tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-357943202009-07-02T09:12:11.789+01:00notes from an exiled academicOxford Forumnoreply@blogger.comBlogger255125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35794320.post-19115387260270459752009-07-02T08:54:00.004+01:002009-07-02T09:09:34.731+01:002009-07-02T09:09:34.731+01:00

The Eastern Orthodox Church seems to be closer to the Gnostic traditions of early Christianity than the Western is. In particular, it seems to be the only form of Christianity that incorporates into its rituals a recognition of the importance of royalty (i.e. of centralisation) as a psychological concept.The Eastern Orthodox marriage ceremony takes the form of a joint coronation of the new

Oxford Forumnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35794320.post-5526586577596014122009-06-29T19:49:00.003+01:002009-06-29T19:55:24.697+01:002009-06-29T19:55:24.697+01:00

The communists thought of politeness as a product of bourgeois fetishism. By now, rudeness has become the norm in this country. Agents of the collective with power over individuals (doctors, teachers etc.) are now amazingly rude by the standards of fifty years ago; and fifty years ago had already seen some slippage from the norm that had prevailed earlier. On the other hand, of course, all

Oxford Forumnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35794320.post-61026551561680430652009-06-24T14:29:00.002+01:002009-06-24T14:33:21.925+01:002009-06-24T14:33:21.925+01:00

It is amazing how completely the modern ideology has wiped out the worldview that was present approximately at the peak of the British Empire, which was the worldview of the books which I read in my grandfather’s library.It is perhaps no accident that Christianity arose at about the peak of the Roman Empire. Clearly there was a good deal in both situations that would favour centralised psychology

Oxford Forumnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35794320.post-52691638246537699292009-06-22T14:53:00.013+01:002009-07-02T09:12:11.800+01:002009-07-02T09:12:11.800+01:00

In an earlier post I discussed the recent case of a mother deemed ‘too stupid’ to look after her own child, and expressed surprise that even conservative journalists no longer find it shocking that children should be removed on such grounds.This case, discussed at greater length in another recent Daily Mail article, presents a number of interesting issues.A) The first is the way that reacting

Oxford Forumnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35794320.post-44380537016915960312009-06-16T15:07:00.005+01:002009-06-16T16:51:19.773+01:002009-06-16T16:51:19.773+01:00

Certain works of fiction, significant during the Victorian and Edwardian eras, are no longer read much, but contain elements of a certain outlook – relatively aware of existential reality – which is almost totally absent from modern culture. That this is so is no accident. The outlook in question is incompatible with the ethos which now prevails, after the cultural revolution we have had. The

Oxford Forumnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35794320.post-10447080813473200182009-06-11T13:12:00.005+01:002009-06-11T14:17:11.463+01:002009-06-11T14:17:11.463+01:00

I see that family courts are now to be open to journalists, instead of secret, which may conceivably be a consequence in part of our drawing attention to some of the more obvious horrors on our blogs. Actually this will do no good; one only tries to highlight one or two of the worst cases to illustrate the fact that this is bound to result from the principle of individual freedom being violated.

Oxford Forumnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35794320.post-80002897844841332062009-06-05T15:40:00.003+01:002009-06-05T16:00:00.882+01:002009-06-05T16:00:00.882+01:00

Would a court have decided a 24-year-old single mother was ‘too stupid’ to care for her three-year-old daughter if this wasn’t so? According to a weekend news report, ‘Rachel’ – her full name withdrawn for legal reasons – has had this happen to her.We’re indignant if the rights of mothers are asserted and children die as a result. We’re indignant if social work professionals and courts assert

Oxford Forumnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35794320.post-4565280693302396252009-06-04T11:08:00.005+01:002009-06-04T16:35:44.283+01:002009-06-04T16:35:44.283+01:00

At my last seminar an Iraqi lady commented that the way we had been treated sounded like what happened in an authoritarian regime, only where she came from they would shoot you for expressing any criticism of the system, not merely suppress you. Later she asked, ‘What are they threatened by?’I wrote her the following letter after the seminar.Dear ...When we met, you seemed to feel that we should

Oxford Forumnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35794320.post-84597015630817193212009-06-04T09:00:00.008+01:002009-06-04T11:07:30.231+01:002009-06-04T11:07:30.231+01:00

