Count on the right wing to use (and abuse) "woke" in the same way that they do so many other terms they have no understanding of, such as socialism, critical race theory, Black Lives Matter, diversity...heck, even "left wing".
Almost like both sides are full of crap but only notice it in the other side.
Of course when you get utterly ludicrous accusations - for example, conservatives are called racists by left wing nutjobs no matter what they do or say - then the pushback has the potential to be just as ludicrous.
Almost like both sides are full of crap but only notice it in the other side.
Of course the comments Limited and I are posting are pure baloney. There is no use trying to be serious when your opponents believe you are racist regardless of any dialog. We can only point and laugh.
"But there are! The problem is, they're all on my side. :)"
Hitler only cared about those on his side. His colon/bracket reminds me of Hitler and his evil smile with his (fake) jig after conquering France. I'm pretty sure Starhopper is a closet Nazi sympathizer. If you read his comments closely it's turtles and Nazis all the way down.
I'm not trying to accuse Crazy Star of being Hitler, I'm only pointing to his comments to say he's worse than Hitler. I'm trying to keep things adult and civil.
We are all potentially "worse than Hitler". Any attempt to make him a one-off, to dismiss his evil as sui generis, serves to avoid this terrible truth, essentially denying the doctrine of the Fall.
Which is why a perpetual self examination (a.k.a., being "woke") is essential. Also, it's why it's OK to make comparisons to Hitler.
Hitler is known for what he did, not for his potential. We don't refer to Hitler as another Saint Francis of Assisi just because he had the potential or because we want to look at the good things he did. Hitler was a one-off and not another Saint Francis of Assisi.
If you wokesters are only doing self-examination, more power to you. Don't pretend you can use your absurdity to do "the other" examinations.
"Self examination" of someone else would be a contradiction in terms. And yes, we all have the potential to damn ourselves, as well as to accept Salvation.
If the woke stuck to self-examination and that examination led them to salvation, all Christians would rejoice. It's when the woke examine others and find racism, bigotry, homophobia, xenophobia, sexism, transphobia, and other evil intentions in people they don't even know, normal people find them absurd.
bmiller, The type of self-examination the "woke" encourage is examining how one is being or has been wronged that one hadn't noticed before.
Actually, it's the type were you try to understand that you can give offense without intending to give offense. That seems a simple concept, but it eludes the anti-wokesters.
Re the OP. Maybe. But one of the problems is that what constitutes nonsense is itself a bone of contention.
This shows racism. Nah, yer 'avin a larf! The clumsy chat up approach or indeed the sarcastic reaction to it do not amount to racism, given what we know racism has been and has done. My feeling is that there can be sensitivity about asking someone's nationality directly. 'Where are you from?' is less direct but ambiguous, especially in our cosmopolitan world. There are eggshells here. Adding a racism eggshell just makes dialogue harder, as Susan Hussey has just found to her cost. But a little insensitivity does not amount to racism.
Here is a Brendan O'Neill opinion piece in Spiked magazine about Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s recent Reith Lecture. O'Neill and Spiked writers generally are left of centre in UK politics. Listen to Adichie.
I'll admit, I've never heard the notion that 'it's only murder if you kill at least five people before' (I mean, we all know what murder has been and has done, so one little killing barely qualifies, right?).
I see you've still fallen victim to the confusion of "Freedom of speech" with "consequence-free speech", and to the lie that cancel culture actually cancels people in a significant way (unless you truly believe that no one should ever suffer any consequences for what they say, period, and start defending Jane Fonda and saying people should have gone to her movies regardless of her activism).
I think this quote from the article gets the the heart of the matter:
Her accoster agrees it was true but asks: ‘Why should we say it even if it’s true?’ Adichie was astonished. To her, the idea of not giving voice even to truth, lest it cause offence, is utterly alien. She was being accused, she says, of having ‘desecrated the prevailing orthodoxy’. ‘It was like being accused of blasphemy in a religion that is not yours.’
As I've mentioned before, it not only seems like a cult, but a cult dangerous to society. If they want to go around and accuse each other of heresy let them. But they should keep to themselves and let everyone else live their lives.
Wrong, One Brow. You compound two philosophical errors with a bit of wishful thinking.
• Murders are well-defined discrete events. We do not have discrete 'racisms'. Racism is a mode of thought. It is seen as wrong in so far as it significantly motivates other serious harms. In contrast with murder, very much a matter of degree.
• Almost everyone advocating for free speech accepts that there must be constraints and that breaking the constraints (incitement to violence, slander, etc), after due process, should have consequences. It is not for a Twitter mob to deal out the consequences.
• You are deceiving yourself if you think cancellation is harmless. People get forced to resign, get sacked, lose business, etc, even rather humble people without a platform. It is easy to contribute to this with a casual retweet, say. And, since one is among many and probably anonymous, easy to excuse oneself from causing harm.
