4 ms·

If you can show me a passage which seems to indicate sightedness, perhaps it can serve as an antidote. I think I deserve an expansion of the accusation of will

by bsanr 5y ago

If you can show me a passage which seems to indicate sightedness, perhaps it can serve as an antidote. I think I deserve an expansion of the accusation of willful zealotry on my part, at least.

netcan 5y ago
This is a first person recollection of a nine year old girl's experience surviving two revolutionary civil wars and a genocide. Not incidentally, the sentiments you express were the precise sentiments weaponised to fuel and justify this bloodbath. Stopping at paragraph one to "yeah but she's a bouge...." is a mark of zealotry. As to "sightedness," which I take as meaning obligatory mentions of class issues, imperialism and foreign cultural influences... it's sprinkled liberally throughout the piece. Even the title. The "softness" she's talking about is bourgeois softness, compared to peasants who had been living almost as hard before. Here's one passage: "It would be tempting to affect a survivor’s bravado, as if I had achieved my continued existence through will and wit. But my chief survival advantage was being born to a family that could afford to fly to Saigon. We used our dwindling gold to flee to a place where wearing eyeglasses did not put our lives in immediate danger." I suspect this does not suffice, given my first paragraph. This is not an essay about how capitalist greed and imperialist arrogance are the ultimate culprits. This is a story where ideological zealots play the roles of crusader, conquistador and slaver. The willful element is turning the story around. Capitalism and Imperialism the root cause, even if the actual atrocities were committed by anticapitalist anti-imperialists. This is always true and if it isn't, just "dig deeper" and find that it is true. That sounds like willful zealotry to me. It's equivalent to blaming the caliphate for the inquisition, berating a muslim or jewish victim for blindness to the true underlying cause... Also, refusing to read something because it doesn't start with a declaration that ideologically conforms to your position is willful. Have I met my obligation?
- bsanr 5y ago
  [flagged]
  - Haga 5y ago
    Ah, yes the intellectual version of west centrism. The murderous hord marched the victims down the old road thus Roman's are to blame. Swooping criticism like that has no sting and is unlikely to sway future road builders.
  - netcan 5y ago
    I know, and that is precisely the problem. The zealot perspective is that every story is the same story. It's always a story about capitalist greed or always story about moral impurity or always a story about market interventions going awry. It's beyond bias. It's total tunnel vision. In any case, this is her story, her perspective. Write your own story, and it'll be the story you want. Meanwhile, how dare you, who wrote what you wrote demand that others read your comment carefully and generously for nuance... especially when you are taking the position of the kmer rouge yourself.
    - bsanr 5y ago
      There is a reason that my issue with the essay is presented as one that maps to rhetorical phenomena similar to the one specifically in question. It's because the central issue is the repetition - the ubiquity - of Capitalism and Western imperialism's apparent innocence in regards to suffering in the world that it largely shaped. No story that perpetuates this falsehood can be called beautiful; it can't be called truth, or even helpful. Every story like this recreates it's own cruel circumstances for posterity. And to say so is the opposite of tunnel vision; it's to acknowledge on multiple levels that meaning is half-formed without consideration of context, even if that context damns one's sentiments. >Meanwhile, how dare you, who wrote what you wrote demand that others read your comment carefully and generously for nuance... Because. I may be a hypocrite, but I'm not wrong. And in any case, our circumstances are different: I'm not misrepresenting her words; you're misrepresenting mine.
      - CRConrad 5y ago
        > And in any case, our circumstances are different: Oh yeah? > I'm not misrepresenting her words; Sez you. > you're misrepresenting mine. Sez you.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

by bsanr 5y ago

If you can show me a passage which seems to indicate sightedness, perhaps it can serve as an antidote. I think I deserve an expansion of the accusation of willful zealotry on my part, at least.

netcan 5y ago

This is a first person recollection of a nine year old girl's experience surviving two revolutionary civil wars and a genocide. Not incidentally, the sentiments you express were the precise sentiments weaponised to fuel and justify this bloodbath. Stopping at paragraph one to "yeah but she's a bouge...." is a mark of zealotry. As to "sightedness," which I take as meaning obligatory mentions of class issues, imperialism and foreign cultural influences... it's sprinkled liberally throughout the piece. Even the title. The "softness" she's talking about is bourgeois softness, compared to peasants who had been living almost as hard before. Here's one passage: "It would be tempting to affect a survivor’s bravado, as if I had achieved my continued existence through will and wit. But my chief survival advantage was being born to a family that could afford to fly to Saigon. We used our dwindling gold to flee to a place where wearing eyeglasses did not put our lives in immediate danger." I suspect this does not suffice, given my first paragraph. This is not an essay about how capitalist greed and imperialist arrogance are the ultimate culprits. This is a story where ideological zealots play the roles of crusader, conquistador and slaver. The willful element is turning the story around. Capitalism and Imperialism the root cause, even if the actual atrocities were committed by anticapitalist anti-imperialists. This is always true and if it isn't, just "dig deeper" and find that it is true. That sounds like willful zealotry to me. It's equivalent to blaming the caliphate for the inquisition, berating a muslim or jewish victim for blindness to the true underlying cause... Also, refusing to read something because it doesn't start with a declaration that ideologically conforms to your position is willful. Have I met my obligation?

bsanr 5y ago
[flagged]
- Haga 5y ago
  Ah, yes the intellectual version of west centrism. The murderous hord marched the victims down the old road thus Roman's are to blame. Swooping criticism like that has no sting and is unlikely to sway future road builders.
- netcan 5y ago
  I know, and that is precisely the problem. The zealot perspective is that every story is the same story. It's always a story about capitalist greed or always story about moral impurity or always a story about market interventions going awry. It's beyond bias. It's total tunnel vision. In any case, this is her story, her perspective. Write your own story, and it'll be the story you want. Meanwhile, how dare you, who wrote what you wrote demand that others read your comment carefully and generously for nuance... especially when you are taking the position of the kmer rouge yourself.
  - bsanr 5y ago
    There is a reason that my issue with the essay is presented as one that maps to rhetorical phenomena similar to the one specifically in question. It's because the central issue is the repetition - the ubiquity - of Capitalism and Western imperialism's apparent innocence in regards to suffering in the world that it largely shaped. No story that perpetuates this falsehood can be called beautiful; it can't be called truth, or even helpful. Every story like this recreates it's own cruel circumstances for posterity. And to say so is the opposite of tunnel vision; it's to acknowledge on multiple levels that meaning is half-formed without consideration of context, even if that context damns one's sentiments. >Meanwhile, how dare you, who wrote what you wrote demand that others read your comment carefully and generously for nuance... Because. I may be a hypocrite, but I'm not wrong. And in any case, our circumstances are different: I'm not misrepresenting her words; you're misrepresenting mine.
    - CRConrad 5y ago
      > And in any case, our circumstances are different: Oh yeah? > I'm not misrepresenting her words; Sez you. > you're misrepresenting mine. Sez you.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]