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Comment by goldcd | Hacker News Reader

Was so lovely after reading the article, that the point that stuck with me, aligned with your comment right at the top.

Maybe there's some sort of new "non-denominational creed" we could all sign up for.

~" We may not agree but I will always listen to you. I will always consider your opinion with respect and will endeavour to understand your reasoning. My views are not set - my goal is to listen to arguments to come to an informed position, I can honestly take forward "

As I typed that, I could hear the happy-clappy sounds of some mocking-utopia ringing in my ears - but goddamnit, it doesn't sound too hard for us to each put it into action. I'm as guilty as the next person, but I'm going to try going forward.

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This is a key aspect of the struggle of civilization and not utopian at all. If we hope to change anyone's mind and reach a level of social consensus on anything then it's imperative we make a safe space for everyone to think and have civil discourse. Knee jerk recriminations for essentially thinking is the recipe for entrenchment of positions and pushing people to the margins where they are more likely to mix with extremists. RBG and Scalia were a great example of how to disagree respectfully and not treat ideas as a personal threat but to engage with them with enthusiasm. I am with you in your quest to listen and give ideas their due and all people respect.

Can't echo this enough. It feels over the last decade that we really have lost this. You see so little actual discussion taking place any longer. Everything is rhetoric, it is tiring.

> It feels over the last decade that we really have lost this.

Polarization has been increasing in the US for longer than that. Many of these tendrils stretch all the way back to the founding days of the US, but I think the real uptick of this modern flavor is hate started with Newt Gingrich:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newt_Gingrich#Role_in_politica...

Ralph Reed: toxic as a kid at University of Georgia, still toxic today.

My judgement may not move the conversation any further. I'm too emotionally wound up. I could do without the personal experience of the community which spawned this artificial divide. But then again, it's all I have, so I might as well use the hard lessons as well as the good times.

Never been in the same room as the founder of the (so-called) Christian Coalition. I hope. Grew up in Athens Georgia around that time, it was considered a small town. It wasn't all bad, but it took thousands of miles and decades of years before I could enter a Christian Church without wanting to run away.

Disclaimer: this is my perception. Many will disagree and many will downvoted, but I want to put it out there in case it resonates with anyone and generates good, enlightening conversation. I hope people read and respond in the same spirit of good faith.

Perhaps Newt was a catalyst in Washington, but I think the broader cultural change was less related. Even as a lifelong liberal, I recall the 2000s as being a period of liberal snark toward conservatives, especially in the media and on the emerging Internet (I know some will argue that conservative policies are horrible so they deserved to be treated this way, but such arguments miss the point of civility: you debate bad ideas; you don’t attack people). It wasn’t the sort of ruthless display we see today, but it was relentless and it went on for more than a decade. Conservatives generally maintained decorum, but eventually the dam burst and the resentment cascaded over and Trump arrived on the scene to personify the middle finger that many on the right wanted to give to those they felt mistreated them for so long.

None of this is meant to impute blame or innocence on anyone, but to serve as a framework for understanding how we got here as that is prerequisite for getting black to a healthier state.

None of this is controversial or offtopic. Looks like the downvotes just proved your point. Folks don’t even respect a fellow liberal try to engage in a completely reasonable and civil way, forget any hope of them respecting a conservative.

The ironic part is that you allow a partial pass due to bad conservative policies, but during the time period to which you refer, the liberals were anti-gay marriage (DOMA anyone?) and ramming through “tough on crime” laws that they now decry as racist.

The clearest example of this that I have personally experienced was in a discussion a few days ago about the fires in Oregon. A state senator had his house burned down, and my suggestion that we shouldn't be celebrating this guy's misery brought a level of vicious attack I was completely unprepared for.

Like, I get it, it's ironic- he opposed a climate change and wildfire bill and his house burned down. What really scared me though was realizing I don't think the reaction would have been much different if he himself had burned to death in the fire.

Ouch. I have so many complicated thoughts trying to process the implications of that story, which I won’t try to sort out here. People are in denial about this, especially younger people with a fairly narrow view of both history and global politics, but what we are seeing is foreshadowing a civil war, and it’s getting increasingly difficult to see what might avert that outcome. There’s no question in my mind that we haven’t seen the worst of the riots and the violence yet. With the police forces being neutered all over the country, the inevitable response will be federal forces, and I think that is by design. Once that happens, we face a major escalation that will be very hard to unwind. We’ve learned now that these events are not rooted in any principle of justice (despite their clever PR that still appears to be fooling most) which means they can’t actually be avoided. They’re going to continue to capture any event they can to advance. I’m not even sure they realize what they are doing. Honestly, you can see the same ideological possession in so many of the comments in this thread.

Every time the police shoot a black man, unarmed and possibly in the back, there's a huge outpouring from the conservative media about why they deserved it and the police were right to murder them.

That, more than anything else, has contributed to the coarseness of the discourse. Well, that and the 4chanisation of everything. Maybe the right could rein in the "libtard" and "cuck" discourse a bit too? Oh, and the death threats that prominent women get.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/ocasio-cor...

That’s not the case at all. There is an attempt to explain why the shooting was justified, and it nearly always is justified, which is an important analysis. It’s not as though there is a pattern of unarmed killings.

