Thursday 10 August 2017

Google sacking James Damore means we're living in the nightmare world of Jerome Bixby's "It's a Good Life"

SJW sending James Damore to the cornfield
Just in case you haven't yet read former Google software engineer James Damore's 10-page internal memo, entitled "Google's Ideological Echo Chamber", a full PDF version can be found here. If you have ten minutes to spare, it's well worth reading. And if you do have the time to read it, I recommend the version I've link to because many left-liberal online pseudo-news sites have doctored it to suit their preferred narrative. It's clear, logical, well-argued, unemotional and rational - a tad too politically centrist for my taste, and I bridled at the references to climate science, but I agree with the general direction of travel...

...which is in favour of genuine diversity and treating people as individuals, and against the denial of reality and the silencing of dissenting opinions. You would have to be deranged to dismiss it as a hate-filled, anti-diversity "screed" - which, inevitably, is what the whole of the New Left has done. There is no hate in it. It's pro-diversity. It isn't a screed or a rant or a right-wing manifesto - it's a mildly conservative plea for tolerance and dialogue written by a thoughtful young man worried that the company he works for is being intolerant in the name of tolerance. So Google fired him for "perpetuating gender stereotypes". Thus making Damore's case for him. There were reports of Google employees stayed home the day after Damore's memo became public, because it made them feel "unsafe". FFS.
SJW reading James Damore's memo
I won't rehash Mr. Damore's arguments here, because the New Left social justice warriors who have been baying for the young man's blood haven't engaged with any of his arguments. Instead, they've writhed on the carpet, drumming their feet and fists on the floor in a howling, red-faced, nappie-filling tantrum, and, as usual, the grown-ups have stopped trying to explain to them that, actually, reality doesn't automatically rearrange itself to satisfy your desires, and you'd better get used to it, you little shit, because that's just the way it is. Instead, the adults in the room have indulged their little darlings' humongous egos by rearranging reality to satisfy their desires. Great parenting!

One of the most unsettling short stories I've ever read is Jerome Bixby's "It's a Good Life", which was published in 1953, and went on to achieve lasting fame as a Twilight Zone episode in 1961, a segment of Twlight Zone: The Movie in 1983, and as a Simpsons parody in 1991. Anthony Fremont is a three year-old boy born with the ability to rearrange the world to satisfy his desires: if he doesn't like the weather, his food, the furniture - he changes them all just by wishing them otherwise. He has split his hometown of Peaksville, Ohio off from the rest of the world, so that it exists in its own time and space. If people or animals displease him he does grotesque things to them (his first act is to kill the doctor who just delivered him), and then, when he's finished, disposes of their remains by sending them to the cornfield behind the family home. He can read minds, so his family and neighbours have to mask their thoughts when they're around him - or perish. Anthony appreciates a cheerful, sunny ambience, which is why the townsfolk develop the mantra, "It's a good life." Anthony is not innately evil: it's just that his unlimited power over his world means no one has been able to teach him the difference between right and wrong, and he can't learn from experience, because reality is whatever he wants it to be.
Nervous Google board members awaiting SJW's reaction
The horrible little creeps of the New Left are Anthony Fremont made flesh. Men and women are the same. All races are the same. Anyone who doesn't share their beliefs is evil and must be punished and silenced for good - sack them, suspend their Twitter accounts, report them to police! The rest of us (who, like the townsfolk of Peaksville, represent the majority) end up creeping around quietly, nodding in seeming agreement with whatever nonsense these ridiculous narcissists are spouting and   desperately masking our true thoughts in case the little horrors realise what's really going on in our heads. Then, unknowingly, or deliberately - because we're just fed up agreeing that up is down and white is black - we let the mask slip and say what we damn well think. Which is what James Damore did. Which is why he's been banished to the cornfield behind Google HQ - or, if you prefer, the Google Archipelago.

Remember - it's a good life!

4 comments:

  1. Substitute "the UK civil service" for "Google" throughout Damore's memo and the truth value of each proposition is preserved. The Twilight Zone is located in Whitehall, London W1.

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  2. https://www.jamesgmartin.center/2017/08/engineering-education-social-engineering-rather-actual-engineering/

    Good article with which Damore might agree.

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    Replies
    1. It's more than good, Anonymous - it's pant-wettingly terrifying. What next - pilots and doctors??? One of the commenters on Indrek Wichman's article suggests that employers will end up not employing anyone they suspect of having achieved engineering qualifications because of belonging to a victim group rather than merit. But that fails to take into account anti-discrimination employment laws and the army of True Believer social scientists in HR departments, government, the civil service, the justice system and the unions ready to complete the work of universities by whipping employers into line with the progressivist programme.

      Thanks for the link.

      Delete
  3. I posted that link as part of a polite comment in a blog of an Oxbridge (terrible descriptor , I know) College Master and it was deleted quicker than you could say the college motto.

    ReplyDelete