shows and comic books are continually suffering spiritual degradation, castration of manhood, and lobotomy of common sense, defenestration of sound storytelling.”
These behaviors sound demonic in nature, not an illness, entering all aspects of education, commerce, and politics. Medicine as well.
They must be shamed and cast out with force. There is no other solution.
It is much the same here in academia, with the main difference being that statements about how you plan to pay homage to the värdegrund (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V%C3%A4rdegrund) are not just mandatory but also legal; indeed they are compelled by law.
Värdegrund comes before facts or anything else and is worse than DIE because värdegrund is so loosely defined, or even undefined, you will never know if you violate it or not, until your superiors tell you you have done so. The Wikipedia entry briefly explains the concept, but without any context or examples of how it works in practice - it is essentially putting make-up on a pig.
The day I was told that trying to be factual, objective and impartial was to pick the side of the oppressors, I knew my time was up - I was a heretic (every time I write that word I can hear the Grunts from Halo chanting "He-re-tic! He-re-tic!"; the brain works in wondrous ways) because I hadn't when challenged replied with the correct pass-phrase.
Dressing up in old army uniform sans insignia for "Rainbow-day" just crossed the I and dotted the T - apparently, army green is the wrong kind of green.
A point: there are signs that DEI and woke is now somewhat on the back foot. Don't belive it to be so; what is, is that they have finally met a little resistance and have been taken aback, shocked and outraged that resistance is possible. Now is not the time to celebrate a victory: the enemy's front-line is wavering - now is the time to increase the intensity of the attack and have units ready for breakthrough and encircle, plus raids deep into the hinter-lands where the depos are. Against an enemy such as the woke and DEI, static warfare and attrition must be avoided; the continuous never-ending grind is where they excel. The raid, the fluid front, the avoiding of pitched battles, and the always striking at the enemy using his own strengths against him must be the principles of engagement.
That, and no prisoners. No peace. No accord or compromise. Consider the woke and the DEI the human equivalent of Giger's Xenomorph: it's goal is to utterly destroy you because of how it's existence and nature is.
There is no common ground or cause with an existential enemy.
Could not agree more on the woke question. They're staging a tactical retreat, but this is a holy war. They will not surrender, but must be defeated.
Also, on the method of the war: again I agree. There will be no long slow march through the institutions, as the enemy performed. Gradual infiltration is their way. Rather, we must think like chariot warriors and guerillas - lightning raids, hit and run, with the goal of disrupting their logistics and, ultimately, burning down their fortifications.
Crazy stuff about the Värdegrund. Somehow this is the first I've heard of that, despite living in Sweden for a while.
I think one method of swift defeat is to outdo them. Novels, films, stories of any kind. Fiction and media. Although official media is essentially off limits to the normal.
They are overtly political, unavoidably so. Plenty of scope there to entertain audiences desperate for quality.
I do think that is how we will win the culture war. Quality. Lord of the Rings versus gay superheroes.
A character may be political, religious, whatever and spout their views within the logic and context (the internal consistency) of the work; think of Gandalf asking Frodo who gets to decide who deserves to live or not.
It is when the work itself is political that it falls off the cliff; the last Narnia book is a prime example. All the earlier ones puts characters against each other, but the work itself simply tells the story, it doesn't pick a side - it trusts the reader to do that, if desired. The last one is as subtle as a hammer to the teeth, especially the scenes with the dwarves and the one single moslem, pardon "calormen", that can pass through the door before Aslan.
It does, and it scans. Subtlety and honesty are important. I find the most compelling works that take on political themes are the ones in which the author is aware of the shortcomings of their own preferred worldview - they're grappling with issues, rather than preaching. Centering the questions rather than the answers.
Direct link to the article won't co-operate; look for one titled "Sweden: Welcome to Diversity Hell"
I mention this because Ganman is one of few outside academia who has tried to understand the concept "värdegrund" and where it came from. Briefly:
It is an unholy amalgamation of "core corporate values" taken from marketing and capitalist coprorations, bred together with the purityrannical sense if being from islam and christianity at its worst (not the religious tenets as such, just the "obey or else" sense) where guilt over never being politicqally correct /enough/ drives you to ever stronger and extreme displays of obeisance and devotion.
