Why did I major in Political Science anyway? (vegan / vegans / veganism)
02 June 2017 [link youtube]
For more on Thomas Hobbes and the (contested!) resemblance of the "cover portrait" (frontispiece) to Oliver Cromwell (and/or/vs Charles II), see:
http://www.bl.uk/eblj/1978articles/pdf/article4.pdf
(Alas, in my own education, many published sources referred to the resemblance to Cromwell ("in some editions") as an established fact —and this article, also, says that this assumption went unquestioned in the literature on Hobbes for some indeterminate period of time.)
Youtube Automatic Transcription
so aisel what made you get into
political science when you started your undergrad whoa nobody ever asked me this question nobody it's really weird for your fight when you ask this question for years and years and years nobody ever asked me that I cannot remember the last time somebody asked me that question which is a strange thing when I first enrolled in university so obviously coming out of high school I wanted to study the philosophy of poverty and I thought I would find that in the department of economics and you notice about me I still have a very deep kind of sentimental affinity for economics I still care about economics I still read about accounts if you search this channeling fine just a few videos about economics but they're quite passionate even I'm talking about like the debt to GDP ratio of China and economics in Canada I still remain kind of at a high level of literacy about that sounds like a moment not so good London School of Economics that is true that is true so among the disadvantages of living with me microbots no well I'm in the shower listening to lectures on economics from a famous University anymore right so I still do care about economics and I in a sense I'm still passionate about what economics ought to be we doesn't mean in a perfect world would it be and you know I remember saying this to to a co-worker when I got to university of toronto Department of Economics I said for the first time I understand who it is that buys roofin all so rupin all a Kay a roofie these guys I was in the classroom with they were not there for the philosophy of poverty and the classes that were being taught a lot of the time the professor or the the TA didn't even speak English it was someone fresh off the boat from Hong Kong speaking in a thick Chinese accent and like sometimes 50% of the students would be Chinese the first language I was like just just cut out the middleman just stop pretending to speak English the level of English being spoken it was so low Bible with the professor and the students and I mean the other the other white guys who were there as I say like the were guys who were into making money fast and you know I could imagine them being in the market for a date rape drugs because for the best I didn't enunciate that too clearly maybe this video will get blacklisted by YouTube if the computer transliteration and I can't can't pick up those words I digress I was shocked at the low intellectual caliber and frankly low ethical caliber of everything what was being taught and who was learning it and what the whole discipline was about from that University Department's perspective I should also say we had like 300 students in the classroom it's just tear apart like literally theater seating you know 300 students at once the mass education and I went into with a bunch of other kind of disadvantages in terms of my own family background I I grew up with zero math education what my parents said to me I mean other kids I'm not complaining but most of mathematic learning was parents helping up the kids and you know even if the teacher tested you on math most advanced math required you to sit down with your parents get some kind of guidance and my parents always said to me just fail and I did before my father died I did bring that up with new toxin but I said look you know this had a huge impact on my life that you told me just fail and other times he told me to just my way through it and so on but if anything I had a really negative influence from my parents in terms groans man now I'm not naturally bad at math I've actually the number of jobs that forced me to do math like eight hours a day where he's not really intensively and where I learned that was naturally better at math than my coworkers so I don't have fun with that but I had a lot of disadvantage that way that was not the crucial reason though for leaving economics so economics was not the philosophy of poverty and then I had a brief but intensity raid where I had to choose some totally different discipline at my university to replace what my interests were that drew me into economics and long story short end of political science I now know that was really the wrong decision for the right reasons I probably would have been better off Saigon into Asian Studies and Asian languages at the time which already was a major interest one of the big turning points for you actually was visiting South Korea as a very young man and South Korea all the issues that are in the air their wealth and poverty and development post-war crisis post-war reconstruction communism and anti communism and democracy they're all these really heavy issues in the air in Korea and I forget when I was in Korea was that maybe 14 was that maybe 15 and that really made a big impression at that time I remember telling people in Korea yeah I want to study economics I want to study economics of Korea you know to me I thought was a fascinating example of emerging from poverty and those those extreme political circumstance I already did care my mom remind me of this recently or did you care a lot about First Nations - I could tell some funny if they don't stop but for my Ma's reserve she said from childhood I was always ranting about First Nations and their land roads First Nations are polite word in Canada for what you call American Indians native people indigenous people etc so it's everything could be different if I take another direction but I guess you could say political science also this is what's so enticing about it seems to offer you a way to make a positive difference in all those things or whatever it is you have to care about right it's politics politics is everything and nothing right it's it's it seems so full of promise and yeah the the