Well, I tend to think of a cult as having a 'charismatic' leader, but nobody in the ranks of the woke stands out as such. I still think of it as an ideology formed in the universities in the US absorbing strands from cultural marxism and postmodern philosophy and mushrooming this century through the network effects of social media on the internet, somewhat as the Reformation had the Gutenberg printing press. I suspect the woke are mostly found among post millennium humanities graduates, but that's a guess. I'm inoculated against it, being much too old and stemmy.
There is nothing wrong with being "woke". All it means is that you strive to not unthinkingly participate in societal (a.k.a., systemic) evil, and that you realize there can be no peace without justice. Being woke means you examine (and re-examine) everything you believe to ensure that all that you do believe is grounded in love and objective truth. It means not only knowing what you believe, but why you believe it. What is there to object to in that?
Nothing at all, SH. It just misses the point, I think. The contention is over what is meant by the terms 'systemic evil', 'justice', 'love', and 'objective truth'. That is, What actual things fall under these abstract heads. There is little agreement on this, as I think these discussions show.
Precisely! Which is why perpetual self-examination (which ultimately is what being "woke" means) is essential. As St. Peter wrote, "Always be prepared to make a defense to any one who calls you to account for the hope that is in you." You cannot defend what you do not know.
No, 'woke' denotes one particular set of answers to the self-examination, not the self-examination itself. If it were just the latter I and others would have no objections. Except we might say that in some the self-examination is superficial and none too rigorous.
I think this quote from the article gets the the heart of the matter:
Her accoster agrees it was true but asks: ‘Why should we say it even if it’s true?’ Adichie was astonished. To her, the idea of not giving voice even to truth, lest it cause offence, is utterly alien.
Methodists are Christians. Baptists are Christians. Jehovah's Witnesses are Christians. Roman Catholics are papists.
Unless you are an out-of-date AI, you'll notice othering, the sense of rejection in those statements. Even though every one of those statements is true, strung together like that they form a contextual denial of another truth based on the contrasting word choices. I'd wager you felt that even before you thought of it.
Adichie is pulling the same linguistic maneuver, and if you take just a moment to think about it, you'll see that (assuming you don't already). It's not clever nor deep, and her pretense that she's just saying a truth is not believable for a person with her linguistic skill. Your going along with the pretense because you agree with her position, and it demeans you.
So it seems that Susan Hussey got cancelled by someone appropriating from a different culture.
You mean, her ancestors has the surname Headley before they went to the Caribbean? If anything, the name Headley was the appropriation.
David Brightly, I'm inoculated against it, being much too old and stemmy.
It's good to acknowledge your weaknesses (I'm not referring to the "old" part).
Wrong, One Brow. You compound two philosophical errors with a bit of wishful thinking.
As usual, stemmy people make for terrible philosophers.
• Murders are well-defined discrete events. We do not have discrete 'racisms'. Racism is a mode of thought. It is seen as wrong in so far as it significantly motivates other serious harms. In contrast with murder, very much a matter of degree.
Each act of racism is a discrete event. Murder is also a mode of thought, in that if you don't intend to kill someone (or perceive the danger in your actions resulting in killing them), it is not murder. Both racist and murderous thoughts are seen as dangerous in that they create harm. Murdering 10 people is very much worse than murdering one person.
• Almost everyone advocating for free speech accepts that there must be constraints and that breaking the constraints (incitement to violence, slander, etc), after due process, should have consequences. It is not for a Twitter mob to deal out the consequences.
Twitter mobs don't deal out consequences, unless your are referring to the death threats that right-wingers like to hurl at left-wingers. Consequences, to the degree they happen at all, are delivered by bosses, customers, advertisers, etc. Even a stemmy person should be able to see the cause there.
• You are deceiving yourself if you think cancellation is harmless. People get forced to resign, get sacked, lose business, etc, even rather humble people without a platform.
I keep hearing that, but it comes to actual cases of "cancellation", the person supposedly cancelled has done something far worse than just expressing an opinion (SWATting, tacking a kid, etc.) or has had their suffering exaggerated. There's always someone willing to give a bigot another chance.
BTW, o you feel Kaepernick was treated unjustly?
It is easy to contribute to this with a casual retweet, say. And, since one is among many and probably anonymous, easy to excuse oneself from causing harm.
Tweets don't "cancel" people.
Hi BM. Yes, very much like a cult, though it is strangely leaderless. And dangerous to society. Hence Adichie’s 'barbarism'.
I suppose bigots do feel threatened. Adichie buy not get people to buy her book anymore. What a tragedy.
• There are acts of murder but there are no acts of racism. 'Racism' is not a verb. There can be more or less bad acts more or less motivated by racism. Murders are not motivated by murder.
• Twitter mobs don't deal out consequences This is simply disingenuous. Iago had no part in the death of Desdemona?
