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Humans are human and therefore fallible and tribal; film at eleven. In a kind of backhanded way, this nebulous notion that “only X people can be racist” or “on
by hprotagonist 6y ago
Humans are human and therefore fallible and tribal; film at eleven.
In a kind of backhanded way, this nebulous notion that “only X people can be racist” or “only the big oppressors can oppress” or “there’s only one big oppressor right now and it’s X” undercuts itself from the get-go.
- underseacables 6y agoBecause I don’t think it has anything to do with race or oppression, it’s about power. Identifying a group, calling it racist to undermine it, and then through public humiliation and derision, force it to do some thing. That thing could be anywhere thing from better treatment and awareness, to reparations. It’s all about power.
- brayhite 6y agoIt took me a long time to understand this. Not to say I whole-heartedly endorse it, but the sentiment is reasonable. Unfortunately, the language used elicits such visceral emotion, folks have a hard time divorcing their interpretations for a moment to hear someone out.
- thisiszilff 6y agoCertain parts of it do make sense, but it can also cause a feedback loop whereby the shift is away from concrete policy goals and towards power seeking behavior. Much of the present day political toolkit is postmodern flavored which unfortunately erodes the role of reason in communication and makes it less likely that that power is wielded towards concrete policy objectives. > folks have a hard time divorcing their interpretations for a moment to hear someone out. I think the key here is that in our current political landscape, "interpretation" and "hear someone out" don't really mean what they used to mean. Communication today is increasingly performative and less oriented towards synthesis and common understanding. In many of our recent political discussions, the topic hasn't been a specific policy or proposal, but a vague nebula of idea and mindsets that some would like people to adopt wholesale.
- jasonv 6y agoIt may undercut itself from the get go, and that may be a common take down the road, but as a weapon, it’s very effective in certain times and certain places against certain people, now.
- coldtea 6y ago>Humans are human and therefore fallible and tribal; film at eleven. However many seem to have missed the news.
- hprotagonist 6y agoThe strongest saints and the strongest sceptics alike took positive evil as the starting-point of their argument. If it be true (as it certainly is) that a man can feel exquisite happiness in skinning a cat, then the religious philosopher can only draw one of two deductions. He must either deny the existence of God, as all atheists do; or he must deny the present union between God and man, as all Christians do. The new theologians seem to think it a highly rationalistic solution to deny the cat.
- coldtea 6y agoI'm getting a Chesterton vibe (big fan). I've probably read this before, I remember the twist about the cat :-)
- hprotagonist 6y agoyeah, it’s early on in Orthodoxy.