Choosing Prole as your starter character cripples your early campaign and you are limited to Hard or Legendary difficulty, but it does give you a +2 save vs cancelation and a roster of support characters to buff and heal.
It's referring to setting up traits and stats for an RPG (Role Playing Game) character, most likely DnD or a derivative as many RPGs including video games RPGs use similar mechanics even if they're hidden under pretty animations.
Also an extremely clever reference to the proles of Orwell's 1984, who were mostly divorced from the tightrope walk of Party membership. A line from the book was, "If there is any hope, it lies in the proles."
Great post. Calls to disown problematic friends and family are the most repugnant part of the “social justice” movement.
We just got done with the holidays, where as usual a bunch of tools racked up likes on Twitter condemning anyone who eats dinner with Republican relatives. As if boycotting family events over politics will help a single person anywhere.
No wonder the movement is so unpopular, when everything people value can be construed as literal violence. America, your family, the holidays themselves (colonialism). Just stay home in the dark and tweet correct opinions, for justice.
"No wonder the movement is so unpopular, when everything people value can be construed as literal violence. America, your family, the holidays themselves (colonialism). Just stay home in the dark and tweet correct opinions, for justice."
I've had a similar criticism of the movement. This blog talks a lot about how it's corporate/managerial, alienates people, has no chance of winning, etc. I agree with all that. I'd also add that it's just a crappy way to live. I can't imagine any joy coming from a life devoted for cancelling and social justice. I'd rather not adopt an ideology that makes life miserable
I know a fair number of people for whom social justice activism is a form of self-harm. They're all people I've known for decades and people I know well enough to know what mental health issues they have and what maladaptive coping mechanisms they've used in the past. Unlike previous maladaptive coping mechanisms, where you could gently remind them that what they were doing was counterproductive (again, these are people I'm close to, so mental health check-ins have been something we've done for each other for ages), there is no socially acceptable way to push back on their current behavior, as to do so would mean you're complicit in the injustice they truly believe they're fighting and would get you unpersoned.
This is very apt. The sad bit is that they truly believe they are fighting injustice by becoming bullies. There may be a small amount of awareness raised or corporate policy changed by their antics but for the most part, I don't see any actual practical benefit to the people they are stumping for. And they could accomplish these objectives easily without taking people out.
It reminds me of people who pick up veganism as a way to continue engaging in their eating disorder without having anyone call them on it (a relatively common phenomenon).
Maybe you can re-classify that from 'feeling' to 'hypothesis.' I have made that move based on a dreary chain of events that started with being labelled a misogynist by an old college friend over a facebook post. I shared an unflattering appraisal of Hillary Clinton by Camille Paglia during the 2016 primaries.(It included a bit of gratuitous snark but otherwise was an insightful take on the candidate's shortcomings.) I didn't de-friend the guy immediately, but finally did months later when he brought it up again over FB apropos of nada. He even went after me again over it on a friend's post in the spring of 2020 when I had the temerity to question Biden's suitability for POTUS. A few weeks ago word came down that the guy had committed suicide. Of course that was awful to hear. I had known him when he was young and bright and played guitar in a cover band w/some other friends and had a great sense of humor. In retrospect he was obviously suffering from...something. Depression, apparently. In his case maybe it was part of turning the corner from middle-age to the next stage, a process that can F*** w/your mind for sure, as I'm learning myself. Tom, may you RIP.
Yes. If you are busy dealing with other people's problems, you don't have to look at or deal with yourself. It can also confer a false sense of power and superiority that both act as a substitute for a healthy self-esteem.
2) The people I admire all had big public moments where they were clearly (to me) championing the forces of good over the forces of evil.
3) I don't have access to true moments of injustice to publicly fight against (which is really, I'm too comfortable and cowardly to do things like facing fire hoses, and getting locked up or beaten up; and I don't want to travel to the kind of places in the world where those things actually happen).
4) I will invent situations that will make me feel like a justice-championing hero, like snubbing Uncle Bob at Christmas.
5) Why do people not admire me yet?
6) Snubbing Uncle Bob is not enough - I must go onto the internet and tell people how I (heroically) snubbed Uncle Bob.
7) People I don't know tell me how heroic I am.
8) Why do the people I actually know not admire me yet?
Then 6, 7, and 8 just keep repeating, but you have to keep escalating 6 to get the next desired response at 7.
I agree with what you're saying about people like Oswald, but you cite Chappelle and Louis C.K. as examples of never being good enough. They did legitimately bad things. It's not contradictory to like Chappelle's tv show and then turn against him when he becomes anti-trans. That is a consistent application of morality. It's better that than people who support their idols no matter what they do.
The point isn't that they're good. The point is that the status of goodness is transitory in a way that public definitions of goodness don't want to attend to, because they reveal the reality of moral faddishness.
When I was young the publication of a book by Mailer was news...everyone talked about it and I mean popular news weeklies, tv talk shows etc. Who would write the Great American Novel? was discussed by everyday people. That's not something that happens in the same way today.
Right, but I don't think those two are good examples of that. Their turn in the public eye was the result of new actions they took. This isn't moral faddishness; the morals didn't change it was they who changed. You write: "Louis CK was beloved of the woke, until… something happened." I'm sure that if people had known about his sexual aggression from the beginning then he wouldn't have been beloved in the first place. This is a different phenomenon from people re-assessing things that were once benign and deciding that they are now malevolent.
1. There are any number of artists who are personally reprehensible who produced works of legitimate artistry. I don't care if you "cancel" them as long as they can continue to tour/perform/write/compose/whatever and earn a living by doing so. You may not approve of them--that's fine. Just don't stand between me and the ticket office.
2. What Louis CK did is between him, his accusers, and the police. For everyone else to rush to get involved is simply mob justice, an ugly and corrosive practice that runs directly counter to civic order and debases everyone involved.
Chappell is not “anti-trans”. He is pro-reality, in which a woman = an adult human female. Saying that out loud is not doing a “legitimately bad thing”.
