State of Things

Ganymede

So, my rhetorical moral quandary is this: How can people strive for equality in a society where setting yourself apart from others as being more valuable is the main element of securing stability?

To be clear, my objection was to any suggestion that Black Lives Matter movement and the Everyone Gets a Trophy! group are similar. You did it here:

@Ghost said in State of Things:

So with the everyone gets a trophy or black lives matter or omg white privilege people, I tend to look at it all with a slanted brow.

That aside, to answer the previous point directly: the "equality" movements out there are not looking for actual equality between people, but equal treatment under the law. You can provide people with equal treatment under the law while promoting fair, actual competition. For example, you and I can promote our differences and superiorities without the law granting favor to either one of us.

If you're talking about people who want everyone to be treated just like everyone else because, well, that's the right thing to do, I haven't the time or the energy to try to understand the myriad of mental issues and failures those folks have.

(I highly object to Trophies for Everyone! people.)

Roz

@Ganymede said in State of Things:

@Ghost said in State of Things:

So, my rhetorical moral quandary is this: How can people strive for equality in a society where setting yourself apart from others as being more valuable is the main element of securing stability?

To be clear, my objection was to any suggestion that Black Lives Matter movement and the Everyone Gets a Trophy! group are similar. You did it here:

@Ghost said in State of Things:

So with the everyone gets a trophy or black lives matter or omg white privilege people, I tend to look at it all with a slanted brow.

Yeah. As long as you're going to be equating participation trophies with deconstructing deep-seated racial bias, @Ghost, I'm going to be slanting my brow right back at you. Those are very different things with very different validities.

Ghost

How, precisely, did I equate those two things, besides mentioning them in the same sentence? I mentioned them in the same sentence but did not comment as to their validity or the weight.

By slanted brow, I meant that I've got my eye on them.

Stand down.

Ghost

@Ganymede said in State of Things:

To be clear, my objection was to any suggestion that Black Lives Matter movement and the Everyone Gets a Trophy! group are similar. You did it here:
@Ghost said in State of Things:

So with the everyone gets a trophy or black lives matter or omg white privilege people, I tend to look at it all with a slanted brow.

What is your basic attitude problem requires you to make the logical leap from them being mentioned in the same sentence to equating them? Where did I say that they were similar?

You just want to argue. Fuck off.

Edit/Clarification: There's no logical conclusion in any way that the Black Lives Matter movement and the Everyone gets a Trophy! are similar in any way. I shouldn't have to CLARIFY THE HELL OUT OF THAT to call off the dog pound simply because I dared mention them in the same sentence without some 42pt Helvetica font disclaimer that I wasn't equating them.

Roz

@Ghost When you mention a list of things in the same breath as all getting a similar reaction from you, you're grouping them together with some indication that, yeah, there's some thread of commonality there. I still find the idea of listing those things all in the same sentence as stuff you're "keeping an eye on" to be pretty misguided, whether of not you think you equated them. So. Maybe the way you expressed yourself is also part of the problem?

Ghost

No. I'm not.

When I mention three things in a sentence that I slant my brow at (and that's all I say), I've made no statements about my beliefs about the validity of any of them. I've simply mentioned them as all things that I slant my eyebrows at.

The way that I expressed myself isn't part of the problem.

The problem is that both you and @Ganymede chose to read it as some kind of misguided lopping them all into the same category as having the same emotional weight due to the fact that they were all separated with commas.

If you have any questions about my beliefs as to their validity or their strong/weak points, then act like a respectful person and ask.

I would respect it if you wouldn't make these kinds of rude logical assumptions without asking for clarification. We're not on the Hog Pit. Stand down.

DISCLAIMER: By not mentioning that the Holocaust was real in this statement, it does not mean that I am a Holocaust Denier.

I didn't say anything wrong here and I didn't mean to imply anything of the sort. Had I intended to say that, I would have. Had you any intention of understanding whether or not I meant that, then you would have asked.

Don't be pricks about it.

Roz

@Ghost I think that my language in challenging your statement was incredibly civil. I find the language of your response very much not so. My first response indicated that I was slanting my brow back at you. My second was about how your language choices come across. The strongest word I used was "misguided." You've now called me a prick. I think that you're actually the one who needs to turn it down a notch here.

EDIT: Intent is not the only thing that matters. The way we present our points matters, too.

Ghost

I apologize if you are offended by my saying that you're being a prick after you referred to me as misguided due to your reactionary response to assuming that I felt the Black Lives Matter and Everyone Gets a Trophy movements are equal in necessity, despite myself never having said so.

Roz

@Ghost You're the one standing in the way of this being a civil conversation right now. I mean -- I'm not actively offended by you calling me a prick? I'm honestly confused at the heat of your reaction to what's seemed fairly tame language of debate. While you yell at other people to stand down because we're not in the Hog Pit, you're actually being the most volatile.