> It’s not as though there is a pattern of unarmed killings.

There's at least one a month that makes international news? And several thousand demonstrators in the streets for hundreds of days that think they're not justified? And it turns out that the police lie about events unless there's footage, and sometimes even then?

Here's the latest one: https://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/latest-news/police-shooting...

One a month spread around different individuals in the country with over 700,000 cops and a total of over 50 million interactions a year, which includes dealing with all of the violent criminals who usually don’t want to go to go willingly and are often armed, then yes, one a month is incredibly low and indicates that this isn’t a pattern.

Even basic statistics knowledge should make this obvious.

It doesn’t matter that people are rioting. It turns out they routinely lie about events until there is footage too. Crowds riot about dumb/wrong things all the time. Sports games come to mind.

You just linked to an example where a wanted violent criminal was reported to police for violating a restraining order against a woman he previously allegedly raped, who then disregarded the cops orders, decided to fight with them and put them in a headlock, refused to comply again after being shot with tasers, refused to comply again when the gun was drawn, and instead reached for a deadly weapon while in lethal striking distance of an officer. I think you proved my point, not yours.

I am a liberal as well and had a similar perception and that bothered me a bit. But, as fair as I want to be I couldn't help but notice the Republicans always favored the irrational, the fearmongering, and their discourse wasn't simply the other side of things but crooked perverted politics. Maybe the liberal snark was a reaction in the first place. And what we're witnessing now is the reaction to that reaction.

“Republicans always”

This is the language and thought pattern that is the problem. It is not okay to use this kind of language.

Great point upvoted for balance. Remember those Dubya cartoons, even before he became a war criminal.

I'd wager you're getting voted down for "conservatives generally mainted decorum" in the decade after the Clinton impeachment, which included wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Fox News's rise to prominence, the Drudge Report setting the 24/7 alarmist tone that still domiantes online political content, McConnell growing into his now trademark do-nothing leadership, Ann Coulter moving from print to TV and showing everyone else that going weirder and crueler wins now. Hell, Orrin Hatch was literally censured _by Senate Republicans_ in the 2000s for how quickly he dropped his frenemy decorum with Democrats, especially Ted Kennedy.

The 2000s were absolutely not a decade of decorum, for conservatives or anyone in politics. The 2004 election was a massive turning point toward where we are today, and the 2008 election meltdown culminated the Republican party turning itself inside out in ways Gingrich really did directly catalyze a decade and a half prior.

We wound up with the Tea Party at the end of the 2000s and American political discourse went from an already slippery slope to a freefall.

As a New England liberal going back generations, for me it was very clear: conservatives were not simply wrong, but bafflingly, astoundingly, inconceivably wrong. The only logical explanation was that as individuals they were misguided: either evil, or dumb, or maybe just crazy.

I didn't understand this at the time, but everything I saw or read supported this worldview. Newspapers, magazines, schools, academics. Since I was left of them generally, I thought the world was too conservative. When conservatives complained about the mainstream media, it was always in context of mainstream journalists mocking them. For me, I saw it as conservatives mocking their extremists.

Fast forward to today, and I cannot imagine how frustrating it must have been to be a conservative then. That idea, that conservatives are bad, evil or crazy, was pervasive and all encompassing and smug.

Nowadays, for me, it's not about agreeing, but about listening. Hearing what people actually say rather than what a journalist says they say is quite enlightening.

I mean... weren't they?

Look at where it's got them - conspiracy theories about pedophile pizza parlours. I'm struggling to frame the events of the last two decades as "the story of how we realized that conservatives were reasonable people after all".

We tend to be biased towards those we identify with and against those we disagree with, and this will color how we receive and interpret facts themselves, nevermimd simple opinion

Ongoimg anti-racist riots for example: are they a long overdue correction to a deeply flawed and misguided nation that oppresses a large fraction of its own citizens? Or are they a symptom of post-modernist moral relativism run amok, whereby political leaders have abandoned their responsibility to maintain public safety and order? Or perhaps they are a minor local dust up, blown out of proportion by a greedy, cynical media? Perhaps some combination of those?

If one skews left, one will be inclined to dismiss the concerns of the right as unreasonable, perhaps even hypocritical. Do that habitually enough, and conservatives will come off as entirely out of touch; and so will you, to them.

I recommend really striving to understand the point of view of your political opponents, not by reading leftist think-pieces about what the right thinks for example, but reading reasonable presentations of conservative arguments. So, more National Review and less Breitbart, for example. Less focus on "qanon pedo-pizza" who are the black block anarchists of the right, and more on people who makes sense even if you ultimately disagree.

“ Fast forward to today, and I cannot imagine how frustrating it must have been to be a conservative then. That idea, that conservatives are bad, evil or crazy, was pervasive and all encompassing and smug.”

I think this explains a big chunk of the Trump vote. Many voters saw in him someone who would not take the smug mockery without a fight.

This.

It's also why there is such a disconnect with respect to the Russian collusion allegations. To those inclined to trust the mainstream media, it is a settled question: of course Trump colluded, and anyone who can't see that is crazy, evil or dumb.

