Today's Misc.
by JS
I found the last paragraph of this to be the clearest statement yet of a long held belief of mine. Consider,
The APA is, as most modern professional institutions as well as governments are wont to do, speaking a top-down language about a quintessentially bottom-up problem. You want a different culture than what you got? Make it, don’t call for it.
Of course, as a scientist, I’m apt to point out that for someone ostensibly studying society and culture as it is, adopting even the “make it, don’t preach it” premise is fraught with all kinds of observer entanglement issues. This is the source of much of my skepticism as to what qualifies as knowledge in the humanities and social sciences.
That people call for changes instead of implementing them is symptomatic of a distinct lack of knowledge concerning exactly how to bring about the specified social change. This is, unbeknown to the practitioners, a clear sign that nobody really knows in any understandable causal sense how negative social properties arise and predominate.
