The Thread to Restore Sanity And/Or Fear

[Sieg Reyu]

Social Justice Movement /ˈsōSHəl jəstis mo͞ovmənt/

noun

1. Entropy incarnate



This #CancelColbert shtick needs to stop immediately. In the words of the poet DMX: Y'all gon' make me lose my mind up in here, up in here. Y'all gon' make me go all out up in here, up in here. Y'all gon' make me act a fool up in here, up in here. Y'all gon' make me lose my cool up in here, up in here."

Rational minds of the LRR forums, ease my pain. Or make it worse. You do that sometimes. And I guess it is "Sanity And/Or Fear" so I guess it is your choice. If you think I'm wrong, shoot.

[AlexanderDitto]

Here on the internet, people are so continuously exposed to rage-inducing things, so much racism, so much vile shit spewed from the mouth of politicians, celebrities, random people on the internet... that we live in an age where peoples' sensitivity for these things from people they trust has gone way up.

Yes, this is an overreaction. It will pass.

But I would suggest that your outrage not lie with those individual people who have become a bit overzealous in their calls to destroy anything that seems to them even remotely personally offensive. Instead, realize that the cause for these problems stems from the really, actually messed up world we live in where "The Washington Redskins Original Americans Foundation" is something that someone would think was a good idea.

A similar topic, that you should read, that might give you some perspective, from Rami Ismail.

A lot of people are, sadly, very unused to thinking critically about anything. It is a failure of the US education system, and education systems worldwide.

This doesn't mean "social justice" is an unworthy goal. It means that, as with everything, when a large group of people convenes, a lot of them aren't going to be leaders, or thinkers. A lot of them are going to be reactionary, which can be dangerous and frustrating and counter-productive.

[AdmiralMemo]

I had to research this to find out what the bus was going on...

In the end... Ditto:

[Sieg Reyu]

I agree Ditto, if anything this just proves how offensive the original Snyder foundation was.

And I'm not saying the social justice movement is inherently bad. But as it has grown and gone on, it has become more chaotic and less organized. I mean, just look at this http://i.imgur.com/UmNt7C0.jpg

I feel like they're some of these people are getting dangerously fantical. They are in a group with people who have a couple of the same ideals, but they assume everyone shares all of them, so they feel justified in doing all of theses ridiculous things. And others in the group do it because others in their group are doing it, so they should to. It just feels very, I don't know. . .WBC-ish. The second I see godhatesstraightwhitemen.com, I'm fucking done.

[AdmiralMemo]

The second I see godhatesstraightwhitemen.com, I'm fucking done.

I am now tempted to register that for the LULZ.

[Duckay]

And I'm not saying the social justice movement is inherently bad. But as it has grown and gone on, it has become more chaotic and less organized. I mean, just look at this http://i.imgur.com/UmNt7C0.jpg

I don't even know what to say. That person quoted on Tumblr is absolutely sickening. It makes me really, deeply uncomfortable that there are people who believe that who think that they're 'on the side of right' or whatever.

On the whole, though, I am not comfortable thinking of people like that as emblematic of anyone who believes in social justice causes because in my experience, they're the ridiculous fringes (which every group has), not the core. Is that wrong?

[AlexanderDitto]

On the whole, though, I am not comfortable thinking of people like that as emblematic of anyone who believes in social justice causes because in my experience, they're the ridiculous fringes (which every group has), not the core. Is that wrong?

This is precisely right. Every group has fringes, and as a group grows, those fringes too grow. The existence of radical feminists does not invalidate the goals of the feminist movement. The existence of black supremacists does not invalidate the goals of the civil rights movement any more than the existence of the KKK does.

Goals should be evaluated based on their merits, while acknowledging our biases to the extent that it is possible. That's all. There are always going to be people who are terrible. Unfortunately, the internet gives them a megaphone. That doesn't mean they're right.

[Sieg Reyu]

I just. I just can't stop looking at this idiotic bullshit. I'm trying to zen out on this comic, but it's not helping




Cause what really pisses me off, is, in the list of peoples/cultures that Stephen Colbert has personally wronged, Asians are pretty far down the list. Sure he put them in interment camps in World War 2, but that was 110,00 people and for four years. I don't know how much you know about the Trail of Tears, but it is definitely one of the most fucked up things that Stephen Colbert has ever done. And it's something that the Native Americans never really recovered from and Colbert hasn't really done anything to make it right. And let's not even get started on that time he went to Africa and brought back all those slaves. So it kind of bothers me that the people that Stephen Colbert has done the most injustice to are getting completely overshadowed.

