Liberals, progressives and conservatives of note sign open letter to end cancel culture. (Noam Chomsky/J.K. Rowling/Gloria Steinem/David Brooks etc.)

[Agema]

Ok, but all of that is dumb. I'm sure you would agree, that just wanting to be above someone else is a terrible mindset and an even worse analysis of reality.

Mm.

I think it is theoretically better to not base one's satisfaction on extrinsic factors: my experience is that it breeds unhappiness. That's how I try to be, but I have to reflect on and work at it. I cannot deny that in practice extrinsic factors do affect my satisfaction: for instance, even though my pay is fine and meets my needs and wants, I have also thought at times I should be paid more because I earn less compared to other people with the same qualifications and experience. Envy? Injustice of feeling exploited? In ways these negative feelings can be useful, if they motivate self-improvement.

I think it's also potentially quite a primal motivation. Someone who has more than you is more powerful, and potentially, even subconsciously, appreciated as a threat, and we are deeply motivated to remove threat. Or social dynamics like pack dominance, that whilst we have a drive to co-operate, also a drive to dominate.

Of course we are also in a capitalist system which thrives on competition, which drives a sense of winners and losers, superiority and inferiority. The poor are often characterised as unworthy, with rhetoric to emphasise their vices, whilst the rich are lauded and characterised with rhetoric to emphasise their virtues. Thus our socioeconomic system, pushing competition, has at core a powerful drive for people to think of themselves relative to others.

 

[Silvanus]

Go hang out with something like Habitat for Humanity and get back to me.

Oh, I've got quite a lot of experience working (and otherwise interacting) with charities. They're full of committed, driven, kind-hearted people.

Do you honestly think they represent even 5% of people?

Mm.

I think it is theoretically better to not base one's satisfaction on extrinsic factors: my experience is that it breeds unhappiness. That's how I try to be, but I have to reflect on and work at it. I cannot deny that in practice extrinsic factors do affect my satisfaction: for instance, even though my pay is fine and meets my needs and wants, I have also thought at times I should be paid more because I earn less compared to other people with the same qualifications and experience. Envy? Injustice of feeling exploited? In ways these negative feelings can be useful, if they motivate self-improvement.

I think it's also potentially quite a primal motivation. Someone who has more than you is more powerful, and potentially, even subconsciously, appreciated as a threat, and we are deeply motivated to remove threat. Or social dynamics like pack dominance, that whilst we have a drive to co-operate, also a drive to dominate.

Of course we are also in a capitalist system which thrives on competition, which drives a sense of winners and losers, superiority and inferiority. The poor are often characterised as unworthy, with rhetoric to emphasise their vices, whilst the rich are lauded and characterised with rhetoric to emphasise their virtues. Thus our socioeconomic system, pushing competition, has at core a powerful drive for people to think of themselves relative to others.

In a sense, of course, the only value of money is determined by relative factors.

I don't mean in a wishy-washy "money is what you make of it" kind of way. I mean in the sense that the value of money is literally determined, in part, by the amount of it that exists.

 

[tstorm823]

Oh, I've got quite a lot of experience working (and otherwise interacting) with charities. They're full of committed, driven, kind-hearted people.

Do you honestly think they represent even 5% of people?

25% of people in the US volunteer their time in any given year, closer to 75% give to charity in some way, and those are just the things on the books. Those numbers don't include the uncountable personal interactions people have with those they know who need help.

 

[Seanchaidh]

Better work for the same pay is more efficient with respect to pay.

(Emphasis mine)

Desperate people will accept less pay, longer hours, and other worse conditions. And then there's the extreme case: prison slavery.

Pay isn't the same.

First, you need some history lessons, because there are tons of occasions where those with power literally funded their competition.

You're not disagreeing with my statement...

The history of ruling classes is a history of those who have jealously guarded their wealth and power and eliminated so far as they could any serious competition.

