So it seems like C trains are running express for track maintenance, so I’m on the verge of going to get a 1 train which will land me a few blocks from home even though I hate the 1 train…and then I hear an announcement “Police, police, please respond to the uptown 1 train! Police, police, uptown 1 train!”
So I guess not.
I’m typing with music on my laptop and these three pigeons keep landing on my windowsill, poking around a little bit, and then diving back off the fire escape one after the other in the same order, and I’m like….do they like Ralph Vaughan Williams?
They either got bored or they do not like Roomful of Teeth.
“Some scholars observe that, in classrooms today, the initial gesture of criticism can seem to carry more prestige than the long pursuit of understanding. One literature professor and critic at Harvard - not old or white or male - noticed that it had become more publicly rewarding for students to critique something as “problematic” than to grapple with what the problems might be; they seemed to have found that merely naming concerns had more value, in today’s cultural marketplace, than curiosity about what underlay them.”
I have indeed noticed this in online discussion and “discourse”. And it’s frustrating as fuck.
Identifying that a problem exists is only the first step in solving it. If you don’t then analyze the details, determine what is and is not working, why it works the way it does, and then how to change those things for the better etc. you are not actually working to solve the problem.
Identifying problems also means understanding why something’s a problem.
People’s explanations for why something’s problematic often begin and end with, “It’s problematic because it’s bad, and if you don’t agree that it’s bad you’re a bad person.”
But this isn’t an answer that helps anything.
Guilt-tripping only motivates people to work on the problem inasmuch as it takes to demonstrate they’re not a bad person, rather than motivating them to work on the problem until it’s solved.
No one’s a bad person for being clueless about an issue, but anyone trying to educate others about it ought to understand it themselves, and ought to explain the problem in a way that imparts comprehension to other people, not guilt.
Exactly exactly! And I’m also incredibly concerned about how this has become the de facto style of interacting with anything because honestly? It’s not just that they fail to impart comprehension to others, it’s that most of them don’t comprehend it themselves. They have heard the grapevine say x thing is ~problematic~ and they are so deathly afraid of the social ostracism that would come if they were ever accused of being problematic/supporting problematic things/not adequately performing outrage about problematic things that they parrot it without thinking about it, and then go around and bully others into expressing the same opinion without ever really arguing for or understanding that opinion.
Also, I think what too many people on the internet have lost sight of is that “critical thinking” does not mean “only say negative things/have a negative judgment.” That is not what “critical” means. It actually means the opposite, because it’s about putting aside your judgement and emotional reactions, sometimes even your moral reaction, to look at something holistically, objectively, and in context, with the goal of understanding why it is the way it is, how it works, and what effects it might have on other things, not to come to a simple answer of “this is kosher for people of xyz cause” or “this is universally condemnable and anyone who interacts with it in any way is guilty by association.” But people have completely missed this, so instead we have even more judgment and less critical thinking, and we have also created this environment that is simultaneously cynical and shallow, where it’s cool and progressive to be negative about things but never to say “yeah of course it isn’t perfect but it has value both despite and because of that.” It’s not a coincidence that you hear “x show is problematic and if you watch it you’re a horrible person” or “teaching about y is always bad” a hundred times more frequently than “hey x show does a pretty good job actually.” We devolved from “there are shades of grey to everything” to “everything is black or white” to “actually everything is bad all the time and if you ever say anything is good or neutral you’re part of the problem and you must support every bad thing I hate.” Tearing things down is seen as activism and awareness, but fixing things or building up the things that are good is not valued because it doesn’t give you the same social justice street cred, and that’s all it’s about anymore.
Reblogging this last addition, because it eloquently points out the vital discernment processes that “peer-pressure morality” is trying to undermine.
And it’s late so my brain’s checking out, so I’ll leave it to someone else to explain deeper…But this entire problem is very much the result of Protestant social engineering.
I shit you not, I wish I was making this up…but it’s literally no secret that Evangelicals have been doing things like buying up Top-40 radio stations and maneuvering into positions of government with the intention of indoctinating the nation. It’s been stated as much in leaked in email correspondences. There was even a post going around recently citing how Republicans utilize fandom wars to give credibility to their talking points.
