Maxims, rules of thumb and other observations on human cognition and sociocultural affectations

This will be added to on an irregular basis...
  • What is said to humans directly is received with skepticism and considered with dubiousness while that which is heard in passing, especially that which most conforms to their mentality or prejudices, is readily believed.
  • Humans have a certain cognitive latency between exposure to new information or experiences and the ability to think dispassionately and intellectually about it.
  • Humans have a certain cognitive spectrum starting with the moment of exposure to new information or experiences and ending with some point at which the thing is effectively "in the past" for them.
  • This cognitive spectrum is linked to the emotional process often referred to as shock, anger, denial and acceptance.
  • The more and faster information or experiences are presented to people and the closer the quarters and the lesser the distance between people, the more their early reactions in the passionate emotional stage are reflected back to them in the manner of responses to those reactions from others in light of those responses.
  • The more outrages which are suffered without sufficient time to allow emotional bleed-off, the farther the bar for subsequent reaction and outrage are pushed, and the more further events must progress before reaction and outrage.
  • It is possible for serious detriments to eventually sit below this threshold for long enough for their damaging effects to build and multiply until their entire society undergoes some reactive convulsion.
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Thursday, May 29, 2008

UK Academia Loses Their Minds, In Other News, Water Is Still Wet

UK union encourages Israeli academia boycott | Jerusalem Post

The University and College Union, the largest trade union for academics and academic-related staff in further education in the UK, voted on a motion at their annual conference in Manchester on Wednesday that will reintroduce an academic boycott of Israel.

The motion passed without debate and by a show of hands and asks members "to consider the moral and political implications of educational links with Israeli institutions, and to discuss the occupation with individuals and institutions concerned, including Israeli colleagues with whom they are collaborating."

What moral and political implications? Drawing scorn from the usual Muslim organizations? Drawing tsk-tsk disapproval from the usual anti-everything leftists? Collaborating with people brave and ballsy enough to stand up to half a dozen Arab and Persian nations arrayed against them with both arms and one foot tied behind their back?

Last year, UCU lawyers deemed a boycott "unlawful" and ruled that a motion calling for a boycott passed at last year's conference "cannot be implemented," leading to the decision being thrown out.

However, the union failed to adhere to its lawyers' rulings - and has refused to respond to the calls to make public the legal advice it received - and last month, another boycott of Israeli academia was introduced.

So their own layers told them it was not lawful per UK and EU legal standards and court precedents (which are the two primary things which lawyers use to decide if something is or is not a bad idea) and they decided to ignore their (probably expensive) legal counsel and to reintroduce yet another boycott measure.

Anti-Semitic? No. Anti-Jew. There's a difference. They'd fall over backwards and sideways to give accolades to the least accomplished Palestinian Muslim poet writing allegedly pithy and amusing screed against Israel and Palestinians are Semitic. Half as much attention would be paid if he was one of the odd Christian denominations there whom they don't think much of either as they are considered sell-outs to the forces of western hegemony and inauthentic when it comes to things like struggle and victimhood.

No, this is more of the deeply ingrained thinking of the Christian west coming to the surface through the mental cracks of socialistic idiocy and that idea is that Jews somehow don't deserve a home of their own. It's been publicly denounced by the Vatican, it's been harrumphed by the CoE, etc., but still continues to defy attempts at wiping it out.

It's the sad legacy of how Christianity came about and here being used by the usual suspects on the left, who are always against their own nation, their own interests, their own success, their own people, etc. just for the sake of annoying all and sundry and exulting in the power of that. Like being vocal supporters of the Soviets during the Cold War even as Stalinist atrocities were documented and Russians were escaping or emigrating left and right.

(If you want to get down to it, it is anti-everyone-else not anti-Semitism, as these sort are bigoted and condescending to everyone who isn't one of them. Palestinians are helpless retarded children in their view and incapable of acting any better than supporting the ultimately anti-Palestinian interests of Syria and Iran, both of whom would gladly see the Palestinians reduced to radioactive dust just to see Israel lose. Remember, before Israel popped back onto the historical stage, the area was the ass end of the former Ottoman Empire and considered of no interest whatsoever unless someone not Muslim was trying to control the area in which case, everyone feigned indignance and waged jihad until it was back to being under Muslim rule and preferably from as far away as possible.)