12 ms·

My reading from the outside is, the left needs to realize (I'm sure it applies to the right equally as well) that scolding people into guilt is not a viable app

• clusterfish 6y ago
  I think the extremes, both left and right, have realized that their greatest enemy is not the other extreme, but the masses in between. A group that has the numbers, with mild views that can dilute your message with reasonable doubt, challenge certain aspects of your extreme yet be broadly acceptable to a much wider audience including those tending towards your side – that's poision for an extremist. Therefore, their solution to that is tribalism, polarization, and shaming for any hint of non-compliance with the extreme's dogma. End result is that the vast majority of moderate people do not participate in debates on sensitive topics, leaving the field open for polarizing demagoguery. All that's left is to make more topics sensitive to get an advantage there too, and that's progressing very well too.
  • runarberg 6y ago
    this might be false equivalence. People far on the left (except from some nas-bols; which I’ve never encountered in the wild) call them selfs anti-facists. It is clear who their greatest enemy is. In fact far left groups (like food not bombs, etc.) often engage in social programs called mutual aid where the goal is to spread propaganda through helping the masses.
    • runarberg 6y ago
      At the risk of entertaining the no true Scotsman: A leftist that doesn’t empathize with the masses, is not a true leftist.
      • glogla 6y ago
        Thats hard since sometimes the masses are fighting against being helped (because that would be socialism) while languishing in poverty. Do they really have the right to commit suicide by policy, taking us with them via climate change? It is realy hard to empathize with those.
        • marcosdumay 6y ago
          > the masses are fighting against being helped If you are looking for a clearler symptom that you don't empathize with them, there isn't any. What is not a moral failing, by the way. But check your "Left" label, because it's probably wrong.
          • glogla 6y ago
            You can be Left without empathizing with people who want you dead. That's a pretty straightforward application of Paradox of Tolerance.
            • runarberg 6y ago
              I know a certain Jesus Christ who would disagree with you. In seriousness though, visiting poor rural American during Trump is a really numbing experience. You see the people there flagging Trump signs everywhere while living in dirt poor conditions. It is hard not to emphasize with them even though they are calling for everything you are fighting against. After all, the establishment has failed those people. The democratic party has severely failed them. Democracy it self has failed them. I know that really capitalism has failed them and they would find better answers under socialism then under Trump (after all Trump has failed them as well). But you must still understand where this is coming from. That is you must empathize with them, even though their views are wrong.
  • Floegipoky 6y ago
    "I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to ‘order’ than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: ‘I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action’; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a ‘more convenient season.’” - Dr. King, 1963
    • deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
• ZephyrBlu 6y ago
  When you elevate yourself above a group of people there is no option for dialog, because engaging in dialog would mean that you view those people as equals.
• jude- 6y ago
  > I just think the solution should lie in : 1) dialog 2) laws If they're not willing to be reasonable (like, you don't get to "dialog" about whether or not genocide is appropriate), then the best and most moral course of action could very well be to stop them from recruiting your friends. In the context of tech, this is the essence of deplatforming. Twitter and Facebook cannot censor, since they are not governments. However, as private entities, they can decide not to let you use their service. That's their private property rights in action.
  • jude- 6y ago
    Wow, so many downvotes for saying that debating genocide is never okay. There's truly nothing to debate -- it's always wrong, and we would do well to kick out users who would say otherwise, lest they start organizing. Seriously, wtf is wrong with you?
    • bena 6y ago
      Don't pay it any mind. There is a certain class of posts where certain opinions and moods of HN become apparent.
    • saalweachter 6y ago
      One of my all-time favorite metaphors on the internet: "I really don’t understand how bipartisanship is ever going to work when one of the parties is insane. Imagine trying to negotiate an agreement on dinner plans with your date, and you suggest Italian and she states her preference would be a meal of tire rims and anthrax. If you can figure out a way to split the difference there and find a meal you will both enjoy, you can probably figure out how bipartisanship is going to work the next few years."
• koonsolo 6y ago
  Reminds me of some test I read in a book (can't remember which one). A teacher asks some student to stand up and raise his hands before him. The teacher stands in front of him and does the same, touching the students hands. Then the teacher starts pushing, and the student uses force to stay in place. Then the teacher uses more force, and so does the student. Finally the teacher asks: "Whay are you pushing me?". "Because you were pushing me!" This is exactly what is happening here. You cannot expect people to give in once you start pushing.
  • nitrogen 6y ago
    This is exactly what is happening here. You cannot expect people to give in once you start pushing. There was an episode of STTNG that had a profound effect on me as a kid as a metaphor for confrontation, where the crew of a destroyed ship kept saying "more power to the shields" when the "shields" were actually causing the problem.
