Such a shame. Berkeley used to have nice used books and records stores on University and San Pablo during the ’70s and ’80s—even into the ’90s. And audio/stereo stores in the ’70s and ’80s, of course
…always a bit commercial, though. And they’ve always had strict “No Loitering” ordinances (because “California” I guess—I’m sure the advent of laptops and Wi-Fi changed that a bit during the 2000s and 2010s). There was Round Table Pizza, McDonald’s and Orange Julius (“college town”).
I’m a bit torn about this. On the one hand, it makes no sense to ban a less risky activity like exercising alone while allowing much more risky activities like attending a communal dining hall. But on the other hand, leftist teachings in universities and the ignorance that results are quite close to the core of the political problems ailing the world today, since universities are in a sense training people to be idiots.
So it could be that allowing these students to experience first hand the arbitrary, capricious, and callous behaviour of leftists in positions of power could be in their interest overall.
“…Or you could read it as brainwashing techniques: solitary confinement, broken up by propaganda sessions.”
In my experience, when given a choice between conspiracy and incompetence, choose incompetence. University staff as described by Clarissa seem unable to muster up enough intelligence to protect their own employment. It doesn’t make sense to me that people so deficient in that regard are somehow simultaneously capable of implementing a university wide psy-op.
Normally, I’d agree. But when I was a teenager, in the Protestant/Evangelical milieu, there was a cautionary tale circulating, possibly with a lawsuit attached, about a particular summer church camp. The parents became concerned when some of the kids came home tired, having lost weight, and frankly a bit loopy mentally. And yet, the kids had nothing but good things to say about camp. On further inquiry… things seemed sketchy. The kids consistently didn’t get enough to eat because of some game they played at mealtimes involving someone calling out a phrase, and everyone jumping from their seats and running around the table until… I forget. Recite the Bible verse? Answer the Old Testament trivia question? Beats me. Anyway, similar “games” were used to prevent the kids ever getting enough sleep, or calling their parents, there were intense breakout sessions… anyway, the general consensus was, this camp isn’t teaching anything heretical, but it’s basically child abuse via brainwashing techniques, and Do Not Send Your Kid There, no matter how shiny the brochure looks.
If a dinky church camp can do it, why not Berkeley? Yeah, it’s probably incompetence. But I wouldn’t be willing to rule out deliberate intent. Isolate, isolate, isolate. I’m extremely curious to see if any of the other elements are present at Berkeley: repetitive chants/music? In-group benefits for those who’ve fully adopted the party line? Dim lighting? Emotionally intense video/lecture/workshop sessions? Irregular scheduling?
“If a dinky church camp can do it, why not Berkeley?”
I’m not an expert, but if I were to hazard a guess, I would say that it is because a church camp is a small enterprise while a university is an institution.
Small enterprises can easily go astray because there are few checks & balances, much more discretion, smaller target groups/ability to micromanage, fewer staff/greater consistency of purpose, greater efficiency etc while institutions are the other way around. The bigger something gets, the harder it is to get it to do anything complex that requires secrecy/consistency/competence efficiently.
That’s why other institutions like governments, police forces, militaries etc need so many systems/training regimes/high budgets. Getting them to do complex things competently is really difficult.
They absolutely do this in the military. It’s a teambuilding thing, apparently.”
Yes I know. The military is a large, well funded institution with lots of systems in place and training regimes that get everyone working to a standard purpose. That’s why I stated in the previous post:
“That’s why other institutions like governments, police forces, militaries etc need so many systems/training regimes/high budgets. Getting them to do complex things competently is really difficult.”
It doesn’t have to be conscious or planned. If you take a bunch of hormonal teenagers, isolate them, deprive them of physical activity and socialization, scare them and feed them a steady diet of SJW crap from a screen, they’ll go nuts. It’s very easy. This is an impressionable, immature, physiologically vulnerable bunch.
I believe this is just about the dorms, which are mostly just freshmen. Can you imagine the lawsuits, “my child got COVID because you did not regulate your dorms well enough”?
UCB administration has always been conservative. And remember, this is where John Yoo and other important conservative faculty work. The university does not control what book and record stores, or restaurants, survive off campus, much less outside city limits.
People need to get a grip. They seem to think Mario Savio was UC faculty. The Free Speech Movement, which took place over 50 years ago, was not University generated and it opposed University policy.
Well, complain to the ones in charge. Every institutional living setting is really carefully regulated in CA, and as you must know, there are a lot of lawyers and actuaries involved in these decisions. These weird extrapolations, that asking for self-isolation in dorms is something invented by “leftist” professors imagined to exist, is silly and that is not how things work
I know for an absolute fact that right here where I am it’s the people with BLM in their signatures and plans to persecute ideologically non-compliant colleagues who stand behind every single single idea that keeps us off campus and in Zoom school. Have i imagined their existence? Is the memory of them publicly calling me a murderer and a fascist because I choose to teach in person a figment of my imagination?
