The Year 2020
For whatever reason, instead of posting these as I wrote them, I just compiled them into one giant document that no one will ever read. But for the record, here's what I've been thinking about this year.
5/5/2020
I don't think the US has a higher proportion of conspiracy theory-minded people than Canada. But it DOES seem to have a higher proportion of personal-liberty-at-any-cost type people. So for these MY RIGHTS people, having a conspiracy theory available to ameliorate their conscience concerning the effect their actions have on others is just too perfect a pairing. I don't share my friend's contempt, but I am concerned about the phenomenon.
Edit for clarity: I am not shaming people who have no way to pay their bills except for working. I'm saying you don't need a conspiracy theory to justify a return-to-work-sooner stance. Not being able to pay your bills is horrible. Everyone getting back to work and the resulting thousands of deaths is horrible. There's no perfect solution to this. But claiming that all our science and medical institutions are part of a conspiracy to... what? Help the government control you? I just don't get that.
The US has 1.22 MILLION coronavirus cases. Over 71,000 deaths
Canada has 61,000 cases and 4122 deaths.
Adjusting for population, the US rates are more than DOUBLE that of Canada's.
This discrepancy shows that federally coordinated public health measures WORK.
And yet people continue to insist that the virus is a hoax, government measures are just fascist clawbacks of our civil liberties, and the virus will just disappear on its own if we all just go back to work and go about our business.
You are not only being stupid, you are being reckless. You are putting your friends at risk through your behavior. It is YOUR OWN FAULT if you lose these friends because they don't like the fact that you are putting them at risk by being a massive asshole.
I'm going to have to think long and hard about whether I can forgive the people who insisted that they knew better than the experts and let everyone know it. I don't think I want to be around people with that little regard for others when they need to be the smarter person in the room.
5/6/2020
Here's a thing that a lot of people somehow don't understand. So science... like... It's not a "thing". It's not a monolithic block of united fact. It's a process. And it has countless contributors, all residing on a spectrum from "very informed about their sub-specialty" to "armchair ponderer". And thanks to our rad technology, we now have access to that full spectrum. Meaning that whatever dumb fringe idea you want to back up with ""science"" you can now, with a simple Google search.
Very very few of us (myself included) have the tools and knowledge necessary to vet our sources of information. One common work-around to this problem is to blindly accept whatever we consider "the consensus" to be. Problem with that is now we all live in social/media bubbles so we are seeing different consensesueses. Consensai? So that's a garbage work around. Another even garbagier work-around is to FEEL a feeling about a thing, google that thing, and then share the results with the world as if they are FACTS! VERIFIED! PROOF! Because, you know, this one guy on a YouTube channel or on a news show panel said a thing you also feel.
Here's my rule of thumb. Which means it's the RIGHT rule. ;) The more BINARY an answer is, the less likely it is to be true. Does your theory require an entire organization to be EVIL? Does it require a country or political party to have multi-decade spanning secret plans? Does it require tons of people to purposefully lie about something to accomplish said plan? Yeah, these are all binaries that, while technically possible, are so improbable that building your interpretation of the world on them feels irresponsible to me. I prefer to work in rough probabilities. Stay open to updating my prior assumptions. Listen to dissenting opinions just in case their perspective illuminates something I (or my resources) are missing.
Anyway, I hope you enjoyed my rant. Now pretend to read this article before posting your response.
5/7/2020
Conspiracy thinking is a spectrum. You have the end that's completely unmoored from reality like the Bill Gates and 5G stuff. But much more common is the stuff like: China purposefully designing Covid as a weapon (because communists are evil) the WHO purposefully lying to the public for some sort of illicit gain. The Democrats trying to use the emergency to take away our freedom. Etc.
This end of the spectrum is less tinfoil hat, and more about reinforcing social/political narratives. It's important to recognize the difference between these ends of the conspiracy spectrum. Because:
A. Conspiracies are a real thing that really happen. (Just seldom at the scale that most theorists see) If we view the topic of conspiracy as a binary state, where ALL conspiracy is crazy then we aren’t seeing the world clearly.
B. Reasonable people (including you and me) are susceptible to bending our perception of reality to fit our worldview. So when a neatly packaged narrative is available that scratches that itch, it's really hard to resist. It doesn't require mental or moral deficiencies to be susceptible to overly-simplistic answers, whether they come in the form of slogans, platitudes, demagoguery or conspiracy.
C. The mechanism of conspiracy theory crafting can accidentally illuminate real patterns that are emergent properties of systems. I say ‘accidentally’ because conspiracy thinking is often focused on motives, while the actual causal chain is left vague. (because it HAS to be vague or it could be evaluated and disproved)
Here's an example of a conspiracy that I don't think exists (motive-wise) but a system of incentives still produce the same outcome.
Theory: -Democrats are purposefully lying about the dangers of of Covid in order to take away US citizens’ freedoms.- This implies some kind of collusion behind the scenes where Democratic leadership is meeting, knows and understands the reality of Covid, but decides to change the presentation in a coordinated effort to raise fears, knowing they can capitalize on those fears to curtail liberties. "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
Probably more likely: Turns out human understanding of the virus, like all new things, is shaky, distributed poorly, communicated inefficiently (because policy makers don't have the advanced degrees necessary to understand the facts that are known, or how to navigate the disagreements among specialists.) and constantly evolving as new data and tests are done and various models are shown to be more or less accurate. Therefore, there is no "Truth" about the virus to be had, hidden or exposed. And there is no policy decision that is "Right". Because we simply don't know all the facts, and if we did, that wouldn't mean we know how to interpret them accurately right now.
Given the above... Any political party will take whatever opportunity available to progress their agenda. "Never waste a crises" can be read as a cynical and coldly pragmatic political doctrine. But also: "Charles Doyle of the University of Georgia, coauthor of the Yale Book of Modern Proverbs, has found that this expression is now commonly applied to economic or diplomatic crises that can be exploited to advance political agendas, but he traced it back at least as far as 1976, when M. F. Weiner wrote an article in the journal Medical Economics entitled “Don’t Waste a Crisis — Your Patient’s or Your Own.” Weiner meant by this that a medical crisis can be used to improve aspects of personality, mental health, or lifestyle."
In other words, a crisis can be an inflection point that can be used to pivot towards or away from your goals. The fact that in general, the Democratic party in the US wants a much more robust social safety net, and that a lot of the dangers we are facing in the immediate future stem from having a very flimsy one, means that ANY activity they pursue towards their goals can be perceived as a cynical power grab. Then, if one is inclined to assume that Democrats believe what they do because they want to repress freedom in order to secure power and wealth for themselves.... well it's not a stretch to then believe that they are purposefully inflaming fear in order to achieve their nefarious goals. And while I agree that we need a much more robust social safety net, I can't deny that it's a totally human, normal, natural thing to exaggerate a problem in order to make your point and forward your agenda. BUT...
Back to my point about what is actually "known"... it's hard to exaggerate a problem when NO ONE KNOWS what is an exaggeration or an under-estimation.
And as such, I feel like that nips pretty much every conspiracy theory in the bud. Rather than conspiracy and bad faith imputations of bad motives, it seems more fruitful to me that we discuss the systems and policy that allowed a flu bug to cripple the world. And have a debate about how we could change said systems and policy to avoid this kind of crises the next time it comes around.
5/15/2020
This is not a prediction. I'm just noticing two social elements at play right now.
1. Overton Window-stretching talk being floated about delaying the presidential election due to Corona. An idea that a certain % of our population would like to see happen because they like their man where he is.
2. Precedent being set that armed civilians can gather in large protest rallies pretty much wherever they want. I can't be certain, but I'm guessing a large % of these groups fall into the camp mentioned in point 1.
So I'm projecting into the future, where there is no official government mandate to delay the election, but where armed protesters see it as their duty to scare people away from voting stations. This, I assume, would probably lead to armed conflict.
Not a fun idea, but curious if others have had similar ponderings. I don't intend this speculation as an attack on any political party or leanings. Just an extrapolation from current events.
EDIT FOR CLARITY: I'm not talking about all or even most Trump supporters. I'm talking specifically about the GI JOE wannabes swarming state capitols with their bazookas and machine guns. You don't need a lot of those guys to lead to what I'm talking about.
5/16/2020
Today's Word of the Day is "epistemology". That's the theory about how we know stuff. Most people (myself included) tend to miscategorize information they receive or discover. It's much easier to parse information in a binary way, as being either True or False. I honestly think that binary thinking is the bane of reason. What you can see in the exchange below is one person who is happy to categorize their own 'research' in the same conceptual bucket as an institution which is the aggregate of thousands of specialists who have spent their lives learning and developing a field of science. How can one come to such a conclusion?
1. "Well that's just like, your opinion man." C.S. Lewis talks about how the idea of democracy has bled into every facet of our lives, including the epistemological. We have this idea that since everyone has intrinsically equal value, therefore we feel that every opinion is of equal value, no matter the source. "Who do you think you are, you're no better than me!" But this epistemology does not hold up to scrutiny. Not where there can be one person who knows some websites, vs. a person who has studied a topic their entire life.
2. Institutions can be corrupt. The philosophy of science is full of great examples about how bias and corruption impact the pursuit of knowledge. This can be held as true, while simultaneously pointing at the literally millions of ways our lives are demonstrably better because of scientific advancement despite the fact that the process and institutions of science are imperfect. This idea that an organization like the CDC can't be trusted is another example of inappropriate binary thinking. Like all organizations, the CDC, the WHO, et. all suffer from political influences. But to what degree is that true? 100%? 90%? 10%? The way you estimate that influence matters a GREAT deal in determining the value you put on their data and policy recommendations. If you can acknowledge that it's not literally 100%, then you need to explain HOW you know what the percentage is. Without direct oversight of that institution I can't imagine your inference holds much weight. Granted, there IS a spectrum of knowledge one may posses about an organization such as the CDC. Perhaps you've been closely following all of their policy decisions and published research for decades, and have found a trend of inaccuracy. I'm willing to bet you haven't done that. But I'll bet you've read a hot take, think piece, or facebook post that claims it. Again, if you put that "data" in the same conceptual bucket as data that is the result of lifetime of specialized study, then you are the victim of binary thinking.
