SOCIAL JUSTICE

[RJM]

At what level of does 'society' acquire authority not just to authorize what I may say, or what I may not say -- but what I must say -- am required to say?

 

[RJM]

Substitute 'say' for think and the problem will start to become evident, imo?

 

[wil]

Hmmm.... I don't think "society" ever does....the privileged empowered social cast may....the governing authorities may...and the oppressed minorities try....

But society as a whole? I don't think so.

 

[Miken]

Unless there is a specific well defined reason for it and a specific well defined limit on what it entails, such as being sworn in as a trial witness or taking an oath of office or other legal situation, no one should ever be required to say something that they do not wish to say.

 

[Namaste Jesus]

Hard to respond here without sounding like Old Faith! Well IMO, as long as you're not breaking the law and observing proper etiquette for the venue in which you're speaking, no one actually has the authority to tell you what to say, think or do.

Be that as it may however, you can get fired these days just for voicing an unpopular opinion, siding with what may be perceived as the wrong individual, group, political party or religion. So I think a lot of things just go unsaid out of fear of repercussion and people nod in agreement even when that's not necessarily the case. So in that way I suppose, authority or no authority, many feel societal pressure these days to say or not say certain things in the public arena.

 

[wil]

observing proper etiquette for the venue

Hmm. Venue..i should have added religious institutions.

 

[RJM]

But society as a whole? I don't think so.

But the society of powerful thought influencers perhaps? The 'society' of the science community, or of the student community, for instance. Or the woke society.

The compulsion being that a person's work or writing or acting is rejected and the person is socially blacklisted and prevented from making a living by the members of that society -- even if the person concerned does not actually belong to that society -- because he/she does not say the required things that need to be said?

 

[RJM]

To what extent is the conservative over-reaction toward 'social justice warriors' in fact caused by the extremist attitudes of some of the warriors themselves?

https://www.interfaith.org/community/threads/19502/page-2#post-338750 Post #21
“… [those] liberals … [who] are completely intolerant of any other opinion than their own … introduce their propaganda on everyone … force their … propaganda down me and everyone else's throats … that is when I have a problem …”

https://www.interfaith.org/community/threads/19474/ Post #55

… woke victimization of JK Rowling? They are declaring JK Rowling a Nazi fascist -- posting memes of her in Nazi uniform -- and campaigning to 'cancel' her ... which means to effectively eliminate her from speaking or writing or earning etc, even if not to quite actually take her physical human life? In the name of tolerance and free speech, naturally …

So I’m attempting to continue the discussion, hold the thought here, in a new thread …

 

[muhammad_isa]

Interesting..
I think that people are happy with democracy unless they find themselves in the minority
It certainly can be frustrating .. but resorting to insults is not the way forward, imo.

I would say that the way US canvassing is being conducted these days would make older Presidents turn in their graves.
They certainly would get banned here on IO .. the CoC does not allow such behaviour

 

[RJM]

I think that people are happy with democracy unless they find themselves in the minority
It certainly can be frustrating .. but resorting to insults is not the way forward, imo.

IMO minority victim status expires when the minority tries to force its own mores and values, and particularly language, upon the majority? So, often the minority victim status doesn't jibe with its treatment of those who disagree.

Minority societies are often the most intolerant. They want freedom of expression, and demand on being referred to in certain terms, but they're not interested in letting anybody else speak.

So in a way this early 21st century rise of the right is a direct consequence of that. The left extreme social justice warriors have only themselves to blame. It's the victim card. Left wing oppression is equal and opposite to right wing oppression. They are flip sides of exactly the same coin ...

A person says the wrong thing on Twitter to upset the social justice warriors and their world turns to ash. The point is the extreme left is largely responsible for creating the alt-right backswing, and they enjoy the victim status it allows.

 

[Cino]

This kind of moral panic sucks.

Not too long ago (within my lifetime) in my country, you could literally lose your livelihood for having been at a political rally. There were laws passed to prevent the public service / state employees / officer corps from being subverted by extremism, and these laws were then enacted in such a way that having listened to a leftist speaker at a rally as a college student would permanently end your career as a school teacher or other public servant. As things are in my country, the bias was overwhelmingly against the political left, as the right wing was not perceived as a threat to the state's institutions.

I think it is always bad when it escalates to these levels, and what you term "the woke" exhibit much the same behavior as the commie-panic stricken of days past.

 

[Phyllis Sidhe_Uaine]

Let's not forget those who are "offended" by people who don't "look right"! I mean, those who are "offended" by men that are "too feminine" or women who are "too masculine"!

