Boethius

@Preety_India Well, last year it seemed like most of the companies abandoned our 45th president and have taken up the cause of Social Justice in the time since. It's hard for me to know what to make of what some people refer to as "woke capitalism".

@Preety_India Are you at war with Stage Orange?

That's probably true. I guess a lot of people aren't really aware of what capitalism is or how it works, which might explain why people start saying things like "capitalism is evil" once they start to gain an awareness of the limitations of how it operates. On the other hand, I look at something like the "Thank You NHS" social phenomenon and I feel so much cringe. Like, I probably don't want to live in a society where we start applying personalities to our companies. I kind of prefer having companies be "known" entities, even if those entities are fundamentally "selfish" in nature. I find that when people ask me if I want to help out with something, my initial (defensive) reaction is to say "no". But that if I pause and take a moment to think about it -- or even better yet, just jump to saying "yes" -- then I usually feel better about it all afterwards. So to your point, I should probably keep up that practice. I expect that's what we will be doing as we move into the future. I have so little idea, however, of what it could look like that I don't know how I could help support this.

@Forestluv Do you see any sensible way for balancing the interests between competing groups, like Black Lives Matter and Blue Lives Matter for example? I struggle in thinking that an individual like myself simply has to "choose" one group over the other as the object of my sympathy.

@aurum I've found it strange watching companies the past few years become socially conscious. I guess they've been doing it as a way of protecting their bottom line, since customers these days want to spend their money in ways that are socially and environmentally responsible. But I've found the commercials of companies saying that they "put people first" to be kind of bizarre and disingenous. Fundamentally, I believe companies exist to make money and are incapable of having a conscience. This is unlike humans, of course, who do have consciences and who do not exist for the sake of maximizing their own personal financial portfolios -- regardless of how much their behaviors say otherwise Do you have any thoughts on moving from an empathetic sense of care toward concrete action?

@commie Do you feel yourself accountable to some of the things that Social Justice demands of people, even if you don't particularly believe in it?

My most radical view is that I think we are all being held to account, even now, for our ability and willingness to live our lives out of an abundance of love. As Bertrand Russell once said, actions born out of a motive that is ultimately other than love are at best useless, and are more likely harmful at worst.

@Fredodoow I'm aware of the sort of "demonization" of straight white men that you are referring to. In certain social justice spaces I have personally heard the problems of the world laid upon straight white men. But I think what you're missing is your own personal ability to tune the toxic aspects of this out. Yes, you should try to be a non-racist, non-sexist, non-homophobic, all around good man (maybe even an ally, if you feel so called), but you also don't need to accept the status of society's punching bag. The key is that the way you avoid being someone's punching bag isn't by arguing out about reverse racism and misandry, but in more subtle ways of letting things slide off your shoulders. You can force people to own their projections when they are thrown on you, for example. Let's say a woman says in your vicinity that "men need to get in touch with their feelings". That's a cliche that's been floating around since the 70's, and maybe it's true, maybe it's not. You can always ask yourself "why does she care what men do?" The answer might be that she has dated men who expect her to play the role of therapist or who are dismissive of her own emotions. So in that case it's true that the men in her life have failed her, in a way, by not getting in touch with their own emotions. But if you are not dumping your emotions on her and you are able to have competent emotional conversations with her, then at that point it actually isn't her business, quite simply, how you decide to deal with your own emotions -- maybe you have a therapist, maybe you do kickboxing, maybe you practice Stoicism. My point is that these sorts of cliches that sound like men are being blamed for something usually have some kernel of truth in them and some natural limitations as well. For myself, I found that learning a bit of Stoicism (Meditations by Marcus Aurelius, for example), learning about psychological projection including Karpman's drama triangle, and practicing non-violent communication (as developed by Marshall Rosenberg) helps me avoid the predictable drama of these various conversations when they devolve into simple finger pointing. If you prefer finger pointing then you're gonna get called racist, sexist, homophobic, etc and most people aren't going to defend you. But if you just want to live your life responsibly and in a way that avoids unnecessary drama, then some of what I wrote may be useful to you as well. Good luck!

@Forestluv That's an interesting point about these platforms already participating in the "attention economy". My fear is if legitimate criticism gets de-platformed for reasons of naively short-sighted political gain. Which would be bad from a free speech perspective and also bad for the health of any political party in the long term. I suppose my concern about free speech can be addressed by still allowing critical material to be available but harder for an interested party to find. But the politics of all these restrictions are going to take a couple years at least to work out. I worry what becomes of the anger and resentment of Trump's supporters if they have absolutely NO outlet to express themselves. In particular, I would prefer if the Republicans don't put up a more polished version of Trump in 2024. So I remain sceptical about these restrictions.