Ghost

@Roz Look, just because I throw out some sarcasm or outline things in bold doesn't mean I'm yelling, nor does it mean that I'm upset in any way.

To be honest, the one who's being a prick about it is @Ganymede.

So I'll more constructive: In the future, if you have any questions about whether or not I was implying something, it would be more proper to ask for a clarification.

Roz

@Ghost You can't police other people's language about what is and isn't too mean or rude to exist outside the Hog Pit and then tell them not to call out your own language. But you've already basically said that there's no way for your own language to be a part of any disagreement here, just my interpretation. So. No, I don't foresee that much constructive debate between us in the future on this.

Arkandel

@surreality said in State of Things:

There is a great opportunity in this, but it is one we are typically hamstringing ourselves from the jump, re: preparing ourselves to take advantage of it.

That's creativity. Imagination. Art.

I quite agree. It's just that it's hard for those things to be valued if you can't feed your family - and there are about in the mid-term to be millions more people who won't be eligible for employment any more.

The potential for mankind to be freed from the shackles of unnecessary labor and invest in creativity is fantastic, but who here thinks there won't be a major backlash against people getting 'something for nothing'? They won't be allowed to devote all that extra time to something unique, even if their efforts are literally no longer necessary.

I've seen debates about this on Slashdot where otherwise perfectly reasonable-sounding posters wrote things very close to "if I work then you need to as well, even if you don't have to". They actually expected people to be forced to perform completely menial, unneeded tasks to 'pay for it', whatever it is they're supposed to be paying for.

The kinds of people who post such things - who view the issue from a vindictive point of view, and consider freedom from labor as a social disease, not a goal - are those who'd be the ones primarily in the way of solutions like a reasonable universal guaranteed income; the "no freeloaders" folks.

So it might not matter if there are about (predictions range from 10-15 years before the numbers hit a truly critical mass) to be a pretty damn many of such unemployed people, or that you can't possibly reeducate all those people to get them to code or perform high-end tasks which (currently) can't be automated when they are driving a truck today within the span of a generation.

But then what will happen to that generation?

@Ghost said in State of Things:

All people matter

To me the "All People Matter" peeps sound as absurd as following cancer awareness campaigners around trying to hijack them with all-disease awareness slogans.

Like, dude, what are you doing?

Ghost

@Roz I'll agree to disagree. I'll also be chill. Let's give it 24 hours and if you wanna chat and straighten out the wrinkles, let's take it to message chat.

Thenomain

@Arkandel said in State of Things:

To me the "All People Matter" peeps sound as absurd as following cancer awareness campaigners around trying to hijack them with all-disease awareness slogans.
Like, dude, what are you doing?

Because we can sympathize with cancer. We know what a disease is by experience, and we can extrapolate.

What many of us can't do is know what it's like to live as a different human being. This is a social engagement that we can't just walk into a different neighborhood and go, "Holy smokes, so this is what being discriminated against is like!" No, what the human mind seems to do is to respond with, "Man, those Others, they're such jerks!"

The "Others" are those who look different than you. We're wired that way; it's a survival tactic. Stay away from the person who acts different because it could be a disease, it could mean they don't understand our ways and are going to hurt our ability to survive. Thanks to Fucking European Fucking Colonialism, we didn't give it up until a scant 152 years ago.

Er, sorry, I meant 72 years ago.

Shit, I meant 63 years ago.

Maybe two years ago?

Wait, I meant ... maybe never?

Point here is that it's easy to sneer at the people who are for something you think is Wrong(tm), but until you understand their position I don't think it's possible to argue against it or resolve it.

Ghost

@Thenomain hardcore up vote, there.

Derp

Another thing to keep in mind here, as we snipe at each other about Black Lives Matter and Participation Trophies and whatnot...

You cannot force another person to accept your subjective perspective on these types of matters. Your perspective is, as mentioned, subjective. Just because they disagree with you, or don't view a particular social movement/phenomenon the same way that you do, doesn't make them wrong. Because there is no empirical value by which one can measure these things.

I'm one of those people who responded to Black Lives Matter with 'All Lives Matter'. Because I think that this conversation needs to be had. Being from a hispanic family, and also gay, I've seen my share of discrimination. But it never gets talked about. And what really chaps my ass is, when it does get talked about, people are quick to rally around this idea of

Well at least you don't have it as bad as the black guy.

Look, man. Fuck that. Yes, I know that blacks in this country have it rough. I've seen the studies, I've lived in the neighborhoods. We all read about this stuff in school, at length. But they aren't the only ones. People of all colors have it bad (many whites included), and it could just as easily be proven (if you're looking at the neighborhoods where they live and proportions of discrimination) that poor people have it bad. I've lived in neighborhoods where white cops treated other white people who lived there as badly as the blacks, or hispanics. Etc. Just because they were poor, and from a different sub-culture. And what's worse, in any discussion, the idea that blacks somehow have it worse, and therefore are the only ones who deserve immediate attention, is frequently used to hijack pretty much any discussion of these things.