• the person supposedly cancelled has done something far worse than just expressing an opinion. This is vigilantism.
• There's always someone willing to give a bigot another chance. It's been said that cancel culture is quite unforgiving.
• Of course CK was treated unjustly. He got cancelled for making a gesture.
• Adichie is a bigot because she advocates free speech? Or because she refused to say a trans woman is a woman? What is she doing that is far worse than just expressing an opinion?
What I find interesting in the dialog between David and Starhopper is that David understands what Starhopper's point is but Starhopper doesn't understand what David's point is.
Everyone agrees that we should examine ourselves and our motives and even encourage others to do so too. It seems David is fine having a discussion with someone who disagrees with him, but is not fine with those that intend him harm because he disagrees with him.
It's interesting to watch Starhopper totally ignore the point at issue in real time.
Thanks for the BBC link to Adichie's lecture/Q&A. I listened to the whole thing.
She's a feminist and blames mostly the "Right" for incivility. But she still thinks it's better to defeat bad ideas with good ideas rather than censor "bad" ideas and make curious people think they are actually "good". She says she doesn't even look at social media, so I give her a pass on her understanding on source the "incivility" on social media.
• There are acts of murder but there are no acts of racism. 'Racism' is not a verb. There can be more or less bad acts more or less motivated by racism. Murders are not motivated by murder.
Is this just a grammar objection? 'Violence' is a noun, and there are acts of violence. Similarly 'kindness', 'mayhem', etc. 'Acts of' seems exclusively used with nouns and gerunds. An individual murder is an act of murder, an action motivated/affected by racism is an act of racism.
• Iago had no part in the death of Desdemona?
Is Othello supposed to be a real-life exemplar? The truth is that advertisers don't want their products associated with controversy.
• This is vigilantism.
Being fired for SWATting someone in the park is vigilantism? You have an odd definition.
• It's been said that cancel culture is quite unforgiving.
People say lots of things, but that doesn't make them true.
• Of course CK was treated unjustly. He got cancelled for making a gesture.
Yet, made millions from a Nike advertising campaign after it happened.
• Adichie is a bigot because she advocates free speech?
Do you believe in consequence-free speech?
Or because she refused to say a trans woman is a woman?
Yes, for that reason.
What is she doing that is far worse than just expressing an opinion?
Saying Catholics are not Christians is also expressing an opinion. Some opinions are rude to express. Rudeness has consequences, such as advertisers not wanting to buy your space or people not wanting to buy your book.
BM, Note Adichie started university in the US just before year 2000. Another video. Jordan Peterson discusses the origins of Covid-19 with the science writer Matt Ridley. Interesting in itself, but at about 1h16m in the conversation takes a metaphysical turn. JP suggests that Christianity and Science are brothers-in-arms against contemporary anti-Enlightenment values. MR kind of agrees.
• We accept that all murders are, roughly speaking, equally bad. By comparing racially motivated acts to murder you are disingenuously suggesting that all racially motivated acts are also equally bad. This is false.
• You seek to exonerate Twitter mobs from any responsibility in provoking a cancellation. Othello illustrates that there are causal chains in human affairs. Iago bears some responsibility for Desdemona's death. Of course firms don't want their products associated with controversy. The Twitter storm is the controversy. And deliberately manufactured as such.
• Mob 'justice' without due process is vigilantism, is it not?
• Rudeness has consequences. You are being disingenuous again, shuffling off onto abstractions the malicious actions of individuals.
• We accept that all murders are, roughly speaking, equally bad. By comparing racially motivated acts to murder you are disingenuously suggesting that all racially motivated acts are also equally bad. This is false.
To my understanding, most jurisdictions have multiple levels of "murder", with different penalties attached thereto. That certainly sounds like some are worse than others, at least in the eyes of the law.
However, I don't think this tangent is helping with your attempts to claim that racism is a primarily mental phenomenon, as opposed to murder, much less that mild acts of racism are not racism.
• You seek to exonerate Twitter mobs from any responsibility in provoking a cancellation. Othello illustrates that there are causal chains in human affairs. Iago bears some responsibility for Desdemona's death. Of course firms don't want their products associated with controversy. The Twitter storm is the controversy. And deliberately manufactured as such.
The entire play happens over the course of a single day. If the main character takes two or three hours to think things over, there is no tragedy.
Twitter storms come and go. I don't think any advertiser is worried about a three-week-old Twitter storm. What they do worry about is repetition.
• Mob 'justice' without due process is vigilantism, is it not?
Not when the mob is not the people dealing out consequences.
• Rudeness has consequences. You are being disingenuous again, shuffling off onto abstractions the malicious actions of individuals.
Oddly, I find it less disingenuous than the pretense that the "cancelled" have anyone but themselves to blame.
Is a 'mild act of racism' mild because it's only mildly bad or mild because it's only mildly racist?
