6 ms·

Any living person can hold a reprehensible point of view, and as much as I may disagree with it, I really can't stand this attitude of writing people off becaus

by ljm 6y ago

Any living person can hold a reprehensible point of view, and as much as I may disagree with it, I really can't stand this attitude of writing people off because of a flawed perspective. That doesn't mean I support spousal abuse by association, it means I recognise he has a shitty point of view amongst all of his other flaws, as well as his qualities. There isn't a single person in history that can meet this standard of 'goodness'. Not you, nor I, nor anyone. So yeah, let's acknowledge people for all that they are, good and bad, but let's not reduce people to a two dimensional caricature of themselves based purely on what is now considered unacceptable.

mlthoughts2018 6y ago
What a ludicrous point of view. The world has a lot of good people in it. There is do defensible reason for celebrating unapologetic bad people. Honest mistakes, sure. Character flaws, ok. Blatant endorsement of spousal abuse on a major news program with no retraction or apology ever? Get real.
- ljm 6y ago
  I find it more perplexing that we pre-occupy ourselves with splitting the people of the world into those who are good and those who are bad. And then making sure the bad group can't ever make its way back into the good one. Rarely, if ever, is it so clear cut. And if anything, it's quite a juvenile (and pervasively Western) value system. I find it particularly exhausting and the world is as it is because there isn't enough compassion going around to even consider how we might approach our problems with kinder, less vengeful, hearts.
  - mlthoughts2018 6y ago
    What a very weird take on my comments. We didn’t make Sean Connery identify as “bad” - he did that, and did so unremorsefully and unapologetically. He didn’t want to come back to the “good” side. I find it most perplexing of all that you would want to do mental gymnastics to defend someone like that or minimize the highlighting of genuine harm that person did by trying to disingenuously act like it’s more nuanced than some moralistic sense of right or wrong. Sometimes it really, really isn’t. Sometimes a person goes on TV sloganeering in favor of spousal abuse, inflaming who knows how many actual abusers out there to believe it’s ok & feel emboldened to keep doing it - real material harm. Sometimes that really, really is only bad, and by never retracting or apologizing, that person doesn’t leave reasonable people any choice but to see that this extreme harmful behavior outweighs pretty much everything else.
    - cheschire 6y ago
      Time and place, my dude. You might as well start picketing outside of the man's wake. It's rude to trample on the emotions of people who are mourning together.
      - klyrs 6y ago
        Nah. Airing of grievances is a perfectly legitimate form of grief. When my (very popular, publicly beloved, but privately abusive) dad died, I didn't speak my mind at his funeral because of attitudes like yours. People with an incomplete understanding of his person wanted to censor my experiences in order to relish in the good times. My grief process would require several years of counseling. They were there for a party, and most of them experienced a day or less of grief. The truth is complex. The weirdest reaction to "cancel culture" is people who would censor the truth in favor of fantasy, but complain that their fave artist is the one being censored.
        ljm 6y ago
        Erasing history in any form isn't great, really. Which is why I was quite specific in the original reply about acknowledging _all_ of it, not just specific bits. I mean, you can still say that someone was an asshole about a few things but you still loved them. Other people can say they didn't love him at all and have nothing positive to say. They're intimate feelings. It's not the same as going to someone who is grieving and celebrating and saying, don't forget that he did X, Y and Z though! Where X, Y and Z are hideous things. It's not a place to start trying to change people's minds about someone. That'll happen all by itself over time, as we can see with people such as Mother Theresa and Jimmy Saville. My parents were similar in having one public appearance, but being abusive to me in private. I cut contact so I don't imagine or expect to be at any family funeral, so I can't say how I'd react. But I know they would be appreciated by others in a way that I could never be.
      - mlthoughts2018 6y ago
        Nah, sorry, that is no excuse. He made these decisions. This is the legacy he intended, with his own volition. If you do something like go on national press and unapologetically endorse spousal abuse (which absolutely invites and encourages other abusers and leads to real harm), and you double down on this and never apologize or retract it, then you absolutely deserve for it to be constantly brought up as a defining event in your life. “Let’s honor someone who did something despicable just cuz that’s “respectful” and we like his movies” is totally not OK.
  - unabst 6y ago