I forget the details, but I welcome others to investigate this because it paints a truly alarming picture.
This kind of societal-level undue influence is very real and is exactly why a skill like critical thinking—as defined above—is neccessary. It helps keep you keep your agency over your own mind.
I’ll do it; it’s a topic I’ve written many, many posts about over the years and have never published for reasons that you can probably guess, but which a lot of people would probably be better off for hearing.
We have already seen many times how a reliance on the “letter of the law,” in this case the correct jargon or performance, without an understanding of the “spirit of the law” is quite dangerous because of how open it leaves things to infiltration and manipulation
The case that comes to mind is the male celebrity, can’t remember who, who would tweet about #MeToo and say all these feminist things, but who turned out to be a misogynistic creep in real life to the real women around him. There was a similar incident a couple years ago about someone who was an outspoken advocate for racial and gender diversity in the medical field but ended up being weirdly bigoted and, when push came to shove, put their own career interests above anything else. But at least these people can only be said to be selfish.
There have absolutely been coordinated efforts to deliberately exploit the ways these well-meaning but inexcusably ignorant people in progressive scenes rely on buzzwords and “correct” framing and have basically no idea how to examine content; I was there and I was good at it. It was considered a great sport to tie social justice types into knots by arguing the kinds of things that have now firmly infected some of these circles, like “actually, supporting trans people is extremely sexist, because you’re saying that gender is based on stereotypical traits, and all these AFAB people calling themselves nonbinary or transitioning are selling out women everywhere by buying into the patriarchal essentialist assumption that anyone who likes certain things or wants to dress/act a certain way must be a certain gender, and saying you’re nonbinary is just saying you ‘aren’t like other girls.’ People only want to transition because of patriarchal trauma and violence against female-coded bodies and by normalising transition you’re just sweeping the real problems under the rug and encouraging mental illness, which is ableist.” These are just standard TERF talking points now but they came from the alt-right, and it wasn’t from people who actually gave a shit about “the patriarchy.” Another one was “actually, people should never have relationships outside their race, because there will always be a difference of social power, and by encouraging race mixing what you’re really doing is saying you want cultural distinctiveness to be erased, which is ethnocidal and will only ever benefit the oppressor,” or its reverse, “cultural appropriation isn’t real and complaining about ‘microaggressions’ is essentialist and segregationist.” These arguments are opposite; it doesn’t matter, the point wasn’t for us to win but for you to lose. We just knew that if you use the right buzzwords, there’s a lot of people who are conditioned to immediately accept it as true and it was funny to watch them scramble to reconcile convictions like “patriarchy=bad” and “supporting minorities=good” that these arguments put at irreconcilable odds — if you take them at face value, which they always did. And the biggest goal was to make them look stupid in public, to get them to contradict themselves and hang themselves with their own political correctness so that the entire movement would be discredited, or else to change the courses of these movements without their advocates ever even having to see themselves as right-wing.
I personally learned these tactics under evangelicalism, although they have spread to a lot of ideological groups. It wasn’t just passively, either. It was explicitly taught. We were taught that cultural relativism and subjectivity were some of the worst evils out there, while at the same time being taught basically to exploit the fact that our opponents didn’t think that. For instance, we were supposed to make creationism accepted, and the first step to do that is to give it attention and to make the general public believe there were actually two sides of equal validity, and we framed it as “teach the controversy.” There really isn’t a controversy in the scientific community, but it doesn’t matter; you can say anything you want and people will believe it. The idea was to get people to “hear out” the creationists, to get creationists a platform to debate scientists with actual credentials because even when the creationists inevitably lost the debate, they will have made headway, because now they are putting themselves on the same level as respected scientific experts, and then they goad the evolutionists into losing patience or sounding smug and looking like the assholes. They lose the battle but it’s strategic, because they are controlling the perception the general public has of the “fight” they made up. But to even get to that point, they appeal to the leftist paradox of tolerance and belief in cultural relativism, by saying that it isn’t fair to keep the “intelligent design” crowd silent, that people have a right to their spiritual beliefs, and that it’s morally wrong to deny people that right. Of course they don’t really believe that! Those people think cultural relativism and multiculturalism are evil! They would have no problem denying evolutionists the right to question creationism if they had the theocracy they want, but they know that it is most strategic for them to use the other side’s own logic against them. This has been going on a long time, but it is a tactic the alt-right went on to adapt and perfect for the social media age, and it worked so well because we knew that you were playing by rules we had no problem discarding as soon as it suited us. It was all for the greater good, as we saw it. We could use cultural relativism as a means to an end where we could discard it, knowing that our opponents would not be able or willing to fight that argument.