I have asked many people - both online and in person - what it was that Chapelle actually said that was so offensive, and I haven't gotten an answer yet. I choose to remain ignorant until one of these very angry people tells me what it was that I am supposed to be angry about.
I enjoyed the way you brought religion in to the conversation. One of my favorite lines from the prophets is Micah "do justice, love mercy, walk humbly with your god."
Those nine words create, in a nutshell, an infinite philosophical space.
My favorite verse from Matthew—always relevant, but especially so in our current moment:
“And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full.” [6:5]
“If your brother or sister sins, go and point out their fault, just between the two of you. If they listen to you, you have won them over.
But if they will not listen, take one or two others along, so that ‘every matter may be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses.’
If they still refuse to listen, tell it to the church; and if they refuse to listen even to the church, treat them as you would a pagan or a tax collector." [Matthew 18]
Charhdi kala, or relentless optimism, is also a strong tenet in Sikhism. Not blind or performed optimism, but a deeply held joy: that all is and will be well.
I really liked this, but I would put Louis CK in a different category from the others you mentioned. He masturbated in front of people without their consent which to me is more serious than saying vicious things.
Having said that, it wasn’t Weinstein behavior either and I don’t think that it merits permanent cancellation. He has taken responsibility, abjectly apologized, suffered some financial consequences and has spent some time in the wilderness so I don’t have an issue with him returning to public life.
"And because he’s Patton Oswalt and he’s a huge weenie..."
Yup. What I found particularly objectionable was that he repeatedly invoked his many years of friendship with Chappelle as a defense. What difference does that make? "I've known Hitler since high school, that should surely count for something."
If Chappelle had engaged in Holocaust denial there is no way that Oswalt would have taken his phone call. The obvious truth is that Oswalt does not consider Chappelle's "anti-trans" sentiments to be disqualifying in the same sense that something such as antisemitism or racism would be. Everything else is just desperate obfuscation.
I think about the meta turn as something akin to commodity fetishism. When products are first placed on the market (as opposed to being privately consumed or bartered) their value is defined in the context of other similar products. As a result, any notion of value based in "natural" means of production is lost. In the same sense, outrage can have a real "natural" origin... in the act of being truly outraged. But outrage also has value in the context of political life. At some point, this politically-derived notion of outrage just becomes so dominant that we can lose all sense of what actually makes us mad.
The alienation of posting labour under capitalism. I'm only partly tongue-in-cheek here. I genuinely think that most of the people outraged 24/7 are doing so at the behest of others. Either directly (troll farms, etc) or indirectly (I have to maintain my social capital the eyes of others)
When I used to twitter, I followed both Ellis and Oswalt, and I saw them transform from clever, kind, reasonable people into petty, virtue chasing, unhinged moral maniacs in real time and it really bummed me out. Their gradual mental putrefaction due to exposure to that platform was just one of the many reasons I hopped off the twitter hate-bus. Like Freddie says, it’s no surprise that the leopards eventually came for their faces, but it doesn’t make it any less useless, tragic or pointless. I used to really enjoy their faces.
I’m about your age, similar background and education. Two thoughts.
First, I was an excellent English student, but I decided not to major or pursue it further because I realized that I all needed to do to get As on papers was make stuff up. Words in the texts were just malleable puzzle pieces. Talk about some parallel phrasing here, a common theme there, and I was praised and rewarded - regardless of whether my claim bore any relation to actual authorial intent, etc. I’m not suggesting the discipline of literature is illegitimate, more that this kind of associational interpretation was really the main skill I was taught through college. That exercise is now wielded on an exponential scale due to the proliferation of the written word through social media, such essentially anything can constantly “smack of,” “raise questions about,” “provide cover for,” etc. This has resulted in some really wild claims that collapse vital distinctions between present and past, individual and systemic problems, and (as you’ve noted) political aims and new social/etiquette norms. We disagree somewhat, but we’re also all talking about our own interpretation of different things, and so all that cuts through is the infinite ways in which That Person Is Bad. To the extent my fellow PMCs and I feel a lack of meaning, it’s partly because this is all we were trained to do.
Second, my main inculcation in moral values and heroic myths came through (1) learning about the Civil Rights Movement throughout primary and secondary education (along with slavery, Jim Crow, etc - all vital and good), and (2) the 2000s politics of gay marriage, which crystallized a political lens and a particular notion of righteousness (and evilness of opponents) among my general demographic, particularly those of us who for whatever reason couldn’t really grok Iraq or economics at that point. I still hold the values I learned through those processes, but they’re being stretched into uber-explanations of the world that they were never meant to be - partly because they embody the most quasi-religious beliefs many of us hold and it feels good to be righteous. And again, because the actual policy and process questions are complicated and frankly boring to many, people seize on the belief that they’re doing their civic duty by participating in denunciation culture (and all those likes don’t hurt either).
I was having an earnest conversation with friends over Christmas dinner about this very issue. I believe my line was something about how I doubt any Black auto mechanics care about the fact that hydraulic brakes have a master and slave cylinder. However, we concluded that all this language policing is basically the result of PMC progressives wanting desperately to do *something* to help people they are convinced are oppressed; they can't do anything (directly) about blue-collar workers' casual racism on the job, or police brutality, or generational wealth gaps...but they sure can yell at their peers on Twitter and Slack for not keeping up with the most current progressive language updates.
The difference between a Black mechanic who has to perform skilled work to get paid and a gig economy Twitterer is that only the latter would think about clutch and brake part names.
But this is probably not right either. The Twitterer would be completely unaware about car parts in the first place.
I logged in to my Spam filter today and discovered that White List and Black List had been changed to Allow List and Block List. You know - if this really helps someone feel better - fine. But I think taking labeling like this personally is a bit precious.
The difference between a good English student and a great one is the bullshit. A good English student is a great bullshitter. A great English student is Freddie in the first half of this essay, earnestly (and adeptly) drawing on the literature of our past to try and make some sense of the present.
Opinion will vary. The first half was pretty weak tea for a Hitchens fan. God myths may be popular, but so are soap operas. Dismissal works for me. Neuropathology not yet evolved from, and seriously endangering species health, if not survival.