Plus politically correctness the way Lenin defined and codified it: the Party is always right; what the Party speaks is truth. Nowadays, without any notions of communism but instead liberalism and libertarianism applied to issues of race, culture and identity.
It is applied the way stamps in your party-book was in communist states: too many, and you're suspected of trying too hard, not enough and you're suspected of dissident thought - and "correct" is never defined and nailed down. It is Kafka's delator and the logic of the inquisition:
If you stand accused, you must be guilty. If of nothing else, then you are guilty of wasting the court's time.
Academia is pyramid scheme with shit pay. Glad it prepared you to unleash your brilliant writing. Your essays are inspiring and deeply resonant. Congratulations for your success!
> A few days ago, I came across this video by the science YouTuber Sabine Hossenfelder: My dream died, and now I'm here.
Funny. First Hossenfelder, then Briggs, now you. Three people in ~3 days dunk on Academia from basically the same angle. Collusion? ;) Are we to unleash Conspiracy Theories? xD
Don’t give up on your writing dreams. An old coworker of mine from the late 1980’s (I was the department secretary, he has a PhD in physics) has written sci-fi, a guide to fiction writing, and now writes Christian fiction set in the time of Jesus. Look up Randy (or Randall) Ingermanson. He has a blog and his books are on Amazon. Keep up the 💩posting, too!
I've no intention of giving up. Quite the opposite - the main thrust of this is that the scientific career was really more of a preparation for writing ;)
You will do far more good for human flourishing in writing than academia. Regardless of what the I F*cking Love Science people say, if a people's spiritual needs are not met, nohing else will be met either.
If you write SF, I wonder what will be the sexuality in your books. :) I've started to read science fiction and I noticed a pretty clear trend. The older the book, the more crazy the sexuality. For example, Randezvous with Rama (~1972) has polygamy as perfectly normal, something nobody bats an eye at. But The Moon is a Harsh Mistress (1955)? Oh boy! Line marriages, clan marriages, polygamy, premarital sex, even hints of adultery, you name it, it has it! xD OTOH, Theft of Fire (2023) not only doesn't have anything deviant, *it doesn't have sex at all*! Well that's not true. Devon really outdid himself and, since he couldn't insert a sex scene in the narative, he instead created a dream scene and had his characters fuck in their dreams. You know. Can't have a work of science fiction without AT LEAST ONE sexing. xD But at least it was normal one-on-one hetero sex... with the exception of butterfly wings.
PROJECTION: by 2050 science fiction will only permit full 100% Christian heteronormative sex under the bond of marriage. Characters that engage in premarital sex will get eaten by space ghouls. Polygamy will be forgotten about.
I find the sex stuff generally uninteresting. Heinlein was a dirty old man, but his best work was definitely not deep dives into alternative relationship architectures.
Wow - I'm well out of modern literature, meaning books written after the year 2 000 - has it gotten that bad, that we are now in an age of neo-puritanism where sex is described the way Zamjatin did (but in his case to make point) in "We"?
Time to re-read "The Reproductive System" (John Sladek), methinks.
I find a lot of contemporary books tend to skip over or imply the sex scenes. Which honestly I prefer. It isn't prudishness (well maybe a little), it's just that most authors are terrible at writing sex scenes, and they come off as cringe, awkward, or weird.
"As Luke penetrated her shields, he could feel the Force well up inside him, coursing as was it a raging yet serene torrent, through his staunchly girded loins just before he launched his throbbing proton torpedo at her yawning, glistening thermal exhaust port."
C'mon, Star Wars was already ruined by Disney. Bring on the smut!
🤣 true! I’ve dabbled in writing erotic fiction and I think I do a decent job of it…but now that I’ve become a Christian, I don’t feel comfortable with that language anymore. Had the beginnings of a story that I’m trying to rewrite without all the sex scenes and I keep coming up with blanks.
