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PaperclipPerfector  8mo ago (text post)   28085 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 11, 2023

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  1. I agree we should view it as terrible awful behavior. Not sure it should be criminal.

  2. Question is whether there is the possibility of forgiveness. Brand seems to have gotten his life together and decries what he did previously.

I don't think Brand should face criminal charges unless there's good evidence for the criminal allegations; presumably, as in eg. Weinstein's case, that's something that the police and prosecutors will determine. Social sanction? Well, if people want to judge him for fucking a 16 year old girl when he was 35, that's their right.

I'm curious - how do you actually coordinate on enforcing social sanction besides something like a religion? Aka "wokeism" or the ol' faithful of Christianity.

I think this question is confused.

The non-woke and non-christian parts of our society have large and well-used mechanisms of enforcing sanctions. The courts, being fired by your employer or kicked out of an institution, distributed social rejection. I don't see how this is different in kind from the Church proscribing a behavior or exiling someone. And the Church's moral commandments were developed in ways not dissimilar to our own - some were debated by powerful men and legislated, all were evolved and spread among individuals of varying intellect and interests. Fraud and theft are immoral actions too, and we enforce social sanction against it all the time, both via courts and social media.

You don't. It's emergent based on what catches on and what doesn't. It's a social sanction so society is the arbiter as a whole.

That's the point really. It's the distributed judgment of your fellow citizens. And when enough agree, a new convention coalesces and through social shaming and gossip it spreads to a critical mass.

Even with Christianity it only works when enough people agree with the tenets. But if Christianity fails to convince enough people, its reach falls. It still spreads through the same mechanism as every other social judgement.

I’d say social sanction is exactly what he’s facing now, it’s essentially cancellation.

I’m not sure Weinstein got a fair trial. He was basically convicted first in public opinion.

Didn't stop Spacey from somehow dancing through an endless bunch of raindrops.

Or Depp for that matter, where Heard clearly had a 3-0 lead for years.

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