You're also going to have to be clear about what you mean by "their competition", because ruling classes typically have a lot of competition within their class. Among other things, that's what wars between nations are typically about. But when, say, another class is rising like the bourgeoisie with respect to the feudal aristocracy, the aristocracy's lack of inclination or ability to crush the bourgeoisie ended up turning their world upside down.

So you think there's a ruling class deliberately holding people down to exploit them, but also it's not the people it's just the system. Riiiiight.

Employers typically want to pay their employees less and there are very solid business reasons in a capitalist system to want that and to engineer situations in which that occurs. Desperate people are much easier to pay less because of the diminishing marginal utility of everything, which includes money. Since the difference between the value of labor and its price is what constitutes profit for employers, employers want their employees to have as little ability to decline their terms as possible; for strikes to be as painful for their employees as possible. This is why capitalists tend to try to undermine and roll back social welfare systems where they exist and oppose the creation of new ones.

 

[Agema]

In a sense, of course, the only value of money is determined by relative factors.

I don't mean in a wishy-washy "money is what you make of it" kind of way. I mean in the sense that the value of money is literally determined, in part, by the amount of it that exists.

I think that's a different thing, though.

We could eliminate money, but people would put more emphasis on other figurative "currencies" to measure themselves against others. How attractive their spouse is, how big their penis or breasts are, whether they get employee of the month, or a better high score on Space Invaders. Many football players, for instance, derive pleasure by beating the opposition, where some just like playing. Likewise football fandom, some love watching the game played beautifully, and others more just want their team to win to feel they are superior - that of course even being a vicarious experience because they aren't even the ones doing the playing. A nationalist may simply want and enjoy their people's own sovereignty, but some think their nationality makes them better than foreigners. And so on.

What I think capitalism encourages is that anything can be monetised, such that money assumes a stronger role as a determinant of worth. You slog hours of voluntary time in a hospice for free, you could be called a saint for your goodness, but from a captalist perspective you're a fool for working without pay.

 

[Satinavian]

25% of people in the US volunteer their time in any given year, closer to 75% give to charity in some way, and those are just the things on the books. Those numbers don't include the uncountable personal interactions people have with those they know who need help.

Charities have the problem that people tend to give to persons they know or like or to organisations they have some connection to.

Personally i prefer higher taxes and a proper social system.

We could eliminate money, but people would put more emphasis on other figurative "currencies" to measure themselves against others. How attractive their spouse is, how big their penis or breasts are, whether they get employee of the month, or a better high score on Space Invaders. Many football players, for instance, derive pleasure by beating the opposition, where some just like playing. Likewise football fandom, some love watching the game played beautifully, and others more just want their team to win to feel they are superior - that of course even being a vicarious experience because they aren't even the ones doing the playing. A nationalist may simply want and enjoy their people's own sovereignty, but some think their nationality makes them better than foreigners. And so on.

What I think capitalism encourages is that anything can be monetised, such that money assumes a stronger role as a determinant of worth. You slog hours of voluntary time in a hospice for free, you could be called a saint for your goodness, but from a captalist perspective you're a fool for working without pay.

I agree. I did live in a communist country when i was young and wealth was no status symbol there at all. People competed for other stuff.

 

[Sneed's SeednFeed]

Go hang out with something like Habitat for Humanity and get back to me.


You think that made them richer? Why? Why is a class of people arguing with each other all day your idea of prosperity?

I don't know, the sum of modern mathematics, physics and modern science owing themselves in large part to Greek inquiry is a pretty big boon you know. Being able to debate and to practice science, art and philosophy is a debt that Europe owes Greece in that sense, given that literally all European democracies are based on Greek principles of politics as are all the former colonies that they lorded over.

I think that's quite significant.

 

[Buyetyen]

I don't know, the sum of modern mathematics, physics and modern science owing themselves in large part to Greek inquiry is a pretty big boon you know. Being able to debate and to practice science, art and philosophy is a debt that Europe owes Greece in that sense, given that literally all European democracies are based on Greek principles of politics as are all the former colonies that they lorded over.

