Here in the US we'll refuse to interact with someone if we find out that they're part of the wrong tribe, but our political violence is pretty low on the scale of what's possible.
There, they have a lot of political violence and from what I understand quite divisive political issues that put people's lives and livelihoods at stake, but apparently they don't have the culture of avoiding talking about it altogether that we do and they don't attempt to avoid associating with anyone who disagrees with them.
But maybe the real take way here is that people in Indian should talk less about politics!
If someone is like, "Nah, those things are bad" then I'm happy to not associate with them because I find their beliefs abhorrent. It has nothing to do with tribal affiliation and everything to do with policy.
This is absolutely not how a lot of people operate.
I don't think it's unreasonable to live a morally comprehensive life. For example, I probably couldn't be friends with a white-supremacist even if they were kind, gentle, supportive, and caring. Some folks are able to look past those things and more power to them. I, however, couldn't sleep at night.
In my mind, the moral, healthy, productive, and pro-social thing would be to continue friendship.
I dont think shunning people builds bridges or helps anyone.
Then again, my generation grew up with stories like black activists who befriended KKK members and slowly converted them with compassion and challenging their preconceived notions.
More power to the people who can do it. It's just not within my ability.
is it just cultural instinct and expectation?
When I think about why I'm uncomfortable with the idea, it stems from feeling like a lack the ability to push back against bigotry with tact. While some people have this skill, I do not. The consequence of this is either not engaging with bigots, or not speaking up when something bigoted is said.
I believe that not speaking up against bigoted beliefs implicitly normalizes their acceptability. What I mean by this is that I personally and deeply value tolerance and non-judgementalness with the exception of bigotry[1].
Faced with an inability to tactfully push back, I feel left with not engaging with folks who are overtly bigoted. Saying, "well you should not do that or feel that way," doesn't change the emotional response I have to that situation, it only pushes the intellectual part of me farther way from the emotional side creating a wider gap between feeling and intellect - effectively sowing greater cognitive dissonance.
More power to the people who have the skills to tactfully engage with bigots, but that's not me right now. Maybe someday.
None of us get through life without complicated trade-offs, and in most cases when you disagree with ~50% of a country's population it's because you have different values of what good thing matters most.
Most people are full of contradictions and often carry beliefs that might be seen as controversial (perhaps in hindsight). Maybe it's not appropriate to lump all controversial beliefs into one, but I think a small part of the problem is that we identify ourselves as being morally pure as a way to avoid having hard conversations.
There is a human instinct resolve ambiguity, and barring that, heuristically paper over it.
The more emotionally engaging a topic is, the more galling the uncertainty and cognitive dissonance is. The more distressing the uncertainty, the more people want a simple solution, even if it isnt true.
I think questions like if someone can be a racist AND a good person are complex. They are uncomfortable. This makes a simple answer of "NO" all the more attractive. It makes life a lot easier than if the answer is "sometimes, but it depends on 1,000 other things".
Applying purity tests to others provides an easy way to go through life while minimizing the thought and consideration given to those people.
Contact info in bio.
So, in some sense it is a "privilege" to not have such a rare and extreme problem.
But, mostly the privilege is in the other direction, and the people with the privilege are the ones who dont have other serious problems in their life that they can afford to spend all their time and effort focusing on something that they have little ability to effect or change and aren't directly related to their immediate problems.
Most the people with material problems are the ones with the less privilege here, even though, yes in some rare cases the inability to avoid focusing on things that are irrelevant to ones day to day and immediate problems can be an issue.
> is life free of that burden.
Quite the opposite. People with actual burdens don't have the time, effort, or luxury to focus on things that are outside of their immediate issues.
They have things to do and problems to solve that are hurting them seriously in the material world.
Its the rich and wealthy, and undiscriminated that have the privilege to be morally pure all the time.
Well, going back to the original hypothetical that was brought up about making friends with racists.
Befriending the racists can actually be a pretty effective way of getting the racists to stop assaulting you at school every day.
If that example is too extreme, you can go with "making friends with people to work together on homework so you can graduate".
And, you are what you pretend to be sometimes, and eventually that stuff can turn into real friendships.
I would never judge someone for doing that.
But you seem to think that making moral "compromises" must mean that one's life is free from burdens.
By all means, do what you need to do in your life.
But, it is extraordinarily insulting that you are calling people privileged for having the "luxury" of not being morally pure, and not being able to pick and choose perfect friends.
This is a great example of how communication between people with different outlooks breaks down. We'll eventually get frustrated, call it quits, and never speak again. It's the exact pattern played out in miniature.
The example you gave with having to make friends to get a good grade, I'm unsure how that relates to compromising your morals. Is that an experience you personally went through? What was that like for you?
I will repeat and rephase the answer which you may have misunderstood:
Circumstances, like someone preventing one's self from being assaulted every day by racists or racial supremacists, seems like a pretty clear cut example of someone who has less privilege.
Maybe those other people were talking about a friend? Maybe they were just talking about things in general and had no specific situation in mind.
I was just giving some possible situations or hypotheticals that would justify their arguments that they made.
But I am glad you were able to basically agree with me here that their arguments were justified in certain circumstances.
The complete refusal to interact with someone who disagrees with you is a relatively new phenomenon that seems to have risen alongside social media.
We most certainly did not. Point to an era where there wasn't political violence in the US.
Jim Crow? Civil rights era? WTO Protests? Vietnam war protests? Rodney King? Stonewall? Like... this country has been violent about politics since this country was a country.
Growing up I was afraid to be even remotely "non-manly" because I was so worried I'd be dragged behind someone's truck.
No, we didn't. Look up what happened in the 1960s. And even that was mild compared to what went on in election campaigns in the 19th century in the US.
You must have forgotten the US Civil War, plus all the turbulence of the 1960s.
The big difference there was that, for the most part, the two sides were geographically separated from each other.
>The complete refusal to interact with someone who disagrees with you is a relatively new phenomenon that seems to have risen alongside social media.
If you're thinking of the early-to-mid 20th century, things have changed. America has become much more diverse, and co-mingled (in the past, immigrant and other minority groups tended to keep to themselves and not socially interact so much with other groups). White European-descended people are no longer the overwhelming majority (remember, immigrants in the past mostly came from Europe), religion has lost much of its power and many of its believers, homosexuality has become far more accepted, basically one side feels existentially threatened, and the other side oppressed.