Knitters got knotted in a purity spiral (2020)
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Personally I have become much less agreeable, and as a result, people in my own networks who might have participated in the ratcheting don't do it when I am around, because the purity ratcheting was essentially a way to abuse and exploit peoples agreeableness. Given it was such a tiny minority to begin with, if only a small fraction of the majority become disagreeable, it can halt the spiral of hysteria it requires.
What I/many can articulate more simply now that we didn't have the words for then is that this is a very old redemption hustle, and they're offering a kind of redemption I don't need. Just because someone is uncharitable doesn't mean I have to mollify them, and demanding a denial or denunciation from me is just their way of making a conversation about themselves. It's a disease of politeness, and the reason we got here is because we forgot sometimes in this world it is appropriate and necessary to say, please, fuck off, because we are being taken advantage of by people betting very heavily that we won't.
The bully wasn't reformed after that, he remained a bully until we parted ways years later, however the group was wiser for it, and that type of behavior had a very short half life as a result. As I get older, this phenomenon is emblematic or representative of society. Sometimes culture dictates that there are certain things we just won't accept anymore, like spousal assault, smoking in the public indoors, and poor legislation. Resistance is cumulative.
In the past on some corners of the internet I'd get "down voted" (whatever system the locals use, not just reddit) for anything that smelled of X, Y, or Z.
That's still the case at times BUT I've seen a lot more folks express distaste for that kind of crusade and gotten a lot more support from people when inevitably I end up sayng "No that's not what i'm saying, I'm tired of having to say that ... we can say X and not be Y".
Meanwhile the most egregious examples of the kind of calling folks out for their perceived impurity such as "you know you don't have to defend X" type comments seem to get a great deal less support now, if not outright ridicule.
Answer that they is a limit to how much immigration is sustainable? Clearly you must think we're over that limit now.
Answer that cheating visa systems is bad? Clearly you must think the quotas are high enough as they are.
Answer that opening the floodgates would let in problematic people? Clearly you must think contrary to data! that the people currently being let in are bad (rather than that the process acts as a filter).
It's at least as complex of an issue as the new hot topic, where appropriately formulated polls can claim to find overwhelming support for either extreme position despite that (or because, really) most people seem to favor something somewhere in the middle.
I’m a very obviously brown guy and happen to be an immigrant. Up until 2016 or so, most of my encounters with racism had been from homeless people. But in the last few years that’s quickly been overshadowed by white liberals getting angry that I don’t want to be part of their “rainbow coalition.” (And that has been over further overshadowed by well meaning white liberals acting really weird.) Despite living in a Trump precinct I have yet to encounter any racism from a Trump voter.
People are starting - albeit unevenly and at different stages and with considerable pushback – to realise that they don't owe an account of their morality to any old person on the internet, that they can be non-racist and not have to agree with (and genuflect to) every other self-styled non-racist trying to sell some wacky opinion to them, etc.
And - what makes me most happy of all - they are doing it, at least many of them, without falling prey to the "I disagree with someone from Not Racist FC so I guess all that's left to me is to sign up to Racist FC" non sequitur.
What is the situation now compared to 10 years ago for example?
But I am interested in the varying responses / votes over time, specifically when it comes to the topics I mentioned.
Community voting patterns are interesting.
I think the reason why lots of such endeavors peaked and subsided is removal of a major irritant - the former president. Trump was fairly unusual in his ability to boil the blood of his opponents into outright madness, in a way that, say, GWB couldn't. If he spent 4 more years in the WH, I am not sure what would be the end result.
There are some few exceptions but people tend not to care. Result is that there is an even larger trust problem between people, politics and press. In my opinion people trying to improve language expose themselves and what you see is mainly shallow and ugly, especially if they shine the focus on prejudice where they usually don't really form good role models compared to the average bloke.
I still remember some companies that jumped on this train though and I am looking for signs if I want to work for any of them. Because that will inevitably be a toxic relationship and with probably management with a weird focus.
The original blog post behind this case (where the woman wrote about how foreign India seemed but how excited she was to visit) is a perfect example.
The people calling out her “colonialist” references to Mars claim to be speaking on behalf of their friends. Then you have actual Indian people coming along later, wondering what the fuss was about and welcoming the author to India.
My theory probably doesn’t stand up to any scrutiny but it useful to ask “is anywhere here actually saying that they’re personally offended?”.
So far, universally, the people "on the ground", doing the work, are very nice to talk to. Informative, understanding, firm, kind.
(AKA isn't Twitter itself a huge part of the problem?)