Heh, I'll admit that when reading math papers I find it hard to figure out whether the proofs being presented are correct or whether they contain a hole I cannot see. But I chalk this up to familiarity with the domain.
When it gets abstract enough it just feels arbitrary. Calculus for me is the mathematics of getting stuff done but some of the math for math's sake seems kind of pointless.
It can certainly be arbitrary, to some extent, but that doesn't make it nonsense. You establish the axioms of your theory, and everything that's true under that theory then follows. You can find that pointless, but plenty of human activities are essentially pointless, or done mainly for aesthetic reasons. The problem is that we're being sold mathematics as somehow useful, which it certainly doesn't have to be.
I never claimed it was nonsense, that's the other poster. I would certainly concede that there are plenty of examples of "pure" math that turned out to have a practical application.
More than anything what I take from this post is that deep knowledge of religion and history and literature would temper what you characterize as the "directionless moralism within our aspirational classes." The introduction to this essay was perfect to me. It takes the issues to a higher plane before addressing the actions today. Had I not been a reader of medieval poetry and a child who carefully balanced indulgences against my sins I might not have responded so intently, but I was.*
I've been in an ongoing struggle with a young person abt. 22 who covers local politics (very well) but can't stop his directionless moralism. He characterizes people with whom he doesn't agree as "terrible" and there is no quarter. I have decided that if someone hasn't read at least __Notes from Underground__ I can't take anything they moralize about as having any substance.
*And in spite of the abolition of indulgences to knock off time in purgatory I still think there is a scorecard out there...I mean someone kept track of all those rosaries I said for less time in limbo, didn't they? And you could be forgiven, right along, which was to me a good part of my childhood religion.
I hate to be picky (or maybe I don't), but didn't you say the rosary to shave time off in purgatory (not limbo)? I used to say 10 Hail Marys every night, but I would often lose count and start over again, so most nights I probably ended up saying at least 20. Hoping that shaves a few years off for me.
you are right, I was trying to avoid writing purgatory 2x in the sentence and of course they are different..purgatory for expiation and limbo for unbaptized babies--or that is how I remember it. But I did have a lot of plenary indulgences racked up.
Also, can we try to start calling people like Oswalt, who feel the need to throw their friends under the bus in order to appease the woke mob, as "Euthyphros?" As in, "We got another fucking Euthyphro over here, writing some long, rambling facebook post explaining why he needs to "distance himself from so and so..."
But Oswalt is trying to have his cake and eat it too. He's friends with Chappelle, he want to stay in Chappelle's good graces and simultaneously he wants to appease the woke mob.
Yep. But he’ll never appease them now that he’s a target. I’ve already seen people dig up 2 clips of Oswalt making “transphobic” jokes in old comedy routines.
It's true. All the hedging means that maybe he's not the best example. That said, it's hard to know whether his angle represents a genuine attempt to stand by his friend vs. sensing the cultural trade winds of an emerging wokenes backlash.
Nailed it. The Left is now the Right, meaning that the Social Justice set are now the ones doing all the moralizing and scolding and public shaming whereas in the past it was religious nuts.
You know, my politics haven't changed much. I'm still the same anti-authoritarian, left-leaning, pro-free speech guy I always have been. It's just that the group abusing its grip on the culture has changed in the past few decades. There are days when I hate these wokescolds and their sneering, condescending attitudes so much that it eclipses my hate for far right conspiracy mongerers. I dunno, it's just a personality quirk.
And the anti-anti-cancel culture types like Michael Hobbes? Oooooh, I REALLY hate that guy. I have to fight the urge to throw my phone across the room whenever I see what he's up to.
One of the great things I got from Freddie is that when people come at me with Social Justice ideas that feel authoritarian (or just plain stupid), is that I respond that the idea doesn't sound very left to me, and provide some reasons. Are those leftist values? Is it a left value to try and control people through shame? Sounds like something the Christian right does.
Depends. Usually it creates confusion. Which is fine by me. I don't know, maybe its just silent judgment. But I mean what I say, and it feels good to say.
Edit to add: sometimes you also get to the thinness of others' arguments. I was commenting on online toxicity, and just general conversational toxicity, and I had people defending it. After pushing a bit - is that really your value? is that how you want to act? - you get to really immature answers like "they did it first so I can dehumanize back as much as I want." They are defensive, but its transparently not a dignified response.
YMMV. Take it with a huge grain of salt. I'm a at point where either these friends are going to be with me in the next couple of years, or they just won't. Its their job to decide. One of the things I really love about this blog is that it helped me have more confidence in who I am and my own judgments about things.
One tactic I like, for making myself feel good more than it being effective at persuasion, is to push for examples. Like, Obama Lied: "you can keep your doctor".
I think it's good to push for thicker argument, one that includes theory/ generalizations (cliche? BS?) plus some specific example or a few.
I think its a valid point that I do this as much for myself as I do others. I might not convince anyone. At least I didn't let them hose me with their thinking patterns.
They're human values. There are excellent reasons why shaming and virtue policing work - and indeed a lot of excellent circumstances where it should be deployed. Any society has its behavioral limits and a lot of them are absolutely vital. We have no problem, collectively, punishing and ostracizing people who sexually abuse children, for example. Controlling such people through shame is perfectly reasonable behavior.
I actually have a big problem with sexual predator lists and mandatory disclosure laws. At the end of the day once somebody gets out of prison they need to get a job, full stop. The alternative is simply too stupid to contemplate. Anything that interferes with that process is counterproductive.
Employment is a binary. Either you can get a job or you can't. Of course there are going to be some individuals on disability who are unable to work but for the majority throwing up roadblocks to gainful employment is a great way to perpetuate a cycle of revolving prison stays.
"the idea doesn't sound very left to me," - are you in favor because the idea is on the left? or are you on the left because of the ideas?
I'm in favor of Human Rights. Democracy seems to support human rights to a greater extent than dictators BUT if there's a democracy that violates rights more than a Singapore style dictator, I'll favor more the rights-respecting dictator.
