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PaperclipPerfector  2yr ago (text post)   28293 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 25, 2023

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This breach will probably be plugged, since the exploiters are not organized. But I'm not sure how they'll do it since the only way they can do it without folding to essentialism (which they can no longer) is to require political tests which can always be faked.

Why is that the only way they can do it? Isn't the classic obscenity test - "I know it when I see it" - good enough? Arguably, the current regime is just that with more steps designed to obfuscate it. This ties into my thoughts on your first statement:

I've watched intersectionals take Liberalism apart limb from limb using its own reasoning against it. I think turnabout is fair play.

which is cromulent enough on its face, but which doesn't account for the defenses that the "intersectionals" (first time I've encountered this term used as a noun to refer to the people - I like it) have built against this very sort of thing. After all, if you master how to exploit a vulnerability, you also often learn how to fix them. In this case, it's just rejecting the concept of "using reasoning or logic to draw conclusions" as an oppressive made-up structure, in favor of "listening to marginalized voices." Which, given the degrees of freedom in determining what a "marginalized voice" is, in the context of some conference discriminating its attendants, is just another version of "I know it when I see it."

To address the core of your argument, I disagree that intersectional greatness on the attack translates into a learned defense. That may be how strategy works sometimes but not all the time.

Indeed most of the gambits that are and were deployed to sustain breaches, up and including the use of arbitrary power to break principles where contradiction is effective, are not translatable to the defense.

Progressives are not good at building or sustaining solid institutions. They are great at taking over existing ones and getting their effort's worth out of the ruins they end up holding, but builders and stewards they are not.

To take this specific example, the use of arbitrary power to maintain a "i know it when i see it" standard requires the constant deployment of political capital to defend a blatant injustice that can easily be attacked. This is not a problem if this is used to exploit a breach, such as in the case of preferential admissions into an institution as one's power can grow faster than is spent, but it's not something that can be maintained in the long term without a legitimizing principle.

Eventually someone you don't like gets the arbitrary power and can wipe you out since all restraints are gone. If it is "i'll know it when I see it", then you may very well say that only neo-post-chisto-integralist women are real women for these purposes, insofar as you have a coalition backing you.

I've long predicted that intersectionalism is going to have to mutate into a proper imperial religion if it seeks to maintain its gains as Christianity had to do. Either that or it'll end up being the same sort of flash in the pan as the Terreur or the Cultural Revolution. But I'm not sure which is more likely even now.

To take this specific example, the use of arbitrary power to maintain a "i know it when i see it" standard requires the constant deployment of political capital to defend a blatant injustice that can easily be attacked. This is not a problem if this is used to exploit a breach, such as in the case of preferential admissions into an institution as one's power can grow faster than is spent, but it's not something that can be maintained in the long term without a legitimizing principle.

Eventually someone you don't like gets the arbitrary power and can wipe you out since all restraints are gone. If it is "i'll know it when I see it", then you may very well say that only neo-post-chisto-integralist women are real women for these purposes, insofar as you have a coalition backing you.

These are fair points, and I particularly find the note about having to expend political capital to be a very good one. But what if these people believe that they have effectively infinite political capital, and what if they're right? We can talk about how naked power moves make the populace less likely to politically support you, but I think the protection they developed against the vulnerabilities they exploited can keep that at bay such that the long term is the long term. At some point as that long term gets lengthened, it becomes effectively infinite for someone living in 2023.

I've long predicted that intersectionalism is going to have to mutate into a proper imperial religion if it seeks to maintain its gains as Christianity had to do. Either that or it'll end up being the same sort of flash in the pan as the Terreur or the Cultural Revolution. But I'm not sure which is more likely even now.

I'm not sure either. After all, even tracing all the way back to the intellectual roots in the 20th century, it's barely a blip so far in historical terms. I don't know what a "proper imperial religion" is, but by my lights, I think it has already mutated - or perhaps "evolved" or "ascended" - to a proper religion at this point. I see it as one possible next evolution of religion, one that's developed in response to the greater materialistic and scientific thinking by the populace of the past couple centuries in comparison to most times before, which has greatly weakened the status of traditional religions which often directly contradict materialism or science. The religion that succeeds in this environment is the religion that convinces its believers that it's not a religion or even that it's antithetical to religion, and I think intersectionality (or CRT or wokeness or idpol or whatever name its adherents refuse to let others label it by) is proving to be extremely successful at this.

It’s easy enough for organizers to implement “I know it when I see it.” It also opens up new attack surfaces. “Live by the sword…”

...Isn't this just reimplementing monarchy with extra steps? The liberal thing is supposed to be figuring out how to run things on rules, but the rules don't work so we get "I know it when I see it", but that just hands power to an "I"; what's the difference between "I know it when I see it" and "‘L’etat c’est moi’"?

I knew there was a reason I didn't trust NrX...

I have been to night clubs where they obviously wanted to limit the number of straight regular white men, but this is in a country where face checks are just not a thing and would really enrage people. So they put an alt black female security at the door who would have a short chat with you at the door asking questions like "what does tolerance mean to you". Unless you really believe all the bromides (or you have an autistic level of cynical knowledge of social justice thinking like me and my friends), it is very difficult to give a fake correct answer.

Figuring out how to run things on rules works when you have a unified culture where people interpret the rules in the same way, but fails when that ceases to be true.

Maybe I’ve misunderstood but haven’t you said the same many times?

In the absence of a shared understanding, the reification of a local or federal “I” is the only alternative to full anarchy.

Quite.

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