Eh. Actual Indian person here. I think it's pretty stupid to comparing a flight to India to "going to Mars". You have Pizza Hut, Subway, and KFC in India, for crying out loud.
In normal times, the person saying things like this would have been chided by a few of their friends. Now they are viciously attacked by the whole of the Internet – which is the real problem.
Also, the woman in question was coming from the UK, as I recall, so alleged food quality in America wouldn't be terribly important to her.
The first 50+ comments on the blog are supportive, as they would be "in normal times" as well.
https://fringeassociation.com/2019/01/07/2019-my-year-of-col...
In case anyone is curious, here is the paragraph including the "pretty stupid" comparison:
> I’ve wanted to go to India for as long as I can remember. I’ve a lifelong obsession with the literature and history of the continent. Photos of India fill me with longing like no other place. One of my closest friends from that pink-striped tube skirt era (we originally met at JC Penney) is Indian, and her family had offered back then that if I ever wanted to go with them on one of their trips, I could. To a suburban midwestern teenager with a severe anxiety disorder, that was like being offered a seat on a flight to Mars. It was fun to think about, but are you kidding me? I was so young and dumb then that I didn’t even partake of her mother’s Indian cooking. (Talk about regrets!)
She could have said the same expression about New York.
Wait, you can't take back comments on the Internet?
And the answer is always "It's never an easy answer. You have to do your homework. And it might change, and it might get uncomfortable. Too bad."
The easy answer is “I really don’t care.”
I can't help thinking the whole woke thing has been some kind of manufactured media project, maybe with overtones of state propaganda, which had the overall goal of drawing attention away from the fundamental failings of many once-respected American institutions - media, government, academics, etc. I wouldn't be surprised if it was all purposely designed as some kind of divide-and-conquer tactic, something to distract the American public and draw attention away from ever-more-obvious gross failures of our incompetent leaders, which are across-the-board in nature and not exclusively linked to any political party.
If this is a correct assessment, then you'd expect the typical 'accepted topics' of mass American political conflict - i.e. guns & abortion - to start taking center stage now, because they don't want people howling for 'better wages and less inflation' or screaming 'fix the damn infrastructure, you incompetent clowns' outside their windows.
If one wanted to come up with a propaganda project to hide decline they picked a really bad one!
Also, I think your point about it being a distraction tactic is exactly right. I remember back around the 2012-ish era, when Tumblr started getting really weird with blogs promoting some pretty insane things in the name of “social justice.” Turns out, some Russian troll farm was posing as Black activist bloggers to sow chaos. I was very active on Tumblr at the time and remember thinking how weird all those blogs felt, and when the news of the Russian campaign broke, it all made sense instantly.
I get that same feeling from today’s woke/anti-woke discourse. It doesn’t feel honest. It feels like someone is playing us again.
Until it does. I didn’t care about any of it myself until I got an email saying my mild mannered Midwestern law school professor declared himself a “a racist” in front of the whole school: https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/northwestern-univers.... Then my high school declared standardized tests to be racist: https://www.newsweek.com/states-ask-high-court-halt-race-bas.... Then I got an email saying my third grader was learning how to “develop her identity” around her “skin tone.”
A lot of the people who are in charge of telling you what to do and pulling the levels of state power to coerce you into doing stuff, and people in charge of reporting the news and socializing your kids and in many cases making public health decisions, buy into this woke stuff. And if you think the things they believe won’t affect you, just wait.
We clearly run in different circles. I basically eliminated my own social media usage, and pretty much what people around me are concerned about is who will get deported, how to protect people seeking abortions once they’re banned, and what new fresh hell will be visited on some person of color or marginalized faith, trans or queer person, or just someone holding a camera. Y’all worried about your finances are totally justified in that worry. But these concerns aren’t drama or trivia, they’re literally life or death for people whether you care or not.
Don't underestimate it. For example, hardcore German nationalism was once very popular in academic circles of Germany and Austria-Hungary (the German speaking part, of course). A normal Hans from the street, just like you, couldn't care less about what the students say and shout, and Vienna, Terst, Prague and Krakow were nice multicultural cities. At least on their surface.
Until 1914. It is possible that without this toxic undercurrent that attacked the Austrian state for decades and moved it closer to imperial Germany against its own interest, the Great War wouldn't have happened.
I cannot emphasize enough the harm that can come from this and how easily it is exploited.
It's one of the big problems with social media. Outside of social media, we act differently in professional or public contexts from private ones. Context collapse merges them to great detriment.
