Conservautism
Doubly Afraid of Change
I am actively attempting to deradicalize myself. I dislike puritanism and intolerance. DM me if you want my Discord, Twitter, Reddit, etc.
User ID: 1719
Conservautism
Doubly Afraid of Change
2yr ago
It doesn't mean we're literally ruled by disabled children, but it does mean we're ruled by people who think disabled children and/or death are sacred.
Conservautism
Doubly Afraid of Change
2yr ago
It's a good post, but I wish it explicitly attacked the claim that "to find out who rules over you, find out who you're not allowed to criticize", because that's what's relevant here.
Conservautism
Doubly Afraid of Change
2yr ago
I agree with all of this, but I think you can agree two things are linked while still having separate words for them, thereby acknowledging that they are two different things.
It's a great post, but my reaction was "Yes, any personality trait that anyone could conceivably want medical intervention for should be considered a mental illness, and anyone who has a problem with that is the real baddie for stigmatizing mental illness."
And.. you know, this IS a normative demand I have a preference for having one word that exclusively refers to things that involve government policy and a different word for things that involve individual choices. I want people to voluntarily start using this word. That's normative.
Conservautism
Doubly Afraid of Change
2yr ago
I agree that a Jewish rejection of idolatry would be akin to a rejection of tyranny, but the Jewish voices you see in the media don't actually reject idolatry. You can tell that by the way they treat the holocaust. Dennis Prager said that questioning any part of the official narrative means you're denying it in its totality, which means you're evil, which means that if hell exists, you will go there. And this guy is a dissident Jewish voice!
And yeah, the fact that Jews are a monotheistic religion is important, I guess. But so is the role that Jewish people (were believed to have) played in the formation of the USSR. Why isn't that mentioned in this article? Or in most articles on this subject?
By the way, what're your views on the holocaust, if you don't mind me asking? The fact that people get so mad about holocaust revisionism leads me to believe there must be something to it, but I'm not educated enough to say what that something is. I do believe the Nazi party deliberately murdered several million Jews because they don't want Jews in their territory. I don't care about the specifics beyond that, and I think calling anyone who disagrees on the specifics beyond that a "denier" is insane. It's weird to me that David Cole gets so much flack for saying the gas chambers were fake, when he still claims that the Nazis committed genocide. (And in case anyone lobs an accusation at me, I don't think the gas chambers were fake. I just think that if they were, it would change nothing.)
Conservautism
Doubly Afraid of Change
2yr ago
They are connected, but there is an obvious difference. Why do we use one word, "political", to conflate axiology, morality, and law?
Conservautism
Doubly Afraid of Change
2yr ago
There needs to be a taxonomical distinction between political views and what I have recently decided to call "normative views". Political views relate to government policy, and normative views relate to the way we use language and the way we treat each other, i.e. social norms. Whether we define racism as racial discrimination or "prejudice plus power" is a normative issue, as is whether it's ever okay to misgender someone. These issues are only political insofar as they can be affected at the ballot box, and they generally cannot. (Public schools teaching CRT is an example that you can go after at the ballot box.)
Conservautism
Doubly Afraid of Change
2yr ago
According to NPR, 43% of Americans support criminalizing gender-affirming care and 54% oppose it, whereas two years ago, 28% supported it and 65% opposed it. What caused the surge in opposition? Did people just not know what gender-affirming care was two years ago? Did they assume that psychological evaluations of trans kids were more thorough than they actually were?
Conservautism
Doubly Afraid of Change
2yr ago
Then that's what conservatives should be talking about! Instead they're, at best, focusing on the mental illness, and, at worst, focusing on the ideological aspect. (I'm basing this on lurking headlines and overhearing my dad listening to Ben Shapiro and talk radio stuff.)
Conservautism
Doubly Afraid of Change
2yr ago
I wrote off this story immediately after it broke, because mentally ill males commit school shootings two or three times a year in America. But now, over a day later, I just found out the shooter was biologically FEMALE. That makes it extremely different from other school shootings for reasons the media obviously won't comment on, and I'm extremely surprised I don't see any discussion of this aspect of the story online. Why is a biological female perpetrating this, when the trend has always been male? Could they have overdosed on testosterone?
Conservautism
Doubly Afraid of Change
2yr ago
I do understand the difference, and I do believe I'm capable of sympathy, but not empathy.
Also, on this topic, is there a meaningful difference between empathy and theory of mind? To me, they seem like the same concept and both are things that I lack, but "empathy" is the word people usually use when shaming.
Conservautism
Doubly Afraid of Change
2yr ago
I can recognize fear or sadness if it's obvious enough, but I can't understand why the person feels that way or what would stop them from feeling that way. I also sometimes assume that it's being feigned for malicious purposes, i.e. the people who cried in public when Hillary lost in 2016.
