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You are describing the concept of "social norms" and "taboos" and "shunning" in a particularly convoluted and confused way. You are talking about people being

You are describing the concept of "social norms" and "taboos" and "shunning" in a particularly convoluted and confused way. You are talking about people being shunned and gossiped about like it is on par with being kidnapped by armed government agents and confined in a cell. Like going to jail or being killed and getting cancelled on twitter are close enough to the same thing that the same philosophical framework applies. I'd suggest you back up and re-evaluate how you got here.

stcredzero 8y ago
You are talking about people being shunned and gossiped about like it is on par with being kidnapped by armed government agents and confined in a cell. So one is bad stuff on the level of violent terrorists and intelligence agencies, and another is bad stuff on the level of mean girls in high school? No disagreement there. Both of those stink. Then, there's bad on the level of groups of people going around in masks, using anonymity to get away with beating people up (1), committing vandalism, and terrorism on a level where universities have to hire $600,000 in security. That's also happening. (Shouldn't this be the sad, tragic legacy of the past?) Namecalling, exclusion, silencing -- none of these is intellectually worthy. None of these gets us closer to the truth. All they do is fuel and add legitimacy to the unreasonable extremists and prevent the reasonable discussions from being had. Like going to jail or being killed and getting cancelled on twitter are close enough to the same thing that the same philosophical framework applies. The common mechanism is the coercion in contrast to convincing. The key concept is that authoritarianism. I'd suggest you back up and re-evaluate how you got here. I'm not backing up. It's high time that lots of people stopped backing up and started calling out all the authoritarianism which is supposedly happening in the name of human freedom. It's coercion going against human freedom. If you are really on the side of justice, then when given the opportunity to hear people out and talk, you hear people out and talk. The side of justice, in the end, finally convinces through appeal to universal principle, not through force alone. In the long arc of history, it's clear who uses force alone. (Even in WWII, the victory of military arms would have meant just another war, if it weren't for the demonstration of principles and generosity by the US as victors. The subsequent cold war was won by the truth of our having a better system, not authoritarianism.) (1 -- Even beating innocent people up, because they are too taken by anger to tell the difference.)
- panic 8y ago
  Authoritarianism by definition requires a strong central power. Whatever you're talking about isn't authoritarianism.
  - stcredzero 8y ago
    Authoritarianism by definition requires a strong central power. This is one of the dishonest absolute tropes which need to be squashed, because it obscures the truth. It's an obfuscation that's as good as a lie. (1) Here's the universal, timeless truth: All power is temporary and contextual. All of history teaches us this. A masked mob dominating the street for a couple of hours clearly has contextual power. The mob that took over Evergreen State College and made the president ask to go to the bathroom had temporary, contextual power. Authoritarianism just requires power, and all power is temporary and contextual. Silencing speakers just requires this temporary, contextual power. Ruining a life just requires temporary, contextual power. Instilling fear so that people remain silent just requires temporary, contextual power. All of that is authoritarianism. All of that is coercion instead of convincing, and none of that requires the power of a government. That said, there is plenty of centralized power now being used by corporations and by colluding groups spanning multiple powerful corporations. There is plenty of the corporate power of the purse acting to actively silence people operating in 2019 and recent years. Whatever you're talking about isn't authoritarianism Merely wielding power to make people do what you want is authoritarianism. That is what comes of pseudo-activism that never gets beyond grievance and outrage. That is what comes of pseudo-activism that stays in that potentially toxic zone and never gets to the level of universal and unifying principles. That's the dishonest ideology of people who want to wield power to coerce others, yet deny it at the same time. It's based on the obvious lie of static, timeless power, easily refuted by history. (1 - "Power + Prejudice" being used to justify the distortion of a racial arrow onto what should be universal justice that applies to all human beings -- is part of the lie. We've seen ideologies that assign different justice to different races, creeds, orientations. They all claim to be part of a movement of justice, and in the end, they all turn out to be evil. If power is temporary and contextual, there can be no idiosyncratic directional vectors to justice, especially none related to melanin.)

stcredzero 8y ago

You are talking about people being shunned and gossiped about like it is on par with being kidnapped by armed government agents and confined in a cell. So one is bad stuff on the level of violent terrorists and intelligence agencies, and another is bad stuff on the level of mean girls in high school? No disagreement there. Both of those stink. Then, there's bad on the level of groups of people going around in masks, using anonymity to get away with beating people up (1), committing vandalism, and terrorism on a level where universities have to hire $600,000 in security. That's also happening. (Shouldn't this be the sad, tragic legacy of the past?) Namecalling, exclusion, silencing -- none of these is intellectually worthy. None of these gets us closer to the truth. All they do is fuel and add legitimacy to the unreasonable extremists and prevent the reasonable discussions from being had. Like going to jail or being killed and getting cancelled on twitter are close enough to the same thing that the same philosophical framework applies. The common mechanism is the coercion in contrast to convincing. The key concept is that authoritarianism. I'd suggest you back up and re-evaluate how you got here. I'm not backing up. It's high time that lots of people stopped backing up and started calling out all the authoritarianism which is supposedly happening in the name of human freedom. It's coercion going against human freedom. If you are really on the side of justice, then when given the opportunity to hear people out and talk, you hear people out and talk. The side of justice, in the end, finally convinces through appeal to universal principle, not through force alone. In the long arc of history, it's clear who uses force alone. (Even in WWII, the victory of military arms would have meant just another war, if it weren't for the demonstration of principles and generosity by the US as victors. The subsequent cold war was won by the truth of our having a better system, not authoritarianism.) (1 -- Even beating innocent people up, because they are too taken by anger to tell the difference.)

panic 8y ago
Authoritarianism by definition requires a strong central power. Whatever you're talking about isn't authoritarianism.
- stcredzero 8y ago
  Authoritarianism by definition requires a strong central power. This is one of the dishonest absolute tropes which need to be squashed, because it obscures the truth. It's an obfuscation that's as good as a lie. (1) Here's the universal, timeless truth: All power is temporary and contextual. All of history teaches us this. A masked mob dominating the street for a couple of hours clearly has contextual power. The mob that took over Evergreen State College and made the president ask to go to the bathroom had temporary, contextual power. Authoritarianism just requires power, and all power is temporary and contextual. Silencing speakers just requires this temporary, contextual power. Ruining a life just requires temporary, contextual power. Instilling fear so that people remain silent just requires temporary, contextual power. All of that is authoritarianism. All of that is coercion instead of convincing, and none of that requires the power of a government. That said, there is plenty of centralized power now being used by corporations and by colluding groups spanning multiple powerful corporations. There is plenty of the corporate power of the purse acting to actively silence people operating in 2019 and recent years. Whatever you're talking about isn't authoritarianism Merely wielding power to make people do what you want is authoritarianism. That is what comes of pseudo-activism that never gets beyond grievance and outrage. That is what comes of pseudo-activism that stays in that potentially toxic zone and never gets to the level of universal and unifying principles. That's the dishonest ideology of people who want to wield power to coerce others, yet deny it at the same time. It's based on the obvious lie of static, timeless power, easily refuted by history. (1 - "Power + Prejudice" being used to justify the distortion of a racial arrow onto what should be universal justice that applies to all human beings -- is part of the lie. We've seen ideologies that assign different justice to different races, creeds, orientations. They all claim to be part of a movement of justice, and in the end, they all turn out to be evil. If power is temporary and contextual, there can be no idiosyncratic directional vectors to justice, especially none related to melanin.)