Topic: "Dumb and Dumber"- Are Americans hostile to knowledge?

[greg]

yes but i got all my other spelling correct, and my ideas are pretty insightful.
Don't you think I should get a  B on spelling, but an A on content.

"the USA is like unto an island slowly sinking into the sea"

sure, sounds good to me.

[Tapio Dimitriyevich Shostakovich]

Its is very rude of foreigners not to speak English.  It is much more efficient for everyone else to learn English.  After all, there are hundreds of foreign languages - who could keep track of them all?. Every foreigner just has to learn one additional language - English - to spare us the inconvienence of learning thousands of weird dialects.

Except that you're trolling you didn't read what I wrote. I was talking about the american as a foreigner in other countries.

[Hector]

Its is very rude of foreigners not to speak English.  It is much more efficient for everyone else to learn English.  After all, there are hundreds of foreign languages - who could keep track of them all?. Every foreigner just has to learn one additional language - English - to spare us the inconvienence of learning thousands of weird dialects. 

Does that mean efforts will be made by the citizens of the USA to learn English and I am not referring to the ever-increasing Hispanic population?

[paulb]

interesting to see what books are on obama and clinton's shelf.
HA!
and what books are their favs
HA!
and also ask thema  few questions about Plato and Jung
HA!
Ignorance (to ignore both forms, common and special  knowledge) has made its home here and there's no end inisght.

[bwv 1080]

Except that you're trolling you didn't read what I wrote. I was talking about the american as a foreigner in other countries.

Yeah I meant foreigners in other countries.  If we Americans do you the favor of traveling to your land, then it is just good customer service to learn English. 

[Tapio Dimitriyevich Shostakovich]

If we Americans do you the favor of traveling to your land

[drogulus]

     I understand there are billions of people all over the world who don't speak English. This seems like an extravagance to me. What are they all for?

[pjme]

[Roy Bland]

https://slippedisc.com/2021/02/us-composer-classical-music-is-segregationist/

[Todd]

Black Scholars Confront White Supremacy in Classical Music

...I am a white American who grew up with the classics, and I am troubled by the presumption that they are stamped with whiteness—and are even aligned with white supremacy, as some scholars have lately argued. I cannot counter that suggestion simply by gesturing toward important Black figures who cherished this same tradition, or by reeling off the names of Black singers and composers. The exceptions remain exceptions. This world is blindingly white, both in its history and its present.

[DavidW]

Classical music came from a western European tradition.  It canonized white men, but it doesn't exclude listeners or artist of any race or gender.  We wouldn't say that blues excludes Caucasians or Asians, so why attack classical music?  I'm not a fan of political correctness being weaponized to create strife where none is needed.  And calling out classical music because "the music is old" is silly. 

Primephonic has curated content for black history month.  Finding constructive ways to be more inclusive is great, but attacking the entire genre is not useful.

[greg]

I'm not a fan of political correctness being weaponized to create strife where none is needed.

Gotta divide the non-rich class somehow, though...
If middle and lower class people of all backgrounds are united, how else are our rightful elite masters going to have more control over our lives? 

[Jo498]

As early as the late 18th century there were  colored performers in classical music, like the Chevalier de St-Georges or George Bridgetower.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Bridgetower
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chevalier_de_Saint-Georges

I recall an incident when in around 2000 or so a black presenter during some award ceremony at the MET or some similar place made the totally uninformed joke that he probably was the first black man on that stage without a mop, blissfully ignoring many black opera singers since the 1950s. (So some dumbing down and ignorance is the precondition for further dumbing down. Right now they are placing random black characters into historical british TV series, maybe in another generation kids won't believe that this was faking history, just like some people think that an armored knight needed a crane to get onto his horse.)

The problem here was the naivité of people clinging to some remnants of enlightenment thinking. They thought that reason, enlightenment, human rights etc. were universal things that had only accidentally been established first in Western Europe (or the US by people of such descent). Such universality should and would override parochial identities. They were wrong in many respects. It is of course not accidental but the product of around 2000 years of a rather particular historical development that modern western individualist + universalist thinking was established. (Of course this does not prove their non-universality, like the fact that some maths theorem was discovered first in India or Russia is irrelevant, but it is much easier to make such universalist claims for maths than for enlightenment political values.)
It was even more naive to think that because of its success in some parts of the world from the 18th to the late 20th century it could be established everywhere within a generation or two. And not to expect that some people would happily revert to and promote clannish and parochial consciousness, if it helped their goals, e.g. making a career out of some special identity or keeping some power structures in place by an identity-based "divide et impera"-strategy.

