The Moral Arc

[The Mad Monk]

"Safe spaces" is something that appears to be encouraged on college campuses these days.

[Elok]

There does appear to be something to what JM says, as well; wherever I go, it is mostly white (and gay) people getting apocalyptic. Black people, if they mention the lout at all, shrug and shake their heads. They're not the ones knitting, uh, "kitty" hats for the angry women's march on Inauguration Day. Too little experience with Latinos in my neck of the woods to draw even anecdotal conclusions, but if there's an angry Latino march I haven't heard of it.

[The Mad Monk]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHG0ezLiVGc

[Lorizael]

"Safe spaces" is something that appears to be encouraged on college campuses these days.

Well, I just got through receiving an education at a bastion of liberal, coastal elites and never once encountered a safe space.

But here's the thing about safe spaces, guys: it's just making explicit a real and uncontroversial aspect of our psychological needs. If you spend 8 hours a day with an ******* boss and incompetent coworkers and then have an hour long drive home through ferocious traffic, but then you get home and feel comfortable and loved and valued, congratulations, that's your ****ing safe space. This idea that we need to put on our big boy pants because the real world is a mean place is bull****, because all of us have a place we go to when we're ****ing tired of dealing with the real world.

Except, actually, not all of us do. If you are a battered spouse or a gay kid with homophobic parents or what have you, then maybe not even home is a safe space. Then you rely on other spaces, either ones provided by the community or by friends or like-minded individuals.

Do maybe some people take this notion and run with it and talk about providing safe spaces from the great injustice of being mildly offended? Maybe. But who gives a ****? Stop getting so goddamn worked up when other dumb people do a dumb thing. Learn to roll your ****ing eyes and move on. Don't go whining about how the whole world has gone soft and kids these days and bla bla bla, because then you know what? Then you're waaaaaay overreacting to a minor problem, and hey what the hell does that sound like?

(The "you" here is not aimed at anyone here, but at the people I see on Facebook and Twitter who get frothy about this kind of stuff. This probably comes across as way harsher than I intended. But I'm tired and kind of in a bad mood for completely unrelated reasons, so I'm just going to hit post reply now and see what happens. Sorry.)

[giblets]

white homosexuals who have never experienced a sustained open attack against their lives and property in US history.

Are you serious?

[Elok]

I wouldn't go as far as JM does there, but gays probably have far less to fear from Trump than, say, Muslims. Mind you, I've no idea how Muslims are reacting to all this. But even illegal immigrants face a much bigger challenge. Religious conservatives are in the back of the Trump bus, and they're only there because nobody else would take them.

[Kidlicious]

The danger with Trump is perhaps longer term it the R machine accepts they have to play Trumps game to stay relevant. That is something that on a longer timeframe might lead to a generation where closer to half the population would follow a Trump like figure down the rabbit hole.

So really we should probably root for Trump to be as terrible as people fear he will be.

He's not going to be terrible at all. I think the guy is rude, and it bothers me that people supported him over Cruz, but maybe it's for the best. He should be a good leader I'm, maybe even great. Rudeness really doesn't matter.

[Kidlicious]

Well, I just got through receiving an education at a bastion of liberal, coastal elites and never once encountered a safe space.

But here's the thing about safe spaces, guys: it's just making explicit a real and uncontroversial aspect of our psychological needs. If you spend 8 hours a day with an ******* boss and incompetent coworkers and then have an hour long drive home through ferocious traffic, but then you get home and feel comfortable and loved and valued, congratulations, that's your ****ing safe space. This idea that we need to put on our big boy pants because the real world is a mean place is bull****, because all of us have a place we go to when we're ****ing tired of dealing with the real world.

Except, actually, not all of us do. If you are a battered spouse or a gay kid with homophobic parents or what have you, then maybe not even home is a safe space. Then you rely on other spaces, either ones provided by the community or by friends or like-minded individuals.

Do maybe some people take this notion and run with it and talk about providing safe spaces from the great injustice of being mildly offended? Maybe. But who gives a ****? Stop getting so goddamn worked up when other dumb people do a dumb thing. Learn to roll your ****ing eyes and move on. Don't go whining about how the whole world has gone soft and kids these days and bla bla bla, because then you know what? Then you're waaaaaay overreacting to a minor problem, and hey what the hell does that sound like?