Conservautism
Doubly Afraid of Change
2yr ago
This is a good post. Thank you. We need to meme the phrase "toxic femininity" as an equal counterpart to toxic masculinity. The traits that "toxic masculinity" exists to criticize do exist, though I'd quibble with the implicit claim that they are prevalent in our culture. Toxic femininity, though..
Conservautism
Doubly Afraid of Change
2yr ago
What about theory of mind?
Conservautism
Doubly Afraid of Change
2yr ago
I don't like when people treat empathy as an all-or-nothing, or when they say that not having empathy makes you a bad person. I am capable of empathizing with people, but only when they think the same way I do, which means I hardly have empathy at all. For example, if something makes someone upset, I can understand their thoughts/feelings if the same thing would make me upset. Otherwise, it's like I'm looking at an alien creature. It's why I've never understood why people get offended at jokes when they know that they're jokes, or why people don't find communism as upsetting as racism, and so on. And on the rare occasion I do think I've modeled someone mentally, I usually end up being wrong.
What would you call this phenomenon? Limited empathy?
Conservautism
Doubly Afraid of Change
2yr ago
I guess I agree with the former, but only in the sense that any dramatic irony can ruin immersion. But if we're talking about the latter, I don't think that's true.
I love Breaking Bad, a critically-respected drama, and the show is full of humor that the characters don't react to. Saul is a comic relief character, yes, but you could make the case that Jesse and Walt are both funnier characters, not to mention Todd. I loved the entire bit in the movie with his maid. I love when he paid his respects to her. That was pitch black dark humor and it was great. But Jesse wasn't laughing.
Conservautism
Doubly Afraid of Change
2yr ago
I agree with everything here, except
"You cry and you laugh, or you ponder and you laugh, or you scream and you laugh, or you eat ice cream and you eat bacon, what's not to love"
The problem isn't comedy, it's the repetitive way Marvel inserts comedy.
Conservautism
Doubly Afraid of Change
2yr ago
I don't think they can. I've never even seen anything funny that makes me entirely cease feeling sad or afraid. At best, it's a spoonful of sugar.
Conservautism
Doubly Afraid of Change
2yr ago
Tone is a subset of immersion. Tone is feeling what the characters feel, or what you would feel if you were there with the character. I have never experienced a tone break in the written word, but I have experienced it many times in live-action media. It happens when the actor performs in a way that is designed to elicit laughter or some other reaction to the exclusion of what the protagonist would actually be feeling or what I would be feeling if I were with the protagonist. In fact, as I write this, I'm not sure if there really is a difference between tone and immersion.
My favorite emotion that can be elicited from art is ambivalence. I like media that has parts that are funny and parts that are sad, but I love media in which the parts that are funny are the same as the parts that are sad. Tonal confusion is the best tone, and I think it elevates something good to something great. In real life, when something funny happens, it doesn't break your sorrow or terror. If you've ever seen someone have a psychotic break, you'll see what I mean. Those are often both funny and horrifying.
Conservautism
Doubly Afraid of Change
2yr ago
I hadn't seen that Scott post. Thank you for sharing it.
Conservautism
Doubly Afraid of Change
2yr ago
I agree. I guess this has backfired. I was hoping to be talked down, not up. But the truth matters. I thank you for your honesty.
Conservautism
Doubly Afraid of Change
2yr ago
I am of the opinion that there is no such thing in fiction as a joke ruining the tone. Every time someone complains that a joke has ruined the tone, they are likely misidentifying a problem. For example, the MCU doesn't have a problem with jokes ruining the tone. The MCU has a problem with characterization. The characters all employ the same kind of snark, regardless of whether it fits their established personality.
Conservautism
Doubly Afraid of Change
2yr ago
The Simpsons seems to be accusing anti-CRT parents of practicing a motte and bailey, where the motte is being anti-CRT and the bailey is being anti-teaching about slavery and Jim Crow. It actually looks like The Simpsons is practicing one themselves, where their motte is wanting to teach about history, and their bailey is wanting to teach CRT. Nobody watches The Simpsons anymore, but the existence of this is still boggling my mind. I'm not offended, just confused. In 20 years, will anyone understand what this was about? Will they think that there were literally people trying to whitewash history in this way?
Conservautism
Doubly Afraid of Change
2yr ago
Did you read his graphic novel about open borders? It was great at addressing the economic arguments, just not the cultural ones.
And I say it's a dead end because there's nothing that can be done. Even if we fixed immigration, the call is coming from inside the house. Americans really buy into wokeness, and the people pushing it the hardest are paradoxically the people who have the most to lose from it.
Right. I don't literally think the people who you can't criticize are your rulers, but they are people who your rulers hold sacred. But I'd classify the people who don't want me to "attack" Jews as people who hold Jews sacred. This also applies to concepts. The holocaust is sacred because I can't question it.
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