Confessions of a Human Nerve Ending

Yesterday, I published my take on the Sokal Squared scandal on my page at Medium , and was surprised that it got a bump from the editors, “Our curators just read your story , It’s a Publish or Perish World , that you submitted for review. Based on its quality, they selected it to be recommended to readers interested in Education across our homepage, app, topic page, and emails.”   While the recommendation immediately meant more people read my story than the one I posted a week before (six reads vs. none), what really caught me off guard was a related story I read this morning on The Daily Beast .   While I didn’t specifically cite the Quillette story referenced, I did send the link to it to my wife as an   example of my sense that the lefts’ obsession with identity was alienating people that should be politically aligned with our larger goals.   Yet, in reading the Daily Beast article, I realized I’d been hoaxed (a direct response to the Sokal Story) as well.   The story I linked to

Disclaimer: I’m not invested in securing tenure at a university, yet I do feel that my time working on my Master’s in Rhetoric was worthwhile. While my job as a mid-level manager at a community college doesn’t require that level of education, expending the effort to work full time and study was a way to stay engaged and keep my brain active. Background: I developed a sort of discipline that sitting in front of a computer most days rewards. I read a lot; I watch documentary films and various YouTube clips a lot. And as I sort of meandered my way through understanding the larger world as presented to me via the web, I, as predicted or delivered by the  algorithm on YouTube , became exposed to a broader variety of opinions ( Jordan Peterson, Sam Harris, The Ruben Report, Bret Weinstein ) than my online circle of poet and progressive friends held or posted about on other social media platforms. It lead me to the NYTimes piece on the  Intellectual Dark Web . From there it was