A Thing Wot Someone Sent Me.
Feb. 11th, 2025 11:08 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
annwfynAnd it sparked complicated and contradictory thoughts.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2022/05/social-media-democracy-trust-babel/629369/
1) I think it's pretty accurate to say that we live in a madly polarized society and we are, on a wider level, utterly losing the ability to talk to people who don't agree with us entirely. And that this is a massive problem and is doing very significant amounts of widespread societal harm.
2) I also think it's accurate to say that when I post that, I'm coming from a most privileged position where talking to people who don't agree with me will mostly not involve talking to people who wish harm specifically to me or people like me.
3) I think that it's very human for any group/village/tribe to create a whole set of practices/moral codes/taboos to bind them together as a group and to enable them to co-exist. I think that's an element of social living that we depend upon hugely. We've created religion in the past to provide that framework, and now that's in decline it seems pretty obvious to me that lots of little micro-societies and philosophically united tribes are building their own moral frameworks/secular religions to give them that community and framework.
4) I also think that if you want to change the world, then having this madly complex and interdependent set of moral crusades trying to run alongside each other is often counter productive. Historically (from the 18th century until RIGHT NOW) the movements which have been the most successful have been single issue movements which can form broad alliances. Annoyingly, the right seems to be better at that than the left at the moment, and the center has also historically done quite well. The anti-corn law league succeeded and the Chartists mostly failed. The pro-life movement decided it was willing to ally with a bunch of degenerates, including Trump, and have done very well. TERFdom has done pretty well out of a bunch of right wing evangelicals allying with second wave feminists and dragging a lot of anxious people with prejudices from the middle ground along.
The intersectional left, meanwhile, I don't think has done quite so well.
5) I know this was my second point, but also, I just want to add that I am v aware that I'm still typing from a point of privilege and that I know that 'making compromises to form broader alliances' can also, from a different point of view, be seen as 'throwing some people under the bus to placate a trading bloc down the road'.
6) I am not sure which point I'm making but when that article talked about the tendency of people to pick a series of stances and then make them a tribal issue so they couldn't budge from them at all, or even think about it too much, and talked about COVID, it did send up a small flurry of terrible memories.
During COVID I had the slightly odd experience of becoming a BAD PERSON who JUST WANTED OLD AND DISABLED PEOPLE TO DIE and A KAREN with INVENTED MENTAL HEALTH PROBLEMS. I was actively encouraged to self harm. I was flat out explicitly told that if I was suicidal, then that was on me, and it was my choice to kill myself or not and if I did, no one should feel bad and it was better that I died than someone vulnerable to COVID who wouldn't have a choice.
I was told that if I was experiencing severe mental illness I should suck it up and just learn to deal with it. I was told that I was probably making it up because in other countries, no one had trauma responses to their faces being covered, and COVID precautions weren't causing any mental health issues because there was no sudden spike in suicide statistics.
I was THE BAD and I had a wall of text on my FB every single morning from my super lovely 'protect the vulnerable' compassionate left wing friends. The only people who seemed to think I had any cause for complaint were the EVIL RIGHT.
It was an odd time. I felt really like I'd been expelled from NICE LEFT over something I didn't really have control over, and it didn't matter how many other viewpoints I agreed with them on. I was now a tribal baddie. It was weird. I don't think I have a point here. I just was struck by that section on how weird and extreme COVID viewpoints because due to the tribal element.
I shall ponder this more later. But for now, I leave it here. You should read and tell me how you reconcile trying to be part of a broader society that is capable of talking to itself, and how you hold your own moral line.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2022/05/social-media-democracy-trust-babel/629369/
1) I think it's pretty accurate to say that we live in a madly polarized society and we are, on a wider level, utterly losing the ability to talk to people who don't agree with us entirely. And that this is a massive problem and is doing very significant amounts of widespread societal harm.
2) I also think it's accurate to say that when I post that, I'm coming from a most privileged position where talking to people who don't agree with me will mostly not involve talking to people who wish harm specifically to me or people like me.
3) I think that it's very human for any group/village/tribe to create a whole set of practices/moral codes/taboos to bind them together as a group and to enable them to co-exist. I think that's an element of social living that we depend upon hugely. We've created religion in the past to provide that framework, and now that's in decline it seems pretty obvious to me that lots of little micro-societies and philosophically united tribes are building their own moral frameworks/secular religions to give them that community and framework.
4) I also think that if you want to change the world, then having this madly complex and interdependent set of moral crusades trying to run alongside each other is often counter productive. Historically (from the 18th century until RIGHT NOW) the movements which have been the most successful have been single issue movements which can form broad alliances. Annoyingly, the right seems to be better at that than the left at the moment, and the center has also historically done quite well. The anti-corn law league succeeded and the Chartists mostly failed. The pro-life movement decided it was willing to ally with a bunch of degenerates, including Trump, and have done very well. TERFdom has done pretty well out of a bunch of right wing evangelicals allying with second wave feminists and dragging a lot of anxious people with prejudices from the middle ground along.
The intersectional left, meanwhile, I don't think has done quite so well.
5) I know this was my second point, but also, I just want to add that I am v aware that I'm still typing from a point of privilege and that I know that 'making compromises to form broader alliances' can also, from a different point of view, be seen as 'throwing some people under the bus to placate a trading bloc down the road'.
6) I am not sure which point I'm making but when that article talked about the tendency of people to pick a series of stances and then make them a tribal issue so they couldn't budge from them at all, or even think about it too much, and talked about COVID, it did send up a small flurry of terrible memories.
During COVID I had the slightly odd experience of becoming a BAD PERSON who JUST WANTED OLD AND DISABLED PEOPLE TO DIE and A KAREN with INVENTED MENTAL HEALTH PROBLEMS. I was actively encouraged to self harm. I was flat out explicitly told that if I was suicidal, then that was on me, and it was my choice to kill myself or not and if I did, no one should feel bad and it was better that I died than someone vulnerable to COVID who wouldn't have a choice.
I was told that if I was experiencing severe mental illness I should suck it up and just learn to deal with it. I was told that I was probably making it up because in other countries, no one had trauma responses to their faces being covered, and COVID precautions weren't causing any mental health issues because there was no sudden spike in suicide statistics.
I was THE BAD and I had a wall of text on my FB every single morning from my super lovely 'protect the vulnerable' compassionate left wing friends. The only people who seemed to think I had any cause for complaint were the EVIL RIGHT.
It was an odd time. I felt really like I'd been expelled from NICE LEFT over something I didn't really have control over, and it didn't matter how many other viewpoints I agreed with them on. I was now a tribal baddie. It was weird. I don't think I have a point here. I just was struck by that section on how weird and extreme COVID viewpoints because due to the tribal element.
I shall ponder this more later. But for now, I leave it here. You should read and tell me how you reconcile trying to be part of a broader society that is capable of talking to itself, and how you hold your own moral line.
