I CAN TOLERATE ANYTHING EXCEPT THE OUTGROUP
October 26, 2014 1:19 PM Subscribe
"today we have an almost unprecedented situation...We have a lot of people...boasting of being able to tolerate everyone from every outgroup they can imagine...And we have those same people absolutely ripping into their in-groups---straight, white, male, hetero, cis, American...This is really surprising. It’s a total reversal of everything we know about human psychology up to this point...people who conspicuous love their outgroups, the outer the better, and gain status by talking about how terrible their own groups are. What is going on here?" (Slate Star Codex)
Scott Alexander is the pseudonym of a psychologist who says this of his blog: "Topics on Slate Star Codex tend to center vaguely around this meta-philosophical idea of how people evaluate arguments for their beliefs, and especially whether this process is spectacularly broken in a way that may or may not doom us all. In between there’s a lot of cognitive science, psychology, history, politics, medicine, religion, statistics, transhumanism, corny puns, and applied eschatology."
Scott Alexander is the pseudonym of a psychologist who says this of his blog: "Topics on Slate Star Codex tend to center vaguely around this meta-philosophical idea of how people evaluate arguments for their beliefs, and especially whether this process is spectacularly broken in a way that may or may not doom us all. In between there’s a lot of cognitive science, psychology, history, politics, medicine, religion, statistics, transhumanism, corny puns, and applied eschatology."
Interesting essay, thanks for posting. I have agreements and disagreements, but I'll have to chew on it for a bit.
posted by Sticherbeast at 1:37 PM on October 26, 2014
posted by Sticherbeast at 1:37 PM on October 26, 2014
Meta-ingroups?
posted by boo_radley at 1:39 PM on October 26, 2014
posted by boo_radley at 1:39 PM on October 26, 2014
But I'm not like THOSE white people. I'm a good person. But all those other white people, yeah, fuck'm.
I see this crap all the time. It's particularly fun to have seen a number of upper middle class, highly educated white women in my local political scene start dating non-white men and immediately start acting as if this mitigates their own whiteness in some way, and entitle them to hate on privileged white people without being hypocritical.
It guilt. It's an immature, transparent display of white leftist guilt. A high-school level of thinking from people who often have masters degrees. And it's not new. This behavior has been around since the 60s civil rights era.
It's really pathetic if you ask me. You can be white and/or cis and/or male and/or straight and have a realistic understanding of your privilege, without having to simultaneously feel as if you carry some new form original sin, and without feeling guilty about being born into the place you were born into.
posted by MeanwhileBackAtTheRanch at 1:48 PM on October 26, 2014 [20 favorites]
I see this crap all the time. It's particularly fun to have seen a number of upper middle class, highly educated white women in my local political scene start dating non-white men and immediately start acting as if this mitigates their own whiteness in some way, and entitle them to hate on privileged white people without being hypocritical.
It guilt. It's an immature, transparent display of white leftist guilt. A high-school level of thinking from people who often have masters degrees. And it's not new. This behavior has been around since the 60s civil rights era.
It's really pathetic if you ask me. You can be white and/or cis and/or male and/or straight and have a realistic understanding of your privilege, without having to simultaneously feel as if you carry some new form original sin, and without feeling guilty about being born into the place you were born into.
posted by MeanwhileBackAtTheRanch at 1:48 PM on October 26, 2014 [20 favorites]
So if the straight emperor has gay family members who were Jewish yet still joined the nazi party in 1930, would they be in a in-group?
posted by clavdivs at 1:48 PM on October 26, 2014
posted by clavdivs at 1:48 PM on October 26, 2014
The groups he's talking about have lots of signifiers and have been studied in-depth. Like here. People self-segregate by profession or vocation, and this translates roughly into geographic and social segregation.
posted by the man of twists and turns at 1:50 PM on October 26, 2014 [1 favorite]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 1:50 PM on October 26, 2014 [1 favorite]
Scott Alexander is the pseudonym of a psychologist
(In fact a psychiatrist.)
posted by grobstein at 2:01 PM on October 26, 2014
(In fact a psychiatrist.)
posted by grobstein at 2:01 PM on October 26, 2014
The worst thing that could happen to this post is to have it be used as convenient feces to fling at the Blue Tribe whenever feces are necessary.posted by the man of twists and turns at 2:10 PM on October 26, 2014 [1 favorite]
"Blue tribe" versus "red tribe" goes back to the beginnings of our nation, the earliest colonies, the Civil War. There are fundamental and mutually inconsistent differences in how we wish to arrange our society.
posted by ClaudiaCenter at 2:15 PM on October 26, 2014
posted by ClaudiaCenter at 2:15 PM on October 26, 2014
I've read this twice now and I truly can't make sense of his argument. I guess we can start here:
But I think the situation with “white” is much the same as the situation with “American” – it can either mean what it says, or be a code word for the Red Tribe.
...
You can bet some white guy on Gawker who week after week churns out “Why White People Are So Terrible” and “Here’s What Dumb White People Don’t Understand” is having fun and not sweating any blood at all. He’s not criticizing his in-group, he’s never even considered criticizing his in-group.
He appears to be arguing that when members of the "Blue Group" criticize, say, white people or middle-class heterosexual males, that they are a) doing it only to score rhetorical points; and b) that they do not actually intend to criticize white people etc, but instead are using "white" as a code for "Red People." But this is prima facie false. For example, I disgree with quite a lot that Richard Dawkins has to say, and I think he represents some of the worst of white male privilege; so when I criticize straight white male privilege, he is one of the people I have in mind. But I, like Dawkins, am a member of the "Blue Tribe!" I'm not using Dawkins as a proxy to attack the "Red Tribe." And, in addition, when I talk about straight white male privilege, I include myself in that criticism. I don't do this to score rhetorical points. I do this because I truly believe the argument I'm making.
More generally, this entire essay makes the assumption that those of us who criticize white privilege are doing so for ulterior reasons, which is extremely condescending, not to mention false. It is not surprisingly that this guy self-identifies as a "Grey Tribe" member and has a link on his sidebar to Popehat, one of the most foul and unpleasant mouthpieces of garbage Libertarianism: Libertarians don't just disagree with the idea of privilege, they even think that people who do believe in privilege are lying when they say they believe in it!
posted by Frobenius Twist at 2:15 PM on October 26, 2014 [60 favorites]
But I think the situation with “white” is much the same as the situation with “American” – it can either mean what it says, or be a code word for the Red Tribe.
...
You can bet some white guy on Gawker who week after week churns out “Why White People Are So Terrible” and “Here’s What Dumb White People Don’t Understand” is having fun and not sweating any blood at all. He’s not criticizing his in-group, he’s never even considered criticizing his in-group.
He appears to be arguing that when members of the "Blue Group" criticize, say, white people or middle-class heterosexual males, that they are a) doing it only to score rhetorical points; and b) that they do not actually intend to criticize white people etc, but instead are using "white" as a code for "Red People." But this is prima facie false. For example, I disgree with quite a lot that Richard Dawkins has to say, and I think he represents some of the worst of white male privilege; so when I criticize straight white male privilege, he is one of the people I have in mind. But I, like Dawkins, am a member of the "Blue Tribe!" I'm not using Dawkins as a proxy to attack the "Red Tribe." And, in addition, when I talk about straight white male privilege, I include myself in that criticism. I don't do this to score rhetorical points. I do this because I truly believe the argument I'm making.
More generally, this entire essay makes the assumption that those of us who criticize white privilege are doing so for ulterior reasons, which is extremely condescending, not to mention false. It is not surprisingly that this guy self-identifies as a "Grey Tribe" member and has a link on his sidebar to Popehat, one of the most foul and unpleasant mouthpieces of garbage Libertarianism: Libertarians don't just disagree with the idea of privilege, they even think that people who do believe in privilege are lying when they say they believe in it!
posted by Frobenius Twist at 2:15 PM on October 26, 2014 [60 favorites]
He certainly has the long-winded, circular, "I'm getting to the point, just give me five more sections", this-is-science-and-rationality, am-I-blowing-your-mind-yet style of writing I'd expect from someone of that tribe, anyway.
posted by naju at 2:24 PM on October 26, 2014 [10 favorites]
posted by naju at 2:24 PM on October 26, 2014 [10 favorites]
More generally, this entire essay makes the assumption that those of us who criticize white privilege are doing so for ulterior reasons, which is extremely condescending, not to mention false.
Are you so sure you know what your reasons are? Isn't the whole point of privilege theory that you might not actually know your own reasons for doing things?
posted by Sebmojo at 2:27 PM on October 26, 2014 [12 favorites]
Are you so sure you know what your reasons are? Isn't the whole point of privilege theory that you might not actually know your own reasons for doing things?
posted by Sebmojo at 2:27 PM on October 26, 2014 [12 favorites]
Meh. There are so many dogwhistles and bits of mangled logic in this piece that I actually suspect Scott Alexander is the pseudonym of a Fox News personality.
Comparing reactions to the death of Margaret Thatcher and the death of Osama Bin Laden is particularly stupid. One was a horrible person who died of natural causes, the other was a horrible person who was pointlessly murdered alongside his family by agents of the United States government in the name of jingoism. It is in no way, shape, or form contradictory or hypocritical to be glad Thatcher's dead while also being disgusted by the circumstances of Bin Laden's death.
The author appears to like putting people into neat categories, and is baffled when they don't quite fit. That's his problem.
posted by Sys Rq at 2:28 PM on October 26, 2014 [10 favorites]
Comparing reactions to the death of Margaret Thatcher and the death of Osama Bin Laden is particularly stupid. One was a horrible person who died of natural causes, the other was a horrible person who was pointlessly murdered alongside his family by agents of the United States government in the name of jingoism. It is in no way, shape, or form contradictory or hypocritical to be glad Thatcher's dead while also being disgusted by the circumstances of Bin Laden's death.
The author appears to like putting people into neat categories, and is baffled when they don't quite fit. That's his problem.
posted by Sys Rq at 2:28 PM on October 26, 2014 [10 favorites]
The author appears to like putting people into neat categories, and is baffled when they don't quite fit. That's his problem.
Anyone who asks "Why do you avoid and revile your in-group?" doesn't understand how groups work, at a basic geometric level.
posted by belarius at 2:30 PM on October 26, 2014 [9 favorites]
Anyone who asks "Why do you avoid and revile your in-group?" doesn't understand how groups work, at a basic geometric level.
posted by belarius at 2:30 PM on October 26, 2014 [9 favorites]
More generally, this entire essay makes the assumption that those of us who criticize white privilege are doing so for ulterior reasons, which is extremely condescending, not to mention false.
Slate Star Codex is like this with a lot of things. For example, that Anti-Reactionary FAQ that gets posted very time anyone brings up Moldbuggery also has a lot of unironic comments about "the sane 30% of feminists" and so forth.
And see, for example, this post where he blames feminist blogs for demonizing "Nice Guys" and then argues, and I quote directly:
And he'll also happily post stuff like this:
posted by kewb at 2:32 PM on October 26, 2014 [49 favorites]
Slate Star Codex is like this with a lot of things. For example, that Anti-Reactionary FAQ that gets posted very time anyone brings up Moldbuggery also has a lot of unironic comments about "the sane 30% of feminists" and so forth.
And see, for example, this post where he blames feminist blogs for demonizing "Nice Guys" and then argues, and I quote directly:
Such a response would be so antisocial and unjust that it could only possibly come from the social justice movement.He's extremely suspicious of pretty much anything outside a very narrow band of left-libertarian wonkery, self-defined as "the rationalist community."
[...]
Barry is possibly the most feminist man who has ever existed, palpably exudes respect for women, and this is well-known in every circle feminists frequent. He is reduced to apophatic complaints about how sad he is that he doesn’t think he’ll ever have a real romantic relationship.
Henry has four domestic violence charges against him by his four ex-wives and is cheating on his current wife with one of those ex-wives. And as soon as he gets out of the psychiatric hospital where he was committed for violent behavior against women and maybe serves the jail sentence he has pending for said behavior, he is going to find another girlfriend approximately instantaneously.
And this seems unfair. I don’t know how to put the basic insight behind niceguyhood any clearer than that. There are a lot of statistics backing up the point, but the statistics only corroborate the obvious intuitive insight that this seems unfair.
And suppose, in the depths of your Forever Alone misery, you make the mistake of asking why things are so unfair.
Well, then Jezebel says you are “a lonely dickwad who believes in a perverse social/sexual contract that promises access to women’s bodies”. XOJane says you are “an adult baby” who will “go into a school or a gym or another space heavily populated by women and open fire”. Feminspire just says you are “an arrogant, egotistical, selfish douche bag”.
And the manosphere says: “Excellent question, we’ve actually been wondering that ourselves, why don’t you come over here and sit down with us and hear some of our convincing-sounding answers, which, incidentally, will also help solve your personal problems?”
And feminists still insist the only reason anyone ever joins the manosphere is “distress of the privileged”!
And he'll also happily post stuff like this:
I don’t think I’m at all alone in this. Like, you may notice there’s a large contingent of people – mostly men, but a surprising number of women as well – who totally freak out when they hear social justice stuff and seem to loathe social justice with an unholy passion? And maybe you’ve wondered whether the classic glib dismissal of them as people benefitting from the patriarchy who are upset about “uppity women” quite explains the level of rage and terror and sudden lashing out?And this (from later in the same post):
If you are, indeed, someone who has been traumatized and is easily triggered, you can probably recognize the signs yourself. There’s a certain desperation, a certain terror thinly disguised by rage that doesn’t really come from anything else.
So suffice it to say I am triggered by social justice, and probably a lot of other people are too. Why do I make such a big deal of this?
First, because it has a lot of bearing on whether we can just ban triggery things. There is a certain school of thought that there are two or three excessively evil things that trigger other people, like making fun of rape, and once we make people stop those, we will live in a trigger-free paradise.
But that’s not true. I’m triggered by feminism. My girlfriend is also triggered by certain kinds of feminism (long story), but also by many discussions of charity – whenever ze hears about it, ze starts worrying ze is a bad person for not donating more money to charity, has a mental breakdown, and usually ends up shaking and crying for a little while.
