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The opposite strategy is to talk about politics constantly, so that it's painfully obvious who's in the minority. Which is better for a gay man in Saudi Arabia

The opposite strategy is to talk about politics constantly, so that it's painfully obvious who's in the minority. Which is better for a gay man in Saudi Arabia? A company where people only talk about work, or a company where everybody is expected to take a stance on homosexuality?

ardy42 6y ago
> The opposite strategy is to talk about politics constantly, so that it's painfully obvious who's in the minority. > Which is better for a gay man in Saudi Arabia? A company where people only talk about work, or a company where everybody is expected to take a stance on homosexuality? You're talking about something completely different. What I'm talking about is basically falsely depoliticizing a political decision, so people think it's something that cannot be changed, like nature or something. The reference to Newspeak, which was imagined as a way of dismantling the mental machinery of political opposition, should have made that clear. That you missed it is ironic given your username. If you want to map the experience of a gay man in Saudi Arabia onto what I was talking about, he would marry a woman and not even think things could be any different.
- winston_smith 6y ago
  The objection you and others are making to TFA is that you can't choose to be apolitical, because everything is political. Your contribution is to propose that people might claim things are apolitical to prevent people from realizing the truth about how political they actually are. Your appeal to newspeak is pretty pointless, as it applies only inasmuch as it does to anyone who might claim that something is its opposite, for example the slogans "the personal is political" and "silence is violence". Sure, if you accept lies like that, you may lose the ability to think about the true nature of those things. But you haven't really contributed anything to the conversation. You're just saying "ah, but what if they're /lying/! To /trick us/!"
  - ardy42 6y ago
    > The objection you and others are making to TFA is that you can't choose to be apolitical, because everything is political. Your contribution is to propose that people might claim things are apolitical to prevent people from realizing the truth about how political they actually are. You're still not really getting what I was saying. Directly claiming something is apolitical won't actually create the state I was talking about. To do that you actually have to get a bunch of influential people to talk about some political idea like it was obviously some kind of natural or social law or something. Not everything is political, but many people are ignorant of the political nature of many things. > Your appeal to newspeak is pretty pointless, as it applies only inasmuch as it does to anyone who might claim that something is its opposite, for example the slogans "the personal is political" and "silence is violence". You're thinking about the slogans like "freedom is slavery," which weren't Newspeak and would have been unexpressible in it. > But you haven't really contributed anything to the conversation. You're just saying "ah, but what if they're /lying/! To /trick us/!" I'm not sure I'm contributing the the conversion that you want to have, which makes it a little baffling why you're engaging with me and not one of "the others" who seem to be who you really want to engage with.

ardy42 6y ago

> The opposite strategy is to talk about politics constantly, so that it's painfully obvious who's in the minority. > Which is better for a gay man in Saudi Arabia? A company where people only talk about work, or a company where everybody is expected to take a stance on homosexuality? You're talking about something completely different. What I'm talking about is basically falsely depoliticizing a political decision, so people think it's something that cannot be changed, like nature or something. The reference to Newspeak, which was imagined as a way of dismantling the mental machinery of political opposition, should have made that clear. That you missed it is ironic given your username. If you want to map the experience of a gay man in Saudi Arabia onto what I was talking about, he would marry a woman and not even think things could be any different.

winston_smith 6y ago
The objection you and others are making to TFA is that you can't choose to be apolitical, because everything is political. Your contribution is to propose that people might claim things are apolitical to prevent people from realizing the truth about how political they actually are. Your appeal to newspeak is pretty pointless, as it applies only inasmuch as it does to anyone who might claim that something is its opposite, for example the slogans "the personal is political" and "silence is violence". Sure, if you accept lies like that, you may lose the ability to think about the true nature of those things. But you haven't really contributed anything to the conversation. You're just saying "ah, but what if they're /lying/! To /trick us/!"
- ardy42 6y ago
  > The objection you and others are making to TFA is that you can't choose to be apolitical, because everything is political. Your contribution is to propose that people might claim things are apolitical to prevent people from realizing the truth about how political they actually are. You're still not really getting what I was saying. Directly claiming something is apolitical won't actually create the state I was talking about. To do that you actually have to get a bunch of influential people to talk about some political idea like it was obviously some kind of natural or social law or something. Not everything is political, but many people are ignorant of the political nature of many things. > Your appeal to newspeak is pretty pointless, as it applies only inasmuch as it does to anyone who might claim that something is its opposite, for example the slogans "the personal is political" and "silence is violence". You're thinking about the slogans like "freedom is slavery," which weren't Newspeak and would have been unexpressible in it. > But you haven't really contributed anything to the conversation. You're just saying "ah, but what if they're /lying/! To /trick us/!" I'm not sure I'm contributing the the conversion that you want to have, which makes it a little baffling why you're engaging with me and not one of "the others" who seem to be who you really want to engage with.