From: nospam@example.net
On Thu, 1 Feb 2024, oldernow wrote:
> On 2024-02-01, D wrote:
>
>>> In my mind, racism is attributing likely behavior to the
>>> appearances also known as physical attributes.
>>>
>>> That makes anyone that speaks of a color of person or
>>> people racist, e.g. "white people", "black person", "people
>>> of color", because personhood not only has no color, but is
>>> utterly invisible to the eye, yet in those formulations a
>>> kind of person - i.e. the kind of behavior to be expected
>>> of/from them - is implied by their skin color.
>>
>> This has, in my opinion, been elevated into an artform by
>> the modern woke/identity politics wave. No longer do we
>> categorize ourselves according to skincolor, we now have
>> gender, transgender, environmental, age, wealth and more
>> dividing lines.
>>
>> As I wrote in my rant on communism, this is needed in
>> order to sow discord and create the us vs. them feeling
>> that fuels a lot of politics.
>>
>> The built in weakness here (which is why identity
>> politics/woke:ism will never work in the long term) is
>> that once the external enemy is gone, the internal groups
>> start feeding on each other.
>
> I tend to want to openly break into "And Bingo was his
> name-oh!" after reading something that beautifully put. ;-)
Thank you. =)
> It's funny we're discussing such in an online realm that experienced
> a so-called "Eternal September", because I believe something similar
> happened to society in general, only I can't remember when it became
> obvious to me. But somewhere along the line I began intoning "I'm
> surrounded by idiots" more than just occasionally.
I think that this has probably been the life and fate of intelligent and
thoughtful people since time immemorial. In my case it's been a theme
throughout my life starting out this way, then improving slightly at
university, and then worsening again when I started to work.
I think perhaps also it might be about focus and knowledge. Before the
internet, you had a limited view of others. With the internet, you all
of a sudden have the ability to follow along in conversations all over
the planet, so the difference is that decades ago, this was also the
case, but it was largely unknown to you (and me) and with the spread of
internet, it became visible.
What do you think?
> Grant it, I could simply a massively narcissistic egomaniac, but
> I swear to that while lesser beings have
> probably always been the majority, barriers to their "running the
> place" somehow kept their overall influence such that those with
> "half a brain" could continue to maintain a functioning society.
I don't know if intelligence is what's rewarded in the arena of
politics. I would imagine that what's more sought after and rewarding is
to get things done, not to be too empathetic, be able to manipulate and
the ability to maintain order by force or threat of force.
How much do those things correlate with intelligence? And in our time,
it's of course not only one leader. There are political parties, lobby
groups, corporations, unions and other groups thrown into the mix. Well,
from a western liberal democracy point of view at least.
> Another statement I began using with my wife on a regular basis,
> oh, maybe something like five years ago is "We're going to
> get out of here *just* in time", i.e. before complete and utter
> social/civilization collapse, i.e. before we're literally pulled from
> our house and beaten to death for appearing not merely suspicious
> (read: intelligent), but for having been determined utterly certainly
> to be the cause of the marauding idiots' for-shit life/world.
When thinking about what it's like to be intelligent and feel that the
rest of the world is not, one movie and one book comes to mind.
Idiocracy, did you ever watch it? And Flowers for Algernon, did you ever
read it?
> (See what I mean by "massively narcissistic egomaniac"? ;-) )
No, I've seen way, way worse. ;)
Best regards,
Daniel
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)
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