I like the US Constitution, including the amendments, especially 1, 2, & 10 (The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.).
Free Speech - for adults.
Parental Guidance for minors.
States decide at what age minors get what rights.
(If you're old enough to vote, or drive, you should be treated as old enough to legally drink. And no drunk driving at any age.)
"Is it a left value to try and control people through shame?" -- I think yes, but it's also a right value, and every civilization has always had norms & customs, with shame for those who violate the norms. Good people should give some shame to people's bad actions. The key issue is whether the action really is bad, and thus shameful. Offensive words & ideas in comedy for adults should not be considered bad, nor shamefully x-phobic.
Norms for adults should not always be the same norms for children.
Christian folk, and most normal parents, want to keep porn & obscenity & vulgarity away from kids. Current left culture pushes it on kids. Kids and young people have MORE mental illness than ever (since WW II & better tracking ). A prior thread talks a lot about mental illness and homelessness. I believe that subjecting pre-pubescent kids with adult porn is a huge negative influence on the mental problems (belief - not proof).
There are many true "Truths" for which there is not yet proof. Sadly, lack of disproof is NOT proof, but often is accepted as such; it's part of Confirmation Bias.
Freddie consistently applies this criterion to any online activity: does the mob attack, cancelling, name-calling, etc, actually help any real human beings improve their lives?
Chris Rock once (famously?) said "men are basically as faithful as their options", meaning that most men will cheat on their partners if given the means, motive and opportunity, and men who don't cheat are men who just don't have women throwing themselves at them.
Well, I think that most people are basically as *tolerant* as their power levels demand they be. Cultural leftists preached tolerance, and I'm sure that, on the margins at least, that rhetoric was effective - at least some Christians actually take "love thy neighbor as thyself" seriously and embraced the idea of tolerating (i.e. not actively oppressing or excluding from power) those whom they were on the other side of the culture wars from. However, once woke progressives saw the balance of power shift in their favor in all the places we know and care about - social media, mainstream media, academia - suddenly they stopped caring about being tolerant, because they didn't need to be tolerant anymore. (Or, they invented some truly convoluted thinking to explain why what they had started doing didn't count as intolerance because, well, you know, we all agree that conservatives are really evil, right?)
I suppose I've revealed just how much of a "Very Online Person" I am. Even before the pandemic and full-time WFH, I already did the majority of my socializing and political discussions in online spaces, and certainly Covid has just exacerbated the problem. I 100% agree that society isn't Twitter and in-person discussion is both more polite and more productive. However, our society has been becoming more and more atomized for a long time now - /Bowling Alone/ predates Twitter by six years. I don't think it's unreasonable to claim that, for a significant portion of our society, what happens in online spaces is at least as important as what happens in real life, if not more important. Control of those online spaces is now dominated by progressive/woke voices, which was my main point.
I certainly agree we'd all be better off getting off the keyboard and out into the real world, but I have a desk job that keeps me in front of a computer all day, so here I am.
When I am weaker than you, I ask you for freedom because that is according to your principles; when I am stronger than you, I take away your freedom because that is according to my principles
"Condemning" people is so dumb. My favorite example came from the Democratic debates, where the corporate dems asked Sanders to condemn Castro and Chavez. Guys, they're dead. Sanders can't do much about them.
He did reject their authoritarianism, explicitly and repeatedly. The point was never anything other than the cheap and always effective political smear tactic of guilt by association.
It's not a relevant question. It's a dumb gotcha. If you want to know someone's thoughts on authoritarianism, ask them their thoughts on authoritarianism.
It's relevant to Sanders because these lefty heroes often get a pass on their human rights abuses because of their political positions. Asking Sanders to denounce them is tantamount to a statement of "While I share their politics I find their governing in practice to be abhorrent." And again, given that Sanders is running for office, that's a completely legitimate test.
You should also check out Monica Harris: https://www.letsgetunplugged.com/post/when-a-black-woman-loses-her-tribe She is a black lesbian lawyer who left the progressive LA/Hollywood scene to live in Montana. Her writing is refreshing and hopeful.
Choosing Prole as your starter character cripples your early campaign and you are limited to Hard or Legendary difficulty, but it does give you a +2 save vs cancelation and a roster of support characters to buff and heal.
I don’t understand a word of this, but nevertheless impressed that it resonates with many who do.
It's referring to setting up traits and stats for an RPG (Role Playing Game) character, most likely DnD or a derivative as many RPGs including video games RPGs use similar mechanics even if they're hidden under pretty animations.
Also an extremely clever reference to the proles of Orwell's 1984, who were mostly divorced from the tightrope walk of Party membership. A line from the book was, "If there is any hope, it lies in the proles."
A certain podcaster has argued that when people feel like the Politics button is broken, they mash the Culture button instead.
It's the Streetlight effect. Guy looks for his keys under the streetlight. The keys aren't there, but that's where the light is.
The social justice movement can't materially help black/trans/gay/etc people people, but boy can they hurt Lindsay Ellis.
Great post. Calls to disown problematic friends and family are the most repugnant part of the “social justice” movement.
We just got done with the holidays, where as usual a bunch of tools racked up likes on Twitter condemning anyone who eats dinner with Republican relatives. As if boycotting family events over politics will help a single person anywhere.
No wonder the movement is so unpopular, when everything people value can be construed as literal violence. America, your family, the holidays themselves (colonialism). Just stay home in the dark and tweet correct opinions, for justice.
"No wonder the movement is so unpopular, when everything people value can be construed as literal violence. America, your family, the holidays themselves (colonialism). Just stay home in the dark and tweet correct opinions, for justice."
I've had a similar criticism of the movement. This blog talks a lot about how it's corporate/managerial, alienates people, has no chance of winning, etc. I agree with all that. I'd also add that it's just a crappy way to live. I can't imagine any joy coming from a life devoted for cancelling and social justice. I'd rather not adopt an ideology that makes life miserable
It seems like the thought process of movement adherents goes like this:
1) Why am I so depressed?
2) If you are happy, you have your head buried in the sand, are unempathetic, or are racist.