[Fezzul]

As one piggy said to the other piggy about his skyscraper made of straw...

"It will blow over."

[King Kool]

I think we've all read about the OKCupid thing by now. This was the reaction of an ethics blogger I've been reading for about ten years now.

http://ethicsalarms.com/2014/04/01/unethical-quote-of-the-month-okcupid/

I want to see what you all think of this. I'm a bit conflicted.

[Sieg Reyu]

I think we've all read about the OKCupid thing by now. This was the reaction of an ethics blogger I've been reading for about ten years now.

http://ethicsalarms.com/2014/04/01/unethical-quote-of-the-month-okcupid/

I want to see what you all think of this. I'm a bit conflicted.

I would like to start by saying that I actually changed my browser when this was posted. I've been meaning to for a while, and it just seemed like an appropriate time to do it.

But I do agree, a one time donation of an amount of money that is probably largely insignificant to a man of his stature that was made over half a decade ago is kind of a petty thing to instigate a boycott over. However people are just as likely to start using firefox for the same reason that people will stop using it. Just look at Chick-Fil-A. I figure the best I can do is keep it even.

[AdmiralMemo]

I hadn't heard of this issue prior to this link. I don't like OKCupid. I prefer Chrome to FireFox. I feel that it's a jerk move on OKCupid's part to call out the customers like this, but it's also their prerogative. I am a fan of boycotts, as hitting people in the pocket is about the only way you get their attention. As long as nothing illegal is going on, I feel that any company is free to spend their money any way they like, and any other person or group that doesn't like it is free to boycott.

Thus, I'm kind of conflicted about this. While I personally agree with the blogger that this wasn't the right way to handle it by OKCupid, I feel there's nothing inherently wrong with what OKCupid is doing.

[plummeting_sloth]

It's basically said that the way that white American culture has assimilated and re-appropriated these slurs against Native Americans, the way that their history now basically stands as "An awful thing that happened a long time ago but that's all past now" in the collective conscious and the way in which their electorate numbers prevent them from being an effective voting block on their own have essentially meant that there's essentially no blow-back to using these terms. And as such, if you have to relate the degree to which their are offensive, you have to relate them to something outside their own context, because time and time again the public has shown they don't give a shit about that context.

The issue came up before with The Onion describing the team's owner by a Jewish slur. People rose up in arms at that one as well... funny that all these other slurs seem to get people frothy but somehow the one that's been plastered all over a city for decades doesn't? And people might well say "Well, I agree that the team name is offensive but this isn't the way to go about it", well shit... how is it that nobody seems to be talking about how shitty the name in the wider world until these analogies are drawn?

Which I suppose is a point in the activists favor here... much like people wouldn't have picked on the story without the slur, nobody would have given this lady's point any notice without the over-reaction.

[kamaitachi113]

It's similar in a way to a problem I've noticed in people in work situations recently. Pretend I'm on a phone, talking to you and someone at work at the same time, it'll totally work.
There's a problem, it's a real problem, but it's been there for a while. People are used to the problem existing and generally ignore it, but it's still a problem and occasionally, it gets in the way. It should be solved, and there's no valid reason against solving it, but actually fixing things is messy and will probably cause more short-term problems than the actual problem ever causes at once - but it's the right solution. If the problem had started today, we'd never stand for it. By the time we recognized the problem, it was too late for a quick and easy solution, and now the built-up inertia of ignoring the problem is really the biggest problem around; if we finally address the original problem, we can't pretend we haven't been ignoring it all this time and therefore tacitly compliant with the problematic status quo up to this point.
There's a possible solution, but no outcome is ever going to make everyone happy. We're all going to have to settle for a lose-win scenario, and in that case the status quo tends to win out. It will take a lot more pressure and more examples of how the current situation isn't working out before a new solution can even be considered, and it'll almost certainly involve a lot of people losing their jobs - either because a new group of people will feel freer to make the tough calls or because of the fallout of whatever events lead to the final calls for change.

See how well that worked? If you worked in the right office you'd know what I was saying. I don't actually work there but jeez.