You know what other community has more women than the rationalist community? The men’s rights movement. According to the /r/mensrights survey, about 9.3% of men’s rights activists are female, which is slightly fewer women than the rationalist community on the last survey, but slightly more women than the rationalist community on the survey before that. A friend who reads Heartiste guesses that about a third of his commenters are female (though adds that some of these may be men who are pretending in order to make a point). So if we actually spent all our time belittling women and justifying their oppression, as far as I can tell our percent female readership would probably go up.He spends, in short, an awful lot of time explaining that most feminists are as bad or worse than MRAs, and that gender and race imbalances in the "rationalist" community are basically not problems and anyway trying to solve them would be even worse and YOU ARE THE REAL TRIGGER-ERS, SOCIAL JUSTICE PEOPLE!
I am left pretty certain that the male-dominated rationalist community has a gender imbalance for the same reason as my female-dominated yoga class. We could always see whether it might help to inviting some feminists in, listen to them without protest, and agree to do whatever they say – but I would enjoy that about as much as you would enjoy getting lectured by men’s rights activists without being able to protest, and the end result would probably be about the same.
posted by kewb at 2:32 PM on October 26, 2014 [49 favorites]
Are you so sure you know what your reasons are? Isn't the whole point of privilege theory that you might not actually know your own reasons for doing things?
Sure, to a point - but privilege theory isn't like Fight Club. Eg, "the first rule of privilege theory is there is no privilege theory" is not a claim anyone who believes in privilege would make. If you see the world through a distorted lens, you might not know exactly what the real world looks like, but you sure do know that the lens is there.
posted by Frobenius Twist at 2:32 PM on October 26, 2014 [6 favorites]
Sure, to a point - but privilege theory isn't like Fight Club. Eg, "the first rule of privilege theory is there is no privilege theory" is not a claim anyone who believes in privilege would make. If you see the world through a distorted lens, you might not know exactly what the real world looks like, but you sure do know that the lens is there.
posted by Frobenius Twist at 2:32 PM on October 26, 2014 [6 favorites]
And we have those same people absolutely ripping into their in-groups – straight, white, male, hetero, cis, American, whatever
Just to name a smattering of random in-groups that might be relevant to the diverse readership of his website.
posted by fleacircus at 2:35 PM on October 26, 2014 [11 favorites]
Just to name a smattering of random in-groups that might be relevant to the diverse readership of his website.
posted by fleacircus at 2:35 PM on October 26, 2014 [11 favorites]
But that’s not true. I’m triggered by feminism.
hoooooly fuck that whole "nice guys" article is insane and I'm now sorry that I even tried engaging with this guy's arguments at all
posted by Frobenius Twist at 2:37 PM on October 26, 2014 [31 favorites]
hoooooly fuck that whole "nice guys" article is insane and I'm now sorry that I even tried engaging with this guy's arguments at all
posted by Frobenius Twist at 2:37 PM on October 26, 2014 [31 favorites]
The structure of this essay is going to lead to a lot of confusion, because he shifts gears a couple of times. So you really have to read the whole thing to even get what he's talking about.
It looks at first like he's going to talk about 'self-loathing whites'. He's not— the middle of the essay (the strongest bit) makes it clear that he's talking about the red/blue divide, so his thesis is that most Blue criticisms of "America" or "Whites" are really criticisms of Reds.
He's got a point, and his examples show it. When someone writes a piece called "Why White People Don't Seem to Understand Ferguson", and he's white, he's obviously exempting himself from the charge of not understanding Ferguson.
Frobenius is quite right that we liberals can criticize ourselves for their own privilege. But as more of an outsider, Alexander is not wrong for observing that this self-critique is not searing. Acknowledging privilege is also a way of distancing ourselves from those who don't. That doesn't make it a bad or questionable thing to do, but I think it's disingenuous to deny that "Blues" feel a great deal of animus for "Reds" and believe that they are the main obstacle for social justice.
The last part of the essay kind of turns everything else upside down, by acknowledging that he's more or a less a "Gray Tribe" member who's having fun criticizing his outgroup, and he realizes that that's not meritorious. (Though this obviously didn't bother him enough to consider rewriting or rethinking the essay.) (I'm a little confused by his Gray Tribe, as by his own admission he mostly hangs out with liberals and not Reds... it seems quite the opposite of most libertarians I know of.)
posted by zompist at 2:47 PM on October 26, 2014 [12 favorites]
It looks at first like he's going to talk about 'self-loathing whites'. He's not— the middle of the essay (the strongest bit) makes it clear that he's talking about the red/blue divide, so his thesis is that most Blue criticisms of "America" or "Whites" are really criticisms of Reds.
He's got a point, and his examples show it. When someone writes a piece called "Why White People Don't Seem to Understand Ferguson", and he's white, he's obviously exempting himself from the charge of not understanding Ferguson.
Frobenius is quite right that we liberals can criticize ourselves for their own privilege. But as more of an outsider, Alexander is not wrong for observing that this self-critique is not searing. Acknowledging privilege is also a way of distancing ourselves from those who don't. That doesn't make it a bad or questionable thing to do, but I think it's disingenuous to deny that "Blues" feel a great deal of animus for "Reds" and believe that they are the main obstacle for social justice.
The last part of the essay kind of turns everything else upside down, by acknowledging that he's more or a less a "Gray Tribe" member who's having fun criticizing his outgroup, and he realizes that that's not meritorious. (Though this obviously didn't bother him enough to consider rewriting or rethinking the essay.) (I'm a little confused by his Gray Tribe, as by his own admission he mostly hangs out with liberals and not Reds... it seems quite the opposite of most libertarians I know of.)
posted by zompist at 2:47 PM on October 26, 2014 [12 favorites]
Are you so sure you know what your reasons are? Isn't the whole point of privilege theory that you might not actually know your own reasons for doing things?Not really. Privilege theory isn't about whether or not people are cognizant of their own motivations, it's about whether people have unearned advantages that allow them to go about life without dealing with shit that some other people must deal with.
it's certainly true that people are often... oblique about their own motivations and often driven by deep fears or wants while rationalizing other reasons for their actions. However, unless someone demonstrates some sort of concrete evidence that their stated motives are untrue, it's a pretty weak move to simply assume that people's real beliefs are the opposite of their stated ones.
In other words: don't assume you know other peoples' motives better than they do just because you have a great theory about Why People Do Stuff. The burden of proof is high.
posted by verb at 2:54 PM on October 26, 2014 [8 favorites]
see, for example, this post where he blames feminist blogs for demonizing "Nice Guys"Like a lot of frustrated guys who grapple with questions of power and structural inequality, he walked himself right up to the edge of intersectionalism and then decided, "Nope, I'll bet feminists are to blame."
posted by verb at 2:58 PM on October 26, 2014 [30 favorites]
I reserve, as a cis straight white man, the right to acknowledge openly the problems with my own privilege, and with the culture that hurts people unlike me in its assumption that I ought to be treated like the "default".
posted by rorgy at 2:58 PM on October 26, 2014 [7 favorites]
posted by rorgy at 2:58 PM on October 26, 2014 [7 favorites]
The topic is interesting; but he appears to think of solidarity solely in terms of ingroup and outgroup, which is arbitrarily reductive and simplistic, and bases most of his arguments either on superficialities such as apparent trends in media (not a good proxy for human character) or on extremely tendentious empirical work, e.g. those studies on the heritability of political orientation.
I dislike people like this, who feel motivated to speak at length on complex topics but turn out to have only a few simple ideas.
posted by clockzero at 3:00 PM on October 26, 2014 [7 favorites]
I dislike people like this, who feel motivated to speak at length on complex topics but turn out to have only a few simple ideas.
posted by clockzero at 3:00 PM on October 26, 2014 [7 favorites]
One of the hallmarks of progressives (distinct, I believe, from the "blue" of moderate-ish liberals) is hilariously fighting and critiquing itself, to the point of well-trodden parody at how often it's an obstacle to progress. Such in-group critiques include not-so-shocking revelations as "loudly professed social justice is often about a form of social capital". Men yelling about the badness of men are often viewed with at least a little bit of warranted suspicion, for example, which is why being a male feminist/ally is going to be a tricky prospect even when your intentions are good. This isn't really new, I see it played out in conversations and articles pretty much every day. (I mean, we can also see this on the Blue all the time, right?) I think there is plenty of anguished self-critique occurring within the so-called "Blue Tribe" and it's good in some ways and bad in other ways, but it's definitely there.
posted by naju at 3:02 PM on October 26, 2014 [14 favorites]
posted by naju at 3:02 PM on October 26, 2014 [14 favorites]
This essay reminds me of a linguistics professor of mine, who was in love with the idea of capital-W Wisdom and so-called fourth-person pronouns. One of his chief interests was in our mental blind spots - aspects of our minds' construction which we find inherently difficult to talk about. He would use long-winded, seemingly concentric arguments in order to make his points, about talking about things people don't talk about, in ways they don't talk about it.
I don't want to oversell the article by bringing that up, but it does share that curious mode of construction.
I feel like the author's argument loops around and around and around because, even though he does say some wrong things along the way, he is sliding around something quite correct. Our ideas of our groups, in-groups, out-groups, etc. are far more fluid and complicated than admit even to ourselves, not even when we toss around the concept of intersectionality.
I don't know if his own worldview is compatible with this, his own observation, but then again, I don't think most people's worldviews are.
...
When he brings up both WWII and Yugoslavia, it's all I can do to avoid trying to tie what I'm getting from this essay back to my own pet interest in WWII-era Yugoslavia. It is naive and insulting to claim, as he does even if it is a joke, that the Yugoslavs just sort of generally hate one another. There are actually many very "good" reasons for why the Balkans have been a place of so much conflict and violence: reasons drawn from history and intergroup relations. It is nowhere near as simple as, say, Croats "hating" Serbs just because it would physically possible to do so.
...
It seems like a mistake to pit what the author is saying "against" privilege theory. Of course white privilege exists, to the extent that anything has ever existed. The complicated part is that that whiteness, non-whiteness, privilege, lack of privilege, etc. are all complicated and fluid concepts.
posted by Sticherbeast at 3:05 PM on October 26, 2014 [8 favorites]
I don't want to oversell the article by bringing that up, but it does share that curious mode of construction.
I feel like the author's argument loops around and around and around because, even though he does say some wrong things along the way, he is sliding around something quite correct. Our ideas of our groups, in-groups, out-groups, etc. are far more fluid and complicated than admit even to ourselves, not even when we toss around the concept of intersectionality.
I don't know if his own worldview is compatible with this, his own observation, but then again, I don't think most people's worldviews are.
...
When he brings up both WWII and Yugoslavia, it's all I can do to avoid trying to tie what I'm getting from this essay back to my own pet interest in WWII-era Yugoslavia. It is naive and insulting to claim, as he does even if it is a joke, that the Yugoslavs just sort of generally hate one another. There are actually many very "good" reasons for why the Balkans have been a place of so much conflict and violence: reasons drawn from history and intergroup relations. It is nowhere near as simple as, say, Croats "hating" Serbs just because it would physically possible to do so.
...
It seems like a mistake to pit what the author is saying "against" privilege theory. Of course white privilege exists, to the extent that anything has ever existed. The complicated part is that that whiteness, non-whiteness, privilege, lack of privilege, etc. are all complicated and fluid concepts.
posted by Sticherbeast at 3:05 PM on October 26, 2014 [8 favorites]
I thought I was going to like this a lot based on the pullquote. And I did like it for a while, but then it got boring.
But then the last section basically saved it:
posted by anotherpanacea at 3:07 PM on October 26, 2014 [6 favorites]
But then the last section basically saved it:
"This essay is bad and I should feel bad.Ok, buddy. You may have a bunch of crazy beliefs about feminism, but I like your style.
I should feel bad because I made exactly the mistake I am trying to warn everyone else about, and it wasn’t until I was almost done that I noticed."
posted by anotherpanacea at 3:07 PM on October 26, 2014 [6 favorites]
Eh.
First, the reason people rip their ingroups -- the reason people have always ripped their ingroups right up until an outsider had the temerity to try -- is that familiarity breeds contempt. My family all hates each other until someone says something about my family, at which point solidarity emerges.
Second, a sort of simple minded cure for groups that are suffering outside the mainstream is to be open and accepting and welcome them into the mainstream. It's not sufficient but it is sort of a prerequisite for things to improve.
Third, it only took me two paragraphs to describe that.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 3:07 PM on October 26, 2014 [7 favorites]
First, the reason people rip their ingroups -- the reason people have always ripped their ingroups right up until an outsider had the temerity to try -- is that familiarity breeds contempt. My family all hates each other until someone says something about my family, at which point solidarity emerges.
Second, a sort of simple minded cure for groups that are suffering outside the mainstream is to be open and accepting and welcome them into the mainstream. It's not sufficient but it is sort of a prerequisite for things to improve.
Third, it only took me two paragraphs to describe that.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 3:07 PM on October 26, 2014 [7 favorites]
I think it's disingenuous to deny that "Blues" feel a great deal of animus for "Reds" and believe that they are the main obstacle for social justice.
Maybe it is disingenuous. But I think it's equally disingenuous to read that animus as if it's a) entirely unjustified and b) the only relationship intended or felt.
(I'm a little confused by his Gray Tribe, as by his own admission he mostly hangs out with liberals and not Reds... it seems quite the opposite of most libertarians I know of.)
There's a long tradition, albeit a sometimes quiet one, of left-libertarianism, basically people who start from the premise that their ideas are empirical (for a range of understandings of "empirical"), who are hostile to cultural/social constructivist explanations of social and political phenomena, and who are very distrustful of anything that looks like anything other than a kind of amicable atomism.
Someone in that "tribe" -- and, oh, the just-so evo-psych notions embedded in that word -- is anti-reactionary and anti-conservative because those, too, proceed from ethical/cultural principles first and data second; but they also, as Alexander does in many of his posts, fundamentally believe that an essentially pure meritocracy is possible with the right social setup. So they're also anti-leftist. His tribe would be, among other things, pro-graph, pro-market, anti-academy, and broadly secularist (but not necessarily militantly atheistic). Basically, centrist pseudo-Popperians who think the stat sets they assemble imply that reality has a vaguely progressive bias.
posted by kewb at 3:09 PM on October 26, 2014 [5 favorites]
Maybe it is disingenuous. But I think it's equally disingenuous to read that animus as if it's a) entirely unjustified and b) the only relationship intended or felt.
