A Sober Reminder to Unbelievers Everywhere!
Homepage › Forums › Small Talk › A Sober Reminder to Unbelievers Everywhere!
This topic contains 40 replies, has 9 voices, and was last updated by 
TheEncogitationer 2 years, 6 months ago.
-
AuthorPosts
-
August 16, 2022 at 4:10 pm #44205
Jake,
The U.S. Constitution protects the individual right to express ideas and opposing ideas. It does not provide any guarantees of how anyone will feel about any of them.
August 16, 2022 at 4:22 pm #44206Reg,
Salman Rushdie is a brave and admirable man with or without a Knighthood or any other official honorifics and his defense and praise by The Hitch is an honor in it’s own right.đź‘Ťđź‘Ť
I’m just glad no one ever insulted Rushdie with a Pulitzer, an award named after a “yellow journalist” and awarded to the worst of “yellow journalists.’
August 16, 2022 at 4:26 pm #44208Davis, A dream sequence about an 8th Century illiterate sheep-herder/warlord having a dialogue with Satan in a fiction book that no one is required to read is not the same as children compelled by law to attend an institution where they are subjected to bullying and abuse. No. Just no.
No one said they were the same.
August 16, 2022 at 11:22 pm #44217Ehhhh…I have no problem with works that ridicule ideologies. I do have problem with those who make blanket statements about speech not being violent.
August 17, 2022 at 2:56 am #44218Encospeak: The U.S. Constitution protects the individual right to express ideas and opposing ideas. It does not provide any guarantees of how anyone will feel about any of them.
In general yes it does. However it is not an absolute right. Nor should it be. A mindless application is for those who have taken the first amendment Koolaid. As a six year old i opened a roadside Kool-aid stand and was killing em until that little Bastard next door started selling Zarex. Even now i can hear that stinking Zarex jingle. Zarex is zippy. Zarex is zesty..So i took a cart on wheels with Kool-aid door to door. That’ll teach that little rat bastard to mess with me. Hope you won’t be offended by my little free market anecdote of my childhood. BOOM! KAZAAM! I was really impressed with that offense/offended explanation of the first amend. when i was selling Kool-Aid.
August 17, 2022 at 5:39 am #44221speech not being violent.
Surely speech can only be harmful, not violent. Violence is physical. To call words “violence” is to devalue the word “violence”.
August 17, 2022 at 5:55 am #44222speech not being violent.
Surely speech can only be harmful, not violent. Violence is physical. To call words “violence” is to devalue the word “violence”.
Why, I agree with you on this. Speech can’t be violent, but we live in that age where words no longer mean what we thought they meant a while back.
August 17, 2022 at 6:28 am #44223Part of the shift is due to a link between certain types of prolonged stress and neurological harm. Patterns of verbal abuse can contribute to such neurological harm as well as psychological issues that have lasting and substantial harmful effects including self-harm or suicide. At some point the line between physical trauma and emotional/ psychological trauma gets a little fuzzy as the former can result in lasting psychological harm, and the latter can cause physiological harm.
We can make a distinction between physically hitting a person and, let’s say, making fun of their clothes. Which one is more harmful may depend on a lot of contextual factors, but under conventional terminology, one of those is violent and the other is not. Even if we extend considerations to neurological harm from abuse, one of those actions is violent and the other is possibly violent.
I suppose the other area where things get fuzzy is where words hold the place of physical force, for instance threats. Threatening to beat the shit out of one’s child isn’t physically violent, but it wields violence as a tool. Things like hate propaganda similarly can provoke violence or the threat of violence. For instance, a recent revival of the ‘gays are pedophiles trope’ in the form of calling all 2SLGBTQ+ people ‘groomers’ has led to people showing up with rifles to events like drag queen story hour. No one’s been shot, so there has been no actual violence, but violence is the tool being wielded here. Does that mean such speech should be conflated with violence? To be honest, I no longer care. I will say I get why ‘violence’ is a concept relevant to that sort of hate propaganda.
August 17, 2022 at 8:30 am #44224I think there is a problem with perceived infantalisation and crying wolf.