Those who feel misrepresented by the mainstream media, don't see how that allegation isn't just more of the same egregious lying they have experienced first-hand for decades

It is such a wide gap in outlook

Yes, the Russia collusion thing was particularly egregious. It turns out that it wasn’t just the media, but also trusted Federal bureaucrats who were willing to abuse their office for political gain. The media completely discredited themselves by supporting a largely false narrative, and yet they never really came clean about it, and many who furthered that narrative are still working in the media.

I hope that one day the US can come to agree on the facts. But many situations seem to be like Scott Adams says: two people watch the same movie and see two different narratives.

As a lefty, I feel those of us breaking for the Green Party are treated the exact same way. In a way our ideas aren't validated even in the party we called home, so we're leaving for greener pastures.

Your thesis is that conservatives "lost their cool" and elected someone clearly unfit for office in 2016 because... George W Bush got made fun of a lot until 2008?

I'm sorry, but I just don't think this is a helpful or accurate framework. Liberals spent 8 years snarking about conservatives because Bush was president, doing all his Bushy things. What about the following 8 years, when Obama was president? Can you specify at what point exactly you think conservatives lost their sense of decorum?

Specifically Newt around Vince Foster's death. You can trace the roots of a lot, a _lot_, of today's utter partisan obstructionism and foolishness — mainstreaming fringe conspiracy theories with the explicit and openly espoused purpose of wedging the other party regardless of its goals — to Gingrich making Vince Foster's death an unending headline news story.

I mean christ, Trump _still_ brings up Vince Foster.

It started with Goldwater, with Nixon and then Gingrich being two major milestones as it developed.

It's John McCain's fault.

Not because he was bad - he wasn't. He was an honorable man. So honorable he got rid of earmarks, the allocation of funding to particular projects.

The result of this being that there is very little reason for people to cross the aisle. Previously, you had to keep working with the other party to keep the gravy train on schedule. Now?

For bonus points, ask if the cost of gridlock are higher or lower than the cost of the earmarks.

it's not just about listening to ideas. if it were that easy, we'd already be more socially cohesive. it's about subtler things like real empathy, where you can actually see and follow the chain of reason someone takes to get to a position, however outlandish you think that is at the outset. it's about holding contradictory ideas in your head at the same time, constantly, about everything, rather than retreating into your warm and cozy ideological corner at every dissonance.

but it's also about not simply giving in to the outlandish because you want to create a safe space. that means calling someone out for what is usually some form of aggression without alienating or offending, putting real social capital on the line, and requiring self-restraint, courage, a bit of charisma, and more.

and then you have media organizations like npr itself, nytimes, and twitter actively trying to play both sides, instigating while also trying to claim the moral high ground, feeding divisiveness.

it's hard, and takes active, willful effort from (nearly) everyone.

If you really want to find a compelling starting point for the state of our current public political discourse, you may find it in the repeal of the Fairness Doctrine in 1987. Rush Limbaugh's first radio broadcast airs in 1988 which introduced "anger-tainment" as a very profitable political news model. As time passes, this new business model affected every news organization in one way or another, to various degrees, willingly or not.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FCC_fairness_doctrine

i'm not sure the (repeal of the) fairness doctrine is a prime culprit, but i'm open to hearing a fuller perspective.

more to the point, i just heard a real example of the kind of empathy and compassion we need by nba hall-of-famer isaiah thomas on tnt's "the arena" airing right now, of all places.

it was in relation to LA county sheriff alex villanueva calling out lebron james to put up money for the recent shooting of two sheriff deputies in compton. this is a powder-keg issue here in LA right now. the knee-jerk reaction would have been to put down the sheriff for an unreasonable emotional outburst, but isaiah basically extended his hand and narrated how he understood where the sheriff was coming from, even if the demand was not exactly well thought out.

that's really hard to do in the moment, and my respect for isaiah just rose significantly because of it.

I'm not sure how old you are, but think about what you saw on that political / news show then imagine how Walter Cronkite would have reported those events. I haven't seen the show you're talking about, but I would imagine the difference would be stark.

Point being, what you saw sells ads better than if Walker Cronkite reported it because it's emotionally charged. All this really kicked into gear with Rush Limbaugh because he was allowed to sit there and just rant for 3 hours and get people riled up. When you consume any news, look for clues that they are trying to get you riled up. Look for emotional words like "obliterated," "destroyed," etc. particularly in the headline (which reporters don't control). News is a business and are bound by the same profit/loss laws as any other business.

This makes so much sense, I mean Chris Cuomo, Maddow, Brian Williams, CNN, MSNBC, CNBC, doesn't matter - they all use very emotional language to describe things.

I long for the good ole Walter Cronkite news casts. (I didn't mention fox commentators because that's beyond the beyond, they're way worse).

Judy Woodruff, and to a lesser extent Chris Hayes avoid inflammatory language.

Could you elaborate how fox is worse?

Is this because you disagree politically or because they’re “beyond the beyond, they’re way worse” or whatever thoughtless, meaningless comment Was typed?

Fox News was conceived as and currently is a propaganda network for the Republican Party. Roger Ailes, a Nixon advisor, saw how the media caused the public opinion to really sour during the Watergate scandal and impeachment and he had the foresight to counteract it. He was the first CEO for Fox News, which was funded by Rupert Murdoch, founder of SkyNews in Australia, another network with not the best reputation.