    > Rarely, if ever, is it so clear cut. And if anything, it's quite a juvenile (and pervasively Western) value system. And the opposite edge of the same sword are stories of Keanu being such an amazing human being etc. All the while no one knows or seems to even care who they truly are. We demonize and idolize for a sense of moral righteousness and to strengthen our world view. It's far from compassion, has little to do with them, and it's juvenile. Bad behavior is not an argument against good behavior. Bad character is not an argument against good character. They're not mutually exclusive, and it's a false dichotomy. Let the police arrest the criminals. But speech should be free. We've all said dumb sh_t. We've all believed dumb sh_t. We've all done dumb sh_t. To paraphrase George Carlin, we're all born guilty.
fao_ 6y ago
I don't think anyone here was saying that we should reduce people to a two-dimensional caricature of themselves. I think the point that was trying to be made was that, this is something people should know about before they decided to unreservedly push this man as a saviour or as a hero, and that giving this knowledge to people allows them to decide how they feel about it, whether they are comfortable with it, and ultimately, be aware of it. 'Cancelling' public artists and figures is always about three things: 1) Reducing the effect, or putting into context, their platform. In other words: allowing people to be aware about the ideas creators hold -- there's almost always some kind of bleed-over -- and if that person tends to go on a soapbox, allowing people to be able to discern whether they want to listen based on this new fact that could be extremely relevant. For example, it would change your mind whether someone was talking about the nature of consent, based on whether they were known for being abusive and acting non-consensually with other people, no? That seems like a hugely important fact to know. 2) Allowing us to be aware and put into context the people that we, as a society, hold up -- people who for all intents and purposes can 'do no wrong'. And deciding whether or not we still want to consume those works, and hold them up on that pedestal, with that information. 3) If they are still alive, ensuring that they remain accountable for actions or beliefs that have harmed or will harm people. Ensuring people who are vulnerable and likely to interact with them, can be aware and avoid being harmed. This gives the public figure a choice: They can either push back against it and dig their heels in deeper, or they can take responsibility, grow as a person, and maybe even cast off or recant whatever made them act in such a way or believe such things. It allows them to introspect into what they've done, and gives them the opportunity to decide to become a better person. A wonderful example of this is Dan Harmon, who acted inappropriately towards staff under him, and did not realise it at the time because of his emotional state. He introspected to figure out why that happened, apologised in full, and has presumably taken steps and made himself more aware so he will not repeat those actions. In addition, staff around him can be more aware, and can more openly and safely broach the issue with him now if he does relapse, because of how he responded. What better can we ask for?! It's not about destroying people, or encouraging people to see them as some monster, it's fundamentally about allowing people to choose how they want to interact with that person -- even in a parasocial way. It's about allowing choice, and allowing people to act with discretion, more than anything else. Arguably, this encourages people to see them less as a two dimensional caricature. My reaction to this information was that this person was obviously very complex, and had both good ideas and bad ideas. Interestingly enough, I always percieve people (like you) who so vehemently argue against spreading information like this, and allowing people to choose how they view public figures and interact with content that they have produced, as arguing this from fear. From the fear that acts that you have done will catch up with you. This might not be true, but it does make me wonder.
umvi 6y ago
Indeed, I think it's a terrible mistake to hold historical figures to modern standards and morals. I'm sure there are things even the best among us do today that could be harshly judged in the future. "Of this I am quite sure, that if we open a quarrel between the past and the present, we shall find that we have lost the future" -- Winston Churchill
- approxim8ion 6y ago
  Some morals aren't as modern as people make them out to be when making this argument. Also interesting to use a quote from a man responsible for starving millions of innocents in a debate about morality, but that's neither here nor there.
  - ljm 6y ago
    > innocents Not people? I'd hate to be referred to as 'an innocent'. --- To address the main point, history is full of this. I mean, try quoting Mother Theresa and see what people will say then. We _could_ try to cleanse history of all memorable quotes written or spoken by people who have don't have a clean track record in morality (whatever that actually is at a certain point in time) but I don't think we'd be left with all too much to learn from. To go further into my own thought process, I'm much more in line with non-dual tantric attitudes to this than I am with what we commonly call morals these days.