Liberals are always ALWAYS the ones who come to suffer under free speech restrictions since they are the ones who make proposals that break conventional ways of understanding or participating in society. So while we probably do need some reasonable restrictions to prevent the spread of hate and disinformation, if left-leaning folks think they're gonna be able to use free speech restrictions for political gain, they will learn (at least eventually) how sorely mistaken they were in that.

Maybe you're right that I should be less sceptical of these conversations, given that they have the capacity to bring healing to ridiculously complicated and painful topics. I do think we're gonna at least stumble our way through quite a bit of our history & politics via these conversations.

In some of my previous posts I have mentioned spending time struggling with Critical Race Theory. In particular, I am an academic who belonged to a racial affinity group for over a year reading a variety of books on these topics. One thing that is incredibly striking about the conversations is that the more you engage with them the "deeper" they bring you into yourself. This is very much unlike other cultural topics -- climate change, for example, where the conversation is likely to revolve around the strong scientific consensus that change is happening, some of the political proposals for keeping global warming under control, and some relatively modest changes we can make in our lives to help do our part as individuals. With CRT you can start at the level of interpersonal interactions between white people and POC, go down a level to internal thought processes (implicit biases), then descend into the level of emotions and unhealed trauma, push down into the level or morality and politics, and finally plunge all the way down to metaphysics and theology. In fact, as a Christian I can say that nothing has helped reconcile me to my Christian faith as thoroughly as has engagement with CRT -- if I am guilty of racial sin simply by virtue of being white, as CRT strongly leads one to believe, then from what quarter can I hope to receive any amount of redemption or salvation? My point is that discussions that take CRT as the framework can quickly spiral into incredibly sensitive territory (hence all the admonitions against "white women's tears"). I do not think that most of what I listed above are appropriate topics for the workplace, even in spite of the fact that many institutions and schools are holding these sorts of conversations among their employees. I don't think anyone at work really needs to hear about how I came to accept Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior, I don't think I need to reshare childhood wounds and traumas that have very much informed my views on race and redemption (Robin DiAngelo herself relates her brutally painful childhood to her relationship with race), and I don't see the value in hashing out my personal position on incredibly divisive political questions (like the appropriate interpretation of the slogan Defund the Police). So seeing all of this laid out, what are some healthy boundaries for engaging with CRT at the workplace in a professional manner? I'm thinking of things like "I don't feel comfortable discussing my childhood traumas at work". In many ways, I'm asking about the situations under which it is in fact appropriate for a white person to remain *silent* about their relationship with race in order to avoid professionally inappropriate oversharing. I know that CRT explicitly says that "silence is violence" but I again think this is a divisive slogan (remaining silent when a coworker is being racially harassed is unethical but a certain level of emotional restraint and hence silence is professional). Thoughts?

@Opo The examples that pop off the top of my head are ones of moderating the "progressive" impulse to tear it all down and have a full-on revolution. I have not seen on Slate, for example, any consideration of which statues it might not be wise to tear down or the fact that not each and every single problem the Black community faces can be laid at the feet of white folk. This makes sense, given that we are in a polarized period of time where most politically minded and active people view politics as a game of tug-and-war between two competing sides (so that everyone is incentivized to pull as hard as they can in their team's direction and give no slack to the opposition). But if your interest is in thinking through problems systematically then it is simply not the case that the most radically leftist position is going to be the most practically effective one. So the conservatives I listed above have useful perspectives to offer in providing some balance (and I should mention that most of them are adamantly opposed to Trumpism). A decent taste of what I mean is offered by David Brooks' most recent article: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/13/opinion/conservative-radicals.html And the commenters there are very predictably confused/angry by what he wrote since they expect political pieces to be arguments either for or against one of the two major parties in the US, so that they just don't have a way of making sense of something that's more idiosyncratic and "individualized" even.

For the past couple years I have mainly followed the journalists Damon Linker, Ross Douthat, David Brooks, Rod Dreher, Matthew Walther, Andrew Sullivan, and Michael Brendan Dougherty. All of whom I realize are either centrists or conservatives! Well, I used to be super progressive on most issues, so I know the progressive position backwards and forwards and can read random articles on Slate, NYTimes, Vox, BBC, etc. and generally agree with the position being advocated while also seeing the limitations of that position (limitations that conservatives are more able and willing to explicitly identify than are progressives).

@Girzo I was thinking Yellow because there are personal relationships in the game (optional romantic interests even) along with very "holistic" story lines.

For Green I would say a game like "Life is Strange" that emphasizes the development of personal relationships. For Yellow maybe something like "Mass Effect".

