01-07-2015, 07:42 PM
ShiftyNJ Wrote:Agreed If "words are just words" then one should not be so married to them that we don't care if they are a trigger for somebody else. It is not a lot to ask that we not use words that are pejorative to another group of people. Use a different word, otherwise what you're saying is "I'm too important to worry about your feelings."
On the flip, I'm reading an interesting book right now that describes "stages of ethnocentrism" and it says we have a whole generation of people who think you are sufficiently evolved just by knowing the list of "Bad words" not to say, and yet become remarkably intolerant of someone who did not grow up with those same taboos, instead of giving them a chance to learn why they are a problem. If we are ever to have a truly just society, we have to get beyond that to understanding WHY certain words are problems and actually listen to each other.
Shifty, I'd like to know more about that book.... it's something both Jay and I would like to read.
Most guys in GS have seen me take on my pet peeves a few times. I'm not as big on being politically correct as I am on being consistent and informed.
Let's look at the issue of Ferguson. In print, on blogs, in video, on news shows and in person people from the social justice end of the spectrum have been consistently reliant on empty talking repeated repeated over and over until all of them accepted it as true and rhetoric totally detached from reality and facts. They could not and still cannot speak on a level in which they are capable of discussing the facts involved with the issue. Anyone with an opinion that differed from theirs was immediately assaulted with allegations of racism, being uncle toms, and worse.
If someone they want to have a discussion and only brings empty talking points and intentionally misleading ideological rhetoric to the table it cannot be a discussion.
Since most of the social justice movement depends heavily on Alinsky's rules for radicals it makes sense they rely on empty talking points and intentionally misleading rhetoric.. after all *everyone * knows * people are more *inspired* by emotional rhetoric than by boring facts and reason. But that does not give empty talking points and intentionally misleading rhetoric anything resembling equal status to facts and reason for the purposes of discussion and problem solving.
........ and this is the reason I say there's little difference between SJWs and the people they usually say they're against... like christian fundamentalists who also depend on perpetually repeated talking points and intentionally misleading rhetoric designed to inspire emotions rather than reason. Change a few nouns and pronouns in their rants and they sound exactly the same.