    - approxim8ion 6y ago
      About 'innocent', I'm not sure why I went for that choice of word. I think an earlier version of the comment in my head had "killed" instead of "starved" but that would include war casualties which are more ambiguous so the innocent thing. Either way, it was incoherent and you're right that "people" was a better choice of word. English isn't my native language but it's no excuse because I've been speaking and writing in it for years. >To address the main point, history is full of this. I agree, but I do feel it is relevant to acknowledge the portions of someone's legacy that aren't clean. The quote in isolation is a fair and fine one, I suppose. I would show more restraint in bringing up the cursory comment on Churchill if the context of the thread was something else entirely.
hliyan 6y ago
I wonder about this a lot. I love meat, but I'm fairly certain our descendants will judge us the same way we judge slave owners: we were intelligent, we had the necessary mental ingredients to come to the conclusion that some of the animals we consume possessed some level of sentience, but we were unable to do so due to sheer historical and cultural momentum.
- lenkite 6y ago
  And those descendants will be viewed in horror by their descendants in turn, when they prove that plants have sentience and thoughts.
  - bradbeattie 6y ago
    Not to drift too far off topic, but you may be surprised to learn about biomass transfer efficiency. It takes a lot more plant mass to feed to animals than eating those plants directly. This "plants might feel pain too" gotcha doesn't really play out.
    - lenkite 6y ago
      That's assuming the biomass can be eaten by humans in the first place. We can't digest a lot of stuff that can be eaten by animals whom we can eat in turn.
    - hencq 6y ago
      I feel you misunderstood the point being made. Societal norms and attitudes evolve and blindly measuring history against contemporary standards is often counterproductive. Please don't mistake this as some apology for slavery, wife beating, antisemitism or whatever. It isn't; people did reprehensible things in the past. Just realize that it's extremely unlikely that our current norms are the objectively correct ones that will be forever unchanged.
      - mensetmanusman 6y ago
        I believe there is more slavery, wife beating, and antisemitism now than in the past.
qubex 6y ago
I hate the recent “Cancel Culture” thing (that the phenomenon you descrive is an instance of). Firstly, and beside the point, the term itself is wonderfully (though I suspect accidentally) ambiguous and self-defeating, as one can read it as “the culture of a cancelling” (as intended) or “this will cancel culure” (a possible side-effect). Anyway... yes, cancel culture... I criticised it here once previously and amongst the various responses, most contrarian, was one that stuck with me: paraphrasing, it read “you’ve always told us to vote with our feet and now you’re complaining about cancel culture?” Clearly this responder considered “cancel culture” to be the latest term for “boycot”, but I don’t think that’s accurate. I cannot (yet?) justify even to myself what utterly subtle distinction must exist between the two, but until I do and probably even thereafter I will accept that they do have a point.
- tartoran 6y ago
  I think people can vote with their wallets/feet if they don’t approve of someone, it’s their right. I am not sure whether that constitutes cancel culture or not. However, there are cases where the cancelled is abused, sent death threats and such and this is absolutely a bad thing and should not happen. Also some people are ‘cancelled’ before the complete news breaks out or the whole picture emerges and in the end it turns out they were setup or completely innocent. That is a big problem and seems to be a part of the cancel culture. An example of a guy coaxed to do the ok sign, filmed and posted everywhere had his life ruined for no reason. That is not okay and we should do something to stop it
- tetrometal 6y ago
  I think the point is fair. From the perspective of liberty, there's no government using aggressive force against you; this is a perfectly free-market phenomenon. That said, that doesn't mean it's always moral. For example, I don't feel comfortable saying at my place of work (software engineer) that women are biologically different than men and this probably has a large impact on why the field isn't 50/50 men/women. I think this is a perfectly reasonable position, yet there's no way I could say this at work. I'd lose my job, just like James Damore. So, I don't think that what is being done is wrong in the political sense, but I do think unfair cancellations are unethical. I think it's fine to "cancel" people/businesses/organizations that cause or allow unfair cancellations to take place. I already quietly decline to do business with and lobby against companies that adopt "woke" postures. I'm part of a silent majority that votes with their wallet, I suppose.