It lists:
- BY THE SAME AUTHOR "How knitters got knotted in a purity spiral" BY GAVIN HAYNES
- SUGGESTED READING "How knitters got knotted in a purity spiral" BY GARETH ROBERTS
- SUGGESTED READING "How knitters got knotted in a purity spiral" BY DOUGLAS MURRAY
- SUGGESTED READING "How knitters got knotted in a purity spiral" BY ANTONIA SENIOR
- SUGGESTED READING "How knitters got knotted in a purity spiral" BY TITANIA MCGRATH
- SUGGESTED READING "How knitters got knotted in a purity spiral" BY GILES FRASER
I can't even begin to guess how stuff like that happens, must be some epic bug in their CMS, or some weird A/B attempt to ... fool people into reading the same article many times? And where does it get the author names, one wonders. AI-backed publishing system gone crayzay?
How knitters got knotted in a purity spiral - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22240041 - Feb 2020 (235 comments)
Some of the comments at the time seemed to think the only way to save the community would be to reject the values being force onto the community, it looks like that did not happen.
I don't think that rejection is necessity for a community to survive but there needs to be a way that they can recenter. If the community is supposed to be about knitting, than discussions about race, sex, etc should not occur.
Perhaps is is enough to identify as a knitter, as opposed to a bisexual knitter from SE Asia. All the other stuff is noise in the SNR.
What a packed and insightful statement. I'll be turning that over in my mind for some time.
On the right, there's a coherent, objective moral value statement that voters want upheld, namely "babies are people too, beginning at conception, and must be treated as such by the law." It's pretty straightforward whether this value is being upheld, and there's no risk of a "purity spiral" where people propose increasingly crazy ideas to signal their loyalty to the cause. Just don't kill babies... that is all.
On the left, unless I'm mistaken, there aren't coherent, objective moral value statements at the heart of CRT, identity politics, or pro-choice arguments ("my body, my choice" isn't a well-defined philosophical statement) which does lead to a purity spiral. For example, there have been serious proposals to allow "after birth abortion" -- i.e. it's OK to kill babies after they're born - for a recent example see [0], but there are many other examples as well. TA mentions other purity spirals that occur on the left.
But regardless, yes, there are absolutely politicians on both sides of the aisle who use people's moral values as a means to power (I'm especially thinking of a recent US president, but there are many others). "You want to get rid of abortion? Vote for me!" -- but disingenuously. They don't appear to care personally about whatever it is, they posture to get power while not understanding the nuances of how to wisely implement laws that reflect the peoples' values, or even what those values are exactly in the first place.
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[0] CA AB-2223, in its original text (now amended), read "Notwithstanding any other law, a person shall not be subject to civil or criminal liability or penalty, or otherwise deprived of their rights, based on their actions or omissions with respect to their pregnancy or actual, potential, or alleged pregnancy outcome, including miscarriage, stillbirth, or abortion, or perinatal death" (emphasis mine). Note "perinatal death" means death within the first 7 days after birth (thus legalizing infanticide). This has thankfully been edited to perinatal death due to a pregnancy-related cause -- but that could still encompass scenarios like "intentional injury to the child moments before or during birth".
On the other side, many of the politicians currently running for office as Republicans in my state have been dragged so deep into the anti-abortion purity spiral that they’re publicly insisting women should die rather than terminate a non-viable and life-threatening pregnancy.
Right. This is why rape is illegal.
Nobody needs to intentionally kill an innocent human being, ever. Full stop. Bear in mind that unintentionally killing an innocent human being can be morally acceptable, such as in the case of a medical intervention to save the mother's life. The intent is to save the mother, and if the necessary treatment unfortunately ends the innocent baby's life that is a tragedy, but not immoral. One might say the outcome is the same, but in ethics intent is very important.
Edit: And returning to my original point from the earlier comment, the anti-abortion purity spiral has led these politicians to vow to outlaw abortion even to save the life of the mother. They apparently don’t agree with your evaluation of intent in the eyes of the law.
I suppose then that you oppose vaccine mandates?
> Civilized societies don’t coerce living people (or even cadavers for that matter) to give up their body parts to save the life of another.
It's fortunate that childbirth typically leaves the mother with all of her body parts.
> the anti-abortion purity spiral has led these politicians to vow to outlaw abortion even to save the life of the mother. They apparently don’t agree with your evaluation of intent in the eyes of the law.
By definition an abortion is an intentional killing. The killing of the child isn't an unfortunate side effect, it's the primary purpose of the procedure.
How does intentionally killing the innocent child in itself save the life of the mother? A medical procedure to save the life of the mother isn't an abortion. For example an ectopic pregnancy will kill the mother if not treated and all effective treatments unfortunately kill the child. That doesn't make it an abortion.
