Peterkin

The other thing about technological mass culture - the really big and destructive thing - is its ephemerality. There is never time to understand anything, no time to reflect and compare, no time to assess. Impressions come thick and fast, images, rumours, accusations, opinions - and then they're gone. There is never time to look beneath the surface. Primitive tribes had tribalism, but it had depth and substance.

But.... Why does anyone care? That is a shift in cultural dynamics (the sensibilities are a different topic) - where the buying/voting/adoring/revolting public's attention is focused. To a large extent, legitimate mainstream news media have lost their audience and credibility, because they failed to inform the public.* But they have also been undermined by government funding policy and the public's thirst for sensation. *That's largely down to money again, plus partisan politics.

I have my own solution: I don't know any of the celebrities de minute; I'm not on Twitter, facebook, Snapchat, Tik-tok, Instagram, Reddit, or whatever Trumps' new platform is called...(Oh. Seriously??? Of course.) I don't know who's hot, who's so last week, who's on the way up or in a doghouse. If one of those people or events is brought to my attention on a forum, I research the basis of the claim before commenting - then don't bookmark it, don't commit the names to memory - move on. I find detachment remarkably unstressful.

What are the weapons? Public shaming, shunning, banishment, expulsion, ostracism , exile and excommunication have been common methods of dealing with members who threatened the stability or transgressed the rules of communities, since long before we had any recorded cultures. Much longer: lions and apes and wolves do it! Back when communities were small enough, the offender was sent away to make his way alone in the wilderness, or join another tribe that would have him. In civilizations like Ancient Rome, it would be a judicial decision meted out by vested authority. Now, because of extensive, intrusive, obtrusive, all-encompassing, ubiquitous mass communication media, societies are not limited and defined. Anyone can be in in any tribe consisting of members the world over. Everyone has access to a big platform; can be noticed if their performance stands out in some way - and because there is so much competition, many of the performances are deliberately confrontational, provocative or outrageous. Who does the noticing? What kind of personality is attracted to these performances? Anyone can become an overnight celebrity, and just as easily fall afoul of the millions of equally public personae who pay attention to them. They usually can't be physically removed from their residence or place of work, but their virtual life can be made unpleasant by unpopularity. All the other people have access to the same platform: they can throw virtual tomatoes at close range. And nowadays, we're at a point in the breakdown of civility where threats of beating, rape and murder are not at all unusual. As for businesses, strike and boycott are nothing new, either. A merchant who offended his suppliers and customers went out of business in 1200 BC, just as in 1876. Now that corporations are global, so are their suppliers and customers - their disapproval is expressed through a bigger megaphone - like everything else. It's just one of the ways all this communication complicates our social lives and cultures. Yes, that's another aspect. So much of cyber opinion is manufactured - fake news, fake election campaign, fake feedback, fake editorial....

I've heard 3, 4, 5, 6, or even a spectrum from 0 to 100. (Hardly anything human comes in just two categories.) Actually, I've never heard an atheist claim that a god of some kind cannot exist - but you'd have to stretch the definition all out of recognizable shape. What they (we) often do say is that none of the gods of myth and legend exist. More frequently, the discussion centers on the specific deity (whether of one part, two or three) central to the modern Christian doctrine. These latter discussions commonly start with a challenge issued by a theist, who thereby establishes the identity of the God in question. However, it's not unreasonable to declare non-belief, skepticism, even incredulity at the suggestion that an intangible, invisible, non-measurable concept has known characteristics or habits - such as presence and absence - and still fits into that one little word with Jehovah and Thor. I'll try not to confuse it, but I wonder: How do we know what another person's unbelief relates to?

Seriously? A rude university professor started the French Revolution, the Bolshevik Revolution and the Holocaust? I can only stand so much hyperbole. Deal me out.

After or for? Name three of each, with credible citations. Okay, name one.

Good idea! Let's stop pretending anyone has lost their job for being discourteous. Or for being called ignorant bigots.

Of course it is! Doesn't matter how big and nasty a lie you tell, it is your right to tell it, and nothing will happen to you: nobody's silencing, muzzling or oppressing you. What is that hyperbole supposed to mean? Criticized? Disapproved of? Denounced? She said something unpopular and people reacted. Maybe overreacted; maybe she was surprised. You have to take the temperature of the room before you decide on a potentially inflammatory course of action. She didn't lose her job; she wasn't turfed out or forced out. She was uncomfortable with the reaction - which is what she knew would happen - and quit. That's certainly one of the options. So is taking her message to social media, her blog, You Tube, and interview programs that invite her. She's not injured; not violated, not jailed, not destitute. She made an informed choice as an autonomous adult. She wasn't blamed for refusing to say something somebody was trying to force on her that she found repugnant. She was blamed for saying something she didn't have to say that other people found repugnant. There is a substantial difference. Where is the state/institutional oppression?