And yet America, arguably, was only ready & willing to elect its first Black president precisely because of how accomplished Barack Obama personally was. Put differently, if Barack Obama "set the standard" for Black people in America, then America felt like it had nothing to fear in elevating a Black man to the highest office in the land. It was after Obama became president and started bringing awareness to the suffering of the Black community (with unfair policing as with the arrest of Henry Louis Gates Jr. and with brutality as with the murder of Trayvon Martin) that America's attitude started to curdle. It was one thing, after all, to acknowledge Black people when they were self-reliantly overcoming lingering hardship -- such an acknowledgment actually flatters America's view of herself as the Land of Opportunity -- but quite another to acknowledge the ongoing debt that America owes to the Black community and the ways in which America continues to fail her Black citizens. Hence Trump. As soon as Black people started asking for help or demanding accountability from the government, what they got instead was the boot. From the beginning, Trump directed law enforcement agencies to halt the trainings and initiatives they had started to put in place under Obama for curtailing police brutality. And he seemed to think the Black community should be grateful for his administration ("what have you got to lose?" he asked of Black people many times). So we know from Obama's time as president that "respectability politics" isn't going to work in inspiring (white) America to provide the relief the Black community requires. We know from Trump's time as *whatever it is he is doing* that blunt force isn't going to magically cause the Black community to straighten out its own affairs. The only option left is for the Black community to play a leading role in setting governmental policy for uplifting its people. This will come about from both the Black community seeking such power and from (white) America ceding its power in turn. Hence the excitement over Biden choosing a Black vice-president.

If we take as given the simple fact that physical objects act according to fixed "laws of Nature", we might ask why we human beings are the one thing in the universe that don't (seem) to obey such laws. I'm reminded of the poem: "Creator of the starry heavens, Lord on thy everlasting throne, Thy power turns the moving sky And makes the stars obey fixed laws. Thou makest lesser stars grow dim Before the Moon's reflected rays When opposite her kinsman bright; Then closer to the Sun she moves And loses all her borrowed light. Thou the Evening Star dost make Rise cold and clear in early night, And change, as Morning Star, his reins To pale before the new sun's light. When Winter's cold has stripped the trees Thou holdest day in confines tight: When Summer comes with torrid heat Thou givest swifter hours to night. Thy power rules the changing year: The tender leaves the North wind stole The Spring West wind makes reappear; The seeds that Winter saw new sown The Summer burns as crops full-grown. All things obey their ancient law And all perform their proper tasks; All things thou holdest in strict bounds, -- To human acts alone denied Thy fit control as Lord of all. Why else does slippery Fortune change So much, and punishment more fit For crimes oppress the innocent? Corrupted men sit throned on high; By strange reversal wickedness Downtreads the necks of holy men. Bright virtue lies in dark eclipse By clouds obscured, and unjust men Heap condemnation on the just; No punishment for perjury Or lies adorned with speciousness. They use their power when whimsy bids, And love to subjugate great kings Whose sway holds countless men in fear. O Thou who bindest bonds of things Look down on all earth's wretchedness; Of this great work is man so mean A part, by Fortune to be tossed? Lord, hold the rushing waves in check, And with the bond thou rul'st the stars, Make stable all the lands of earth." -- Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy

I started working on my own trauma once I got away from my family and went into college. It's been a long ongoing process, however, and one that I was only able to really start focussing on once my education was complete and I was reasonably secure in my profession.

I wonder if the US was always going to have problems controlling a virus like this -- relative to other countries -- because of how large we are and how many international airport hubs we have. Not that the administration's response has been anything less than inept, of course. But I do figure this was going to be pretty bad for us no matter what.

I don't have that kind of power -- I'm relatively new to these forums myself. I was trying to point out to you that we can engage in political topics in ways that are constructive (respectful, relevant, exploratory) instead of being merely provocative and argumentative. And I actually think there is a good topic here, about the ways in which conservatives might experience liberal political norms as being tyrannical. But as others also pointed out, I don't think the way you started this thread was likely to lead to that sort of deeper conversation.

I believe honor is a fundamentally Blue value. So it sounds like you would be looking for a person who is transitioning from Red into Blue. Maybe someone like Charlemagne after he became baptized into Christianity. As an aside, recall that he threatened death for any of his followers who didn't convert to Christianity, which quite a Red way of imposing Blue!

@IJB063 You start from a premise that the people on this forum are "Trosky esque" in their views and then ask people to reveal how highly they score on a fascism test, where your conception of fascism is that of an anti-semitic neo-Nazi. It's hard to understand what you think this will achieve, aside from the exact same provocation that Leo has set as a warning to avoid. Why don't you try to constructively engage with the members of this forum instead of picking a fight?

As the computer scientists say, "garbage in, garbage out".

I get the sense that when people think of "socialism" they are imagining the USSR's version of Communism, as in the clip below. That clip does a good job showing how it is that a Green sounding idea like Communism is actually Blue to the core, and why we need to carefully distinguish between "socialism" as it exists in the Nordic countries, for example, from Communism as it existed in the USSR.