3 ms·
In order to establish an equivalence you have to develop a function that takes a modern situation and perfectly transposes it to a past situation. This way a pe
by Almondsetat 3y ago
In order to establish an equivalence you have to develop a function that takes a modern situation and perfectly transposes it to a past situation. This way a person that believes that the past situation was bad will have to admit the present situation is also bad.
Problem 1: it’s difficult to construct such an equivalence
Problem 2: it’s difficult to communicate
Problem 3: humans are not logical robots and can easily handwave it and ignore you
- contrarian1234 3y agoRight, operating by straight analogy doesn't work. If you say "X and Y are acting like NAZIs" that's generally not effective. That's why it's critical to distill thing and create a new vocabulary. If you take the Salem Witch trials in conjunction with other historical events and distill some general conclusions about human (group?) behavior and give it a label - then you can use history indirectly to improve discourse To the Freud example .. "You're acting like John at the last birthday party" probably won't get through to someone. But saying "I think you're projecting right now" likely can - b/c you're using a term that describes a common phenomena that everyone is familiar with. Before Freud described the defense mechanisms, people probably had a much harder time "calling people out" on these patterns.