Just as Iago uses Othello's own character to destroy him (that's why the play is a tragedy) so does the mob use an employer, say, to punish a cancellee. Sometimes the punishment is the stream of abuse, threats, etc, from the mob itself. Either way it is without due process or authority and thus a species of vigilantism. The mob is judge, jury, and executioner.
David Brightly, Is a 'mild act of racism' mild because it's only mildly bad or mild because it's only mildly racist?
I meant acts where the the racism was unintentional or not a primary motivating factor.
Just as Iago uses Othello's own character to destroy him (that's why the play is a tragedy) so does the mob use an employer, say, to punish a cancellee.
Iago lied, IIRC. By contrast, people can only report actual tweets.
Sometimes the punishment is the stream of abuse, threats, etc, from the mob itself.
Now you're describing right-wing behavior on Twitter, much more than left-wing.
Either way it is without due process or authority and thus a species of vigilantism. The mob is judge, jury, and executioner.
Where "execution" is that you don't use Twitter.
Leftists talk to minorities as if they are incompetent. It's a scientific fact.
To be clear, the supposed "leftists" are the taking on the appearance of less competence. It's hardly a surprise.
One Brow, We have been talking factually but our disagreement is at bottom a moral one. For you, the eradication of racism is the great moral project of our time. Maybe also a radical liberation of our minds from the constraints of our bodies. Judging by the evasiveness of some of your responses I think you see that other, traditionally accepted, values are getting trumped in the process. This is regrettable, but as usual some eggs have to be broken to reach utopia. But let's put our moral differences to one side. I think you are going about your project in an ineffectual way. Recognition and fear of the other has been deeply engrained in human nature by our evolution. The way to remove the fear is to remove the other. Not by eliminating them of course but by smoothing over the differences and reducing the tribalisms in which the fears circulate. This won't be easy and it won't be quick. America seemed to be on the right path in the 1960s but since then seems to have taken a wrong turn. Impatience on one side maybe and a feeling of 'surely we have done enough' on the other. There are forces at work today active on the left and the right which exacerbate the differences and drive in yet more wedges. Global economic changes have not helped. Nor the sexual revolution. And the postmodernist genie cannot be put back in the bottle it seems. So I am not sanguine. It saddens me. I am into the final third of my life and would have liked to have lived to see things improve.
With apologies for the psychologising. I wish you well.
I don't think racism will be eliminated in our time, or my children's time. Too many powerful people benefit from it. You talk of both traditional values being "trumped", and of how fear of the other has been deeply engrained, but do you see how they are connected, that traditional values have supported and hardened this fear into social structures?
I was not aware that you considered my responses to be evasive. I've seen them as correcting a false paradigm. For example, the conservative response to the gains of the 60s was not 'surely we have done enough', but a deliberate attempt to undermine those gains. That was the goal of the war on drugs, the encouraging of white flight, etc.
By the way. Modernism is much more the enemy of traditional values than the critiques of postmodernism. Modern theories like Marxism, Positivism, etc., proposed to uproot the traditional social structures; postmodernism tries to sift through all the structures and find the flaws in the their approaches.
I appreciate the dialog. I hope to have more in the future.
One Brow, I do think we have very little common ground. In a blog comment I feel obliged to write compactly to the point of terseness, and this can lead to misunderstandings. Where I understand what you say, I generally disagree! However, if you would like to correspond by email my address is david dot a dot brightly at gmail dot com, or we could write at greater length more publicly on my own blog visible at my Blogger profile. I am embarrassed to commandeer Victor's threads.
Count on the right wing to use (and abuse) "woke" in the same way that they do so many other terms they have no understanding of, such as socialism, critical race theory, Black Lives Matter, diversity...heck, even "left wing".
ReplyDeleteThere's glory for you!
ReplyDelete"Count on the right wing to use (and abuse) 'woke' in the same way that they do so many other terms they have no understanding"
ReplyDeleteSounds like what a Nazi would say.
Almost like both sides are full of crap but only notice it in the other side.
ReplyDeleteOf course when you get utterly ludicrous accusations - for example, conservatives are called racists by left wing nutjobs no matter what they do or say - then the pushback has the potential to be just as ludicrous.
If only there were adults in the conversation.
"If only there were adults in the conversation."
ReplyDeleteBut there are! The problem is, they're all on my side. :)
Think he was implying sane adults.
ReplyDeleteKevin,
ReplyDeleteAlmost like both sides are full of crap but only notice it in the other side.
Of course the comments Limited and I are posting are pure baloney. There is no use trying to be serious when your opponents believe you are racist regardless of any dialog. We can only point and laugh.
Don't be this guy.:-)
"But there are! The problem is, they're all on my side. :)"
ReplyDeleteHitler only cared about those on his side. His colon/bracket reminds me of Hitler and his evil smile with his (fake) jig after conquering France. I'm pretty sure Starhopper is a closet Nazi sympathizer. If you read his comments closely it's turtles and Nazis all the way down.