Susan Boyle ... was admitted to a private clinic under the Mental Health Act by doctors worried about her state of mind on Sunday. Professor Chris Thompson, chief medical officer of The Priory, where the singer is being cared for ... added ‘I read Susan Boyle was assessed under the Mental Health Act. It implies compulsory admission. It implies there was a degree of personal risk. Secondarily

Oxford Forumnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35794320.post-64744694777741556192009-05-27T11:26:00.006+01:002009-05-27T12:32:10.159+01:002009-05-27T12:32:10.159+01:00

There seem to be several horrors in the papers every day, which we are not able to speak out against, except in ways that attract no publicity and do us no good.A mother was apparently jailed for speaking to her child in the street, having been forbidden to see it because social workers and the judge think that what she is suspected of saying to her children (when considering their complaints

Oxford Forumnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35794320.post-31516412428901929772009-05-21T14:12:00.005+01:002009-06-04T09:09:22.812+01:002009-06-04T09:09:22.812+01:00

Various people recently have been expressing opinions about whether or not intelligence is innate. It may be wondered why this would matter if it did not involve freedom being confiscated and destroyed, in order to provide people by force with the sort of ‘education’ that socially appointed agents of the collective think they ought to have. And it may also be wondered why it would matter if

Oxford Forumnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35794320.post-84746339593448059152009-05-17T20:49:00.002+01:002009-05-17T20:53:46.361+01:002009-05-17T20:53:46.361+01:00

Well, of course, we need (and should be getting) help from many points of view to prevent me being prevented from contributing on an adequate scale (or, indeed, any scale at all) to the many areas now regarded as ‘academic’. Urgent though those needs are, please do not lose sight of the fact that my most urgent priority is still to get started on my 40-year academic career within a socially

Oxford Forumnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35794320.post-91874608406953983522009-05-15T14:46:00.006+01:002009-06-08T20:12:56.439+01:002009-06-08T20:12:56.439+01:00

Not only is the possibility of teaching or tuition being a positive factor in someone’s education greatly exaggerated, but its negative potentialities (which may be very great) are overlooked. I concluded retrospectively that everyone’s determination to make me do maths as a sole subject, and at far too late an age for taking a first degree, could only have arisen from their awareness,

Oxford Forumnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35794320.post-67532245639690503662009-05-14T15:11:00.003+01:002009-05-14T15:39:17.324+01:002009-05-14T15:39:17.324+01:00

A note on ‘anger’If a person is angry at the way they have been treated by society (schools, hospitals, etc) this is regarded as demonstrating the weakness of their position. For example, when I have given some account of the damaging ways in which I have been treated, as an explanation of how I could have been forced into my present quite unacceptable and unsuitable situation, people are very

Oxford Forumnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35794320.post-88779357923188684762009-05-08T09:57:00.003+01:002009-05-08T10:05:26.302+01:002009-05-08T10:05:26.302+01:00

Managing emotions will be given the same importance as English and maths in Sir Jim Rose’s primary school education reforms unveiled yesterday. ‘Personal development’, along with the three Rs and computer skills, will form the centrepiece of the plans, which will be introduced in September 2011. Children will learn to take turns and share, prepare healthy meals, manage their feelings, and avoid

Oxford Forumnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35794320.post-20557682752597950052009-04-28T14:04:00.005+01:002009-04-30T11:03:49.879+01:002009-04-30T11:03:49.879+01:00

As many as 40,000 drinkers are dying every year because the Government has utterly failed to deal with Britain’s alcohol problem, leading experts said yesterday.Doctors and academics [i.e. agents and beneficiaries of the oppressive state] lined up to condemn round-the-clock drinking, brought in by Labour, and the availability of cheap alcohol in supermarkets. (Daily Mail, 24 April 2009).Why

Oxford Forumnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35794320.post-82559806208787067402009-04-21T12:20:00.003+01:002009-06-04T09:08:49.253+01:002009-06-04T09:08:49.253+01:00

The Daily Mail is not much less obsessed with the ideology than any other newspaper. Today it has a front-page headline ‘Working Class Children Betrayed by Labour’, with the ridiculous first two sentences: Bright children from poor homes are failing to get into university because of under-performing state schools and not class bias. That is the finding of a major study, covering hundreds of