  • hef19898 6y ago
    So in that case, the party with authority and power asked the other to do something. Then the powerful party started pushing and then complained about counter pressure. Sounds familiar.
  • zozbot234 6y ago
    > ... You cannot expect people to give in once you start pushing. On the contrary, Chinese martial arts (as well as physical exercise more generally, as with Tai chi chu'an) use the pushing hands exercise to teach how to skillfully yield and redirect the other party's power. It's viewed as foundational to the entire discipline.
    • progre 6y ago
      Martial arts is not politics, and the western mindset is to respond with equal or greater force. In fact the military doctrine is to respond with disproportional force. Yielding may be the smarter thing to do, but that's would be seen as weak in most of the world (including, I suspect, China).
  • 6y ago
• anothernewdude 6y ago
  The first is actually the fabric that modern society relies upon. The second is what you are doing in your post.
• k4c9x 6y ago
  I don't think anyone really expects to convince racists, sexists, homophobic, rapey, violent, narcissist to change their ways. Ignoring them is obviously bad so there's nothing left to do but to try and make sure their, technically legal, but clearly nefarious, behavior doesn't go unnoticed at every opportunity.
• caslon 6y ago
  The winning approach is obviously in waiting for the other side to die off; the left is currently the majority, and the right is, on average, old. In this regard, it's absolutely a "viable approach": By making it low-status to be right-wing, or even by not carrying right-wing views on popular private platforms, it makes the right-wing destined to lose out somewhere along the line simply due to the youth not wanting to associate with them. It's a waiting game above anything, and on a long enough scale it looks like the winner is clear here, for better or worse.
  • chmod600 6y ago
    What does "winning" even mean for the left? The people who choose leftism will win against everyone else for the reasons you say, but like all political victories, winning is (comparatively) the easy part. Keeping your values intact and governing a successful society is the hard part. The Left seems to have given up on liberalism in persuit of victory. They are in the process of giving up on progressivism. What remains?
    • caslon 6y ago
      What's good about liberalism? They seem more progressive than ever; an open socialist nearly won their primary last year.
      • chmod600 6y ago
        Socialism, liberalism, and progressivism are all different ideas. Leftism tries to combine these ideas into a coherent political ideology. Liberalism (the part about individual rights) is a check on the abuses of socialism, and progressivism is supposed to make it all work (experts in control making good decisions). I'm not a Leftist, but I can acknowledge that it's a coherent ideology. When you take Leftism and take away liberalism and progressivism, you are left with rebels that have no solution to anything. Like BLM and antifa which are always recruiting to attack a mysterious "system" rather than making serious proposals. (It's always easier to get people to agree on a problem than a solution.) If they were to win, it would look more like Venezuela or Cuba than Denmark or Sweden.
• hef19898 6y ago
  You cannot tolerate intolerance. And of the two sides, only one is actively trying to restrict the freedom of people based on skin, religion and sex. Only one side is arguing for violence against weaker people, like fugitives and migrants. And it is this side that hides behind free speech. The author is getting a couple of things completely wrong about both France and Germany. The FN managed to get into the second round of Frances presidential election only to clearly loose that round. In the following parliamentary elections, FN lost as well. Whether or not the FN will end being a major factor will be shown by the next elections. If anything, the more aggressive approach seems to have softened the FN and make it more mainstream acceptable. In Germany, we went without a major right wing party from 1945 to the rise of the AfD. And the AfD is, until now, more of a nuisance than a threat. That could change with the next elections, so. The reason we managed to go without a party like that for decades are the laws we have. These laws were created based on lessons of WW2 and the Nazis rise to power. That they work less well in the 21st century, with social media, shoulder really surprise anyobe. I'd also add, that the Covid restrictions, and the seemingly incompetent governments, are the main driver behind the right rise in popularity. And not some failure to fight hate speech.
  • curiousgeorgio 6y ago
    > And of the two sides, only one is actively trying to restrict the freedom of people based on skin, religion and sex. Only one side is arguing for violence against weaker people, like fugitives and migrants. I sincerely don't think either of the two sides is advocating for those things (ignoring a very few extremists - on both sides - with malicious intent, who don't represent the majority). I do see those issues mentioned a lot in the public debate, but mostly in the context of straw man arguments repeated as a sort of battle cry, and to denigrate "the other side". It was a whole lot easier to push McCarthyism than it ever was to convincingly prove you weren't a communist.
    • hef19898 6y ago
      The AfD called to shoot migrants at the EU border. They retreated to the "only one person's personal opinion" after a harsh backlash. QAnon representatives are calling for the murder of Democrats. The same group advocates for brutal treatment of migrants, restrictions of freedom of choice for women, direct violence against muslims. I don't see any of this on the left side of the political spectrum. Also, when someone in a group voices radical opinions and calls for violence it represents the groups view when said group is not distancing itself from these views. Because if the group doesn't, the one person is just the group trying to find out how far they can go.