As long as you rely on simple heuristics to tell you whether an argument is good or bad (both in terms of logic and in terms of morality), you will always be vulnerable. Just because someone says that x is an antiracist or feminist or queer-liberating position doesn’t mean it actually is, and you aren’t obligated to treat it as such just because they say so. Furthermore, you don’t actually have to try to reconcile what they’re saying, and a lot of times the best course of action is to not try to do so at all, to not engage, because again, they aren’t trying to win points for their argument, which they may or may not even believe, but to make sure that you lose, and as soon as you engage with them seriously and at face value, you’ve already lost. But people are so paranoid that if they say the wrong thing or don’t adequately publicly condemn something, that makes them just as guilty, which is not true, and subject to losing the approval of their entire social circle and cast out for their social justice sins. They’re too afraid to do anything but believe it.
Fear is one of the most useful tools an ideology can wield, and it’s not just the more obvious fears like fear of change, fear of obsolescence, fear of unfamiliarity, which the ideology may directly offer a solution to. It is also the fear of questioning, doubt, and independent thought. No matter where that ideology falls on the political/religious/social spectrum, an ideology that employs this against its adherents is dangerous and so easily manipulated by both intrinsic and extrinsic forces, and it will never be in your best interest. If you are afraid to toe the party line because of social or other consequences, you’re in a cult, and it doesn’t matter if you agree with the other positions or not. You can be feminist or socialist or whatever without falling into the cult (which is often what they tell you you can’t do — you can’t be a good x if you don’t immediately swallow y unquestioningly) but you need to be aware of it and learn to trust your own ability to evaluate evidence and arguments without relying on others to tell you your opinion, because otherwise that opinion will always be a liability to you and to the movements you claim to support.
I want to thank you so, so much for this generous insight, and for speaking up about this issue. For what it’s worth, it’s been a burning hot iron in my mind as well.
For those scrolling:
And if you need additional context to understand the architecture of everything outlined here, I recommend looking up these resources:
“As long as you rely on simple heuristics to tell you whether an argument is good or bad (both in terms of logic and in terms of morality), you will always be vulnerable. Just because someone says that x is an antiracist or feminist or queer-liberating position doesn’t mean it actually is, and you aren’t obligated to treat it as such just because they say so.”
In order of meaning on Gilbert Baker's original eight colour rainbow flag, these are:
Hakushin line JR E653-1000 U107; Hot pink, representing sex.
Bernina Express; Red, representing life.
SEPTA's Broad Street Line; Orange, representing healing.
Doctor Yellow (Shinkansen test train)- Yellow, representing sunlight.
Sž series 711; Green, representing nature.
DOST Hybrid Electric Train; Turquoise, representing magic & art
British Rail class 385; Indogo, representing Serenity.
SR 34027 Taw Valley (Platinum Jubilee livery); Violet, representing Spirit.
A Green Heron stands still and silent, ready to pounce at any moment.
This pride I will once again kindly ask you guys to at least skip-read the intersex wikipedia page and learn what that word. You know. Means.
Common misconceptions:
“In Jewish thought, a sin is not an offense against God, an act of disobedience. A sin is a missed opportunity to act humanly. The verb to sin in Hebrew is also used in the sense of ‘missing the target.’ When God created us free to choose between good and bad, He also gave us the capacity to know when we had chosen wrongly”
— Harold Kushner, To Life!: A Celebration of Jewish Being and Thinking
Had an idea you might be able to use for something: Klingon Soap Operas.
