You will find that you listen better
Oh for the love of god. You are the last person who should be lecturing others on listening better.
I do listen, but I also talk a lot. This includes talking about stuff that I have already got in my own head. I don't just talk about what you said to me, but I also talk about what I have got on my own mind. When I talk about hateful movements that I have been worried about, I am not NECESSARILY talking about you. I am more likely to be talking TO you about THEM.
It was because of anti-wokeist rhetoric that that man was afraid of me.
What's your evidence for that? It sounds like something anti-trans rhetoric would cause. Do you know specifically what was said that set him off?
In any event, some people have been known to mistake anti-racism rhetoric for anti-white rhetoric, and become afraid that somebody would be coming for them on account of their skin color. Do you think, to forestall that scenario, we should all refrain from criticizing racism?
Anti-wokism tends to be associated with transphobia.
Have you ever heard of a "premature anti-fascist"? It's a concept from the McCarthy period. The idea was that yes, sure, ever since the fascists tried to take over the world starting around 1938, we all know fascism is evil, and all sensible people oppose it. It's good to be anti-fascist, here in 1950. But back in the early 1930s there were already a number of people who were making a stink about how bad fascism was. And the fascists hadn't done anything really evil that early, so why did these people go off on how bad it was? It would be tempting to think their antifascism was prescient -- that they were folks with more situational awareness than the majority -- but no, according to the McCarthyists, their antifascism wasn't ahead of its time, but premature. It supposedly showed not that the early anti-fascists were
smarter but rather that they had
worse reasons for being against the fascists. I.e., the McCarthyists figured premature anti-fascism tends to be associated with communism. The communists were among the first people to sound the alarm about fascism; consequently anybody who had made an issue of fascism before the late 1930s was suspected of being a communist, and they figured he should be investigated, accused, and vilified for his putative communist tendencies.
The murders and the attacks were already happening by the 1930's, but the first people they attacked were the most misunderstood. This includes the 1920 attack on Magnus Hirschfeld by a folkish mob, which left him so grievously injured that a doctor pronounced him dead. He survived and recovered, but the violence in that country continued to get worse.
Also, if you are interested in logical empiricism, you might be interested in the story of Moritz Schlick, who was one of the progenitors of logical empiricism. He was one of the founders of the Vienna School, and he was their leader. He was one of the forefathers of logical positivism, which developed later into logical empiricism as it reached the English-speaking world, and logical empiricism is very important as a part of modern secular philosophy. He was murdered in 1936 during the rise of Austrofascism.
Germany and Austria were already dangerous places to be, even by 1920, for some people. I would object to the idea that the escalation was not something that people that were at the center of the violence could not have seen coming. For many people, the situation had already become scary.
By the way, I am an admirer of Pyotr Kropotkin. I would not say that I would take his book and apply it in an orthodox manner, but if you read about his history and read some of his work as a naturalist, I think that he was one of the most important and influential philosophers of the time. He had a friend in the United Kingdom named Oscar Wilde, whom you might also have heard of. Pyotr Kropotkin was one of the fathers of the modern anarchist movement. His connection with Wilde played a HUGE role in the early LGBTQ community and how the community was originally organized.
*suddenly flies up over a map of Ukraine* Now, many people think that I am weird to belabor this, but anarchist phlosophy, inspired by Pyotr Kropotkin, is alive in well in certain Ukrainian cities. While those that directly follow Pyotr Kropotkin's ideas may constitute a minority group, I would also point out that cities where the anarchists have had the greatest influence have also been among the most effective at repelling the Russian invasion. This includes the city of Kharkiv, and if you look at the city of Kharkiv in relation to Moscow, it really ought to have been one of the first cities to fall. Instead of following expectation, the defense around Kharkiv has been particularly fierce. While it would be false to say that there are enough anarchists in Kharkiv to give them credit for the prodigious and unexpected resistance against the invasion around Kharkiv, I think that the fact that so many people there have been sympathetic with an anti-authoritarian system of ideas could arguably be related to the culture, in that city, having become naturally inimical to an authoritarian regime.
*alights on the map* Now, I want to be clear that I am, foremost, anti-authoritarian. I do have other views, and my views on economics and taxation are really complex and, whether you know it or not, informed by science. *raises a forepaw coquettishly* I love studying economics, and actually, my reading on the subject goes back to the early work of Knut Wicksell. Also, many people would be surprised to find that John Maynard Keynes was a) bisexual and b) politically very similar to today's Elon Musk, actually, including that habit of saying things that come across as more insensitive than they were actually intended.