I think that's quite significant.

That's another thing capitalism sucks at. Because it sees education as a commodity rather than an investment in the population and thus the market, the incentive for a capitalist is to limit access education in order to keep wages depressed and maintain the profit margins they're accustomed to. Give this a few decades of course and this will lead to economic recession as there just aren't enough educated people to meet demand anymore. Hard to stay competitive when you live in a country of mostly stupid people.

 

[Sneed's SeednFeed]

That's another thing capitalism sucks at. Because it sees education as a commodity rather than an investment in the population and thus the market, the incentive for a capitalist is to limit access education in order to keep wages depressed and maintain the profit margins they're accustomed to. Give this a few decades of course and this will lead to economic recession as there just aren't enough educated people to meet demand anymore. Hard to stay competitive when you live in a country of mostly stupid people.

Education is commodified and made scarce when there's a system of arbitrary of actual scarcity. It was efficient and is still efficient up to a point, but we're capable of a more productive enterprise that doesn't impose such limits on people when they're otherwise capable of doing so. Anything else is bullshit innatism or essentialism. Even a moderate social democratic reform such as the ones in place in Germany maintains an efficient workforce and an economic premium on education (as much as it disgusts me to rest on petty reform when we are the inheritors of May '68).

Though in this instance, I'm less bothered by analysing capitalism than tstorm's intellectual dishonesty at claiming that there is no benefit from exploitation and that slavery was bad for everyone. This is like a parody of conservatism. At least own up to your chauvinism instead of sinking to lower and lower depths so as not to disturb your feelings in the face of facts.

 

[tstorm823]

This is why capitalists tend to try to undermine and roll back social welfare systems where they exist and oppose the creation of new ones.

I can almost hear you describing social welfare systems as a subsidy for corporations out of the other side of your mouth.

I don't know, the sum of modern mathematics, physics and modern science owing themselves in large part to Greek inquiry is a pretty big boon you know. Being able to debate and to practice science, art and philosophy is a debt that Europe owes Greece in that sense, given that literally all European democracies are based on Greek principles of politics as are all the former colonies that they lorded over.

I think that's quite significant.

Fetishising the ancient Greeks is primarily anti-Catholic nonsense.

 

[Sneed's SeednFeed]

Fetishising the ancient Greeks is primarily anti-Catholic nonsense.

Your church thinks otherwise. If you think stating the obvious contributions of Greek society to the world is fetishism then you need to read a book on the history of any science or philosophy and see the dedication it has to them.

I'll also assume you're done with this two-faced and racist charade of pretending that slavery was bad for everyone and that black people should just shut up about their grievances. You're not nearly as clever a troll as you think and that shovel of yours has only so deep to dig to cover up your non-arguments.

 

[tstorm823]

Your church thinks otherwise. If you think stating the obvious contributions of Greek society to the world is fetishism then you need to read a book on the history of any science or philosophy and see the dedication it has to them.

And between those periods, Greece was conquered. The slaves you refer to came from constant warring within their own culture. It's hardly coincidence that they had so many ideas and succeeded at using roughly none of them. That's not prosperity.

I'll also assume you're done with this two-faced and racist charade of pretending that slavery was bad for everyone and that black people should just shut up about their grievances. You're not nearly as clever a troll as you think and that shovel of yours has only so deep to dig to cover up your non-arguments.

I'm sorry, I seem to have made an argument too nuanced for you. I did not say slavery was bad for everyone, it obviously benefits the slaveholders, but rather that it's bad for society taken as a whole. I didn't ever say black people should shut up about their grievances or anything like that, if anything I've implied white people should be joining in black people's grievances. I didn't think I was saying something terribly clever, so I'm surprised you missed it so completely.

 

[Seanchaidh]

I can almost hear you describing social welfare systems as a subsidy for corporations out of the other side of your mouth.

Your inability or unwillingness to engage the point is noted.