"the arena" is a sports talk show that happened to be on in the background after watching the lakers game (in which lebron and his crew won). it's relatively unique in that it's anchored by a black woman (cari champion), but it's squarely a sports opinion show, and incidentally political, for instance, due to the intertwining issue of black folks being disproportionately targeted by police and the legal system.

it's not meant to be fact-rich/low-opinion news, and they make that obvious by not mimicking a news format, unlike many other "news"-like shows, which is entirely acceptable. there is room for a few opinion shows in the mix. but it's the opinion shows disguised as news shows that are insidiously problematic, and that's increasingly all of them.

we're entirely in agreement that the profit motive drives news and news-like organizations in a race to the bottom toward attention-grabbing infotainment rather than staid factual news.

it's almost as if we need to break off high-value, low-engagement news organizations into fully independent non-profits that are funded by a pool of income from the infotainment industry for the right to continue delivering low-value, high-engagement infotainment, rather than intermixing the two.

It just occurred to me that our political news discourse has gotten so bad, it was easy to assume "the arena" could be the name of a news / opinion show, but my mistake.

>it's almost as if we need to break off high-value, low-engagement news organizations into fully independent non-profits that are funded by a pool of income from the infotainment industry for the right to continue delivering low-value, high-engagement infotainment, rather than intermixing the two.

We absolutely do, and I think there is a demand for it, just not sure how it would ever get funded because the investors would always want the higher return the anger-tainment style would bring. I try to focus on individual / independent journalism when available. I'm just starting to (audio)read Woodward's new book, and it seems pretty fair so far. I thought his last book seemed fair also. The difference of the new book is quite stark compared to the media's take on it recently.

I remember early in his presidency, watching a Trump speech. A short while later I saw news coverage on that same speech and it was like they weren't even talking about the same event.

I think this might collapse at the edge cases: If I'm a black man and the opinion is that I'm an animal, and the person with the opinion uses this reasoning to abuse me, then I may be ethically correct to not listen or keep myself in their presence.

Or, say, I'm a disabled person and someone tells me they think social services should be cut so people like me can die off for the good of humanity. It may be actively emotionally harmful for marginalized people to be listening to toxic opinions that they are worth nothing.

(EDIT: To be clear I think listening to opinions I disagree with in good faith is a good thing that we need more of in society. However, I also believe marginalized voices are, by sake of being marginalized, are forced to engage in a significantly higher volume of significantly more emotionally taxing opinions, and therefore may need to protect themselves, and that isn't wrong.)

If someone is expressing a good-faith opinion then you shouldn't write them off just because you disagree. Of course, "good faith" is a subjective judgement.

Over time I've come to realize that usually there's a legitimate reason why someone believes what they do. Often they are either optimizing for different things, or view the matter differently.

If listening to someone's opinion is actively causing emotional harm, then sure, don't listen to them. But I worry very much about the rise in offense-taking. Perhaps it's an illusion but I've felt it's become incredibly difficult to talk to people with different [political, etc] opinions than my own: not because of me, but because of their attitude towards dissent.

I agree it has become difficult to talk to people with different political opinions than my own. I just think the statement suggested was logically too strong, and entirely non applicable in very important failure modes. There are often legitimate reasons why someone believes what they do, but sometimes the belief is "I think there should be no consequences to murdering someone like you, because you're not worth the social resources you take with your disability", which was a belief expressed to me, and I need to protect myself emotionally from people who genuinely believe I should be dead.

> If listening to someone's opinion is actively causing emotional harm, then sure, don't listen to them.

I think that might be the most important time to listen to them. If merely hearing an opinion threatens your model, that’s probably a warning sign indicating that your own ideas are fragile and unsustainable, and they need to be exposed to ideas that challenge them. Engage with painful ideas, break your own models down and reformulate them into something more robust. I think the unwillingness to do this is what leads to the problems you mention.

I’m reminded of “The Coddling of the American Mind”

> If merely hearing an opinion threatens your model, that’s probably a warning sign indicating that your own ideas are fragile and unsustainable, and they need to be exposed to ideas that challenge them.

This doesn't strike me as a universal truth. It's good as a general principle to test your ideas against ones that challenge them and make sure they're as robust as possible -- but if that "challenging idea" is "your group has no right to exist," then it's not reasonable to argue "if merely hearing that you have no right to exist threatens your model, that's a warning sign that your own ideas are fragile and unsustainable," is it?

So, my own philosophy is 100% listen to them, I don’t believe in closing off my mind due to fear of “emotional harm” etc.

My point was more like, if person X really does feel that way, then sure they can retract themselves from discussion. But they should do so knowing it’s their own failing/weakness and not blame it on the other person being “toxic”.

I have no idea what your point it, but you may want to add one more example. Let's say I am a Trump supporter and the opinion is that I am a scum and should die before the election, then it may be ethically correct not keep myself in their presence.

I mean, honestly, yes, if someone wishes your death I don't know if it is healthy to expose yourself continually to their opinions that you should die. That's emotional abuse.

It's easy to come up with these kinds of excuses for not tolerating the opinions of people you disagree with. If you disagree with me about abortion, you are either trying to murder babies (and hence I shouldn't have to be civil to you) or you're trying to control women's bodies (and hence I shouldn't have to be civil with you). If you disagree with me about health care reform, that's a life and death issue and hence I shouldn't have to be civil with you. If we disagree about a military intervention, that's a life and death issue and I shouldn't have to be civil with you.