I’m experiencing bullying and abuse by these individuals. They are all very leftist. I will not be gaslit into pretending that it’s not true.
We are not Berkeley, so these individuals aren’t the majority, and we do manage to protect students from some of this lunacy, at least.
“weird extrapolations, that asking for self-isolation in dorms is something invented by “leftist” professors imagined to exist”
Covid policies (along with BLM) were weaponized by the democratic party in order to unseat Trump. Lots of people fell for that hook, line and sinker and most of them are leftist/liberal/progressives (three separate but intersecting groups). Many of those people have since assimilated these protocols (from pronouns through “anti-racism” to extreme lockdown rhetoric) as normal operating procedure. Lots of people aren’t good at letting go of ideas that are no longer needed….
So, yes, leftists whether professors or administrators are definitely on the “let’s say online forever!” side more than other people.
You can easily find out how person votes from the degree of their COVID stringency. And not only in the general but in the primaries, too. The more to the left your candidate, the more terrified of COVID you are.
Another symptom is the degree of excitement one feels over Kamala Harris. The people who post excited paeans to her on social media are the ones who mask their kids and rarely leave their house.
All this is going to do is make kids less willing to come forward if they do get sick. If they don’t want to admit they went anywhere and no one will admit they had contact with anyone, then contact tracing can’t feasibly happen. Plus it places unnecessary guilt on anyone who happens to get it, because the thought is that they did something wrong, and any protests to the contrary will be met with “well, if you hadn’t done XYZ you wouldn’t have gotten sick, so it’s all your fault.”
This kind of stigma is extremely problematic. This is what causes some doctors to justify not seeing covid or post-covid patients. Because they did it to themselves, therefore they must not be deserving of treatment. When the reality is you can take all the precautions in the world and still get it.
It’s very disturbing how moral value is being attached to COVID. The attempts to blame the people who got infected are not only wrong but also dangerous. Where does it end? Are cancer patients to blame for getting sick? Heart patients? What about sick kids? It’s a very, very dangerous and immoral game to play.
COVID doesn’t have a moral compass and doesn’t reward people for “good behavior.”
Unfortunately this isn’t new. It’s in the Old Testament, where illness was actively compared to doing the wrong things or living the wrong way. STDs have always had a moral value associated with them. More recently, there was a lot of stigma surrounding HIV patients, especially if they were children.
Yes, it’s a psychological defense mechanism. People reduce their anxiety by convincing themselves that if they are “good” nothing bad will happen to them. It’s ultimately very infantile because an adult knows that it doesn’t work this way.
From memory, the word “moral” is derived from the Latin “moralis” which just means habit or custom sensed as being good for the human being as part of the society. In other words, it’s a little like the Nash equilibrium where the correct action for an individual member of a group is to do what is good for the individual and good for the group as a whole in equal proportion.
It is obviously implied that all members of the group should conduct themselves in this way, which means that the group reciprocates, benefitting the individual in turn.
To illustrate, in regards to COVID and morality, it would be very immoral for a person who is infected to move freely throughout the society, since that would harm others, which weakens the society, and so lessens the reciprocal benefit for the individual. At the same time, it would be very immoral for a person with an absolutely critical skills that the society needs to give up work for life and stay home to avoid all risk of infection, since the absence of those skills harm the society unduly. In the case of the latter, the correct action would be for the individual to minimise/mitigate risk using all available information and means, reasonably, and return to work.
What seems logical to me based on the meaning of the word – that is to say “where it ends” is to say that the most moral thing for any person to do during these times is subjective, since every person participates in the society differently and undergoes different risks. In my opinion, an infected person has a moral obligation to stay away from others in practically all circumstances, while a recovered person who may break out in the virus and become infectious again has a moral obligation to judiciously keep a distance from others/minimise any behaviours that would spread any virus for a period sufficient for the virus to be studied a bit more ie another few months or something.
Clarissa's Blog 
Such a shame. Berkeley used to have nice used books and records stores on University and San Pablo during the ’70s and ’80s—even into the ’90s. And audio/stereo stores in the ’70s and ’80s, of course
…always a bit commercial, though. And they’ve always had strict “No Loitering” ordinances (because “California” I guess—I’m sure the advent of laptops and Wi-Fi changed that a bit during the 2000s and 2010s). There was Round Table Pizza, McDonald’s and Orange Julius (“college town”).
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Solitary outdoor exercise… so the point is to make them all crazy.
