This author has clearly never considered that this minimalist and highly symbolic artwork (by the commenter’s own admission) might not be depicting the different colors of people literally. The black men and the white men may or may not be blacks and whites; they could very well be the darker halves and lighter halves of a shared human nature ... What this means for the cultural Platonists is that even if we are not libertarians (as I am not), we still ought to act as if we are civic libertarians on most matters that fall outside our realm of expertise, and even some matters that we do know a fair deal about.
A friend of mine is hugely into art, has an MFA and has worked at NYC galleries. We were touring some galleries once, looking at some modern art sculpture that some high concept title and description on it ... but it kind of looked like poop. I asked him, "Do you think the artist knows it looks like poop?" He replied: "Of course, that's part of the game." And then later I pointed out one that looked phallic, and my friend said "of course the artist intended that."
The grug brain / midwit / topwit meme really comes to mind here...
Modern artists seem to be addicted to trolling. Telling people who point out the obvious, intuitive message of some piece of art that they have a dirty mind and they are simply not sophisticated enough is part of the trolling. I don't think the artist is propagandizing in favor of white genocide -- but rather he is probably getting a private chuckle from watching all the sophisticated, effete, white male art critics who will praise the artwork and its "symoblisms of unity" while studiously avoiding saying the blatantly obvious.
There is no reason to reward this trolling with display in public areas. As /u/coffee_enjoyer points out, this "art" does not educate us, does not spiritually uplift us, does not display some amazing abilities of craftsmanship so there is no reason to give it any respect at all. The mural should be replaced by something better.
devin
1yr ago
Thus, when you are looking at "crime rates in Edwardian England" and comparing them with "crime rates in US ghetto", you are comparing a period which was the result of what had been a sustained and prolonged effort to reduce crime, the rise of an increasingly professional police force, changes in prosecution, changes in imprisonment, and the general social and economic improvements.
That is my point -- policing, prosecution, along with general morality and habits instilled by family and community -- is what matters for crime. The level of material well-being matters much less, if at all, it is rounding error compared to other factors.
devin
1yr ago
I don't think that poverty or inequality substantially explains crime, and a while ago a wrote a long post explaining why: https://devinhelton.com/inequality-crime
The most compelling evidence to me is just the existence of so many communities that are far poorer or more unequal than poor areas in America, while having extremely low rates of crime -- whether this be the slums of Edwardian England, post-war South Korea, Chinatown in old San Francisco, or the peasant areas of contemporary China. By any objective standards (such as calories and protein the average person can afford) these places were way poorer than the ghetto in a modern American city. Yet the crime rates were below that of modern America as a whole.
The second most compelling branch of evidence is the failure of policy based on the "poverty causes crime" thesis. We have foodstamps, government housing, and formerly had "general assistance" specifically to pull people out of the worst of poverty. And these public housing buildings became notorious for extreme high rates of crime, worse crime than is recorded in many far more impoverished areas.
Any link between poverty and crime is probably mostly the inverse -- the prevalence of anti-social habits and behaviors that create high-crime, also make for bad employees and make a community a bad place to build wealth.
I don't think simple "studies" will ever convince anyone, as I show in my post, there can always be accusations of confounders and cherry-picking. One actually has to make an attempt to read a variety of quantitative and qualitative sources and really try to understand the world.
One sophistic tactic I see in this debate, is to abuse the word "poverty." So people will admit that there are many food-poor populations will have low crime, but say that "poverty" is much more than that. For instance the UN defined poverty as:
Fundamentally, poverty is a denial of choices and opportunities, a violation of human dignity. It means lack of basic capacity to participate effectively in society. It means not having enough to feed and cloth[e] a family, not having a school or clinic to go to, not having the land on which to grow one’s food or a job to earn one’s living, not having access to credit. It means insecurity, powerlessness and exclusion of individuals, households and communities. It means susceptibility to violence, and it often implies living on marginal or fragile environments, without access to clean water or sanitation.”
Note that "susceptibility to violence", ie crime, gets baked into the definition of poverty, so the link between crime and violence becomes tautological!
Note that by making the definition of poverty basically "all bad things", it becomes a great blender where any bad thing gets linked to poverty and then pretty much any NGO or government agency that has a mandate to tackle some specific issue is also addressing poverty. So the argument becomes, if you want to address crime, just expand the budget for all the things that the government is doing ...
Are you an American? Have you had standard American schoolbook history and civics?
The problem with this question is that to "be generally fluent and comfortable understanding the issues of our day" you need several things:
An understanding of the historical and political narratives that our current leadership grew up with, that is, what was being taught from 1970 to around 2005.
An understanding of the historical and political narratives that are now in vogue (eg. 1619 project)
Revisionist accounts that will explain all the myth-making in 1) and 2). Of course, many revisionist histories are themselves quite false ... so you have to find the right ones. I can tell you what I think are the right ones, but how will you know to trust my judgement?
If you just know 3), the "true history" you will have trouble debating, or even interacting with the mainstream. You might get yourself in a lot of hot water. If you just know 1) or 2), you will basically be an NPC, and a victim of fashion, and a victim of forces larger than yourself and that do not have your interest at heart.
I'll plug my own site that I created many moons ago, which just lists a bunch of book and article pairings that set a left/mainstream/center-left account against a non-left/revisionist account. Maybe you will find it useful: https://countersearch.net/
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