Furthermore, medical technology has come a long way. It's often an option to induce a premature delivery rather than just kill an innocent human being. And the odds are better than they've ever been that the baby will even survive and be healthy.
Yes, it is wrong to force someone to undergo a medical procedure against their will.
> It's fortunate that childbirth typically leaves the mother with all of her body parts.
This is, simply, factually incorrect.
> By definition an abortion is an intentional killing. The killing of the child isn't an unfortunate side effect, it's the primary purpose of the procedure.
Also factually incorrect.
> A medical procedure to save the life of the mother isn't an abortion.
Dude, it takes a 3-second Google search to determine that this is false
I know many mothers and not one is missing any body parts as a direct result of childbirth.
> Also factually incorrect.
You’ll have to be more specific if you don’t want this to parse as nonsense.
> Dude, it takes a 3-second Google search to determine that this is false
I don’t consider SEO garbage an authority on anything.
Blood and uterine tissue are not body parts?
> I don’t consider SEO garbage an authority on anything.
The websites for the NIH, CDC, and WHO can be found on Google.
Not in any accepted usage of the term. With your tortured definition a woman is maimed every time she has a period. Please at least try to be serious. We’re talking about killing human beings, not fooling about what the best editor is.
See Ectopic Pregnancy https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/9687-ectopic-...
>> I know many mothers and not one is missing any body parts as a direct result of childbirth.
That is a really small sample to decide that it is okay for the government to interfere into the private medical decisions between it's citizens and their doctor.
>> You’ll have to be more specific if you don’t want this to parse as nonsense.
To accept this kind of government overreach without understanding the consequences to independently living breathing humans is unfortunate for the families and lives it will take and harm. The risk that pregnancy carries, especially in older and youngest females and those with pre-existing conditions are risk that the United States of America, of all places, should not be forcing on it's citizens. This country was once a symbol of liberty and freedom and has been losing it's way for a minute now - as most things do periodically. This time it will have long term consequences for families and communities of those not affluent enough to travel for or afford proper medical care, for which-ever choice the patient and their doctor decide is best.
- Severe maternal morbidity [1] - "unexpected outcomes of labor and delivery that result in significant short- or long-term consequences to a woman's health.”
- High-risk pregnancy [2] - "About 50,000 people in the U.S. experience severe pregnancy complications each year."
- Maternal Mortally [3][4]
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[1] https://www.cdc.gov/reproductivehealth/maternalinfanthealth/...
[2]https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/22190-high-ri...
[3]https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/maternal-mo...
[4] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hestat/maternal-mortality/2020... - USA version
Those who want to get abortions aren't being forced into childbirth against their will, unless there was rape involved.
Pro-abortion activists seem to think they only have (or ought to have) a choice after they're already pregnant. The real choice was months earlier.
> The real choice was months earlier.
That is a large blanket assumption. Condom breakage, having a specific gene which makes female birth control very unreliable [1], partner reproductive coercion [2]. Among others. Given enough time, moral purity spirals into attacking then punishing the people wronged or having found themselves in an unfortunate situation. In this particular case, condom breakage, an unfortunate gene one didn't know they had, finding out too late you trusted the wrong partner [sneaky birth control sabotage] etc.
But modern values devalue life in part because they also devalue sex. They treat sex casually, as though it isn't the outward symbol and seal of a lifelong commitment and promise, and the very means by which more human life is created.
There would be no felt need for abortion to exist if sex and human life were both valued as they ought to be - as sacred, as gifts with a particular design not our own, as capable of great glory when used rightly -- and great devastation when used wrongly.
Consider how delicately and carefully we handle matters when the stakes are high - when there's the possibility of gaining or losing much based on our decisions. Sex and marriage and family ought to be held in high regard, because the stakes are so high. They can end so well -- or incredibly badly when handled outside their designed operating parameters.
Abortion to me represents the human collateral and fallout from having abandoned a right view of sex and marriage and family. So much death. Ideas have consequences, indeed.
As a side note, a high view of sex and life also increases the travesty that rape is. It's so much worse, morally speaking, than liberals can say it is given their moral framework.
Good god no. That may be fine for you as a personal religious view, but as a pluralistic society I hope we never go there again.
I hear this a lot, and it's currently a popular "wedge scenario" pro-abortion advocates are using to try to convince people that abortion shouldn't be outlawed.