by ljm 6y ago

mlthoughts2018 6y ago

What a ludicrous point of view. The world has a lot of good people in it. There is do defensible reason for celebrating unapologetic bad people. Honest mistakes, sure. Character flaws, ok. Blatant endorsement of spousal abuse on a major news program with no retraction or apology ever? Get real.

ljm 6y ago
I find it more perplexing that we pre-occupy ourselves with splitting the people of the world into those who are good and those who are bad. And then making sure the bad group can't ever make its way back into the good one. Rarely, if ever, is it so clear cut. And if anything, it's quite a juvenile (and pervasively Western) value system. I find it particularly exhausting and the world is as it is because there isn't enough compassion going around to even consider how we might approach our problems with kinder, less vengeful, hearts.
- mlthoughts2018 6y ago
  What a very weird take on my comments. We didn’t make Sean Connery identify as “bad” - he did that, and did so unremorsefully and unapologetically. He didn’t want to come back to the “good” side. I find it most perplexing of all that you would want to do mental gymnastics to defend someone like that or minimize the highlighting of genuine harm that person did by trying to disingenuously act like it’s more nuanced than some moralistic sense of right or wrong. Sometimes it really, really isn’t. Sometimes a person goes on TV sloganeering in favor of spousal abuse, inflaming who knows how many actual abusers out there to believe it’s ok & feel emboldened to keep doing it - real material harm. Sometimes that really, really is only bad, and by never retracting or apologizing, that person doesn’t leave reasonable people any choice but to see that this extreme harmful behavior outweighs pretty much everything else.
  - cheschire 6y ago
    Time and place, my dude. You might as well start picketing outside of the man's wake. It's rude to trample on the emotions of people who are mourning together.
    - klyrs 6y ago
      Nah. Airing of grievances is a perfectly legitimate form of grief. When my (very popular, publicly beloved, but privately abusive) dad died, I didn't speak my mind at his funeral because of attitudes like yours. People with an incomplete understanding of his person wanted to censor my experiences in order to relish in the good times. My grief process would require several years of counseling. They were there for a party, and most of them experienced a day or less of grief. The truth is complex. The weirdest reaction to "cancel culture" is people who would censor the truth in favor of fantasy, but complain that their fave artist is the one being censored.
      - ljm 6y ago
        Erasing history in any form isn't great, really. Which is why I was quite specific in the original reply about acknowledging _all_ of it, not just specific bits. I mean, you can still say that someone was an asshole about a few things but you still loved them. Other people can say they didn't love him at all and have nothing positive to say. They're intimate feelings. It's not the same as going to someone who is grieving and celebrating and saying, don't forget that he did X, Y and Z though! Where X, Y and Z are hideous things. It's not a place to start trying to change people's minds about someone. That'll happen all by itself over time, as we can see with people such as Mother Theresa and Jimmy Saville. My parents were similar in having one public appearance, but being abusive to me in private. I cut contact so I don't imagine or expect to be at any family funeral, so I can't say how I'd react. But I know they would be appreciated by others in a way that I could never be.
    - mlthoughts2018 6y ago
      Nah, sorry, that is no excuse. He made these decisions. This is the legacy he intended, with his own volition. If you do something like go on national press and unapologetically endorse spousal abuse (which absolutely invites and encourages other abusers and leads to real harm), and you double down on this and never apologize or retract it, then you absolutely deserve for it to be constantly brought up as a defining event in your life. “Let’s honor someone who did something despicable just cuz that’s “respectful” and we like his movies” is totally not OK.
- unabst 6y ago
  > Rarely, if ever, is it so clear cut. And if anything, it's quite a juvenile (and pervasively Western) value system. And the opposite edge of the same sword are stories of Keanu being such an amazing human being etc. All the while no one knows or seems to even care who they truly are. We demonize and idolize for a sense of moral righteousness and to strengthen our world view. It's far from compassion, has little to do with them, and it's juvenile. Bad behavior is not an argument against good behavior. Bad character is not an argument against good character. They're not mutually exclusive, and it's a false dichotomy. Let the police arrest the criminals. But speech should be free. We've all said dumb sh_t. We've all believed dumb sh_t. We've all done dumb sh_t. To paraphrase George Carlin, we're all born guilty.