3. Most humans draw conclusions based on emotions. Our 'tribe' is the biggest influence on our thinking, since being excluded from the tribe is an incredibly painful, potentially ruinous state of affairs. There's nothing right or wrong about this. It's simply the way human brains work. The trouble comes when you or I PRETEND that it's not the case for US. That WE are the rational skeptics armored with Truth and Logic. And yeah, there's a spectrum you and I are on, and it's different for different topics. It's easy to apply rational less-biased thinking to topics that bear little weight on our worldview or social belonging. For instance, my life doesn't change at all if there's a Bigfoot. So my emotional state hardly plays into the way I receive data on the topic and draw my conclusions. However, on the topic of medical safety, I live with my wife and brother who both have compromised immune systems and would likely be severely damaged by Covid. That makes it much more difficult for me to analyze data in a dispassionate way. But I try my best. Either way, if I catch myself saying something like "blindly listen", that's a great reminder that I need to step back and examine my own emotional state on an issue and how it's impacting my line of reasoning.
And finally, because this topic is so polarized and becoming more and more aligned with political factions, I need to state, for the record, that I recognize that no; we can't stay locked down forever. And yes, the economic impact of lockdown also produces suffering and death. And no, there's no good, right, perfect answer as to how we need to navigate the issue. My point is that this political polarization is influencing how a lot of people perceive medical advice. And when the advice doesn't line up with their tribe's politics, the natural next step is to demonize the institution giving that medical advice, as if it can only come from our twisted evil enemies. But please ask yourself... if the advice the CDC was giving DID line up wit your politics, would you still think they are corrupt and not to be trusted?
5/18/2020
Last Sunday I hit 193.6 lbs. I haven't been that heavy in many years. I'd been "letting myself go" in the sense that I stopped depriving myself of comfort eating. I wasn't eating a TON, or eating nothing but junk. But for me, for whatever reason, if I'm not brutally strict I just naturally balloon. So I got strict again, and in 7 days lost almost 8 pounds. I'm currently on the little bounce back that always happens several days into the process. Back up to 186.6. My "trick" to losing weight is simply to look at one number. Carbs. Keep it as low as possible, and I lose weight. That is literally all there is to it. For me that number seems to be around 10 - 50 g / day. I couldn't work out this week because I kinked my neck on day one of weightlifting.
Anyway, it's funny how different emotional triggers make ALL the difference in my ability to stay as brutally strict as I need to be to not have a giant gut. It's definitely not something I can just switch on or off with willpower. My only strategy is to take full advantage of the windows where my self-control becomes available. And I can't predict when or what it is that opens those windows.
All this to say, I hate being a physical creature. I hate everything about human bodies and just want to be a being of pure energy. Is that too much to ask?
6/6/2020
So what does “All Lives Matter” mean? To most of my friends it means that the person saying it is a white supremisicst. How else can they see such a clear message as the one above and remain unconvinced?
The answer is that they deny the premise. They have a deep emotional (this is not an attack, all worldviews and values are ultimately emotional) need to interpret the world through the lens of the Individual. An individual’s actions and attitudes. Therefore the whole world of systemic issues is invisible to them. Their need to interpret reality as a series of individual actions and attitudes because that is how their moral system is constructed. They believe that for the most part, an individual gets what they deserve. Do bad stuff and you deserve to be punished. No excuses. Do good stuff and you deserve to be rewarded. If you aren’t rewarded, it’s because of a bad individual doing an injustice to you. (Of course no one sees things as EXACTLY that simple, but that’s the kernel of their moral system.) (I know, it used to be mine)
Freewill is paramount in this worldview. So any explanations for actions/attitudes that point to reasons outside of intrinsic character traits seem like flimsy excuses to them. And thanks to the law of large numbers, they can paint vivid pictures of outliers who overcome hardship to make a great and successful life for themselves. If these cherry-picked individuals could do it, then there is NO EXCUSE for ALL individuals to fail to do so. (Except for other individuals who unjustly oppose you, and that’s why we have the legal system) If you can’t be Oprah it’s because you must lack some fundamental moral character traits.
So when it comes to instances like George Floyd, It's about an individual police officer and an individual black man; and that can NOT speak to broader societal trends because that would challenge their individualistic outlook. Note that there is valid room to find actual data on the percentage of victims of police brutality, broken down by race; and if that pure data were available it should be taken into account by everyone. But to posit that these cases are cherry-picked by BLM et. al in order to paint an inaccurate picture of oppression requires leaning on a lot of tenuous studies and statistics. The numbers are not in. And police brutality is only one of MANY vectors for understanding systemic racism. So in this context of incomplete data, why would your default setting be “disbelieve those who claim to be victims”?
So when they see the cartoon above, they think, "that person's leg is not actually hurt. They are trying to unfairly gain advantage by claiming that it is."
Because the vast majority of "All Lives Matter" people do NOT actually FEEL any racism within themselves. And to them, racism is ONLY a matter of how an individual feels, and CAN'T be manifest in systems and procedures. I think they are right that there's only a small fringe of people who actively feel like white people are better than other races. (consciously) Their bar for "what racism is" is so high that only true psychopaths can clear it. So the notion that an entire race can be the victim of what they define racism to be, is ludicrous. And their logic is not wrong. IF you accept the premise of their worldview that racism can only be an interaction between two individuals, then almost all claims of racism must be false because there are so few racists left (again, according to their definition of racist). But that’s the problem with logic. If the premises are flawed, it doesn’t matter how mathematically accurate the logical formula is, it will still yield a result that does not match reality.
I can’t convince people who need to interpret reality as merely individuals. I can’t make them “see” systems at work in complex ways. Ways that were not authored by an individual, but that emerge horrible traits none-the-less. But I think if we are going to survive as a country without a second civil war, THIS is the argument that we are going to need to find a synthesis for. There MIGHT be a way to preserve the individualistic pillar for freewill and responsibility that they need, while still incorporating the acknowledgement of systemic powers that also need to be recognized and changed for REAL justice to grow. I believe that most “All Lives Matter” people DO care about justice. But because they can’t see systemic injustice due to the threat it poses to their moral foundations, they don’t believe those who claim it’s affecting them. I do think if it were white people calling out the systemic injustice, they’d be a lot more likely to investigate it seriously, and it’s hard to avoid calling that racist.
I’m not sure what a synthesis looks like. I know there’s a tension between thinking in individualistic vs systems term for most people. Because almost no one exists on the extreme ends where reality is ONLY systems or ONLY individuals. It’s just that humans will always pick and choose the examples of both in order to confirm their biases and reinforce their tribal allegiances. I’m probably TOO FAR on one side of that spectrum to be a person who can find a workable cultural synthesis. I don’t even believe in free will, so ALL I see are systems. And ain’t nobody (else) got time for that. But I will still be looking for ways to thread this needle. (This does not mean compromise with racism. It means finding ways to make system dynamics ‘click’ for those who currently can’t see them.) It definitely doesn’t feel like it now, but excluding our hunter-gatherer years, I’m convinced that humanity has never had it so good. The fact that the segment of humans who have it the best is so far removed from those who don’t, is humanity’s next big hurdle. I’d like to help us clear that if possible. Otherwise, I think we’ll all lose everything.
XXXCondacending. But I will say, it is a work of art to be that condescending AND that polite at the same time, so kudos for that...
ME: Do you feel like my post was condescending to people with your worldview? I'm curious, because my thoughts are grappling with my former positions as much as they are with any other theoretical human. I don't think I was dumb before. I don't think people who agree with old Josh are dumb now.
XXXwell if your post accurately reflects your understanding of my worldview, then no wonder you left that behind. I would to if that was even remotely accurate. I live and breathe systems, and I have no trouble seeing them. But I also have done extensive research on the data you indicate doesn’t exist (it does, by the way, and isn’t that hard to track down). And that data does not support the idea that America today is systematically racist.
If there is anywhere that systemic racism does still exist, it is ironically in the Democrat Party. They continue to fool the majority of minorities in this country into believing they are fighting for them, when in fact it is decades of destructive Democrat policies that have led to the current state of poverty and dependency on the government of a large segment of the black community today.
So yes, I felt your “matter-of-fact”, but inaccurate, portrayal of the Christian worldview was definitely condescending. We are not to judge motives, so I will not judge whether it was intentional or unintentional. I tend, knowing what I do about you, to assume that it would be the latter and stemming from an incomplete understanding of all the other possible reasons a Christian might insist that “all lives matter”. Because you didn’t come into the same planet as my reasons and the reasons of many I know, including prominent members of the black community.
thanks for the thoughtful explanation. It's very valuable to me as I practice the craft of communication.
My understanding of how communication works is like so: The relationship between communicators defines the bandwidth of the ideas that can be carried. On one end of this spectrum you've got lifelong friends who love and trust one another. In that context you can have very strong disagreements, but also the real possibility of changing minds based on the arguments put forth. The other end of the spectrum is two strangers yelling slogans at each other. Since you and I are closer to the later side of that spectrum we have to work extra hard to keep the bandwidth as broad as possible if our goal is meaningful communication with any chance of having our true thoughts and motives seen fairly.
On top of this challenge, there is the inherent problem with the dynamics of holding a contrary opinion. To have a disagreement, one necessarily believes that the other is wrong. That those holding it can not yet see the validity of their point. ("I was blind but now I see") And so if there is not enough good faith between interlocutors, then it's very easy to feel that one is being spoken down to. Again getting back to the bandwidth problem when there is not a trusting relationship to begin with.
Because I was convinced of the conservative argument on this topic in the past, and now I am not, that means that I'm convinced the conservative argument is lacking. Just as you find my argument lacking. I think we can both recognize that this is inherent to disagreement, and does not automatically infringe into the arena of personal disdain. I know there are personality dispositions that literally cannot disambiguate the disagreement of ideas and the belittlement of the one holding those ideas, but I don't think you are very close to that area of the personality profile.
Also, I want to make another thing clear. There are pros and cons to changing from one worldview to another. Just as there are to sticking to a single worldview for a lifetime. It's easy for those who have changed to say that they were previously [insert insult here] but are now perfectly enlightened people who look back shaking their head at the ignoramuses who remind them of who they used to be. Likewise, it's easy for one who has stayed consistent in their worldview to look askance at the flip-floppers who are clearly just changing views to be popular, win the girl, get a promotion, just want to dump their morality so they can party, etc. But like I said, both histories carry advantages and disadvantages when it comes to the world of ideas, and I haven't lived enough lifetimes to be able to tell you which is superior for interpreting reality.