I'm not trying to accuse Crazy Star of being Hitler, I'm only pointing to his comments to say he's worse than Hitler. I'm trying to keep things adult and civil.
ReplyDeleteWe are all potentially "worse than Hitler". Any attempt to make him a one-off, to dismiss his evil as sui generis, serves to avoid this terrible truth, essentially denying the doctrine of the Fall.
ReplyDeleteWhich is why a perpetual self examination (a.k.a., being "woke") is essential. Also, it's why it's OK to make comparisons to Hitler.
Nazi Star,
ReplyDeleteHitler is known for what he did, not for his potential. We don't refer to Hitler as another Saint Francis of Assisi just because he had the potential or because we want to look at the good things he did. Hitler was a one-off and not another Saint Francis of Assisi.
If you wokesters are only doing self-examination, more power to you. Don't pretend you can use your absurdity to do "the other" examinations.
"Self examination" of someone else would be a contradiction in terms. And yes, we all have the potential to damn ourselves, as well as to accept Salvation.
ReplyDeleteIf the woke stuck to self-examination and that examination led them to salvation, all Christians would rejoice. It's when the woke examine others and find racism, bigotry, homophobia, xenophobia, sexism, transphobia, and other evil intentions in people they don't even know, normal people find them absurd.
ReplyDeletebmiller,
ReplyDeleteThere is no use trying to be serious when your opponents believe you are racist regardless of any dialog. We can only point and laugh.
When you're the type of person who doesn't think this shows racism, it's hard to not laugh along at you.
bmiller,
ReplyDeleteThe type of self-examination the "woke" encourage is examining how one is being or has been wronged that one hadn't noticed before.
Actually, it's the type were you try to understand that you can give offense without intending to give offense. That seems a simple concept, but it eludes the anti-wokesters.
Re the OP. Maybe. But one of the problems is that what constitutes nonsense is itself a bone of contention.
ReplyDeleteThis shows racism. Nah, yer 'avin a larf! The clumsy chat up approach or indeed the sarcastic reaction to it do not amount to racism, given what we know racism has been and has done. My feeling is that there can be sensitivity about asking someone's nationality directly. 'Where are you from?' is less direct but ambiguous, especially in our cosmopolitan world. There are eggshells here. Adding a racism eggshell just makes dialogue harder, as Susan Hussey has just found to her cost. But a little insensitivity does not amount to racism.
Here is a Brendan O'Neill opinion piece in Spiked magazine about Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s recent Reith Lecture. O'Neill and Spiked writers generally are left of centre in UK politics. Listen to Adichie.
David Brightly,
ReplyDeleteI'll admit, I've never heard the notion that 'it's only murder if you kill at least five people before' (I mean, we all know what murder has been and has done, so one little killing barely qualifies, right?).
I see you've still fallen victim to the confusion of "Freedom of speech" with "consequence-free speech", and to the lie that cancel culture actually cancels people in a significant way (unless you truly believe that no one should ever suffer any consequences for what they say, period, and start defending Jane Fonda and saying people should have gone to her movies regardless of her activism).
David,
ReplyDeleteI think this quote from the article gets the the heart of the matter:
Her accoster agrees it was true but asks: ‘Why should we say it even if it’s true?’ Adichie was astonished. To her, the idea of not giving voice even to truth, lest it cause offence, is utterly alien. She was being accused, she says, of having ‘desecrated the prevailing orthodoxy’. ‘It was like being accused of blasphemy in a religion that is not yours.’
As I've mentioned before, it not only seems like a cult, but a cult dangerous to society. If they want to go around and accuse each other of heresy let them. But they should keep to themselves and let everyone else live their lives.
Wrong, One Brow. You compound two philosophical errors with a bit of wishful thinking.
ReplyDelete• Murders are well-defined discrete events. We do not have discrete 'racisms'. Racism is a mode of thought. It is seen as wrong in so far as it significantly motivates other serious harms. In contrast with murder, very much a matter of degree.
• Almost everyone advocating for free speech accepts that there must be constraints and that breaking the constraints (incitement to violence, slander, etc), after due process, should have consequences. It is not for a Twitter mob to deal out the consequences.
• You are deceiving yourself if you think cancellation is harmless. People get forced to resign, get sacked, lose business, etc, even rather humble people without a platform. It is easy to contribute to this with a casual retweet, say. And, since one is among many and probably anonymous, easy to excuse oneself from causing harm.
Hi BM. Yes, very much like a cult, though it is strangely leaderless. And dangerous to society. Hence Adichie’s 'barbarism'.
ReplyDeleteSo it seems that Susan Hussey got cancelled by someone appropriating from a different culture.
ReplyDeletethough it is strangely leaderless
ReplyDeleteDo you really think so?
