Really? So it's just an axiom that everything bad in India is because of the "Britishers"? That certainly helps to understand Indians' beliefs, though it doesn't make me more sympathetic to them.
I do not appreciate you trying to strawman my position.
The core argument of Indian Nationalists is that the concept of India is not a colonial construct that only exists due to British Colonialization. They argue that people in the region have been linked by shared culture despite having lived through frequently changing borders.
Indian Nationalists do not make any claims to India's past economic heft. In face they very much accept that they have a long way to go. They feel that the fractured nature of their people works against them and that to accelerate development there is a need to leverage the cultural links to build a shared ethos if you ever want to get things done. For them the British are just one among the many foreign conquerors that have ruled the region since the 12th century. I very much detest it when people try to reduce it to just "Indians think India sucks because of the British". Whether or not it can be proved that India is worse off due to colonization is not at all a part of my argument.
Going back to elaborating on the point I had been trying to make to @justawoman.
What I am saying is even if there is objective evidence that India was destined to be the way it is regardless of past events, that wouldn't make the fact any less painful. And I recognize that some arguments that folks on themotte may throw around casually are actually painful to read depending on what race, religion, culture, gender or background you come from.
The whole segment on my experiences as an Indian on the internet is essentially me trying to say yes, I can empathize with the experience of @justawoman who has to argue with people casually discussing a topic that she cares deeply about and would only accept the highest standards of evidence.
But while I think that folks on themotte can be more careful with how they throw around words, it should not be something that's verboten, since topics when sociological, at best have scant evidence and that's the best we can ever get.
kiln
1yr ago
I can empathize that it's not a nice experience to face positions that you feel are an attack on your person or deeply held beliefs.
I pretty much feel the same in every corner of the internet. To give an example that should hopefully be at some distance from the American Culture War, I definitely do not enjoy people claiming that India being colonised by the British empire was good for us and civilized us unwashed barbarians. It is not fun to be spoken down to by Americans who believe my lived experience of living in my country holds no weight. Nor do I enjoy reading about what Americans say behind our backs about the Indian expats in the Software industry.
But as much as I would love to give objective statistics to prove people wrong, I doubt I will ever be able to satisfy those who disagree.
Now on whether "Men are funnier than women", it is a poorly supported argument since the only thing going for it is anecdata. But given the dumpster fire that is the reproducibility in Sociology, anecdata is probably the best you will get. Besides, how many people even base their social know-how on studies over anecdata from folks they know or can relate to?
Also is it that the argument is poorly supported that bugs you, or is it because you feel that it puts down women?
Would it feel any less offensive if someone gave "objective" proof for this?
It wouldn't be any less painful for me even if someone threw objective proof at my face by ripping open a portal to a parallel universe where India never went through successive stages of colonization and is still a cesspit of suffering.
kiln
1yr ago
On reddit the participation of progressives largely felt like folks dropping by to sneer on themotte for a few comments rather than actual engagement. It felt as if a good number of them wouldn't have minded if themotte got hit by the banhammer.
That said, preaching to the choir on themotte while feeling nice doesn't give you much. But I do not have any ideas for how to improve upon that. People like places that echo their views back at them and enforce the ideological conformity for their worldview. For this use case reddit is strictly better especially if your views are aligned with the current zeitgeist.
A lot of people on themotte may want to convince progressives that their positions are not logically consistent and patently unfair. But progressives have no incentive to engage with you to be convinced or to try to convince you. Their views are already mainstream and platformed by institutions.
kiln
1yr ago
I have observed that most Hindu Indian diaspora folks are non-practicing and do not have any serious engagement with their cultural traditions or philosophy. At best they may dress up for Diwali and often not even that. A good chunk of Urban India also belongs to this category.
I am also pretty much the same, the modern deracinated Indian, so I am not trying to throw shade or anything. Given this cultural upbringing, I do not think Sunak, Patel or Braverman's policy positions have any religious basis.
It is possible that this is just coincidence, but you're not wrong in saying that Indians (but not progressive Indian diaspora) are more likely to be critical when Pakistan is involved. India already gets a horrible rap in the media especially on gender issues and more recently on Caste and Nationalism. Indians are extremely wary of facing further backlash due to the depredations of the Pakistanis being conflated with Indians since they're all "South Asian". For example, I saw a post on reddit speaking about the British Grooming gang issue as a problem the "South Asian" community needs to face. Many Indians do not see Pakistanis as their community, especially if they are Hindu.
The animus between the average Indian and Pakistani is as real as the animus between Ukraine and Russia. Shared blood or similarities in culture only makes the wound deeper rather than "superficial" as many Westerners and progressive diaspora like to claim.
The Indian commentariat also feels there is an increasing tendency of Progressive media to lump negative coverage of Pakistani mainland or diaspora with South Asia. This is perceived by Indians as an insincere attempt to wash away the ills of Pakistan as South Asian since any positive coverage is happily proclaimed as Pakistani
| Origin | +ve coverage | -ve coverage |
| Pakistan | Pakistani | South Asian |
| India | South Asian | Indian |
Forgive the horrible formatting but, I can't seem to get the markdown tables right.
I agree that Western civilizations seem to have a tendency to proselytize their religion, be it Christianity or Progressivism which doesn't seem to be Beijing's modus operandi. But, I am not sure if the Chinese government would be satisfied with just ruling over ethnically Chinese people.