3) I feel bad being happy when there are so many people suffering in the world.
4) I'm feel so alone and am so disappointed in people.
5) Why at I so depressed?
I do increasingly feel that a lot of online political behavior is driven by underlying neuroses that have nothing to do with politics.
Hasn't this been obvious since at least November, 2016?
I know a fair number of people for whom social justice activism is a form of self-harm. They're all people I've known for decades and people I know well enough to know what mental health issues they have and what maladaptive coping mechanisms they've used in the past. Unlike previous maladaptive coping mechanisms, where you could gently remind them that what they were doing was counterproductive (again, these are people I'm close to, so mental health check-ins have been something we've done for each other for ages), there is no socially acceptable way to push back on their current behavior, as to do so would mean you're complicit in the injustice they truly believe they're fighting and would get you unpersoned.
That's sad but fascinating.
This is very apt. The sad bit is that they truly believe they are fighting injustice by becoming bullies. There may be a small amount of awareness raised or corporate policy changed by their antics but for the most part, I don't see any actual practical benefit to the people they are stumping for. And they could accomplish these objectives easily without taking people out.
Self-righteousness acts like a drug in the brain and is literally addicting: http://www.davidbrin.com/nonfiction/addiction.html
It reminds me of people who pick up veganism as a way to continue engaging in their eating disorder without having anyone call them on it (a relatively common phenomenon).
Maybe you can re-classify that from 'feeling' to 'hypothesis.' I have made that move based on a dreary chain of events that started with being labelled a misogynist by an old college friend over a facebook post. I shared an unflattering appraisal of Hillary Clinton by Camille Paglia during the 2016 primaries.(It included a bit of gratuitous snark but otherwise was an insightful take on the candidate's shortcomings.) I didn't de-friend the guy immediately, but finally did months later when he brought it up again over FB apropos of nada. He even went after me again over it on a friend's post in the spring of 2020 when I had the temerity to question Biden's suitability for POTUS. A few weeks ago word came down that the guy had committed suicide. Of course that was awful to hear. I had known him when he was young and bright and played guitar in a cover band w/some other friends and had a great sense of humor. In retrospect he was obviously suffering from...something. Depression, apparently. In his case maybe it was part of turning the corner from middle-age to the next stage, a process that can F*** w/your mind for sure, as I'm learning myself. Tom, may you RIP.
This is very sad.
Yes. If you are busy dealing with other people's problems, you don't have to look at or deal with yourself. It can also confer a false sense of power and superiority that both act as a substitute for a healthy self-esteem.
I think it's more like:
1) Why do people not admire me?
2) The people I admire all had big public moments where they were clearly (to me) championing the forces of good over the forces of evil.
3) I don't have access to true moments of injustice to publicly fight against (which is really, I'm too comfortable and cowardly to do things like facing fire hoses, and getting locked up or beaten up; and I don't want to travel to the kind of places in the world where those things actually happen).
4) I will invent situations that will make me feel like a justice-championing hero, like snubbing Uncle Bob at Christmas.
5) Why do people not admire me yet?
6) Snubbing Uncle Bob is not enough - I must go onto the internet and tell people how I (heroically) snubbed Uncle Bob.
7) People I don't know tell me how heroic I am.
8) Why do the people I actually know not admire me yet?
Then 6, 7, and 8 just keep repeating, but you have to keep escalating 6 to get the next desired response at 7.
I agree with what you're saying about people like Oswald, but you cite Chappelle and Louis C.K. as examples of never being good enough. They did legitimately bad things. It's not contradictory to like Chappelle's tv show and then turn against him when he becomes anti-trans. That is a consistent application of morality. It's better that than people who support their idols no matter what they do.
What precisely did Chappelle do that qualifies as a "bad thing"? Declare himself to be on "Team TERF"?
The point isn't that they're good. The point is that the status of goodness is transitory in a way that public definitions of goodness don't want to attend to, because they reveal the reality of moral faddishness.
When I was young the publication of a book by Mailer was news...everyone talked about it and I mean popular news weeklies, tv talk shows etc. Who would write the Great American Novel? was discussed by everyday people. That's not something that happens in the same way today.
Right, but I don't think those two are good examples of that. Their turn in the public eye was the result of new actions they took. This isn't moral faddishness; the morals didn't change it was they who changed. You write: "Louis CK was beloved of the woke, until… something happened." I'm sure that if people had known about his sexual aggression from the beginning then he wouldn't have been beloved in the first place. This is a different phenomenon from people re-assessing things that were once benign and deciding that they are now malevolent.
1. There are any number of artists who are personally reprehensible who produced works of legitimate artistry. I don't care if you "cancel" them as long as they can continue to tour/perform/write/compose/whatever and earn a living by doing so. You may not approve of them--that's fine. Just don't stand between me and the ticket office.
2. What Louis CK did is between him, his accusers, and the police. For everyone else to rush to get involved is simply mob justice, an ugly and corrosive practice that runs directly counter to civic order and debases everyone involved.
"It's better that than people who support their idols no matter what they do." Maybe it's better not to have idols.
What legitimately bad thing did Chappelle do?
He made fun of crack heads and opioid users.
Oh, wait, that was always in his act, and Bob liked it 🤔
Chappell is not “anti-trans”. He is pro-reality, in which a woman = an adult human female. Saying that out loud is not doing a “legitimately bad thing”.
I have asked many people - both online and in person - what it was that Chapelle actually said that was so offensive, and I haven't gotten an answer yet. I choose to remain ignorant until one of these very angry people tells me what it was that I am supposed to be angry about.
He commented directly on Wokeitude in his hour special on Netflix. He's an amazing cultural critic.
I enjoyed the way you brought religion in to the conversation. One of my favorite lines from the prophets is Micah "do justice, love mercy, walk humbly with your god."
Those nine words create, in a nutshell, an infinite philosophical space.
My favorite verse from Matthew—always relevant, but especially so in our current moment:
“And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full.” [6:5]
“If your brother or sister sins, go and point out their fault, just between the two of you. If they listen to you, you have won them over.