Department I ended up in and the career path I ended up on her the lack thereof it really was the wrong decision for me in so many ways I've said this many times on YouTube you know a lot of upsetting and sad things that in my life I have a divorce I have a four-year-old daughter all those other things but really the poor quality of university education in Canada it really is like the the crisis in my life I can't get over because I'm still burdened with it I'm still coping with it I'm still working hard to find it other roads and yeah I you know guys if any of you feel like I'm rubbing it in your face that I have a diploma in political science I really feel like I got a good education despite that program and not because of it and there was a real sense of my part of these courses aren't teaching us anything that matters I asked to go to the library independently and teach myself everything Mather's I really felt it was a big emotional burden I felt this is my one chance to get an education I don't get another chance which is true for most of us and whatever is wrong with it there's no point playing the blame game I've got to take it all on my own shoulders I've gotta learn to be an autodidact evidence do it for myself the one one example of that which you can relate Jesus she's an English literature major English major so the whole including linguistics not stuff too but if she is an English major but I went to a class so much the first class for a specialized course a 400 level course and advanced reading course just on Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes which I had already read so this is a classic of English literature as well as politics and everything else and the woman teaching the class I found out from other professors tell me she only was given that assignment because of who her boyfriend was literally she was the girlfriend of another professor in the Department of this kind of thing and it became very obvious very fast in her first lecture that she had never read the book she was teaching she had never read it once and she asked the students Oh so who's already read the book because we're just going to do an open reading we're going to go with color blank reading or something Fred his term like you know where he does so still freaking second I put my hands already minute and she said sliders oh well maybe you want to drop the class he's going with the book because look what we're going to be reading this at such a low level that something's already read the book wouldn't have any interest and she started in this incredibly Jewish okay so for the first class let's just talk about the cover illustration this is the cover from you know the original not the modern cover the cover was tall was fish so you know so what do you see I'm like what do you think what do you feel bit early so this is 400 level political science class and it's literally asking what are your feelings and your emotions about this picture and she's like yeah like you notice like over here there were cannons and like over here there were guns like and spoke about book of the war alright this is pretty deep and so she I waited I didn't make any comment and she ended her Hirschfeld which is totally spontaneous eliciting emotional reaction students and I said aren't you even going to mention who a portrait of it's a portrait of an historical figure and she said what do you mean I said it's Cromwell and she said who she had never heard this is a professor of science he said she had never heard of Oliver Cromwell she had never read the book she was totally unaware of the historical and political context of it so this I'm just being honest you I was less eloquent in an emotional situation at that age than I am now and today I'd be able to make some dry witty remarks and I'd be able to cope with institutionally it was emotionally devastating me we tired with us like when you're younger I think you react to situations like that with a feeling of this can't possibly be real like this must be a bad dream it's not possible that this person is so incompetent is so ignorant it's so terrible like you know you can't really mean what you just said you have these kind of mixed feelings of disappointment and outrage you want to have you today I mean I'd have some kind of witty laconic reflectiveness this kind of thing that did impact me moshe i did drop the course but you know why can't I take a course I mean this is being stirred this isn't Cambodia right this isn't like I'm at university or expecting them to have a great course on Cambodia so I'm expecting that a great course on the kree or the Egypt or the Algonquin something really matters me personally this is completely mainstream British beautiful tradition of both literature and and in politics and you can't even do that and this is the level of confidence in Commons but that was just another one of those moments where I walked out I was always emotionally deficit was really emotionally impacted by it I left during the break I didn't stay for the whole class and I you know just sat there shaking my head thinking it's all on me I have to go alone to the library if I'm going to read Plato and Aristotle I am going to read Plato an hour so nobody's going to give me a grade for it nobody's going to teach you to mean it was explained to me everything whatever it was in the whole history of political science I had to figure out what was important and this was before Wikipedia matter of fact you know I had to figure out what was important and I'd teach it to my to myself with you know and again at that time I'll just be honestly guys again you guys know I was raised in an extremely left-wing family and I did not turn out left-wing I ended up questioning that in a sense the only in the same way that someone is raised Christian their main sense of the world maybe as a whole where God used to be in a lot of ways my only sense of what was important in politics as a whole where communist needs to be I knew communism was a failure I knew these into which Marxism fail I'd already read Karl Marx it read all that stuff but it wasn't like I had any kind of guidebook or map to really start teaching myself political philosophy in political science but I just it was this horrible sinking feeling of if I'm going to get any value out of this education it is