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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   34498 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 6, 2023

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IS MY CLASH WITH THEMOTTE POSTERS PURELY VALUE BASED

Let's assume that your poorly-developed, unsourced arguments are all 100% true. They're not, and throwing music and novels in there is almost absurd enough to suggest parody, but I don't want to deal with your Gish gallop, so I'm going to use my imagination.

Why should I care? If, as you seem to think, [redacted] are unfeeling automata who may neither comprehend art nor build genuine rapport...I'm not seeing the problem. Explain to me why the existence of such people is a bad thing. From: @netstack

17 upvotes!

Now, the fascinating thing about this post is it takes my position far further than I could ever imagine doing so and then confronts me with a person who claims it would be irrelevant if this extreme position were fully true. That "unfeeling automata" might, if representing a substantial portion of your elite, convert your somewhat free country into a nightmare where you never saw an unmasked face again, seems not to bother him in the slightest.

Now I'd be tempted to ignore this as a one-off but then there's this response to my comment on foot-binding.

"...Furthermore, similar laundry lists of objectionable practices would be possible to assemble concerning any race of people or, indeed, of the human race. Even assuming the Chinese are every bit as bad as you say, that doesn't make them special.** Even assuming the [redacted] are every bit as bad as you say**, that doesn't make them special." - naraburns

Now this is fascinating to me, because while I can intuitively understand the conditions leading to things like genocide, or more to the point physical child abuse, footbinding falls within the entirely alien moral universe world to me. Given the choice between an otherwise loving family who bound my feet, and an otherwise violent one that didn't I cannot possibly imagine choosing the latter. I'm pretty sure this isn't just my gender speaking for another gender, and I'm more than willing to entertain what might be considered misogynistic thinking. Yet @DaseIndustries hits me with this.

"...Read some interviews of surviving women from traditional families who have had that done to them, see what they think of it."

Now, I don't doubt that someone of Dase's intellectual caliber understands why the testimony of a person, victimized irreperably by loved ones, in a cultural context where this was normal; might be less than reliable. So I'm left, once again with the feeling that our underlying basic instincts must just be different in some way. How would we go about figuring out whether this is the case?

  • -28

At the risk of making discussion even less substantive and more personal, I ask: are you, by any chance, like myself, a self-hating person of East Asian descent?

The only people I know who are as obsessed as you are with the particular deficiencies of the Chinese soul are myself and a small number of acquaintances, also of Chinese descent. Occasionally we will have conversations along the lines of "why do we just kind of suck?" We'll challenge our other friends to name a single courageous, empathetic, inspiring Chinese leader, and they'll come up with some names, and I'll say those are pretty weak examples, and they'll say, well how many courageous empathetic inspiring leaders of other races can you name? And I'll ask whether basic kindness is even a virtue in Chinese culture, which will elicit eyerolls. Etc.

While I am somewhat heartened by the testimonies of commenters here who insist that they have interacted with East Asians and found them all right, I remain, like you, hooked on this idea of a fundamental racial difference in disposition, even if I cannot put my finger on exactly what it is. And I'm sure I would be shot down just as you have been if I tried to make more specific claims. However, I'm less sure that this is important on a geopolitical or civilizational level. There's definitely some vibe mismatch, and sometimes vibes are superficial and sometimes not. Anyway, if you do not happen to be an undercover East Asian, I suppose I can only express my hope for general tolerance.

I will respond to you on one specific point:

3.2 MASKS PEOPLE, MASKS! Explain to me why, until perhaps the last two months, your average East-Asian American was more likely to be masked than blue-anon types. Isn't the parsimonious answer simply that infants who won't fight to uncover their nose, become adults that are indifferent to showing their face?

Speaking only for myself, I still wear a mask sometimes for several reasons: 1) it's cold out, and a mask keeps my face warm, 2) I seem to get sick easily, 3) when I have allergies I feel more free to sneeze/throat-clear on a crowded bus if I'm wearing a mask, 4) it seems to produce some feeling of psychological safety, as with sunglasses, 5) the lower half of my face isn't especially attractive, so I'm not losing too much, 6) it might deter unwanted chitchat when I'm in a hurry, a bit like headphones. (Reasons 4-6 are more just slight benefits that counterbalance the negatives.)

Is your circle of acquaintances familiar with Lee Kuan Yew? He’s easily among the best national leaders in the modern era.

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