{"id":149545,"date":"2023-08-02T01:57:50","date_gmt":"2023-08-02T09:57:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=149545"},"modified":"2025-03-25T10:19:57","modified_gmt":"2025-03-25T18:19:57","slug":"decoding-decoding-the-gurus-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=149545","title":{"rendered":"Decoding Decoding The Gurus, Part Two"},"content":{"rendered":"

Part one.<\/a><\/p>\n

This decoding is a hard job because the podcast Decoding the Gurus<\/a> (DTG) by academics Matt Browne and Chris Kavanagh is objectively impressive. Matt and Chris, however, seem unaware that they have their own subjective partisan left-wing hero system, a product of contingent circumstances, and it is this subjective hero system that drives them to call out racism, bigotry, xenophobia, Islamophobia, homophobia and the like. <\/p>\n

As philosopher Rony Guldmann writes in his work in progress Conservative Claims of Cultural Oppression: On the Nature and Origins of Conservaphobia<\/a>: <\/p>\n

* Being inflected by the buffered identity, the Enlightenment\u2019s particular brand of empiricism isn\u2019t culturally neutral, and was rather crafted in reflection of a hero-system. Its function is to uphold a set of social meanings that will ratify the ethos of disengaged self-control and self-reflexivity as essential human nature, as the \u201ctrue self\u201d that lies dormant or suppressed among the unwashed masses. The light with which Becker\u2019s \u201cemancipated ones\u201d believed the world was freshly flooded is none other than this, none other than the buffered identity. This identity is not an actual datum of experience, but rather the silent, unquestioned backdrop against which experience, including the meaning of harm, is now conceptualized, transforming whatever falls outside it into the object of scorn and incredulity.<\/p>\n

* We know that our evolved capacity for disgust can become culturally misdirected with the consequence that homosexuality becomes viewed with a visceral repugnance that would be more appropriate for telltale signs of bacterial infection. And I am arguing that the intellectualism of the liberal elites may be vulnerable to a similar kind of cultural misdirection. Just like disgust, our evolved \u201cneed for cognition\u201d or \u201cneed for accuracy\u201d as embedded in the angular cingulated cortex may have been culturally harnessed to imperatives that provide the desired neurological stimuli at the cost of intellectual substance and honesty. Indeed, Mooney acknowledges that liberals find it \u201chard, psychologically\u201d to buck what the scientists say. This inhibition is not the product of individual reflection, but rather a reflexive, socially inculcated responsiveness to \u201cthe rhetoric and airs of an intellectual,\u201d to the language, style, and demeanor of the New Class, which symbolically articulate the original spiritual vision of the buffered distance.<\/p>\n

* [T]he practitioners of science may understand themselves as \u201cmotivated fully by epistemic considerations,\u201d but a \u201cbig part of the motivation resides in the prestige and admiration surrounding the [scientific] stance itself, with the sense of freedom, power, control, invulnerability, dignity, which it radiates.\u201d And it is precisely this stance\u2014the ethos of disengaged self-control and self-reflexivity\u2014that fuels liberals\u2019 dismissive indignation toward conservative claims of cultural oppression. <\/p>\n

* In its broadest sense, Enlightenment means respect for facts. And it is a fact that our embodied reason is \u201cshaped by our bodies and brains and interactions in the real world,\u201d and that our conscious thinking is \u201cshaped by the vast and invisible realm of neural circuitry not accessible to consciousness.\u201d Being part of the \u201cpermanent furniture of our brains,\u201d narrative and metaphor cannot be erased and replaced by \u201ccold, hard reason.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So how do you succeed in academia? You play the game according to its rules. This will usually do more for your success than ground-breaking scholarship. <\/p>\n

As philosopher Rony Guldmann notes<\/a>: “Having anointed themselves the guardians of reason and enlightenment, liberals enjoy the plausible deniability to implement a sectarian agenda under the cover of universalistic virtue, like objectivity, inclusivity, benevolence, and so forth. But conservatives charge that this aura of superior virtue is only a sophisticated social illusion, the dishonest secular fa\u00e7ade for moralistic or quasi-religious impulses, a hidden will to power that seeks only to uphold one parochial social identity at the expense of its rivals.”<\/p>\n