all on me I'm out here all alone and you know obviously nobody else cares about Korea nobody else cares about Cambodia or First Nations or those kinds of things there's me but even nobody cares will give me a classical education in political science in the foundations whether you want to see done in terms of Aristotle or Hobbes or or even the US Constitution all that stuff I've read from itself as ridiculous as as that may sound really getting a sense of the basics yeah I can really tell that when you talk about history and politics and you didn't just learn it from a course that you took yeah same with all Asian Studies like about all the countries in this region like earlier you were just talking about Myanmar like you know you didn't learn that in a class yeah you definitely like one out somehow yeah yeah yeah when did a lot of Asian countries right right I've met a few other people with similar spirit but I mean I think I think it's funny choose it I chose to be an autodidact because I had no other choice but you can see the way in which was rigorous was that each of those places was asking the same questions so we will be worried we're talking with history of Myanmar but what about slavery but what about agriculture what about Cupra where did the food come from how did the economy work when I was first studying the history of Thailand or Myanmar or India or Sri micro any of these places I never was looking at it with rose-colored glasses like Oh is paradise or this is the East in contrast to the West or this is the oppressed South in Congress of the global north or socialism and Congress to capitalism in all of those places I was basically looking with the same rigorous eye to figure out how society works so that that was the product of not having a course I think very often when you're given a course by a professor it exactly has that kind of propaganda value of telling you like for example this is why Japan is the most wonderful country I've been to classes like that and you know you gotta say pardon me you know yeah yeah it's more meaningful to the way that you describe these things I can tell it wasn't like from a test like you actually care about how things works and at the time like yes you have a cold contact whereas for a test you would just be memorizing the effect and like you really just know like these details that I don't think you would have learned from right yeah it's what does what does what opinion does the professor want to cure back on the final test but look I mean guys long story short that is also I ended up learning Chinese though which I do in which I never want to learn I still don't want to learn was that all this learning I did though ultimately is not bankable in Canada there's no way I can cash in on and get a masters degree a PhD or a career or any kind of you know it doesn't open any doors for me put it that way so ultimately the decision was to conform to go back to University in Canada and to just try to study something mainstream that you know the system could could give me credit for and it seemed like the best option at the time was Chinese so we'll see and when I do and when I sit down and talk to professor's they often recognize even if they're specialists in China that I have a kind of expertise that they don't have I have expertise in areas they don't have and so on and those are indeed the areas that at least Canadian academia doesn't reward so she accepts me with all these ludicrous contradictions [Music]
political science when you started your undergrad whoa nobody ever asked me this question nobody it's really weird for your fight when you ask this question for years and years and years nobody ever asked me that I cannot remember the last time somebody asked me that question which is a strange thing when I first enrolled in university so obviously coming out of high school I wanted to study the philosophy of poverty and I thought I would find that in the department of economics and you notice about me I still have a very deep kind of sentimental affinity for economics I still care about economics I still read about accounts if you search this channeling fine just a few videos about economics but they're quite passionate even I'm talking about like the debt to GDP ratio of China and economics in Canada I still remain kind of at a high level of literacy about that sounds like a moment not so good London School of Economics that is true that is true so among the disadvantages of living with me microbots no well I'm in the shower listening to lectures on economics from a famous University anymore right so I still do care about economics and I in a sense I'm still passionate about what economics ought to be we doesn't mean in a perfect world would it be and you know I remember saying this to to a co-worker when I got to university of toronto Department of Economics I said for the first time I understand who it is that buys roofin all so rupin all a Kay a roofie these guys I was in the classroom with they were not there for the philosophy of poverty and the classes that were being taught a lot of the time the professor or the the TA didn't even speak English it was someone fresh off the boat from Hong Kong speaking in a thick Chinese accent and like sometimes 50% of the students would be Chinese the first language I was like just just cut out the middleman just stop pretending to speak English the level of English being spoken it was so low Bible with the professor and the students and I mean the other the other white guys who were there as I say like the were guys who were into making money fast and you know I could imagine them being in the market for a date rape drugs because for the best I didn't enunciate that too clearly maybe this video will get blacklisted by YouTube if the computer transliteration and I can't can't pick up those words I digress I was shocked at the low intellectual caliber and frankly low ethical caliber of everything what was being taught and who was learning it and what the whole discipline was about from that University Department's perspective I should also say we had like 300 students in the classroom it's just tear apart like literally theater seating you know 300 students at once the mass education and I went into with a bunch of other kind of disadvantages in terms of my own family background I I grew