5 ms·
Why the Term Jedi Is Problematic for Justice/Equity/Diversity/Inclusion Programs
- elp 5y ago"The Jedi are inappropriate mascots for social justice... a religious order of intergalactic police-monks, prone to (white) saviorism and toxically masculine approaches to conflict resolution (violent duels with phallic lightsabers, gaslighting by means of “Jedi mind tricks,” etc.)." and it goes on. It's really really hard not to believe the authors are trolling. Is this parody?
- colpabar 5y agoIt looks serious to me. Go to the homepage and look at the some of the other articles; this one doesn’t seem unusual.
- quantified 5y agoThe better it is masked, the more masterful the troll, though.
- smitty1e 5y agoWe live in a continuous validation of Poe's Law https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe's_law https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe's_law
- quantified 5y agoDetecting sarcasm needs contextual cues such as vocal inflection or facial expressions. In the 1700s pamphleteers would distribute satires, if you read them today you might mistake them for sincerity. Where is Samuel Clemens when you need him?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- brightstep 5y agoIf you strip out the woke language, it's pretty easy to see this as factual. The Jedi absolutely are a police force. They often use violence and psychic manipulation through the Force. They are arguably a religious force, pursuing a fairly ascetic lifestyle consistent with a monk.
- dariusj18 5y agoPlus the Jedi portrayed in the prequels aren't supposed to be the heroes. They are a blinded group of zealots tricked into using their powers to wage war because of their own hubris.
- loudtieblahblah 5y agoWhere else has been taken over hardest by the woke other than corporate America and geek culture? This is a perfect fit.
- forbin_meet_hal 5y agoI really want to believe this is another "Sokal Squared" attempt.
- vmception 5y agoTo me, it reads as some of it is hyperbole for emphasis after they already made their point. Their main point is pretty good.
- coldtea 5y agoOnce a culture starts going downhill in certain aspects, there's no going back. And once there is not a good chunk of shared values and agreed upon ideas beyond some abstract tennets, any BS bikeshedding and any fringe opinion becomes an "equally valid" and important discussion point as anything else...
- h2odragon 5y agoCan we call them "segregation initiatives"? I've already seen "separate but equal" thrown around with no apparent sense of irony or awareness that was a catchphrase once.
- vmception 5y agoI've pointed out that "safe spaces" are a rebranding of "separate but equal", armchair academics often defend it with a strawman argument of the word racist: where convenient, they drop the colloquial overly broad misuse of the term for a technical academic-only definition that includes a power dynamic necessary for exclusion to be racist. Since the beneficiaries of the safe space are not the "power majority" it therefore invalidates any criticism of their exclusionary and toxic behaviors, by that definition. The reason its a strawman argument is that it misses that the federal government prohibits "race-based discrimination", for like 50 years, and never uses the term racist or racism so the definition is clearer than the standard people invented.
- Stevvo 5y agoSatire is meant to be funny.
- enriquto 5y agoWhat ever happened to Scientific American? My dad was subscribed since before I was born, and paid for each 6 numbers to be bound in a high-quality encyclopedia-like hardcover binding. I remember devouring these venerable volumes as a kid, looking especially for the Martin Gardner, and later Douglas Hofstadter, mathematical games. But also for all the extremely cool news about space exploration, chemistry research, biology, plans for future nuclear fusion. Now it seems to be nothing of the sort (I don't talk about this stupid article, but about the overall content).
- yucky 5y ago>What ever happened to Scientific American? They are becoming more and more progressive.
- enriquto 5y agoAlright, I don't care too much about that. This is not what makes the magazine bad. There was also some cold war anti-soviet bullshit at the time. I remember a communist friend of my dad that sometimes came home and reprimanded him for making me read such an obvious capitalist mouthpiece that doesn't even have formulas in its "physics" articles (the guy was an italian phyisicist working on a tokamak). But the articles were longer, more interesting, and much more in-depth. Right now most articles have barely two or three paragraphs, with many of them being content-free or short news snippets.
- yucky 5y agoThe article in question is fairly long. It's absurd, but that is due to the nature of their bias at the magazine now. But the length is there.
- bgroat 5y ago"Problematic" as a word has become a red flag for me. Many social justice initiatives are important and worth talking about (I'm a BIPOC), so I get it. But an essay on taking umbridge with the Jedi sees like a waste of time to social signal, "I'm woke! Woker than thou!"
- quantified 5y agoFFS
- sigmaprimus 5y agoIt's a trap!!!
- kgwgk 5y agoBy the way, I got there via https://michaelshermer.substack.com/p/scientific-american-goes-woke https://michaelshermer.substack.com/p/scientific-american-go... which was mentioned in the comment section of https://razib.substack.com/p/setting-the-record-straight-open https://razib.substack.com/p/setting-the-record-straight-ope...
- kerneloftruth 5y agoScientific American? I would have guessed Mother Jones or The Nation with nonsense like this.
- mam4 5y agoHow disconnected these people are to not see this is precisely the kind of BS mindset that lead normal people to go toward extreme-right / trump type votes.
- jacknews 5y agoIs it time for Scientific American to change it's name? Either they let this trollish (or outlandish) opinion piece through because they lack scrutiny and judgement, or they let it through to self-mock their opinion column, perhaps to try and defuse the E.O.Wilson debacle. In either case, it is not becoming of the magazine of old.
- threatofrain 5y agoIs there a single scientific publication aimed at a general audience which does not tend towards triviality or nonsense? If so, what is the foremost example?
- jacknews 5y agoSciAm used to fill that niche; serious science, by serious scientists or good science journalists, explained for, and entertaining, the everyman. What I'm seeing now is not serious or good or science.
- TakuYam 5y ago>What I'm seeing now is not serious or good or science. Or entertaining.
- LinuxBender 5y agoAgreed. I have attempted to contact them multiple times and asked them to stop this. They never reply. They've turned 180 degrees from what they used to be. I've not researched this but I assume they must have been acquired by somebody.
- MagnumOpus 5y agoProbably IEEE Spectrum?
- hw-guy 5y agoKnock on wood.
- loudtieblahblah 5y ago[flagged]
- forbin_meet_hal 5y ago
- forbin_meet_hal 5y ago
- kgwgk 5y agoDiversity and intersectionality! That makes me think that they would have prefered another pop culture reference instead of the jedi: https://www.denofgeek.com/tv/themes-of-power-rangers-diversity-and-tolerance/ https://www.denofgeek.com/tv/themes-of-power-rangers-diversi... https://www.denofgeek.com/tv/the-themes-of-power-rangers-empowerment/ https://www.denofgeek.com/tv/the-themes-of-power-rangers-emp... https://www.denofgeek.com/tv/the-themes-of-power-rangers-feminism/ https://www.denofgeek.com/tv/the-themes-of-power-rangers-fem...
- yeetawayhn 5y agoMaybe they would like EDJI better?