But I think it's largely a red herring. Either the baby is still alive, or it's not. A high view of human life rules out all intentional taking of life, including assisted suicide. It would also rule out these types of abortions, as they are taking life at a time when life would not end naturally.
Valuing human life highly means accepting that while some people are different, we are all equally valuable -- even those who have birth defects or who die as an infant. And people with Down's syndrome are as equally valuable as those who don't.
> It's not about fetuses, it's about sex.
You may have a point, but I could make the same argument in reverse. One could argue the only reason those on the left want to preserve the right to abortion is because they want to have sex divorced from its potential consequences.
> There are endless ways that conservatives dream about restricting our sex lives.
I'm a conservative (at least w.r.t. moral issues), and let me assure you I do not think (much less dream) about the sex lives of liberals.
What I do think, wish, and pray for is a country that is collectively characterized by knowing God, acknowledging him, giving thanks to him, and asking for his help when we need it -- something both the left and the right in Washington are sadly far from.
You ask us to accept your assurance regarding the sex life of liberals but you nonetheless seek to inject your non-authoritative scriptural interpretation into the decisions they make with their bodies. Jesus did not lead this way nor are we called to.
If we treated our peers like Jesus treated the woman at the well, rather than like the subjects of our moral empire, then the country we pray for would be closer to a reality.
That may be so, but it doesn't change what I believe to be true - that babies are people too and should be treated as such.
> If we treated our peers like Jesus treated the woman at the well, rather than like the subjects of our moral empire, then the country we pray for would be closer to a reality.
I agree with you on that - and I believe it's right to live and speak that way with people who are in need. Doing so doesn't mean not advocating for specific policies and laws based on what I believe to be true -- namely that all people are valuable, including babies.
Check the news again. There are already ideas going as far as "condoms for married couples only".
Also, some "plan B"s mean large doses of the standard contraception pill. You can't ban one without the other.
It’s about human life. Naturally that means sex has something to do with it on account of that’s where human life begins.
Here is the simple moral reasoning: Killing innocent human beings is wrong. Pre-born babies are innocent human beings. Therefore, killing pre-born babies is wrong.
IVF involves killing innocent human beings in virtually all cases, because undesired babies are “donated.”
> Also sex ed, and 100 other school sex issues
Yes, many parents object to schoolteachers grooming their children.
> dream about restricting our sex lives.
I can assure you that your sex life has never entered my dreams.
Is this really a thing? It reminds me of the satanic panic of the 1980s.
First of all it suggest bad faith in this debate so how would any honest opponent respond here? I do think the group that wants to control anyone's sex life is quite small in reality. The conflict is mostly ideological and it is an ideological question at the core.
Proponents and opponents are pretty evenly split between genders but conservatives are framed to be men trying to police the bodies of women.
There is also a conservative argument pro abortion but it is mainly militant proponents that make a consensus here more difficult. I am not from the US but to my knowledge activists pushed the topic of abortion as a topic and are now in a worse place than before.
[1] https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/top-30-export-products-o...
American culture really caught on only during world war II, when people around the world experienced first hand the sheer wealth of American soliders.
It works in the context of being a wealthy superpower with access to almost limitless energy sources(mainly oil), but attempts at emulating it outside of this context look silly.
Case in point: new housing in my corner of the world is in large part sprawl. People flock to it, because they crave the same amazing amount of living space Americans usually enjoy.
Problem is, as a percentage of wages, fuel is easily at least four times as expensive around here. Also cities aren't nearly as car-oriented as in the US.
It's a humanity thing ... not a region.
History is full of "oh those people over there do that thing, how silly" and then it happens in their own backyard. We're all human.
It does seem, however, that US-based social media companies set up systems that foster and fuel them, like warm a Gulf of Mexico (am I a racist for using that name?) makes hurricanes (not an intentionally racist suggestion).
Here is a question I don't know the answer to: are purity spirals common/problematic on WeChat?
I don't know where you live, but clearly what the article was discussing went beyond North America.
> "As long as our hypothetical Blub programmer is looking down the power continuum, he knows he's looking down. Languages less powerful than Blub are obviously less powerful, because they're missing some feature he's used to. But when our hypothetical Blub programmer looks in the other direction, up the power continuum, he doesn't realize he's looking up. What he sees are merely weird languages. He probably considers them about equivalent in power to Blub, but with all this other hairy stuff thrown in as well. Blub is good enough for him, because he thinks in Blub."
http://www.paulgraham.com/avg.html
I have a theory that this applies to progressivism or moral frameworks or whatever you want to call it. Let's suppose we were to re-write the above quote to apply to morality.
