Thursday, October 22, 2009

Who the Hell is Dr. Silverstein and Why Should I Care?

My apologies for making yet another post for the ongoing troll roast.

When I thought I might get somewhere by asking for clarification on an analogy, Gabe brought up some glurge about an irrelevant professor named "Dr. Silverstein." I'm not particularly motivated to find out if he's a real, stupid person, someone intelligent whose had his views misrepresented, or some conveniently fictional straw man, but I'll press on with burning the straw man he was used for.

I'm against the Disneyfication of history in history classes. Unfortunately, there are a lot of "PC" hippie douches out there who don't want to say anything remotely bad about someone's ancestors, and far too many people who are too milquetoast to shoulder the "controversy" of telling the truth. Yes, there were some great figures in just about every culture, but there was also a lot of barbarism. Humans are all capable of great good and great evil.

The image of Dr. Silverstein, as described by Gabe, is a racist: He wants non-whites Disneyfied, but doesn't want to convey the same "privilege" to whites. I find that sort of thought disgusting, just like I find the Disneyfication of my white ancestors disgusting. Lots of humans did wonderful things, coming from many cultures and races. Those same cultures were brutal and superstitious. The people who were able to discover or invent new things deserve their kudos.

It's only recently, with the Enlightenment, that human brutality is waning (with no shortage of setbacks and obstacles). The ideas that our society is founded upon are not a product of racial genetics, just some people in the right social, economic, and scholastic circumstances getting inspired and successfully promoting those ideas. Freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and the scientific method are not encoded into anyone's DNA. Someone raised in an environment where others share these ideas and pass them onto the next generation will be more likely to prosper.

I'm sure a lot of us as kids went through a phase of being angry over the crimes of someone's ancestors. I imagine some very rare hippie douches never did. It'd be nice if, for example, the European settlers got together with the Indians for a turkey dinner in November and puppy-hugging like in the saccharine Thanksgiving specials, but they didn't.

One of my history professors had a saying: "Nostalgia is the destruction of history." Yes, you can celebrate great figures of the past and their contributions to the world, but don't whine like a hippie douche when someone points out the darker parts. To me, it doesn't matter if you're Gabriel or this Dr. Silverstein. Disneyfying history is wrong, and even more so when you do it selectively.

207 comments:

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Anonymous said...

Thats why having the most powerful wand/broom makes you superior to others?

Like Harry Potter?

MWchase said...

Why are you holding us to any interpretation of, in essence, crypto-Calvinist literature? That's like asking a geneticist to defend Lysenkoism (read: really stupid).

Bronze Dog said...

Yeah. Hence why race is an irrelevant line in the sand. So we're in agreement, then?

MWchase said...

Ugh... I now have no clue what his point is at any given time...

What is this, the Tao of Troll? 'The argument that is refuted is not the true argument.'

I mean, when I look over those posts... I can't even tell if that rambling non sequitur was an elaborate shell game to try (pathetically) to get us to switch positions, or what. Here's a hint, Gabe: just because you've forgotten what everyone was talking about, doesn't mean that we have.

Anonymous said...

"I just bough the "entire" Potter Series and sat down and watch it all. Yes Yes, what the hell you say? I know, I was really bored and these kind of movies aren't the best quality package for an old man like me, but hell, I love pretending im young... Well,. these movies seem maybe a bit to young, anyway."



Was Mein Kampf getting a bit boring,Gabe?

I wonder if you can tell the difference between fiction and fact? You seem to retreat into fantasy at the drop of a hat.


JS:)

Anonymous said...

All in all, it seems to be a difference between blacks and whites that do not really exist, Gabriel is very ignorant and a poor student, he gets a magic woo woo that is apparently BETTER then others, that is, the magic woo woo, not him then?

By the way ITS RACE RACE RACE RACE RACE all the way down despite my contradictory waffling.



Gullibriel.

Chakat Firepaw said...

So Gabe:

Have you figured out just who you mean when you say white?

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