Comment by nefitty | Hacker News Reader

Comment by nefitty | Hacker News Reader

I'm curious to know what other HN readers think about this topic. I was born and raised on the left side of the spectrum, and continue to be so. I can empathize with my fellow millenial's struggle to push for a true egalitarian and respectful culture in the name of liberalism. I'm torn though. I see some of these actions moving the left to eventually begin embracing seemingly-fascist policies and aesthetics. What could be more equal than having everyone dress and act in a way prescribed by the same philosophical system?

There seems to be a crack in this generation's perception of what the West promises. We, the left, strive for social liberalism, civil equality, freedom of speech, protection of the individual by institutions, etc. but as many of us see in the news every week, the reality is that our system continues failing on all these fronts. This is basically a symptom of the historical tug-o-war between the left and right, entrenched biases, and the unexpected results of a complex civilization.

I was influenced greatly by anarchist philosophers, but managed to tear away from their commitment to dissolving the state. I see the role of government as necessary, especially in a free market system. I don't know what role social norms should play in this. Should we try to live inoffensively? Should we speak and move lightly, lest we offend some minority group? My line is the blatant racism of people like Donald Trump, no need to mention his support from the KKK. This article seems like we're wasting energy focusing on perceived microaggressions, when there are truly violent people around the corner targeting the same minority groups with truly malevolent intentions.

As an outsider, It doeesn't look to me like a left vs right issue.

>We, the left, strive for social liberalism, civil equality, freedom of speech,

This seems to hint at the problem. You (the left) conflate freedom and equality, as though they are similar goals that can be achieved through similar means. But often these goals conflict with each other; Trying to achieve one often works against the other. Since we need decent amount of both in a society, maybe we should strive for a balance between the two using a common-sense approach?

The political correctness movement isn't the first to embrace totalitarian methods, and it won't be the last. When you manage to convince yourself of the rightness of your beliefs, there's very little you can't find a way to justify to yourself and other like-minded folk.

You put a bunch of people, be they left-wing, right-wing, religious or secular in the same spot, and their talk will be influenced and perhaps dominated by group politics. A significant minority with an internalised sense of lack will compete for status and power in a self-righteous manner.

i.e. by striving to promulgate the most virtuous opinions, and, as a corollary, ostracising and denouncing those who voice wrong or unfashionable opinions.

The rest of the group will go along with it because they don't want to be individually targeted. Even though they may privately suspect that what's going on is bad and that true virtue does not depend on one's opinions.

I watched some of Milo Yiannoupoulos's recent lectures in his tour of American universities. He claims that the purpose of attending university is to be exposed to difficult and disturbing ideas. I'm not sure if this is true.

Perhaps it ought to be true. Yet I suspect that no one knows what the real purposes of universities are because they are an evolved tradition. What we do know is that most of the early European universities and their colleges were founded with the intention of preserving and promoting orthodoxy: combatting heresies, training priests, etc. What we're seeing at present in the anglospherical universities is simply the emergence of a different sort of orthodoxy.

I'm not surprised at all. In my book, the leftists and the nazis are basically the same considering what they actually stand for, their historical record and differ only by their stance on nationalism. I also have the "privilege" of being born when my country was ruled by a communist dictatorship, growing up experiencing the results of leftist policies, listening to countless accounts from my family members of the days when the left came to power post WWII. For me all this is deja vu: a new form of wooden language [1] rising up (microaggresions, triggers, intersectionality etc), discrimination based on circumstances of birth, policing of the language, behavior and beliefs of people, including trying to police how people behave and speak in private - any former communist secret police would be proud, people's tribunals like witch hunts etc. You hear about history repeating itself, but to actually experience it is kind of sad. But what do I know, I'm a brainless pessimistic libertarian kook...

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wooden_language

I'm loosely Buddhist. I subscribe to the concept of the Buddha Nature. I suspect this trend of viral angry arguments about both important and stupid things is a side effect of our innate ability to practice individual discrimination apart from the whole Buddha. This natural type of discrimination is healthy in one sense, as it gives rise to all of us believing we're separate entities. On the other hand, it's possible that trait has been exploited by some self-propegating meme mechanism (accelerated by the Internet) which causes us to discriminate against each other, even to the point of pretending to discriminate against the discriminators.

I think when we start chewing up clock cycles simulating whether another group might be offended by the action of another group, we've gone a step too far in governing ourselves. I'm also a bit troubled this agenda is being pushed by our country's educational system.

And, FWIW, I do think that if a given group of people are offended by the blaming actions of another group of people, they have the right to stand up and say how they feel about it and be heard. Real discrimination of humans by humans is not cool, and should be avoided where possible.

When you live in a world where Donald Trump is "blatant" racism we've gone a little too far.

edit: To expand, there is nothing "blatant" about his racism and from what he says you can't even infer if he is racist or not. What he is clearly doing though is using dog whistle politics to bring in the racist vote and that in itself is a good reason not to vote for him.

"I see the role of government as necessary, especially in a free market system."

So it's not especially necessary in a command economy?

I don't know if you're being facetious, but I meant my comment relative to anti-government ideologies.

it's just standard horseshoe theory. The far left ends up adopting the methods of the far right (authoritarianism).

More like extremes ends of the political spectrum always tend to adopt authoritarianism because their demands on humans are too extreme to be enforced any other way.

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