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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   28224 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 23, 2023

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Racism is a magical word that literally has no meaning in 2023. First of all, there is no agreed upon definition of it and this would be the case even if it wasn't abused by left wing activists. But it is abused by left wing activists and it means anything that has racial implications or even just the appearance of them that the left doesn't like. There are a bunch of others like woke, antisemitic, socialism, capitalism, neoliberalism, far-right, postmodern, critical race theory, Nazi, etc. and I could go on. These things had meanings at one point, but now they just mean my in-group or ideology thinks this person or thing sucks and we're going to call it one of these magic words so you know it's bad.

I sort of disagree, I think they usually have a specific and constrained meaning to the people saying them.

The problem being that the people they're being said to are often hearing a different meaning, and the people they're being said about have a vested interest in making sure that they have no reasonable meaning at all.

So conversations break down into people talking past each other, either accidentally through divergence of perspectives and filter bubbles between people on the same 'side', or through intentional malicious misinterpretation (either immediate, or mediated through 'elites' pushing the narrative of confusing definitions) between people on opposite 'sides'.

It's true that, if you listen to 5 different people using these terms, they might be using them to talk about subtly or not-so-subtly different concepts, and they might not all apply the same term to the same situations. It's true that, on the macro scale, that makes it seem like they have no specific or coherent meaning.

But I think it's a thought-terminating error to jump from that appearance of incoherence on the macro level, to assuming that individual people who use them are not trying to say anything specific or meaningful or insightful or useful, and are just spouting random sneers.

Usually the individual does have something cogent they're thinking and trying to convey with the term, even if the state of the culture war makes it hard to convey these types of ideas effectively. You'll fail to learn something if you look at this difficulty and place the error in the mind of the speaker, rather than the sorry state of the language and culture.

Ideally, this is where we start asking each other to taboo our words, to make communication more clear.

Agreed on most of these, but I think the terms "woke" and "capitalism" have retained fairly clear definitions even when used by their detractors.

I disagree pretty strongly, 'woke' is applied by someone to almost everything non-conservatives do or say these days, and 'capitalism' can mean anything from 'any form of trade or private property' to 'a system with a specific ruling class of capital-owners that is distinct and privileged from workers'.

I do expect that you may personally have extremely clear definitions of those terms in your head, and be in a filter bubble where most people use the words that way pretty consistently.

However, I think this state of affairs is true for most of the people who use all those other terms, as well, and they have equally good reason to think their words are fairly clear and consistent.

I disagree. I've seen so many different things be called woke and I haven't seen anyone give it a good definition. I think my definition of it being the inverse of historical American values is a pretty good heuristic though. You take whatever Americans traditionally thought before the 1960's (or what wokes think they thought) and invert that and you get the woke position pretty reliably. For example, Manifest Destiny -> Stolen Land or We're a Christian Nation -> Christianity is oppressive or capitalism is good -> capitalism is bad.

For capitalism, I see leftists and socialists blame everything on capitalism. So you get stuff like the problem with X is actually capitalism for literally everything. So crime or inequality are apparently caused by capitalism even though they existed before capitalism.

For capitalism, I see leftists and socialists blame everything on capitalism.

If you lived in North Korea or the USSR why would "Communism" or The Party and the society it created not touch nearly everything politically wrong? Capitalism is responsible for the life we live. If it's not the best of all possible worlds, a society of angels, then yes some level of blame should be left at its feet.

This is especially true for the Marxist and therefore often socialist conception of Capitalism and society. Where everything flows downstream of economics as a first mover, including things like religion, romance, and local custom.

So crime or inequality are apparently caused by capitalism even though they existed before capitalism.

Just to note, the same outcome can have different causes under different circumstances.

EG flooding can be caused by torrential rain or by tsunami, but it wouldn't be wrong for someone in a torrential rainstorm to say that the rain is causing the flooding they are currently experiencing.

Are the Proud Boys woke? No. Is BLM woke? Yes. Are the Proud Boys racist? Arguably yes. Is BLM racist? Arguably yes.

I can think of a few other things that are woke or not. I'm having trouble thinking of anything that is clearly and inarguably not racist.

That's not true, racism has a very clear definition.

A collection of racist policies that lead to racial inequity that are substantiated by racist ideas

If it quacks like an animal-that-quacks, then obviously it is an animal-that-quacks.

By your definition of racism, saying "I hate niggers" is not racist.

EDIT: I'm stupid and did not realise I was replying to sarcasm.

sarcastic quoting of kendi.

Who defines what a racist policy is and what racial inequality is though? There is a lot of subjectivity in there.

/u/PierreMenard is sarcastically quoting Ibram X Kendi's famously circular and incoherent definition of racism.

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