___

Stereotypes and Truths

My husband once told me that all stereotypes are based on truth—some kernel of truth, exaggerated—a caricature in words. In all the years since he said that, I haven't found anything that would dispute it.

All in the year 2021, biology was the enemy, and was being rediscovered. Transgender athletes caused radical feminists to blast out with details on the differences between men and women, following years of their rhetoric assuring everyone there WERE no differences. Evolutionary psychology came to be a study (following on evolutionary biology, and evolutionary anthropology, I suppose; I don't know that full set or the order in which they appeared).

In late 2021, I was told that Howard Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences was discredited within the social sciences. I haven't heard more about that yet, but my theory is that IF someone will benefit by denying that, it would be those who defend "the autism spectrum" in order to get special allowances, special services, and drugs (or perhaps more accurately, those who provide services—and drugs—to them), and others whose behaviors and needs are not "disorders," but easily explained by the idea that just as with music, athleticism, mathematical ability, some are especially equipped (or not) in what appears to us as interpersonal and intrapersonal knowledge.

[I read the "study," and was unimpressed.
It was a report by several grad students
and they had conflated Multiple Intelligences
with "Learning Styles," complaining that they
might not be real if they couldn't be
tested for somehow. Schooly-school stuff.]

So in thinking about these things, and listening to an interview with an evolutionary psychologist who was admitting to sometimes preferring or recommending attractive delusions over measurable fact, I thought I might start a collection.


I've seen versions of this since the 1970s, in office humor (photocopies passed around) and on a t-shirt once:

Heaven v. Hell

Heaven:

Hell:

from a UK site

Three other variants:

Heaven is where the police are British, the cooks are French, the mechanics German, the lovers Italian and it's all organised by the Swiss.

Hell is where the chefs are British, the mechanics French, the lover's Swiss, the police German and it's all organised by the Italians.


Heaven's where the police are british, the chefs are italian, the mechanics german, the lovers french, and it's organized by the swiss.

Hell is where the police are German, the chefs british, the mechanics french, the lovers swiss, and the italians organize everything.


Heaven is where the police are British, the lovers French, the chefs Italian and the engineers German.

Hell is where the chefs are British, the police are Italian, the engineers are French and the lovers are German.



A North American cousin of that:
The tragedy of Canada is they could have had French cuisine, American technology and British culture. Instead they ended up with British cuisine, French technology and American culture.


When I wrote about a game I played in airports, trying to identify a flight's destination by people in the waiting area, someone responded "SANDRA!!!!!!! I want to know...... have you been spying on us? I laughed soooooo hard at this my sides still hurt!"
(that's here but the earlier discussion is lost now; sorry)


While looking for more of the discussion just above, I came upon something called "stereotype threat." References dated from 1995 to 2014. I don't know if it's still something being "researched." It's a threat to logic and truth, I think.


Humor

Multiple Intelligences