> "As long as our hypothetical practitioner of the Blub moral framework is looking down the moral continuum, he knows he's looking down. Moral frameworks less advanced than Blub are obviously less just, because they're missing some assumptions about people's rights and obligations that he's used to. (Don't they know that slavery is wrong? And obviously lying and stealing are right out under most circumstances.) But when our hypothetical Blub practitioner looks in the other direction, up the moral continuum, he doesn't realize he's looking up. What he sees are merely weird rules. He probably considers them about morally equivalent to Blub, but with all this other hairy stuff thrown in as well. (Intersectionality? Critical race theory? And people keep adding extra letters at the end of LGBT? Is this all a bunch of made-up nonsense, posturing, and virtue signalling?) Blub is good enough for him, because he thinks in Blub and lives in a world where Blub applies to situations that correspond to his real-life personal experience."
This isn't to say that critics of complicated moral frameworks are always wrong. Sometimes people really do get caught up in virtue signalling and posturing. But I think these complicated moral frameworks are usually a reaction to real injustices, and sometimes it's worth standing up to oppose an injustice. Knowing when or how to do that can be complicated though. Moral crusades can themselves cause tribalistic behavior, exclusion, and intolerance of honestly held opinions, which can also be another kind of injustice.
> Most movement atheists weren’t in it for the religion. They were in it for the hamartiology. Once they got the message that the culture-at-large had settled on a different, better hamartiology, there was no psychological impediment to switching over. We woke up one morning and the atheist bloggers had all quietly became social justice bloggers. Nothing else had changed because nothing else had to; the underlying itch being scratched was the same. They just had to CTRL+F and replace a couple of keywords.
There it is. It’s an advertisement for a documentary masquerading as a news article.
It plays out so predictably, too. First, they -- we -- came for the fundamentalist conservatives, but I was not ... Then it was the fiscal conservatives, then the moderates, the liberal guys who didn't manage to seem vaguely embarrassed to be heterosexual, and so on. They all get together and "discuss" things until someone (or more than just one) leaves the site. Throw in a unhealthy dose of "dogwhistle" paranoia and "everyone who disagrees with me is a goosestepping fascist buying Nazi memorabilia on the darkweb" disdain and, well, it's amazing to watch.
> I have to wonder how many of these morality spirals aren't instigated by actual trolls.
> An example of this was the explosion of transgender issues into the mainstream soon after gay marriage was legalized. I recall reading a fringe right-wing blogger about the "lesbian vs transgender conflict", a few years before the "T" in LGBT became more prominent. This prominence may well have been engineered by trolls in an attempt to alienate a group of people who were rapidly being accepted into mainstream society.
Funny how this "troll" managed to somehow also coincide with the opinions of countless lesbians and radical feminists, who have been speaking and writing about this topic for many years.
That is, in the above instance, in terms of homosexuality being defined as a same-sex sexual orientation, and the inherent conflict in attempting to replace it with the concept of "same gender identity" attraction. With so-called "genital preferences" being an act of bigotry. It's incredibly homophobic ideology, in that particular purity spiral.
The evil woke people are coming to ruin your knitting and Young Adult novels communities.
By... asking you not to say ignorant things on a global medium about how going to India is like going to mars?
And people apologizing for stuff. The horror.
Like, even if what was claimed is true, who cares? There's nothing there and people seem to have adopted fighting against this non-thing as part of their identity.
Does this really deserve the multiple mentions of war, the red terror, and communist China purges? Aren't we overreacting just a tad?
The degree of political polarization now evident in the U.S. is despicable and horrifying in equal measure. Purity spirals are evident on both sides of the divide, and the worst thing you can call someone is a member of the opposing party. The extremes on both sides are anti-science, although the left has embraced some behaviours that are less contradictory to the common good purely by coincidence. e.g. Wearing masks became a political statement. While it was good that roughly half the population were wearing them willingly, turning it into political virtue signalling made it less likely for the other half of the population to wear them. The right behaviour for the wrong reasons had unintended consequences.
In Canada, our political parties have long detested each other beyond reason. e.g. Read "Right Here, Right Now" by Stephen Harper (former conservative PM) and, even if you don't agree with him, you'll find he makes intelligent arguments except when it comes to the Liberals. When he speaks of his opponents it's a bit like like reading Marcus Aurelius' "Meditations" when he transitions from stoic philosophy to ranting about catamites. Logical one moment, insane the next.
In a real sense, politicians are at the very centre of purity spirals even if they aren't always responsible for creating them. Consider Republicans who have caught flack from the far-right for being vaccinated or wearing masks. If you're a highly visible member of a demographic entirely consumed by a massive purity spiral, what option do you have but to conform?