Justice Ginsburg and Justice Scalia disagreed on just about all of these issues and got along fine. I don't think that's because they didn't care about their respective principles and about the issues that were at stake. I think it's because, as a point of fact, we have to live in a society with each other regardless of our differences. And most of those differences are genuinely rooted in good or at least understandable intentions in the first place.

I think this is an easy handwave to ignore that some people get more disagreement than others about whether or not they deserve civil rights, life, etc. While you espouse a need to listen, you’re not really listening at all here or even trying to understand what is being said.

It's not a handwave and it's not even remotely easy. If it were easy, it wouldn't have taken centuries of bloodshed for humanity to develop the basic concept of peacefully tolerating disagreements over fundamental values.

Millenia, not centuries. Living in relative peace is a novel and stunning development in world history.

I really don't think that's objectively true. The "relative peace" is quite relative after all, depending a lot on where you live, and at best it's less than a century old (75 years since the end of WWII). I think there have been many other societies that have passed an occasional century or so in relative peace throughout history. It's just that the wars are more prominent in the history books than the boring peaceful years between them.

I'm not saying we haven't achieved anything... wide-spread recognition of basic human rights, near abolishment of slavery, valuing democracy and self-determination have all been taking to new heights over the last few generations. But at the moment all this is looking pretty fragile.

And personally, RBG's death today left me feeling more than ever that we're on a knife's edge, and that we could fall right back into those millennia-old patterns that are only occasionally interrupted by a century or so of "relative peace". Or worse.

And I'm not even an American nor live in the US!

Classical liberalism/the open society/the Enlightenment all came about centuries before WWII. There were wars (WWII included) fought against people who explicitly rejected these principles, but coming up with those principles in the first place was the part I was referring to.

> It's not a handwave and it's not even remotely easy. If it were easy, it wouldn't have taken centuries of bloodshed for humanity to develop the basic concept of peacefully tolerating disagreements over fundamental values.

As a general principle, sure.

BUT.

I don't think it is reasonable to expect anyone to peacefully[0] tolerate fundamental values that fundamentally challenge their right to exist.

We may admire genuine saintliness, but expecting it (and taking people to task when they don't measure up) is a bridge too far.

You may have the right to say that you think I and my extended family should be exterminated, but I damn well have the right to — at the very least — get in your face about it.

After all, the solution to bad speech is more speech, right?

[0] Note that one can be non-violent without being peaceful.

I don’t think you need to be friends with people who explicitly and literally advocate for genocide. If you are just making that point to introduce that particular nuance for the sake of completeness, I think I can agree with everything you said.

My reservation is that most of the time this kind of argument is made, it’s because someone wants to take the most extreme cases and use them to construct some dubiously over-generalized argument. For instance, over a hundred years ago the Supreme Court themselves did this, notoriously stating “but certainly there isn’t the freedom of speech to shout ‘fire’ in a crowded theater!” and then using that to construct an argument to justify throwing someone into prison for distributing pamphlets about resisting the draft.

In the here and now, there is a far bigger problem with people taking normal political disagreements and catastrophizing them into excuses to break friendships and disown family members than there is with people literally advocating for genocide.

> My reservation is that most of the time this kind of argument is made, it’s because someone wants to take the most extreme cases and use them to construct some dubiously over-generalized argument.

This is literally the opposite of the original claim which is to try and understand where people are coming from and to listen to them as if they’re reasonable actors. You are doing the exact shit you’re accusing others of- assuming bad faith in their intentions and arguing against the bad faith intentions in a discussion about how to take good faith intent in arguments.

I’m certainly trying not to do that. Did you read the first paragraph of my comment? I think that’s what you’re trying to do, though.

If you are not trying to do that then why even bring it up as a concern you have? Why ask if I read the first paragraph and not assume in good faith I read the whole post and respond to relevant portions I have a response to, just like any other reasonable human being?

> If you are not trying to do that then why even bring it up as a concern you have?

Because webmaven's comment was slightly ambiguous. While I don't think he meant to imply the specific connotations that I have concerns with, this is a public forum where it's possible that the audience could certainly infer those connotations, which makes it relevant to address them. Especially because it's a central part to the issues that we're discussing.

I tried to be conscientious about this and went out of my way to strongly imply that I didn't think webmaven meant to imply these connotations. Note, for instance, how I transition from using the second-person pronoun in the first paragraph ("If you are just making that point...to introduce nuance...", "I think I can agree with everything you said") to the passive voice and third person in the second paragraph ("most of the time this kind of argument is made", "someone wants to take the most extreme edge cases"). Maybe I should have been more clear about it, but that's what I was going for.

> Why ask if I read the first paragraph and not assume in good faith I read the whole post and respond to relevant portions I have a response to, just like any other reasonable human being?

You have contributed nothing to the discussion other than to make personal accusations that I am "not really listening at all here" or "doing the exact shit you’re accusing others of". In that light, I am assuming good faith by assuming that you're sinking to that level not because you're a troll or a jerk, but because you're genuinely misunderstanding me. That's why I asked if you read the first paragraph--because I thought that if you understood what I was trying to convey with it and read the rest of my comment with it in context, that would clear up your misunderstanding. Apparently that wasn't enough. I hope this comment is.