 

[Dreiko]

And between those periods, Greece was conquered. The slaves you refer to came from constant warring within their own culture. It's hardly coincidence that they had so many ideas and succeeded at using roughly none of them. That's not prosperity.

The thing about the period of roman control over Greece is that it was still allowed to be itself culturally. It's why the new testament was written in ancient Greek and not Latin. They had the foresight to allow us to keep developing the sciences and the culture to advance humanity. Also you are forgetting the Byzantine empire which is basically more modern Greeks. You know the Turkish capital of Istanbul? That's actually them just mimicking the old saying "is tin polin" which means "towards the city", a common thing said during the Byzantine era about Constantinopole which was so grand as to just be known as "the city".

So yeah, you can be conquered and enslaved (funnily enough, the ottomans enslaved greece for roughly the same time period that africans were slaves in America) but if your culture is strong enough it'll still endure.

 

[Seanchaidh]

but if your culture is strong enough it'll still endure.

Somewhat doubting that has much to do with the "strength" of a culture (whatever that means) as opposed to the concrete material realities of a given oppression.

 

[Buyetyen]

The thing about the period of roman control over Greece is that it was still allowed to be itself culturally. It's why the new testament was written in ancient Greek and not Latin. They had the foresight to allow us to keep developing the sciences and the culture to advance humanity. Also you are forgetting the Byzantine empire which is basically more modern Greeks. You know the Turkish capital of Istanbul? That's actually them just mimicking the old saying "is tin polin" which means "towards the city", a common thing said during the Byzantine era about Constantinopole which was so grand as to just be known as "the city".

So yeah, you can be conquered and enslaved (funnily enough, the ottomans enslaved greece for roughly the same time period that africans were slaves in America) but if your culture is strong enough it'll still endure.

"Allowed 'us'?" Maybe consider editing the plural pronouns there to third person. Also, how exactly are we measuring the strength of a culture? What are the metrics? And if we extrapolate outward, isn't this basically you saying that the various extinct indigenous tribes who fell victim to genocide weren't strong enough to be worth preserving?

This is a very facile reading of history. The Roman empire primarily allowed freedom of cultural expression among conquered peoples because trying to convert them by force instead of letting syncretization do the work for them yielded way fewer goods and tax revenues. This is part of the reason there were so many mystery cults in the empire. The Mongol Empire did the same thing. Colonial empires on the other hand saw themselves as having a directive from God to bring superior, enlightened Western thinking and the salvation of Christ to the "savages." Bringing up the Byzantines just shows how you have to stretch your argument due to your shallow knowledge of the topic. And once again bringing up the historical slave trade elsewhere on the globe does not absolve the participant states in the Atlantic Slave Trade of their crimes against humanity.

 

[Zeke davis]

Opinion | 10 Theses About Cancel Culture

What we talk about when we talk about “cancellation.”

web.archive.org

This guy has a history of being someone who's bad but on this i cannot help but 100% agree with that they're saying.
With the caveat that harassment and threats cause harm regardless if they fire people or not, natch. and some examples he brings up may have valid criticism that he may not agree with though he avoids actually taking a stand(ironically) in the piece in itself.

 

[Terminal Blue]

It's hard not to notice the people most often focusing on structural economic issues with regards to racial inequality are the ones selling crap like white people benefiting from racism, as though one group hurting automatically makes another group benefit.

White people do benefit from racism.

The racial inequality in America today, or the global inequality between majority white countries and everyone else, is a direct result of the history of racism. The explosive growth of the US economy in the early and mid 19th century was fuelled, in large part, by slavery. Shortly before the civil war, cotton exports comprised the majority of the total value of US exports. The domestic textile industry, one of the first drivers of industrialization in the Northern US states, also relied directly on slavery. Slavery brought incredible wealth into the US economy, it laid the foundation for the US to become the wealthiest country on the planet by the end of the century. At the time, that wealth may have disproportionately benefited a small number of industrialists, landowners and investors, but over a very long time (in no small part due to the efforts of unions) that wealth translated into a better standard of living for white Americans, but was specifically kept from black Americans. That economic inequality continues to this day.