With that established, I'll point out a few things which might help our mutual understanding. First, I was a conservative evangelical christian apologist for about two decades. I studied every christian apologist book out there. I listened exclusively to the Rush Limbaughs and Sean Hanities of the day, every day. I've always voted Republican. I've always been emotionally satisfied by looking like a flaming liberal while actually being a whip smart conservative warrior. I also STILL keep current with conservative thought. In fact, to the statistics issue, I listen to every podcast from Glenn Lowrey, a black economist who has pointed to every emerging study on the topic and sees it as further evidence that BLM is unwarranted. I've looked at them all and find the sample sizes and construction of (most of) them to be weak at best. I am not ignorant of this body of work. So I find the idea that I don't understand the issues to be invalid.
I know I'm not going to move the needle on your ideas about BLM, the democrat party, etc. But I would like to offer one thought that my life experience has planted in me. I believe it is conflation to package "Christianity" "Conservative" and "Republican" together as an interlocking unit. You have no idea how much I passionately love Jesus and find the fundamental root of hope in my life founded on Christ. Please don't misunderstand this as either an plea for you to see me as "a real Christian" OR as an argument that "real Christians should be liberals". Only that I, as an individual, was motivated by a desire to be as Christ-like as possible, and that lead me to listen -very carefully- to "the least of these". And that listening lead to study, and that study lead to the need to break through some garden walls that would rather not have.
Also note: MY personal journey is NOT an imputation of anyone who has done the same process as me, but come to different conclusions. It is merely a testimony to how I perceive myself and my motives. I simply offer it as an exercise in the stretching of conceptual boundaries.
I really hope you don't find my "polite" to be a fig leaf for condescension, but as a legitimate expression of my desire for substantial exchange of ideas with people who are every bit as worthy as I.
6/13/2020
Another attempt to understand the current cultural schism.
I tried building a model for understanding the difference between people who skew conservative and those who skew liberal. I’m not talking about technically correct political labels, just the personality dispositions.
I see a conservative person as one who finds past or current paradigms to be right, good, the best we can do, and that which keeps society from collapsing. To that end they support institutions that reinforce current or past cultural norms and legal structures that maintain law and order. They see personal responsibility as the primary foundation of a moral society. As always, here is the required >>caveat: very few individuals fit this model to a T, and my theory does not require that. This is a description of the right side of a personality spectrum.<<
I see the liberal person as one who finds past or current paradigms to be unfair and oppressive, specifically to marginalized people. They think that maintaining current institutions and laws is the same as supporting unfairness and oppression. They see systems as the fundamental mechanism for creating a moral society. This is a description of the left side of a personality spectrum.
>>And a double caveat. Both sides will complain that they aren’t so dumb that they ONLY see personal responsibility OR systemic mechanisms as THE basis for morality.<< This is not my claim. My claim is that in the hierarchy of importance, the right sees personal responsibility as highest, to the point where systemic arguments are usually seen with intense suspicion if not outrage. And now the left is outraged when the right claims that anyone with problems could fix them if they worked harder and had more grit. (Implying that those with bad lives deserve them)
If this is an accurate -albeit rough- model of two ends of a personality spectrum, then I have the next iteration for my theory as to why the gap between the ends is growing. This is tricky for me personally, because as I’ve moved from one end of the spectrum to the other, I’ve lost contact with a lot of the cultural touchstones that are currently felt so viscerally by those toward the right. But I remember what Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck et al. told me every day for over a decade. I also have a lot of friends and family who I still interpret (wrongly, I’m sure) as being pretty close to the archetype of the right that I painted above.
And now I have many friends who are very close to the archetypal liberal I painted, and I doubt many of them would complain about my description (though they will complain that what they call ‘liberals’ are not the true Left, but just another finger puppet of capitalism.) I’m still more conservative in temperament than many of my liberal friends. I have a fairly high ‘Openness to Experience’ but I also think that most experiments in radically altering society have ended poorly for everyone, including those for whom the revolution was intended to help. On the other hand, we’ve never had the technology we do now, and I think that’s a big game changer. Could make things worse, or… could be the key to facilitating a successful reformat of society. I just don’t know. All this biographical description is intended to help you, my gentle reader, to parse my theory. Understand the source, and calibrate accordingly.
So my main contention is that the gap is coming mostly (not completely) from the liberal bloc moving further left. The conservatives have largely remained stationary. >>Caveats: The liberals I’m referring to are the pop-culture libs, not the academic Left that’s been around since the Enlightenment. The conservatives I’m referring to are the masses, not the media pundits and newly emboldened hate groups.<<
So why would I say something so controversial, yet so brave? Am I saying that liberals are to blame for bringing us to the brink of a cultural civil war? Not really. Well kinda. Well it’s complicated. What I’m claiming is that there was -pre mass internet- a large dormant Fat Middle between the liberals and conservatives. But something activated a large part of the middle, converting them to liberals. What was that activation agent? Quite simply, it was the platforming of previously marginalized (unheard by most) voices. It’s easy to write off ‘those lazy people’ who have the problems with crime, drugs, poverty, etc. when the primary voices in your life are those who are successfully established in the status quo. When your media, education, church, coworkers and neighbors are all doing alright. Us middle class white suburbanites had our worldview shaped by our own voices, valorizing that which keeps us comfortable. Those on the margins need not be ‘explained’. They probably made bad life choices. We didn’t. Nothing to see here. Move along.
But hey, look, it’s the internet! Suddenly the conglomerated institutions of media are being displaced by kids streaming Fortnite and some guy in his truck ranting into his cellphone. Suddenly there is no “the media” but a cacophony of discordant voices coming from millions of perspectives. Suddenly this giant mass of white suburbanites had access to voices and opinions they never heard before. And suddenly it’s harder to write off the marginalized because they have faces and personalities and stories we have witnessed. So while it’s still very possible to prioritize personal responsibility as the primary factor for determining financial success and social acceptance… it’s HARDER to do so when faced with PEOPLE who seem to indicate the contrary. If it CAN’T be all chalked up to personal responsibility, then a new explanatory mechanism is required; at least subconsciously. Well thanks to hundreds of years of political philosophy there’s no lack of systemic explanations available.
So my contention is that over the past decade or so, a bunch of us white suburbanites formed parasocial relationships with people we otherwise never would have heard of or cared about. I think those who were ‘activated’ by this mostly skewed liberal due to the nature of the relational dynamic of these here social platforms.
So the ranks of ‘liberals’ has grown rapidly. This is naturally very concerning, -indeed terrifying- to those who are conservative by nature. Because you gotta remember, the KEY to saving us all from Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome is to KEEP the current, or previous, institutions in place and unchanged. And suddenly it seems like everyone wants to change everything! And what do you do when you feel like someone is pulling you into the abyss? You pull BACK as hard as you can. Not just for yourself. But for the children. This, I think, explains the visibility of the far right and hate groups. I do not mean that all conservative people started sewing white hoods. I mean that those who are aligned with fascism and racism had new tactics for getting getting clicks from worried conservatives. All they needed to say was anything along the lines of ‘the old ways are best’. Of course the more specific they get about those old ways, (blatant racism) the more conservatives they lose. But again, with a widening chasm, there’s less and less room on the edge of the cliff, so the traditionalist and the radical facist are pressed closer and closer together. >>Caveat: I don’t know any of my conservative friends who have any overt fascist or racist personality dispositions.<<
But that brings me to my next point. Everyone has a threshold at which another person’s beliefs are beyond the pale. Their beliefs are so extreme and distasteful that you can’t imagine being friends with them. (Pedophiles, KKK, etc.)
‘Beyond the Pale’ originated as a phrase that was literally about political boundaries where one could and could not go. Well the liberal bloc has been moving the boundary line of what they can perceive as a moral decent human being. Maybe the conservative bloc has been doing the same. I can’t tell from over here. But I think the reason the liberal bloc has been moving the boundary for the Pale is thanks to systems-oriented morality. The more aware one is of the facts (assuming them to be true) concerning how our systems, institutions and cultural norms hurt, oppress, coerce, imprison, drive to suicide, and murder so many marginalized people, it’s hard not to associate support for those systems as support for the results of those systems.
IF the claims made by many marginalized are true, THEN anyone party to the defence and celebration of the things they claim cause so much wanton death and misery is truly monstrous. This puts them beyond the pale. Literally evil.
And for someone who is convinced of the claims made by many marginalized, what choice would you have? I hate the feelings it churns in me to know how my liberal-minded friends think so many of my conservatve-minded friends are literally evil and equivalent to nazis. But I have nothing I can say to argue that their feelings aren’t valid. All I can say is that because I have reservations, and am less perfectly convinced, I don’t see it that way. It’s hard to advocate that people have more doubts, especially when revising systems requires bull-headed conviction. I don’t know how to get my liberal friends to ‘see’ my conservative friends as good people who simply have different fundamental premises about justice and morality. I think those conservative premises need amendment, which is why I’ve been moving the direction I have been. I think the conservative’s support for many systems DO cause harm to the marginalized. But I know they are not the same as a nazi.
I also have a premise that existing systems produce stability through a mechanism that has been called cultural capital. I think my experience with game design has taught me that radically changing a system will always ‘break things’. And usually break things we didn’t expect or want to break. If we do a revolution on any given system in our culture I’m fairly certain we will lose very important infrastructure. Supply lines, internet, water, food production, etc. No one can anticipate how the ripples from one system collapsing while others are being built will affect other stuff.
While I’m happy to work to knock down the level of comfort and affluence the traditionally privileged have in order to redistribute that comfort and affluence to the traditionally marginalized. (My conservative programming is screaming in the back of my brain about a ‘growing pie’…) But I don’t believe we have a mechanism for doing so without blowing something up in a way that will backfire or be counterproductive. I love researching theories for these mechanisms. I hope I’m wrong about the intrinsic problem with systemic revolution. I don’t think my concervative friends are wrong to be worried. They aren’t merely worried for their own sake, but for society at large. Not just for the status quo, but civilization as a whole.
