I hope there isn't a time in the future when people see the current wave of anti-racism, anti-slavery, and anti-misogyny as just a silly fad we had in the early 21st century. Although, I guess the people would have said the same about nudity in the mid-1800s...
Plenty of the things which are pushed unconditionally in the US right now should be debatable and debated. Some concepts like cultural appropriation look clearly dubious to my French self. The issue is that having a debate has become impossible. In some circles, you will be quartered for daring to express that there exists differences between men and women which might not be socially constructed.
That's a problem. Why have people become so afraid to speak their minds? We live in a democracy or not?
Not really, no.
Setting aside pedantry about the US being a republic and not a pure democracy, the fact is that wealthy elites decide election outcomes now. You ended up with Trump because elites in Russia wanted him elected more than elites in the US wanted Clinton. You got rid of him because elites in the US had woken up to the fact that they weren't the only player in that game anymore.
Culture wars are a proxy battlefield in much the same way that Ukraine is.
Sadly, we can't wait for the train to stop at next station and get out, because it's the only train we have.
This is so detached from reality, that is not even trying to understand why trump happened and why it may happens again.
On a similar note, you can absolutely point to America for using the international monetary system in its favor, and that wouldn't be the same a blaming regular americans.
Some of them, like Israel and China, push pretty hard, albeit with different goals.
Also worth noting that in many cases they're just co-opting the system set up by US powerbrokers, e.g. Tucker Carlson of Fox News talking about how great Putin is.
Actually political scientists routinely refer to the US as a democracy. You're splitting a hair that experts do not. The word "democracy" does not only mean direct democracy. Mentioning this non-issue at all is a signal, but maybe not the one you hoped for.
In day-to-day life it certainly doesn't matter - but when you are attempting to discuss the nature of that political system itself, I don't think it is at all unreasonable to call out the distinction and decide whether to discuss it further. No need for snide jabs.
A sufficiently large group of people have realized that they can function legally as a social lynch mob.
A person can stand by their ideals all they want, but if their livelihood and/or social standing have been taken from them, then expressing those ideals doesn’t serve them very well.
Many people just find it easier not to engage.
History will not reflect kindly on these groups — they will be mocked (“crazy things people actually believed in the 2020s!”).
> We live in a democracy or not?
Regarding democracy, the most vocal zealots on both extremes of the political spectrum support decidedly undemocratic positions.
Many/most of the folks I know who speak out loudest about “freedom” are also the most willing to restrict it… for others.
What’s the saying… freedom for me but not for thee?
Before I come across as overly cynical, let me just add that most Americans I’m around have a very laissez faire attitude about most things. They are just very quiet about it, living their lives peacefully.
I’m a believer in the very moderate silent majority in the US. It’s just hard to notice that it exists when pretty much all mainstream media and social media are designed to favor the promotion of extremist stances.
My experience in the US is the opposite. It's only at the extremes that you'll find people concerned about our civil liberties slipping away, wanting to give everyone a voice, and accepting that there are opinions unlike their own and that's ok.
Probably because people on both ends are threatened by the middle party duopoly. The middle only allows conversation about wedge issues and nothing different or more substantive. The middle both decide for whom we can vote because they're corporations, not democratic entities. They collaborate only to make sure viable 3rd parties cannot exist and to ensure their donors' demands are met. Otherwise, they return to squabbling over wedge issues that neither party actually ever solves because the wedges are too useful to be solved. Our two middle parties are fundamentally anti-democratic - maybe that's why most Americans are independent.
And doing that while you created that topic in the first place.
Always was, IMO what you're experiencing with this is just the Overton window shifting around you.
Goes both ways: People hardly ever discussed trans topics when I was a teenager and I don't know if that was a taboo or merely lack of awareness, but I do know that lesbian gay and bisexual topics were tabooed.
Arguing these is pointless, because they are violate dogmas that underpin our modern ideology. They are not up for argument. If another ideology suggests that racism is actually a-ok, then we consider it clearly flawed, because dogmatically, ideologies that come to that conclusion must be flawed. And not just flawed, because these fundamental dogmas are what shapes our notions of "good" and "evil". Not adhering to these dogmas makes you evil.
I must add, this is not a fallacy of some sort. If I were thrown into another society where everyone approves of racism, I am still attached to my personal dogmas. I would consider such a society unjust and warped. As a matter of fact, there's plenty of personal dogmas our current society violates, and I consider our current society and its ideology unjust and flawed.
Which raises another point, which is that our society does not have a monolithical ideology. It has an emergent ideology that arises from common agreement, but there's plenty of people in our society these days who disagree with several of the dogmas. And that's what makes them "bad" or "evil".
The only way to argue someone out of a personal dogma is to convince them that whatever your dogmas are is reflective of absolute good, evil, and/or truth. This is the subject of what is likely one of the oldest philosophical debates and has spawned several religions.
This is not a two sided discussion where each camps agree in block with a set list of propositions. It's also not manichean with things being either completely true or false, right or wrong or, good or evil. You are not either for or against. If you believe that, you are the problem.