(I'm a little confused by his Gray Tribe, as by his own admission he mostly hangs out with liberals and not Reds... it seems quite the opposite of most libertarians I know of.)
There's a long tradition, albeit a sometimes quiet one, of left-libertarianism, basically people who start from the premise that their ideas are empirical (for a range of understandings of "empirical"), who are hostile to cultural/social constructivist explanations of social and political phenomena, and who are very distrustful of anything that looks like anything other than a kind of amicable atomism.
Someone in that "tribe" -- and, oh, the just-so evo-psych notions embedded in that word -- is anti-reactionary and anti-conservative because those, too, proceed from ethical/cultural principles first and data second; but they also, as Alexander does in many of his posts, fundamentally believe that an essentially pure meritocracy is possible with the right social setup. So they're also anti-leftist. His tribe would be, among other things, pro-graph, pro-market, anti-academy, and broadly secularist (but not necessarily militantly atheistic). Basically, centrist pseudo-Popperians who think the stat sets they assemble imply that reality has a vaguely progressive bias.
posted by kewb at 3:09 PM on October 26, 2014 [5 favorites]
One of the hallmarks of progressives (distinct, I believe, from the "blue" of moderate-ish liberals) is hilariously fighting and critiquing itself, to the point of well-trodden parody at how often it's an obstacle to progress.I'll stop posting here now, I swear, but I can say from personal experience that there is nothing unique about this in progressive circles. It's there in spades in any group with strong ideological components and idealistic goals. Religious fundamentalism is plagued by it, conservative activism is all but defined by endless litmus tests and ingroup knife-fighting over the finer points of theory.
The funny thing is that for the couple of decades I counted myself as part of that crowd, it was an article of faith that the other team -- the progressives, the democrats, the liberals, the socialists, etc. -- were so "successful" because they weren't bound by principles the way we were. They would put aside their differences for the greater good at the drop of a hat, and unite to [promote abortion/raise taxes/end capitalism/whatever].
I think that every group that is characterized by vigorous internal debate imagines that the other guys are so much less troubled by these things, and that the "good guys" would win if they'd just get with the program.
posted by verb at 3:11 PM on October 26, 2014 [36 favorites]
I can say from personal experience that there is nothing unique about this in progressive circles
Don't get me wrong, in-group fighting and anguish happens everywhere. But progressives do this in a very particular way. They (we) hold self-criticism and inspection of your own faults up as one of the greatest things you can do, it's sort of embedded deeply in the culture - e.g. the concept of privilege is about a lot of things, but a huge part of it is about figuring out your personal blindnesses and keeping awareness of them at the forefront in your daily life. And so progressives rail harshly against people who don't interrogate their own blindnesses - this is definitely an out-group to them - but progressives are just as guilty of this as anyone else, inevitably, so progressives spend a lot of time castigating other progressives in their circles.
That's a somewhat unique kind of self-criticizing group, isn't it?
posted by naju at 3:23 PM on October 26, 2014 [3 favorites]
Don't get me wrong, in-group fighting and anguish happens everywhere. But progressives do this in a very particular way. They (we) hold self-criticism and inspection of your own faults up as one of the greatest things you can do, it's sort of embedded deeply in the culture - e.g. the concept of privilege is about a lot of things, but a huge part of it is about figuring out your personal blindnesses and keeping awareness of them at the forefront in your daily life. And so progressives rail harshly against people who don't interrogate their own blindnesses - this is definitely an out-group to them - but progressives are just as guilty of this as anyone else, inevitably, so progressives spend a lot of time castigating other progressives in their circles.
That's a somewhat unique kind of self-criticizing group, isn't it?
posted by naju at 3:23 PM on October 26, 2014 [3 favorites]
It's almost like trying to characterize all yays as applying to the in group and all boos as applying to the out group doesn't work.
posted by Pope Guilty at 3:25 PM on October 26, 2014 [1 favorite]
posted by Pope Guilty at 3:25 PM on October 26, 2014 [1 favorite]
The term "oikophobia" (literally "fear of the household," but broadened by some to mean "repudiation of one's heritage") might be useful here. Granted, its use in the more political sense is due to conservative thinkers, but it often fits, IMHO.
posted by dhens at 3:31 PM on October 26, 2014 [3 favorites]
posted by dhens at 3:31 PM on October 26, 2014 [3 favorites]
Barry is possibly the most feminist man who has ever existed, palpably exudes respect for women, and this is well-known in every circle feminists frequent. He is reduced to apophatic complaints about how sad he is that he doesn’t think he’ll ever have a real romantic relationship.
The "Barry" he's talking about here, BTW, is my friend Barry Deutsch, and he's writing in response to Barry's post on how MRAs have ruined complaining about being single, which they have.
I imagine people who actually care about ethics in video game journalism are in the same state.
posted by Myca at 3:43 PM on October 26, 2014 [16 favorites]
The "Barry" he's talking about here, BTW, is my friend Barry Deutsch, and he's writing in response to Barry's post on how MRAs have ruined complaining about being single, which they have.
I imagine people who actually care about ethics in video game journalism are in the same state.
posted by Myca at 3:43 PM on October 26, 2014 [16 favorites]
They (we) hold self-criticism and inspection of your own faults up as one of the greatest things you can do, it's sort of embedded deeply in the culture - e.g. the concept of privilege is about a lot of things, but a huge part of it is about figuring out your personal blindnesses and keeping awareness of them at the forefront in your daily life.
Honestly,t he more I think about it, the more I think about the analogs within other groups is the same process dressed up in different colors. It's all about judging the self and the other against an ideal - it's the ideal which shifts from place to place.
If you think about it, the process is central to creating and maintaining a life - outside of a situation where people who chose wrongly die instantly or near-instantly, it's all making up hypothesises of what we "should" do with varying levels of feedback about the results of those choices. Certainly for a lot of my choices I get very little or conflicting feedback.
Ultimately, I think the hardest thing for people to do is to be kind, either to ourselves or to others - and given there are times when kindness may not be the best choice, and often times where kindness can be harmful to the self and change nothing about the other, I can understand the difficulty.
posted by Deoridhe at 3:47 PM on October 26, 2014 [4 favorites]
Honestly,t he more I think about it, the more I think about the analogs within other groups is the same process dressed up in different colors. It's all about judging the self and the other against an ideal - it's the ideal which shifts from place to place.
If you think about it, the process is central to creating and maintaining a life - outside of a situation where people who chose wrongly die instantly or near-instantly, it's all making up hypothesises of what we "should" do with varying levels of feedback about the results of those choices. Certainly for a lot of my choices I get very little or conflicting feedback.
Ultimately, I think the hardest thing for people to do is to be kind, either to ourselves or to others - and given there are times when kindness may not be the best choice, and often times where kindness can be harmful to the self and change nothing about the other, I can understand the difficulty.
posted by Deoridhe at 3:47 PM on October 26, 2014 [4 favorites]
Three reactions.
1. This sentence seemed to be the point of the essay and is interesting to consider:
I am saying that the underlying attitudes that produce partyism are stronger than the underlying attitudes that produce racism, with no necessary implications on their social effects.
2. That means the Red Tribe feels intensely patriotic about “their” country, and the Blue Tribe feels like they’re living in fortified enclaves deep in hostile territory.
While I think it's true what is identified as "American as apple pie" is often coded white and rural, when we talk about American music and aesthetics, things get much less white. I think it was around this part of the essay that I lost patience with the writer. Castigating Blue Tribers for writing articles on gamer misogyny or American ignorance (that do not acknowledge, at least in the headlines, that #notallgamers are men or #notallAmericans are oblivious), while also using the same rhetorical simplifications was something I found intensely irritating.
3. Research suggests Blue Tribe / Red Tribe prejudice to be much stronger than better-known types of prejudice like racism. Once the Blue Tribe was able to enlist the blacks and gays and Muslims in their ranks, they became allies of convenience who deserve to be rehabilitated with mildly condescending paeans to their virtue.
OK, now I feel like the writer did one of those things I used to do in university where I would write essays that meandered so far from the original thesis that logic dissolves into gooey WTF-ness. Does the Blue Tribe not also consist of blacks and gays already? I think the recruitment of newer immigrant groups, such as many Muslim communities, or Latinos, or Asian Americans, by various political causes and parties may be less of a stretch, but this definition of Blue Tribers as originally white and straight is just so wrongheaded.
posted by spamandkimchi at 3:48 PM on October 26, 2014 [5 favorites]
1. This sentence seemed to be the point of the essay and is interesting to consider:
I am saying that the underlying attitudes that produce partyism are stronger than the underlying attitudes that produce racism, with no necessary implications on their social effects.
2. That means the Red Tribe feels intensely patriotic about “their” country, and the Blue Tribe feels like they’re living in fortified enclaves deep in hostile territory.
While I think it's true what is identified as "American as apple pie" is often coded white and rural, when we talk about American music and aesthetics, things get much less white. I think it was around this part of the essay that I lost patience with the writer. Castigating Blue Tribers for writing articles on gamer misogyny or American ignorance (that do not acknowledge, at least in the headlines, that #notallgamers are men or #notallAmericans are oblivious), while also using the same rhetorical simplifications was something I found intensely irritating.
3. Research suggests Blue Tribe / Red Tribe prejudice to be much stronger than better-known types of prejudice like racism. Once the Blue Tribe was able to enlist the blacks and gays and Muslims in their ranks, they became allies of convenience who deserve to be rehabilitated with mildly condescending paeans to their virtue.
OK, now I feel like the writer did one of those things I used to do in university where I would write essays that meandered so far from the original thesis that logic dissolves into gooey WTF-ness. Does the Blue Tribe not also consist of blacks and gays already? I think the recruitment of newer immigrant groups, such as many Muslim communities, or Latinos, or Asian Americans, by various political causes and parties may be less of a stretch, but this definition of Blue Tribers as originally white and straight is just so wrongheaded.
posted by spamandkimchi at 3:48 PM on October 26, 2014 [5 favorites]
(For the record, the reason "Nice Guys" are pathetic is because they are hypocrites. If they themselves were willing to date any girl who is "nice," regardless of how attractive they find her, they wouldn't be dateless.)
posted by straight at 4:15 PM on October 26, 2014 [17 favorites]
posted by straight at 4:15 PM on October 26, 2014 [17 favorites]
Three sections into this, I had the feeling that it was going to go off the rails and become guilty of the same oversimplification that it accused everyone else of. But I stuck with it, because political essays posted to the bluewhite usually end up being good. Nope. I think I strained a muscle in the giant eye-roll I gave when he did the Big Reveal at the end and proclaimed himself a Grey Triber.
posted by spitefulcrow at 4:16 PM on October 26, 2014 [2 favorites]
posted by spitefulcrow at 4:16 PM on October 26, 2014 [2 favorites]
Hmm. Though he was unnecessarily verbose (and I don't want to even get into the "Nice Guy" article), through the wandering weeds of his argument I thought there were a few really interesting points. One was that your out-group isn’t the people that you share the least number of demographic characteristics with. It’s the group you dislike the most, that you define yourselves in opposition to most.
And he was right (about me at least) about who that out-group is. I’m way more bothered, at a gut level, than George Bush or Margaret Thatcher or Rush Limbaugh or Sarah Palin or Tony Abbot than I am by ISIS or Osama Bin Laden. Even though I think that, objectively speaking, ISIS and Osama are worse people in most relevant ways, and I would never try to justify beheadings or almost anything that they do or did.
Why the imbalance? I think this is because it feels — and I’m not saying this feeling is accurate, I’m just trying to describe the gut feeling rather than the rational consideration — it feels like any damage ISIS or Obama has done to me or my loved ones is indirect. The damage done to me by members of the Red Tribe feels a lot more direct, and that is therefore who I dislike.
For example, consider my sister, who served two tours in Iraq and is still bothered by PTSD even after almost a decade away. In my rational mind I try to stay away from the blame game entirely, because I think blame is pernicious and it usually only ends up hurting the blamer: but my lizard brain? You can bet my lizard brain blames Bush, not Osama, for the fact that she got caught in that clusterfuck in the first place. It is Bush’s smirking face that I picture when I think about what she’s been through. I’m not saying that’s right, and I agree that really there is more than enough blame for everyone, but my lizard brain is mad at Bush.
Or, to take an example closer to home, consider the fact that I spent much of my adolescence struggling with internalised hatred brought about by being queer in a pretty religious and conservative part of the country. Do I hate someone like Fred Phelps or the Taliban for their homophobia? Or do I, on a gut level, reserve more emotion for the religious leaders I knew who preached that being gay was a sin -- or Rush Limbaugh, who people I knew daily listened to him tell them that the gays and feminists are what is ruining America? It’s Limbaugh, or the people I knew in person, that I feel far more strongly about. Even though Phelps was a much worse homophobe and the people I knew were much better people overall. (Okay, yes, Rush is a dick through-and-through).
We dislike — we hate — what we know, what we have experience with. And thus it takes way more difficult emotional work to get myself to un-see that someone is a member of Young Republicans than if they are a member of Young Muslims. I’m not proud of that, because it’s the exact same tribal thinking that I condemn in most other contexts. But I think identifying it — and being willing to sit with and acknowledge those uncomfortable emotions rather than try to explain them away or justify them — is the first step to becoming really non-tribal. Which I do think is a very good goal, still.
posted by forza at 4:26 PM on October 26, 2014 [16 favorites]
And he was right (about me at least) about who that out-group is. I’m way more bothered, at a gut level, than George Bush or Margaret Thatcher or Rush Limbaugh or Sarah Palin or Tony Abbot than I am by ISIS or Osama Bin Laden. Even though I think that, objectively speaking, ISIS and Osama are worse people in most relevant ways, and I would never try to justify beheadings or almost anything that they do or did.
Why the imbalance? I think this is because it feels — and I’m not saying this feeling is accurate, I’m just trying to describe the gut feeling rather than the rational consideration — it feels like any damage ISIS or Obama has done to me or my loved ones is indirect. The damage done to me by members of the Red Tribe feels a lot more direct, and that is therefore who I dislike.