(sigh)
Thanks for the thought. I appreciate your kindness!
But unfortunately, because you've sent me the idea and I've read it, I can now not use it, ever. No matter how much I might like to.
This isn't about you, you understand. And in its way it probably seems like a cruel paradox. You were only trying to be helpful! But if I was working on something for Trek and this concept came up even in casual discussion, I would be honor-bound (and contractually required) to inform them that the idea had come to me from a reader or fan. And then—rightly, from their point of view—they would forbid me to use it, because the idea's originator might some day, despite all their friendly intentions now, sue them over it. And the evidence that I was at fault would be easy to obtain. Sending a DM on any major platform generates an electronic "paper trail" that will confirm its target has opened and read the message in question. And that electronic record can be subpoenaed and submitted as evidence, and would stand up in court.
"Oh, come on, who'd do a thing like that, what are the odds...?" people will say. But it's not generally known that I've already been involved in a high-stakes lawsuit in which someone tried to sue Mattel over material I wrote when developing the initial form of the "Barbie: Fairytopia" universe (and the first Fairytopia film) for them. I'd never so much as met or communicated with the person suing them, had never read even a word of their work... but they still went to great trouble and expense attempting to prove that I'd had access to their material and used it without permission.
Mattel won the suit (as I'd frankly been expecting: the attorney handling their defense was one of the most expert IP lawyers in the US). But it gave me the chills... and made it clear how very wrong things could go, and the kind of damage that could be done to my career and my personal life, if I even accidentally used ideas from unauthorized sources.
Seriously, folks. I know you all mean well! But please don't make me tap the sign. DO NOT SEND ME STORY IDEAS, no matter how vague or general or unformed they may be. To do so is to absolutely guarantee that they will never, ever happen.* (And in my own universes, your innocently-meant suggestion could mean that neither you or anyone else will ever see that particular Young Wizards or Middle Kingdoms plot, no matter how much you'd like to... because I take this stuff seriously.)
...Thanks, all.
*This is also why I don't read fanfic set in my universes. Which you also shouldn't send me: please and thank you.
Please read this before you send me ideas or links to fanfic of any of my stuff. Please.
This was clarifying, actually, as to what I find so wrong with modern-day radical social justice movements' accusations that "liberals" just want oppressed people to be less "aggressive" in asking for their rights.
Because it's not that I oppose "aggressive" activism, it's that I don't think we should just be recapitulating Christian evangelicalism.
It's that I think we should actually be working to end oppression, I think we should be acting on oppressed people's demands for their rights, not just trading in our acceptance of white supremacy and structural racism for that.
Because its precepts are just as fucked up when people say them in a kind and gentle voice.
The X-Files is a profoundly American series for many, many, MANY reasons, it's baked into its DNA like whatever is going on with the alien virus, but one of them is that it's a road trip show almost as much as it is anything else. Mulder & Scully's particular weird intimacy is forged in large part from being trapped together in the oddly therapeutic atmosphere of the front seat of a car and in isolated depressing motels for weeks of their lives - if you don't end up hating each other, it's a fast track to limitless trust between two people who otherwise find trust very difficult!
I find this post very grating on several levels, and yet it’s got me thinking…
I’d never seen or heard the “Heroine’s Journey” conceptualized before, but looking at it, I wonder whether it’s got something to do with the “The Princess Bride is sexist/Buttercup is stupid and useless” discourse and the ways in which certain kinds of women’s stories are devalued.
Thinking also of Elora Danan in the recent Willow series.
Because if a heroine’s journey must begin, in some sense, with her separation from the feminine, if that’s the heroine’s journey that we’re almost as accustomed to seeing as the classic Hero’s Journey… then how do we recognize a heroine who does not do that? Who either utterly refuses to do that, or never has it occur to her?
The Princess Bride is a movie in which, time after time after time, we learn that we aren’t being told the story we assume that we are, and this would seem to be another way in which that’s true. That this is, in some sense, what we think a Heroine does.
