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> American individualism so often deflects the responsibility of dealing with such trauma on those who are subjected to this kind of harassment because it's not
by disown 6y ago
> American individualism so often deflects the responsibility of dealing with such trauma on those who are subjected to this kind of harassment because it's not impacting the vast majority of the population ("not my problem").
It's not individualism, it's constitutional rights. The idea of american individualism is not true. We are a collectivist people - racial, native vs foreign born, protestant vs catholic, confederates vs union, etc.
> but somehow they don't devolve into the Orwellian nightmare that we always fear when we talk about limiting free speech.
Don't they arrest people for their dog's salute or symbols right? Europe is far closer to orwellian nightmare than the US I'd say.
> In fact, has there been another Western democracy more tested and compared to Orwell's 1984 in the last 5 years than the US?
"Last five years". And what happened?
> The worse that harassment gets online, I believe the more segmented and walled off and commercialized the internet will become.
No. As sneaky politically driven people use the death of children to demand censorship, that's when the internet will become more segmented, walled off and commercialized.
People like you are why there is ever more censorship, segmentation and commercialization. Clutching your pearls and screaming about the children while you only care about political censorship. Do you ever clutch your pearls and cry over the millions of children who are killed in wars? Or do you only cry for them when they serve your political agenda? It can't be an accident that in the last few years, a small but vocal contingent has used dead children at every opportunity to push for more censorship.
- Technically 6y ago• Constitutional rights are so commonly understood to be individualist that you see the same reasoning applied to justifying not wearing of masks. In reality the bill of rights is interpreted in a legal context that allows for collectivization of rights, but culturally there's a strong tie to individual liberty that I am shocked someone could deny with a straight face. • You seem to be conflating collectivism with tribalism. Antagonistic and in/out group relations are not necessary for or equivalent to collectivization. Making the two agree is the whole point of "internationalism". • Collectivization necessarily implies that the distribution of equity aligns with the needs of the collective. This is trivially false for all of the ways you've chosen to divvy up society into tribal groups except, I guess, catholicism vs protestantism (which I barely see as a dynamic here anyway). More generally I think you are right, there are great instances of collectivization in the US: I'm not seeing them in your examples, though! The Postal Service, the Public School & Public Library culture are fantastic examples. Even the famously anti-socialist right can be quite collectivized if you look at how, economically, individuals distribute resources to their friends, family, community, "tribe", etc. Arguably many churches in American Christianity foster very collectivized approaches to resource distribution—I know I grew up working my church's food pantry.... However, if we as americans look in a mirror, we are trained to only see ourselves as individuals or part of small isolated groups or "tribes", not as a cell of some larger, functioning, rational, identifiable whole america.