For example, consider my sister, who served two tours in Iraq and is still bothered by PTSD even after almost a decade away. In my rational mind I try to stay away from the blame game entirely, because I think blame is pernicious and it usually only ends up hurting the blamer: but my lizard brain? You can bet my lizard brain blames Bush, not Osama, for the fact that she got caught in that clusterfuck in the first place. It is Bush’s smirking face that I picture when I think about what she’s been through. I’m not saying that’s right, and I agree that really there is more than enough blame for everyone, but my lizard brain is mad at Bush.
Or, to take an example closer to home, consider the fact that I spent much of my adolescence struggling with internalised hatred brought about by being queer in a pretty religious and conservative part of the country. Do I hate someone like Fred Phelps or the Taliban for their homophobia? Or do I, on a gut level, reserve more emotion for the religious leaders I knew who preached that being gay was a sin -- or Rush Limbaugh, who people I knew daily listened to him tell them that the gays and feminists are what is ruining America? It’s Limbaugh, or the people I knew in person, that I feel far more strongly about. Even though Phelps was a much worse homophobe and the people I knew were much better people overall. (Okay, yes, Rush is a dick through-and-through).
We dislike — we hate — what we know, what we have experience with. And thus it takes way more difficult emotional work to get myself to un-see that someone is a member of Young Republicans than if they are a member of Young Muslims. I’m not proud of that, because it’s the exact same tribal thinking that I condemn in most other contexts. But I think identifying it — and being willing to sit with and acknowledge those uncomfortable emotions rather than try to explain them away or justify them — is the first step to becoming really non-tribal. Which I do think is a very good goal, still.
posted by forza at 4:26 PM on October 26, 2014 [16 favorites]
Red people are like THAT but blue people are like THIS, AMIRITE? But Grey people, well, totes different.
Chattering classes gotta chatter, I guess.
posted by rmd1023 at 4:26 PM on October 26, 2014 [3 favorites]
Chattering classes gotta chatter, I guess.
posted by rmd1023 at 4:26 PM on October 26, 2014 [3 favorites]
Is he a Popehat member? Or are these red/blue/grey tribe analogies much more widespread than I think? (Sorry if this is a stupid question, but I genuinely haven't run across it until recently. Dr. Google only links me to the same blog as this article and some grey/blue/red tribe tee-shirts. )
The latest Popehat article on #gamergate, which I found pretty unreadable, is also all about the blue/red/grey tribes.
posted by frumiousb at 4:27 PM on October 26, 2014 [2 favorites]
The latest Popehat article on #gamergate, which I found pretty unreadable, is also all about the blue/red/grey tribes.
posted by frumiousb at 4:27 PM on October 26, 2014 [2 favorites]
It guilt. It's an immature, transparent display of white leftist guilt. A high-school level of thinking from people who often have masters degrees. And it's not new. This behavior has been around since the 60s civil rights era.
And, maybe even more to the point, the kabuki of monitoring and calibrating attitudes around identity can displace actual leftist politics.
Walter Benn Michaels: The differentiation between left and right neoliberalism doesn’t really undermine the way in which it is deeply unified in its commitment to competitive markets and to the state’s role in maintaining competitive markets. For me the distinction is that “left neoliberals” are people who don’t understand themselves as neoliberals. They think that their commitments to anti-racism, to anti-sexism, to anti-homophobia constitute a critique of neoliberalism. But if you look at the history of the idea of neoliberalism you can see fairly quickly that neoliberalism arises as a kind of commitment precisely to those things.
posted by batfish at 4:30 PM on October 26, 2014 [5 favorites]
And, maybe even more to the point, the kabuki of monitoring and calibrating attitudes around identity can displace actual leftist politics.
Walter Benn Michaels: The differentiation between left and right neoliberalism doesn’t really undermine the way in which it is deeply unified in its commitment to competitive markets and to the state’s role in maintaining competitive markets. For me the distinction is that “left neoliberals” are people who don’t understand themselves as neoliberals. They think that their commitments to anti-racism, to anti-sexism, to anti-homophobia constitute a critique of neoliberalism. But if you look at the history of the idea of neoliberalism you can see fairly quickly that neoliberalism arises as a kind of commitment precisely to those things.
posted by batfish at 4:30 PM on October 26, 2014 [5 favorites]
I believe the author is a grey tuber.
posted by benzenedream at 6:32 PM on October 26, 2014 [1 favorite]
posted by benzenedream at 6:32 PM on October 26, 2014 [1 favorite]
And, maybe even more to the point, the kabuki of monitoring and calibrating attitudes around identity can displace actual leftist politics.To reiterate, though, that process has replaced actual political and economic conservatism in the United States' "conservative" political party, too. Just reiterating, again, that these patterns are not ideology-specific.
posted by verb at 7:18 PM on October 26, 2014 [1 favorite]
Being able to freely criticize your in group is one of the all time hallmarks of extreme privilege. "freely" in this case means both the ability to be casual and the lack of blowback or costs in criticizing one's own group.
posted by chaz at 7:34 PM on October 26, 2014
posted by chaz at 7:34 PM on October 26, 2014
It is not surprisingly that this guy self-identifies as a "Grey Tribe" member and has a link on his sidebar to Popehat, one of the most foul and unpleasant mouthpieces of garbage LibertarianismIt's not surprising to me, because although Scott is the author of the Anti-Libertarian FAQ, he is also incredibly sensitive to the fact that the only way to learn is to pay attention to opinions you don't already agree with.
You might do well to learn from that.
posted by roystgnr at 8:08 PM on October 26, 2014 [4 favorites]
For all the flaws in this essay, this study about how "party" gets a stronger gut reaction than "race" is super fascinating.
posted by DGStieber at 8:10 PM on October 26, 2014 [3 favorites]
posted by DGStieber at 8:10 PM on October 26, 2014 [3 favorites]
Popehat, one of the most foul and unpleasant mouthpieces of garbage LibertarianismDefinitely depends on who you're reading over at PopeHat; Ken, for example, is a breath of fresh air even when I vigorously disagree with him, while Clark is unbearable. That's the trick with multi-author blogs.
The unreadable "recent article at Popehat about #gamergate," for example, was written by Clark. Ken's take this evening was... significantly more nuanced.
posted by verb at 8:42 PM on October 26, 2014 [12 favorites]
To reiterate, though, that process has replaced actual political and economic conservatism in the United States' "conservative" political party, too.
Really? The reversal of the New Deal and the Great Society since Reagan don't count as victories for "actual" political and economic conservatism? There's a "no true scotsman" fallacy threatening here... I would argue, on the contrary, that the "left" has won on multiculti and the cosmetics of progress, and the right has won on the actual distribution of power and resources.
posted by batfish at 8:50 PM on October 26, 2014 [3 favorites]
Really? The reversal of the New Deal and the Great Society since Reagan don't count as victories for "actual" political and economic conservatism? There's a "no true scotsman" fallacy threatening here... I would argue, on the contrary, that the "left" has won on multiculti and the cosmetics of progress, and the right has won on the actual distribution of power and resources.
posted by batfish at 8:50 PM on October 26, 2014 [3 favorites]
The reversal of the New Deal and the Great Society since Reagan don't count as victories for "actual" political and economic conservatism?We're not talking about the efficacy of different political movements. This is about their view of the out-group, in-group criticism, and so on. Solidly conservative candidates on the right, folks that progressives hate, increasingly face bitter primary battles over internal purity tests, too.
Most of those internal arguments look crazy pants to progressives, but that doesn't mean they aren't intense and ongoing.
posted by verb at 9:04 PM on October 26, 2014
Ok, but then it's not really right to say that the tea party purity olympics or whatever has replaced actual political and economic conservatism in the same way that identity politics has replaced actual leftism.
posted by batfish at 9:17 PM on October 26, 2014
posted by batfish at 9:17 PM on October 26, 2014
If you're well-educated, It's easier to hate your neighbour than the guy in another country. It feels more comfortable. Because you're hating something you know, and that 's so much cosier than hating the alien. You know where you are with neighbour-hatred.
posted by Decani at 9:27 PM on October 26, 2014
posted by Decani at 9:27 PM on October 26, 2014
...what about trying to not hate anyone?
By and large, I'm much more comfortable with a nuanced view of everyone, whether I agree with them or not. Even with the people who I fear the most - woman hating men - I try to spend time figuring out their hate, the roots it has, and the soil it grew in. Not for their sake, but for my own - for the hope that someday there will be a path out of here which doesn't include them killing me.
posted by Deoridhe at 1:28 AM on October 27, 2014 [3 favorites]
By and large, I'm much more comfortable with a nuanced view of everyone, whether I agree with them or not. Even with the people who I fear the most - woman hating men - I try to spend time figuring out their hate, the roots it has, and the soil it grew in. Not for their sake, but for my own - for the hope that someday there will be a path out of here which doesn't include them killing me.
posted by Deoridhe at 1:28 AM on October 27, 2014 [3 favorites]
I totally agree, Deoridhe! I think the first step to accomplishing that is to recognise when you are hating or disliking someone. That allows you to interrogate the feeling rather than trying to justify it (which is otherwise the overwhelming temptation).
posted by forza at 2:12 AM on October 27, 2014
posted by forza at 2:12 AM on October 27, 2014
I like this article, and I like all of SSC's articles. I don't agree with all/most of them, but I think they are challenging and interesting, and they have lots of nuggets of truth in them. I think its quite hard to justify being pleased about Thatcher's death but not about Bin Laden's, yet certainly some did have that reaction. I think you can, just as you can justify marching against Isreal's actions while not doing so against the Syrian government, but I think its worth thinking about why you are doing things carefully, rather than just trying to quickly justify oneself.
It is definitely true that we, as humans, post-hoc justify. Its very, very easy to come up with reasons why we did something. I have got into arguments with my wife before where I have given a list of things that made me upset. And while all of those things are good reasons to get upset, it's usually true that the actual reason that I am upset is that I am tired and hungry. Looking at our core reasons for the ways we act can be helpful, and lead to clear thinking.
I don't think SSC is perfect at clear thinking, but I think he's quite good at it. I don't share his political sympathies, but do agree that "femnism" as it exists online can be quite unfocused, for instance, and sometimes run ahead of what the facts support. I don't particularly agree that there is much of value to get from MRAs, but it might be worth considering why men associate themselves with that movement.
posted by Cannon Fodder at 4:02 AM on October 27, 2014 [2 favorites]
It is definitely true that we, as humans, post-hoc justify. Its very, very easy to come up with reasons why we did something. I have got into arguments with my wife before where I have given a list of things that made me upset. And while all of those things are good reasons to get upset, it's usually true that the actual reason that I am upset is that I am tired and hungry. Looking at our core reasons for the ways we act can be helpful, and lead to clear thinking.
I don't think SSC is perfect at clear thinking, but I think he's quite good at it. I don't share his political sympathies, but do agree that "femnism" as it exists online can be quite unfocused, for instance, and sometimes run ahead of what the facts support. I don't particularly agree that there is much of value to get from MRAs, but it might be worth considering why men associate themselves with that movement.
posted by Cannon Fodder at 4:02 AM on October 27, 2014 [2 favorites]
I imagine people who actually care about ethics in video game journalism are in the same state.
Well, it's not hard to make points about ethics in video game journalism without seeming like a misogynist douche - just look at the overwhelming majority of journalists in the video games industry, the ones nobody is creating a maelstrom about: the men.
I think its quite hard to justify being pleased about Thatcher's death but not about Bin Laden's, yet certainly some did have that reaction.
I think it's pretty easy, actually. It'd probably be harder to justify getting all judgey about people being pleased at one death while being pleased at the other, though. I was neither pleased nor horrified at Bin Laden's death (seeing it as a bit of a symbolic irrelevance at that point), it was just a thing that happened. People celebrated, and I get that, and people were critical of the circumstances of his death (i.e. he should have been arrested and faced trial) which I also get. Thatcher dying did raise some schadenfreude in me, though. I just don't really take much truck with the 'respect for the dead' thing - if I can say Thatcher was evil on the day before she died, I can say it on the day she died, and the day after.
And hey, Chumbawumba didn't have an EP coming out on the day of Bin Laden's death.
posted by Dysk at 5:02 AM on October 27, 2014 [1 favorite]
Well, it's not hard to make points about ethics in video game journalism without seeming like a misogynist douche - just look at the overwhelming majority of journalists in the video games industry, the ones nobody is creating a maelstrom about: the men.
I think its quite hard to justify being pleased about Thatcher's death but not about Bin Laden's, yet certainly some did have that reaction.
I think it's pretty easy, actually. It'd probably be harder to justify getting all judgey about people being pleased at one death while being pleased at the other, though. I was neither pleased nor horrified at Bin Laden's death (seeing it as a bit of a symbolic irrelevance at that point), it was just a thing that happened. People celebrated, and I get that, and people were critical of the circumstances of his death (i.e. he should have been arrested and faced trial) which I also get. Thatcher dying did raise some schadenfreude in me, though. I just don't really take much truck with the 'respect for the dead' thing - if I can say Thatcher was evil on the day before she died, I can say it on the day she died, and the day after.
And hey, Chumbawumba didn't have an EP coming out on the day of Bin Laden's death.
posted by Dysk at 5:02 AM on October 27, 2014 [1 favorite]
Thatcher dying did raise some schadenfreude in me, though
Why Thatcher and not Bin Laden though? If we consider them both evil (and I feel like if we consider Thatcher to be evil we should probably consider Bin Laden to be evil) then shouldn't we take a similar amount of pleasure in their deaths (or, I suppose, a proportional amount)? At the very least, the fact that many did not might be worth thinking about I guess. To declare my interests, I don't think I've taken pleasure in death exactly, but I have probably taken more pleasure in the misfortune of people who's politics I dislike than of, say, terrorists. I can think of lots of reasons for that, but I do think its worth thinking about at least.
posted by Cannon Fodder at 6:08 AM on October 27, 2014 [1 favorite]
Why Thatcher and not Bin Laden though? If we consider them both evil (and I feel like if we consider Thatcher to be evil we should probably consider Bin Laden to be evil) then shouldn't we take a similar amount of pleasure in their deaths (or, I suppose, a proportional amount)? At the very least, the fact that many did not might be worth thinking about I guess. To declare my interests, I don't think I've taken pleasure in death exactly, but I have probably taken more pleasure in the misfortune of people who's politics I dislike than of, say, terrorists. I can think of lots of reasons for that, but I do think its worth thinking about at least.
posted by Cannon Fodder at 6:08 AM on October 27, 2014 [1 favorite]
A lot of this was a whole lot of beaten-to-death liberal hand-wringing over, "we are such a divided country and we just don't *talk* to each other any more!"