[Daverz]

As early as the late 18th century there were  colored performers in classical music, like the Chevalier de St-Georges or George Bridgetower.

Colored?  Seriously?  Are you trying to be an "edgy" troll?

I recall an incident when in around 2000 or so a black presenter during some award ceremony at the MET or some similar place made the totally uninformed joke that he probably was the first black man on that stage without a mop,

That was Chris Rock.   It was a historically inaccurate joke (oh, the humanity!),  but let's not pretend that black singers have had anything close to proportional representation at the MET.

[greg]

This might be relevant to this thread:

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/18/opinion/fake-news-media-attention.html

The NY Times thinks we shouldn't use critical thinking when reading stuff online. Just use better sources.

People learn to think critically by focusing on something and contemplating it deeply — to follow the information’s logic and the inconsistencies.

That natural human mind-set is a liability in an attention economy. It allows grifters, conspiracy theorists, trolls and savvy attention hijackers to take advantage of us and steal our focus.

YES.
I AGREE.
THE NY TIMES IS OFFICAL. IT CAN'T BE WRONG. BEEP BOOP.

“Whenever you give your attention to a bad actor, you allow them to steal your attention from better treatments of an issue, and give them the opportunity to warp your perspective,” Mr. Caulfield wrote.

This is literally your parents telling you not to hang out with the bad kids.

I don't live with my parents anymore, but I can't wait until people with these opinions get into power so I can have new parents again to tell me what not to do! 

[Jo498]

Colored?  Seriously?  Are you trying to be an "edgy" troll?

No. I am not a native speaker, I cannot keep track on the actually acceptable anglo-expressions. (You know, we lag a bit behind the angloavantgarde, like with popular music. When I was a kid in the 80s "farbig" was for a while more PC than "schwarz" and really forgot that it became verboten for lightly black (how can one even express that one is lightly colored and not black?) Should I have used the word "mulatto" as Beethoven did wrt Bridgetower?

That was Chris Rock.   It was a historically inaccurate joke (oh, the humanity!),  but let's not pretend that black singers have had anything close to proportional representation at the MET.

When did white (pale?, pink? non-Poc?) basketball players last have a "proportional representation" in the NBA or the US national team? In the 4x100m relay team? What about Blues or Rap artists?
Why is one disproportionality a problem to be addressed in sad tones or with fake history (which is of course admissible for the greater good, unlike using a word that was pc a few decades ago but considered bad now) and the other ones completely acceptable? They should both be acceptable unless there is obviously foul play to get more whites into opera singing and more blacks into basketball, and actually better singers or players are excluded because of spurious quota or cabals. I don't think that this is the case in either basketball nor opera, but you are welcome to prove me wrong once you've untwisted your knickers after my wrongspeak.

BTW, many Europeans guess that 30% or so of Americans are black, when it is closer to 13%, probably because they are clearly overrepresented in internationally visible positions in showbiz, music and sports.

[steve ridgway]

I cannot keep track on the actually acceptable anglo-expressions.

Yeah they change. Old people here have got into trouble for using what is no longer correct. It’s best not to talk about race really, leave it to the professionals.

[Todd]

The NY Times thinks we shouldn't use critical thinking when reading stuff online. Just use better sources.

There is truth to this.  For instance, The Graun is a rag and can be dismissed out of hand. 

It’s best not to talk about race really, leave it to the professionals.

Indeed.  Fortunately, GMG has several professionals who post here regularly.  See above.

[DavidW]

This might be relevant to this thread:

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/18/opinion/fake-news-media-attention.html

The NY Times thinks we shouldn't use critical thinking when reading stuff online. Just use better sources.

I agree with the article mostly because opinion and speculation are frequently intermingled with factual reporting when historically they would be kept separate.  If something is important it is worth checking that it is widely reported and accurately reported instead of hyperfocusing on that one article.

[71 dB]

Critical thinking is needed to evaluate which sources are good.