6 ms·

This is a very privileged, ignorant take. He seems to be lumping in all outrage as the same. People being outraged at Nike doing something is the equivalent to

by xmzx 6y ago

This is a very privileged, ignorant take. He seems to be lumping in all outrage as the same. People being outraged at Nike doing something is the equivalent to voter rights being taken away because certain people of a certain race vote a certain way. These things aren't remote the same. And his idea that political parties should "work together" often means you're negotiating the rights of people, who neither party member usually is part of, either to have more or less rights, and you're negotiating them like they're bargaining chips. This author and so many people who aren't part of marginalized groups really can't grasp this.

naravara 6y ago
Irrespective of how justifiable the anger is, the root issue that compulsive anger is both poisonous to mental health and that it gets in the way of critical thinking in ways that make it easy to be manipulated are both true. Things don't need to be morally equivalent to have the same mental, emotional, and physiological effects. It is also possible to be mad about stuff and take productive action on them without regularly having to stoke the outrage fires. In fact that's critical to being able to think strategically about it.
kemonocode 6y ago
Not all causes are made equal, and they're not necessarily important to the same degree for everybody. That's not being "privileged" or "ignorant", that's the patent truth.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
betwixthewires 6y ago
Sounds to me like you're deliberately missing the point to as to protect your own outrage. "Of course what they are outraged about is bullshit, but what I'm outraged about is 100% valid and reasonable." The article isn't saying there aren't things to be legitimately outraged about. The article is saying 1) being outraged doesn't fix anything, and 2) of course you feel strongly about what you're outraged about, but objectively there's a high chance you're overreacting to your own detriment and the detriment of those around you. More to your view though, the history of politics is negotiating the rights of people, look at how the UN Declaration on Human Rights was negotiated. Finally, this gatekeeping idea that basically says that anyone that disagrees with you cannot possibly understand, that is complete horseshit. Words like "privileged" and "marginalized groups" give away this completely wrong mentality. We all really can grasp it. We just disagree. We might have very good reasons to disagree, you just refuse to try to understand them. If you did maybe you'd find a way to show us how they're wrong.
TeeMassive 6y ago
Sorry but being outraged never solved anything. "I'm angry look at me" never attracted any kind of widespread support. MLK understood this and his speeches reflected that with messages of hope, not anger, meanwhile the other radical part of the civil rights movement tend to swept under the rug and for good reasons. There are more ways, better ways, to impose political pressure and they tend to work best in practice with incremental practical improvements as opposed to bloody wars and destructive revolutions. And it seems that you have a very binary view of the world. Us vs them. It's our way or tyranny. "They" can't understand, but only "we" can. All doctrines that view the world along a single dimension is prone to disastrous results. As for rights, they can be and will always be negotiated. They are not born out of thin air and the question of balancing them with responsibility will never truly be entirely settled. Finally your whole arguments relies on the Genetic Fallacy. I don't need to have had a third degree burn over 90% of my body to know it must hurt like hell. I don't ask my cardiologist if he ever had a cardiac arrest before I see him to know if he's competent. Most people will know what injustice feels like even if they didn't experience the ones based on race. This is such a juvenile argument.
- dagmx 6y ago
  Please don't invoke MLK as a bastion of peace and hope. it's so contrite: "look at this well behaved person there. Be more like him" Except MLK also called out the passiveness of people, he called out the folks who were moderates. He worked with many who were deemed troublemakers and are hero's today. He spoke with anger and rage many a time. So when people point at MLK and Gandhi as "peaceful models to follow", it's just a dog whistle to sit down and behave, and not step out of line. MLK didn't make the movement for civil liberties by being polite and taking everything in his stride. Neither did Gandhi. This is just plain white washing of history to appeal to "order" that befits people who don't need to care. And no, you can't simply just understand what other people are going through just by proxy. No, most people don't know what Injustice feels like until they experience it, many don't even know when they do. It's about a conscious shifting of minds, and understanding that other people go through life differently than you, so maybe instead of saying "I understand", it's okay to say you don't and that you're there for them. Because you cannot understand. You cannot understand unless you live it. You can only sympathize, but first you need to even acknowledge the depth of the problems.
dagmx 6y ago
I agree with you 100%. This is the take of people who have little on the line, and don't face issues everyday, falsely lumping all matters of outrage together. They're now upset, outraged even, that their status quo is challenged, and write about how we need to chill out and slowly work towards change. Well, yes slow change works if they've got little to lose from it. I'm honestly flummoxed by all the people in the comments here talking out against this supposed "outrage culture" without breaking down the nuance of what people are outraged about. Are we talking about outrage over sexual and racial harassment? Is that not worth being outraged about? Or are we talking about Hasbro making gender neutral Potato heads, and the end of sales of some racist Dr Seuss books? Articles like this help people lump everything in together, and feel better about themselves for being above it all. It's a supremely privileged position.
- haberman 6y ago
  > This is the take of people who have little on the line, and don't face issues everyday This kind of narrative is an easy way to dismiss the opinions of people who disagree with you, but it bears little resemblance to the real world, where people of all kinds face issues that you may or may not know about, and people of all demographics actually do care about things like beloved Dr Seuss books going out of print: https://johnmcwhorter.substack.com/p/and-then-they-came-for-on-beyond https://johnmcwhorter.substack.com/p/and-then-they-came-for-...
  - dagmx 6y ago
    I think you missed my point completely if that's the part you're latching on to out of context. My whole point is that you can't dismiss outrage as a whole, and lump all issues together.
    - haberman 6y ago
      You want to a priori establish some outrage as virtuous and legitimate (ie. critiques around sexism/racism) while dismissing other outrage as silly and trivial (ie. critiques around pressure campaigns to censor culture). Is it possible that there is some legitimacy in both complaints?
davmar 6y ago
yeah, this was my reading of the article as well.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

by xmzx 6y ago

naravara 6y ago

Irrespective of how justifiable the anger is, the root issue that compulsive anger is both poisonous to mental health and that it gets in the way of critical thinking in ways that make it easy to be manipulated are both true. Things don't need to be morally equivalent to have the same mental, emotional, and physiological effects. It is also possible to be mad about stuff and take productive action on them without regularly having to stoke the outrage fires. In fact that's critical to being able to think strategically about it.

