Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?
This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.
Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.
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Notes -
Re: the FC thing—that was mostly relevant as a reminder that if that sentiment was broadly shared here, then I should not put my energy into building this space. If the zeitgeist of a space is “we don’t even want to live in a country with you,” it sure isn’t the sort of space I want to put my creative energy into.
As for the map—the map is that I spend the overwhelming majority of my politically relevant time online pushing against prog excesses, I have never self-identified as one and continue not to, and at this point I literally work for a law firm that is overtly anti-prog, but due to a few high-level traits, a loud subset of people cannot help but map me into that category regardless. The map is that after years of watching you and yours form overtly and obviously incorrect models of who I am and what I do, then cling to them after you should very well know better, I prefer to spend my time engaging with people who don’t do that. The broader map is that some form of this sentiment, spread over a hundred excellent former regulars here, is why there are a hundred excellent former regulars here, and the problem is not with them.
Well, it all feels a bit out of left field to me. I never asked for putting your creative energy into here, and where you decide to put it doesn't even require justification.
I thought we were talking about the general sense of betrayal you feel with this community, and I thought this was supposed to be an example of what makes you feel this way. If it isn't - my bad. If it is - I have trouble seeing anything hurtful about that statement. It's normal for people to live in a country where there fundamental values are respected. I'm pretty sure you expressed such a sentiment yourself.
You don't think you might be reading just a little bit too much into a single word? I never attributed the excesses of progressivism to you, or dismissed your work against them. It was a shorthand, and it's a relative term, and I distinctly remember you playing it for a joke, that a gay furry is the most conservative person at your law school. Is it really so wild you still look progressive to someone from a different background?
It is a reflection of that sense of betrayal. I'm not sure what's odd about feeling betrayed by a large chunk of your online community rallying behind the idea that they don't want to share a country with you. That you would struggle to understand it is a bit baffling.
Like, c'mon: "I don't even want to live in a group of hundreds of millions of people that includes both me and you. Your ideals disgust me on a fundamental level. But hey, now that you've broken out, where's the promotion for us hometown lads?" Surely you can see why I'd find that a bit rich. You cannot at once reject someone as unworthy to share a polis with you and expect them to treat your companionship as meaningful.
The friend-enemy distinction matters. Put bluntly, I see you personally as wanting to put me on the enemy side of the friend-enemy distinction, repeatedly defend that choice, and then post in resentment about a lack of friendship resulting from that. Choose one.
I don't at all think I'm reading too much into a single word, no. It's obnoxious for people to treat me as a representative of a coalition that rejects me and that I reject, and it is a specific coalition, not simply a relative term. Using it suggests neither understanding nor a wish to understand, and I find it much easier to simply build elsewhere than to bridge a determinedly unbridgeable gap.
Well again, I'm not struggling to understand, I just disagree.
No? I don't know what to tell you... You can find me as disgusting as you want, but If I find some interesting bit of info at your Substack, I'll drop a link to it when sharing it with others. If I forget to do so, and rake in a million views from it, I'll probably feel pretty shitty about it.
I don't really expect anything from how your treatment of my companionship. I'm just trying to figure out what your grievances are, and figure out what I can learn from them, and if I can improve. But this particular one... like I said I'm not sure on what grounds you're expecting anything more than "sorry to hear that, bro". Like I said I consider it 100% normal to want to live in a country that respects your fundamental values, so if you're going to get sufficiently values-diverse group together, you will inevitably end up with people not wanting to share a country with each other. It is again quite strange for me to see you insist on this, since like I said you expressed the same sentiment yourself, or at least I don't know how else to understand "I want to live in a culture where my family and I can live according to our values and build alongside people who share those values". Maybe there's supposed to be a difference between "country" and "culture", but no matter how I slice it, it sounds at most like the same thing with extra steps.
It matters when you're doing political activism. This place is very explicitly not a place for that, so I don't see the issue.
Quite frankly it's not even about friendship. I saw what you did as akin to meme accounts on Twitter reposting some webcomic or another, but diligently removing the artist's signature. The analogy doesn't quite fit since the post in question wasn't written here, but I can't help but parse the situation this way. It's not even that much of a big deal as far as I'm concerned, so I don't get why you insist on portraying me as making unreasonable demands.
If you want to tell me how it came off to you that's fair enough, but you can't tell me how I meant it.
That's a bit ironic, given the above.
Compare it to individual houses in a neighborhood. A family's rules reign supreme in their own home, no one can demand they do something. But outside that house, they don't hold that power and have to negotiate if they want anything done.
The issue is the misuse of "country" because it implies a certain level of being able to make moral demands of others. We don't live in such an age. If a man from Kansas approached one from New York, the idea that the former could demand the latter change their behavior or views to align with a different morality would be considered absurd by most people.
But that's why it's a bad analogy. There can be subcultures, or countries that contain different cultures by region, but these days there usually is a common culture uniting the entire country, so it's not something confined like a household vs/ a neighborhood. It's also not something based solely on negotiation, and can be quite oppressive. Progressives are usually the first to point this out with things like homophobia, strict gender roles, etc.
For me, I'd much rather hear "I don't want to be a part of your country / culture! Leave me alone, I'll make my own with like-minded people", than to hear demands of being in the same polity from someone with completely incompatible values. Same energy as having a stalker that deluded themselves they're in a relationship with you.
It's hardly common if it's oppressing certain groups, right? That's a sign one group's beliefs are dominating other groups.
I don't follow... there has to be commonality for domination to work. Some have pulled it off, but it tends to be hard to oppress minorities, when you're not the majority.
The commonality would just be colocation, right? I can't impact the people of China unless I live there. Not easily, anyways.
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