He also misses the most conspicuous reason why there is so much criticism of the in-group: because they are the ones who are allowed to make those criticisms. Seriously, this is the most obvious point in the world. It is considered less biased because there isn't any apparent ulterior motive. It's also "provocative" because it is unexpected.
It didn't seem necessary to wrap this up in a whole lot of anxiety about how we are a divided nation. Big shock, but it turns out that political and ideological beliefs mean things and have real life consequences to people, who will sort themselves towards the best fit for their profession and personal/emotional satisfaction.
posted by deanc at 6:34 AM on October 27, 2014 [1 favorite]
He also misses the most conspicuous reason why there is so much criticism of the in-group: because they are the ones who are allowed to make those criticisms. Seriously, this is the most obvious point in the world. It is considered less biased because there isn't any apparent ulterior motive. It's also "provocative" because it is unexpected.
It didn't seem necessary to wrap this up in a whole lot of anxiety about how we are a divided nation. Big shock, but it turns out that political and ideological beliefs mean things and have real life consequences to people, who will sort themselves towards the best fit for their profession and personal/emotional satisfaction.
posted by deanc at 6:34 AM on October 27, 2014 [1 favorite]
I think its quite hard to justify being pleased about Thatcher's death but not about Bin Laden's, yet certainly some did have that reaction. I think you can, just as you can justify marching against Isreal's actions while not doing so against the Syrian government.
The questions here are so reductively put, so bizarrely decontextualized, that of course equivalences seem to burble up. Had a squad of pro--miner's-union troopers from, I dunno, Newcastle, parachuted in and shot Thatcher in her home, I imagine most left-wingers would have had a lot of qualms about taking any pleasure in her death. But that's of course not what happened; she lived a long and politically successful life and passed on of natural causes. No one particularly imagined that Thatcherism died with her, but no one had any reason to feel politically or morally culpable in the causes of her death either. She received a multimillion-pound state funeral and endless hagiographies from her side of the political spectrum. Thus, her opponents indulged in a kind of impotent display of schadenfreude, a kind of belated and rather meaningless bit of compensation.
With Bin Laden, little of the hand-wringing was about him so much as about the circumstances of his death, the notion that they set a worrisome precedent or represented a kind of overreach, and was symptomatic of a deeply misguided or immoral response to terrorism in general with real, wide-scale, and concrete consequences. and the argument that killing Bin Laden in such circumstances was not the stunning blow against terrorism it might've been. There was also the idea that it might've been better to try and take him alive in order to actually try him and thereby achieve a limited restoration of or advocacy for the very sorts of processes and values that he so destructively opposed.
Likewise, marching against Israel makes plenty of sense in ways that marching against Syria does not. The United States government supports Israel militarily and diplomatically; it opposes Syria. There's much more incentive, and much better reasons, to march to change a government policy than there are to march to support an existing one. This is also why there are, I would guess, a lot more anti-Israeli-government protests in the U.S. than pro-Israeli-government marches, which is probably the better situation to consider. Unsurprisingly, people get out an march when they don't like what we're doing, not when they do. (Actually, isn't a "Pro" march that aligns with official policy usually called a parade?)
Additionally, there's the simple fact that Israel and the U.S. are representative democracies; a popular march at least vaguely constitutes something that such governments are supposed to respond to. Perhaps your congressperson will notice the numbers of marchers and vote differently, or perhaps Israeli government officials might perceive a reason to moderate their military response lest the U.S. become politically disinclined to continue robustly supporting some of the things they do.
It's harder to identify the purpose of a march against Syria, a hereditary dictatorship which has never been terribly interested in internal expressions of popular opinion, let alone American expressions of popular opinion. It might make sense to march in favor of a U.S. strike on Syria if you have reason to believe the U.S. won't strike at Syria, but that would require a profound ignorance of both recent and distant historical context.
Really, it's about seeing these events as part of larger processes and connecting them to their concrete and structural outcomes, consequences, and causes. Peeling away all such context and treating them as individual, arational/irrational emotional responses in the void lets you play a false equivalency game and declare yourself rational and most others irrational, but it's hardly "clear thinking" or really, anything like thinking at all. It's like demanding to know why someone bought an apple but not an orange while leaving out the fact that they're trying to make an apple pie. Clearly, they're all irrational anti-orangists, and need to engage in deep self-examination before they go abandoning or disparaging those people over there insisting that they buy oranges!
So the real question is, why go to the effort of stripping away all that valuable context and posing a frankly bullshit question? Well, to define oneself as a clear thinker and shout "Gotcha!" at people you already (perhaps...irrationally!) don't like, of course.
posted by kewb at 6:35 AM on October 27, 2014 [17 favorites]
The questions here are so reductively put, so bizarrely decontextualized, that of course equivalences seem to burble up. Had a squad of pro--miner's-union troopers from, I dunno, Newcastle, parachuted in and shot Thatcher in her home, I imagine most left-wingers would have had a lot of qualms about taking any pleasure in her death. But that's of course not what happened; she lived a long and politically successful life and passed on of natural causes. No one particularly imagined that Thatcherism died with her, but no one had any reason to feel politically or morally culpable in the causes of her death either. She received a multimillion-pound state funeral and endless hagiographies from her side of the political spectrum. Thus, her opponents indulged in a kind of impotent display of schadenfreude, a kind of belated and rather meaningless bit of compensation.
With Bin Laden, little of the hand-wringing was about him so much as about the circumstances of his death, the notion that they set a worrisome precedent or represented a kind of overreach, and was symptomatic of a deeply misguided or immoral response to terrorism in general with real, wide-scale, and concrete consequences. and the argument that killing Bin Laden in such circumstances was not the stunning blow against terrorism it might've been. There was also the idea that it might've been better to try and take him alive in order to actually try him and thereby achieve a limited restoration of or advocacy for the very sorts of processes and values that he so destructively opposed.
Likewise, marching against Israel makes plenty of sense in ways that marching against Syria does not. The United States government supports Israel militarily and diplomatically; it opposes Syria. There's much more incentive, and much better reasons, to march to change a government policy than there are to march to support an existing one. This is also why there are, I would guess, a lot more anti-Israeli-government protests in the U.S. than pro-Israeli-government marches, which is probably the better situation to consider. Unsurprisingly, people get out an march when they don't like what we're doing, not when they do. (Actually, isn't a "Pro" march that aligns with official policy usually called a parade?)
Additionally, there's the simple fact that Israel and the U.S. are representative democracies; a popular march at least vaguely constitutes something that such governments are supposed to respond to. Perhaps your congressperson will notice the numbers of marchers and vote differently, or perhaps Israeli government officials might perceive a reason to moderate their military response lest the U.S. become politically disinclined to continue robustly supporting some of the things they do.
It's harder to identify the purpose of a march against Syria, a hereditary dictatorship which has never been terribly interested in internal expressions of popular opinion, let alone American expressions of popular opinion. It might make sense to march in favor of a U.S. strike on Syria if you have reason to believe the U.S. won't strike at Syria, but that would require a profound ignorance of both recent and distant historical context.
Really, it's about seeing these events as part of larger processes and connecting them to their concrete and structural outcomes, consequences, and causes. Peeling away all such context and treating them as individual, arational/irrational emotional responses in the void lets you play a false equivalency game and declare yourself rational and most others irrational, but it's hardly "clear thinking" or really, anything like thinking at all. It's like demanding to know why someone bought an apple but not an orange while leaving out the fact that they're trying to make an apple pie. Clearly, they're all irrational anti-orangists, and need to engage in deep self-examination before they go abandoning or disparaging those people over there insisting that they buy oranges!
So the real question is, why go to the effort of stripping away all that valuable context and posing a frankly bullshit question? Well, to define oneself as a clear thinker and shout "Gotcha!" at people you already (perhaps...irrationally!) don't like, of course.
posted by kewb at 6:35 AM on October 27, 2014 [17 favorites]
i thought this was a very interesting article. I particularly liked the "dark matter" concept - that there is a whole nother society intermingled with my own social group that I don't know and never see. I also was surprised and excited to learn that political bias can be stronger than racial bias.
My criticism of this article is that, while group theory is a good descriptor of societal behavior, I don't think it's a good explainer of societal behavior. I simply don't think we have the science to back up claims that group theory truly predicts or explains social behavior to the same extent that psychology can predict individual behavior. I think group theory is mostly reifications, guesses, ad-hock, and economics.
I suppose I'm somewhat of an atomist because I think the correct level of social analysis is the individual. If social groups can be seen as cohesive, individual bodies made up of cells, then I think that those social groups cannot be analyzed using the same language of desires, actions, and morality that is applied to the cells. It would be as useful as claiming that white blood cells should stop persecuting viruses and instead give them fair trials.
posted by rebent at 6:44 AM on October 27, 2014 [2 favorites]
My criticism of this article is that, while group theory is a good descriptor of societal behavior, I don't think it's a good explainer of societal behavior. I simply don't think we have the science to back up claims that group theory truly predicts or explains social behavior to the same extent that psychology can predict individual behavior. I think group theory is mostly reifications, guesses, ad-hock, and economics.
I suppose I'm somewhat of an atomist because I think the correct level of social analysis is the individual. If social groups can be seen as cohesive, individual bodies made up of cells, then I think that those social groups cannot be analyzed using the same language of desires, actions, and morality that is applied to the cells. It would be as useful as claiming that white blood cells should stop persecuting viruses and instead give them fair trials.
posted by rebent at 6:44 AM on October 27, 2014 [2 favorites]
Why Thatcher and not Bin Laden though? If we consider them both evil (and I feel like if we consider Thatcher to be evil we should probably consider Bin Laden to be evil) then shouldn't we take a similar amount of pleasure in their deaths (or, I suppose, a proportional amount)?
Feelings don't work like that. Both are evil, sure, and I condemn them both, but I don't feel the same way about them. I don't see any inherent contradiction, personally. Their deaths had different symbolic qualities, in no small part because of the circumstances kewb outlined better than I could above.
posted by Dysk at 6:48 AM on October 27, 2014
Feelings don't work like that. Both are evil, sure, and I condemn them both, but I don't feel the same way about them. I don't see any inherent contradiction, personally. Their deaths had different symbolic qualities, in no small part because of the circumstances kewb outlined better than I could above.
posted by Dysk at 6:48 AM on October 27, 2014
> Of course white privilege exists, to the extent that anything has ever existed. The complicated part is that that whiteness, non-whiteness, privilege, lack of privilege, etc. are all complicated and fluid concepts.In conclusion, white privilege is a land of contrasts.
posted by axon at 6:55 AM on October 27, 2014 [1 favorite]
I don't think SSC is perfect at clear thinking, but I think he's quite good at it
Really?
Now, granted, this blog post was a paragraph, with some footnotes, but for some reason, it went on and on and on. (To reverse Kant's claim, this work would've have been longer had it not been so long).
The argument, such as it is, seemed to be something like this:
First, why is (1) even a problem? It's perfectly reasonable to self-criticize, and the act of self-criticism or criticism of one's own group is hardly anything new, or unheard of, as he seems to imply. In fact, it's a co-original with social thought as such. Plato complains about Athenians. But he's an Athenian! and so on. Or, say, Nietzsche's utter disgust with Germans, a disgust even more palpable than his undeniable distaste for Jews (and their inheritance: Christians).
(3) is a complete non-sequitur. It exists simply to add a vague amount of plausibility to the overall claim. Not only that, but, while the study looks interesting, it's hardly surprising to anyone who has paid any attention to politics since the Carter-Reagan election on. Or to anyone who was alive and conscious during the 8 years of Bush. Obviously, we're a polarized nation. So what?
(4)? Well, you've discovered that anti-racists, intersectionalists and feminists are generally well educated liberals. Good job? There is clearly a connection between people's implicit biases and the positions they hold. So, congratulations, you've discovered that anti-racists are likely to be biased against people who have external markers associated with racists. Good job again. You've blown me away with your careful and considerate logic.
There isn't even an argument here. And, at any rate, since it begins from an entirely flawed premise, the whole thing is a clusterfuck. Asking a question in the right way is half the battle. 'Alexander' has lost the war.
posted by dis_integration at 7:09 AM on October 27, 2014 [10 favorites]
Really?
Now, granted, this blog post was a paragraph, with some footnotes, but for some reason, it went on and on and on. (To reverse Kant's claim, this work would've have been longer had it not been so long).
The argument, such as it is, seemed to be something like this:
- People be like, kill whitey! But those people are themselves white!
- (1) Doesn't make any sense! It's totally unpossible and I refuse to try and think of any way to make sense of it except by explaining it away as a form of false-consciousness.
- Implicit bias is stronger in relationship to party affiliation than it is to race.
- Obviously, this explains (1)! When white people are all "kill whitey", what they mean is: "repooplicans sux! let's go to California Pizza Kitchen!".
- Case closed? Oh yeah, I'm totally a 'rationalist' left-libertarian. Here, eat my bio-truths!
First, why is (1) even a problem? It's perfectly reasonable to self-criticize, and the act of self-criticism or criticism of one's own group is hardly anything new, or unheard of, as he seems to imply. In fact, it's a co-original with social thought as such. Plato complains about Athenians. But he's an Athenian! and so on. Or, say, Nietzsche's utter disgust with Germans, a disgust even more palpable than his undeniable distaste for Jews (and their inheritance: Christians).
(3) is a complete non-sequitur. It exists simply to add a vague amount of plausibility to the overall claim. Not only that, but, while the study looks interesting, it's hardly surprising to anyone who has paid any attention to politics since the Carter-Reagan election on. Or to anyone who was alive and conscious during the 8 years of Bush. Obviously, we're a polarized nation. So what?
(4)? Well, you've discovered that anti-racists, intersectionalists and feminists are generally well educated liberals. Good job? There is clearly a connection between people's implicit biases and the positions they hold. So, congratulations, you've discovered that anti-racists are likely to be biased against people who have external markers associated with racists. Good job again. You've blown me away with your careful and considerate logic.