Black Lives Matter actually reduced the awareness of a particular problem -- the police in this country are getting out of control no matter who you are, Minorities of all colors tend to have more police-related violence or incidents of rights violations, not just black people. This is a discussion we need to be having with everyone, not just one group. Yes, BLM, you are important too, but do you think for this one discussion you could try not being the divas of the show, and recognize that there is a systemic problem that expands beyond you?

Black Lives Matter did more damage than good. Studies are already showing that what should have been a productive conversation has already caused people to become desensitized to this sort of thing. And I jointly fault the media and BLM for that -- but I tend to fault BLM more. Because they pulled so many crazy antics to try and get media attention toward their specific group when a discussion about the systemic problem was already ongoing that they managed to do the thing most of us try and avoid at all costs -- they managed to look like the Divas of Discrimination, which is un-fucking-productive in the largest possible way.

Is my opinion subjective here? Yes. Do you need to agree with it? No. But there are plenty of ways that an issue can be viewed, and sniping at each other like you somehow have some kind of method to show how empirically wrong another person's subjective POV is is just stupid. It detracts from the discussion.

Coin

Man, I do not have the spoons for this fucking thread.

Ganymede

@Ghost said in State of Things:

To be honest, the one who's being a prick about it is @Ganymede.

You're right; I was. I was a self-righteous asshole for it too, because I read the comment incorrectly at the absolute wrong time. I wasn't trying to be argumentative; I was trying to be argumentatively inflammatory.

That's my transgression, and I'll own it. I apologize for the misreading, which is severely hypocritical, and would like to move on to address substantive points.

@Derp said in State of Things:

Black Lives Matter did more damage than good.

I disagree, but only from a matter of perspective.

Black Lives Matter opened up a wound that, as you aptly put it, is suffered by minorities of all kinds, including poor people regardless of their race. It did good by forcing a dialogue and examination, and provoked a response within the law enforcement community that would likely not have happened without. At least now, law enforcement agencies are strongly considering or adopting the use of cameras, if only to protect themselves. The use of body cameras has been debated since I was a prosecutor.

Where Black Lives Matter falls down is by attempting to twist each and every incident of law enforcement violence into a shit-show that makes the victims look as bad, or worse, than the police officers. Where Black Lives Matter falls down is by indiscriminately picking up incidences on video which actually exonerates racist cops who happened to beat up a not-so-sympathetic victim. And that has turned Lily-White America against what should have been a cause they could support: increased scrutiny of government and law enforcement.

Unfortunately, like Occupy Wall Street, I think Black Lives Matter attracted the wrong support base and took a wrong turn. I do not necessarily fault the founders of the movement -- one of whom tragically killed themselves -- because these sorts of movements so often fall apart when there is a lack of leadership. Thankfully, the movement helped propel people like Bernie Sanders and other progressives to the forefront, and put some pressure on the government to police themselves. But the movement has fallen short, and will always fall short, in getting adequate support to address the issue of discriminatory or disparate law enforcement and application of force because by its very title, it is divisive.

(I'm a huge law enforcement supporter and a actively-voting Republican at state and local levels, and have a number of law enforcement friends who would agree with @Derp.)

Arkandel

@Ganymede said in State of Things:

(I'm a huge law enforcement supporter and a actively-voting Republican at state and local levels, and have a number of law enforcement friends who would agree with @Derp.)

You ~~might~~probably have a more accurate idea of what the case actually is than we non-Americans do due to your profession.

Is the 'blue code' a real thing in your opinion? Do cops back illegal actions taken by their peers to the point of committing perjury or hiding/modifying evidence?

Derp

@Arkandel said in State of Things:

Is the 'blue code' a real thing in your opinion? Do cops back illegal actions taken by their peers to the point of committing perjury or hiding/modifying evidence?

It's not just cops. It's everyone. Behavioral psychologist and organizational sociologists have looked at this kind of thing forever. Simply belonging to a group will generally cause a person to feel sympathetic toward that group, and make them willing to bend rules, allocate resources, or any number of other things in favor of the 'in group' versus the 'out group'. This is especially prevalent in situations where the 'out group' is seen as the enemy, like law enforcement versus criminals. One is antithetical to the other.

But yeah. In just about -any- human organization, members of a group will develop at least some degree of loyalty to other members of the group, and will take actions to protect them from harm. The real question is the extent to which it occurs. How much is too much? When does a member of the in group become a member of the out group, psychologically speaking? It's very interesting stuff. There's no doubt that it happens, but it's hard to make any kind of generalization because there is really no scope to how much it occurs.