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naraburns  nihil supernum  2yr ago (text post)   35889 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 3, 2022

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I've never much been swayed by the argument that my enemies aren't evil, they're just stupid. But you gave it a real effort, so bravo.

User has received 7 day temp ban for this post. Personal attacks aren't acceptable.

Edit: My bad, I misread this post. User has been unbanned.

I stand now among the greats, unfairly persecuted for the truth -- Christ, Mandela, Minotaur.

It was three days before christ was resurrected. It was 27 years before Mandela was released. It was 12 hours before you were unbanned. My turn-around time is better than god.

Truly, you are the greatest moderator of all time. Of all time.

Good on you admitting a mistake and reversing it.

Perhaps one of us is misunderstanding this post. As I understand it, it could be written "I've always found 'conflict theory' explanations more convincing, but you have made a very compelling case for a 'mistake theory' explanation, good job".

If that's a fair summary, I'm struggling to see a personal attack.

The post implied "you gave a real effort towards calling your enemies stupid". You seem to have read it as "you gave a real effort towards demonstrating your stupidity", which is not what it was saying.

Ya this is how I misread it, decision reversed. Thanks for pointing out the mistake.

If you expect 'evil' to mean 'they are pushing diversity because they want to undermine western civilization, the truth, beauty, God, country, mankind, and everything, because they are hitler satan nazis', then ... nobody is like that. Obviously they think what they're doing is good and will benefit their friends (and, because they are progressives/universalists/etc, "their friends" mean everyone). Everyone has all sorts of good-sounding, and even partially true, motivations - hitler, so did stalin, so did pol pot, so did the mongols, etc. Even active malice against something like jews is justified by their claimed subversion of truth, beauty, the race, etc. And if that's evil, it's evil because ... of what it causes, not some clear and obvious property of 'evilness'. (It can be justified that certain subgroups of the population are poisonous and toxic, need to be locked up and kept away from untainted people - for all sorts of infections diseases that was literally true. And, it can even be true as a matter of "inborn traits" - wild animals! So you can't just categorize that as 'evil, because that's what evil means'.) The "crazy person who wants to kill everyone and destroy the world because he is mean and hates the innocent joy of diverse babies" villian archetype exists because he's the simplest character to cast the "brave resistance poor weak underdog" against, and because the universalist claim is that killing people is bad, so people who do it do so because they want to kill everyone. If your enemies are evil (which they can be), it's because the effects of their actions are bad, not because they "intend" to be evil. So, they're stupid and they're evil, not one or the other.

Like, what does the 'evil', in the sense in which it's opposed to 'being mistaken', take on what the woke execs / writers are doing look like? What is it that they intend, maliciously, to happen as a result of casting more black people or showing off sassy strong independent women?

(and, because they are progressives/universalists/etc, "their friends" mean everyone)

Demonstrably not true. You can't have an oppressor/oppressed dichotomy if the set of oppressors is null; progressives definitely have an outgroup.

Like, what does the 'evil', in the sense in which it's opposed to 'being mistaken', take on what the woke execs / writers are doing look like? What is it that they intend, maliciously, to happen as a result of casting more black people or showing off sassy strong independent women?

Hypothetically, if one of their motivations was "this will cause anguish among my outgroup, which is good, for they are bad" and this social attack was in fact undeserved, then I'd think that would be sufficient?

What is it that they intend, maliciously, to happen as a result of casting more black people or showing off sassy strong independent women?

The dissolution of the social and cultural norms that produced our current civilization, because the current crop of culture-makers were taught to hate said civilization.

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