August 17, 2022 at 3:21 pm #44225I was taught when young that the world is full of assholes, hate mongers, racists, bullies, malcontents, shitheads, fascists, morons, snobs, sex maniacs, fear mongers, idiots, clergy and people who decorate with pastels and to not to care in the least what they think or say. When I was young it was fairly difficult to do. Trying to navigate society. The greatest gift that advanced age has granted…I am finally there. Honestly don’t give a shite what some stranger or even 95% of my acquaintances think about me or say to me. It is fantastic.
August 17, 2022 at 3:43 pm #44226I think there is a problem with perceived infantalisation and crying wolf.
I’m not sure that I understand. Are you saying people perceive those equating certain verbal abuse and violence as being coddled or potentially as making up harm that doesn’t exist (or at least not to the degree claimed)?
August 17, 2022 at 4:32 pm #44227No Simon I don’t think equating violent verbal abuse with violent physical abuse devalues one or the other. If you have ever been the victim of an extreme prolonged violent verbal attack you might recall that you suffer as much emotional damage and stress as with physical violence and it can certainly result in related physiological harm. There is far less of a social tolerance for verbal violence in many Western countries as there were before. This is less so in the United States with its fundamentalist anything goes speech laws, but the impetus is on not accepting it and legislating against it.
August 17, 2022 at 4:32 pm #44228I think there is a problem with perceived infantalisation and crying wolf.
I’m not sure that I understand. Are you saying people perceive those equating certain verbal abuse and violence as being coddled or potentially as making up harm that doesn’t exist (or at least not to the degree claimed)?
Bleh. I wrote that right after waking up. Times like this I wish I could edit for clarity or delete and start over.
August 17, 2022 at 5:03 pm #44229I think there is a problem with perceived infantalisation and crying wolf.
If by perceived infantilisation, you mean people conflating society at large not tolerating abusive behaviour, allowing people to enjoy their lives without unnecessary menace/bullying/harm with the creation of some kindergarten state…then I agree with you it is a problem. It is a conservative reaction to wanting to hold onto the same old pointlessly harmful shit. Can it go to far? Yes sometimes it can. Is it necessary? Yes. Why should toxic bullying, the continuation of hostility towards marginalised groups and unnecessary stress and harm be allowed to continue…when they are easily avoided by relatively small changes in our behaviour
Cry wolf
You mean when marginalised groups keep quietly pointing out the hostility directed to them for decades and nothing changing?
August 17, 2022 at 5:45 pm #44230Can it go to far? Yes sometimes it can. Is it necessary? Yes. Why should toxic bullying, the continuation of hostility towards marginalised groups and unnecessary stress and harm be allowed to continue…when they are easily avoided by relatively small changes in our behaviour
I think we’re in a paradigm shift when it comes to looking at harm and harm prevention. It puts us in a space where we can see more problems than solutions, which in itself can breed stress and harm, but is also probably necessary to move forward.
Where we do see solutions, they aren’t always the correct solutions. As an example, trigger warnings are a proposed solution to a valid problem concerning, primarily, ptsd. But does that mean they work? Not necessarily. Unfortunately, trigger warnings were met with mockery, derision, and dismissive attitudes, which it turn created a backlash against those being dismissive, and what was meant to be a therapeutic practice became a new battleground. Instead of the practice just being looked at in terms of therapeutic efficacy, it’s now political when it never should have been.
Humans often seem to struggle more with harms that aren’t readily visible or don’t result from a singular traumatic event. A broken leg is easier to understand than depression. Being in a car accident is easier to understand than chronic pain (even if that pain is a result of that same car accident). Johnny Depp being accused of certain acts by Amber Heard is more relatable than a lifetime of what are commonly deemed micro-aggressions. Even ebola is somehow easier to grasp than Covid. Point being is we rely too much on how relatable a concept of harm is to us to ascertain the degree of harm caused and what degree of accountability we have to mitigating such harm. And that’s a rather silly and unreliable approach.
Addressing harm often involves change. Addressing harms we can’t feel ourselves nor relate to likely feels like change for no reason. And change for no reason is bound to feel destabilizing or disempowering at which point we’re prone to put up walls of resistance. And we’re stuck in this space where it’s even more difficult to progress than it was before, especially if there is a majority/ minority dynamic to the issue.
-
AuthorPosts
You must be logged in to reply to this topic.