The reason for this is hard to explain since most of us do not have a good mental model of how the Chinese government or the average Chinese citizen thinks. Most Chinese discourse happens on Chinese platforms in Chinese languages far removed from the English internet. But Beijing does seem to want to throw its weight around if it feels it can get away with it, as we've seen in a few incidents in the South China Sea or the military incursions along the Indo-Tibetan border. Though, this may be a tendency of any emerging Hegemon. The US has done it. Russia could do it in the past, but not anymore. China feels it's missing out.
One explanation is that we're not the target audience of the PR.
The other explanation is a divergence in the hierarchy of values. For example, appealing to patriotism may work quite well for a lot of cultures, but will completely fall flat if the target audience is blue tribe coded. The PR attempts of a lot of countries that targeting a western audience completely fall prey to this, especially since they do not include all the required progressive shibboleths.
A counterexample of a non-western culture that has learnt to play this game is Extremist Islam. No matter how regressive the Islamic exceptionalism and double standards pushed, the figureheads know just the right words to use to pull at the heartstrings of progressives looking for an outlet for their white savior tendencies.
In general people do not understand that everyone does not think like them. In the US, you see it with progressives and the conservatives who seem to only succeed at preaching to the choir, though the progressives make up for this inability with a ruthless and relentless focus in subverting institutions.
kiln
1yr ago
Does anyone have a good model for Elon's thought process here? I do not see him deriving any satisfaction from his current role at Twitter.
Investing effort as the CEO of a Social media product seems like a big step down from being known as a Tech Entrepreneur in the Electric vehicle or commericial Space aviation space.
Getting into fist fights on Twitter trying to squeeze non advertising revenue from a social media product seems like the least interesting and the most self-defeating thing to do. The general population is now accustomed to getting Social media for "free". It's a losing battle to make them pay for it with the glut of other "free" options.
A lot of women in highly visible positions seem to be very much aligned with the progressive Zeitgeist in regarding rationalist adjacent spaces as *-ists. Aella seems to be an oddity in this regard. I am pretty sure if any other woman even makes a superficial attempt [1] at hearing out rationalist positions, she will build up a similar following of simps.
[1] By superficial attempt I do not mean to say anything about Aella. I don't follow her and don't know anything about her.
kiln
1yr ago
So, you're saying they weren't richer. What made them higher status then? Was there no material benefit to being in an upper caste?
If we consider being a rich landowner the epitome of status in a poorly-industrialised society like India, than the link between upper caste and status becomes a bit fuzzy.
In Punjab Jatt Sikhs tend to dominate. In Tamil Nadu I hear a lot of castes who are considered traditionally as Shudras dominate but this does not make Tamil Nadu the land of caste egalitarianism that some imagine it as. They have the highest rates of caste endogamy in India and have plenty of news worthy cases of discrimination among themselves, just that you cannot plaster Brahmin in the headlines. Different regions have different dominating castes.
From my own experience there seem to be as many rich Brahmin land owners as broke subsistence farmers. My extended family leans towards the latter. To make an analogy to the US, we were trailer trash and we sure felt privileged.
kiln
1yr ago
What you are alluding to can be better explained by "not understanding something since their job depends on not understanding it".
For example, opinions that toe the line on gender issues, even if poorly supported receive no push back when expressed by women. Hence, they have no incentive to think about them critically when the conclusion may not benefit them in the short term.
Plenty of people including men have shown this tendency on other issues when their privilege hinges on not addressing it.
kiln
1yr ago
I would say most of them can't do anything about it other than complain about it bitterly on the internet. They speak about any of this under their real name there is a very real risk of losing your job and getting smeared by highly online zealots and spineless employers worried about losing face.
From my limited engagement in this space which is themotte and some subreddits threads I stumbled upon through culture war discussions is feminists or progressives will do their very best to put down any discussion that actually touch on men's issues as sexist, patriarchal, racist, authoritarian, fascist, supremacist,... you can go on and on.
The few spaces that seem to be greenlighted like /r/menslib are utterly useless in covering issues that most men actually worry about. Discussion on gender issues will involve points that are not very charitable to men... and women which feminists and progressives can't seem to handle with their binary oppressor/oppressed mindset.
kiln
2yr ago
While I wouldn't go as far as to call it unethical, I agree that avoiding meat is more ethical. Many of the animals we eat seem to be able to experience suffering similar (enough) to what humans do. And for me at least the response to seeing animals suffer is very similar to what I feel when I see humans suffer.
But the current prevailing sense of ethics among most of my peers do not recognise eating meat as particularly unethical and meat is a decent and easy source of protein so I do not shy away from eating meat whenever it's available. In case the ethics of my peers changes significantly enough to start regarding meat as highly unethical I wouldn't mind stopping.
Ultimately, while I agree it is not very ethical, I don't care for it enough to act on it, especially when there are no social consequences for not doing so.
While I cannot give any point in the support of "Men are funnier than Women" since that's not something I believe to be true.
I think I understand our point of difference better. You expect The Motte to be a forum for perfect rational debate. And I guess that's what many on themotte claim it to be.
But it's not that and that bugs you.
It doesn't bug me since I do not expect The Motte to be a forum for perfect rational debate. While folks here are better at stating and accounting for their biases than other spaces on the internet, I do think a lot of people end up venting their frustrations a bit. And that's fine.
I feel that mainstream progressive (and conservative) spaces impose binaries on topics and rule out discussion on domains that their binaries fail to explain.
The less restricted nature of The Motte helps to find arguments that may offer better explanations and would otherwise be banned. But of course you also get bad arguments that should have received more pushback. We all have our biases, I just see that as a part and parcel of the trying to model the world better.
More options
Context Copy link