Getting dobbed on to your dean would have to be near the top of the concerns for academics. Matt Browne and Chris Kavanagh admitted as much on a Patreon video about a year ago (I played this discussion on one of my videos circa late December of 2022, which one?). So to have a nice life, academics, along with the rest of us, tend to shy away from topics that could get us in hot water (unless you have a narcissism that must receive attention at all costs). <\/p>\n

One thing I’ve learned from interviewing thousands of people is that everybody is vulnerable. In polished presentations, people often look strong, but up close, you see their weak points. Everybody is accountable to someone. Everybody can get in trouble for something they say. <\/p>\n

Much of what is considered expertise by the media and the academy is an expertise at playing the game of expertise. Much of education is learning to play the game of education.<\/p>\n

I got to break many stories (such as an HIV outbreak in porn and LA’s first latino mayor was getting divorced after an affair) as a blogger because regular journalists were not incentivized to report them. <\/p>\n

Establishment journalist Amy Klein wrote about me in the New York Times Sep. 5, 2008<\/a>: <\/p>\n

Except that professionally he was causing me problems. He was always hounding our newspaper to cover scandals in the Jewish community. As a blogger he had \u201crelaxed\u201d standards as to sources, so people with axes to grind came to him and voil\u00e0! he would give them a forum, and then I had to write a news story about it.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It wasn’t my “relaxed” standards as to sources that gave my stories punch. Rather, it was that they conveyed truths that were impossible to ignore, even by those such as Amy Klein who wanted to ignore them. And when the Jewish Journal wrote about me, they were happy to use numerous anonymous sources to attack me<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Professionals hate non-professionals treading on their turf (all professions strive to increase their power and prestige and income at the expense of the majority), and journalists today regard themselves as professionals. <\/p>\n

Tony Castro wrote in the Los Angeles Daily News June 6, 2007<\/a>: <\/p>\n

From the fury and intensity with which Luke Ford is reviled in the American porn industry, you would think he\u2019s with the FBI or a rabid evangelist crusading against any incursion on family values.<\/p>\n

Ford, though, is a lowly author who over the past 10 years has made a career of writing and blogging on pornography \u2013 and who, on any day, wields an extraordinary influence over the industry unmatched by any news organization.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not a crusader against the industry,\u201d says Ford, 40, who blogs at www.LukeIsBack.com after making a name for himself at<\/p>\n

www.LukeFord.com. \u201cBut there is very little filter between me and my readers. There is no glorification or celebration of the industry, just fact-based reporting on issues and stories that the industry would just as soon not have made public.\u201d<\/p>\n

Over the years, Ford has broken the stories of four porn actresses and one porn actor who tested positive for HIV, a health scare that temporarily shut down film production in the industry and led to some voluntary safeguards and monthly HIV testing.<\/p>\n

\u201cLuke Ford (was) way out front with the HIV porn story,\u201d acknowledged former New York Times business writer Nick Ravo.<\/p>\n

There have been other stories that Ford has been \u201cway out front\u201d with as well: the role of the Mafia in pornography up until the late 1990s, especially in distribution, and Internet credit-card scams of some pornography firms. <\/p>\n

…Posting porn stars\u2019 real names, writing about the role of the mob and revealing which actors had had cosmetic surgery, the site became an immediate, controversial sensation in the industry.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe X-rated industry prefers to be a legendary milieu rather than a fact-oriented milieu,\u201d says Bill \u201cThe Bear\u201d Margold…<\/p>\n

Former Times reporter Ravo agrees.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was way ahead of the curve in critiquing, in his own comic way, the pornography industry, and \u2013 Internet historians of the future should note this \u2013 he was one of the first bloggers in any field. He was doing it before they even called it blogging. He doesn\u2019t get credit for that.\u201d<\/p>\n

…\u201cFor Luke, there are no sacred cows,\u201d Margold said. \u201cHe takes no prisoners.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Most professionals are more interested in the approval of their peers than in pursuing truth. You can’t expect people to understand something if their income, happiness and social status depends upon not understanding some obvious truth, such as group differences. <\/p>\n