Prudishness and prurience produce their own kinds of weird. Finding the happy medium is a hard trick, which is why the smart call is usually just to draw a tasteful curtain and let the characters have a private moment.
Think this with your heart: “Jesus, if you are the Son of God, I consecrate my heart to your Heart. Please send me the Holy Spirit so I can see Truth and have the courage to convert and follow Him wherever He leads”
Mathematical proof of God’s mind
Who could have imagined that mathematical images could be so beautiful?:
My own trajectory is similar, although didn't involve academia. Just the slow realization you are not getting on and the DEI quota system has serious consequences for many people's livelihoods, mine included.
I've enjoyed your work these past few years and am keen to see more. I'm also publishing a sci-fi novel soon so we overlap there too. It will be interesting to see if ultimately Substack becomes a launchpad for new writers, including novelists. It is certainly a viable alternative to the dying mainstream.
Keep up the good work and look forward to news of the novel.
Academia stunk long before the DEI began eating its rotting corpse. Publish or perish = Total Quantity Management.
I look forward to reading your fiction. I tried my hand at SF before going into physics and got a big stack of rejection slips for my efforts. Physics was easier. Writing software easier yet.
The root of the problem in the academic sector, as everywhere else, is managerialization. It rationalizes everything it touches, and in the process sucks out the soul and leaves it hollow and pointless.
The Humanities end of academia has been the natural home of a malcontent intelligentsia since the 1920s (if not even earlier) - one that wanted to see itself as more sophisticated than thou by unpicking our culture's moral compass. And these types MADE A B-LINE for the public-funded universities and the rest of our polity was foolish enough to stand by as they have entirely colonised them and sheep dipped the rising generations of the professional/managerial elite with their bogus Social Justice race and gender victimhood cults. The rest is history:
It isn't only that. You also have a massive influx of midwits starting mid-century and growing from that point on. Dumbing down STEM is very difficult; dumbing down the humanities comparatively easy. Thus lit became a bird major, stuffed with exactly the kind of people that are easiest to indoctrinate.
Very cool to learn more about your background JC. I see myself through a lot of your work. You described me perfectly thru the Covid saga. I was a fucking wreck. Lost my girl, couldn’t find a job because I refused the evil juice, and was pissed off at the world. To top it all off, I was drinking like a homeless man in San Francisco.
In the first stage of Covid I sobered up after a 2 week binder (the hard stuff). The fear of the Nation and World collapsing gripped me tight. All I could see was darkness and I knew something unexpected and inherently evil had entered the fray. I had never been keen to its vibrations before that. Through all of the dark murky fog I found my way. I thought about taking the easy road out but instead struck a deal with The Divine Spirit.
It had occurred to me that if I were to eat a bullet those responsible for this mess would NOT be offended. In fact, they would simply laugh at my demise but more than likely they wouldn’t notice at all. So I decided I would stick around come what may. I would work to become a thorn in their side even if it just meant living for the right reasons.
Have since settled down but head and heart are still on a swivel. There is simply is no way to go back for me. Memory holing may work on the masses but it is useless against the strong willed.
John I hope you see this because I would really like your input. I deliberately waited for traffic to die down before broaching this subject. I can tell you it MIGHT make a helluva an article BUT I am not completely certain you should broadcast it. You certainly can if you like tho. I would enjoy the fuck out of reading it.
I find it odd that this little corner of the internet went untouched at the height of Censorship Inc. They’re out of SanFran for crying out loud. It should have been easy to squash this platform. I can tell you have a memory quite a bit like my own, ie we don’t easily forget. For me I think of it as both a gift and a curse.
My thoughts lead me to wonder what if it us writing the LLM’s of the future. There’s never been any talk about an AI for Substack as far as I know. To be honest I really don’t know much about it. Seems strange “they” allowed or funneled some of best talent over here and let them bash the vaccines especially. Even if it’s not planned I wonder if a Substack AI would out compete the others regardless.