fao_ 6y ago

I don't think anyone here was saying that we should reduce people to a two-dimensional caricature of themselves. I think the point that was trying to be made was that, this is something people should know about before they decided to unreservedly push this man as a saviour or as a hero, and that giving this knowledge to people allows them to decide how they feel about it, whether they are comfortable with it, and ultimately, be aware of it. 'Cancelling' public artists and figures is always about three things: 1) Reducing the effect, or putting into context, their platform. In other words: allowing people to be aware about the ideas creators hold -- there's almost always some kind of bleed-over -- and if that person tends to go on a soapbox, allowing people to be able to discern whether they want to listen based on this new fact that could be extremely relevant. For example, it would change your mind whether someone was talking about the nature of consent, based on whether they were known for being abusive and acting non-consensually with other people, no? That seems like a hugely important fact to know. 2) Allowing us to be aware and put into context the people that we, as a society, hold up -- people who for all intents and purposes can 'do no wrong'. And deciding whether or not we still want to consume those works, and hold them up on that pedestal, with that information. 3) If they are still alive, ensuring that they remain accountable for actions or beliefs that have harmed or will harm people. Ensuring people who are vulnerable and likely to interact with them, can be aware and avoid being harmed. This gives the public figure a choice: They can either push back against it and dig their heels in deeper, or they can take responsibility, grow as a person, and maybe even cast off or recant whatever made them act in such a way or believe such things. It allows them to introspect into what they've done, and gives them the opportunity to decide to become a better person. A wonderful example of this is Dan Harmon, who acted inappropriately towards staff under him, and did not realise it at the time because of his emotional state. He introspected to figure out why that happened, apologised in full, and has presumably taken steps and made himself more aware so he will not repeat those actions. In addition, staff around him can be more aware, and can more openly and safely broach the issue with him now if he does relapse, because of how he responded. What better can we ask for?! It's not about destroying people, or encouraging people to see them as some monster, it's fundamentally about allowing people to choose how they want to interact with that person -- even in a parasocial way. It's about allowing choice, and allowing people to act with discretion, more than anything else. Arguably, this encourages people to see them less as a two dimensional caricature. My reaction to this information was that this person was obviously very complex, and had both good ideas and bad ideas. Interestingly enough, I always percieve people (like you) who so vehemently argue against spreading information like this, and allowing people to choose how they view public figures and interact with content that they have produced, as arguing this from fear. From the fear that acts that you have done will catch up with you. This might not be true, but it does make me wonder.

umvi 6y ago

Indeed, I think it's a terrible mistake to hold historical figures to modern standards and morals. I'm sure there are things even the best among us do today that could be harshly judged in the future. "Of this I am quite sure, that if we open a quarrel between the past and the present, we shall find that we have lost the future" -- Winston Churchill

approxim8ion 6y ago
Some morals aren't as modern as people make them out to be when making this argument. Also interesting to use a quote from a man responsible for starving millions of innocents in a debate about morality, but that's neither here nor there.
- ljm 6y ago
  > innocents Not people? I'd hate to be referred to as 'an innocent'. --- To address the main point, history is full of this. I mean, try quoting Mother Theresa and see what people will say then. We _could_ try to cleanse history of all memorable quotes written or spoken by people who have don't have a clean track record in morality (whatever that actually is at a certain point in time) but I don't think we'd be left with all too much to learn from. To go further into my own thought process, I'm much more in line with non-dual tantric attitudes to this than I am with what we commonly call morals these days.
  - approxim8ion 6y ago
    About 'innocent', I'm not sure why I went for that choice of word. I think an earlier version of the comment in my head had "killed" instead of "starved" but that would include war casualties which are more ambiguous so the innocent thing. Either way, it was incoherent and you're right that "people" was a better choice of word. English isn't my native language but it's no excuse because I've been speaking and writing in it for years. >To address the main point, history is full of this. I agree, but I do feel it is relevant to acknowledge the portions of someone's legacy that aren't clean. The quote in isolation is a fair and fine one, I suppose. I would show more restraint in bringing up the cursory comment on Churchill if the context of the thread was something else entirely.