I sincerely doubt that. People can be coerced to the limit of their willingness to comply; beyond that, they have the option of the consequences of non-compliance. If you insist on responding negatively to the opinions of internet posters with whom you disagree, the option is to be called an arrogant, cherry-picking, virtue-signalling hypocrite. There is always a choice. Rarely do the options include D - Do as you please and everyone always approves.

Disaster relief missions, probably. It might stow away undetected in the medical personnel themselves, or in their equipment and/or vehicles.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vK2u4y7J58I

Why? Same reason you expect a psychology professor not to take a fixed position on human interaction? Academics are as prone to rigid ideology and territorial aggression as other people; perhaps more than most, since their range is so small. Like you said, messy world. Messy psyches. Messy social issues. Somebody we've only heard about fourth-hand is reported by somebody else we've never met to have committed suicide [directly and exclusively] because people we don't know anything about beyond the label put on them by the reporter had written mean things we didn't read. Which should be sufficient to convince us that somebody entirely different whom we never met, in another country, not only isn't entitled to be referred-to by a simple one-syllable pronoun of their choice, because we don't know whether they're spoiled or unable to bear children, but requiring the use of that word in a university setting amounts to persecution - not of the person who makes the request, but of the person who vilifies it from a huge, very public platform. ?

Maybe every human being on Earth is delusional. They still have rights under constitutions and legal systems enacted by other delusional people. And one of those rights, atm, is self-designation. That may mean sometimes somebody who wants to keep a position as shaper of youthful minds, or someone who wants to stay in charge of a department staffed with some flakes and kooks, has to learn one of the nine new gender pronouns - which he never actually has to use except possibly in reports, since the standard form of address "you" is already gender-neutral - well that's child's play compared to having had to learn all the professional jargon needed to bullshit his way into the job in the first place. Then again, the political climate can change in a heartbeat (though not very probably through radical tolerants storming Parliament) and all that midnight oil could be wasted. Oh well.

Open and fair competition for the wage-earner's custom, or for the provision of public facilities, will certainly result in a happier country than tax cuts and subsidies to monopolies. Graft takes a lot of the bang out a tax buck, and having the consumer in thrall can add a great deal of excess profit to corporate coffers and reduction of the consumer's buying power - resulting in ever more income disparity, which immediately translates to political and social disparity. That doesn't rule out the public ownership and government control of essential services. Some things are far more efficiently done according to a long-term, comprehensive plan than periodic contract renewal and market adjustment. However, there is a great danger in government being in charge of a service and contracting it out to private companies - both in corruption and quality control. The tax-payer doesn't actually know who is in charge of deploying his money to its full potential.

These are foreseeable consequences of every opinion ever posted on the internet. None of these consequences force anyone to say anything they don't want to say.

You mean, like, if you refuse to take the oath of office as written, you can't be inaugurated president? Or if you refuse to promise not to divulge company secrets, they won't hire you? Or if you can't be respectful to your student and fellow faculty members, your contract won't be renewed? I'm not terribly upset by those consequences.

There is a handy lookup function on my browser that allows me to bridge small rivulets of ignorance in particular subjects. I avail myself of this function from time to time, hoping that eventually my vast ignorance will diminish. The insolence, however, is intransigent.

Of course we cannot agree - especially about your low opinion of all human beings. Comapare that chart with the list of all the English words you don't know (e.g: thoroughly) and have managed to lived without, so far. Infacilty in a few more pronouns will make no appreciable difference to your communication skills. Only the tense is wrong. Every biology textbook did refer to male and female, wherever the authors deemed it applicable to sexual reproduction. (There are, of course, other kinds of reproduction, which involve no genders at all) What biology textbooks will refer to is yet to emerge. Whether biology textbook will delve into the details gender fluidity and variation depends on the level of instruction.

Remember that the caste mentality goes very deep in India. If you're one of an unvalued or unwanted group, you take what you can get.

The final arbiter of all things natural has pronounced. I guess we all feelin' preddy small right now.

Looks like the most succinct diatribe against social welfare that I've seen in a while.

in an article from ACLU Ohio references this interesting map from PBS. A lot more than just interesting, actually: it's a well-compressed education on the subject of diverse social attitudes.

Understanding is easy. Believing is impossible - since it's (still, in spite of much repetition) not true. How can you tell? Do you really believe you know better what's under their clothes and skin than they do? And why is it so important to you to classify people by their reproductive capability?

If I can remember that far back, I think there was something about lobsters, tough guys and women red in tooth and claw on Page 1, and then lost of bogus attacks on an amendment to the Bill of Rights. Other than that, I have seen very little on the title topic. Dr. Peterson seems to have plenty of reactions and attitudes to matters political, but I never saw one single "idea". In that sense, the whole thread can be considered a failure. OTOH, I'd never heard of or from this Peterson, or Dave Chapelle until now, so my database on 'influencer' culture is greatly enriched. I meant lots, but will leave it.