Been here since mid 2021. I don’t have a page but I have dropped a shitload of comments. Some fairly intelligent lol. Would be cool to know we are the future 😉
Smiles….just wondering if we might be something a bit more. Regardless of the AI angle I find it next to impossible the tiny little SS was allowed to push out anti-vax propaganda. At first it could be written off as insignificant. However by start of 2022 we the major suppliers of truth…… time will tell my friend
I just left a comment for John on this thread I think. It’s about Substack AI. Thought maybe you might be interested. It’s a little combination of hope and fun I suppose lol.
I dropped out of academia a few steps behind, and in a diametrically opposed field to yours, but for the same reasons. A life that I would have very much enjoyed just 3-4 decades ago became impossible.
My own experience has been similar to yours in some ways. As a programmer in the SF Bay Area, I found myself increasingly discriminated against purely on the basis of my race (white) and sex (male). I was sent to HR at least three times simply for speaking unwoke opinions. This led to a deep weariness and disgust with woke-corporate life and my liberating early retirement three years ago. Now I'm not making money, but I am enjoying life far more. I feel very fortunate to have the opportunity to express myself by collecting and publishing memes, any one of which would have gotten me sent to HR during the days of my wage-bondage.
Have you seen the Star Wars meme, 1977, Ben Kenobi’s hermitage, in the first frame Luke says incredulously, “You were in the meme wars??!!” Then in the second frame Ben says, “Yes, I was once a shit poster, same as your father …” and in the final frame Ben continues, “… before the Dark Times, before the Big Tech censorship.” 😂
The other problem with Science(tm), aside from the ones you document (and I have sadly experienced having gone deeper into the abyss than you) is that it has no culture of Wisdom.
Just a few lines to explain why science is so twisted. The entropic view of the universe as well as humanity is a lie! We do not have any limits of human growth, or any other limits. Lyndon Larouche and many other thinkers know the truth about who and why we adopted this false paradise. The real medical scientists have been marginalized out of sensuousness, and Physics', biochemists, astronomers, every branch of science has been twisted into believing this false reality. Our universe is not closed, space is not empty. The Malthusian eugenics pushers are responsible for this. Plato was right about reality. Kepler was the true scientist, and Newton was false. We are living in a matrix where we are trapped into thinking up is down, right is wrong, black is white as in Bertrand Russel's statement that public school could convince children that snow is gray and eventually convince them it is black. This has been the brainwashing public-school miseducation that has left us where we now are.
From the author John C. WRIGHT:
“The most disheartening trend is the spread of the mental disease of social justice addiction through all the major institutions of the publication and media industry. Not just written science fiction, but films and shows and comic books are continually suffering spiritual degradation, castration of manhood, and lobotomy of common sense, defenestration of sound storytelling.”
These behaviors sound demonic in nature, not an illness, entering all aspects of education, commerce, and politics. Medicine as well.
They must be shamed and cast out with force. There is no other solution.
Ragnarok approaches, I fear.
John C Wright has a way with words that few can surpass and none can imitate.
Indeed, a demonic obsession. Wright would certainly not disagree.
It is much the same here in academia, with the main difference being that statements about how you plan to pay homage to the värdegrund (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V%C3%A4rdegrund) are not just mandatory but also legal; indeed they are compelled by law.
Värdegrund comes before facts or anything else and is worse than DIE because värdegrund is so loosely defined, or even undefined, you will never know if you violate it or not, until your superiors tell you you have done so. The Wikipedia entry briefly explains the concept, but without any context or examples of how it works in practice - it is essentially putting make-up on a pig.
The day I was told that trying to be factual, objective and impartial was to pick the side of the oppressors, I knew my time was up - I was a heretic (every time I write that word I can hear the Grunts from Halo chanting "He-re-tic! He-re-tic!"; the brain works in wondrous ways) because I hadn't when challenged replied with the correct pass-phrase.
Dressing up in old army uniform sans insignia for "Rainbow-day" just crossed the I and dotted the T - apparently, army green is the wrong kind of green.