While it's to be expected that politicians will bend in whichever way the wind of these spirals blow, it's especially distressing to see how many people have a rigid political identity that is completely unhinged from personal values, needs, or philosophy.
For example, in my province "Conservatism" used to include a healthy dose of "conservation". Four decades ago, a conservative government decided to ban strip mining in the Eastern slopes of the rocky mountains to "conserve" natural beauty. Scientific studies conducted since then have only confirmed the wisdom of this decision. Strip mining in these areas, even with today's best practices, would have had massive risks for watersheds covering huge swaths of populated areas. Today, "Conservatism" means overturning that ban without telling anyone, quietly inviting shady penny stock companies in to start strip mining explorations, getting caught, "pausing" and opposing the efforts of the non-Conservative opposition to reinstate the ban.
My father is a staunch political conservative who voted for the conservatives four decades ago and now supports them just as unequivocally, despite the fact that conservatism's meaning is, in many cases, the polar opposite of what it used to be.
Politics as personal identity is the root of purity spirals at the same time as it is a cause for people to support policies that are contrary to their ideals and needs. We need to encourage people to stop being loyal to "their side", and start supporting things they value. How do we do this?
non-Influencer knitters aren't affected at all.
I don't think getting more middle-managers will ever get this issues any better because it's in their interests to increase their power as much as possible, not solve anything.
Given that, what's the alternative to a messy communal brawl that hopefully doesn't destroy the community? The author of the essay speaks about the ratchet dynamics as if it's obviously to be avoided; an alternative read is that his take is descriptive of what's actually the way that these things get worked out, sometimes for the better, sometimes not.
As the article's author notes, the knitting community has mostly healed as well. My wife is a knitter so I've followed it more closely than others. Some prominent voices aren't so much anymore; others are more prominent. As the author notes, Nathan Taylor came back and made more money than before, covering his losses and then some.
Contrast that to the "new athiest" collapse that led to two distinct communities. Whether that's for better or worse probably depends on perspective. It only seems bad if you feel a need for there to be a monolithic community. I think the split (which I also witnessed at the time) really did reveal a deep schism in the community, so I'm not sure it isn't better to be two factions divided.
To describe the North American SF convention scene as healthier after casting out the right wing[1] and normalizing the use of censorship[2] seems a bit rich.
[1] Sad Puppies and aftermath
[2] Sensitivity readers and other freelance commissars
This is a childish sort of cynicism that's really about nursing your feeling of grievance with promises of justified retribution to come. I actually have a philosophy degree, and studied in detail the political philosophers of the last five centuries. Politics is not about crushing your enemies, it's about figuring out durable institutions and social pacts that maximize freedom and human flourishing while sufficiently limiting our self-destructive tendencies. It's about figuring out how to live together. If it comforts you to believe that "my victory" is as cynically appreciated as your own, you're doing yourself a disfavour.
Just don’t pretend that everything’s nice and happy because everyone agrees
I don't. But I also don't fool myself that the sort of big tent moral relativism that allows for indivisible differences to coexist side-by-side is some sort of victory, or commitment to rights for all. It's just a matter of using high-minded rhetoric to avoid hard choices in who you're willing offend.
If your first and second paragraphs are consistent I don’t see how. Should you feel like continuing this my email is in my profile.
> This is a childish sort of cynicism ...
I do note that you engaged in the rhetorical trick of smearing those with whom you disagree by associating the entire movement with the literal worst person possible, which is itself childish cynicism.
A: "As a sufferer of a severe anxiety disorder, the prospect of a trip to India was to me as scary and unlikely as a flight to Mars."
B: "Whoa! Wow! White supremacy much?"
In fact, rhetorically, this is how that side gains any victory at all. Certainly not through principled advocacy and reasoned debate.
This is on the face of it a bit silly. It's confusing a bad thing with the entire scene, which is not appropriate. Hundreds of years ago we thought "don't tar everyone with the same brush" would be a nice clear way to correct silly thinking like this; I bet we never thought it would still be happening today.
A few years ago — when I was totally unaware of the ideological take-over of sci-fi — I set a goal to read all Hugo award winners over the lifetime of the award, in chronological order of the awards. Many early books were out of print, and I ordered and read used physical copies.
I abandoned the effort when I hit the modern era of woke sci-fi culture.
The books were just bad. It was then I actually looked up what had happened in sci-fi culture — these books were being promoted because they promoted Right Thinking and were written by the people of the right race/gender/thought - not because they were good books.