But Buttercup doesn’t.
We see Elora become more herself again over the course of Willow’s first (and as it turns out, only) season, but never by seeking to make herself less feminine.
Do we know how to recognize a heroine who never renounces her femininity in any way?
Likewise, I think it’s got a lot to do with why you see people have such a problem, in the Earthsea series, with what happens to Ged in Tehanu.
Because Le Guin gives him a heroine’s journey.
Because (notwithstanding that he’s already had a couple of books’ worth of hero’s journey to himself) it’s not just that he realizes his adventuring days are over, it’s that he chooses home and family and union with Tenar.
I find this post very grating on several levels, and yet it’s got me thinking...
I’d never seen or heard the “Heroine’s Journey” conceptualized before, but looking at it, I wonder whether it’s got something to do with the “The Princess Bride is sexist/Buttercup is stupid and useless” discourse and the ways in which certain kinds of women’s stories are devalued.
Thinking also of Elora Danan in the recent Willow series.
Because if a heroine’s journey must begin, in some sense, with her separation from the feminine, if that’s the heroine’s journey that we’re almost as accustomed to seeing as the classic Hero’s Journey... then how do we recognize a heroine who does not do that? Who either utterly refuses to do that, or never has it occur to her?
The Princess Bride is a movie in which, time after time after time, we learn that we aren’t being told the story we assume that we are, and this would seem to be another way in which that’s true. That this is, in some sense, what we think a Heroine does.
But Buttercup doesn’t.
We see Elora become more herself again over the course of Willow’s first (and as it turns out, only) season, but never by seeking to make herself less feminine.
Do we know how to recognize a heroine who never renounces her femininity in any way?
Not an expert but from personal experience this is true. Firms will also try to build a case representing multiple clients as well, which can strengthen their case and give a bigger pay out. If they win.
If your company is stealing wages from you there is a good chances their stealing from others. Talk to your coworkers about your wages (but be smart about it).
You absolutely have the power to sue their asses if you need to. You might need to take the time to do your research and talk to multiple lawyers first but don’t let the fear of lawyer fees be the Only thing that stops you.
Also check into whether your locality has a human rights commission or EEOC. These bodies can sometimes get you relief even without filing a lawsuit. Consider also filing a complaint with your state attorney general’s office or calling your city councilperson.
Filing a lawsuit isn’t even the only recourse you might have.
LOVE seeing a guy I’ve worked with as an actor on an Equity contract, now that he’s acting as a producer, complain about the constraints that Equity imposes on things like the 29-hour reading agreement...
Now, researchers have put a nail in the coffin of porn addiction. Josh Grubbs, Samuel Perry and Joshua Wilt are some of the leading researchers on America’s struggles with porn, having published numerous studies examining the impact of porn use, belief in porn addiction, and the effect of porn on marriages. And Rory Reid is a UCLA researcher who was a leading proponent gathering information about the concept of hypersexual disorder for the DSM-5. These four researchers, all of whom have history of neutrality, if not outright support of the concepts of porn addiction, have conducted a meta-analysis of research on pornography and concluded that porn use does not predict problems with porn, but that religiosity does
If the concept of pornography addiction were true, then porn-related problems would go up, regardless of morality, as porn use goes up. But the researchers didn’t find that. In fact, they cite numerous studies showing that even feeling like you struggle to control your porn use doesn’t actually predict more porn use. What that means is that the people who report great anguish over controlling their porn use aren’t actually using more porn; they just feel worse about it.
Having moral conflict over your porn use (PPMI) does turn out to be bad for you. But that's not because of the porn. Instead, higher levels of moral conflict over porn use predict higher levels of stress, anxiety, depression, and diminished sexual well-being, as well as religious and spiritual struggles. In one study by Perry and Whitehead, pornography use predicted depression over a period of six years, but only in men who disapproved of porn use. Continuing to use porn when you believe that it is bad is harmful. Believing that you are addicted to porn and telling yourself that you're unable to control your porn use hurts your well-being. It's not the porn, but the unresolved, unexamined moral conflict.
This is a really good writeup.