I'm kind of luke-warm on Musk, but I don't think that being a convinced transphobe is really on his list of shortcomings. He's not a transphobe. He's just a dragon. Dragons don't hate people. We are just rude. Just because he is a dragon does not mean that I always agree with him, but he is nevertheless a dragon.
He actually proposed putting dragon wings on his ship, which is literally named Dragon.
*shakes her head violently to clear it* Pardon the digression upon the digression. Back to the original digression. I actually don't have inflexible opinions about economics or tax policy because the truth is that there is not really a perfect consensus, among economists. Nevertheless, I do think that I would be worried if a political leader were not at least trying to consult with reputable economic experts in regard to topics like tax policy, and I would rather a political leader take the advice of reputable economists than just follow my own current pet theories. I may be literate about economics, but I do not consider myself to be a prophet.
I do not follow prophets. I eat them. Because I am a dragon.
Regardless of the mutability of my opinions about economic theory, I am principally anti-authoritarian. I could never feel comfortable living under any authoritarian regime at all, whether it is right-wing or left-wing. It would not work for me. Interestingly, there is actually a neurological reason why I am the way that I am.
By the way, you should read my weird, wandering, roleplay-laced posts because I read about some interesting shit.
APPARENTLY, entrepreneurial types of personalities (I am one, even though I also work for a wage) actually have different brains from other people. Just like some people's brains are transgender brains, some people have brains that will never enjoy being told what they are or are not allowed to think and how they are or are not allowed to live. This is a brain difference about yourself that you could not change if you even wanted to!
People who want to be their own bosses -- like entrepreneurs -- may fall into this neurological group.
www.entrepreneur.com
This is why you might be sympathetic toward transgender people's plight, but when their defenders get too overzealous about telling you how you are or are not allowed to think, it utterly pisses you off. If this is you, then you could not change this about yourself even if you wanted. No matter how long you live, you will never feel comfortable with authoritarianism. You will never feel comfortable with having your own will subverted. Not even for reasons you would otherwise agree with. You are utterly stuck with the brain you've got.
Are you following? The point of my little history lesson is, when somebody criticizes the wokes and you react by blaming him for transphobia even though he didn't say anything against trans people, you are being a McCarthyist. Don't be a McCarthyist.
I told you, I am not on Twatter, which is the primary instrument for promoting those kinds of authoritarian movements. I just happen to be a transgender person, and I am absolutely stuck with the brain that I have. I am not capable of feeling comfortable with being seen by others around me as a "he." It will always feel creepy and unpleasant to me. I cannot HELP but to feel this way. I am stuck with it. The brain that I have is the product that I have. It is not customizable. It is sold as-is, no warranty, and the price is non-negotiable.
However, I also have an anti-authoritarian philosophical point-of-view and an intensely anti-authoritarian brain. When I was a kid, I literally threw a computer at a teacher because he grabbed me by the arm. Because I also like to treat others as I would like to be treated, I see it as incumbent upon me to get you to give enough of a shit about me, as a person, that it matters to you how I feel. I have to sell myself just like I would have to sell you a product. While I can inform you that I will inevitably find misgendering to be offensive, I still have to persuade you to care if you have offended me. If I have done nothing at all to give you any reason whatsoever to care how I feel, then it is quite mad if I expect you to care if you offend me.
If actually can persuade you to care, though, then you will call me by whatever pronoun I wish to be called, not because you are afraid of getting into trouble for calling me something else but because I am your friend. It is natural for you to want your friend to feel comfortable and happy. This is not a "woke religion" imposing restrictions upon your behavior, but it is your own rational behavior toward someone for whom you feel at least a small degree of affection. You like your friends, and you want them to feel good, even if you personally think that the things that make them feel good are a little weird.
However, I am also going to point out that anti-wokism is not really making a departure from everything that was wrong with wokism. They are absolutely embracing the same exact strategy, but where the wokists were taking an authoritarian strategy toward defending the interests of people of color and transgender people, the anti-wokists are taking an authoritarian strategy toward attacking our interests.