I enjoy John Cleese’s speech making the same point ( https://youtu.be/wXCkxlqFd90 ).

This is amazing. Thanks.

Timeless!

If I believed in one true (God/Truth/...) why I do not kill you all/crusade into/suppress all/burn you in stake/ Spanish ...

It is so hard to accept others and let them articulate their view.

Because a lot of times those others want to remove liberties from me or from people I care about, like women or non-straight people.

There's a factor not considered here: to what extent were Scalia & Ginsberg able to get along because of other material conditions?

As supreme court justices we can assume that they had a basic foundation of psychological and material security - a position of prestige, a job for life, healthcare and so on.

I believe it is a lot easier to summon the "higher thoughts" necessary to be civil when ones personal position is more secure, so to achieve a more civil society it may help to work to make more insecure people secure.

> If I'm a black man and the opinion is that I'm an animal

That’s not the opinion though. That’s exactly what the parent is referring to. You need to listen, understand, and empathize before assuming that people who don’t agree with you must be racist.

But with the internet much more of what you do is visible and more people know about it. What you said could be attacked with "white silence is violence"

I had a much longer response typed - but deleted it when it stopped even making sense to me.

"white silence is violence"

googles

Still no idea how that could be applied to my post - but I am most definitely white, and after a bit of introspection, can't think of anything I've constructively done to address racism outside of late-night internet posts.

So whilst I'd like to think I was "non-racist" - I do now feel a bit shitty that I entertain the cognitive-dissonance of being "anti-racist" and "not having ever done anything that was anti-racist"

Then if I cookie-cutter myself out to everybody else - I now see how racism flourishes, whilst the majority tut-tuts.

Was that your point?

This — suspension of judgement long enough to engage in genuine introspection, followed by a return to the conversation with humility — is something we so rarely see, and each need to engage in more.

Kudos to you for leading by example.

I am so not a good example of anything.

But genuinely do appreciate your reply - makes that little voice in my head feel "less alone"

What was interesting/depressing was my "how about a creed" post was getting a few up-votes, then the moment I replied below saying maybe I was a "crap anti-rascist", my OP started to get down-votes.

Text hadn't changed, but by putting some context around it, it was read differently.

Very consistently I’ve found engaging with replies to your own comment will get the original (even high ranking comment) downvoted.

It could be just a reflexive thing to seeing a given username show up too often. I wouldn’t presume it was any deeper than that.

I think it's more than that.

In my OP I very deliberately stuck to abstracts that I'd hoped "nobody could disagree with".

And nobody seemed to - until I put more words beneath it.

You're right though - engaging with your own posts is perceived as negative. People read the platitude and hit 'like' - the more you put beneath it, the greater the opportunity for something to annoy somebody (and scroll up to try to kill the thread)

> I entertain the cognitive-dissonance of being "anti-racist" and "not having ever done anything that was anti-racist"

The systems and histories in place we battle with are much bigger, and much older, than we are. Unless your explicit goal is to set out to change the world (which frankly is a shitty goal and usually leads to some kind of genocide), literally the best advice is "think globally, act locally", as "outdated" as that saying I suppose now is.

Except that it is especially true when what you want is positive social change. Think about the implications of someone who first implements your initial original post ("just stop and think for a sec"), and then also implements your second ("is there anything I can do here?"). That's enough. Literally that, when applied on a large scale, would change the world, in a way far more positive than riots and social justice movements.

See, humans are really terrible creatures. We have a bad habit of overcorrecting and, you know, killing millions of people in the name of an ideal. We've done it what, dozens (hundreds? thousands?) of times.

It's the difference between water carving a river, and a nuke carving a crater. The first one takes longer but is alot less destructive.

Woah - I'd love to change the world (and why wouldn't you?)

Then I lost your thread.

Then I agreed with you, "we're terrible"

Imagine what a planet full of people all changing the world would look like. Absolute, unabashed chaos. We all love to think we are the hero of our own story, but we aren't, and most of the time, shouldn't be.

We should do what we can do, what fate and hard work have placed in front of us.

"Change the world" as a cause in and of itself has killed far too many people to be considered a valid goal. We all believe our vision for the world is the right or best one, except it seems we're actually pretty bad at forcing the world to look like us.

You were berating yourself for believing in anti-racism, while not actually physically doing anything about it. My point was this: These are not contradictory things, and don't let emotional blackmailers convince you otherwise. You do what is in front of you to do, and only that. If there's not actually anything in front of you to do, that's it. Is there or isn't there? That's 100% up to you. I can't say there is or there isn't. But it is important to question even the statement that there is something to do because otherwise you get caught in a Kafka trap of never actually living in a just world (tilting at smaller and smaller windmills until you're swinging at air).

Here's the line of thinking:

The idea is that ineffectual discourse without actual efforts towards reform is a method of signalling that one wants change while benefiting from the status quo of oppression.

Discussion is great, but the discussion is supposed to result in change, not a vortex of words which have no connection to reality.