There isn't even an argument here. And, at any rate, since it begins from an entirely flawed premise, the whole thing is a clusterfuck. Asking a question in the right way is half the battle. 'Alexander' has lost the war.
posted by dis_integration at 7:09 AM on October 27, 2014 [10 favorites]
In conclusion, white privilege is a land of contrasts.
I enjoy a good "land of contrasts" joke as much as the next person, but...and, granted it's hard to pick up tone and nuance over the internet...are you seriously taking exception to the idea that broad-gauge topics like identity and privilege are complicated and fluid? I'm not sure why you would snark about it otherwise.
posted by Sticherbeast at 7:20 AM on October 27, 2014
I enjoy a good "land of contrasts" joke as much as the next person, but...and, granted it's hard to pick up tone and nuance over the internet...are you seriously taking exception to the idea that broad-gauge topics like identity and privilege are complicated and fluid? I'm not sure why you would snark about it otherwise.
posted by Sticherbeast at 7:20 AM on October 27, 2014
I read this article a few weeks ago, after someone I follow on Twitter posted it.
It was hard to read then, and it's nice to see people taking issue with a lot of the claims.
I had a long, multi-paragraph response all written out after I first read it, and thought about posting it here myself, but thought better of it as my framing would have been much more, um, problematic and fighty.
There are a lot of explicit assumptions that the author makes, and the worst of them is the "false consciousness" crap. I have yet to see any modern social theories that even reference this idea, except to dismiss it as utter tripe, because it is and always has been. Hell, it's one of the theories that EST is based on, which was a fucking nightmare of bad ideas and bad people trying to make money off of crap theories. At least it provided a negative experimental result, instead of actually doing (much) damage to our culture (though I'm sure many of the later off-shoots are still kicking around somewhere, though I haven't been following the New Agers for a while now. Too easy of a target).
I am still trying to figure out just what it is about 'social justice' that these people dislike so much. I guess privilege likes to keep on privileging.
posted by daq at 8:06 AM on October 27, 2014
It was hard to read then, and it's nice to see people taking issue with a lot of the claims.
I had a long, multi-paragraph response all written out after I first read it, and thought about posting it here myself, but thought better of it as my framing would have been much more, um, problematic and fighty.
There are a lot of explicit assumptions that the author makes, and the worst of them is the "false consciousness" crap. I have yet to see any modern social theories that even reference this idea, except to dismiss it as utter tripe, because it is and always has been. Hell, it's one of the theories that EST is based on, which was a fucking nightmare of bad ideas and bad people trying to make money off of crap theories. At least it provided a negative experimental result, instead of actually doing (much) damage to our culture (though I'm sure many of the later off-shoots are still kicking around somewhere, though I haven't been following the New Agers for a while now. Too easy of a target).
I am still trying to figure out just what it is about 'social justice' that these people dislike so much. I guess privilege likes to keep on privileging.
posted by daq at 8:06 AM on October 27, 2014
Like most people I know, I simultaneously belong to quite a variety of in-groups. I'm not sure this esay takes that sufficiently into account.
He also misses the most conspicuous reason why there is so much criticism of the in-group: because they are the ones who are allowed to make those criticisms.
Truth. And for me, anyway, I criticize groups to which I belong because I care about them and want them to do better. It's like the kid who thinks his parents don't love him when they correct his behavior - if they didn't care about him, they wouldn't care what he did.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 8:39 AM on October 27, 2014 [3 favorites]
He also misses the most conspicuous reason why there is so much criticism of the in-group: because they are the ones who are allowed to make those criticisms.
Truth. And for me, anyway, I criticize groups to which I belong because I care about them and want them to do better. It's like the kid who thinks his parents don't love him when they correct his behavior - if they didn't care about him, they wouldn't care what he did.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 8:39 AM on October 27, 2014 [3 favorites]
I actually mispoke before, in that obviously we cannot control our feelings about someone's death, although we can certainly examine why we might have them. It seems odd though to (as some did) censure one celebration of death while robustly defend another. This definitely happened with Thatcher/Bin Laden. My initial reaction to the article was that in many cases the voices were not quite the same (I'm not super happy about crowing about anyone's demise I guess).
Kewb, I agree... for the most part. I think there are very sensible reasons to focus on Isreal rather than other nations, but I think sometimes that focus is unthinking rather than nuanced. I think to talk about that in particular would be rather derailing though, so I'll leave this there.
I don't disagree that the article itself is somewhat unfocused, a lot of articles on SSC are, they tend to be a ride as you follow the authors thoughts rather than necessarily a carefully structured logical argument. I just tend to get interesting things to think about from it: I also enjoy engaging with counterfactuals from fairly smart people.
posted by Cannon Fodder at 8:58 AM on October 27, 2014
Kewb, I agree... for the most part. I think there are very sensible reasons to focus on Isreal rather than other nations, but I think sometimes that focus is unthinking rather than nuanced. I think to talk about that in particular would be rather derailing though, so I'll leave this there.
I don't disagree that the article itself is somewhat unfocused, a lot of articles on SSC are, they tend to be a ride as you follow the authors thoughts rather than necessarily a carefully structured logical argument. I just tend to get interesting things to think about from it: I also enjoy engaging with counterfactuals from fairly smart people.
posted by Cannon Fodder at 8:58 AM on October 27, 2014
I don't think this article is very good, but I think his main point is true, if maybe trivial.
Most of the time when people say something critical about a group they belong to, when they say "men do this" or "what Americans don't understand," they don't mean "us men" or "we Americans," they mean "those men" or "those Americans," and sometimes they actually mean something even more specifically not-themselves like "fratboys" or "Republicans." Maybe, as people have been arguing above, there are more exceptions than he recognizes, but I think they are exceptions.
posted by straight at 9:27 AM on October 27, 2014 [4 favorites]
Most of the time when people say something critical about a group they belong to, when they say "men do this" or "what Americans don't understand," they don't mean "us men" or "we Americans," they mean "those men" or "those Americans," and sometimes they actually mean something even more specifically not-themselves like "fratboys" or "Republicans." Maybe, as people have been arguing above, there are more exceptions than he recognizes, but I think they are exceptions.
posted by straight at 9:27 AM on October 27, 2014 [4 favorites]
One was that your out-group isn’t the people that you share the least number of demographic characteristics with. It’s the group you dislike the most, that you define yourselves in opposition to most.
Yeah, I think this is the interesting take-away - that and the nature of tolerance. Your in group is the people you would genuinely feel terrible to be repudiated by. The outgroup is the ones you are delighted to be hated by. And he's absolutely right - it shows zero tolerance to talk about how cool you are with people that you are already cool with. You can only be tolerant of things you actually hate.
(I also love the shit out of the Father Brown mysteries, and love to see it dropped there.)
posted by corb at 9:34 AM on October 27, 2014 [2 favorites]
Yeah, I think this is the interesting take-away - that and the nature of tolerance. Your in group is the people you would genuinely feel terrible to be repudiated by. The outgroup is the ones you are delighted to be hated by. And he's absolutely right - it shows zero tolerance to talk about how cool you are with people that you are already cool with. You can only be tolerant of things you actually hate.
(I also love the shit out of the Father Brown mysteries, and love to see it dropped there.)
posted by corb at 9:34 AM on October 27, 2014 [2 favorites]
Also, the Osama/Thatcher thing was pretty visible here, so strongly that I wonder if the author is actually a Mefite.
posted by corb at 9:44 AM on October 27, 2014 [1 favorite]
posted by corb at 9:44 AM on October 27, 2014 [1 favorite]
It seems odd though to (as some did) censure one celebration of death while robustly defend another.
Fully agree. But yeah, that is not the same thing as not being equally delighted (or appalled) at their deaths.
posted by Dysk at 10:06 AM on October 27, 2014
Fully agree. But yeah, that is not the same thing as not being equally delighted (or appalled) at their deaths.
posted by Dysk at 10:06 AM on October 27, 2014
when they say "men do this" or "what Americans don't understand," they don't mean "us men" or "we Americans," they mean "those men" or "those Americans," and sometimes they actually mean something even more specifically not-themselves like "fratboys" or "Republicans." Maybe, as people have been arguing above, there are more exceptions than he recognizes, but I think they are exceptions.
One of the things is that this phenomenon is relativpely recent, and much of the time it is used in contrast to what African Americans are told every day. There were a lot of points made in jest about how the "white community" needs to take more responsibility to prevent more messes like the Keene, NH pumpkin festival. And after a while it stands to reason that it is probably a good point that whites need to take more responsibility for, say, the Bush administration.
There's no magic to it-- if we are quick to discuss community responsibility for bad actors within that community, even if when pushed we would say, "oh, I mean only those people within that community," then it stands to reason that the same community responsibility/identity applies to the majority as well.
This and the license in-group members have for self criticism are both so obvious that it boggles the mind that the author didn't even touch on them but rather spilled a lot of virtual ink about how he had supposedly discovered a brand new thing that no one had ever thought of before.
posted by deanc at 10:08 AM on October 27, 2014 [2 favorites]
One of the things is that this phenomenon is relativpely recent, and much of the time it is used in contrast to what African Americans are told every day. There were a lot of points made in jest about how the "white community" needs to take more responsibility to prevent more messes like the Keene, NH pumpkin festival. And after a while it stands to reason that it is probably a good point that whites need to take more responsibility for, say, the Bush administration.
There's no magic to it-- if we are quick to discuss community responsibility for bad actors within that community, even if when pushed we would say, "oh, I mean only those people within that community," then it stands to reason that the same community responsibility/identity applies to the majority as well.
This and the license in-group members have for self criticism are both so obvious that it boggles the mind that the author didn't even touch on them but rather spilled a lot of virtual ink about how he had supposedly discovered a brand new thing that no one had ever thought of before.
posted by deanc at 10:08 AM on October 27, 2014 [2 favorites]
This is like reading the musings of a very precocious but sheltered young person. I can admire the effort and intellectual drive, but I would rather hold the discussion among people more on my level instead of going through every single point that he hasn't yet had the intellectual maturity to think all the way through yet.
I look forward to his next essays, "using the original definition, today's liberals aren't really liberal," and "how come blacks can use the n-word when the rest of us can't?"
posted by deanc at 10:14 AM on October 27, 2014 [2 favorites]
I look forward to his next essays, "using the original definition, today's liberals aren't really liberal," and "how come blacks can use the n-word when the rest of us can't?"
posted by deanc at 10:14 AM on October 27, 2014 [2 favorites]
The comments here are kind of hilariously proving his point. Man, that guy appears after all to be part of the out-group! Get him!
But it's true. It's really hard to criticize your own in-group - which requires really criticizing a thing that you are doing and all of your friends are doing and that they think is totally righteous and good and will continue to think so after you say it's wrong. You aren't criticizing your in group if you're a white guy talking about your privilege, if your friends are mostly people who are down with privilege critiquing.
posted by corb at 10:30 AM on October 27, 2014 [2 favorites]
But it's true. It's really hard to criticize your own in-group - which requires really criticizing a thing that you are doing and all of your friends are doing and that they think is totally righteous and good and will continue to think so after you say it's wrong. You aren't criticizing your in group if you're a white guy talking about your privilege, if your friends are mostly people who are down with privilege critiquing.
posted by corb at 10:30 AM on October 27, 2014 [2 favorites]
The comments here are kind of hilariously proving his point. Man, that guy appears after all to be part of the out-group! Get him!
The fact that people here are disagreeing with him doesn't prove that we're piling on an "out-group" person because they're an out-group person. It may mean that there are actual flaws in the arguments presented.
Indeed, quite a few posts here have done that. See, for example, dis_integration's post laying out the linked assumptions in Alexander's argument and showing where they really don't seem to join up all that well.
Maybe someone can address these counterarguments to Alexander's reasoning, but the strongest defenses so far have been that Alexander is well-intentioned despite the flaws in his arguments.
posted by kewb at 10:48 AM on October 27, 2014 [4 favorites]
The fact that people here are disagreeing with him doesn't prove that we're piling on an "out-group" person because they're an out-group person. It may mean that there are actual flaws in the arguments presented.
Indeed, quite a few posts here have done that. See, for example, dis_integration's post laying out the linked assumptions in Alexander's argument and showing where they really don't seem to join up all that well.
Maybe someone can address these counterarguments to Alexander's reasoning, but the strongest defenses so far have been that Alexander is well-intentioned despite the flaws in his arguments.
posted by kewb at 10:48 AM on October 27, 2014 [4 favorites]
Part of the Thatcher/OBL divide comes down to what makes a bigger, more relevant statement for the speaker. Getting too jolly at the death of OBL can come off as a statement of support for the War on Terror, US geopolitics, etc. On the other hand, refusing to treat Thatcher's death with polite solemnity is a statement of rebuke against both neoliberalism and the idea that she should be admitted into the club of politicians who are eventually treated with some respect.
Humorously enough, I remember on the internet seeing somebody use that same Chesterton quote, but they only did so with the proviso that Chesterton was indeed an anti-Semite, but that he also said many true things. As somebody who is both a Jew and a Chesterton fan, I found that to be somewhat bemusing: the context in which the quotation was made had nothing to do with Jews or anti-Semitism, nor does that quote itself have anything to do with that, either. I also knew that the person making that proviso wasn't Jewish, either, so there was no personal angle.
To me, the proviso did not come off as any kind of service to Jews, or as a meaningful statement about bigotry: instead, it just seemed like a statement of the speaker's own political identity.
posted by Sticherbeast at 10:50 AM on October 27, 2014
Humorously enough, I remember on the internet seeing somebody use that same Chesterton quote, but they only did so with the proviso that Chesterton was indeed an anti-Semite, but that he also said many true things. As somebody who is both a Jew and a Chesterton fan, I found that to be somewhat bemusing: the context in which the quotation was made had nothing to do with Jews or anti-Semitism, nor does that quote itself have anything to do with that, either. I also knew that the person making that proviso wasn't Jewish, either, so there was no personal angle.
To me, the proviso did not come off as any kind of service to Jews, or as a meaningful statement about bigotry: instead, it just seemed like a statement of the speaker's own political identity.
posted by Sticherbeast at 10:50 AM on October 27, 2014
Dis_integration's post was not a breakdown at all of the arguments, except in some sort of parody world.
