Freedom of speech means freedom from repercussions?

[Timsup2nothin]

How do you think that starts to happen? Take a guess, other than "taught that way", go back to the person who taught it and why they taught it.

Be reasonable in your explanation, as if it's actually supposed to make sense, though we both know it's "deep end".

I was taught racism by my father, for no apparent reason. I work very hard to not let it impact my behavior, but can't actually unlearn it. I consider it a great accomplishment that my son was astonished to hear that I only do through constant vigilance what he does quite naturally.

Without society imposed consequences impacting my father even while he was passing on this blight to me it is possible that I would not have been inclined to make the effort, or might have made it less effectively, thus continuing to pass on the problem. I shudder to think how things would have gone had I grown up in an era when my father could have clung to Faux News, Breitbart, and AppleDumplingHeads on the internet for support.

 

[AppleDumplingHead]

But we're talking about present day. We've invented things like standing armies to protect us from the "other" that actually means to harm us. I get why the ancestral impulse exists. What I'm not getting is why you consider it to still be relevant to modern life.

That's exactly what kkk, black panther, alt left, et. al., are. They're standing armies to protect "them" from what they anticipate means to "harm them" or "take things from them". If you "get why ancestral impulse exists", why do you think modern life should be so very removed? We're not as "evolved" in that respect as you give us credit.

He wants us to come up with a variety of answers and then he selects whichever is the most useful one for his purposes. It allows freedom to adopt or avoid adopting whatever position he wants and commit to no statement that might inconvenience him later.

Cryptics are thieves of time.

I was hoping he'd answer "because they see others as lesser", so I could chime in with "that is incidental".

If they only saw them as lesser, there would be no threat. We want things, need things, and when people seem to take what we feel we want and need, we associate that with a given group to avoid.

 

[AppleDumplingHead]

I shudder to think how things would have gone had I grown up in an era when my father could have clung to Faux News, Breitbart, and AppleDumplingHeads on the internet for support.

I'm absolutely sure you're convinced I'm advocating racial hatred. From your other discussions, I don't have faith in you to discern otherwise.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

I'm absolutely sure you're convinced I'm advocating racial hatred. From your other discussions, I don't have faith in you to discern otherwise.

From your other discussions I'd say that you are, though as usual you are trying to skirt around it and dress it up a bit for public consumption.

 

[AppleDumplingHead]

From your other discussions I'd say that you are, though as usual you are trying to skirt around it and dress it up a bit for public consumption.

If you really want to get to the bottom of things, it helps to understand why the other side feels the way it does. If you don't care for that, you don't really care to get to the bottom of things.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

If you really want to get to the bottom of things, it helps to understand why the other side feels the way it does. If you don't care for that, you don't really care to get to the bottom of things.

Correct. Why Breitbart readers believe the swill Breitbart spoons out is not a path to the bottom of anything I want to get to. Why racists want to convince people that racism is either justified or necessary is also not a path to any bottom I care to find. Septic tanks have bottoms, I don't need to get there to know its not where I want to be.

 

[Senethro]

Resource competition? Is that really what you think it comes down to and serves as sufficient justification?

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Resource competition? Is that really what you think it comes down to and serves as sufficient justification?

It worked against wolves. And bears. Sharks not so much, yet.

 

[AppleDumplingHead]

Resource competition? Is that really what you think it comes down to and serves as sufficient justification?

An explanation isn't necessarily justification. You're being petty. Do you want to fix the problem or complain about it like an inane pleb?

If you want to fix it, this is the direction you go. Instead of simply taking something from a child, put something back in his hands. Convince the prejudiced people their fears don't have merit by showing by example how to better work together. Realize the child's going to be confused and follow through with compassion and conviction.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

I, for example, have a prejudice against feminists. I feel as a colored person looking to a white supremacist toward them. Many feminists claim they don't "dislike" men, many white separatists claim they don't "dislike" people of other ethnicity. In truth, females have always been powerful, always been just as integral, always been just as influential as males, or we couldn't have gotten here. They look to supposed "power" men have and they lust for similar "power" or "control", disregarding those "powerful and controlling" men maltreat not only women but other men as well, and for some reason want to be "that". So it stems from a feeling of lack of power, lack of control, and manifests as irrational disdain, and in extreme cases leads to hatred, just as racial bigotry.

You do know there are female forum members here, right? I'm sure I'm not the only one who considers herself a feminist. I'm also sure I don't have a blanket "irrational disdain" for males. Any males I disdain are disdained for perfectly rational reasons.

Females have "always" been powerful and influential? Really? So women have never been considered property, ineligible to vote, and not even legal persons who could sign their own contracts and other legal agreements?

Mis-associating ( I can't think of a better word right now ) , for example, "ethnicity with crime" is exactly the same mechanism as mis-associating a distant growl in the night with a sabre-tooth tiger. Yes, you can calm yourself, rationalize the campfire is protection or that what you heard isn't, truly, a predator, but that instant, that immediate instinctual feeling is exactly what we're looking to when we see much of this racial bias. It's ingrained. Can we help it? Sure, but only when we separate ourselves from that innate nature which kept us alive for thousands of years, and we're "here" today because of it.

When I hear a growl in the night, I never immediately think "sabre-tooth tiger!" because they're extinct.

I really don't like having to spell things like this all out. Can't I just be cryptic, and you figure it out for yourself over a period of months or years and then you go, "oh yeh, that's what he meant"?