But because their resistance necessarily requires defending the powers-that-be, their motives can be interpreted as being ABOUT keeping the marginalized disempowered and oppressed. And look, we’ve always had racists for whom it IS about that. But all the conservative friends and family I know well don’t WANT injustice, racist results from our systems, or needless oppression. It makes me sad how so many of them seem to have a premise that those who are vocal about their systemic oppression are wrong about the sources of their problems. It’s seems condescending for me to tell someone who is claiming to suffer that I know better about what is causing their pain. Or to point to the couple of prominent figures from their group who disagree with them and agree with me. And yeah, Facts are super important here. Statistics are great to help interpret reality. If the number of POC deaths by cop are proportional, that’s important, and should inform both side’s views and strategies. If there are better models for crime prevention that require fewer gun-toting police, that should inform both side’s views and strategies.
This is not a BOTH SIDES argument. I’m not pulling a South Park. When you’ve got advocates of killing 100 innocent people, and advocates of killing none, the proper stance is not centrism. My personal convictions have to do with having a very low opinion of my own interpretation of reality, as well as skepticism about humans being able to control the outcome of complex systems. At the same time I am compelled by love to seek out and listen closely to those with the least. To try my best to understand the perspectives of those with very different lived experiences than my own. And use whatever resources and privilege I have to assist however I can when I’m convinced that a prescribed action is warranted and effective.
I think my ponderings here will upset almost everyone I know (who has the sheer audacity to read so much on Facebook). The emotional valence of the extreme attacks coming from ‘the other side’ is so powerful that it’s very hard to still see “them” as human. “They” are so ridiculous. So evil. So far beyond the pale. But I think to continue down this road means literally civil war. And that’s probably going to hurt a lot more people than it’s going to help. :/
I apologize if this post isn’t long enough. I’ll endeavor to write a longer piece soon. Love, Josh
6/21/2020
There is a certain critique I keep hearing regarding the topic of systemic racism. It goes something like this: “You can’t fix systemic racism because it’s only one expression of the darkness of the human heart. Unless you can fix human nature, it will always exist.”
My friend Travis put it this way: “Systemic racism itself is a conceptually easy way to account for issues that in fact are much more complex than racism.”
I completely agree with this. My concern is that this statement could be easily read as a signal to give up, because, after all, we can’t change 7 billion + human hearts. Even if you’re coming from a spiritual framework and believe that the solution to systemic racism is for everyone to convert to your beliefs, I don’t know anyone who thinks that’s going to happen without some world-ending event. (Apocalypse, Ragnarok, Rapture, Mayan calender runs out of days, etc.)
So I’m going to use a metaphor (Actually a simile, but when you say that it just confuses people) to articulate my view on institutional reform as the appropriate mechanism for addressing systemic racism. Matching the scale of the treatment to the scale of the problem is important. As a surgeon, you could say, "Diagnosis: Patient has a bad arm. Treatment: Amputate... or dab it with antiseptic? Who knows! We just know it’s bad! Actually, let’s just ignore it and maybe it’ll stop being bad." Or. "Diagnosis: Patient has 6,974,399,220 abnormal quantum fluctuations. Treatment: re-write the rules of physics to change abnormality.” Or. "Diagnosis: Patient has a potentially cancerous mole on arm. Treatment: cut off the mole. Check patient’s skin all over on a regular basis afterward to ensure cancer does not return."
I think that's where I land on systemic racism. It can't fix human nature or the evil hearts of men. (My allusion to quantum) And it's not a purely symbolic catchphrase like "color blind". (My allusion to antiseptic.) It's a level at which human activity is possible to address, given the fact that our institutions that produce racist outcomes were created by humans in the first place. Will it FIX all problems for all times? Of course not. But if you survey human history you can see institutions that were worse than many we have now. That leads me to believe we can construct ones that are better than what we have now. I don't think we've tapped our potential at creating better institutions by hitting the ceiling of human nature. I think that conceptually that is possible. But I don't see evidence that this is the state we currently find ourselves in now.
7/7/2020
“Why do you trust X about Covid 19? Don’t you know they are trying to control you / take over the government / keep you from breathing the way God intended / make you disrespect Trump?! Don’t you know you can’t trust what X is saying?!”
I rely on scientific consensus as organized and distributed through various established scientific publishing organs and organizations. I do this because:
1.I am not a scientist. (Even if I was I would need to rely on the network of other scientists because no single field contains all the answers)
2. I don't know how to interpret raw scientific data.
3. I've learned from the history of science that attempts to apply "common sense" or "folk wisdom" to complex technological issues usually leads to stupid things like flat earth.
4. I recognize that science is a process, which means that best practices evolve as new data is discovered.
5. I recognize that no organization of human endeavor is perfect. So the fact that "what we are being told changes!" or "The X is corrupt!" is not a disqualifying event for me. Because:
6. The alternative is to randomly assimilate whatever "information" and ideas I stumble across on social media or sensationalist news outlets. That is a guaranteed way to confirm my biases. I'm just not into that when there's a chance I could be endangering others because “I just have a hunch that I know better than the experts. “
Reply: Authoritarian politics and scientific institutions seem to be too intertwined for me to put much faith in the establishment. I try to make up for it by allowing for more uncertainty within my worldview.
Josh:
I'm always happy to hear that others allow for uncertainty in their worldview.
There are, no doubt, complex interactions between all the powers-that-be and authority structures. And those create perverse incentives that introduce a lot of noise into the system. I can rank my trust in them by looking at the forces that keep these institutions from running completely off the rails. Religious institutions have financial and cultural-capital concerns. Governmental institutions (in our semi-democracies) theoretically have to answer to popular opinion. The entertainment/news complex is also held to account by markets. And while the scientific community is certainly buffeted by all of these forces as well, they do have one big differentiating factor, which is the theoretical adherence to The Scientific Method for finding truth. And while any individual or organization within the institution of science can be overly influenced by corrupting forces, the fact that they are surrounded by other people and organizations that PROFIT from getting closer to truth, and further from untruth, means that the corrupt will be out-competed in the long run. This is not the case in government, religion, entertainment.
7/22/2020
Let me paint an imaginary picture. Let's say in the near future an evil atheist liberal president is elected and he outlaws Christianity. As a response, Christians hold protests in the streets for weeks that stretch into months. There's a spectrum of protesters. The vast majority are totally peaceful, holding signs, chanting, singing, speaking into bullhorns. Some are more riled up, and sometimes throw water bottles at the police, or vandalize buildings. And because their's chaos, there are always the chaos tourists who see a chance to loot some businesses. Now the Far Left Mainstream Media is saying that "Christians are violently rioting and looting, causing millions of dollars in damages! They must be stopped at all costs!" The police force is militarized. They arbitrarily attack the protesting Christians, shooting tear gas and rubber bullets at their faces. Shooting at EMTs attempting to help, and at the press that are trying to cover the events. Then, at some point the evil atheist president loses his patience. It's time for Law and Order! Time to send in unmarked vans and grab protesters off the street for questioning.
Is this all ok, "because don't break the law and you'll be fine."?
I'm not basing my understanding of systemic racism on individual acts of police encounters. That's my point. The system I'm referring to comes up when you start to ask WHY do black people account for such a large percentage of arrests and incarcerations. Why are they so disproportionately poor? (A leading indicator that leads to crime.) And oh my god yes I know there are individuals who are poor and not criminals. And also rags-to-riches stories. I’m saying that statically, there are all sorts of indicators here. The natural question is WHY. There are two broad categories of explanation. One is internal, the other external. And because life is complicated the two affect each other.
If you go full-Internal, (the conservative view I grew up around) you're typically arguing that there's a problem with black culture that stems from...? Hard to avoid actually saying something racist when you go full-internal. Is it "their nature" that "makes them this way"? Does that explain why other minorities are doing better, statistically speaking, in the US? If black people would just clean up their acts then everything would turn around for them. They'd pull themselves up by their bootstraps out of poverty and drugs and fatherlessness, etc. After all, look at all the examples of successful black people. If THEY can do, there must not be any reason why they ALL can't do it. But again... there's no way to avoid coming back to the brass tacks of WHY such a high percentage of black people in the US have these problems in the first place.
So it’s possible that black people have a higher percentage of “bad traits” that drives their “bad culture” that produces their disproportionately bad statistical outcomes. But because outright saying that there’s something inferior about black people is not said in polite society anymore I’ve never seen my conservative friends delve this deep. They always stop one step above, at “It’s a cultural problem” without honestly confronting WHERE culture comes from.
So then. There is also the External family of proposed reasons why black people have the disproportionately bad statistics in the US. These include the history slavery, repression of education and more recently of their exclusion from home ownership which was enacted through several mechanisms including redlining, home owners associations and lending institutions that avoid lending to black-sounding names. Having a non-poor family is the leading indicator of financial success in life, and having a home with accrued wealth is the leading indicator of growing financial success. So these policies have had long-tail effects that ripple through the generations. White people who have not had to deal with these systemic issues got homes and accrued wealth, while black people predominantly had to rent, and thus not only did they NOT accrue wealth, but actually contributed to adding MORE wealth to predominantly white landlords. This is a SYSTEM, whether it was purposefully designed or not. Same with the prison system that gives much longer and more severe punishment to black people for the same activities. And I can already feel the retort brewing, (because I used to think this way myself) that Asians and other immigrants don’t have the same problems. And you should look into why that would be. And honestly grapple with the underlying question I asked above. “it’s possible that black people have a higher percentage of bad traits that drives their bad culture that produces their disproportionately bad statistical outcomes.” It that’s the conclusion you come to then you should really own it. Acknowledge it.
So on the systemic external factors: there are many more that are just a google search away. But if you find the redlining system unconvincing, then I don’t think you have the receptors necessary to accept any systemic explanations.
One REALLY big hurdle for me to develop the receptors necessary to research systemic racism with an open mind and heart, was my deeply held conviction that Personal Responsibility is THE foundation of morality and success. And these systemic explanations erode this narrative. A sharp conservative mind will notice that erosion, and then, because we are all human, that mind will over-react by building a strawman to replace the whole notion of systemic racism. The strawman looks like this: A black guy saying “Nothing bad I do is my fault! It’s all the system! I have no choice, that’s why I do the bad things!”