• clarkmoody 6y ago
  Maybe they're trying to force a violent response from the right, so they can use the power of the state to crush them?
• titzer 6y ago
  Every society exerts social pressure in the form of norms and shaming. People are only sensitive to the shaming they won't accept, which always seems to come from the people they disagree with, and they are completely blind to the shaming that goes on in their in-group.
  • willcipriano 6y ago
    Interesting thought, it would seem to follow that those less effected by social shaming might find themselves at a evolutionary advantage over those that are greatly effected. For example those who ignore prohibitions on premarital sex may have more children overall.
    • mywittyname 6y ago
      Except that society has a mechanism for for enforcing social norms: laws. Premarital sex might seem like an evolutionary advantage, unless you live in a society that murders you for such activities. You are right though, which is why high-status in a society are "allowed" to break social norms with no consequence.
      • throwaway316943 6y ago
        You can pass all the laws you want but if they aren’t backed up by a general consensus in the society they will be defied at every turn.
        • mywittyname 6y ago
          Counter-point: authoritarian regimes. The general consensus in such countries is that the laws are terrible and oppressive, the the brutal enforcement largely ensures compliance.
          • throwaway316943 6y ago
            Brutal enforcement is quite distinct from legislation so much so that the legislation becomes unnecessary since such practices often take the form of extrajudicial conviction and punishment at the hands of police or the military.
• ravenstine 6y ago
  Not only would they disagree with you, but their strategy actually works. Leftists, "wokeness", and social justice wouldn't be the hot topics they've been if the strategy of leftists weren't effective. In terms of "adults", they are few and far between. There will always be biological adults, but so many adults are emotionally stunted that it's difficult for me to give them the title. Just as domestically raised cats are more child-like than cats that have spent their lives on the streets, the average life of an adult in the west is replete with comfort and novelty so as to keep them from building maturity and character. This makes them incredibly easy to be shamed into doing whatever is considered acceptable by the society they're in.
  • drooby 6y ago
    You might have to define “works”. There was a raid on the capitol. Racial tension is at its highest point in decades. Domestic terrorism is on the rise.
    • ravenstine 6y ago
      I hesitate to respond to this because I've been scolded by dang whenever I make political comments about specific groups, so I'll have to speak very generically. I will say that political movements can be either ambivalent towards or in support of destabilization of the current regime, even if that means doing things that superficially appear to be counter to their goals, so long as their politics are normalized and even chosen by the information brokers.
  • alexfromapex 6y ago
    Their strategies may “work” in the short-term but I think short-term thinking is really damaging the long-term progress for the US political sphere. The reason the founders decided to emphatically form the “United States” is because we are stronger working together than as factions or tribes.
    • artichokes 6y ago
      > we are stronger working together than as factions or tribes. "We are stronger working together" is what a tribe is.
• mint2 6y ago
  Do you know the history of jaywalking? Shaming works. But telling people they shouldn’t insult and denigrate people for immutable physical characteristics is not shaming them, but if it is that’s a weird aspect of the interaction to focus on.
• ThrustVectoring 6y ago
  It absolutely does work. A little bit, at first, when you have broad consensus backing you - but it does work. People will begrudgingly change their behavior for relatively minor things, and the change in the use rate of racial epithets in public reflects that. The problem is that A) this process is more useful for advancing within the ideological block than for advancing the ideology's goals, and B) there's a "Laffer Curve" of sorts for paying "moral taxes" in following behavioral norms. The internal dynamics of a movement is going to set the level by true-believer dynamics where outrageously high demands are acceded to, while the general public is going to respond to that level of demand of "well, if you think I'm a bad person for saying 'Latino" instead of 'Latinx', that's your problem".
  • ryandrake 6y ago
    > It absolutely does work. A little bit, at first, when you have broad consensus backing you - but it does work. People will begrudgingly change their behavior for relatively minor things, and the change in the use rate of racial epithets in public reflects that. The only change is that you now have a bunch of people who are afraid to use a handful of naughty words in public because they might lose their job over it. You haven't changed any minds or hearts, you've just moved the conversations into private rooms. You can't end racism by just shaming people for using the n-word. It's arguably just as bad now as it was during the Civil Rights era, but you can't easily see it anymore because it's mostly kept within "friendly" company.