hliyan 6y ago

I wonder about this a lot. I love meat, but I'm fairly certain our descendants will judge us the same way we judge slave owners: we were intelligent, we had the necessary mental ingredients to come to the conclusion that some of the animals we consume possessed some level of sentience, but we were unable to do so due to sheer historical and cultural momentum.

lenkite 6y ago
And those descendants will be viewed in horror by their descendants in turn, when they prove that plants have sentience and thoughts.
- bradbeattie 6y ago
  Not to drift too far off topic, but you may be surprised to learn about biomass transfer efficiency. It takes a lot more plant mass to feed to animals than eating those plants directly. This "plants might feel pain too" gotcha doesn't really play out.
  - lenkite 6y ago
    That's assuming the biomass can be eaten by humans in the first place. We can't digest a lot of stuff that can be eaten by animals whom we can eat in turn.
  - hencq 6y ago
    I feel you misunderstood the point being made. Societal norms and attitudes evolve and blindly measuring history against contemporary standards is often counterproductive. Please don't mistake this as some apology for slavery, wife beating, antisemitism or whatever. It isn't; people did reprehensible things in the past. Just realize that it's extremely unlikely that our current norms are the objectively correct ones that will be forever unchanged.
    - mensetmanusman 6y ago
      I believe there is more slavery, wife beating, and antisemitism now than in the past.

qubex 6y ago

I hate the recent “Cancel Culture” thing (that the phenomenon you descrive is an instance of). Firstly, and beside the point, the term itself is wonderfully (though I suspect accidentally) ambiguous and self-defeating, as one can read it as “the culture of a cancelling” (as intended) or “this will cancel culure” (a possible side-effect). Anyway... yes, cancel culture... I criticised it here once previously and amongst the various responses, most contrarian, was one that stuck with me: paraphrasing, it read “you’ve always told us to vote with our feet and now you’re complaining about cancel culture?” Clearly this responder considered “cancel culture” to be the latest term for “boycot”, but I don’t think that’s accurate. I cannot (yet?) justify even to myself what utterly subtle distinction must exist between the two, but until I do and probably even thereafter I will accept that they do have a point.

tartoran 6y ago
I think people can vote with their wallets/feet if they don’t approve of someone, it’s their right. I am not sure whether that constitutes cancel culture or not. However, there are cases where the cancelled is abused, sent death threats and such and this is absolutely a bad thing and should not happen. Also some people are ‘cancelled’ before the complete news breaks out or the whole picture emerges and in the end it turns out they were setup or completely innocent. That is a big problem and seems to be a part of the cancel culture. An example of a guy coaxed to do the ok sign, filmed and posted everywhere had his life ruined for no reason. That is not okay and we should do something to stop it
tetrometal 6y ago
I think the point is fair. From the perspective of liberty, there's no government using aggressive force against you; this is a perfectly free-market phenomenon. That said, that doesn't mean it's always moral. For example, I don't feel comfortable saying at my place of work (software engineer) that women are biologically different than men and this probably has a large impact on why the field isn't 50/50 men/women. I think this is a perfectly reasonable position, yet there's no way I could say this at work. I'd lose my job, just like James Damore. So, I don't think that what is being done is wrong in the political sense, but I do think unfair cancellations are unethical. I think it's fine to "cancel" people/businesses/organizations that cause or allow unfair cancellations to take place. I already quietly decline to do business with and lobby against companies that adopt "woke" postures. I'm part of a silent majority that votes with their wallet, I suppose.