I can't count how many times that I've been told to shave my "beard" because I'll look much "prettier" if I did (they forget that I could nick my jugular vein if I did shave my "beard"!)

I have to find a Jewish group near me that doesn't separate the men from the women because I'm neither/nor (I'd be "sitting" on the "wall"/"barrier" if I attended the closest synagogue!) The "joke" about this sort of stuff goes, "You have ten men, you have one schul; if you have eleven men, you have two schuls." I would add, "If you have twelve men, you have thirty schuls!"

It's no wonder that I prefer s!

Phyllis Sidhe_Uaine

 

[RJM]

This kind of moral panic sucks.

Not too long ago (within my lifetime) in my country, you could literally lose your livelihood for having been at a political rally. There were laws passed to prevent the public service / state employees / officer corps from being subverted by extremism, and these laws were then enacted in such a way that having listened to a leftist speaker at a rally as a college student would permanently end your career as a school teacher or other public servant. As things are in my country, the bias was overwhelmingly against the political left, as the right wing was not perceived as a threat to the state's institutions.

I think it is always bad when it escalates to these levels, and what you term "the woke" exhibit much the same behavior as the commie-panic stricken of days past.

Which victim status expires when the then victims become the now censors and arbiters?

Quoting again the last line of George Orwell's Animal Farm:

"The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.”

 

[RJM]

Make light at your own cost, imo:

 

[wil]

Is this actually a societal thing?

Or is it a fringe group? Not the ones that have given up on reading or buying her books, nor the ones who lambast her for what she has written....there are those groups against any author for almost any reason.

As to the book burners? Are they more than a fringe radical group?

It doesn't seem clear to me that this is at a societal level.

 

[Cino]

Which victim status expires when the then victims become the now censors and arbiters?

Oh. I thought you were angry at the perpetrators, the "woke". Now I'm unsure about what it is that you are saying. That victims should stay victims? That victims must not become perpetrators? That victim status makes people dangerous?

In psychology, there is a thing called "repetition compulsion". Victims of a traumatic experience sometimes re-enact the situation (often with shifted roles) hoping to find release or clemency, often to tragic ends.

There is stockholm syndrome, victims siding with their abuser.

There is good old revenge seeking.

All of these seem more straightforward explanations than assingning hidden powers to victimhood.

 

[RJM]

All of these seem more straightforward explanations than assingning hidden powers to victimhood.

So that's ok, then?

 

[Namaste Jesus]

My feeling is, instilling a victim mentality in society, has erased accountability and created a false sense of entitlement. Take my wife's store for instance, a cashier was given a written warning for repeatedly coming in late. This after several verbal warnings went unheeded. They refused to take any responsibility for their own actions and immediately pull out the race card. Like them showing up late for work everyday and disrupting business couldn't possibly have had anything to do with it.

 

[Miken]

This kind of moral panic sucks.

Not too long ago (within my lifetime) in my country, you could literally lose your livelihood for having been at a political rally. There were laws passed to prevent the public service / state employees / officer corps from being subverted by extremism, and these laws were then enacted in such a way that having listened to a leftist speaker at a rally as a college student would permanently end your career as a school teacher or other public servant. As things are in my country, the bias was overwhelmingly against the political left, as the right wing was not perceived as a threat to the state's institutions.

I think it is always bad when it escalates to these levels, and what you term "the woke" exhibit much the same behavior as the commie-panic stricken of days past.

I was around for McCarthy as well.

 

[Cino]

So that's ok, then?

I don't think victimhood is anything to be desired, or that it is a "status" in the positive sense, or that victims are granted a potentially unfair advantage which they somehow earned by their previous suffering.

In short, "victimhood" is not a useful frame of reference to understand what is going on between the woke crowd and their opponents, or the pre- and post-war generations in 70ies Germany, or any such conflict. Being a victim does not make one right or wrong, it is not even a safeguard against becoming a perpetrator oneself. "Victimhood" is a diagnostic yardstick, not a moral one.

That's why I prefer to use other frames of reference to decide whether I want to form a moral judgement, if at all, since taking an involved moral stance in such situations often serves to perpetuate such perpetrator-victim-rescuer triangles (with shifting roles, as can be observed).

All that said, hypocrites, even those who share my political views, I find hard to bear. Maybe it is the plain hypocrisy of ostensibly liberal "woke" types acting like authoritarians that grates on your nerves?