This is where things necessarily get complicated, because I agree with the idea that the narrative we tell ourselves GREATLY impacts our actions and attitudes. And I agree (and every liberal and leftist I know ALSO agrees) that if you tell yourself you’re not responsible then you’re in great danger of doing irresponsible bad things. And for an influencer to convince someone that they don’t have to take responsibility for anything because of bad systems is to disempower them. But that does not mean you cannot hold both truths at once. A group can both be oppressed by systemic factors AND a certain percentage of any group will have some ‘it’ factor that works well enough in a society for them to be able to succeed. But you can’t expect and demand that every member of a group be exceptional in that way. If there are systemic barriers, then it is right and just and loving to work to remove those, so even the unexceptional in an oppressed group has the same chance at success as the unexceptional of the non-oppressed group. And messages of self-sufficiency, personal responsibility and resilience are important to EVERYONE. But those messages come off as mockery if you pretend that those way have way more obstacles don’t have those obstacles.
___
There's a fundamental disconnect in the whole conversation about property vs. lives that stems from a difference of opinion concerning systemic racism, and the extent to which one thinks it is a real life and death struggle worth causing damage over. There's a spectrum on which one can be placed in regard to how much they agree that systemic racism is an explanatory mechanism for the sad statistics concerning black people in the US. More systems-oriented thinkers will be more on board with more radical action taken to address systemic racism. Because systemic answers are the best way to address systemic problems. For those who tend to interpret the statics as a result of a bunch of individual bad life choices, and don't think there's anything to look at beyond that, then the entire BLM endeavor is sadly misguided, and ANY amount of property destruction is going to FEEL viscerally like a terrible waste. I think most people in the US are somewhere in the middle on this spectrum, and so for them, anything other than holding hands and singing kumbaya is outrageously disproportionate. They think the answer is to moderate some bad apples, maybe enact some policy changes.
Another big part of the alarm we who were raised very whitebread (not an insult, just a description) have is that we've had it pounded into us since birth that "being nice" and being polite is how you get things done. And to fail to be nice and polite at all times is a moral failing. So you combine this visceral reaction against footage of impolite protesters, along with no real conviction that fundamental systemic problems need to be addressed, and you have a powerful recipe for focusing on very different things... like property destruction and graffiti.
"Defund the police" is a slogan I'm not a fan of. I've heard "Unbundle the police" as a substitute. Here's a very simple illustration of the concept.
Interlocutor: "I'm hopeful my friend that you are not in fact engaged in groupthink"
Well, I'm a human, which is a social animal, and as such I'm constantly engaged in groupthink. My hope is that by keeping my group diverse I'm honoring as many people and ideas as possible, but I'm sure that I'm always failing at that. And that failure will manifest as harm to some and benefit for others.
"Surely you must think independently and it must be that I just don't see all the times you deviate from standard Progressive thought"
I'm interested in hearing how people from all perspectives think about ideas that are new to me. As one who strives to be "like Christ" I've been exploring as many ideas for how to manifest maximum compassion to 'the least of these' over the past couple decades, and found the conservative social-political thought world I was raised around wanting. That worldview COULD be the most compassionate to the downtrodden. I just can't have that confidence unless I truly tried to understand other worldviews. I suppose I could post a picture of my bookshelf full of the classic conservative texts that I've studied over the years. Or the hundreds of thousands of words I've typed as an apologist for conservative worldview ideals back in the day. But I think you'll take me at my word that I'm intimately familiar with perspectives that fall outside of progressive circles.
"Progressives not only frequently fail to understand historical examples of human nature (such as security comes first in the heirarchy of needs over almost everything else) ... without appreciating the potential downsides to their optimistic plans."
This just seems like a your-mileage-may-vary sort of thing. Depends on who you talk to and who you read. For my part, any progressive thinkers that don't engage with the concerns you listed are not interesting to me, though I still try to listen when I encounter ideas that operate outside of my comfortable paradigms. And while pragmatism is a vital ingredient in almost every endeavor in life, there is a time and place for vision-casting and utopia imagining. I wonder if you're confusing the imagery of the cartoon above for a blueprint that the left is going to use to pretend to fix the world. It's not. It's vision-casting. Of course the brass tacks of implementation will be fraught and full of failed experiments that lead to injury and death. But that is already what our current policing experiment has lead to. You are convinced the experiments would lead to MORE injury and death. I look around the world at other countries and don't see the evidence of that. There are certainly a lot things that set the U.S. apart from these other countries that could foil such attempts at change. But if you agree with that then I think you've lost your appeal to historic patterns as evidence for what will or will not work in the here and now.
"But it doesn't seem (from my POV) to occur to you that while new and better methods are possible, they aren't easy--so an opinion cluster of any flavor (a.k.a. any tribe or group) is unlikely to be entirely right."
What about the ideas I've been bringing up makes you think that I think they would be easy solutions? And clusters of solutions can indicate a good source just as easily as they can indicate group think. However, I know for certain that *I* don't have the epistemological justification to interpret ANY idea accurately. I CERTAINLY don't think any political organization has a better chance. What I want to advocate is a more brave approach to experimentation. I think we, as a civilization, reached a local peak when it comes to the well-being of humans a couple decades ago. I think the formerly marginalized voices that are now less-marginalized have been making us aware that it may have been a peak for some of us, but much less so for them. That, to me, warrants the risk of exploring through some valleys in order to find a higher peak that is better for everyone. Are you familiar with Explore/Exploit strategy? Check out this cool article about it. I think you'll like it. (This is not related to politics, it's usually explored in the domain of computer science and business, but has application in almost everything.)
https://www.scotthyoung.com/blog/2019/09/17/explore-exploit/
"Note I am in favor of addressing housing issues and doing more mental health treatment etc. I'm in favor of increasing social welfare spending, if properly focused. "
That's wonderful to hear.
7/28/2020
In case you haven’t noticed I like thought experiments where you take a proposal and imagine it coming from a different source. For me, that helps to remove the bias I have for or against the source so that I can evaluate the idea of the proposal better. In videogames this would be something like removing the mechanics from the aesthetic theme. An example of this would be if you had a game where you’re in a military hanger and run from person to person stabbing them in the neck and watching them bleed out. You gotta stab ‘em ALL dead to win. Stay with me. Now take those same mechanics of running from person to person, and change the art so that instead of stabbing them you are hugging them. And you’re at a family reunion. And instead of bleeding out they smile real big. You could have a game that has all the same level design, win-states, and pacing, but produce a very different visceral reaction. The mechanics are the same. The salience is different.
To whit: Imagine a social movement called Suburbia Matters. It’s not race-based, though most suburbs in the movement are predominantly people of causian origins. One thing they are very upset about is that their taxes are going to a police force that they rarely utilize. It’s not fair, they say, to pay for law enforcement when they aren’t the ones breaking the law! When THEY need emergency services, 9 times out of 10 they need something like mental health experts, traffic enforcement, or dispute resolution. So rather than pay all this money for a giant organization filled with people who carry around guns in order to stop violent crime, they’d like to have THEIR needs addressed in a way that is customized to their experience. They ARE the ones paying for it after all. THEY should get public service that reflects their needs. They would like a police department that is about 10% of the size it currently is, based on the statistics of how often violent crime is a problem for them. And they want 90% of their tax dollars to go towards other emergency services and other systems that are shown to reduce the social ills they face such as substance abuse and mental disorder.
PLEASE don’t read this as a GOTCHA bit of rhetoric designed to OWN the other side. I’ve never had an interest in winning rhetorical debates. And if I did I’d be bad at it. I want to talk about the MECHANICS of this idea separate from the current culture war it has been contextualized in. That may be impossible, immoral, or irresponsible. But it’s something my brain just automatically does.
So I’m curious. Does this framing shine light on any facet of the idea you hadn’t considered before? Or am I still just a schill try’n to turn you into a marxist?
7/28/2020
This is my FEEEEEEEEEEELING about what's driving a big part of the culture war that's manifesting throughout politics and social media. I hope that by talking through the lens of my feelings and interpretations that my more-conservative-leaning friends will be able to see my heart and motives. No one needs to agree with me. But it could be helpful to see the values and premises in the foundation, right?
What I'm claiming here is not REALITY. It's my FEEEEEEELINGS. And we all know facts don't care about them. This is a story about MY psychology and MY reasoning that lead me to the changes in opinion I’ve had over the years. I’m Present Josh (Likely to be wrong about anything) explaining the journey from Past Josh. (Also likely to be wrong about anything)
This is a metaphor that I found illustrates my journey well.
Imagine we as a society are searching for the best way to organize ourselves in a just and compassionate way while also maximizing for freedom of expression and personhood. (There's a general consensus among most people I know from all social-political flavors that these are all good things) I'm going to shorthand call this Human Flourishing.
Now imagine that search takes place on a landscape with unknown boundaries and topography. (Or topology depending on how mathemagical you are.) There are peaks and valleys on this landscape. Valleys represent the opposite of those values we are all perusing. So totalitarian dictatorships, slave economies, etc are down there. And peaks represent the human flourishing we want. When we survey history it's easy to compose a narrative (cue Hegel) about how we've slowly been ascending a slope, and at some point... let's say it's when Boomers came of age, but the specifics don't matter... At some point we got to a peak, and now the consensus is that we have either got as high as we can, or that we are sliding back downhill.
On the more conservative side they'll say we are sliding down due to socialism and cancel culture. And the lefties will say those "best days" were only best for those with a lot of privilege, and were never great times for the marginalized.
So now we have a culture that is bifurcated with two impulses. One is to slam on the breaks and stay on this peak. Because as far as we can tell, there's no taller peak out there. We can tinker with things a bit to maybe add some elevation to this peak, but any fundamental change will mean heading back into the barbarous past full of anarchy and despotism. This was my view for most of my life.
But also imagine it's very foggy, and there isn't actually a way to see if we ARE on the tallest peak. Maybe there's one just on the other side of the fog.
Some personalities are risk-averse, (Generally a good thing to be when you’re responsible for others) and will camp out on their Local Maxima. Not only that, but they will insist that any movement from that Local Maxima is destined to ruin and misery. They are happy to Law and Order those who disagree into submission because it’s for the greatest good.
