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These protests are possibly the single largest protests for civil rights in the country's history. It is estimated that between 15 and 26 million Americans prot

These protests are possibly the single largest protests for civil rights in the country's history. It is estimated that between 15 and 26 million Americans protested. Roughly 6% to 10% of the US adult population. If after almost 1 in 10 Americans protesting for the same thing you're pushing, you think you're less capable of succeeding at your job, I think you may want to question your approach. And I don't mean that disrespectfully. I mean that in a sincere way. These protests were Americans saying that more of the same won't work. Yet another police sensitivity training class won't work. Yet one more less than lethal weapon won't work. Meeting with community leaders isn't sufficient. Raising the police budget so they can address this concerns isn't the answer. That's all been happening for a quarter of a century at this point and it's still fundamentally broken. Almost 1 in 10 people are saying, we need a fundamentally different approach w.r.t. to policing. Police don't need to be called in for every mental health case, for every role of a social worker, for patroling schools and "arresting" kids because middle schoolers got into a fight. The fact that out of ~20 million people, including plenty of outside agitators that disagreed with the protests and participated maliciously trying to discredit them, that the vast overwhelming majority have been peaceful is a testament. The system is fundamentally broken, and has acquired sufficient power to resist all of the normal checks and balances. That's when protests is most useful - to raise awareness of what is truly happening and advocate for change. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/07/03/us/george-floyd-protests-crowd-size.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/07/03/us/george-flo...

wisty 6y ago
If the mayor of Portland joins them, and many of them just chant "fuck Ted Wheeler" at him, maybe they need to come to the table with solutions rather than just problem?
eezurr 6y ago
I think it's important to step back see the bigger picture. Your comment IMO is exactly what PG is talking about when he defines "aggressively conventional" (down to using the actions of the masses to support your POV). A perfect system cannot exist, and getting there is limited by economics -> diminishing returns. It seems like you are pushing for a social structure that will consume American freedom to lower rate of failure (which is a drop in the ocean considering our population size) from our social system. The system is not fundamentally broken, it's just human; comprised and run by humans.
- BoiledCabbage 6y ago
  I have a number of disagreements with your comment. The first is the following: 1. OP posted that they've been trying something for many years and it hasn't produced the end result people want 2. An unprecedentedly large protest event has happened 3. I'm suggesting that OP should use the awareness of this new event to consider a new approach. 4. You characterize the above as "aggressively conventional". If saying someone should take new knowledge and do something different in your opinion is "aggressively conventional", then I reach one of two conclusions. Either a. You have a very different understanding of "conventional" than PG meant. b. It illustrates the uselessness of PGs framework for delineating conventionality, conformity and action. My opinion is it's actually option "b". PG has essentially framed any opinion that someone advocates for, that he (and via implication the reader) strong disagrees with as being conventional, and any opinion that he or the reader advocates for as independent. PG got a BA in from Cornell, an MS and Phd from Harvard. He went to study fine arts at Rhode Island school of design, and then at an art school in Florence. Following by going into business, and starting a company. I have nothing against any of those, and in fact thing it's a great path and laud him for the hard work and decidation of doing it. But it's true, that it's almost impossible to be in and leverage any more traditional, conventional methods of success in society than that. That is as conventional as it get. And yet he labels himself as independent. Amongst people who went to Ivy Leagues and started a company he advocated for something somewhat different (you can make more money doing X than by doing Y), but honestly it's pretty darn conventional. It's like being the rebel on Wall St., or the punk rocker that dyes their hair orange instead of the typical pink. He calls out teenagers, but doesn't see how exactly he's in that same mold. Now directly on "conventional". Everything has been done before. Protests have happened before, people in power have used it to suppress ideas, there have been pandemics, there have been new technologies. If your definition of conventional is "has this ever happened", then from knowing even a tiny slice of history - exactly everything ever is conventional. If you choose your definition of conventional to be more practical than "everything that ever happens", you come to a definition of conventional being supportive of those ideas, structures and systems of the existing groups in power. And independent meaning pushing ideas against them. Leveraging a non-infinite definition of "conventional" your argument above no longer makes sense. It becomes clear that you're arguing for using the conventional methods of trying to reform the system, which is what haven't been working. You are arguing for conventional thinking, while denouncing it. > It seems like you are pushing for a social structure that will consume American freedom to lower rate of failure ... from our social system. This is uninterpretable to me. I'm not even certain what social structure you're accusing me of pushing. > The system is not fundamentally broken, it's just human; comprised and run by humans. And this again to me seems to be the fallacy/oversimplification you've used. Because a system is comprised of and run by humans it not fundamentally broken? Every system is comprised of humans. That means you're arguing that no system can ever exist that can be broken. Again you're using a label and try to have it encompass the infinite. The fact a system is comprised of humans doesn't mean it can't be broken.