Alexander starts off talking about how true tolerance is not of those things that we agree with, but those things that we disagree with or even hate.
Then he moves into talking about how white people are often the ones criticizing white people. But it's not true that he refuses to think of reasons why. In fact, he does think of reasons why - that people are often not criticizing themselves, or people they really identify with, but with other "whites" with whom they disagree. But doesn't even privilege theory often talk about how one of the privileges of being white is the ability to see yourself as an individual and not as part of a race? In which case his premise that these white people do not see "white people" as an ingroup and instead see their affiliations as ingroups is not even particularly shocking.
posted by corb at 10:56 AM on October 27, 2014 [1 favorite]
Alexander starts off talking about how true tolerance is not of those things that we agree with, but those things that we disagree with or even hate.
Then he moves into talking about how white people are often the ones criticizing white people. But it's not true that he refuses to think of reasons why. In fact, he does think of reasons why - that people are often not criticizing themselves, or people they really identify with, but with other "whites" with whom they disagree. But doesn't even privilege theory often talk about how one of the privileges of being white is the ability to see yourself as an individual and not as part of a race? In which case his premise that these white people do not see "white people" as an ingroup and instead see their affiliations as ingroups is not even particularly shocking.
posted by corb at 10:56 AM on October 27, 2014 [1 favorite]
Yeah, I think this is the interesting take-away - that and the nature of tolerance. Your in group is the people you would genuinely feel terrible to be repudiated by. The outgroup is the ones you are delighted to be hated by. And he's absolutely right - it shows zero tolerance to talk about how cool you are with people that you are already cool with. You can only be tolerant of things you actually hate.
I think that's an awfully unreflective definition of tolerance. For one thing, it seems to presume that all reasons for intolerance are created equal, when it may be that we don't tolerate a group or its actions because there's a reasonable argument that said group is doing genuine harm to others.
Even at the abstract level, this strikes me as a deep misunderstanding of tolerance, a concept that we get primarily from Joh Locke. In Locke's argument, you can tolerate a position or group to which you're indifferent, or one which you dislike but do not intellectually or morally oppose, but you *can't* tolerate something that's actively noxious.
So, for example, Locke refuses to extend religious toleration to Catholics, because they are pledged to Rome, not England, and therefore are not merely "different" or "dislikable" in opinion but active enemies of English civil order. The idea that tolerance is a civic virtue does not flow, philsoophically, from the notion of empathy or even from one of moral sentimentalism and the value of good feelings; it starts from an opposition to conflicts spurred by religious "enthusiasm," that is, sectarian conflict within an existing society. Nor does empathy, paradoxically, demand tolerance; empathy is understanding where someone else is coming from *even if you disagree*, and sometimes *even if you actively oppose their agenda* on various grounds.
This is also why classical liberalism has a pretty ready retort to the whole "tolerate my extreme intolerance" thing; toleration and tolerance presume that the underpinnings of the liberal civil order are not actively threatened, and certain forms of intolerance -- genocidal racism or murderous religious chauvinism, for example -- conflict directly with the very foundations of a liberal society.
As the liberal consensus has expanded, things like sexism, classism, and so forth sometimes become candidates for this sort of "intolerable toleration." We can argue about whether they cross those lines or not, but there's not really a coherent argument for "tolerance only counts when you tolerate what you hate." (Funnily enough, that argument most resembles Derrida's notion that you can only forgive that which is unforgivable; in other words, the argument perhaps doesn't support tolerance at all but instead deconstructs it in the true, philosophical sense of the term.)
And, of course, many positions outside the liberal consensus don't take up the idea of "tolerance" as a virtue, so arguments from tolerance may not even be relevant in regard to those positions.
posted by kewb at 11:05 AM on October 27, 2014 [3 favorites]
I think that's an awfully unreflective definition of tolerance. For one thing, it seems to presume that all reasons for intolerance are created equal, when it may be that we don't tolerate a group or its actions because there's a reasonable argument that said group is doing genuine harm to others.
Even at the abstract level, this strikes me as a deep misunderstanding of tolerance, a concept that we get primarily from Joh Locke. In Locke's argument, you can tolerate a position or group to which you're indifferent, or one which you dislike but do not intellectually or morally oppose, but you *can't* tolerate something that's actively noxious.
So, for example, Locke refuses to extend religious toleration to Catholics, because they are pledged to Rome, not England, and therefore are not merely "different" or "dislikable" in opinion but active enemies of English civil order. The idea that tolerance is a civic virtue does not flow, philsoophically, from the notion of empathy or even from one of moral sentimentalism and the value of good feelings; it starts from an opposition to conflicts spurred by religious "enthusiasm," that is, sectarian conflict within an existing society. Nor does empathy, paradoxically, demand tolerance; empathy is understanding where someone else is coming from *even if you disagree*, and sometimes *even if you actively oppose their agenda* on various grounds.
This is also why classical liberalism has a pretty ready retort to the whole "tolerate my extreme intolerance" thing; toleration and tolerance presume that the underpinnings of the liberal civil order are not actively threatened, and certain forms of intolerance -- genocidal racism or murderous religious chauvinism, for example -- conflict directly with the very foundations of a liberal society.
As the liberal consensus has expanded, things like sexism, classism, and so forth sometimes become candidates for this sort of "intolerable toleration." We can argue about whether they cross those lines or not, but there's not really a coherent argument for "tolerance only counts when you tolerate what you hate." (Funnily enough, that argument most resembles Derrida's notion that you can only forgive that which is unforgivable; in other words, the argument perhaps doesn't support tolerance at all but instead deconstructs it in the true, philosophical sense of the term.)
And, of course, many positions outside the liberal consensus don't take up the idea of "tolerance" as a virtue, so arguments from tolerance may not even be relevant in regard to those positions.
posted by kewb at 11:05 AM on October 27, 2014 [3 favorites]
But it's not true that he refuses to think of reasons why. In fact, he does think of reasons why - that people are often not criticizing themselves, or people they really identify with, but with other "whites" with whom they disagree.
This also gets us into some really weird territory. Let's say I oppose murder. I therefore don't murder. Are murderers now an "out-group" whom I must not criticize, lest I prove myself intolerant?
Conversely, imagine that I am critical of people who shout and curse when traffic doesn't go their way. Yet I, myself, sometimes get frustrated and do that, and it even feels good when I do it. Now let's say that I get especially critical of people who use racial slurs when they get mad while driving. I myself do not use racial slurs. Am I constructing an "out-group" and evading self-criticism, or are there perhaps perfectly good additional reasons, having little or nothing to do with group identity, for seeing "shouting racial slurs" as worse than "shouting generic insults" when in the grips of road rage?
In both of these cases, it seems rather difficult to maintain that tolerance is an absolute virtue, or even much of a virtue at all.
posted by kewb at 11:11 AM on October 27, 2014 [1 favorite]
This also gets us into some really weird territory. Let's say I oppose murder. I therefore don't murder. Are murderers now an "out-group" whom I must not criticize, lest I prove myself intolerant?
Conversely, imagine that I am critical of people who shout and curse when traffic doesn't go their way. Yet I, myself, sometimes get frustrated and do that, and it even feels good when I do it. Now let's say that I get especially critical of people who use racial slurs when they get mad while driving. I myself do not use racial slurs. Am I constructing an "out-group" and evading self-criticism, or are there perhaps perfectly good additional reasons, having little or nothing to do with group identity, for seeing "shouting racial slurs" as worse than "shouting generic insults" when in the grips of road rage?
In both of these cases, it seems rather difficult to maintain that tolerance is an absolute virtue, or even much of a virtue at all.
posted by kewb at 11:11 AM on October 27, 2014 [1 favorite]
As the liberal consensus has expanded, things like sexism, classism, and so forth sometimes become candidates for this sort of "intolerable toleration." We can argue about whether they cross those lines or not, but there's not really a coherent argument for "tolerance only counts when you tolerate what you hate."
"Tolerance only counts if you tolerate what you hate" is not at all the same thing as "we must tolerate everything". The fact that there really are intolerable things has nothing to do with the article.
The fact that not everybody will agree on the particulars of what does or does not constitute a sufficiently intolerable form of *ism is exactly what makes it so difficult to dismiss the idea that, yes, one really ought to be able to tolerate things that one does not actually like. There will always be disagreements and edge cases and gray areas and complicated cases and so on.
This also gets us into some really weird territory. Let's say I oppose murder. I therefore don't murder. Are murderers now an "out-group" whom I must not criticize, lest I prove myself intolerant?
Where in the text are you seeing anything like this? I don't mean a paraphrase. Where, specifically, are you seeing this?
posted by Sticherbeast at 11:14 AM on October 27, 2014
"Tolerance only counts if you tolerate what you hate" is not at all the same thing as "we must tolerate everything". The fact that there really are intolerable things has nothing to do with the article.
The fact that not everybody will agree on the particulars of what does or does not constitute a sufficiently intolerable form of *ism is exactly what makes it so difficult to dismiss the idea that, yes, one really ought to be able to tolerate things that one does not actually like. There will always be disagreements and edge cases and gray areas and complicated cases and so on.
This also gets us into some really weird territory. Let's say I oppose murder. I therefore don't murder. Are murderers now an "out-group" whom I must not criticize, lest I prove myself intolerant?
Where in the text are you seeing anything like this? I don't mean a paraphrase. Where, specifically, are you seeing this?
posted by Sticherbeast at 11:14 AM on October 27, 2014
this strikes me as a deep misunderstanding of tolerance, a concept that we get primarily from Joh Locke.
If tolerance were a thing that we got primarily from John Locke, you might be right - but I'm really not sure that it is. I think for example some people come to it precisely from the same place that fictional Father Brown comes to it - from religious principles. "Love the sinner, hate the sin" is a really important article of faith for many people. If you believe that man is fundamentally sinful and only God is perfect and without sin, and also believe that sin is evil, then the goal is, in fact, ultimately, to come to a place of tolerance for other mortal sinners, because only God can judge sin, and you are not God, and attempting to play God by condemning others for their beliefs and practices is essentially usurping God's authority, which is yet another sin.
So in many ways, it's a definitional conflict - both sides preach and may even believe in tolerance, but it's different kinds of tolerance for different reasons, if what you are saying is correct. In one side, it's for purely practical civil-order reasons, in the other side, it is in fact a moral virtue.
posted by corb at 11:18 AM on October 27, 2014 [1 favorite]
If tolerance were a thing that we got primarily from John Locke, you might be right - but I'm really not sure that it is. I think for example some people come to it precisely from the same place that fictional Father Brown comes to it - from religious principles. "Love the sinner, hate the sin" is a really important article of faith for many people. If you believe that man is fundamentally sinful and only God is perfect and without sin, and also believe that sin is evil, then the goal is, in fact, ultimately, to come to a place of tolerance for other mortal sinners, because only God can judge sin, and you are not God, and attempting to play God by condemning others for their beliefs and practices is essentially usurping God's authority, which is yet another sin.
So in many ways, it's a definitional conflict - both sides preach and may even believe in tolerance, but it's different kinds of tolerance for different reasons, if what you are saying is correct. In one side, it's for purely practical civil-order reasons, in the other side, it is in fact a moral virtue.
posted by corb at 11:18 AM on October 27, 2014 [1 favorite]
But...I'm not sure anyone's "condemning" the article's author at all? What would that even mean?
posted by nobody at 11:29 AM on October 27, 2014
posted by nobody at 11:29 AM on October 27, 2014
Chersterton is a poor source, then. since he famously wrote that "Modern toleration is really a tyranny. It is a tyranny because it is a silence. To say that I must not deny my opponent’s faith is to say I must not discuss it.” He also wrote that "[t]olerance is the virtue of a man without convictions."
He actually didn't believe that systems of belief other than his own were valid, he supported (for example) the historical triumph of the church over the pagans, and he quite explicitly opposed the "open" conception of toleration in particular. Really, he was the sort of High Anglican/Catholic convert that T.S. Eliot was (on the Anglican side), and like Eliot he believed in an expressly Christian society in which religious dissidence was, as in Hobbes's argument, restricted to freedom of conscience in the form of strictly unvoiced thought.
Another Chesterton quote rather clearly points this idea out: "We come back to the same tireless note touching the nature of Christianity; all modern philosophies are chains which connect and fetter; Christianity is a sword which separates and sets free. No other philosophy makes God actually rejoice in the separation of the universe into living souls." The guy wrote an entire book, Chesterton's Orthodoxy, devoted to describing any position outside his version of Christianity as fundamentally illiberal and mistaken. What he calls toleration is basically Lockean toleration modified to accommodate his notion of Christianty as the wellspring of liberal social order.
posted by kewb at 11:33 AM on October 27, 2014 [1 favorite]
He actually didn't believe that systems of belief other than his own were valid, he supported (for example) the historical triumph of the church over the pagans, and he quite explicitly opposed the "open" conception of toleration in particular. Really, he was the sort of High Anglican/Catholic convert that T.S. Eliot was (on the Anglican side), and like Eliot he believed in an expressly Christian society in which religious dissidence was, as in Hobbes's argument, restricted to freedom of conscience in the form of strictly unvoiced thought.
Another Chesterton quote rather clearly points this idea out: "We come back to the same tireless note touching the nature of Christianity; all modern philosophies are chains which connect and fetter; Christianity is a sword which separates and sets free. No other philosophy makes God actually rejoice in the separation of the universe into living souls." The guy wrote an entire book, Chesterton's Orthodoxy, devoted to describing any position outside his version of Christianity as fundamentally illiberal and mistaken. What he calls toleration is basically Lockean toleration modified to accommodate his notion of Christianty as the wellspring of liberal social order.
posted by kewb at 11:33 AM on October 27, 2014 [1 favorite]
I think there's a strong difference between Chesterton, an entertaining but flawed writer, and Father Brown, an idealized version of a Catholic priest. I am certainly drawn much more to the ideas of the latter than the former, but of course, not being human and being a fictional construct, it's certainly easier.
posted by corb at 11:36 AM on October 27, 2014
posted by corb at 11:36 AM on October 27, 2014
For one thing, to the extent that Chesterton would have said anything against what the author or anyone else would regard as a good attitude towards tolerance, it's irrelevant - nobody here has promised to follow Chesterton to the letter.