Then there are those who say that the Local Maxima is not acceptable. They point to the newly heard (historically speaking) previously muted marginalized people. These people were never invited into “the system”, in fact; often violently excluded. And now we need to account for THEIR human flourishing as well. This counts as >>NEW INFORMATION<< that should prompt a recalculation concerning the risk/reward of venturing into the fog in search peak that higher and better for everyone. This is where I’m at now. I consider the voices of the marginalized that I had not heard before to be >>new and important information<<. I feel this way because I directly connect “marginalized voices” with “The Least of These” that Jesus referred to in His admonition concerning who we ought to focus our resources and energies on. As one who strives to be “Like Christ”, this is where I’ve been led. Don’t hermeneutic me, we can do that elsewhere.
I think the risk-averse can always find a million reasons for staying put. I spent over a decade imbibing all the conservative talk radio, books, magazines and websites. And being a fervent evangelist for these ideas. I would type equally long-winded and confusing posts attempting to articulate them as you see now. I am intimately aware of these arguments. I can’t speak for all conservatives but I can speak with confidence for my former self and probably some chunk of them. I used to think that any other peak will mean that the previously marginalized will become the new power, inverting the paradigm and enslaving the old guard. After all, this has happened in many revolutions in the past, and yet things always somehow end up resolving back to those with wealth dominating. It’s a futile and pointless exercise that can only diminish human flourishing. The risk-averse like Past Josh can also argue that the claims of the marginalized are greatly exaggerated, so movement away from our Local Maxima is really not in their best interest. Or that the desired systemic changes that the marginalized seek are actually bad for them. After all, you can always find some in the marginalized groups who will say so. (How an outsider ought to approach and interpret the internal struggles of a marginalized group is a really important subject I hope to learn more about.)
I can sum up Past Josh’s arguments with one core impulse. Fear. Am I saying all conservatives are cowards? Of course not. I’m saying that in a risk/reward analysis that does NOT account for marginalized voices, the risk of tipping into totalitarianism of whatever flavor is too great to warrant venturing into the valleys in search of a higher peak. That is a rational fear. Fear can be good and healthy. But now that I’m forced to recon with the voices of the marginalized, I’ve changed my risk/reward analysis. I’m not foolish enough to believe that there’s some peak out there that is a utopia where there is no longer haves and have-nots. But I believe that the potential for human flourishing has not been exhausted. As long as we have “The Least of These”, those who are marginalized by systems we have created, then we have potential for growing human flourishing by making better systems. Doing so has inherent risk. Though it could be argued that NOT doing so ALSO carries a different kind of risk, but I’m not into fear as a motivator anymore. My motivation is love, and love ESPECIALLY directed at those who need it the most.
7/29/2020
Ok, so let’s talk about dangerous posts. I was told by several people who I respect that a meme I posted as an example of truly ridiculous ‘whataboutism’ was dangerous. Rather than keep it up and argue about ‘muh rights!’, I’d like to learn more. So I deleted that post and would like to hear people’s perspectives about their philosophy behind dangerous posts.
Here’s what I was thinking. Tell me where my thinking went off the rails:
From my perspective there is a spectrum of how convincing an argument presented on a meme or article is. The danger inherent in that content has to do with how well the rhetoric works to convince people that a dangerous idea is correct. This can be done through several channels: logical argumentation (not generally effective for most) and emotional appeal (much more effective) which can come in every emotional flavor. Disgust, anger, embarrassment, need-for-belonging, need-to-feel-clever, etc.
The meme I posted presented SUCH a bad logical argument that to my perception, it COMPLETELY undercut the emotional appeal it was meant to convey. To me, the meme was rendered innocuous by its utter failure to connect the emotional appeal to the structure of the argument. I could see how a very, VERY stupid person could maaaaybe be swayed by it. But I largely find those people unreachable by any argument that isn’t completely based on the emotional appeal of need-for-belonging. (“All your friends believe X, so you should too or you’ll lose your friends.”)
So I thought that posting it as an interesting cultural artifact could provoke some talk about the structure of rhetoric as found in a current hot topic. Because the example was so extremely bad I thought it could serve as an example of one end of the effectiveness spectrum. (So bad it can’t possibly BE effective, yet not containing anything that isn’t technically true.) (Though it contained a number so I’m sure that number wasn’t right but it really didn’t matter to the core conceit.)
Since my reasoning and understanding are fallible, and the last thing I want to do is to hurt anyone, I rely on my friends to tell me when I’m inadvertently doing so. But this does lift the lid on a very sticky topic concerning how ideas (good and bad) ought to be dealt with in an open and free society. I don’t know if a single thread has the ability to hold such a large topic PLUS the individual example I’m referencing, but we’ll see.
The meme:
7/30/2020
I have a Facebook friend who has been going to observe (not participate in) the protests going on in Portland multiple times for many hours at a time during different times of day, specifically so she can see for herself what's going on, free from the media spin. (without going into too much detail, the reports are mostly mundane most of the time, and when she saw people being destructive it was a tiny fraction of the crowd.) And now I'm having the surreal experience of seeing people who have NOT been there in person arguing with her about the nature of the protest and protesters.
"Sorry... not buying into the "peaceful protests”. I see with my own eyes what’s going on. These people are mentally ill and most on drugs. They are getting paid by George Soros. I’m sorry that you believe what you believe. Maybe someday you’ll really see what’s going on"
I'm not quoting this person to make fun of them (I consider them to be a victim) or to convince you of anything other than this: The commercial systems that reward engagement with pay-per-click have created perverse incentives that have been gamed by almost all companies that produce news content for the internet. (this obviously has been the case for TV news since forever) 1. Find as many examples of highly emotional, outrage-inducing quotes, footage, images, etc. (In other words: people saying or doing the stupidest straw-man version of a position) 2. compile those into the best format for the consumer. Because there are multiple examples of an outrageous thing being said or done it taps into our pattern-seeking bias and gives the impression that these clips are representative of a whole "side". 3. distribute. 4. Profit. 5. Try to tell themselves that it's not their fault the culture is collapsing around us.
8/5/20
In response to an article my pastor asked me to read: https://quarterly.gospelinlife.com/a-biblical-critique-of-secular-justice-and-critical-theory/
Fun article. Nice references. Really love Rawls’ thought experiment. Agree with most of the critiques of the systems presented. Also think the way the systems were presented was necessarily (for space and time) over-simplistic, and many of the critiques could be cross-examined in perpetuity.
But ultimately, I believe the fundamental argument put forth is one that doesn’t work for me for one simple reason.
There is no Biblical Morality. There’s no Biblical telos.
There are many moralities and teleological theories at play and in in conversation in the Bible. Every attempt to synthesize them is simply a matter of which sylLAble you decide to place the emPHAsis. The fact that you can survey both the Bible itself and history, and see countless examples of people applying what they thought to be “Biblical” morality and teleology to their church, government, policy, etc, being manifest as torture, war, slavery, oppression, etc, makes it pretty clear to me that either: A. Everyone who THOUGHT they were being ‘biblical’ in the past were wrong, and we, the blessed, who know how to hermeneutic right, who are ACTUALLY in communication with God, in our particular denomination finally figured it out. Or B. There are countless ways to interpret what “biblical” means, thus destroying the argument that Biblical Morality is the “rich, strong, comprehensive, complex, and attractive understanding of justice”. It’s possible that one of the many proposed moralities that one could articulate while referencing the Bible is really great. Sadly, it gives us no access to which of those proposals that would be.
As such, you can deconstruct all the proposed secular moral systems to your hearts content, as others also deconstruct any given “biblical” moral system, and we’re at a stalemate. Well, not you and me. But everyone and everyone. Even if whatever Keller thinks “Biblical morality” is, unless he has a way to make the rest of society agree with him, we’re still in the stalemate. We still have countless moral frameworks in competition. Keller keeps talking about the problem of the inability for society to form a consensus on this topic. But putting forth his version of “ancient, rich, strong, comprehensive, complex, and attractive understanding of justice” does not address the consensus problem.
It seems completely arbitrary to me that Keller thinks there are “five facets of biblical justice” and when he places that grid over competing theories they fall flat. Of course they do. Just as his theory falls flat when examined by any other arbitrary litmus test. I could spend all day picking apart his theory, cherry picking Bible verses to back up my claims, and present yet another form of “Biblical morality”. Granted, this guy is far more educated and possibly more godly than I am, so I’m sure he could tear me a new one in a debate on the topic. But then I can point to someone who’s more educated and possibly more godly, who disagrees with him. ad infinitum. This solves nothing. This brings nothing to a person who wants to be Christ Like in our current world.
“You cannot insist that all morality is culturally constructed and relative and then claim that your moral claims are not.” I totally agree with this. And agree that most people don’t think through the premises of their moral framework. I simply disagree that anything Keller has presented here represents a useful solution. I think it IS useful to point out flaws in moral frameworks. I think it’s important to sow epistemological humility in moral zealots who haven’t realized that their pet moral frame isn’t perfect. I simply think Keller needs this just as much as those he’s critiquing. Being able to reference Bible verses is something that’s been done by countless others and to many different ends. Many of which were tragic.
As a side note, I so tired of seeing what I’ve called the Jordan Peterson Maneuver, where Marxism and Post-Modernism are lumped together into some kind of bizarre misshapen strawman of both. I mean… points for the rhetorical strategy. But boy is it lazy or dishonest.
8-20-2020
I've been weighing myself daily for over 6 years now. No, I'm not obsessed with my weight, but it does correlate to a lot of other things I find interesting. Mostly I'm interested in the psychological side. WHAT is happening in my life when I have Cookie Monster cravings that I can't control, and what is happening when I don't?
Like many people, eating delicious food is an emotional life raft that keeps my head above water. I binge eat to not feel sad. The more vectors that exist for making me experience feelings I don't like, the more uncontrollable my cravings become. I know this is all very "no duh", BUT what reminding myself of this fact does is help me to avoid the proven-failure-of-an-idea that eating healthy is simply a matter of discipline. At least, not the moment-to-moment kind of discipline. Instead it's about thinking strategically about my life, evaluating my values, and organizing my life accordingly. Understanding that this is a process that takes time to figure out, and managing my expectations. Also having grace for oneself when life throws curveballs, or when I make stupid mistakes.