But if they will not listen, take one or two others along, so that ‘every matter may be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses.’
If they still refuse to listen, tell it to the church; and if they refuse to listen even to the church, treat them as you would a pagan or a tax collector." [Matthew 18]
The exact reverse sequence to a Twitter pile-on
You might dig Sikhism to boot.
Three steps to being a good person-
Perform honorable labor (no mooching, and no crime)
Give charitably to those less fortunate than you
Contemplate the divine
There is more stuff you gotta do and believe if you wanna be a Sikh, but proselytization isn’t a thing so no worries if you don’t want to.
Thanks. So much wisdom to be gleaned by studying and thinking about various religions.
Charhdi kala, or relentless optimism, is also a strong tenet in Sikhism. Not blind or performed optimism, but a deeply held joy: that all is and will be well.
I really liked this, but I would put Louis CK in a different category from the others you mentioned. He masturbated in front of people without their consent which to me is more serious than saying vicious things.
Having said that, it wasn’t Weinstein behavior either and I don’t think that it merits permanent cancellation. He has taken responsibility, abjectly apologized, suffered some financial consequences and has spent some time in the wilderness so I don’t have an issue with him returning to public life.
OK I guess I have to rewrite this fucking thing because I NEVER FUCKING SAID ANYTHING ABOUT WHETHER THESE PEOPLE ARE ACTUALLY GOOD OR BAD
Your comment is unclear. What is disgusting?
It sounds like you're saying:
You Can't Be Good Enough
I see words on the screen, I must respond with all my thoughts on the matter.
There is no other way it could work.
"And because he’s Patton Oswalt and he’s a huge weenie..."
Yup. What I found particularly objectionable was that he repeatedly invoked his many years of friendship with Chappelle as a defense. What difference does that make? "I've known Hitler since high school, that should surely count for something."
If Chappelle had engaged in Holocaust denial there is no way that Oswalt would have taken his phone call. The obvious truth is that Oswalt does not consider Chappelle's "anti-trans" sentiments to be disqualifying in the same sense that something such as antisemitism or racism would be. Everything else is just desperate obfuscation.
I think about the meta turn as something akin to commodity fetishism. When products are first placed on the market (as opposed to being privately consumed or bartered) their value is defined in the context of other similar products. As a result, any notion of value based in "natural" means of production is lost. In the same sense, outrage can have a real "natural" origin... in the act of being truly outraged. But outrage also has value in the context of political life. At some point, this politically-derived notion of outrage just becomes so dominant that we can lose all sense of what actually makes us mad.
The alienation of posting labour under capitalism. I'm only partly tongue-in-cheek here. I genuinely think that most of the people outraged 24/7 are doing so at the behest of others. Either directly (troll farms, etc) or indirectly (I have to maintain my social capital the eyes of others)
When I used to twitter, I followed both Ellis and Oswalt, and I saw them transform from clever, kind, reasonable people into petty, virtue chasing, unhinged moral maniacs in real time and it really bummed me out. Their gradual mental putrefaction due to exposure to that platform was just one of the many reasons I hopped off the twitter hate-bus. Like Freddie says, it’s no surprise that the leopards eventually came for their faces, but it doesn’t make it any less useless, tragic or pointless. I used to really enjoy their faces.
'Mental putrefaction' is excellent. Nice!
You saved me the trouble of writing this. Nice!
I’m about your age, similar background and education. Two thoughts.
First, I was an excellent English student, but I decided not to major or pursue it further because I realized that I all needed to do to get As on papers was make stuff up. Words in the texts were just malleable puzzle pieces. Talk about some parallel phrasing here, a common theme there, and I was praised and rewarded - regardless of whether my claim bore any relation to actual authorial intent, etc. I’m not suggesting the discipline of literature is illegitimate, more that this kind of associational interpretation was really the main skill I was taught through college. That exercise is now wielded on an exponential scale due to the proliferation of the written word through social media, such essentially anything can constantly “smack of,” “raise questions about,” “provide cover for,” etc. This has resulted in some really wild claims that collapse vital distinctions between present and past, individual and systemic problems, and (as you’ve noted) political aims and new social/etiquette norms. We disagree somewhat, but we’re also all talking about our own interpretation of different things, and so all that cuts through is the infinite ways in which That Person Is Bad. To the extent my fellow PMCs and I feel a lack of meaning, it’s partly because this is all we were trained to do.
Second, my main inculcation in moral values and heroic myths came through (1) learning about the Civil Rights Movement throughout primary and secondary education (along with slavery, Jim Crow, etc - all vital and good), and (2) the 2000s politics of gay marriage, which crystallized a political lens and a particular notion of righteousness (and evilness of opponents) among my general demographic, particularly those of us who for whatever reason couldn’t really grok Iraq or economics at that point. I still hold the values I learned through those processes, but they’re being stretched into uber-explanations of the world that they were never meant to be - partly because they embody the most quasi-religious beliefs many of us hold and it feels good to be righteous. And again, because the actual policy and process questions are complicated and frankly boring to many, people seize on the belief that they’re doing their civic duty by participating in denunciation culture (and all those likes don’t hurt either).
I was having an earnest conversation with friends over Christmas dinner about this very issue. I believe my line was something about how I doubt any Black auto mechanics care about the fact that hydraulic brakes have a master and slave cylinder. However, we concluded that all this language policing is basically the result of PMC progressives wanting desperately to do *something* to help people they are convinced are oppressed; they can't do anything (directly) about blue-collar workers' casual racism on the job, or police brutality, or generational wealth gaps...but they sure can yell at their peers on Twitter and Slack for not keeping up with the most current progressive language updates.
The difference between a Black mechanic who has to perform skilled work to get paid and a gig economy Twitterer is that only the latter would think about clutch and brake part names.
But this is probably not right either. The Twitterer would be completely unaware about car parts in the first place.
I logged in to my Spam filter today and discovered that White List and Black List had been changed to Allow List and Block List. You know - if this really helps someone feel better - fine. But I think taking labeling like this personally is a bit precious.