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I wonder when the next violent riot will happen. Everything is being done to make that option attractive to the students.
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I don’t understand why the parents don’t sue the hell out of the university. I am sure they can. This is inhumane!
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I’m a bit torn about this. On the one hand, it makes no sense to ban a less risky activity like exercising alone while allowing much more risky activities like attending a communal dining hall. But on the other hand, leftist teachings in universities and the ignorance that results are quite close to the core of the political problems ailing the world today, since universities are in a sense training people to be idiots.
So it could be that allowing these students to experience first hand the arbitrary, capricious, and callous behaviour of leftists in positions of power could be in their interest overall.
LikeLike
…Or you could read it as brainwashing techniques: solitary confinement, broken up by propaganda sessions.
LikeLike
“…Or you could read it as brainwashing techniques: solitary confinement, broken up by propaganda sessions.”
In my experience, when given a choice between conspiracy and incompetence, choose incompetence. University staff as described by Clarissa seem unable to muster up enough intelligence to protect their own employment. It doesn’t make sense to me that people so deficient in that regard are somehow simultaneously capable of implementing a university wide psy-op.
LikeLike
Normally, I’d agree. But when I was a teenager, in the Protestant/Evangelical milieu, there was a cautionary tale circulating, possibly with a lawsuit attached, about a particular summer church camp. The parents became concerned when some of the kids came home tired, having lost weight, and frankly a bit loopy mentally. And yet, the kids had nothing but good things to say about camp. On further inquiry… things seemed sketchy. The kids consistently didn’t get enough to eat because of some game they played at mealtimes involving someone calling out a phrase, and everyone jumping from their seats and running around the table until… I forget. Recite the Bible verse? Answer the Old Testament trivia question? Beats me. Anyway, similar “games” were used to prevent the kids ever getting enough sleep, or calling their parents, there were intense breakout sessions… anyway, the general consensus was, this camp isn’t teaching anything heretical, but it’s basically child abuse via brainwashing techniques, and Do Not Send Your Kid There, no matter how shiny the brochure looks.
If a dinky church camp can do it, why not Berkeley? Yeah, it’s probably incompetence. But I wouldn’t be willing to rule out deliberate intent. Isolate, isolate, isolate. I’m extremely curious to see if any of the other elements are present at Berkeley: repetitive chants/music? In-group benefits for those who’ve fully adopted the party line? Dim lighting? Emotionally intense video/lecture/workshop sessions? Irregular scheduling?
LikeLiked by 1 person
“If a dinky church camp can do it, why not Berkeley?”
I’m not an expert, but if I were to hazard a guess, I would say that it is because a church camp is a small enterprise while a university is an institution.
Small enterprises can easily go astray because there are few checks & balances, much more discretion, smaller target groups/ability to micromanage, fewer staff/greater consistency of purpose, greater efficiency etc while institutions are the other way around. The bigger something gets, the harder it is to get it to do anything complex that requires secrecy/consistency/competence efficiently.
That’s why other institutions like governments, police forces, militaries etc need so many systems/training regimes/high budgets. Getting them to do complex things competently is really difficult.
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Um. Yeah.
They absolutely do this in the military. It’s a teambuilding thing, apparently.
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“Um. Yeah.
They absolutely do this in the military. It’s a teambuilding thing, apparently.”
Yes I know. The military is a large, well funded institution with lots of systems in place and training regimes that get everyone working to a standard purpose. That’s why I stated in the previous post:
“That’s why other institutions like governments, police forces, militaries etc need so many systems/training regimes/high budgets. Getting them to do complex things competently is really difficult.”
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So… it’s only “going astray” when small institutions do it? I’m not sure I follow your reasoning.
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It doesn’t have to be conscious or planned. If you take a bunch of hormonal teenagers, isolate them, deprive them of physical activity and socialization, scare them and feed them a steady diet of SJW crap from a screen, they’ll go nuts. It’s very easy. This is an impressionable, immature, physiologically vulnerable bunch.
LikeLike
That’s a great point. If only the students had enough brain power to see the connection. I’m not hopeful but I agree that the lesson is well-needed.
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I believe this is just about the dorms, which are mostly just freshmen. Can you imagine the lawsuits, “my child got COVID because you did not regulate your dorms well enough”?
UCB administration has always been conservative. And remember, this is where John Yoo and other important conservative faculty work. The university does not control what book and record stores, or restaurants, survive off campus, much less outside city limits.
People need to get a grip. They seem to think Mario Savio was UC faculty. The Free Speech Movement, which took place over 50 years ago, was not University generated and it opposed University policy.
LikeLike
We don’t torture our students like this, and we are perfectly fine. No lawsuits, no outbreaks.