For me, personally, I've organized my life around one tentpole value, and the extent to which I'm living that value through all the channels of my life, the more at peace and joyful I am. And that makes the sugar cravings stay below the threshold at which I'm able to will-power myself through them. Right now I'm at the lowest/healthiest weight (I recognize these are not correlated for every body) I've been for over 3 years, and I can see why my recent breakthrough is happening. You can see from my graph that I have a sort of trampoline effect that kicks in right around 180 pounds. It's like a magical force field that takes incredible sustained effort to penetrate. And the few times I do I can only stay there for a day or two. But as of today I've been well under that force field for two whole weeks!
Here's what's happening in my life that has allowed this.
1. My life goal of creating an entertainment franchise designed specifically to make the world a more loving place. This past month I've had a couple promising breakthroughs in regard to how I can produce more, and higher quality visual development for it. (This has slowed progress on finishing Book 2, but the long term returns will make this a negligible sacrifice in the long run) I've also made a friend who is excited to be helping me navigate the tricky social issues that creating a new fantasy setting can bring with it, meaning the raison d'être of my life goal is ALSO progressing. Also, the latest book Lelia Rose Foreman is working on now is SO fun. Can't wait for you all to read it.
2. My life partner is disabled and always in pain, and usually needs help due to having recently been through one surgery or another. And the way I look at it, she could have these problems and ended up alone. She could have had these problems and been married to a guy to resented the 'work' it takes to help her. Or in the best world (that includes her illness) married to a guy to adores her and actively feels GREAT about helping her. Which means I get the opportunity and blessing to be able to LIVE my values AND bring the best possible world to a person who deserves it.
3. I found a day job working on an incredibly creative and challenging game where my very specific skills are both needed, wanted, and APPRECIATED! And my job is all about facilitating creativity in others, which again, is tied into my deepest held value.
So that combination of things is, I think, what has made my need to self-sooth with sugar, diminish to the point where it's not a huge concern.
8/29/2020
Before you tear into that obnoxious commenter, please remember... It's a statistical necessity that 49.99999% of people are below average intelligence. And being below average intelligence is not a choice and should carry no moral opprobrium. Also the fact that you can rarely tell if a stranger on line is any of the following can weight your perception of ill intent due to the emotional valence their words carry. Keep in mind, Internet strangers could be:
1. Literally children.
2. Intellectual disabled
3. Emotionally compromised (just got in a fight with partner, just lost their job, etc.)
4. Emotionally compromised from medical issue (head trauma, chronic pain, etc.)
5. Under the influence of drugs or alcohol
6. Have used all their reservoir of self-restraint for the day
7. Emotionally triggered by the medium of social media which has algorithms custom designed to emotionally trigger all of us.
8. In too much of a hurry to express themselves well.
9. Legitimately misunderstood your point due to the medium of written communication. (responding to perceived tone or attitude.)
10. Have an outdated mental model of you
11. Be responding to the worst bad-faith strawman version of your words because that's all they have ever experienced.
12. New or inexperienced in the medium of social media.
13. Not strong English speakers.
14. Desperate for physical or social goods they are currently deprived of.
15. Either a click farm worker or a bot who is paid to provoke division.
16. Simply communicate/interpret the world very differently than you due to culture, autism spectrum, personality type.
17. I'm sure there's more but I'm too tired to keep going. Oh: Too tired to communicate well.
None of this is meant in any way to excuse, encourage, or normalize bad/abusive/obnoxious/illegal/etc. activity of individuals on social media. It's meant only as a reminder that no interaction with another human is ever "an even playing field". And often, asking for a little clarification can help tease apart the ideas from the needs that drive us to share them. Can elucidate the compromised state from which an interlocutor is operating out of. And that can lead to more compassion, even with those who disagree with us. Even with those who we believe to be making the world a worse place. Again... It's good to be in this arena of ideas, opposing what you think is wrong. What I don't find good is aggressively going after a person who may be doing wrong, but is suffering from one or more of the conditions listed above.
I do think that this general heuristic becomes less and less applicable as we leave the world of one-on-one interactions with strangers and into the world of holding political leaders, pundits, and those with large platforms to account for what they are doing or saying.
I also have zero tolerance for threats. I have way too many friends who receive a daily deluge of death and rape threats. I don't care WHY a person does so. The platform needs to dump their asses immediately and the fact that this isn't the case is a massive indictment.
9/6/2020
My understanding of abstracted beliefs (such as political, moral, philosophical, religious) is that they serve the primary function as a group solidarity signifier. People don't "choose their beliefs". They are in a social context where some beliefs are rewarded by inclusion and others are punished with exclusion. Given the incentives, and the evolutionary programming that compels us to belong to our groups or die, I can't blame anyone for their terrible beliefs. I do however, try to articulate why more inclusive and loving beliefs are valid, so that if/when their group identity context changes, they will have an least some other options for replacing retrograde anti-social ones.
9/8/2020
I want to try an experiment in conversation that I don’t think anyone will like or participate in. Are you hyped!?! Here goes.
I’m going to attempt to abstract an idea AWAY from current politics to the point where it can be debated in as open a way as possible. And to that end, I’m going to… *gasp* DELETE any responses that reference specific current or historical events. Deleting comments is SO against my nature that I don’t know if I can do it, but I’m gonna try.
THE TOPIC: “Can rioting that includes violence ever be justified?”
Again… in the abstract. What kind of context do you believe would justify violent riots? And what KIND of violence would cause you to draw the line and abandon the movement? Or would you say that there can never be a context wherein violent riots are ethically justified? Historical and current events are not allowed, but you can postulate hypotheticals. As long as they don’t rhyme with Yatzi or Matt Bive Ladders.
I’ll get the ball rolling... I can imagine a scenario where a government oppresses some group of people by forcing them into slavery, killing them for simply being in that group, or taking everything they own. I would say this group is justified in rioting, and I would say that destruction of property is very easy to justify in this context. It would be harder for me to justify burning down buildings because of the innocents who might die, so that’s in the gray for me. I think it would be less gray for rioters to attack troops/police who are actively attacking the riot. I think it is more gray to kill those troops/police. But ultimately, the amount of discomfort I feel for this level of violence is predicated on the kind of oppression the group is undergoing. For example, if the oppression that the group suffers is being never allowed to walk on the grass, then I’m far less comfortable with the violence that happens in riots opposed to that policy. If the oppression is literally a government killing that group on sight, then I’m much more comfortable with even violent behavior that kills troops/police and/or risks the lives of innocents. (I can’t think of a scenario where I’d ever be comfortable with TARGETING innocents.)
And a final thought… I recognize that in this abstracted thought experiment, I can’t embody the life of a person suffering the oppression. So I will naturally be weighting my feelings in a much different way than one who is in such an oppressed group. And therefore I should not mistake my armchair philosophizing as actual real-world ethical work. But I DO think it’s helpful to simply contemplate the issue divorced from the preconceptions that come with political affiliations.
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An evangelical friend asked how any Christian can ever vote for a democrate since they are pro-abortion.
I believe a Christian can have the following views on abortion. (plus many more)
1. When a sperm meets an egg a soul enters that clump of cells and God now has made a human that has all the same rights that God wants for all humans.
2. At some arbitrary point, (say when the heart starts beating, or the brain starts signaling) a fetus becomes a baby human with all the same rights that God wants for all humans
3. When a baby exits the vagina it's now a human with the same rights that God wants for all humans. Before that it's not much more than tissue.
4. All things are predestined so it really doesn't matter when a fetus is considered human.
5. Human is not a binary state that pops into existence at any arbitrary point. It's a spectrum that grows from a fertilized-clump-of-cells to fully-finalized-brain of a mid-20s adult. The amount of human rights we afford that entity grows along with their humanity and is balanced against the rights of others differently in accordance. (Mother's wishes Vs. fetus' abstract right to live)
6. We also can't forget the prevalent historical view that infants outside the womb aren't even considered humans with human rights until some developmental milestones are reached. This is why it was common practice to leave infants who were deemed undesirable, not-flourishing, or sickly/deformed outside to die. This view was also held by many historical Christians.
B. And outside of that whole paradigm is the notion of human rights which is a modern invention that gets pulled into the debate in an ad-hoc sort of way, and which historically, Christians have been mixed on. As far as I can tell, most Christians care what God would consider murder more than they are concerned with human rights as a concept, but it does muddy the waters and is worth considering if you care about thinking deeply on the topic.
For me, personally, options 1 - 3 break down under their own logic when pushed to the extreme. 4 is unhelpful for making ethical decisions. 5 does not break down logically unless you attempt to apply binary legal concepts to it. 6 is an extension of 5 but in a different legal context. I was raised in a cultural and ethical framework that would make this impossible for me to stomach. Just as anything other than 1 or 2 is impossible for most evangelical Christians can stomach.
It comes to this. If you feel like God demands a binary human/non-human distinction for His ethical framework to function then you have the emotional valiance of "This political party wants to rip babies limb from limb in a gory satanic ritual sanctioned by the state". I do not have that binary distinction as foundational to my ethical or religious convictions, so I don't share that emotional valiance. I know that's a sharp dividing line for most evangelicals and one of the main reasons they can claim other Christian denominations are "not really Christians".
Now, beyond the religious/ethical dimension there is the practical world we live in, where abortion is legal, and the process of criminalizing it would bring with it a host of problems that reach into far too many areas for me to try to summarize with the time I have now. But since the number of abortions may or may not actually decrease if it's criminalized, I can't see the price it would cost our society as ethically defensible. Even if we completely zero out the rights of a mother, (as the pro-life camp is wont to do) and pretend they don't matter, the price we pay in other kinds of death and violence needs to be considered. The civil war that would probably be instigated. The rise of fascism in order to facilitate said criminalization of abortion. (I am not claiming that any state with criminalized abortion IS fascist, but in our current political context it would require many of the definitions of fascism to be increased to insure that such laws were enforced.)
Beyond the issue of Abortion and the fallout that criminalization of it would bring, there's the whole REST of the context of how political policy affects other lives. It's possible that more people suffer and die under Republican policy than Democrat policy. Or visa-versa. A Christian can believe either of those claims. Or neither.
TL;DR
It's more complicated than : Republicans = good guys who want to save the babies & Democrats = bad guys who want to kill the babies. While many Christians DO hold that view, I, and many other Christians do not.
