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PaperclipPerfector  4mo ago (text post)   25705 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 1, 2024

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I think a good comparison is the word heretic. Imagine you are an atheist and a puritan accuses you of being a heretic. Do you say "yes, you are right I am indeed a heretic." Only if you are trying to be provocative, but really you would just dismiss the entire frame of that question. No, I'm not going to admit to you that I am a heretic, I'm not going to accept your frame of the world by embracing that label, I dismiss the label altogether.

I don't have to imagine I'm an atheist, I am, and I'd happily confirm that I'm a heretic relative to any particular religion's dogma that defines me as such. I know that I meet that definition and don't have any problem with the word because it is has no moral worth to me.

The way that example is different from the one we're talking about here is that the people who meet a standard definition of racism don't want to be called racists. You imagine an atheist wouldn't want to be called a heretic, but why should we care? We've actively rejected that frame, so we're not embarrassed about being accurately labeled.

Whereas most racists have not actually rejected the social frame that gives rise to definitions and accusations of racism. They still want to be an upstanding member of that society, and they still want to think of themselves as morally correct within that society. So they want that society to drop it's own labels and definitions in order to accommodate them.

But could you be so blasé about labels like heretic or infidel if they carried with it serious social repression? If you couldn’t get a job, or lost all your friends or contact with your children if people knew you were an infidel, would you still happily accept the label? Racist is a label that still carries those kinds of consequences for those so labeled. Heretic and infidel really don’t outside of heavily religious communities.

Right, that was the point of my last paragraph.

People who meet society's current definition of racist just want society to change its beliefs or norms so that they're not punished. The idea that 'racist' is an incoherent or meaningless category is primarily a rationalization to justify that effort.

Saying that the social sanctions for being racist are too extreme and should be mollified is a real position that can be argued.

Saying that people are using 'the worst argument in the world' or 'labels as superweapons' to apply those sanctions to people who don't actually deserve them under the original purpose and intent of those sanctions is a real position that can be argued.

I don't think 'that word doesn't mean anything because I don't want it to' is a real argument, here. I think it's mostly a rationalization to try to dodge the issue, and society won't accept it.

I don't have to imagine I'm an atheist, I am, and I'd happily confirm that I'm a heretic

That's very brave of you, you could write "I am le heretic!" all day long and get updoots on Reddit.

If someone though is sincerely accusing you of being an infidel or heretic and you confirm their accusation you are accepting their frame of reference.

When you say you will "happily confirm you are a heretic" it's a "what are you going to do about it?" play. But if you actually lived in a society where that accusation had weight and social consequences, and you opposed the conventional wisdom for what entailed heresy, you would not accept that label for yourself or use it to describe your beliefs.

If someone though is sincerely accusing you of being an infidel or heretic and you confirm their accusation you are accepting their frame of reference.

As a factual statement, a non-believer is an infidel. That's what infidel means. As a factual statement, someone who believes in racial discrimination and segregation is a racist.

You can reject the religion that labels nonbelievers infidels, and you can reject a society that abhors racism, but the words still have meanings that accurately describe a set of beliefs or lack thereof.

Yes, there are social consequences for being a racist, as there were at one time harsher social consequences for being an infidel. I understand why you would like to remove the social consequences for being a racist. That does not, however, change the factual meaning of the word or your beliefs. You and @hoffmeister are trying to argue that "racism doesn't exist," when what you're actually claiming is "racism is good and shouldn't be stigmatized." Those are not the same arguments, and the objection to the word "racist" is one of tactical semantics, because of the negative weight "racism" has today. You would prefer a less freighted term - like, say, "racialist" - but that doesn't mean "racist" is not an accurate label. You might not like someone calling you a racist. I would not like someone flinging "infidel" at me as an insult, especially if it potentially carried more serious consequences. But I cannot honestly say I'm not an "infidel."

You can reject the religion that labels nonbelievers infidels

Yes, this is my exact point. If I reject a religion that labels me an infidel or heretic, I am not going to accept that label to describe myself or my own beliefs. This is really basic stuff, nobody does this, except for farming upvotes on /r/atheism which falls under the "intentionally provocative" mode of embracing that label only as a power flex.