up with zero math education what my parents said to me I mean other kids I'm not complaining but most of mathematic learning was parents helping up the kids and you know even if the teacher tested you on math most advanced math required you to sit down with your parents get some kind of guidance and my parents always said to me just fail and I did before my father died I did bring that up with new toxin but I said look you know this had a huge impact on my life that you told me just fail and other times he told me to just my way through it and so on but if anything I had a really negative influence from my parents in terms groans man now I'm not naturally bad at math I've actually the number of jobs that forced me to do math like eight hours a day where he's not really intensively and where I learned that was naturally better at math than my coworkers so I don't have fun with that but I had a lot of disadvantage that way that was not the crucial reason though for leaving economics so economics was not the philosophy of poverty and then I had a brief but intensity raid where I had to choose some totally different discipline at my university to replace what my interests were that drew me into economics and long story short end of political science I now know that was really the wrong decision for the right reasons I probably would have been better off Saigon into Asian Studies and Asian languages at the time which already was a major interest one of the big turning points for you actually was visiting South Korea as a very young man and South Korea all the issues that are in the air their wealth and poverty and development post-war crisis post-war reconstruction communism and anti communism and democracy they're all these really heavy issues in the air in Korea and I forget when I was in Korea was that maybe 14 was that maybe 15 and that really made a big impression at that time I remember telling people in Korea yeah I want to study economics I want to study economics of Korea you know to me I thought was a fascinating example of emerging from poverty and those those extreme political circumstance I already did care my mom remind me of this recently or did you care a lot about First Nations - I could tell some funny if they don't stop but for my Ma's reserve she said from childhood I was always ranting about First Nations and their land roads First Nations are polite word in Canada for what you call American Indians native people indigenous people etc so it's everything could be different if I take another direction but I guess you could say political science also this is what's so enticing about it seems to offer you a way to make a positive difference in all those things or whatever it is you have to care about right it's politics politics is everything and nothing right it's it's it seems so full of promise and yeah the the Department I ended up in and the career path I ended up on her the lack thereof it really was the wrong decision for me in so many ways I've said this many times on YouTube you know a lot of upsetting and sad things that in my life I have a divorce I have a four-year-old daughter all those other things but really the poor quality of university education in Canada it really is like the the crisis in my life I can't get over because I'm still burdened with it I'm still coping with it I'm still working hard to find it other roads and yeah I you know guys if any of you feel like I'm rubbing it in your face that I have a diploma in political science I really feel like I got a good education despite that program and not because of it and there was a real sense of my part of these courses aren't teaching us anything that matters I asked to go to the library independently and teach myself everything Mather's I really felt it was a big emotional burden I felt this is my one chance to get an education I don't get another chance which is true for most of us and whatever is wrong with it there's no point playing the blame game I've got to take it all on my own shoulders I've gotta learn to be an autodidact evidence do it for myself the one one example of that which you can relate Jesus she's an English literature major English major so the whole including linguistics not stuff too but if she is an English major but I went to a class so much the first class for a specialized course a 400 level course and advanced reading course just on Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes which I had already read so this is a classic of English literature as well as politics and everything else and the woman teaching the class I found out from other professors tell me she only was given that assignment because of who her boyfriend was literally she was the girlfriend of another professor in the Department of this kind of thing and it became very obvious very fast in her first lecture that she had never read the book she was teaching she had never read it once and she asked the students Oh so who's already read the book because we're just going to do an open reading we're going to go with color blank reading or something Fred his term like you know where he does so still freaking second I put my hands already minute and she said sliders oh well maybe you want to drop the class he's going with the book because look what we're going to be reading this at such a low level that something's already read the book wouldn't have any interest and she started in this incredibly Jewish okay so for the first class let's just talk about the cover illustration this is the cover from you know the original not the modern cover the cover was tall was fish so you know so what do you see I'm like what do you think what do you feel bit early so this is 400 level political science class and it's literally asking what are your feelings and your emotions about this picture and she's like yeah like you notice like over here there were cannons and like over here there were guns like and spoke about book of the war alright this is pretty deep and so she I waited I didn't make any comment and she ended her Hirschfeld which is totally spontaneous eliciting emotional reaction students and I said aren't you even going to mention who a portrait of it's a portrait of an historical figure and she said what do you mean I said it's Cromwell and she said who she had never heard this is a professor