The difference between a good English student and a great one is the bullshit. A good English student is a great bullshitter. A great English student is Freddie in the first half of this essay, earnestly (and adeptly) drawing on the literature of our past to try and make some sense of the present.
As a first year art student I played the same bullshit game, with shocking success.
Opinion will vary. The first half was pretty weak tea for a Hitchens fan. God myths may be popular, but so are soap operas. Dismissal works for me. Neuropathology not yet evolved from, and seriously endangering species health, if not survival.
I felt like my English essays made sense, whereas Real Analysis and Abstract Algebra were made-up nonsense.
We can argue that all mathematics is made up (with maybe a few exceptions, like the integers as per Hawking), but one thing that it isn't is nonsense.
I trust that it isn't based on some sort of faith in experts. But you game a fake proof and a real one I couldn't tell them apart
Heh, I'll admit that when reading math papers I find it hard to figure out whether the proofs being presented are correct or whether they contain a hole I cannot see. But I chalk this up to familiarity with the domain.
When it gets abstract enough it just feels arbitrary. Calculus for me is the mathematics of getting stuff done but some of the math for math's sake seems kind of pointless.
Astrophysicists might demur...and materials engineers.
By definition anything with an application isn't math for math's sake. In my book anyway.
It can certainly be arbitrary, to some extent, but that doesn't make it nonsense. You establish the axioms of your theory, and everything that's true under that theory then follows. You can find that pointless, but plenty of human activities are essentially pointless, or done mainly for aesthetic reasons. The problem is that we're being sold mathematics as somehow useful, which it certainly doesn't have to be.
I never claimed it was nonsense, that's the other poster. I would certainly concede that there are plenty of examples of "pure" math that turned out to have a practical application.
More than anything what I take from this post is that deep knowledge of religion and history and literature would temper what you characterize as the "directionless moralism within our aspirational classes." The introduction to this essay was perfect to me. It takes the issues to a higher plane before addressing the actions today. Had I not been a reader of medieval poetry and a child who carefully balanced indulgences against my sins I might not have responded so intently, but I was.*
I've been in an ongoing struggle with a young person abt. 22 who covers local politics (very well) but can't stop his directionless moralism. He characterizes people with whom he doesn't agree as "terrible" and there is no quarter. I have decided that if someone hasn't read at least __Notes from Underground__ I can't take anything they moralize about as having any substance.
*And in spite of the abolition of indulgences to knock off time in purgatory I still think there is a scorecard out there...I mean someone kept track of all those rosaries I said for less time in limbo, didn't they? And you could be forgiven, right along, which was to me a good part of my childhood religion.
I hate to be picky (or maybe I don't), but didn't you say the rosary to shave time off in purgatory (not limbo)? I used to say 10 Hail Marys every night, but I would often lose count and start over again, so most nights I probably ended up saying at least 20. Hoping that shaves a few years off for me.
you are right, I was trying to avoid writing purgatory 2x in the sentence and of course they are different..purgatory for expiation and limbo for unbaptized babies--or that is how I remember it. But I did have a lot of plenary indulgences racked up.
Oh by the way, I was sharing these comments with my husband and when I read yours, including your name, he said "I work with her." He teaches at USF.
Say hello! I teach online and website is one of my favorite breaks.
I had to learn the Hail Mary as an Irish Protestant on a dance team full of Irish Catholics. What’s the conversion rate on that do you think?
Oh my gosh that's hilarious. I think when your time comes St. Peter will roll out the red carpet.
Also, can we try to start calling people like Oswalt, who feel the need to throw their friends under the bus in order to appease the woke mob, as "Euthyphros?" As in, "We got another fucking Euthyphro over here, writing some long, rambling facebook post explaining why he needs to "distance himself from so and so..."
But Oswalt is trying to have his cake and eat it too. He's friends with Chappelle, he want to stay in Chappelle's good graces and simultaneously he wants to appease the woke mob.
Yep. But he’ll never appease them now that he’s a target. I’ve already seen people dig up 2 clips of Oswalt making “transphobic” jokes in old comedy routines.
It's true. All the hedging means that maybe he's not the best example. That said, it's hard to know whether his angle represents a genuine attempt to stand by his friend vs. sensing the cultural trade winds of an emerging wokenes backlash.
Nailed it. The Left is now the Right, meaning that the Social Justice set are now the ones doing all the moralizing and scolding and public shaming whereas in the past it was religious nuts.
You know, my politics haven't changed much. I'm still the same anti-authoritarian, left-leaning, pro-free speech guy I always have been. It's just that the group abusing its grip on the culture has changed in the past few decades. There are days when I hate these wokescolds and their sneering, condescending attitudes so much that it eclipses my hate for far right conspiracy mongerers. I dunno, it's just a personality quirk.
And the anti-anti-cancel culture types like Michael Hobbes? Oooooh, I REALLY hate that guy. I have to fight the urge to throw my phone across the room whenever I see what he's up to.
One of the great things I got from Freddie is that when people come at me with Social Justice ideas that feel authoritarian (or just plain stupid), is that I respond that the idea doesn't sound very left to me, and provide some reasons. Are those leftist values? Is it a left value to try and control people through shame? Sounds like something the Christian right does.
I find tactics involving reason and reasonable questions literally are ignored.
Asking "is that a value of the Left?" isn't a reason, its a value judgment. I just back it up with reasons.
Depends. Usually it creates confusion. Which is fine by me. I don't know, maybe its just silent judgment. But I mean what I say, and it feels good to say.
Edit to add: sometimes you also get to the thinness of others' arguments. I was commenting on online toxicity, and just general conversational toxicity, and I had people defending it. After pushing a bit - is that really your value? is that how you want to act? - you get to really immature answers like "they did it first so I can dehumanize back as much as I want." They are defensive, but its transparently not a dignified response.
YMMV. Take it with a huge grain of salt. I'm a at point where either these friends are going to be with me in the next couple of years, or they just won't. Its their job to decide. One of the things I really love about this blog is that it helped me have more confidence in who I am and my own judgments about things.
