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This article borders on incoherent in terms of how meta it tries to get about responses to social justice activities. I think the author should read, “Inequali

by mlthoughts2018 6y ago

This article borders on incoherent in terms of how meta it tries to get about responses to social justice activities. I think the author should read, “Inequality Talk is About Grabbing” and “Sex Prizes” by Robin Hanson and reflect soberly on what they mean about society’s motives. - http://www.overcomingbias.com/2013/08/inequality-is-about-grabbing.html http://www.overcomingbias.com/2013/08/inequality-is-about-gr... - http://www.overcomingbias.com/2010/03/sex-prizes.html http://www.overcomingbias.com/2010/03/sex-prizes.html Cancel culture is about selfishly taking resources, that’s all. There are many things we could try to cancel that would make the world better, but why is it that it tends to only focus on removing someone from a position of (usually pretty menial) authority or influence, like a job or a high status social media outlet. Cancel culture isn’t impacting overt horrific actions of billionaires. We don’t tend to try to cancel across international lines, or cancel people from the past, because we can’t take resources from them. It’s purely about taking whatever stuff you can smash and grab, like social looting, from people positioned with menial wealth, power or influence, in your own country for the most part. Anyone who can resist you is somehow conveniently not a worthy target. We also don’t try to take things that aren’t easy to grab. It’s super easy to remove statues or cancel someone on social media, or get people in the middle ranks fired. This is why you also see calls for direct cash payment forms of reparations even though that utterly makes no sense on any level whatsoever. Direct cash payments by grabbing tax money is one of the easiest things to grab. Real reform that addresses systemic addiction, gang influence, employment gaps, police discrimination, etc., are extremely hard to solve and require complex coordination. So of course conveniently major op eds are written defending direct cash reparations as the only solution. I really wish people would wake up to this more. The world around you is constantly trying to drum up covert hypocrisy reasons why it’s OK to simply take what you have and why this isn’t wrong. The target on your back is a function of what stuff you have that they want, and how easy it is to take it from you. Lower middle class doesn’t have much, so nobody focuses on taking from them. People in other countries are separated by complex laws so taking their stuff is hard. Very wealthy people have resources to resist so taking their stuff is hard. People from past eras are dead and locked their stuff away in institutions, so taking anything aside from symbolic gestures is too hard. This leave you - upper middle class or low end of the wealth class. You have just enough stuff for it to be worth grabbing, and you don’t quite have enough power to resist social movements that take it from you under the guise of social progress.

nathanaldensr 6y ago
Despite you being downvoted, I appreciated your post. I especially find the idea of "social looting" interesting, and I agree with you about the path of least resistance being the middle class--we're easy targets, it seems.
johnday 6y ago
Movements are built off the back of small victories. It's not a surprise or a revelation that what you paint as 'cancel culture', a concept without personification, is exercising its (limited) power in the ways you describe. It seems likely to me that, as victories accumulate, so will the socio-political power of the group, until they are capable of making serious change at the level of nation-states.
- mlthoughts2018 6y ago
  I think you misunderstood. These aren’t “victories” in the sense of having any impact on reform or progress - they have none, not even a little, and the people doing the cancelling never expected or needed them to. It’s only about taking what you can grab. The goal is to get more stuff while not being accused of violating social norms during the act of taking. So cancel culture is invented as an excuse of convenience that allows taking stuff on one hand while claiming moral righteousness (even though your only motive was to take peoples stuff you wanted) on the other. If you wanted social reform, there are many actions you could choose that aren’t directly rooted in terms of who are the easiest people, with sufficiently valuable stuff, to take from. The fact that people choose to focus on social looting instead of all the rational alternatives is what really conclusively demonstrates that cancelling is not at all about pure motives to fix things but instead is just about what can you get away with taking while protected under the righteousness banner of the social movement convenience excuse.

nathanaldensr 6y ago

Despite you being downvoted, I appreciated your post. I especially find the idea of "social looting" interesting, and I agree with you about the path of least resistance being the middle class--we're easy targets, it seems.

johnday 6y ago

Movements are built off the back of small victories. It's not a surprise or a revelation that what you paint as 'cancel culture', a concept without personification, is exercising its (limited) power in the ways you describe. It seems likely to me that, as victories accumulate, so will the socio-political power of the group, until they are capable of making serious change at the level of nation-states.

mlthoughts2018 6y ago
I think you misunderstood. These aren’t “victories” in the sense of having any impact on reform or progress - they have none, not even a little, and the people doing the cancelling never expected or needed them to. It’s only about taking what you can grab. The goal is to get more stuff while not being accused of violating social norms during the act of taking. So cancel culture is invented as an excuse of convenience that allows taking stuff on one hand while claiming moral righteousness (even though your only motive was to take peoples stuff you wanted) on the other. If you wanted social reform, there are many actions you could choose that aren’t directly rooted in terms of who are the easiest people, with sufficiently valuable stuff, to take from. The fact that people choose to focus on social looting instead of all the rational alternatives is what really conclusively demonstrates that cancelling is not at all about pure motives to fix things but instead is just about what can you get away with taking while protected under the righteousness banner of the social movement convenience excuse.