Besides, you couldn't, by design. He wrote voluminously in the form of antimonies and paradoxes. It's what he's known for.
Either way, Chesterton was actually a much better example of tolerance than you may believe. He had strong beliefs - he believed they were true - and he also enjoyed vigorous debate with his many friends who had views entirely opposed to his own. Look at The Ball and The Cross, in which Chesterton sings the praises of arguing vigorously with somebody whom you also love and respect as a friend, such as GKC's relationship with George Bernard Shaw in real life.
posted by Sticherbeast at 11:41 AM on October 27, 2014 [2 favorites]
Besides, you couldn't, by design. He wrote voluminously in the form of antimonies and paradoxes. It's what he's known for.
Either way, Chesterton was actually a much better example of tolerance than you may believe. He had strong beliefs - he believed they were true - and he also enjoyed vigorous debate with his many friends who had views entirely opposed to his own. Look at The Ball and The Cross, in which Chesterton sings the praises of arguing vigorously with somebody whom you also love and respect as a friend, such as GKC's relationship with George Bernard Shaw in real life.
posted by Sticherbeast at 11:41 AM on October 27, 2014 [2 favorites]
Thatcher directly is responsible for far more death and misery IMO. Bin Laden is a product of American imperialism via dictator propping (the Sauds) and the CIA trained and funded mujahadeen. He was a reactionary flailing out against the world that created him. Thatcher sought to make the world less equitable for all and waged a pointless war in the Falklands. Neither person is evil because that word was created to obliterate nuance. I do use it, but mostly in jest.
posted by aydeejones at 11:47 AM on October 27, 2014 [3 favorites]
posted by aydeejones at 11:47 AM on October 27, 2014 [3 favorites]
I like this article. I know...we can go around and around about the particulars. We can criticize how "air tight" the logic of this essay is. But at least some of this essay is meaningful, and useful. Particularly the idea that real tolerance is hard work.
For me, loving someone who is "different" is no big thing...it's part of my culture (and yes, I very much identify with the "blue tribe"...except I do drink Coca Cola on occasion and I don't mind some country music---the hipster "Johnny Cash" type). But loving someone who stands for something I hate...who disagrees with me on a central ideological issue...now that is very hard.
Loving (or in the least, tolerating) people who stand for something you hate, and remembering that though you hate what they stand for they are still people, and you should love them because they are: this is where the real "work" of tolerance lies.
I'm thankful to the author for sparking the conversation about this.
posted by k8bot at 11:56 AM on October 27, 2014 [6 favorites]
For me, loving someone who is "different" is no big thing...it's part of my culture (and yes, I very much identify with the "blue tribe"...except I do drink Coca Cola on occasion and I don't mind some country music---the hipster "Johnny Cash" type). But loving someone who stands for something I hate...who disagrees with me on a central ideological issue...now that is very hard.
Loving (or in the least, tolerating) people who stand for something you hate, and remembering that though you hate what they stand for they are still people, and you should love them because they are: this is where the real "work" of tolerance lies.
I'm thankful to the author for sparking the conversation about this.
posted by k8bot at 11:56 AM on October 27, 2014 [6 favorites]
All this fuss about Chesterton seems like a derail. The only point of the Father Brown excerpt is to say it's not tolerance if you actually like or approve of the thing you claim to tolerate. Nor is it forgiveness if you don't actually believe the person you "forgive" did anything wrong.
All of which I think is pretty obviously true, but I'm not sure what it has to do with the author's point. I don't often see people congratulating themselves about their own tolerance. Mostly the concept of tolerance is invoked as a plea asking others to live peaceably with something or someone they don't like.
posted by straight at 12:19 PM on October 27, 2014
All of which I think is pretty obviously true, but I'm not sure what it has to do with the author's point. I don't often see people congratulating themselves about their own tolerance. Mostly the concept of tolerance is invoked as a plea asking others to live peaceably with something or someone they don't like.
posted by straight at 12:19 PM on October 27, 2014
Dis_integration's post was not a breakdown at all of the arguments, except in some sort of parody world.
Yeah, I didn't mention the stuff about tolerance. It seemed like a rhetorical gesture meant to get you to be prepared to accept something about yourself that was unpleasant. Here, namely, your liberal false-consciousness, wherein every self-critical remark is, in fact, a remark directed at the outgroup Red Tribe. I also generally stop reading whenever someone starts out with a lesson drawn from Chesterton, because time is finite and Chesterton is abhorrent (to me, at any rate). But I gave this one the full read through, and in the end, the point about tolerence seemed totally extraneous.
And the parody was intended. The post is so very smug and self-satisfied, with the cherry on top of its dramatic "reveal" ending, that a little mockery seemed appropriate.
All the same, I don't think I missed any of the piece's crucial steps. Basically, the whole thing hinges on the idea that the contemporary critical discourse on whiteness is "an almost unprecedented situation" because it's an instance of an ingroup criticizing the ingroup and embracing the outgroup. Everything that follows demands that we agree that this is "a total reversal of everything we know about human psychology up to this point", (since, once we agree to this, and admit that, since it's so radical, it can't be the case, we're ready for his rather lazy idea that we've just described the tribes incorrectly) --- a notion that I just find fantastically, tremendously laughable and stupid.
posted by dis_integration at 1:12 PM on October 27, 2014 [3 favorites]
Yeah, I didn't mention the stuff about tolerance. It seemed like a rhetorical gesture meant to get you to be prepared to accept something about yourself that was unpleasant. Here, namely, your liberal false-consciousness, wherein every self-critical remark is, in fact, a remark directed at the outgroup Red Tribe. I also generally stop reading whenever someone starts out with a lesson drawn from Chesterton, because time is finite and Chesterton is abhorrent (to me, at any rate). But I gave this one the full read through, and in the end, the point about tolerence seemed totally extraneous.
And the parody was intended. The post is so very smug and self-satisfied, with the cherry on top of its dramatic "reveal" ending, that a little mockery seemed appropriate.
All the same, I don't think I missed any of the piece's crucial steps. Basically, the whole thing hinges on the idea that the contemporary critical discourse on whiteness is "an almost unprecedented situation" because it's an instance of an ingroup criticizing the ingroup and embracing the outgroup. Everything that follows demands that we agree that this is "a total reversal of everything we know about human psychology up to this point", (since, once we agree to this, and admit that, since it's so radical, it can't be the case, we're ready for his rather lazy idea that we've just described the tribes incorrectly) --- a notion that I just find fantastically, tremendously laughable and stupid.
posted by dis_integration at 1:12 PM on October 27, 2014 [3 favorites]
Basically, the whole thing hinges on the idea that the contemporary critical discourse on whiteness is "an almost unprecedented situation" because it's an instance of an ingroup criticizing the ingroup and embracing the outgroup. Everything that follows demands that we agree that this is "a total reversal of everything we know about human psychology up to this point"
But that seems to be the exact opposite of what he's saying: that we have the appearance of an ingroup criticizing the ingroup, but on closer inspection the criticism is still aimed at an outgroup.
posted by kanewai at 2:38 PM on October 27, 2014 [2 favorites]
But that seems to be the exact opposite of what he's saying: that we have the appearance of an ingroup criticizing the ingroup, but on closer inspection the criticism is still aimed at an outgroup.
posted by kanewai at 2:38 PM on October 27, 2014 [2 favorites]
But that seems to be the exact opposite of what he's saying: that we have the appearance of an ingroup criticizing the ingroup, but on closer inspection the criticism is still aimed at an outgroup.
The problem is that is as far as he goes in his analysis, and promptly falls into the Broderian tar pits. He wants to argue that both sides have their own beliefs that are opposed, but doesn't want to delve any further into why that difference exists, because if he did, he wouldn't be able to maintain his illusion of "tribalism".
In short, this piece is a wonderful example of why the "tribal argument" is really a weaselly dismissal of actual issues.
posted by NoxAeternum at 4:00 PM on October 27, 2014 [2 favorites]
The problem is that is as far as he goes in his analysis, and promptly falls into the Broderian tar pits. He wants to argue that both sides have their own beliefs that are opposed, but doesn't want to delve any further into why that difference exists, because if he did, he wouldn't be able to maintain his illusion of "tribalism".
In short, this piece is a wonderful example of why the "tribal argument" is really a weaselly dismissal of actual issues.
posted by NoxAeternum at 4:00 PM on October 27, 2014 [2 favorites]
kanewai: exactly, hence my parenthetical clarification. Not the clearest writing, I know. But yeah: the point is: this situation appears unprecedented and radical! It can't be the case! There has to be another explanation, namely, that it isn't actually self-criticism, but just plain tribalism yet again.
posted by dis_integration at 4:38 PM on October 27, 2014
posted by dis_integration at 4:38 PM on October 27, 2014
He wants to argue that both sides have their own beliefs that are opposed, but doesn't want to delve any further into why that difference exists, because if he did, he wouldn't be able to maintain his illusion of "tribalism".
That's not an argument against tribalism. Tribalism is real, even if not every tribe is equally correct about everything. This is a difficult nut to crack.
The major difficulty with this issue is that many ideas and ideologies are more incorrect than others, and yet:
- ideological bundles are typically cobbled together not only from some logical conclusions of ideas, but also some historical/cultural accidents, and also merely idiosyncratic trajectories of certain ideas
- people prejudge members of other ideological tribes all the time, both as people judging people and as people judging statements of others
- ideologies can never be completely evaluated objectively, free from human prejudice
- people tend to hold to an archideological fallacy, the idea that ideology is something that other people have; closely related is the idea that they themselves are simply correct about things, while other people are simply wrong, due to lack of knowledge, lack of good reasoning, or immoral qualities
- and yet, for all that, it still remains that some things are quite true, some things are quite false; and still, many things are unknown, uncertain, ambiguous, complicated
- perhaps one thinks that "tolerance" is overrated, but unless you literally want a totalitarian condition, it's barely even a mere rhetorical trick to to think that vocally deprioritizing tolerance is an answer in and of itself: literally nobody thinks that we must always tolerate everything. We still have to think about what tolerance really means, and where tolerance must end, and how to deal when there is disagreement
posted by Sticherbeast at 6:51 AM on October 28, 2014 [3 favorites]
That's not an argument against tribalism. Tribalism is real, even if not every tribe is equally correct about everything. This is a difficult nut to crack.
The major difficulty with this issue is that many ideas and ideologies are more incorrect than others, and yet:
- ideological bundles are typically cobbled together not only from some logical conclusions of ideas, but also some historical/cultural accidents, and also merely idiosyncratic trajectories of certain ideas
- people prejudge members of other ideological tribes all the time, both as people judging people and as people judging statements of others
- ideologies can never be completely evaluated objectively, free from human prejudice
- people tend to hold to an archideological fallacy, the idea that ideology is something that other people have; closely related is the idea that they themselves are simply correct about things, while other people are simply wrong, due to lack of knowledge, lack of good reasoning, or immoral qualities
- and yet, for all that, it still remains that some things are quite true, some things are quite false; and still, many things are unknown, uncertain, ambiguous, complicated
- perhaps one thinks that "tolerance" is overrated, but unless you literally want a totalitarian condition, it's barely even a mere rhetorical trick to to think that vocally deprioritizing tolerance is an answer in and of itself: literally nobody thinks that we must always tolerate everything. We still have to think about what tolerance really means, and where tolerance must end, and how to deal when there is disagreement
posted by Sticherbeast at 6:51 AM on October 28, 2014 [3 favorites]
But that seems to be the exact opposite of what he's saying: that we have the appearance of an ingroup criticizing the ingroup, but on closer inspection the criticism is still aimed at an outgroup.
Yeah, it's an old observation that some of what appears to be ingroup criticism is actually outgroup criticism.
Where he goes wrong is implying that therefore genuine self-criticism and ingroup criticism doesn't really exist (that it is almost always just disguised outgroup criticism) because he doesn't want to consider the idea that maybe some people and groups are genuinely better at self-criticism than he and his ingroup are.
posted by straight at 10:56 AM on October 28, 2014
Yeah, it's an old observation that some of what appears to be ingroup criticism is actually outgroup criticism.
Where he goes wrong is implying that therefore genuine self-criticism and ingroup criticism doesn't really exist (that it is almost always just disguised outgroup criticism) because he doesn't want to consider the idea that maybe some people and groups are genuinely better at self-criticism than he and his ingroup are.
posted by straight at 10:56 AM on October 28, 2014
Where he goes wrong is implying that therefore genuine self-criticism and ingroup criticism doesn't really exist (that it is almost always just disguised outgroup criticism) because he doesn't want to consider the idea that maybe some people and groups are genuinely better at self-criticism than he and his ingroup are.
He doesn't say that at all. What he does say is that it doesn't generally take place so publicly.
And honestly, I'd be hard pressed to think of any example of genuine ingroup criticism performed in front of an outside audience. Can you?
posted by corb at 10:58 AM on October 28, 2014
He doesn't say that at all. What he does say is that it doesn't generally take place so publicly.
And honestly, I'd be hard pressed to think of any example of genuine ingroup criticism performed in front of an outside audience. Can you?
posted by corb at 10:58 AM on October 28, 2014
And honestly, I'd be hard pressed to think of any example of genuine ingroup criticism performed in front of an outside audience. Can you?The Internet has really made this a complicated question, though. The obscurity of private discussion channels and insider forums is the only thing that keeps most things "inside the family" of any group large enough to accumulate real internal analysis. Often, what's called "outgroup criticism" is really just "criticism that people in the outgroup notice and also agree with."
An example is someone inside the Protestant Church criticizing a similar member of the broader Protestant Christian culture for what they feel is an incorrect or damaging take on some religious issue. Whether that's ingroup or outgroup criticism is complicated, and one of the easiest ways of silencing legitimate ingroup critique is to say that it's actually being done to curry favor with the outgroup, not to further the health of the ingroup. This is especially true when there are implicit or explicit hierarchies, and "speaking out publicly" is one of the only ways for people who are not high-status in the ingroup to force action.
Which is to say, simply flipping the definition of who's "in" and who's "out" based on the direction criticism is flowing may be a bit of a blunt instrument for analysis.
posted by verb at 5:55 PM on October 31, 2014 [2 favorites]
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