I know, I know, I know - there's no point to doing this, they'll just say what they want to anyway, it seems defensive, etc. Which is always easier to say when you're not the one who is constantly accused of wanting to put trans children in camps or whatever.
“The sad and inevitable next step is that I will eventually write something that they deeply disagree with, and the intensity of their love for the other stuff will make this unexpected disagreement hurt much more. It’s a privilege to make people feel so deeply. But we all must take care to not invent each other.”
Applies as much to life as it does to writing imo. We must take care not to invent each other.
Not boring! And I – one of your 'libertarian' readers – learned basically nothing new reading this :)
I think you've done a great job 'making yourself', and in my mind too!
> I am one of those rubes who still believe in passionate disagreement that does not close your heart to the other.
I think this is what I love and appreciate most about you. (It doesn't hurt that you're smart and a great writer either tho!)
> I am uninterested in convincing others to adopt atheism.
I don't think people that knew me even a decade ago would believe it, but I've settled (very comfortably) into this myself :)
> Far from a bourgeois or capitalist concern, the pursuit of personal freedom is as Marx argued a natural and beneficial endeavor that reflects straightforward human desires to live without coercion.
I like Ayn Rand's version of this: "Civilization is the process of setting man free from men." or, in contemporary terminology 'Civilization is the process of setting people free from other people.'.
Nice summary. There's a fair amount I agree with and a fair amount that I don't, but I see no need to scream abuse at you about any of it. This isn't really the thread to get into detail about any of those things, but there may be others where we can discuss some of them.
The one thing I will say here is that I would have simply put a period after the words "I believe that achieving a just society cannot happen". Capitalism is not the problem, and there's no evidence to date that socialism can do any better. Civilization of any kind is basically an attempt to construct a set of rules to make it possible for people to live together more or less peacefully, but it can never be perfect. It's always going to be messy, because it's full of people. This is not to say we shouldn't try to address specific injustices, but it would be foolish to think that the result will ever be "a just society".
How will these policies be enforced if we don’t deal with the interpersonal aspects of various types of bigotry?
I’ve been beat up and had people
Yelling fairy at me and was counseled to not flirt with boys at school instead of protected. I know too many women who’ve been slut shamed by law enforcement to count.
If you don’t get to pretty universal acceptance of the weird then all the laws and policies seem more like wishes than help. All these need to be carried out by people whose just basic biases mean that there just can’t be that much help without really sincerely being seen as a human who doesn’t deserve abuse.
I'm only part-way through this but there is an editing error in the email version mixing the muslim paragraph with the disability one. Maybe you already corrected it?
The lede (was buried): "Integrity," and "I believe that there are *pre-political commitments to fairness and decency* that are too often dismissed as a fetish for civility in our contemporary media. I am one of those rubes who still believe in passionate disagreement that *does not close your heart to the other.* Also, while I am a very weird person I would like to think that I *avoid* the bipartisan tendency in contemporary politics to talk like a complete lunatic." There you have it. Best of the July 4 posts in my inbox, which is no surprise. Never stop never stopping, Freddie.
It's good to see in print, and reinforces my thought that when push comes to shove, the left has much more in common than not. I mean, I could change "I believe" to "In this house we" and stick it on a sign in my yard, if the text weren't so long (ha ha). It also sounds like a chunk of the DSA platform, and I don't mean that as an insult, just that we are fighting for the same stuff, albeit incoherently at times.
Not that I learned anything new really, being a somewhat longtime reader, but it's still refreshing to see how you frame your thoughts and positions on things that are sometimes hard to put into words. I often find you materializing what is abstract in my head. So, once again, thanks!
I know, I know, I know - there's no point to doing this, they'll just say what they want to anyway, it seems defensive, etc. Which is always easier to say when you're not the one who is constantly accused of wanting to put trans children in camps or whatever.
“I am one of those rubes who still believe in passionate disagreement that does not close your heart to the other.”
In a democracy, this is the only principle I care about. Happy 4th, friend.
“The sad and inevitable next step is that I will eventually write something that they deeply disagree with, and the intensity of their love for the other stuff will make this unexpected disagreement hurt much more. It’s a privilege to make people feel so deeply. But we all must take care to not invent each other.”
Applies as much to life as it does to writing imo. We must take care not to invent each other.
Well, I can’t say you didn’t warn me that it would be boring. Happy Fourth Freddie!
Not boring! And I – one of your 'libertarian' readers – learned basically nothing new reading this :)
I think you've done a great job 'making yourself', and in my mind too!
> I am one of those rubes who still believe in passionate disagreement that does not close your heart to the other.
I think this is what I love and appreciate most about you. (It doesn't hurt that you're smart and a great writer either tho!)
> I am uninterested in convincing others to adopt atheism.
I don't think people that knew me even a decade ago would believe it, but I've settled (very comfortably) into this myself :)
> Far from a bourgeois or capitalist concern, the pursuit of personal freedom is as Marx argued a natural and beneficial endeavor that reflects straightforward human desires to live without coercion.
I like Ayn Rand's version of this: "Civilization is the process of setting man free from men." or, in contemporary terminology 'Civilization is the process of setting people free from other people.'.
Nice summary. There's a fair amount I agree with and a fair amount that I don't, but I see no need to scream abuse at you about any of it. This isn't really the thread to get into detail about any of those things, but there may be others where we can discuss some of them.
The one thing I will say here is that I would have simply put a period after the words "I believe that achieving a just society cannot happen". Capitalism is not the problem, and there's no evidence to date that socialism can do any better. Civilization of any kind is basically an attempt to construct a set of rules to make it possible for people to live together more or less peacefully, but it can never be perfect. It's always going to be messy, because it's full of people. This is not to say we shouldn't try to address specific injustices, but it would be foolish to think that the result will ever be "a just society".
Hmmm... exactly what I expected. I subscribe (and happily pay) for your scrivenings to get a thoughtful view of topics opposed to my own.
How will these policies be enforced if we don’t deal with the interpersonal aspects of various types of bigotry?
I’ve been beat up and had people
Yelling fairy at me and was counseled to not flirt with boys at school instead of protected. I know too many women who’ve been slut shamed by law enforcement to count.
If you don’t get to pretty universal acceptance of the weird then all the laws and policies seem more like wishes than help. All these need to be carried out by people whose just basic biases mean that there just can’t be that much help without really sincerely being seen as a human who doesn’t deserve abuse.
I'm only part-way through this but there is an editing error in the email version mixing the muslim paragraph with the disability one. Maybe you already corrected it?
The lede (was buried): "Integrity," and "I believe that there are *pre-political commitments to fairness and decency* that are too often dismissed as a fetish for civility in our contemporary media. I am one of those rubes who still believe in passionate disagreement that *does not close your heart to the other.* Also, while I am a very weird person I would like to think that I *avoid* the bipartisan tendency in contemporary politics to talk like a complete lunatic." There you have it. Best of the July 4 posts in my inbox, which is no surprise. Never stop never stopping, Freddie.
It's good to see in print, and reinforces my thought that when push comes to shove, the left has much more in common than not. I mean, I could change "I believe" to "In this house we" and stick it on a sign in my yard, if the text weren't so long (ha ha). It also sounds like a chunk of the DSA platform, and I don't mean that as an insult, just that we are fighting for the same stuff, albeit incoherently at times.
Not that I learned anything new really, being a somewhat longtime reader, but it's still refreshing to see how you frame your thoughts and positions on things that are sometimes hard to put into words. I often find you materializing what is abstract in my head. So, once again, thanks!