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syncope at 07:22am on 03/02/2009
syncope at 07:22am on 03/02/2009I am noticing a trend: white dudes who are ill educated in negotiating ANYTHING from a perspective not their own keep showing up in conversations they don't understand to say a lot of totally offensive, ignorant, hurtful garbage.
I was trying to watch Heroes and to punish me for me stealing her zen last night,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
sparkymonster links me to the parent post to this thread.
My response: so one of the things I'm seeing here is a conflict of the traditional american concept that ALL people have equal rights to ANY opinion that so often gets tossed off by the liberal elite, and the fact that we've hit the point of diminishing returns on the free for all of "everything is equal" because we've discovered what isn't equal: dehumanization.
According to the LAW you have the right to say anything you want. As a human being, you do not have the RIGHT to hurt other people with your willful ignorance and desire to prove your own self-worth as a discrete entity. Sure, you CAN say ANYTHING. Why would you? Just to prove you can? Like a child stripping off their clothes and running around naked because they've figured out how to work velcro? Most of the analogies I had for that were far more inflammatory and included tyrants and murder sprees and so on, which shows my own psychology when confronted with shows of power that have no point other than to prove a point of power/lack of power. That is what you're doing when you say "I have the right to hurt you." Even if you do have a "right" to do it, what motivation other than propping yourself up and belittling others for pleasure would you have to do so?
One cannot apply broad political concepts to individual interactions with other individuals. Sometimes I think the adage about "a little education" is one of the most brilliant flip statements over made. Concepts you were taught in 8th grade Civics might need to be reinvestigated when you're confronted with adult interactions. Should we really be living in a postmodern world and using the propaganda of Manifest Destiny to guide our current beliefs and behaviors? Hint: I think NO. Those very concepts are what allowed whites with means to DOMINATE AND CONQUER the entire continent. There's a direct line from "all men are created equal" (where "men" has the value of white men with property who are the right religion and come from the right ancestral countries) to "Oh that's bullshit. Or as one overly serious college peer once said "If ONE person is offended by the Minnesota Vikings team, then it's offensive." You can check a book out of the library to connect the dots.
I was trying to watch Heroes and to punish me for me stealing her zen last night,
sparkymonster links me to the parent post to this thread. My response: so one of the things I'm seeing here is a conflict of the traditional american concept that ALL people have equal rights to ANY opinion that so often gets tossed off by the liberal elite, and the fact that we've hit the point of diminishing returns on the free for all of "everything is equal" because we've discovered what isn't equal: dehumanization.
According to the LAW you have the right to say anything you want. As a human being, you do not have the RIGHT to hurt other people with your willful ignorance and desire to prove your own self-worth as a discrete entity. Sure, you CAN say ANYTHING. Why would you? Just to prove you can? Like a child stripping off their clothes and running around naked because they've figured out how to work velcro? Most of the analogies I had for that were far more inflammatory and included tyrants and murder sprees and so on, which shows my own psychology when confronted with shows of power that have no point other than to prove a point of power/lack of power. That is what you're doing when you say "I have the right to hurt you." Even if you do have a "right" to do it, what motivation other than propping yourself up and belittling others for pleasure would you have to do so?
One cannot apply broad political concepts to individual interactions with other individuals. Sometimes I think the adage about "a little education" is one of the most brilliant flip statements over made. Concepts you were taught in 8th grade Civics might need to be reinvestigated when you're confronted with adult interactions. Should we really be living in a postmodern world and using the propaganda of Manifest Destiny to guide our current beliefs and behaviors? Hint: I think NO. Those very concepts are what allowed whites with means to DOMINATE AND CONQUER the entire continent. There's a direct line from "all men are created equal" (where "men" has the value of white men with property who are the right religion and come from the right ancestral countries) to "Oh that's bullshit. Or as one overly serious college peer once said "If ONE person is offended by the Minnesota Vikings team, then it's offensive." You can check a book out of the library to connect the dots.
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