wisty 6y ago

If the mayor of Portland joins them, and many of them just chant "fuck Ted Wheeler" at him, maybe they need to come to the table with solutions rather than just problem?

eezurr 6y ago

I think it's important to step back see the bigger picture. Your comment IMO is exactly what PG is talking about when he defines "aggressively conventional" (down to using the actions of the masses to support your POV). A perfect system cannot exist, and getting there is limited by economics -> diminishing returns. It seems like you are pushing for a social structure that will consume American freedom to lower rate of failure (which is a drop in the ocean considering our population size) from our social system. The system is not fundamentally broken, it's just human; comprised and run by humans.

BoiledCabbage 6y ago
I have a number of disagreements with your comment. The first is the following: 1. OP posted that they've been trying something for many years and it hasn't produced the end result people want 2. An unprecedentedly large protest event has happened 3. I'm suggesting that OP should use the awareness of this new event to consider a new approach. 4. You characterize the above as "aggressively conventional". If saying someone should take new knowledge and do something different in your opinion is "aggressively conventional", then I reach one of two conclusions. Either a. You have a very different understanding of "conventional" than PG meant. b. It illustrates the uselessness of PGs framework for delineating conventionality, conformity and action. My opinion is it's actually option "b". PG has essentially framed any opinion that someone advocates for, that he (and via implication the reader) strong disagrees with as being conventional, and any opinion that he or the reader advocates for as independent. PG got a BA in from Cornell, an MS and Phd from Harvard. He went to study fine arts at Rhode Island school of design, and then at an art school in Florence. Following by going into business, and starting a company. I have nothing against any of those, and in fact thing it's a great path and laud him for the hard work and decidation of doing it. But it's true, that it's almost impossible to be in and leverage any more traditional, conventional methods of success in society than that. That is as conventional as it get. And yet he labels himself as independent. Amongst people who went to Ivy Leagues and started a company he advocated for something somewhat different (you can make more money doing X than by doing Y), but honestly it's pretty darn conventional. It's like being the rebel on Wall St., or the punk rocker that dyes their hair orange instead of the typical pink. He calls out teenagers, but doesn't see how exactly he's in that same mold. Now directly on "conventional". Everything has been done before. Protests have happened before, people in power have used it to suppress ideas, there have been pandemics, there have been new technologies. If your definition of conventional is "has this ever happened", then from knowing even a tiny slice of history - exactly everything ever is conventional. If you choose your definition of conventional to be more practical than "everything that ever happens", you come to a definition of conventional being supportive of those ideas, structures and systems of the existing groups in power. And independent meaning pushing ideas against them. Leveraging a non-infinite definition of "conventional" your argument above no longer makes sense. It becomes clear that you're arguing for using the conventional methods of trying to reform the system, which is what haven't been working. You are arguing for conventional thinking, while denouncing it. > It seems like you are pushing for a social structure that will consume American freedom to lower rate of failure ... from our social system. This is uninterpretable to me. I'm not even certain what social structure you're accusing me of pushing. > The system is not fundamentally broken, it's just human; comprised and run by humans. And this again to me seems to be the fallacy/oversimplification you've used. Because a system is comprised of and run by humans it not fundamentally broken? Every system is comprised of humans. That means you're arguing that no system can ever exist that can be broken. Again you're using a label and try to have it encompass the infinite. The fact a system is comprised of humans doesn't mean it can't be broken.