Well, I tend to think of a cult as having a 'charismatic' leader, but nobody in the ranks of the woke stands out as such. I still think of it as an ideology formed in the universities in the US absorbing strands from cultural marxism and postmodern philosophy and mushrooming this century through the network effects of social media on the internet, somewhat as the Reformation had the Gutenberg printing press. I suspect the woke are mostly found among post millennium humanities graduates, but that's a guess. I'm inoculated against it, being much too old and stemmy.
ReplyDeleteThere is nothing wrong with being "woke". All it means is that you strive to not unthinkingly participate in societal (a.k.a., systemic) evil, and that you realize there can be no peace without justice. Being woke means you examine (and re-examine) everything you believe to ensure that all that you do believe is grounded in love and objective truth. It means not only knowing what you believe, but why you believe it. What is there to object to in that?
ReplyDeleteNothing at all, SH. It just misses the point, I think. The contention is over what is meant by the terms 'systemic evil', 'justice', 'love', and 'objective truth'. That is, What actual things fall under these abstract heads. There is little agreement on this, as I think these discussions show.
ReplyDelete"There is little agreement on this"
ReplyDeletePrecisely! Which is why perpetual self-examination (which ultimately is what being "woke" means) is essential. As St. Peter wrote, "Always be prepared to make a defense to any one who calls you to account for the hope that is in you."
You cannot defend what you do not know.
No, 'woke' denotes one particular set of answers to the self-examination, not the self-examination itself. If it were just the latter I and others would have no objections. Except we might say that in some the self-examination is superficial and none too rigorous.
ReplyDeleteWe'll have to agree to disagree there.
ReplyDeletebmiller,
ReplyDeleteI think this quote from the article gets the the heart of the matter:
Her accoster agrees it was true but asks: ‘Why should we say it even if it’s true?’ Adichie was astonished. To her, the idea of not giving voice even to truth, lest it cause offence, is utterly alien.
Methodists are Christians. Baptists are Christians. Jehovah's Witnesses are Christians. Roman Catholics are papists.
Unless you are an out-of-date AI, you'll notice othering, the sense of rejection in those statements. Even though every one of those statements is true, strung together like that they form a contextual denial of another truth based on the contrasting word choices. I'd wager you felt that even before you thought of it.
Adichie is pulling the same linguistic maneuver, and if you take just a moment to think about it, you'll see that (assuming you don't already). It's not clever nor deep, and her pretense that she's just saying a truth is not believable for a person with her linguistic skill. Your going along with the pretense because you agree with her position, and it demeans you.
So it seems that Susan Hussey got cancelled by someone appropriating from a different culture.
You mean, her ancestors has the surname Headley before they went to the Caribbean? If anything, the name Headley was the appropriation.
No problem. Until the next time.
ReplyDeleteDavid Brightly,
ReplyDeleteI'm inoculated against it, being much too old and stemmy.
It's good to acknowledge your weaknesses (I'm not referring to the "old" part).
Wrong, One Brow. You compound two philosophical errors with a bit of wishful thinking.
As usual, stemmy people make for terrible philosophers.
• Murders are well-defined discrete events. We do not have discrete 'racisms'. Racism is a mode of thought. It is seen as wrong in so far as it significantly motivates other serious harms. In contrast with murder, very much a matter of degree.
Each act of racism is a discrete event. Murder is also a mode of thought, in that if you don't intend to kill someone (or perceive the danger in your actions resulting in killing them), it is not murder. Both racist and murderous thoughts are seen as dangerous in that they create harm. Murdering 10 people is very much worse than murdering one person.
• Almost everyone advocating for free speech accepts that there must be constraints and that breaking the constraints (incitement to violence, slander, etc), after due process, should have consequences. It is not for a Twitter mob to deal out the consequences.
Twitter mobs don't deal out consequences, unless your are referring to the death threats that right-wingers like to hurl at left-wingers. Consequences, to the degree they happen at all, are delivered by bosses, customers, advertisers, etc. Even a stemmy person should be able to see the cause there.
• You are deceiving yourself if you think cancellation is harmless. People get forced to resign, get sacked, lose business, etc, even rather humble people without a platform.
I keep hearing that, but it comes to actual cases of "cancellation", the person supposedly cancelled has done something far worse than just expressing an opinion (SWATting, tacking a kid, etc.) or has had their suffering exaggerated. There's always someone willing to give a bigot another chance.
BTW, o you feel Kaepernick was treated unjustly?
It is easy to contribute to this with a casual retweet, say. And, since one is among many and probably anonymous, easy to excuse oneself from causing harm.
Tweets don't "cancel" people.
Hi BM. Yes, very much like a cult, though it is strangely leaderless. And dangerous to society. Hence Adichie’s 'barbarism'.
I suppose bigots do feel threatened. Adichie buy not get people to buy her book anymore. What a tragedy.
One Brow, some responses.