Oxford Forumnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35794320.post-16926383131436225512009-04-15T16:18:00.003+01:002009-04-15T16:27:08.058+01:002009-04-15T16:27:08.058+01:00

copy of a letter to an academicThe ‘credit crunch’ (so-called) is really just a further stage of development in the ongoing socialist destruction of civilisation, most central to which is the destruction of the lives of the most able and functional. This is, of course, already far advanced; the school and university system was already geared to ruin someone like me when I was exposed to it sixty

Oxford Forumnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35794320.post-58682321699703540202009-04-14T22:54:00.013+01:002009-04-15T16:17:56.805+01:002009-04-15T16:17:56.805+01:00

Terrible things appear in the papers practically every day and my unrecognised university is still unable to publish any criticisms of them. An additional infringement of individual liberty is proposed by Gordon Brown.‘Every teenager will have to do at least 50 hours of community work before the age of 19, Gordon Brown has announced. The Prime Minister believes youngsters would be less likely to

Oxford Forumnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35794320.post-37041285316972414512009-04-12T21:55:00.004+01:002009-04-14T10:47:09.715+01:002009-04-14T10:47:09.715+01:00

When I was describing to a colleague the goings-on in Somerville, he commented that bullies always attack the weak. I thought: in Somerville that meant the vulnerable. If you have motivation or aspirations you are vulnerable; many of the young women arriving at Somerville were ambitious and maybe needed to make up for past deprivations, so they were vulnerable to Dame Janet’s[1], bullying by

Oxford Forumnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35794320.post-24639356005963908382009-04-10T14:05:00.002+01:002009-04-14T10:47:35.444+01:002009-04-14T10:47:35.444+01:00

copy of a letterEaster is upon us. ‘Holiday’ times are always particularly bad for us, as any domestic or other workers which we can get become even less reliable and tend to announce without notice that they are going to absent themselves for a holiday of weeks or months abroad. So if you know anyone who might like to earn some money quickly, let them know. But they probably need to have a

Oxford Forumnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35794320.post-55119376163436990212009-04-08T13:30:00.003+01:002009-04-08T13:39:42.046+01:002009-04-08T13:39:42.046+01:00

And betimes I will, to the weird sisters:More shall they speak; for now I am bent to know,By the worst means, the worst. For mine own good,All causes shall give way: I am in bloodStepp'd in so far that, should I wade no more,Returning were as tedious as go o'er:Strange things I have in head, that will to hand;Which must be acted ere they may be scann'd.(Macbeth, Act 3, Scene 4)A quotation from

Oxford Forumnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35794320.post-68086778313081763392009-04-02T11:46:00.006+01:002009-04-14T10:48:09.457+01:002009-04-14T10:48:09.457+01:00

At my last seminar an Iraqi lady commented that the way we had been treated sounded like what happened in an authoritarian regime, only where she came from they would shoot you for expressing any criticism of the system, not merely suppress you. Later she asked, ‘What were they threatened by?’ I think the answer is that any respect for individuality per se is a threat to the total power that

Oxford Forumnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35794320.post-48599783446406784662009-03-30T12:37:00.006+01:002009-04-14T10:48:20.485+01:002009-04-14T10:48:20.485+01:00

Dame Janet Vaughan[1], like Mary Adams[2], was a Fellow Traveller, as communist sympathisers were then called. In Mary Adams’s environment I picked up on a lot of the basic attitudes of communism. As they came out in communist propaganda, they were blunt and unvarnished, without the justificatory ideology in which modern British socialism has wrapped them. The hatred of innate ability was very

Oxford Forumnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35794320.post-57119360925234782632009-03-24T11:05:00.002Z2009-04-14T10:48:32.088+01:002009-04-14T10:48:32.088+01:00

My attempts to get any freedom of action in my life have always been strenuously opposed; when I was at school or university, taking exams in my own way and under my own auspices was seen as freedom, and prevented. When I was thrown out as an adult, attempts to get more freedom than none at all made me a criminal and I was a person to be opposed.The theme of reducing freedom, and increasing

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