That's not how the forum culture here works. Being cryptic just tends to annoy people.

I was taught racism by my father, for no apparent reason. I work very hard to not let it impact my behavior, but can't actually unlearn it. I consider it a great accomplishment that my son was astonished to hear that I only do through constant vigilance what he does quite naturally.

For no apparent reason? In my experience, people who teach racism do it because they want to pass those attitudes on. My grandfather tried it with me with his ranting against the Jews, and my mother was really not happy to discover that I was friends with East Indian people, and patronized restaurants and other businesses that were owned/managed by Pakistani people. I finally had enough one day and told them both off.

If you really want to get to the bottom of things, it helps to understand why the other side feels the way it does. If you don't care for that, you don't really care to get to the bottom of things.

Good advice. You should try it yourself.

 

[Senethro]

An explanation isn't necessarily justification. You're being petty. Do you want to fix the problem or complain about it like an inane pleb?

So why all the guff about how old instincts and fear of strangers are useful today for protection from violent and harmful people?

If you want to fix it, this is the direction you go. Instead of simply taking something from a child, put something back in his hands. Convince the prejudiced people their fears don't have merit by showing by example how to better work together. Realize the child's going to be confused and follow through with compassion and conviction.

Sounds a lot like creating a safe space to displace harmful views.

 

[AppleDumplingHead]

When I hear a growl in the night, I never immediately think "sabre-tooth tiger!" because they're extinct.

This just exemplifies most of what I read from you. You have no idea why I'm laughing right now.

I "think" you're a female chauvinist. Males have been treated just as poorly as females in history. Females have enjoyed periods of equality and even supremacy at times. Right now there is equality, you can vote, you can own property, you can be in charge. Mission accomplished. Rest on your laurels, don't try to spoon feed me your continued resentment. You're not going to somehow make men loathe themselves for the way they're born.

 

[metalhead]

If you "get why ancestral impulse exists", why do you think modern life should be so very removed? We're not as "evolved" in that respect as you give us credit.

Because it is vestigial in a modern context. An anachronism. Modern man, at least in the United States, has no need to equate "otherness" with danger. I'm not arguing that it shouldn't or doesn't exist; such things are outside of our control. What I'm saying is that it is a part of our nature that we, as individuals, ought to strive to overcome. Ought to impress on our children at a very young age to ignore, so that it is easier for them to overcome than it might be for us. Just shrugging and accepting it as part of human nature is defeatist. Human being suppress their base impulses all the time, in the name of preserving the peaceful social order. There is no reason why this needs to be different, other than the impulse has proven to be easily exploitable for political gain.

 

[AppleDumplingHead]

Because it is vestigial in a modern context. An anachronism. Modern man, at least in the United States, has no need to equate "otherness" with danger. I'm not arguing that it shouldn't or doesn't exist; such things are outside of our control. What I'm saying is that it is a part of our nature that we, as individuals, ought to strive to overcome. Ought to impress on our children at a very young age to ignore, so that it is easier for them to overcome than it might be for us. Just shrugging and accepting it as part of human nature is defeatist. Human being suppress their base impulses all the time, in the name of preserving the peaceful social order. There is no reason why this needs to be different, other than the impulse has proven to be easily exploitable for political gain.

I agree with most of that. (except "Modern man, at least in the United States, has no need to equate "otherness" with danger." ) Now what? You'll continue yelling in racists' faces that they're ignoble and stupid, I'll be part of the solution. Meanwhile, you'll say I'm "part of them" for being a moderate conservative, and I'll shrug my shoulders and keep you out of my home. See how that works?

 

[Senethro]

Is being prejudiced against feminists a moderate conservative position now?

 

[AppleDumplingHead]

Is being prejudiced against feminists a moderate conservative position now?

I imagine it's a personal position, but I can cite examples "being against feminism" is moderate liberal, too.

 

[metalhead]

I agree with most of that. (except "Modern man, at least in the United States, has no need to equate "otherness" with danger." )

What's your disagreement? That the "other" presents danger such that impulses to treat the "other" as such are beneficial? Because I'm having a hard time coming up with a reason why such instincts might still be useful, seeing as how human beings are capable of assessing threats rationally.

 

[AppleDumplingHead]

What's your disagreement? That the "other" presents danger such that impulses to treat the "other" as such are beneficial? Because I'm having a hard time coming up with a reason why such instincts might still be useful, seeing as how human beings are capable of assessing threats rationally.

I guess you haven't tried addressing your concerns with street gangs. That's a pretty extreme example, though. How about garden variety psychotic abusers and sociopaths?

 

[metalhead]

But I don't need an "other" = danger impulse to steer clear of dangerous people. In fact it's counter-productive to that end, because the psychotic abusers and sociopaths that are most likely to target me generally look like me, are not threatening to the lizard part of my brain that tries to tell me who is and isn't a threat.

I can put my guard up in public at my discretion. I don't have to give in to base impulses to protect myself or my family from harm. Instincts that try to get me to do so, excepting perhaps fight-or-flight in the case of an imminent threat, don't do anything to keep me safe. They are wholly superfluous.

 

[AppleDumplingHead]

They are wholly superfluous.

I don't agree, at all. They need to be curbed with better judgement from rationality, but they're not some unnecessary obsolete aspect. I can just as easily say a given person's lack of such instinct is damage from too much societal insulation, and he'll be far more likely the victim of someone trying to take advantage.

Very few snake oil salesman encounters end as pleasantly as "The Music Man".