When people advocate for lofty civility above all else when the status quo is violent, aggressive, demeaning and unjust, it shows that the priority is not justice; it is the maintenance of the current order.

Is this position accurate? I don't know. There's obviously countervailing concerns regarding having a chilling effect on the market of ideas, but like all tough questions, it's likely a difficult situation with no clear cut answer and two virtues being traded-off against each other. This seems to be borne out by the fairly dramatic spectrum of positions adopted on the issue across the globe.

No, the statement is nonsensical abusive rhetoric. Silence is literally not violence. It substitutes an argument that stands on its merits with a rather shameful and racist manipulation technique that is unfortunately quite effective, as evidenced by your apparent guilt. You obviously did nothing wrong. When racism flourishes is when we allow phrases like that to enter the discourse.

Did he do nothing wrong? If I see a child being beaten in the street, look at it and say "that's horrible" and continue with my day, have I done nothing wrong? I certainly didn't beat the child, but my inaction allowed the abuse to continue.

So question comes down to, did I have the moral obligation to act?

Personally I lean towards yes, but can at least understand where the people who say no might be coming from.

While I agree that silence is violence at its face is literally false, that's the general principal it's meant to invoke, that injustice can only be stopped when bystanders cease to tolerate it. The victim cannot stop it, and the perpetrator won't. Thus those who tut tut and move on with their day become complicit in allowing it to continue.

That is what the commenter is feeling vaguely guilty about, and it's a healthy thing to feel. I know I have guilt in my past where I have failed to help someone when I had the opportunity, and that guilt that comes from recognition of that has driven me to be less of a bystander later in life.

What you’re talking about has nothing to do with what I said and is an extremely important distinction. Serious allegations should not be made casually with artistic license to bend the truth. If you witness a beating and do not intervene, then no, you did not commit an act of violence.

You could debate what the morally correct thing is or isn’t if you want, but you can’t debate that you committed an act of violence.

This seems like a debate over semantics to me. Silence doesn't mean violence, but silence can enable violence or be worse than violence if the consequence of staying silent are worse than those of violence: http://www.openculture.com/2016/03/edmund-burkeon-in-action....

I'm sorry I wasn't clear in my reply which was short and poorly written considering how it has a very powerful phrase. I'm not implying your post was racist but was responding to the quote you provided:

We may not agree but I will always listen to you. I will always consider your opinion with respect and will endeavor to understand your reasoning. My views are not set - my goal is to listen to arguments to come to an informed position, I can honestly take forward

I was trying to explain that because the internet has increased the visibility of ones opinions to a global scale, and a recent increase in the use of both public shaming as well as punitive financial measures (fired from job, boycott) it could be dangerous to opine about anything.

Speech isn't violence. Lack of speech isn't violence. People lazily regurgitate these postmodernist bumper sticker phrases and consider themselves informed activists.

I would politely disagree (and happy to talk about it)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_they_came_...

I think speech can definitely lead to violence - and speech can also counteract it. Neither directly, but the delta has real-world repercussions.

Or to look at it the other way - can you come up with an example of violence, that wasn't preceded by rhetoric?

> speech can definitely lead to violence - and speech can also counteract it

I don't disagree with you on that. We can say "A can lead to B" and "A can counteract B".

I'm lost at the leap to "A is B" and "NOT(A) by COLOR = B".

I could speak or not speak, and even do so out of negligence or spite. My choices may have effects and consequences, but violence does not mean "anything with effects and consequences".

It feels too much like the missing piece is "this is what we say the word means now, QED". It's all too convenient that a conversation can be shut down by calling it violence. Implicating people is divisive. By it's own logic, redefining violence to include speech is itself a form of violent speech because it causes conflict.

Speech is most definitely capable of being violence. Just ask most anyone who was bullied as a child.

"Maybe there's some sort of new "non-denominational creed" we could all sign up for"

That's me! I'm in that creed.

People associating their identity with their politics is when trouble starts. That's when it becomes really threatening for them to even consider alternate perspectives, because if they change their mind, they will change who they are and who they can be friends with.

It's possible to separate the two, whereby an idea on how society should be organized is just that: an idea, to be considered, adopted, discussed, and abandoned as new information becomes available.

One really poisonous idea I see circulating is "either you are for <some thing> or you are a <bad person>" Either you support riots or you are a fascist Either you punch Nazis or you are one Related, just as terrible, "Time for discussion is over. If you're on the fence at this point, you are <bad person>" These kinds of memes increase polarization, and stop discussion. A person who says something like that can no longer have a calm exchange of ideas with their grandma

I think you hit it right on the head. What I'm wondering now is: What leads to this association of politics and identity? Is it a product of our culture, upbringing, is it human nature? Is it that modern life has so little avenue for people individuating? Maybe it is filling a void.

One thing that strikes me as key to this polarization is how pervasive are some generalizations we make today and how the individual is lost when we make them. I've seen racists make the comment "Black people are ...." (won't repeat that here) but then I see activist say "Black people are (ex. disadvantaged.)" Are there no quite privileged black people? (millionaires, billionaires, etc) Don't lower class people face a pretty similar set of challenges no matter their skin tone? When you look at it, both arguments are generalizing equally as aggressive. My question then is: are all generalizations wrong or only some?