If you look at the followers of people like DeSantis, they are harassing anybody that criticizes his homophobic bill that would restrict the ability of teachers to support their LGBTQ students and students that have family members that are LGBTQ. They are calling people "groomers," and they are doxxing people. They are trying to get people arrested for being child-molesters. They are doing anything in their power to destroy and harass and beleaguer anyone that does not hate LGBTQ as much as DeSantis does. They are using the same toxic authoritarian approach.
My opinion is that it would be better to be like the Ukrainian anarchists during World War II. They opposed both the Soviets and the Nazis.
Me: "Put away the pills, Morpheus."
She slams down her glass violently, making the table shudder. "Pour me a shot of the black and then a chaser of the green!"
Morpheus: "Nuuuu! It would make you too powerful!"
Me:
She pulls out a giant pistol "SERVE IT NEAT, MOTHERFUCKER, OR YOU WILL DIE!"
Morpheus:
He cries and blubbers, but, with his hand trembling violently, he pours the psychopathic dragon her poison. "Don't hurt me!"
Me:
The dragon gulps down the sticky stuff and then slams down her glass for the chaser, which she also tosses back. Her already absinthe-green eyes start to glow radiactively, and a great explosion of power emanates from her. Tentacle wires sprout from her head, and she rises up to become the Goddess of the Matrix as she cackles insanely.
The Black Army was the Ukrainian anarchist militia that helped to bring down the Tsar.
The Green Army was a disorganized peasant militia movement that rose up to defend themselves and their communities against both the Bolsheviks and the Nazis. And yes, many of them had a
tachnaka, which is a horse-drawn armored machine-gun, parked on their property. The
tachnaka made sense, in those people's context, because it was easier for them to get access to enough strong horses to pull it than it was for them to keep a steady supply of gasoline.
*poses for you at three-quarter angle*
Black dragon.
*gazes at you directly, so you can see her absinthe-green eyes clearly*
Green eyes. The color symbolism has a history behind it. Black is a symbol of anarchism. Green is a symbol of wildness, but it is also a symbol of the peasant rebellion against both the Bolsheviks and the Nazis. I originally liked the green because it was a symbol of wildness, but the historical link with Makhnovism has made it more important.
My family was living in a rural area for a reason, even though I consider their reasoning to be misguided. I actually like the city better for the same reasons why they were out there: where people in rural areas are nosy, meddling so-and-sos, people in cities literally don't care what you do as long as you don't bother them. My parents, though, were descended from groups of Christians that had moved to the United States and eventually to rural areas of the United States because they were fed up with authoritarian governments cocktating to them about what they were allowed to believe and how they were allowed to worship and how they were allowed to live. They just wanted to get left alone, and they were willing to go to war and commit bloody murder with muskets and bayonets in order to defend their right to get left alone. They didn't want slaves. They just wanted to live their lives. Many of them were also transported over here as criminals, and they were considered to be criminals in the countries they had come from because they had serious problems with authority. Unfortunately, they were wrong about the idea that you are destined to get left alone just because you have fewer people around you. It does not work that way. In a rural area, your neighbors will actually storm into your house and act like they live there, and you can't get rid of them unless you bribe them with food. In a city, you can't even get people to come over unless you host an event and offer free food and beer, and otherwise, people do not even look at you. It is glorious.
Even though I am urban, I really have the same wild spirit, and because I find authoritarian movements to be incredibly disturbing, I have become intensely sensitive to the warning signs of an authoritarian movement.
Just like the German and Austrian folkish movement, they do not advertise themselves as authoritarian, but they do habitually harass any minority group that they consider to be a scapegoat. They terrorize anybody that opposes or disagrees with their current leaders. They nevertheless bait people into following them by pretending that they are rebelling against the
status quo, and in the minds of their followers, they are only acting in this way in order to "liberate themselves from oppression."
They use the presence of a rival authoritarian movement as something to set themselves against so as to give people a false illusion that they are the opposite of that other authoritarian movement, but at heart, they are really the same fucking thing in different clothing.
I am not trying to tell you to like how wokeism (or wokeness or whatever) was done because I was never really comfortable with the political strategy that was inspired by using "tweet-storms" to harass and beleaguer and terrorize anyone that disagreed with a specific point-of-view, but I am telling you that the same shit is being used for different reasons.
