Ideology is a specious way of relating to the world. It offers human beings the illusion of an identity, of dignity, and of morality, while making it easier for them to part with them

Vaclav Havel

The following is a response to an article from Quillette about what’s happening in our universities.

I really don’t understand the type of anti-racist racism which seeks to deny poor students of colour access to STEM. “Are U teaching the white man’s science?” What utter nonsense. Of course, it’s all based on the notion that The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House. One would have thought if you really wanted to dismantle a house, tools would be exactly what you would need- though why anyone would want to dismantle a system of science, reason and empiricism which has emancipated 90% of the world’s population from the most abject and absolute poverty, whilst simultaneously extending the average lifespan from around thirty to 72.6 years, would be anyone’s guess.

One suspects that at least a part of the motivation lies in the fact that most of the students participating in the protests simply lacked the talent or inclination to hard work to study STEM, with green envy and resentment at the root of their selfishness. Do they not realise that unlike their shockingly shoddy courses, one cannot simply ‘wing it’ with STEM- every lesson represents a key building block of pyramidal knowledge of STEM, with many of them cornerstones, bearing the load for subsequent layers of knowledge further up the pyramid?

But of course, the other reason resides in their realisation that however one dresses up lived experience and however important it may be to storytelling and for narrative purposes, lived experience is simply anecdotal evidence by another name. They know in their heart of hearts that outside the rarefied climate of their cloistered existences, no one is buying what they are selling- even the cringeworthy Brand Imaging of Corporations is starting to turn, as more companies realise there is more to be lost from endorsing this nonsense, than there is to be gained.

Most people now avoid those movies which the critics love, but the audience loathes, and actively seek out the reverse. There has been a revival in interest in older movies and content. Slowly, by increments, the Culture War is finally turning in favour of the Silent Majority. Here in the UK, we seem to be leading the charge. Recent events in the courts have lead to a moratorium being called on the prescription of puberty blockers for those unable to lawfully exercise consent.

But it will be a hard fought battle and sanity will be reclaimed inch by inch. I’m not advocating for a return to colour blindness- things have gone too far for a return to default. But perhaps a better formulation would be to realise that many of disparities in outcomes we see are caused by disparities in childhood development. In this area, it’s important to recognise the most important factor, stronger even than quality of education as a correlation to success and upward social mobility, is the proportion of productive fathers in a community. No other force is more powerful in development.