I think this process of grouping people has ome currents of thought tend to generalize two aspects to it, people who group other people when making statements and people who in some search of uniqueness, group themselves into it? As a non-American, coming from a very heterogeneous country I find it hard to follow how many people will self-identify so readily with a group and in the process lose some of their individuality. Maybe I speak from "privilege" as someone who due to upbringing and origin, felt a quite distinct individual, so I cannot say for sure. I just think this currents of thought harm more by dividing into groups and with many individuals satisfying their need of identity there.

Personally, I think the US in particular is prone to this kind of thinking because the winner-take-all system incentives a dualistic, all-in approach. Thoughtful reflection does not win elections: riling up the rank and file does, including demonizing the opponent. More parliamentary, proportional systems encourage cooperation and collaboration among opponents

As for generalizations, the English language has an unfortunate construction that allows speakers to be ambiguous about their intent when making a generalizing statement. For example, "Men are violent" is a misleadingly meaningless statement. Does it refer to some men? To all men? Is it referring to the fact that men tend to be more violent, statistically, as a group? That assertion is ambiguous, but the always-truthful qualification "some" sits uncomfortably close to the always-unfair and bigoted "all". Bigots of all stripes rely on this ambiguity.

I don't think generalizations are bad necessarily, but to honor the dignity and diversity of individuals, it's vital to avoid this ambiguity, and to always be explicit about the generalization that you're making, and then your statement can be evaluated for what it is, pro or con. E.g. Instead of a Men are violent say what is meant, clearly: Some men are violent. In general men are violent. Most men are violent. All men are violent. Now at least we have a statement that can be agreed with or disputed, instead of motte-and-baileyed

Good leadership involves the sort of thinking where you are prepared to listen to a diverse set of opinions and be prepared to change your mind - especially if there is data that tells you you are wrong.

The political discourse across the globe has taken a sharp turn away from this over the last 40 years in particular. There was a brief window between the end of the Cold War and 9/11 where many had hope this was going to be the new normal. I remember feeling that sliver of optimism as I entered adulthood. No more.

Vote for people who are called "flip-floppers", by their opponents. Change your own opinions when the data changes. Be the change you want to see.

I’m probably gonna do it. I’m not sure I could do the other thing... if the world burns, at least I burn in her camp. I’m ok with that. I’m excited you might be there too!

offers a marshmallow

If people are willing to die for the cause then conversation or listening is not going to accomplish anything.

I’m afraid you do not understand the fire with which you are playing.

I think my problem with statements like this, is that while I can totally imagine the liberals I know taking this viewpoint, there are very few conservatives I know that do. The response will be something like:

“Why would I listen to these whiners? I already know what I want.”

Yeah, the reality is that "listening and respecting the opinions of people whom you disagree with" (or not) is an ideology in its own right.

One would hope that it'd be orthogonal to conservatism/liberalism or any other political spectrum, but I suspect it's not.

In some respects it is, it’s just correlated I’d say.

That type of response may result more from lack of education than from political ideology. Where I live, there are a fair amount of educated liberals and conservatives. I run into liberals and conservatives alike who give a similar response to what you listed; I also run into liberals and conservatives alike who have wonderful conversations about politics without getting riled up. From my observations, there doesn't seem to be a correlation with political ideology.

I'm curious to know how frequently you have encountered one of your liberal friends debating with an educated conservative. Likewise, I'm curious to know how frequently you've encountered one of your conservative friends debating with an educated liberal. Over the past couple of years, I've run into a number of people who simply couldn't believe that an educated liberal/conservative existed, primarily because they grew up in an area where there weren't many people with differing political views. It's a dangerous trap to fall into, because it allows you to categorize the other political party based on only the rhetoric of elected officials and on the interpretation from media. I have yet to meet a conservative or progressive who matches the caricature of either portrayed by politicians or entertainers.

All the educated conservatives I’ve met have been pleasant people. It’s just that the far majority have not been educated (as opposed to liberals, which seem to be pretty much all educated, to the point where I feel education and liberalism might as well be the same thing :/).

That kind of collaboration can’t exist if there are two sides who believe that most issues are zero sum.

I have no evidence for the following statement, but as someone who grew up just before social media was a thing (I became a legal adult about a decade before Facebook), I truly feel that the zero-sum thinking, while present before social media, really took on a new form because of it. It is much more vehement than before. You don't get the same kind of interaction on a forum or a bulletin board that you do on Twitter or FB or [modern social network].

When I was growing up, there was no Fox News channel nor any of the cable news channels (I remember when MSNBC was a brand new thing). News was something you watched for 1 hour in the evening.

24 hours news + trench digging/tribalism have done a horrible number on modern discourse.

Thing is, I think that that's because before, there WAS no discourse, not really. It was slower. Most of the conversation was had by those you watched on TV. Alot fewer people participated. The internet DID democratize that, with frankly predictable results.

Not saying we should have done differently but I do think we need to come to terms with what that means (e.g. realizing it's forcing us into zero-sum thinking and consciously choosing something else).

I'm close to your age I think.

Don't forget that well before Fox News there was a AM radio, and Rush Limbaugh was national in the 80's. I definitely remember how his talking point impacted my high school's debate team's rhetoric.

Agree that zero-sum thinking is a net-negative.

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