One tactic I like, for making myself feel good more than it being effective at persuasion, is to push for examples. Like, Obama Lied: "you can keep your doctor".
I think it's good to push for thicker argument, one that includes theory/ generalizations (cliche? BS?) plus some specific example or a few.
I think its a valid point that I do this as much for myself as I do others. I might not convince anyone. At least I didn't let them hose me with their thinking patterns.
They're human values. There are excellent reasons why shaming and virtue policing work - and indeed a lot of excellent circumstances where it should be deployed. Any society has its behavioral limits and a lot of them are absolutely vital. We have no problem, collectively, punishing and ostracizing people who sexually abuse children, for example. Controlling such people through shame is perfectly reasonable behavior.
I don't need ideas to be useful in absolutely every context. Please continue to shame sexual predators.
Why is sexual assault especially worse than other kinds of assault?
I'm just responding to the comment above.
I don't know. What are your criteria for harm?
Pain.
I actually have a big problem with sexual predator lists and mandatory disclosure laws. At the end of the day once somebody gets out of prison they need to get a job, full stop. The alternative is simply too stupid to contemplate. Anything that interferes with that process is counterproductive.
Only ONE alternative? Which one?
Employment is a binary. Either you can get a job or you can't. Of course there are going to be some individuals on disability who are unable to work but for the majority throwing up roadblocks to gainful employment is a great way to perpetuate a cycle of revolving prison stays.
"the idea doesn't sound very left to me," - are you in favor because the idea is on the left? or are you on the left because of the ideas?
I'm in favor of Human Rights. Democracy seems to support human rights to a greater extent than dictators BUT if there's a democracy that violates rights more than a Singapore style dictator, I'll favor more the rights-respecting dictator.
I like the US Constitution, including the amendments, especially 1, 2, & 10 (The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.).
Free Speech - for adults.
Parental Guidance for minors.
States decide at what age minors get what rights.
(If you're old enough to vote, or drive, you should be treated as old enough to legally drink. And no drunk driving at any age.)
"Is it a left value to try and control people through shame?" -- I think yes, but it's also a right value, and every civilization has always had norms & customs, with shame for those who violate the norms. Good people should give some shame to people's bad actions. The key issue is whether the action really is bad, and thus shameful. Offensive words & ideas in comedy for adults should not be considered bad, nor shamefully x-phobic.
Norms for adults should not always be the same norms for children.
Christian folk, and most normal parents, want to keep porn & obscenity & vulgarity away from kids. Current left culture pushes it on kids. Kids and young people have MORE mental illness than ever (since WW II & better tracking ). A prior thread talks a lot about mental illness and homelessness. I believe that subjecting pre-pubescent kids with adult porn is a huge negative influence on the mental problems (belief - not proof).
There are many true "Truths" for which there is not yet proof. Sadly, lack of disproof is NOT proof, but often is accepted as such; it's part of Confirmation Bias.
Freddie consistently applies this criterion to any online activity: does the mob attack, cancelling, name-calling, etc, actually help any real human beings improve their lives?
Chris Rock once (famously?) said "men are basically as faithful as their options", meaning that most men will cheat on their partners if given the means, motive and opportunity, and men who don't cheat are men who just don't have women throwing themselves at them.
Well, I think that most people are basically as *tolerant* as their power levels demand they be. Cultural leftists preached tolerance, and I'm sure that, on the margins at least, that rhetoric was effective - at least some Christians actually take "love thy neighbor as thyself" seriously and embraced the idea of tolerating (i.e. not actively oppressing or excluding from power) those whom they were on the other side of the culture wars from. However, once woke progressives saw the balance of power shift in their favor in all the places we know and care about - social media, mainstream media, academia - suddenly they stopped caring about being tolerant, because they didn't need to be tolerant anymore. (Or, they invented some truly convoluted thinking to explain why what they had started doing didn't count as intolerance because, well, you know, we all agree that conservatives are really evil, right?)
All those things "we care about" are not physically interactive: hugs, kisses, etc.
Did you omit them for a purpose?
I think woke people are creatures of these media, media meaning between.
Person to person is much more polite. Society isn't Twitter.
I suppose I've revealed just how much of a "Very Online Person" I am. Even before the pandemic and full-time WFH, I already did the majority of my socializing and political discussions in online spaces, and certainly Covid has just exacerbated the problem. I 100% agree that society isn't Twitter and in-person discussion is both more polite and more productive. However, our society has been becoming more and more atomized for a long time now - /Bowling Alone/ predates Twitter by six years. I don't think it's unreasonable to claim that, for a significant portion of our society, what happens in online spaces is at least as important as what happens in real life, if not more important. Control of those online spaces is now dominated by progressive/woke voices, which was my main point.
I certainly agree we'd all be better off getting off the keyboard and out into the real world, but I have a desk job that keeps me in front of a computer all day, so here I am.
When I am weaker than you, I ask you for freedom because that is according to your principles; when I am stronger than you, I take away your freedom because that is according to my principles
"Condemning" people is so dumb. My favorite example came from the Democratic debates, where the corporate dems asked Sanders to condemn Castro and Chavez. Guys, they're dead. Sanders can't do much about them.
The point wasn't to disavow them but to reject their authoritarian bent. That is indeed a relevant question for a guy running for political office.
Thanks for the laugh! :-)
He did reject their authoritarianism, explicitly and repeatedly. The point was never anything other than the cheap and always effective political smear tactic of guilt by association.
In politics you never get to say something once. You have to repeat it loudly and often.
It's not a relevant question. It's a dumb gotcha. If you want to know someone's thoughts on authoritarianism, ask them their thoughts on authoritarianism.
It's relevant to Sanders because these lefty heroes often get a pass on their human rights abuses because of their political positions. Asking Sanders to denounce them is tantamount to a statement of "While I share their politics I find their governing in practice to be abhorrent." And again, given that Sanders is running for office, that's a completely legitimate test.
Not even close to legitimate. More associational blackwashing.
It's the "Are you a tankie?" test. Passing it shouldn't be hard.