If you are given a choice between two different authoritarian regimes, do you want to know what system of reasoning I use to figure out which of two intolerable regimes I want most to tell to go set themselves on fire?
The anti-woke people don't care about opposing the things that were really wrong with wokeness, but in practice, they are really opposed to the only good things about that movement.
The truth is that the followers of DeSantis are already harassing and terrorizing anyone that opposes him. If you don't agree with his policies aimed at silencing and repressing LGBTQ, then they will do anything in their power to get you branded as a "pedophile" (the currently popular term for that being "groomer") or otherwise make your life not even worth living. They constitute a very dangerous extremist movement.
I know what these people are like. I have faced them on different turf.
Those motherfuckers don't care more about anyone's freedom of speech than the Russian government, with their phony "denazification" message, cares about human rights. They might pretend they are doing what they do in the name of freedom of speech, but it is a scam.
I recently got a job offer, which was an attractive-sounding work-from-home job that promised a really high salary. They even sent me a big check to pay for my supplies, and they told me to take part of it as a "sign-up bonus." When it was time to buy my fabled supplies, they said, "just log onto Zelle, and send $1,000 to this account linked with an anonymous email, and your very important supplies will be shipped to you direct!"
I immediately picked up the phone and reported them for check fraud. How long it takes them to get caught, I have no idea, but it's not my problem, anymore.
To a cheerful Disney tune, "It's a scam, it's a scam, it's a scam, it's a scam, IT'S A SCAM!"
*flies a quick circle around a mock-up of Big Ben, leaving a trail of pixie dust in her wake*
It's a scam, and all of these news stories that show transgender people getting people fired from their jobs and otherwise behaving badly is being used to build up sympathy for an authoritarian movement that is really aimed at undermining the liberty of transgender people, including transgender people like myself that HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH IT.
At the time when SOME transgender people were getting on-board with "wokeness" or whatever the right term for it is, I was not involved in that community, but I was dealing with a crisis among the zooey community, which came to a head in 2018 and 2019. It was a fucking nightmare. The old zooey community's organizational strategy was just seriously stupid. The way they organized their community was that they traded dirt on each other so that they would have a system of "mutually assured destruction" to keep the peace, but when some of them turned out to be murderous psychopaths, everything went way sideways very fast. I was never especially involved before, but I have been playing a role in trying to help stabilize the tattered remnants of the community. It is going to take us more than a generation to fully recover, and even that will be tricky and perilous.
Therefore, I utterly missed out on "wokeness" and quite honestly have no truck with it, either way. Believe me, I do not give a damn about "wokeness," but I am just a transgender woman and trying my best to live my life in peace.
Anarchy cannot really be pursued by creating chaos because chaos is almost invariably used as an excuse for imposing tyranny. People are only tempted to truckle to a tyrant when they are afraid, angry, and helpless, and these feelings tend to be a consequence of a disordered society. Therefore, we can only succeed at defeating tyranny by the willing pursuit of order.
Ironic but true.
Well, one way that we try to bring order to our lives is through a system of etiquette. Etiquette is not really compulsory, but it is a generally understood system of rules that you can choose to follow, to make a gesture of your good intentions toward others. You do not follow it out of fear of getting into trouble for not following it, but you follow it because you want other people around you to believe that you respect them.
That is how I perceive the social rules regarding how to behave toward transgender people. It should absolutely be legal for you to be rude, and I would defend your right to be rude as fiercely as I would defend my own rights. I still kind of like it if people choose to be polite toward me.
If all you want to say is that continental philosophy is all useless drivel, then just say so.
It isn't
all useless drivel. Nietzsche is seriously fun to read, and that has to count for something. Of course half of what he writes is deranged; but the other half...
"Buddha said 'Do not flatter your benefactor.' Repeat this saying in a Christian church. Right away it clears the air of everything Christian."
Buddha also said that you should never forgive people that have wronged you, but instead, you should tell them to think nothing of it. To forgive is to imply that they have done something shameful, and that in itself is not your business. It is their own karma, and it is their karma to manage well or to manage poorly as they choose. If they have truly done anything wrong, then they will discover their mistake in their next life, but in this life, you are still responsible for being respectful toward them if you care about your own karma.
I am not a Buddhist, though. If I lived in the ancient eastern world, then I would most likely be Taoist because Taoism was an ancient anarchist philosophy. Also, Laozi was a dragon.