We should be able to explore these subjects in their full complexity with the disagreement that entails. It's not even possible anymore in academia.
We almost universally agree that racism is not ok but what's racism? Some think affirmative action is racist.
The society is far greater than you. Different people have (and have the right to have) different opinions.
I mean it is a fad just a centuries old one.
My opinion is that morality is essentially a tips and trick of how to survive passed in a game of generational telephone.
E.g. ancient Greek hated cannibalism but practiced pederasty. Cannibalism can lead to catching prions and going crazy. For them it was god's punishment. Pederasty probably didn't have as many negative side effects at that time.
Proclaiming superiority over our predecessors is short lived. Imagine if there were two races of butterflies, one gray one white. The white blend better on trees and thus survive more, so white butterflies start arguing they are morally superior (favorite of God, etc.) to the gray ones, but that quickly changes once pollution grays the trees making now white butterflies the more visible prey.
So killing, cannibalism and pederasty are obviously imoral.
Die-off from lack of breeding? Sexually transmissible diseases? In both cases you could also construct homosexuality as immoral
Actually cannibalism is just eating of people, there is no requirement that said people get butchered for it. Someone might ritualistically eat an elder in their community to gain part of their wisdom for example, but there is not a requirement that they slay that elder first - they may just wait for them to die
Maybe this is an unpopular opinion, but I put the blame on those afraid to speak their minds.
I try always to speak my mind — whether it flies in the face of popular opinion or no. I take the downvotes — I sort of like that they have me pause and reconsider my opinion. But if in the end I feel I am still justified the downvotes just become a kind of war-wound or something that I take some small amount of pride in.
I'm not sure why everyone doesn't do the same.
But denying me the possibility to provide food for my two kids, my wife and me, is another thing. And there are just two possible responses: either I won't talk anything meaningful to strangers, or, having calculated my chances, I would aggressively defend my right and my children's rights to speak our minds. And by aggressively I mean very, as in revolutionary very. You threaten my very existence, and then all bets are loose and anything that will let me and my people win over you is permitted.
I hope you're wrong, but...
It would be lovely to see some actual historical perspective on America's periodic obsessions. Post-9/11 anti-terrorism and airport security theater are still here. The Vietnam-era obsession of the left with being anti-war (while the right was still pro-war and anti-communist) has almost reversed. We had McCarthyism in the 1950's. Etc.
The Great Awakenings ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Awakening ) should probably be thrown into the list. And the Salem Witch Trials ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salem_witch_trials#Political_c... ). And...
Can you please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules? We'd appreciate it.
where [view] exists at any point on the political spectrum.
> that there exists differences between men and women which might not be socially constructed
It depends on the context for me. If you're stating that point to make an interesting and insightful comment, all well and good. If you're just using it to bash trans people, it's less valuable IMO.
> If you're stating that point to [say something I agree with], all well and good. If you're just using it to [say something I disagree with], it's less valuable IMO
That's the point. Create a chilling effect to stifle discussion. Make it easy to draw sides and rally a demographic. Force opposition to take increasingly wild, extreme positions, then use those as a way to force your side to get even more extreme. Now you have 20-305 of the population who are rabid about issue X, and any real discussion about it is dead.
Makes it real easy to sidestep other discussions, like how broken housing or minimum wages are.
Nor is this a new thing, by a long shot; was an explicit tactic of the Soviet Union, and has been adopted by plenty of others, notably the US Right-wing.
It hasn't even been 5 years, and already the 2020 "fight racism by renaming your master branch to main" movement feels like a tone-deaf embarrassment.
I can see how these would be considered a silly part of the current anti-racist movement.
Thank god they weren't in place when I went to school. My kids wouldn't be here.
Not sure if it is at all obvious.
https://www.reddit.com/r/RedditEng/comments/11xx5o0/you_brok...
> The nodeSelector and peerSelector for the route reflectors target the label `node-role.kubernetes.io/master`. In the 1.20 series, Kubernetes changed its terminology from “master” to “control-plane.” And in 1.24, they removed references to “master,” even from running clusters. This is the cause of our outage. Kubernetes node labels.
Main is a better name IMHO (increased clarity and brevity) but it is far from "zero downside."
It's not obvious at all. The music industry has been using the term "master" for ages: master bus, master copy, mastering engineer. (It's worth noting this is the exact etymology of the git term, too, as opposed to master in the context of master and slave.) The Black community has overall had zero problem with this, and it hasn't stopped many Black musicians and artists from being successful. The music industry also had none of the "we have to rename the master bus" nonsense that came from the tech industry, despite, or more likely because, a significantly larger proportion of BIPOC and LGBT minorities being involved in music.
I don't care about the master vs main name in the abstract. Either branch name is a fine choice. It just completely doesn't matter and pretending that it has any positive impact or meaningful change on the racism and discrimination faced by Black people in America is insulting. It's purely driven by self-indulgent white people who don't want to make material changes to their own extremely comfortable lives while pretending they're fighting the good fight.