And this OkCupid thing... yeah, it's not cool to me to support anti-gay things, but proportional response is appropriate. It's nobody's job to be a moral arbiter for unaffiliated organizations, that's just a short train to crazy town. Like Seig Reyu said, advertising this organization as having a particular stance, however accurately or inaccurately, only works against them with a certain segment of the population; it works in their favor with another.
Either way, it's another step toward making every single thing I touch or interact with a political statement - where I eat, what I watch, what browser I use, what dating site I visit - I mean, thank God I'm married but it's only a matter of time before my wife is assigned a right-left value that will be used against me in the inevitable ranking system we will use to determine who we're allowed to talk with based on the closeness of our political ideology. It'll be a tough time for me because I think she and I aren't going to be right next to each other, so marital fun times will be a bit more difficult to organize.

[Sieg Reyu]

For people within his own company to protest and leave when he was promoted must mean that he was pretty notoriously anti-marriage equality. I feel vindicated maybe.

[Duckay]

Either way, it's another step toward making every single thing I touch or interact with a political statement - where I eat, what I watch, what browser I use, what dating site I visit - I mean, thank God I'm married but it's only a matter of time before my wife is assigned a right-left value that will be used against me in the inevitable ranking system we will use to determine who we're allowed to talk with based on the closeness of our political ideology. It'll be a tough time for me because I think she and I aren't going to be right next to each other, so marital fun times will be a bit more difficult to organize.

Just to be clear here, no one is talking about a system where people "determine who we're allowed to talk with" based on political ideology or anything else. An individual or a company advocating a boycott is not telling you that you must do anything, and I think that it's a huge exaggeration to suggest that the logical conclusion of someone suggesting a boycott for political reasons is your interpersonal relationships being controlled by a third party. :/

[kamaitachi113]

Just to be clear here, no one is talking about a system where people "determine who we're allowed to talk with" based on political ideology or anything else. An individual or a company advocating a boycott is not telling you that you must do anything, and I think that it's a huge exaggeration to suggest that the logical conclusion of someone suggesting a boycott for political reasons is your interpersonal relationships being controlled by a third party. :/

oh, yeah, totally. I'm not saying that's happening here at all; my problem with it is the way political identity is creeping into aspects of our lives that have previously been non-political. I don't agree with the assignment of that political identity (for example, Chick-fil-A makes a fairly decent spicy chicken biscuit that I occasionally get on a Saturday morning) but sometimes it feels like I'm in either a local minority or a very silent majority by having that opinion. If you're seen ignoring a boycott, that sends one message, but if you're seen following it, it sends another. The people you know well will know what you really think regardless, but when there's a boycott on something that you normally patronize without political motivation your actions will carry political messages whether you want them to or not, and that's annoying to me because sometimes Jack's biscuits just aren't as good (it's rare; Jack's biscuits are really just better than Chick-fil-A's most of the time, but they don't make a spicy chicken one, I have to put hot sauce on it and that's really good too but sometimes just not what I'm in the mood for when I'm not in the mood to cook breakfast).

I think the part of it that's most annoying to my way of thinking is how any political action or affiliation, once known, is used as if it represents the entire organization and anyone who works there. No rational mind can believe this to be the actual case, but when you take actions against entire organizations, you're behaving as if that's the reality. The Mozilla thing (I know very few details, I've been on Chrome for a while so I really don't care much to be honest) seems pretty minor as things go (afaik; if the guy had been accused of murdering people for being gay I imagine that would have caught my attention). Still, these couple of donations are pretty much what's being associated with the Firefox name right now. It's absurd and insulting to everyone involved; whether they believe in marriage equality or not, reducing things to such a simple binary point of view dehumanizes us all.

There are fewer things in life that remain free of political affiliation. It's a depressing trend, and it might not stop until there are too many kinds of politically-charged shower gels for the associations to continue to carry meaning. Then again, political groups might start trying to make better, targeted soaps that will appeal to their base and intentionally further immerse them in a fully political lifestyle. Sanity and/or fear, right? There's plenty of both! Well, plenty of fear at least. You can judge the sanity for yourself. My comment was a hyperbolic exaggeration of a potential dystopian future where these trends play out to the absurd extreme, not a real comment on actual events. Things in America do seem pretty divisive but if my wife and I can keep our marriage together while leaning in opposite directions from center, things aren't really all that bad. (I mean, a lot of things are still pretty bad, but not all because of political divides)

[AdmiralMemo]

kamaitachi113: Exactly. I know you're like "I just want to eat some spicy chicken! I am not making any type of statement by it, other than 'I'm hungry!'"

It's frustrating.