Of course, we also have normal students, not rich, spoiled “socialists.”
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Well, complain to the ones in charge. Every institutional living setting is really carefully regulated in CA, and as you must know, there are a lot of lawyers and actuaries involved in these decisions. These weird extrapolations, that asking for self-isolation in dorms is something invented by “leftist” professors imagined to exist, is silly and that is not how things work
LikeLike
I know for an absolute fact that right here where I am it’s the people with BLM in their signatures and plans to persecute ideologically non-compliant colleagues who stand behind every single single idea that keeps us off campus and in Zoom school. Have i imagined their existence? Is the memory of them publicly calling me a murderer and a fascist because I choose to teach in person a figment of my imagination?
I’m experiencing bullying and abuse by these individuals. They are all very leftist. I will not be gaslit into pretending that it’s not true.
We are not Berkeley, so these individuals aren’t the majority, and we do manage to protect students from some of this lunacy, at least.
LikeLike
“weird extrapolations, that asking for self-isolation in dorms is something invented by “leftist” professors imagined to exist”
Covid policies (along with BLM) were weaponized by the democratic party in order to unseat Trump. Lots of people fell for that hook, line and sinker and most of them are leftist/liberal/progressives (three separate but intersecting groups). Many of those people have since assimilated these protocols (from pronouns through “anti-racism” to extreme lockdown rhetoric) as normal operating procedure. Lots of people aren’t good at letting go of ideas that are no longer needed….
So, yes, leftists whether professors or administrators are definitely on the “let’s say online forever!” side more than other people.
LikeLiked by 1 person
You can easily find out how person votes from the degree of their COVID stringency. And not only in the general but in the primaries, too. The more to the left your candidate, the more terrified of COVID you are.
Another symptom is the degree of excitement one feels over Kamala Harris. The people who post excited paeans to her on social media are the ones who mask their kids and rarely leave their house.
LikeLike
All this is going to do is make kids less willing to come forward if they do get sick. If they don’t want to admit they went anywhere and no one will admit they had contact with anyone, then contact tracing can’t feasibly happen. Plus it places unnecessary guilt on anyone who happens to get it, because the thought is that they did something wrong, and any protests to the contrary will be met with “well, if you hadn’t done XYZ you wouldn’t have gotten sick, so it’s all your fault.”
This kind of stigma is extremely problematic. This is what causes some doctors to justify not seeing covid or post-covid patients. Because they did it to themselves, therefore they must not be deserving of treatment. When the reality is you can take all the precautions in the world and still get it.
LikeLiked by 1 person
It’s very disturbing how moral value is being attached to COVID. The attempts to blame the people who got infected are not only wrong but also dangerous. Where does it end? Are cancer patients to blame for getting sick? Heart patients? What about sick kids? It’s a very, very dangerous and immoral game to play.
COVID doesn’t have a moral compass and doesn’t reward people for “good behavior.”
LikeLike
Unfortunately this isn’t new. It’s in the Old Testament, where illness was actively compared to doing the wrong things or living the wrong way. STDs have always had a moral value associated with them. More recently, there was a lot of stigma surrounding HIV patients, especially if they were children.
It’s a fear thing, I think.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Yes, it’s a psychological defense mechanism. People reduce their anxiety by convincing themselves that if they are “good” nothing bad will happen to them. It’s ultimately very infantile because an adult knows that it doesn’t work this way.
LikeLike
From memory, the word “moral” is derived from the Latin “moralis” which just means habit or custom sensed as being good for the human being as part of the society. In other words, it’s a little like the Nash equilibrium where the correct action for an individual member of a group is to do what is good for the individual and good for the group as a whole in equal proportion.
It is obviously implied that all members of the group should conduct themselves in this way, which means that the group reciprocates, benefitting the individual in turn.
To illustrate, in regards to COVID and morality, it would be very immoral for a person who is infected to move freely throughout the society, since that would harm others, which weakens the society, and so lessens the reciprocal benefit for the individual. At the same time, it would be very immoral for a person with an absolutely critical skills that the society needs to give up work for life and stay home to avoid all risk of infection, since the absence of those skills harm the society unduly. In the case of the latter, the correct action would be for the individual to minimise/mitigate risk using all available information and means, reasonably, and return to work.
What seems logical to me based on the meaning of the word – that is to say “where it ends” is to say that the most moral thing for any person to do during these times is subjective, since every person participates in the society differently and undergoes different risks. In my opinion, an infected person has a moral obligation to stay away from others in practically all circumstances, while a recovered person who may break out in the virus and become infectious again has a moral obligation to judiciously keep a distance from others/minimise any behaviours that would spread any virus for a period sufficient for the virus to be studied a bit more ie another few months or something.
LikeLike