kemonocode 6y ago

Not all causes are made equal, and they're not necessarily important to the same degree for everybody. That's not being "privileged" or "ignorant", that's the patent truth.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

betwixthewires 6y ago

Sounds to me like you're deliberately missing the point to as to protect your own outrage. "Of course what they are outraged about is bullshit, but what I'm outraged about is 100% valid and reasonable." The article isn't saying there aren't things to be legitimately outraged about. The article is saying 1) being outraged doesn't fix anything, and 2) of course you feel strongly about what you're outraged about, but objectively there's a high chance you're overreacting to your own detriment and the detriment of those around you. More to your view though, the history of politics is negotiating the rights of people, look at how the UN Declaration on Human Rights was negotiated. Finally, this gatekeeping idea that basically says that anyone that disagrees with you cannot possibly understand, that is complete horseshit. Words like "privileged" and "marginalized groups" give away this completely wrong mentality. We all really can grasp it. We just disagree. We might have very good reasons to disagree, you just refuse to try to understand them. If you did maybe you'd find a way to show us how they're wrong.

TeeMassive 6y ago

Sorry but being outraged never solved anything. "I'm angry look at me" never attracted any kind of widespread support. MLK understood this and his speeches reflected that with messages of hope, not anger, meanwhile the other radical part of the civil rights movement tend to swept under the rug and for good reasons. There are more ways, better ways, to impose political pressure and they tend to work best in practice with incremental practical improvements as opposed to bloody wars and destructive revolutions. And it seems that you have a very binary view of the world. Us vs them. It's our way or tyranny. "They" can't understand, but only "we" can. All doctrines that view the world along a single dimension is prone to disastrous results. As for rights, they can be and will always be negotiated. They are not born out of thin air and the question of balancing them with responsibility will never truly be entirely settled. Finally your whole arguments relies on the Genetic Fallacy. I don't need to have had a third degree burn over 90% of my body to know it must hurt like hell. I don't ask my cardiologist if he ever had a cardiac arrest before I see him to know if he's competent. Most people will know what injustice feels like even if they didn't experience the ones based on race. This is such a juvenile argument.

dagmx 6y ago
Please don't invoke MLK as a bastion of peace and hope. it's so contrite: "look at this well behaved person there. Be more like him" Except MLK also called out the passiveness of people, he called out the folks who were moderates. He worked with many who were deemed troublemakers and are hero's today. He spoke with anger and rage many a time. So when people point at MLK and Gandhi as "peaceful models to follow", it's just a dog whistle to sit down and behave, and not step out of line. MLK didn't make the movement for civil liberties by being polite and taking everything in his stride. Neither did Gandhi. This is just plain white washing of history to appeal to "order" that befits people who don't need to care. And no, you can't simply just understand what other people are going through just by proxy. No, most people don't know what Injustice feels like until they experience it, many don't even know when they do. It's about a conscious shifting of minds, and understanding that other people go through life differently than you, so maybe instead of saying "I understand", it's okay to say you don't and that you're there for them. Because you cannot understand. You cannot understand unless you live it. You can only sympathize, but first you need to even acknowledge the depth of the problems.

dagmx 6y ago

I agree with you 100%. This is the take of people who have little on the line, and don't face issues everyday, falsely lumping all matters of outrage together. They're now upset, outraged even, that their status quo is challenged, and write about how we need to chill out and slowly work towards change. Well, yes slow change works if they've got little to lose from it. I'm honestly flummoxed by all the people in the comments here talking out against this supposed "outrage culture" without breaking down the nuance of what people are outraged about. Are we talking about outrage over sexual and racial harassment? Is that not worth being outraged about? Or are we talking about Hasbro making gender neutral Potato heads, and the end of sales of some racist Dr Seuss books? Articles like this help people lump everything in together, and feel better about themselves for being above it all. It's a supremely privileged position.

haberman 6y ago
> This is the take of people who have little on the line, and don't face issues everyday This kind of narrative is an easy way to dismiss the opinions of people who disagree with you, but it bears little resemblance to the real world, where people of all kinds face issues that you may or may not know about, and people of all demographics actually do care about things like beloved Dr Seuss books going out of print: https://johnmcwhorter.substack.com/p/and-then-they-came-for-on-beyond https://johnmcwhorter.substack.com/p/and-then-they-came-for-...
- dagmx 6y ago
  I think you missed my point completely if that's the part you're latching on to out of context. My whole point is that you can't dismiss outrage as a whole, and lump all issues together.
  - haberman 6y ago
    You want to a priori establish some outrage as virtuous and legitimate (ie. critiques around sexism/racism) while dismissing other outrage as silly and trivial (ie. critiques around pressure campaigns to censor culture). Is it possible that there is some legitimacy in both complaints?

davmar 6y ago

yeah, this was my reading of the article as well.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]