ReplyDelete• There are acts of murder but there are no acts of racism. 'Racism' is not a verb. There can be more or less bad acts more or less motivated by racism. Murders are not motivated by murder.
• Twitter mobs don't deal out consequences This is simply disingenuous. Iago had no part in the death of Desdemona?
• the person supposedly cancelled has done something far worse than just expressing an opinion. This is vigilantism.
• There's always someone willing to give a bigot another chance. It's been said that cancel culture is quite unforgiving.
• Of course CK was treated unjustly. He got cancelled for making a gesture.
• Adichie is a bigot because she advocates free speech? Or because she refused to say a trans woman is a woman? What is she doing that is far worse than just expressing an opinion?
What I find interesting in the dialog between David and Starhopper is that David understands what Starhopper's point is but Starhopper doesn't understand what David's point is.
ReplyDeleteEveryone agrees that we should examine ourselves and our motives and even encourage others to do so too. It seems David is fine having a discussion with someone who disagrees with him, but is not fine with those that intend him harm because he disagrees with him.
It's interesting to watch Starhopper totally ignore the point at issue in real time.
Guilty as charged. I do tend to ignore points that are not germane to the issue at hand.
ReplyDeleteAKA Solipsism syndrome.
ReplyDeleteMust be something the cult programmed them with when confronted with the truth.
ReplyDeleteDavid,
ReplyDeleteThanks for the BBC link to Adichie's lecture/Q&A. I listened to the whole thing.
She's a feminist and blames mostly the "Right" for incivility. But she still thinks it's better to defeat bad ideas with good ideas rather than censor "bad" ideas and make curious people think they are actually "good". She says she doesn't even look at social media, so I give her a pass on her understanding on source the "incivility" on social media.
David Brightly,
ReplyDelete• There are acts of murder but there are no acts of racism. 'Racism' is not a verb. There can be more or less bad acts more or less motivated by racism. Murders are not motivated by murder.
Is this just a grammar objection? 'Violence' is a noun, and there are acts of violence. Similarly 'kindness', 'mayhem', etc. 'Acts of' seems exclusively used with nouns and gerunds. An individual murder is an act of murder, an action motivated/affected by racism is an act of racism.
• Iago had no part in the death of Desdemona?
Is Othello supposed to be a real-life exemplar? The truth is that advertisers don't want their products associated with controversy.
• This is vigilantism.
Being fired for SWATting someone in the park is vigilantism? You have an odd definition.
• It's been said that cancel culture is quite unforgiving.
People say lots of things, but that doesn't make them true.
• Of course CK was treated unjustly. He got cancelled for making a gesture.
Yet, made millions from a Nike advertising campaign after it happened.
• Adichie is a bigot because she advocates free speech?
Do you believe in consequence-free speech?
Or because she refused to say a trans woman is a woman?
Yes, for that reason.
What is she doing that is far worse than just expressing an opinion?
Saying Catholics are not Christians is also expressing an opinion. Some opinions are rude to express. Rudeness has consequences, such as advertisers not wanting to buy your space or people not wanting to buy your book.
bmiller,
ReplyDeleteMust be something the cult programmed them with when confronted with the truth.
Avoiding irrelevancies is a positive trait.
BM, Note Adichie started university in the US just before year 2000. Another video. Jordan Peterson discusses the origins of Covid-19 with the science writer Matt Ridley. Interesting in itself, but at about 1h16m in the conversation takes a metaphysical turn. JP suggests that Christianity and Science are brothers-in-arms against contemporary anti-Enlightenment values. MR kind of agrees.
ReplyDeleteOne Brow,
ReplyDelete• We accept that all murders are, roughly speaking, equally bad. By comparing racially motivated acts to murder you are disingenuously suggesting that all racially motivated acts are also equally bad. This is false.
• You seek to exonerate Twitter mobs from any responsibility in provoking a cancellation. Othello illustrates that there are causal chains in human affairs. Iago bears some responsibility for Desdemona's death. Of course firms don't want their products associated with controversy. The Twitter storm is the controversy. And deliberately manufactured as such.
• Mob 'justice' without due process is vigilantism, is it not?
• Rudeness has consequences. You are being disingenuous again, shuffling off onto abstractions the malicious actions of individuals.
Fascinating discussion between 2 Jesuits about CRT and Catholicism, HERE.
ReplyDeleteWhat to do if your child is attacked by a SJW.
ReplyDeleteReflexes and quick thinking helped this Mom.
Remember Daytime activity and aggression could be signs of the viral disease,.
David Brightly,
ReplyDelete• We accept that all murders are, roughly speaking, equally bad. By comparing racially motivated acts to murder you are disingenuously suggesting that all racially motivated acts are also equally bad. This is false.
To my understanding, most jurisdictions have multiple levels of "murder", with different penalties attached thereto. That certainly sounds like some are worse than others, at least in the eyes of the law.
