B. U. G. S.

Simmons just came up with a good idea:

NOT SPAM If I could add something to your repetition ideas. I would like to add the word “Why”
to our vocabulary. We should always be asking “why” of PC, and we should always be challenging
the authority of PC amongst our target audience, hence the word “why.”

Comment by Simmons

As with all seminars, most of the good participants do some “practical” outside the classroom. In our case, a large part ofhtat consists of the work we are preparing for here: Spreading the word, talking to people.

Let’s develope Sommons’s concept.

Ideally someone would say that people are equal or at least, people have rights. I would love to hear how they react if you were to say, “Why is that?”

Now, you are not necessairily trying to MAKE a point. You just want to find out what you can by making THEM think. So don’t get off the point. WHY did he say that? What reason does he have to believe that people are equal, or even that people have rights?

I want somebody besides me and you to have to some thinking about basics. If he has some rational answer, you don’t have to press him. But if yu do this a number of times, you may get some interesting results. In any case, the person you ask this of will never forget that somebody actually ASKED him that.

Don’t make it a fight, just drraw him out. DO NOT LET HIM GET OFF THE POINT.

Secondly, remember that HE said it so HE should give you some reason for it. I have had a lot of enjoyable conversations this way, but I can’t give a blow-by-blow to handle it the way I can a number of other things. This would take practice. I don’t KNOW what you will get out of it.

But, as Simmons says, it’s a hell of an exercise nobody ever forgets. NOBODY asks them “Why?” in Ameriuca any more than they would in Soviet Russia.

DON’T let them throw the argument back to you:

“How can you have a civilized society if you DON’t bellive human beings have rights?”

“YOU said people have rights. Now you say it isn’t true, but a civilized society requires it. So you are ot longer sayingit is true, you are saying I HAVE to believe it. That’s not hte same thing.”

Or:

“Every social animal besides man has a regular pecking order. Why must MEN be equal?”

“No social animal allows outsiders ANY rights. Why should we?”

Remember we are doing real graduate work here. In our day, “Graduate work is exactly the same as undergraduate work. Graduate and undergraduate students sit inthe same class most ofhte time, and the grads just do more than the undergrads and have to make better grades. It’s the same.

But there was a time when Karl Marx got his Doctor of Philosophy degree in one week, because all he had to do was comeup with a thesis and defend it. As a REAL graduate student,w hat you must do here is some up with your own approach and report back.

Today, just as undergraduates and graduats are the same thing, no one says any more htat a professor is LEADINF a seminar. I think any college student or professor would look at you funny if yu used that expression. In any case, he would conisder it quaint.

Today, a prpofessor TEACHES a seminar. After you have learned what he has to say and done the prescroibed reading, you sdpend a year doing two papers that are called theses. The trick is do something that goes right along with “the literature,” what is being said in academia right now, and fit something uncontroversial into it.

Then you become aprofessor and you spread the exact same word you were given to captive students. You do NOT think outside the bxo. Which has led to what we all expect. Therehas not been one single interesting idea coming out of the social sciences for a century. Only a ffew full professors who have tenure and do not look forward to any grants or any promotiojn ever come up with anything that is interesting or surprising.

So what THEY call a seminar fits into this stagnant bureaucracy.

So I send y9u out to do your own use of Simmons’s idea. I give you a couple of pointers like staying on the point and never letting THEM use YOU as an excuse for saying what they said. I recommend you try to make it an interesting conversation rather than a battle, which is what we usually do.

From there on, it’s your baby. I want you to report to me your sucesses and failures. This is the place to discuss how to get around the roadblocks.

I have a lot of good stuff you need. That is why I am LEADING this seminar. I have some good stuff to ADD to Simmons’s idea, and I am a good judge of his idea’s potential. But your test comes out there. Your test is how much intellectual satisfaction you get from being here. That is NOT undergraduate work.