of science he said she had never heard of Oliver Cromwell she had never read the book she was totally unaware of the historical and political context of it so this I'm just being honest you I was less eloquent in an emotional situation at that age than I am now and today I'd be able to make some dry witty remarks and I'd be able to cope with institutionally it was emotionally devastating me we tired with us like when you're younger I think you react to situations like that with a feeling of this can't possibly be real like this must be a bad dream it's not possible that this person is so incompetent is so ignorant it's so terrible like you know you can't really mean what you just said you have these kind of mixed feelings of disappointment and outrage you want to have you today I mean I'd have some kind of witty laconic reflectiveness this kind of thing that did impact me moshe i did drop the course but you know why can't I take a course I mean this is being stirred this isn't Cambodia right this isn't like I'm at university or expecting them to have a great course on Cambodia so I'm expecting that a great course on the kree or the Egypt or the Algonquin something really matters me personally this is completely mainstream British beautiful tradition of both literature and and in politics and you can't even do that and this is the level of confidence in Commons but that was just another one of those moments where I walked out I was always emotionally deficit was really emotionally impacted by it I left during the break I didn't stay for the whole class and I you know just sat there shaking my head thinking it's all on me I have to go alone to the library if I'm going to read Plato and Aristotle I am going to read Plato an hour so nobody's going to give me a grade for it nobody's going to teach you to mean it was explained to me everything whatever it was in the whole history of political science I had to figure out what was important and this was before Wikipedia matter of fact you know I had to figure out what was important and I'd teach it to my to myself with you know and again at that time I'll just be honestly guys again you guys know I was raised in an extremely left-wing family and I did not turn out left-wing I ended up questioning that in a sense the only in the same way that someone is raised Christian their main sense of the world maybe as a whole where God used to be in a lot of ways my only sense of what was important in politics as a whole where communist needs to be I knew communism was a failure I knew these into which Marxism fail I'd already read Karl Marx it read all that stuff but it wasn't like I had any kind of guidebook or map to really start teaching myself political philosophy in political science but I just it was this horrible sinking feeling of if I'm going to get any value out of this education it is all on me I'm out here all alone and you know obviously nobody else cares about Korea nobody else cares about Cambodia or First Nations or those kinds of things there's me but even nobody cares will give me a classical education in political science in the foundations whether you want to see done in terms of Aristotle or Hobbes or or even the US Constitution all that stuff I've read from itself as ridiculous as as that may sound really getting a sense of the basics yeah I can really tell that when you talk about history and politics and you didn't just learn it from a course that you took yeah same with all Asian Studies like about all the countries in this region like earlier you were just talking about Myanmar like you know you didn't learn that in a class yeah you definitely like one out somehow yeah yeah yeah when did a lot of Asian countries right right I've met a few other people with similar spirit but I mean I think I think it's funny choose it I chose to be an autodidact because I had no other choice but you can see the way in which was rigorous was that each of those places was asking the same questions so we will be worried we're talking with history of Myanmar but what about slavery but what about agriculture what about Cupra where did the food come from how did the economy work when I was first studying the history of Thailand or Myanmar or India or Sri micro any of these places I never was looking at it with rose-colored glasses like Oh is paradise or this is the East in contrast to the West or this is the oppressed South in Congress of the global north or socialism and Congress to capitalism in all of those places I was basically looking with the same rigorous eye to figure out how society works so that that was the product of not having a course I think very often when you're given a course by a professor it exactly has that kind of propaganda value of telling you like for example this is why Japan is the most wonderful country I've been to classes like that and you know you gotta say pardon me you know yeah yeah it's more meaningful to the way that you describe these things I can tell it wasn't like from a test like you actually care about how things works and at the time like yes you have a cold contact whereas for a test you would just be memorizing the effect and like you really just know like these details that I don't think you would have learned from right yeah it's what does what does what opinion does the professor want to cure back on the final test but look I mean guys long story short that is also I ended up learning Chinese though which I do in which I never want to learn I still don't want to learn was that all this learning I did though ultimately is not bankable in Canada there's no way I can cash in on and get a masters degree a PhD or a career or any kind of you know it doesn't open any doors for me put it that way so ultimately the decision was to conform to go back to University in Canada and to just try to study something mainstream that you know the system could could give me credit for and it seemed like the best option at the time was Chinese so we'll see and when I do and when I sit down and talk to professor's they often recognize even if they're specialists in China that I have a kind of expertise that they don't have I have expertise in areas they don't have and so on and those are indeed the areas that at least Canadian academia doesn't reward so she accepts me with all these ludicrous contradictions [Music]