A point: there are signs that DEI and woke is now somewhat on the back foot. Don't belive it to be so; what is, is that they have finally met a little resistance and have been taken aback, shocked and outraged that resistance is possible. Now is not the time to celebrate a victory: the enemy's front-line is wavering - now is the time to increase the intensity of the attack and have units ready for breakthrough and encircle, plus raids deep into the hinter-lands where the depos are. Against an enemy such as the woke and DEI, static warfare and attrition must be avoided; the continuous never-ending grind is where they excel. The raid, the fluid front, the avoiding of pitched battles, and the always striking at the enemy using his own strengths against him must be the principles of engagement.
That, and no prisoners. No peace. No accord or compromise. Consider the woke and the DEI the human equivalent of Giger's Xenomorph: it's goal is to utterly destroy you because of how it's existence and nature is.
There is no common ground or cause with an existential enemy.
Could not agree more on the woke question. They're staging a tactical retreat, but this is a holy war. They will not surrender, but must be defeated.
Also, on the method of the war: again I agree. There will be no long slow march through the institutions, as the enemy performed. Gradual infiltration is their way. Rather, we must think like chariot warriors and guerillas - lightning raids, hit and run, with the goal of disrupting their logistics and, ultimately, burning down their fortifications.
Crazy stuff about the Värdegrund. Somehow this is the first I've heard of that, despite living in Sweden for a while.
I think one method of swift defeat is to outdo them. Novels, films, stories of any kind. Fiction and media. Although official media is essentially off limits to the normal.
They are overtly political, unavoidably so. Plenty of scope there to entertain audiences desperate for quality.
I do think that is how we will win the culture war. Quality. Lord of the Rings versus gay superheroes.
We need to be careful not to be overly political ourselves in reaction.
Easy way to check oneself for that, when writing:
A character may be political, religious, whatever and spout their views within the logic and context (the internal consistency) of the work; think of Gandalf asking Frodo who gets to decide who deserves to live or not.
It is when the work itself is political that it falls off the cliff; the last Narnia book is a prime example. All the earlier ones puts characters against each other, but the work itself simply tells the story, it doesn't pick a side - it trusts the reader to do that, if desired. The last one is as subtle as a hammer to the teeth, especially the scenes with the dwarves and the one single moslem, pardon "calormen", that can pass through the door before Aslan.
If that makes sense?
It does, and it scans. Subtlety and honesty are important. I find the most compelling works that take on political themes are the ones in which the author is aware of the shortcomings of their own preferred worldview - they're grappling with issues, rather than preaching. Centering the questions rather than the answers.
Yes I think that is the way in. Normals hate politics. They especially hate the woke bullshit we get now.
It is good stories, heroism, zero lecturing etc.
Politics should almost always be in the background, implicit rather than explicit.
I've written a few fiction pieces that definitely had it too front and center myself. Can be hard not to. Although nothing like the wokefests.
Here's an english text from a former state journalist who (in his own words in earlier posts) "saw the light" some 10-15 years ago:
https://jensganman.substack.com/
Direct link to the article won't co-operate; look for one titled "Sweden: Welcome to Diversity Hell"
I mention this because Ganman is one of few outside academia who has tried to understand the concept "värdegrund" and where it came from. Briefly:
It is an unholy amalgamation of "core corporate values" taken from marketing and capitalist coprorations, bred together with the purityrannical sense if being from islam and christianity at its worst (not the religious tenets as such, just the "obey or else" sense) where guilt over never being politicqally correct /enough/ drives you to ever stronger and extreme displays of obeisance and devotion.
Plus politically correctness the way Lenin defined and codified it: the Party is always right; what the Party speaks is truth. Nowadays, without any notions of communism but instead liberalism and libertarianism applied to issues of race, culture and identity.
It is applied the way stamps in your party-book was in communist states: too many, and you're suspected of trying too hard, not enough and you're suspected of dissident thought - and "correct" is never defined and nailed down. It is Kafka's delator and the logic of the inquisition:
If you stand accused, you must be guilty. If of nothing else, then you are guilty of wasting the court's time.
Academia is pyramid scheme with shit pay. Glad it prepared you to unleash your brilliant writing. Your essays are inspiring and deeply resonant. Congratulations for your success!
