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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   29433 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 19, 2024

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One principle or rule that I try to stick by is that though I am free to dislike or avoid other people, I never try to persuade anyone else to do so.

There might still be some scope issues for me, personally. I'm thinking about my family. I don't think there's anything all that wrong with trying to impress upon a spouse/child, "You don't want to associate with that person; here's why." I mostly don't go beyond anything like that.

Another area that might be hazy is whether you're avoiding a specific person or a group. I had a friend once invite me to what was clearly an MLM scheme that they had just started to get into (they jettisoned it not long later, thankfully). I sort of tried to convince them that (implicitly) it wasn't a good group to associate with, but focused on the reasons why I didn't think it made business sense to do (framed as reasons why it didn't make sense for me, trying to soften it with, "...if someone else has these characteristics, maybe..."). This makes me sort of feel in my bones the value of people just blasting to everyone, "MLMs are bad, here's why, and you shouldn't get involved with these specific MLMs," but I can also see how this opens the door to some pretty big conceptual tensions.

I don't have a spouse or children, but I think it's fine to persuade or even directly forbid them from certain associations.

Exactly, and if everyone followed this rule cancel culture would not be a major problem.

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