However, I don't think this tangent is helping with your attempts to claim that racism is a primarily mental phenomenon, as opposed to murder, much less that mild acts of racism are not racism.
• You seek to exonerate Twitter mobs from any responsibility in provoking a cancellation. Othello illustrates that there are causal chains in human affairs. Iago bears some responsibility for Desdemona's death. Of course firms don't want their products associated with controversy. The Twitter storm is the controversy. And deliberately manufactured as such.
The entire play happens over the course of a single day. If the main character takes two or three hours to think things over, there is no tragedy.
Twitter storms come and go. I don't think any advertiser is worried about a three-week-old Twitter storm. What they do worry about is repetition.
• Mob 'justice' without due process is vigilantism, is it not?
Not when the mob is not the people dealing out consequences.
• Rudeness has consequences. You are being disingenuous again, shuffling off onto abstractions the malicious actions of individuals.
Oddly, I find it less disingenuous than the pretense that the "cancelled" have anyone but themselves to blame.
Is a 'mild act of racism' mild because it's only mildly bad or mild because it's only mildly racist?
ReplyDeleteJust as Iago uses Othello's own character to destroy him (that's why the play is a tragedy) so does the mob use an employer, say, to punish a cancellee. Sometimes the punishment is the stream of abuse, threats, etc, from the mob itself. Either way it is without due process or authority and thus a species of vigilantism. The mob is judge, jury, and executioner.
Leftists talk to minorities as if they are incompetent. It's a scientific fact.
ReplyDeleteDavid Brightly,
ReplyDeleteIs a 'mild act of racism' mild because it's only mildly bad or mild because it's only mildly racist?
I meant acts where the the racism was unintentional or not a primary motivating factor.
Just as Iago uses Othello's own character to destroy him (that's why the play is a tragedy) so does the mob use an employer, say, to punish a cancellee.
Iago lied, IIRC. By contrast, people can only report actual tweets.
Sometimes the punishment is the stream of abuse, threats, etc, from the mob itself.
Now you're describing right-wing behavior on Twitter, much more than left-wing.
Either way it is without due process or authority and thus a species of vigilantism. The mob is judge, jury, and executioner.
Where "execution" is that you don't use Twitter.
Leftists talk to minorities as if they are incompetent. It's a scientific fact.
To be clear, the supposed "leftists" are the taking on the appearance of less competence. It's hardly a surprise.
One Brow, We have been talking factually but our disagreement is at bottom a moral one. For you, the eradication of racism is the great moral project of our time. Maybe also a radical liberation of our minds from the constraints of our bodies. Judging by the evasiveness of some of your responses I think you see that other, traditionally accepted, values are getting trumped in the process. This is regrettable, but as usual some eggs have to be broken to reach utopia. But let's put our moral differences to one side. I think you are going about your project in an ineffectual way. Recognition and fear of the other has been deeply engrained in human nature by our evolution. The way to remove the fear is to remove the other. Not by eliminating them of course but by smoothing over the differences and reducing the tribalisms in which the fears circulate. This won't be easy and it won't be quick. America seemed to be on the right path in the 1960s but since then seems to have taken a wrong turn. Impatience on one side maybe and a feeling of 'surely we have done enough' on the other. There are forces at work today active on the left and the right which exacerbate the differences and drive in yet more wedges. Global economic changes have not helped. Nor the sexual revolution. And the postmodernist genie cannot be put back in the bottle it seems. So I am not sanguine. It saddens me. I am into the final third of my life and would have liked to have lived to see things improve.
ReplyDeleteWith apologies for the psychologising. I wish you well.
David Brightly,
ReplyDeleteI don't think racism will be eliminated in our time, or my children's time. Too many powerful people benefit from it. You talk of both traditional values being "trumped", and of how fear of the other has been deeply engrained, but do you see how they are connected, that traditional values have supported and hardened this fear into social structures?
I was not aware that you considered my responses to be evasive. I've seen them as correcting a false paradigm. For example, the conservative response to the gains of the 60s was not 'surely we have done enough', but a deliberate attempt to undermine those gains. That was the goal of the war on drugs, the encouraging of white flight, etc.
By the way. Modernism is much more the enemy of traditional values than the critiques of postmodernism. Modern theories like Marxism, Positivism, etc., proposed to uproot the traditional social structures; postmodernism tries to sift through all the structures and find the flaws in the their approaches.
I appreciate the dialog. I hope to have more in the future.
One Brow, I do think we have very little common ground. In a blog comment I feel obliged to write compactly to the point of terseness, and this can lead to misunderstandings. Where I understand what you say, I generally disagree! However, if you would like to correspond by email my address is david dot a dot brightly at gmail dot com, or we could write at greater length more publicly on my own blog visible at my Blogger profile. I am embarrassed to commandeer Victor's threads.
ReplyDelete