Yes, that's an excellent description, and may it Delenda Est.
Although while the pay isn't great, I was making more as a postdoc than I have so far as a Substacker!
> A few days ago, I came across this video by the science YouTuber Sabine Hossenfelder: My dream died, and now I'm here.
Funny. First Hossenfelder, then Briggs, now you. Three people in ~3 days dunk on Academia from basically the same angle. Collusion? ;) Are we to unleash Conspiracy Theories? xD
There are an infinite number of ways to the wrong, but only one way to be right...
Always interesting to read your work. Thanks for the efforts.
Don’t give up on your writing dreams. An old coworker of mine from the late 1980’s (I was the department secretary, he has a PhD in physics) has written sci-fi, a guide to fiction writing, and now writes Christian fiction set in the time of Jesus. Look up Randy (or Randall) Ingermanson. He has a blog and his books are on Amazon. Keep up the 💩posting, too!
I've no intention of giving up. Quite the opposite - the main thrust of this is that the scientific career was really more of a preparation for writing ;)
You will do far more good for human flourishing in writing than academia. Regardless of what the I F*cking Love Science people say, if a people's spiritual needs are not met, nohing else will be met either.
If you write SF, I wonder what will be the sexuality in your books. :) I've started to read science fiction and I noticed a pretty clear trend. The older the book, the more crazy the sexuality. For example, Randezvous with Rama (~1972) has polygamy as perfectly normal, something nobody bats an eye at. But The Moon is a Harsh Mistress (1955)? Oh boy! Line marriages, clan marriages, polygamy, premarital sex, even hints of adultery, you name it, it has it! xD OTOH, Theft of Fire (2023) not only doesn't have anything deviant, *it doesn't have sex at all*! Well that's not true. Devon really outdid himself and, since he couldn't insert a sex scene in the narative, he instead created a dream scene and had his characters fuck in their dreams. You know. Can't have a work of science fiction without AT LEAST ONE sexing. xD But at least it was normal one-on-one hetero sex... with the exception of butterfly wings.
PROJECTION: by 2050 science fiction will only permit full 100% Christian heteronormative sex under the bond of marriage. Characters that engage in premarital sex will get eaten by space ghouls. Polygamy will be forgotten about.
I find the sex stuff generally uninteresting. Heinlein was a dirty old man, but his best work was definitely not deep dives into alternative relationship architectures.
Wow - I'm well out of modern literature, meaning books written after the year 2 000 - has it gotten that bad, that we are now in an age of neo-puritanism where sex is described the way Zamjatin did (but in his case to make point) in "We"?
Time to re-read "The Reproductive System" (John Sladek), methinks.
I find a lot of contemporary books tend to skip over or imply the sex scenes. Which honestly I prefer. It isn't prudishness (well maybe a little), it's just that most authors are terrible at writing sex scenes, and they come off as cringe, awkward, or weird.
"As Luke penetrated her shields, he could feel the Force well up inside him, coursing as was it a raging yet serene torrent, through his staunchly girded loins just before he launched his throbbing proton torpedo at her yawning, glistening thermal exhaust port."
C'mon, Star Wars was already ruined by Disney. Bring on the smut!
That was terrible but in the best way, I kek'd.
There's undoubtedly a vast library of erotic Star Wars fanfic out there...
🤣 true! I’ve dabbled in writing erotic fiction and I think I do a decent job of it…but now that I’ve become a Christian, I don’t feel comfortable with that language anymore. Had the beginnings of a story that I’m trying to rewrite without all the sex scenes and I keep coming up with blanks.
Prudishness and prurience produce their own kinds of weird. Finding the happy medium is a hard trick, which is why the smart call is usually just to draw a tasteful curtain and let the characters have a private moment.
Perhaps you could find inspiration in Ketuvim/Song of Songs? Plenty of sex, but using poetic language rather than crass anatomical play-by-plays.