I reject the religion that frames the entire concept of racism which, by the way, relative to world history is a brand new concept tightly coupled with our own post-WWII civic religion which is exactly what we reject. "Words have meaning", exactly, which is why it is stupid for you to demand that I accept the framing of a religion that I reject by embracing that word to describe myself. Words have meaning, so I refuse to play along with that garbage and humor a religious fanaticism that I oppose.

Sure, I don't expect you to say "Yes, I'm a racist." But under any definition of racist, your beliefs fit. You are objecting to the label, not denying the phenomenon.

So when you post that "racism doesn't exist," I will continue to point out that it does, in fact, exist, even if it is something that you would like to be embraced and relabeled.

The word racism, like the word "sinfulness", exists insofar as it is a mechanism for controlling the minds and behaviors of the laity. So you can argue that sinfulness exists all day long because there is a religion that has a dictionary definition for it, and it lays out a clear set of criteria for the behaviors that constitute sinfulness. That doesn't interest me, my interest is in dislodging the mind-control broadcasted by that word.

The word racism, like the word "sinfulness", exists insofar as it is a mechanism for controlling the minds and behaviors of the laity.

Nonsense. The word racism describes a belief system. I think that belief system is bad, you think that belief system is good. If we used some other word or phrase (like "racial self interest") to mean the same thing but with a positive connotation, and that received widespread adoption, you would not object to it. You are objecting to the perception of "sinfulness," not to the objectively observable behavior which some people label sinful.

Sinfulness encompasses belief systems too, Amadan.

This is like us arguing over whether BAP is a sinner. If I reject the religious system that frames sinfulness, I'm not going to say "yeah BAP is totally a sinner" I'm going to say "can we stop trying to use the word 'sinner' to pigeonhole beliefs when we should all frankly know better? Sinfulness isn't real, the label is a mechanism for mind-control and behavior-control." This is what Hoffmeister is doing.

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If someone though is sincerely accusing you of being an infidel or heretic and you confirm their accusation you are accepting their frame of reference.

Yeah, that's how communication works.

Words have meaning, and have meaning in context. Just because you disagree with an opponent's worldview doesn't mean that words within the context of that worldview stop having discrete and coherent meanings.

There's a strict empirical definition of what it means to be a heretic to Christians even if I don't believe in Christianity, and there's a literally true answer to that empirical question. There's a strict empirical definition of what it means to be (for example) a racist under the utilitarian definition of racism, even if you reject the empirical racism as a politically meaningful concept, and there's a literally true answer to that empirical question.

It makes sense that you would want to 'reject the frame' if you think you can evade social sanctions thereby. That's a pretty normal thing to do, especially if you think the social sanctions are unjust.

But my point is,. just acknowledge the fact that by doing so, you are running from the truth and trying to muddy the waters. There's a true matter of fact that you're denying because you think people will react to hearing it badly/unjustly.

In a society where it’s illegal to be a heretic, one has to hide one’s atheism to avoid prosecution and the points here about wordplay are irrelevant.

If I’m an atheist in say Iran, then the label is not the problem, it’s that my deconversion from Islam is a tad illegal.

Even in the US the label of apostate or heretic doesn’t matter in terms of “accepting their frame of reference”; what mattered is how my family/friends/society responded to my deconversion. It’s the object level, not the label.

Similarly, if say one has clear racial animosity, many people can find that abhorrent without ever needing to invoke the word “racism.” That term has been abused, but the 1995 version was much less so.

The hard bit is that certain facts about reality do seem to be “racist” or “sexist” and the toxicity of these labels keeps polite society from understanding reality in certain policy areas, inconveniently. That doesn’t make it better for those who really just dislike a given race or sex and/or want to discriminate against them and want those labels to disappear.

An atheist is specifically not a heretic, and in puritan society atheism would in fact be a valid defense against charges of heresy.

Isn't a heretic 'a believer who practices some heresy' -- which lets atheists specifically off the hook on that charge? (and puts Puritans in jeopardy, incidentally)

So the right response would be something about glass houses I suppose.

“Apostate” is what we atheists get.

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