Exactly, and I agree with this completely as a Slavic person (from which the word slave is derived). I frankly consider this insulting as well as having a great grandparent used for forced labour in the Ukrainian Canadian interment camps during WWI, and a grandparent in the German forced labour camps during WWII.
One day we will realize all over again that hyper-focus on race only produces more division and more racism. But I'm lost as to whether or not those on the left doing it care. Maybe they want division and feel that minorities will come out on top and all white men will get their chance to "suffer". Not sure. I have been told as much in person by some who hold this philosophy.
Maybe not, but there'll definitely be a time in the future when the current puritanical wave will be seen as a fad, an embarrassment in human history.
"You mean people actually self-censored in case they were punished for thoughtcrime?"
"Yes, grandson."
Reducing racism is great, but censoring existing works because they contain the n-word just seems stupid.
> Spielberg was also asked about the controversial re-editing of Roald Dahl’s work which has included changing words like “fat” to “enormous” and “ugly and beastly” to just “beastly”.
> Initially he joked that “Nobody should ever attempt to take the chocolate out of Willy Wonka! Ever!” before adding “For me, it is sacrosanct. It’s our history, it’s our cultural heritage. I do not believe in censorship in that way.”
Roald Rahdl books were a big part of what I remember reading as a child. The words "fat" and "ugly" are absolutely grotesque, but also part of the palette he used to draw his worlds as he wanted people to see them. I think parents have the responsibility to have a proper conversation about the questions their children might have about the some of stuff those books bring up, or make the decision to not read them until the child is of a certain age. At least from my point of view, the central question would be that what is the proper age that a child is old enough to know about the existence of the words "fat" and "ugly".
Give it a generation of children growing up with the new euphemisms as standard terminology. Then they will be equivalent.
But even if we erased every single word for fatness from the minds of everybody in existence all in an instant, new words for fatness would be invented the very next instant when people around the world see fatness, can't find a word for it, and invent a new one. Words are tools for conveying understanding. Humans are tool-creating apes; when we need a tool, we make a tool. Remove a slur from people's vocabulary and people will invent a new one.
When I was young, my school had a program for retarded kids, the kids with profound mental disabilities. We also called each other retarded as a mild insult to impugn our friends' intelligence. The teachers and parents hated this, they banned the word retarded and renamed the class for the retarded kids to "Special Education". Anybody caught saying "retarded" would be scolded very severely and denied recess/etc. So what did we do? We started using "special", "special education" and "sped" as insults equivalent to retarded. You can't erase concepts by erasing words, least of all concepts that are so readily observable and self-evidently negative as the state of being mentally retarded or fat. Need a tool, make a tool.
inb4 "it's not real censorship unless the government does it"
Anyway, you're wrong and I think you know it because you said "government-mandated censorship." The first two words clarify the third. This wouldn't be necessary if the third truly implied the first two.
Have you ever heard of the Hays Code? It's quite infamous, you probably have; it was a system of self-imposed censorship from Hollywood to ban scandalous content from movies, such as people kissing or husbands and wives only having a single bed in their bedroom (oh the implications!) But the point is this censorship was self-imposed, there was no act of congress requiring it. The claim that true censorship must come from the government is simply wrong.
> if it's extended to an author reworking their own output, it really loses all sense of meaning.
It doesn't lose all meaning. It loses only the very narrow meaning you wish to impose (probably because it's an ugly word and you don't want to think yourself capable of censoring.)
Proceeds to destroy hundreds of paintings by adding poorly drawn fig leaves and to censor masterpieces over tiny penises.
It is a fad; people will come to their senses and recognise the value of the original work; while accepting the fact that they were produced in a time where these behaviours were considered as acceptable but it's no longer the case.
Or good racism.
It can also lead to further problems. Is it still racist to point out the [race/gender/religion/etc.] [students/employees/etc.] on average aren't as good now they actually aren't due to [employment/selection] bias?
You see that in a way they are perfectly fine with old sensitivity. As long as censorship and exclusion are done the way they have been done in past, they support it.
So... I certainly hope that being genuinely anti those things doesn't turn out to be a fad, those things are all bad things and should be opposed. Having said that I do hope that some of the ways people are choosing to be "anti" these things goes the way of the dodo because I believe they are ineffective and dumb.
As an example trying to get rid of the word "master" in tech... it's use in tech is in no way an endorsement of slavery. The suggestion it is racist to use this term is especially silly to me, because slavery has been practiced by all sorts of cultures for human history and because slavery is still a thing that is going on in the world (just look at that new stadium in the UAE).
Being anti slavery is fantastic. We can do that by boycotting companies that turn a blind eye to forced labour and by pressuring our governments to sanction countries that ignore it within their borders.
The same applies to being anti-racist or anti-misogynist or whatever. There are concrete actions that can be taken that will make a difference, but going back through old art and censoring certain words for fear that they get uttered as if this were Harry Potter and these words were Voldemort is just fucking silly.
“It appeared that there had even been demonstrations to thank Big Brother for raising the chocolate ration to twenty grams a week. And only yesterday […] it had been announced that the ration was to be reduced to twenty grams a week. Was it possible that they could swallow that, after only twenty-four hours?"