It's not particularly important whether your ancestors personally owned slaves. Even if they did, no apology, guilt or personal redress on your part towards the descendent of those your ancestors harmed will go a single step towards fixing the problem. Reconciliation and compensation is not a case of an individual apology or even a one time payment, you can't pay for everything that black people have lost to racism. Rather it has to be the sustained, sincere effort to resolve an ongoing injustice and to build a society that is free from racism, and free from the consequences of racism.

 

[Hawki]

This is a very facile reading of history. The Roman empire primarily allowed freedom of cultural expression among conquered peoples because trying to convert them by force instead of letting syncretization do the work for them yielded way fewer goods and tax revenues. This is part of the reason there were so many mystery cults in the empire. The Mongol Empire did the same thing. Colonial empires on the other hand saw themselves as having a directive from God to bring superior, enlightened Western thinking and the salvation of Christ to the "savages." Bringing up the Byzantines just shows how you have to stretch your argument due to your shallow knowledge of the topic. And once again bringing up the historical slave trade elsewhere on the globe does not absolve the participant states in the Atlantic Slave Trade of their crimes against humanity.

Um...

Look, that might be true in some areas, but allowing cultural expression? Tell that to Christians within the Empire. Allowing language? Off the top of my head, why are Celtic languages in the UK correlated to regions that fell outside Roman control? It's also telling that when the Roman Empire collapsed, the groups they'd conquered didn't magically emerge (e.g. the Etruscans never bounced back into existence). And if you're talking about believing in God for the good of heathens, tell that to the Abassid and Umayyad caliphates. Or, don't tell them I guess, because they probably don't need retroactive instruction on how to bring God to heathens with the sword.

 

[Sneed's SeednFeed]

And between those periods, Greece was conquered. The slaves you refer to came from constant warring within their own culture. It's hardly coincidence that they had so many ideas and succeeded at using roughly none of them. That's not prosperity.

I'm sorry, I seem to have made an argument too nuanced for you. I did not say slavery was bad for everyone, it obviously benefits the slaveholders, but rather that it's bad for society taken as a whole. I didn't ever say black people should shut up about their grievances or anything like that, if anything I've implied white people should be joining in black people's grievances. I didn't think I was saying something terribly clever, so I'm surprised you missed it so completely.

Like, seriously, that's your criterion? That the Greek empire eventually fell? Nevermind the fact that their texts and ideas were spread far and wide across the mediterranean and the middle east and contributed immensly to the Islamic Golden Age, to the development of all modern sciences and the Renaissance? Ever hear of the Sword of Damocles, or I guess, the Recession of Damocles and how it's hanging over your turd of a commander-in-chief?

Other than this foxtrot, you've done 0 to indicate that the greeks weren't prosperous other than inventing a lie that it's somehow anti-Catholic, which has no relation to the contribution of the Greeks or the prosperity of their society. You are an embarassment to all the catholics I know, progressive and conservative by trying to pin the church this way in the first place.

As to your 'nuanced' sophistry you've stated nothing other than a 'everybody suffered under slavery' and snuffed out any discussion of the specifics of slavery and how it has racialised the sum of American economic stratification. It's a common strategy to avoid discussion, literally the 'all lives matter' equivalent. You can pull whatever mental gymnastics you want about your history of fairyland where there is no material consequence or advantage in slavery and deprivation, where you spit on Exodus while you're at it too. After all, the Egyptians suffered too from enslaving the Jews, as did the Romans from killing your favourite jewish carpenter.

Joining in on grievances by saying your demographic suffered too in what was specifically a racialised system would be like Ronald Reagan sitting down with Nicaraguans back in the day and saying that he suffered too from the drugged-up cocaine death squads that the CIA deployed because it made him feel bad. Or hell, George Bush sitting down with Iraqis who were tortured at Abu Ghraib and saying he too felt pain whilst electric pliers were forced up their urethra for the 3rd time that day.