Sex is for marriage... not novels =)
You might be interested in this:
Think this with your heart: “Jesus, if you are the Son of God, I consecrate my heart to your Heart. Please send me the Holy Spirit so I can see Truth and have the courage to convert and follow Him wherever He leads”
Mathematical proof of God’s mind
Who could have imagined that mathematical images could be so beautiful?:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OlD2rcm971U
Movie Review: After Death
https://www.catholic365.com/article/32264/movie-review-after-death.html
Scientific proof of God and the soul:
http://www.catholic365.com/article/26227/scientific-proof-of-god-and-the-immortal-soul.html
Scientific proof of religion
https://www.quora.com/What-do-you-think-really-happens-after-we-die/answers/46502105
What do you believe comes after death (Science backs religion)?
https://www.quora.com/What-do-you-believe-comes-after-death/answer/Federico-A-Nazar
https://www.quora.com/What-do-you-think-really-happens-after-we-die/answers/46502105
Which Christian denomination is more Biblical?
https://www.quora.com/Which-is-the-true-Christianity-Protestantism-or-Catholicism/answer/Federico-A-Nazar
Keep the faith. The airlift is coming. I can hear the propellers.
That's an airstrike. Duck!
It is "Duck & Cover". But please take your pick, Spiff. "Fog of war" or "We had to destroy the village in order to save it".
My own trajectory is similar, although didn't involve academia. Just the slow realization you are not getting on and the DEI quota system has serious consequences for many people's livelihoods, mine included.
I've enjoyed your work these past few years and am keen to see more. I'm also publishing a sci-fi novel soon so we overlap there too. It will be interesting to see if ultimately Substack becomes a launchpad for new writers, including novelists. It is certainly a viable alternative to the dying mainstream.
Keep up the good work and look forward to news of the novel.
It is definitely evolving into a launchpad, although I think it can turn into far more than that.
Academia stunk long before the DEI began eating its rotting corpse. Publish or perish = Total Quantity Management.
I look forward to reading your fiction. I tried my hand at SF before going into physics and got a big stack of rejection slips for my efforts. Physics was easier. Writing software easier yet.
The root of the problem in the academic sector, as everywhere else, is managerialization. It rationalizes everything it touches, and in the process sucks out the soul and leaves it hollow and pointless.
"No politics, no committees, no reports, no referees, no interviews – just highly motivated people picked by a few men of good judgment"
Sir James Black, describing Max Perutz's recipe for research success.
Precisely this. Trying to reduce it to a system, kills it.
The Humanities end of academia has been the natural home of a malcontent intelligentsia since the 1920s (if not even earlier) - one that wanted to see itself as more sophisticated than thou by unpicking our culture's moral compass. And these types MADE A B-LINE for the public-funded universities and the rest of our polity was foolish enough to stand by as they have entirely colonised them and sheep dipped the rising generations of the professional/managerial elite with their bogus Social Justice race and gender victimhood cults. The rest is history:
It isn't only that. You also have a massive influx of midwits starting mid-century and growing from that point on. Dumbing down STEM is very difficult; dumbing down the humanities comparatively easy. Thus lit became a bird major, stuffed with exactly the kind of people that are easiest to indoctrinate.
i read that there was some shitposting in progress. i’m here to help.
Very cool to learn more about your background JC. I see myself through a lot of your work. You described me perfectly thru the Covid saga. I was a fucking wreck. Lost my girl, couldn’t find a job because I refused the evil juice, and was pissed off at the world. To top it all off, I was drinking like a homeless man in San Francisco.
In the first stage of Covid I sobered up after a 2 week binder (the hard stuff). The fear of the Nation and World collapsing gripped me tight. All I could see was darkness and I knew something unexpected and inherently evil had entered the fray. I had never been keen to its vibrations before that. Through all of the dark murky fog I found my way. I thought about taking the easy road out but instead struck a deal with The Divine Spirit.
It had occurred to me that if I were to eat a bullet those responsible for this mess would NOT be offended. In fact, they would simply laugh at my demise but more than likely they wouldn’t notice at all. So I decided I would stick around come what may. I would work to become a thorn in their side even if it just meant living for the right reasons.