These days I use popular sci-fi awards as an anti-recommendation; a popular mainstream award (e.g. a Hugo) is strong indicator of a poorly written book.
When? Which books?
> These days I use popular sci-fi awards as an anti-recommendation; a popular mainstream award (e.g. a Hugo) is strong indicator of a poorly written book.
Strong disagree. Boring, preachy, not meaningfully science fiction, sure, but poorly written, nah. Lots of technically competent MFA crap by people who don’t read out care about SF for sure.
Around 2012, and I don’t recall. I have zero memory for names or titles even when I enjoy a book, much less books I dislike enough to abandon.
(The name thing extends to the rest of my life. I don’t remember names of people or places, period).
> Strong disagree. Boring, preachy, not meaningfully science fiction, sure, but poorly written, nah.
I think those negative traits would qualify writing “poorly written”, but I accept that’s a matter of opinion.
Sounds badly written to me.
At best, it's racists projecting their discomfort onto other people, making others responsible for their own guilt. But more likely, it's sadistic bullies. A sadistic bully cannot say "Destroying a life gets me excited!" but they can say "I fight for social justice!"
I fail to feel outraged by this process. Is "White Fragility" without criticism? Probably not, I think it is a fantastic book, but it scares the bejeebers out of some people and we get instagram drama and articles like this which I interpret as another attempt at purity (trying to outsmart "wokeness").
It is going to take a while for society* to come to grips with this new shift, because we're clearly not going back, but it definitely is rough around the edges, IMHO, because we haven't found the right vocabulary and framing. Unfortunately it is going to require people to sit with feeling uneasy, and that is something most people cannot tolerate.
I very much agree that many people have limited knowledge of the history of the last six hundred years, but I believe that sharing the cold hard facts from history (that aren't taught in schools) has a better chance at opening up a person's viewpoint rather than criticizing their behavior.
People throw around this phrase, but it always strikes me as nonsensical.
There's a lot of stupid opinions that can make people feel uneasy, so unease is not some magic barometer of truth.
People are going to feel really uneasy if they are listening to you defend your appreciation of child pornography, but that doesn't mean you have struck upon some deep uncomfortable truth.
That says a lot about your ideology’s consistency when it comes to how we should behave individually, and treat others, now, in our present.
You have to ignore quite a lot of history to come to the conclusion that these problems were historically ignored.
> I fail to feel outraged by this process.
Maybe if you end up on the receiving end you'll feel differently?
> Is "White Fragility" without criticism? Probably not, I think it is a fantastic book, but it scares the bejeebers out of some people and we get instagram drama and articles like this which I interpret as another attempt at purity (trying to outsmart "wokeness").
Robin D'Angelo has made some deranged, outlandish assertions, and instead of defending them she simply follows up with more outlandish assertions. I had the pleasure of having a non-white person explain things about "white people" that she'd learned from that book that were patently false.
Questioning the moral standing of those who would criticize the dynamic itself isn't useful or worthwhile. It conflates interpersonal confrontation (useful, good, corrective, it's how we build each other up) with a zillion passersby hurling invective at a guy who, in this case, found it so troubling to have a mass of people condemn him on a moral spectrum that is very dear to him that he ended up suicidal.
That being said, you've hit on the actual shortcoming of "woke culture" these handwringing articles miss. It's admirable, not outrageous, that white people becoming conscious of racism feel compelled to do whatever they can about it. But most people (in the US at least) are so depoliticized that their ability to effect systemic change is virtually nil. The project of rebuilding the necessary political capacity is hard, boring work and we probably won't live long enough to see its fruits. If you want gratification, making some rando on the internet bend the knee is much easier.
One definitely gets the impression from critics like the author that they're less interested in seeing that energy redirected than in it dissipating entirely.
It's kind of an Overton Window thing for me. I'm just very used to the 90's, where you couldn't even come close to saying anything like this out loud in, e.g. an academic setting because you know what you would set off.
I'm glad it's out there to at least be reckoned with as a theory.
(Relatedly, this is why I have zero respect for the suggestion that a new form of "censorship" is taking place when people talk about e.g. "cancel culture" and whatnot. This has always been around, the only thing that's new is that it can now come from e.g. both the left and the right)
Put differently, "White Fragility" is intellectual exchange, so was "The Bell Curve", so was "Phrenology" and a lot of other things?
You can only make an omelet by breaking a few million eggs. If you chair is uncomfortable I would suggest a cushion. There isn't much more to discuss here I guess. There are people without too much self-reflection but you are not making a good case. Get some distance if you need it.