Based on relationships with Trump supporters I have this is my mental model of why they support him.
1. They sincerely think that Democrats = Socialism = death camps for conservatives, their kids taken away to be brainwashed into atheists (which means their children will literally be tortured for all eternity in hell literally forever), and complete economic collapse.
2. They think abortion is literally the same thing as murdering a baby. To vote for anyone who is pro-choice is the equivalent to wanting more babies to be murdered.
3. They feel the general cultural move to the left is all about shaming them, and Trump is like a thumb in the eye of those mean SJWs.
4. I honestly don't >personally< know any Trump supporters who are personally racist. (I think they support policy that upholds white supremacy, but they don't perceive it)
Something that I found very inspiring during my evangelical Christian days was this mental model for how to witness. It went like this.
First, we acknowledge that any relationship where one party has a goal, is not a good relationship. As long as our goal is to convert a person, that will poison everything.
Second, we realize that almost no one ever changes their worldview after one conversation. Realistic "progress" doesn't look like someone going from -10 on a topic to +10 because someone dropped a truth bomb on them. Instead, the natural power of a healthy relationship is that as we are inspired by each other, our admiration draws us closer to a consensus. This is where I need to mention that because evangelicalism starts with the premise that evangelicalism is The Truth, that naturally this process means that the "unbeliever" will be drawn toward evangelicalism. But having an a priori that "I'm 100% right" is NOT necessary for this model. The point being that "progress" looks more like dozens or hundreds of small interactions over a period of some time causing a person to go from -10 to -5.
Third, we recognize that it's not our job and our job alone to convert our loved one. Again, evangelicalism has the premise that God's coordinating some 4-D chess by bringing just the right people into your loved-one's life to give them the maximum opportunity to "accept salvation". But again: not necessary for this model. The point is that if I take on the full responsibility to change someone, that is the path to madness, frustration, shame, and ultimately a bad relationship. So we recognize that it takes a community to convince a person that an idea is good.
Finally, we recognize that people are rarely motivated to change their beliefs by abstract concepts and arguments. People are motivated by being inspired by people who are aspirational. That doesn't mean unrealistically perfect. It simply means authenticity. Lead by example. Be a good, kind and just person. Be honest when you disagree, but disagree in a spirit of good faith and patience.
So that's been my approach. Right now I see my role as simply being someone who can try my best to explain why a left-leaning person thinks the way they do. I can do this for my conservative friends and family without shame, judgement or anger. I know that many of them have an idea in their head of what "a liberal" is like, and it's a strawman built by Fox and Hannity and that whole apparatus. So for me to simply exist in their mind as a counterweight to that strawman is doing something.
Beliefs are not abstract disembodied entities in our psyches that can simply be swapped out willy-nilly. Beliefs are embedded in relationships, community, culture, and one's self-perception as a good person. The detangling progress is not fast, nor should it be. Often changing a belief can be very costly both in emotional labor and sometimes literally, as many people's jobs rely on implicit social/political agreement with their boss. Some people need financial or other kinds of support form family that would be at risk if they "change sides". None of which is a great excuse for supporting policy that endangers and oppresses others. But it is a very human thing that I think we can all understand.
As we prepare for another round suggested Covid restrictions advisory I feel compelled to do yet another post about this stuff because I see SO many bad arguments out there. First of all, for the crowd that claims that hospitals are paid to exaggerate the death toll from Covid, when you think the deaths are actually complications from other things... please refer to the chart below. SOMETHING explains that giant spike in "deaths from all causes". I mean, maybe it's not Covid. Maybe it's serial killers, strangling from masks or ghosts. But I think occam's razor is helpful here.
And... if you frame the suggested restrictions as a matter of an infringement on YOUR PERSONAL liberties, or a matter of you being responsible for your own personal risk, you are really missing the point. >> It's not about you. << (If YOU get Covid you'll probably be fine. ) It's about those who are at high risk that you pass it to. It's about giving a fuck about OTHER PEOPLE that you probably don't even know, but who's lives are just as valid and important as yours and your self-righteous freedom. Americans are so heavily indoctrinated with this individualistic mindset that so many of us can't pull our heads out of our own asses long enough to recognize the heroism in small acts of sacrificially, voluntarily giving up a little bit of comfort and normalcy for some time in order to save hundreds of thousands of lives. As if we will spin off into an Orwellian dictatorship because we didn't go to thanksgiving this year and wear uncomfortable masks when we go out.
If you feel like "life is full of risks, we can't stop them all." Like; should we never drive because car accidents happen? Well, that argument swings both ways. If we increase risk radically we can also increase efficiency for some individuals radically. A better comparison is seatbelt laws, which infringe on personal liberty, were strongly opposed by freedom fetishists, and had all sorts of edge-cases brought up as counter arguments. (seat belts can crush your organs or trap you in a submerged car!)
The fact that I see this fetishization of legal rights and personal liberty as a fig leaf over incredibly selfish and reckless behavior predominantly from my Christian friends and loved ones honestly makes me feel sick to my stomach. That of all people, this community that is ostensibly ALL ABOUT sacrificial love is ready to die on this hill of "personal freedom"... No, not die on it. SACRIFICE STRANGERS on it. This is SICK and perverted, and I've never been more ashamed of this community that I was once so embedded in.
This isn't about politics or religion. It's about being a fucking human being who cares about the lives of others. I don't think you understand what being Christ-Like is at all if you think your responsibility to your fellow humans ends at the exact legal limit. You are the pharisaical priest ignoring the dying man on the side of the road because it's not >technically< your responsibility to do anything. If you can't recognize that the United States is WAY on the radical fringe of a political spectrum of personal liberty vs communal responsibility, you may be blind to how this is twisting you into complete asshole. Yes, you don't HAVE to, BY LAW, wear a mask, skip group dinners for a while, or care at all about another human. But if you like to think of yourself as a follower of Christ... what the fuck is your problem?
Now... if you know me, you know I'm normally not like this. I don't usually cuss. I don't usually "attack" people. But I hope that it's shocking enough to shake at least a few people into being a little less likely to be a vector for LITERAL DEATH.
This is a really fun episode about how language (especially written) is evolving rapidly thanks to the internet. If you're a curmudgeon who thinks that these changes are a sign of lazy kids and a dumbing down of communication you owe it to yourself to listen to this. At 45, I've got a LOT of ye olde fashioned habits such as double spaces after a sentence, capitalization, use of periods, and using ALL CAPS to emphasize rather than to yell. But I also work in the videogame industry which is very closely tied to the internet, so I think I'm a bit more in tune with the changes that are happening and why.
The thing that really resonated with me was their talk about sarcasm and irony. Gretchen articulated something I've always felt deeply, but never been able to explain. She says that this mode of communication is like a trust fall, in that for it to work there HAS to be risk involved. This is why it's so emotionally painful for me to signal that I'm being ironic/sarcastic. It undercuts the whole point of that mode of communication. Putting a wink after a sarcastic/ironic statement makes me cringe in the same way as seeing a bad high school skit. (Another quirk of mine is that I feel crushing embarrassment just watching live performances of drama. This is probably unrelated.) Anyway, this thing about undermining the mode of communication I'm naturally inclined to use has caused me to embarrass, hurt, confuse, annoy and pester countless people over the years. And while the explanation given in this podcast helped me diagnose why I'm prone to do this, it doesn't excuse the negative feelings I've caused throughout my life. But dwelling on the root of this proclivity might help me sort out what it is that makes change in this area so difficult, which could, in the end help me to be a better person. Like that time I recognized that I was using cutting jokes with my friends all the time. I was under the impression that they knew that when I called them dumb, ugly, etc. I actually felt the opposite. That was a dumb and ugly assumption. So I (mostly) changed that about myself.
I'm curious if anyone else has gone through a similar communication journey. And if so, I'd love to hear any tips about how you manage irony/sarcasm output while minimizing negativity.
https://soundcloud.com/youarenotsosmart/194-because-internet
Every group needs some percentage of contrarians or else that group will stagnate and ossify into mindless orthodoxy. (Political, religious, cultural, etc.) Sadly, most of the time the contrarians are still wrong. The personality profile that makes a person a contrarian requires them to interpret the consensus argument in bad faith, rendering them immune to logic and reason because there is always the chance that the consensus is indeed wrong. On the other side of the spectrum are the orthodox. Those who mindlessly repeat the consensus line. Also immune to logic and reason. However, they are usually right, just for the pathetic reasons. A contrarian will assume that everyone who agrees with the consensus are of the mindless orthodox echo chamber type. The "sheeple". But statistically, the sheeple are correct more often than the contrarians. This has been borne out in many studies. Groups make better estimations than individuals. Not all the time in all matters. But enough to make my point.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wisdom_of_the_crowd
This is not an argument for mindless centerism either. Both-sidesism is seductive because it makes you feel balanced and wise to be able to discern flaws on both sides of any given disagreement. But that’s easy, shallow and vain. My point is that as obnoxious and dangerous as people can be because of the way they are constituted, they exist for a reason. Which does not mean they should receive support, solace, agreement or a platform to say and do dangerous things. But for me, having a model of the social system in which different types have evolved to serve a purpose in the big picture of survival helps me to not be enraged at what I deem to be stupid or deeply mislead people. I recognize that I could be the stupid or deeply mislead person.
The internet has given the contrarians an outsized (by historical standards, not some arbitrary moral standard or anything) reach and platform.
And I think that's exacerbated by the fact that orthodoxy fractured as everyone discovered that their former high school friends, aunts and their favorite sports celebrity all believe X crazy thing. Without that general cultural consensus (that never truly existed except in our shared imagination) the 'penalty' for dissent was drastically lowered. That used to be a barrier to entry for the contrarian-minded. Lowering the threshold for the price one needed to pay in cultural capital means raising the number who would have been on the fence.
But what this new balance of power leads to is our “post truth” age, where no one knows what to believe because when you look deeply into virtually any topic you can find people with degrees cherry picking things that seem prima facie ridiculous to a layperson. This didn’t used to be a problem for the majority of people because the contrarians were limited to pamphlets or shouting from a soapbox on the street corner. Now the average person is under a daily barrage of this kind of “criticism”. And there’s no more shared imaginary consensus to retreat into.
This is my diagnosis of the widening cultural rift. Take it for what you will.
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