Have since settled down but head and heart are still on a swivel. There is simply is no way to go back for me. Memory holing may work on the masses but it is useless against the strong willed.
Keep Fighting the Good Fight Brother.
Yeah, it's not the same state of agitation as when we were in the thick of it, but there's no coming back from what was done.
John I hope you see this because I would really like your input. I deliberately waited for traffic to die down before broaching this subject. I can tell you it MIGHT make a helluva an article BUT I am not completely certain you should broadcast it. You certainly can if you like tho. I would enjoy the fuck out of reading it.
I find it odd that this little corner of the internet went untouched at the height of Censorship Inc. They’re out of SanFran for crying out loud. It should have been easy to squash this platform. I can tell you have a memory quite a bit like my own, ie we don’t easily forget. For me I think of it as both a gift and a curse.
My thoughts lead me to wonder what if it us writing the LLM’s of the future. There’s never been any talk about an AI for Substack as far as I know. To be honest I really don’t know much about it. Seems strange “they” allowed or funneled some of best talent over here and let them bash the vaccines especially. Even if it’s not planned I wonder if a Substack AI would out compete the others regardless.
Been here since mid 2021. I don’t have a page but I have dropped a shitload of comments. Some fairly intelligent lol. Would be cool to know we are the future 😉
Essentially everything on the open Internet is training data, so there's no doubt we're included in that.
Smiles….just wondering if we might be something a bit more. Regardless of the AI angle I find it next to impossible the tiny little SS was allowed to push out anti-vax propaganda. At first it could be written off as insignificant. However by start of 2022 we the major suppliers of truth…… time will tell my friend
I can't go back either. I am permanently changed. I lost a great deal during covid too, none of which I can recover.
But remember that painful experience is the embryo for real change.
I just left a comment for John on this thread I think. It’s about Substack AI. Thought maybe you might be interested. It’s a little combination of hope and fun I suppose lol.
I dropped out of academia a few steps behind, and in a diametrically opposed field to yours, but for the same reasons. A life that I would have very much enjoyed just 3-4 decades ago became impossible.
The academia of a century ago seems Elysian in comparison to the high-throughput paper mill it is now.
My own experience has been similar to yours in some ways. As a programmer in the SF Bay Area, I found myself increasingly discriminated against purely on the basis of my race (white) and sex (male). I was sent to HR at least three times simply for speaking unwoke opinions. This led to a deep weariness and disgust with woke-corporate life and my liberating early retirement three years ago. Now I'm not making money, but I am enjoying life far more. I feel very fortunate to have the opportunity to express myself by collecting and publishing memes, any one of which would have gotten me sent to HR during the days of my wage-bondage.
Freedom is a reward all its own.
Have you seen the Star Wars meme, 1977, Ben Kenobi’s hermitage, in the first frame Luke says incredulously, “You were in the meme wars??!!” Then in the second frame Ben says, “Yes, I was once a shit poster, same as your father …” and in the final frame Ben continues, “… before the Dark Times, before the Big Tech censorship.” 😂
The other problem with Science(tm), aside from the ones you document (and I have sadly experienced having gone deeper into the abyss than you) is that it has no culture of Wisdom.
A wise observation.
My favorite L Niven novel was a collaboration with Pournelle
“A Mote in Gods Eye”
Thanks for sharing your story Jon
That's a classic. I've read it a few times.
Just a few lines to explain why science is so twisted. The entropic view of the universe as well as humanity is a lie! We do not have any limits of human growth, or any other limits. Lyndon Larouche and many other thinkers know the truth about who and why we adopted this false paradise. The real medical scientists have been marginalized out of sensuousness, and Physics', biochemists, astronomers, every branch of science has been twisted into believing this false reality. Our universe is not closed, space is not empty. The Malthusian eugenics pushers are responsible for this. Plato was right about reality. Kepler was the true scientist, and Newton was false. We are living in a matrix where we are trapped into thinking up is down, right is wrong, black is white as in Bertrand Russel's statement that public school could convince children that snow is gray and eventually convince them it is black. This has been the brainwashing public-school miseducation that has left us where we now are.