    • CharlesW 6y ago
      > The only change is that you now have a bunch of people who are afraid to use a handful of naughty words in public because they might lose their job over it. That's not the "only change". If were, that's still a feature, not a bug. It means that real consequences are possible, and that those possible consequences are widely understood. One is never going to change the mind and heart of a deeply racist person, but one can help bend the overall curve of intolerance over time.
      • ryandrake 6y ago
• clairity 6y ago
  > "My reading from the outside is, the left needs to realize (I'm sure it applies to the right equally as well)..." > "Neither does boxing people into this, that and that category do any good." a good first start is to follow the latter maxim when discussing the former issue, particularly when it comes to issues of power and influence. you're already lost when you speak in terms of left and right. those are distractions from the real coercions impinging on our freedoms daily, from the desire to stagnate and wield (more) power. you need to pierce that construct, disregard it entirely, to understand and orient your resistance and dissatisfaction toward the rightful source. two people chosen randomly are going to be vastly more similar than different, no matter where on the artificially-constructed political spectrum they are. this is how we know it's constructed and not real. the left-right dichotomy, like all dichotomies, collapses our thinking into detrimental zero-sum tribalism pointing us against each other rather toward the real source of conflict, power-wielders, creating an artificial, seemingly-insurmountable gulf, that fractures the populace and shields power further from the will of the people (that's us). a power structure can do awesome things, and sometimes we need it to do those awesome (positive) things temporarily, but stagnated, amassed power can do a lot of awesome, negatively-externalizing, and self-serving things not in the interest of the many (especially the future many). the way to think about power is as flows, not stores, and especially not as individuals, which is where our primitive brains betray us constantly. to harness power, we must allow it to temporarily coalesce when and where it will do good, and dissapate steadily so as not to stagnate, and corrupt, in any one set of hands.
• himinlomax 6y ago
  I make the distinction between anti-racism and anti-racist. If you're anti-racism, you want to reduce racism and that involves talking to people who are racist to fix the problem. If you're anti-racist, you just want to beat someone up and use racism as an excuse.
• BenoitEssiambre 6y ago
  While shaming and scolding might be overused, it's a legitimate tool in some cases. The problem is that a lot of sjw are punching down while telling themselves they are punching up because the person is white. How often did I end up in a room full of urban, university educated people looking down on the white rural common folks. The common people are not always common by choice. It's not necessarily by choice that they can't follow wonkish academic stories about the history of race to understand modern issues. It's not necessarily by choice that they can't see all the shades of gray of advanced morality and sort out complex issues about gender and race. These are the type of people that need to see a moral guide every week just to follow a simple morality where they can't process much beyond stereotypes. The best AIs out there are not able to simulate advanced empathy. It is highly complex and involves multilevel recursive counterfactual meta-cognitive logic (https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/K4eDzqS2rbcBDsCLZ/unrolling-social-metacognition-three-levels-of-meta-are-not https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/K4eDzqS2rbcBDsCLZ/unrolling-...). Given the level of complexity, I don't expect everyone to be able to intuitively get it. A lot of people are intellectually underprivileged and too often, sjw like to scorn and mock them for their handicap. The way I see it, Trumpism is made of an evil right wing elite that has managed to capture a large swath of simple minded folks party because these simple folks were pushed away from more reasonable political affiliation. Populism doesn't have to be negative. The US constitution starts with We the People, not We the Scholars. Yes populism means unsophisticated views but these could be aligned with reasonable policy as much as right wing policy if the left didn't show so much contempt for the intellectually and morally disadvantaged. Democracy means you need unsophisticated people to vote with you to win elections.
• analog31 6y ago
  How politically correct does the left need to be? Especially after the "deplorables" gaffe, the left has bent over backwards to avoid appearing to be condescending towards rank and file right-wingers. And it's ultimately hopeless. No matter how hard we try, someone on the left will scold. Oops.
• joe_the_user 6y ago
  My reading from the outside is, the left needs to realize (I'm sure it applies to the right equally as well) that scolding people into guilt is not a viable approach to affect action or to change perceptions when you're dealing with adults. This seems manifestly false. A lot of adult behavior can be changed by scolding, a lot of society runs on scolding. I'm a pretty rational and strongly opinionated person. You won't change my opinions with scolding. But if someone says "don't talk so loud, you'll wake the baby", well, you can certainly change my behavior. But even more, a lot of people do not operate at anywhere near this the level of rationality and a wider area of their behavior can be changed by scolding. Which is to say the population of fully adult humans is a lot less than the population of humans above the age of majority. And sure, you can't control everything with scolding, you can't replace the police and the army with scolding but scolding, peer (and non-peer) pressure, etc is a tool in the hands of all the different incarnation of "society".
  • jfengel 6y ago
    Certainly people get all angsty about being scolded. If it were being ignored, they wouldn't talk about it so much.