(The "you" here is not aimed at anyone here, but at the people I see on Facebook and Twitter who get frothy about this kind of stuff. This probably comes across as way harsher than I intended. But I'm tired and kind of in a bad mood for completely unrelated reasons, so I'm just going to hit post reply now and see what happens. Sorry.)

Here's the thing about safe spaces, they are an undemocratic way to push people around and get more power.

[Jon Miller]

Are you serious?

Yes.

There were basically none before 1970, and post 1970 there were a few of limited attacks against those that promoted homosexuality as an acceptable lifestyle and part of culture (so these could be considered as a violent response to a nonviolent attack on the common culture) and not an open broad attack against homosexual people (which would be against closeted people too).

There was never anything like what happened in Nazi Germany (unlike what the US did to the Japanese and Native Americans) or against the African Americans. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persec..._the_Holocaust for example of a sustained open attack against homosexuals (some African countries may be trying to copy).

JM

[Kidlicious]

So, I have once again made the fatuous mistake of trying to converse with hardcore progressives on FB. I honestly tried to be open and fair, which was stupid but seemed to begin well. I probably shouldn't have even touched a thread where an old college friend of mine, who is a very nice and very progressive person, asked people to talk about their feelings now that Trump was about to take over and start hunting lesbians for sport. There was a great deal of feeling unsafe and crying about lost futures and WHY DOES EVERYONE HATE US, and let's just say it went slowly downhill until I got chastised for insensitivity and had the sense to bow out before I got compared to Hitler.

I'm still not totally clear about why people are still acting this catatonically upset two months on. If I am to take these claims at face value, they are feeling and acting about how I would six months after my mother died in a horrible wreck. If Hillary had won, the hardcore conservatives would be forming militias, stockpiling ammo, and doing other demented but arguably sorta constructive things. Their general mentality would be "**** THAT WORTHLESS WHORE WE'LL SHOW HER." These folks are, well, hugging their teddies in the safe space. Why?

The simplest, but most mean-spirited explanation is that this is a manifestation of what the Atlantic last year summed up as "victim culture," wherein Young People These Days compete to be the most oppressed and therefore most entitled to attention and vengeance from an external source of authority or validation, yadda yadda. In other words, it's a kind of play-act. But that would require me to believe that it's all basically insincere. So I'm going to proceed on the assumption that this is sincere, but that these people are not the utter ninnies that would seem to imply.

My most promising theory is that these folks really believe in something like MLK's "moral arc of the universe," wherein it's somehow natural for things to continually get better a little bit at a time, with some minor backsliding to be expected. Hillary was a sequel to Obama, a pinnacle of the Fezzian moral vision where the first woman president succeeds the first black president and rights for everyone get all the way better--basically, they're approaching the liberal-prog singularity. Past the curve in the hockey stick. But then, somehow, a parody of Republicanism so grotesque that even Republicans don't like him swoops in and steals her place. They're upset about their jeopardized gay marriages and abortions and Hamilton performances and stuff, but more than that, they're upset because this upsets their understanding of how the story is supposed to go. The universe is all wrong now. The math isn't adding up anymore. They feel like I feel when human beings do the right thing without profit motive, but much more so. They've attempted to make it right by inventing horse**** about Russian "hacking" or trying to subvert the Electoral College (or just blaming it, like a three million margin on the gilded turd is something to be proud of). I thought it was about Trump himself, but I wonder if it's more like disappointed believers redoing their math from Revelation so the end of the world prediction might not be a total fizzle after all.

Your thoughts? Also, for extra credit, is there an interpretation of the whole "privilege" concept that is not essentially about constructing an inverted status hierarchy and forcing the less crippled *****es to know their place when the big kids are talking?

Why do you call them "very progressive?" I have a good friend who is very progressive. I don't have any friends of the type of people you are speaking about. I have one friend on facebook like that, but I keep him because he responds to my posts which keeps them on top of the feed. But he thinks I'm insensitive too, which is the basis for calling people who think differently than you racist, misogynist, Islamophobe etc...

Is it because you are a true traditionalist? Or maybe you are saying that so not to offend the majority here. If the latter, why do you think it is offensive to not call these people what they are?

[Bereta_Eder]

After witnessing the jewish museum of the holocaust in salonica I will not call anyone nazi but the germans.

[Bereta_Eder]

Also there's millenia of history. One such case is the rotunda (double brother of the roman pantheon), milenia of history, usage, splendor.

Still even more ancient was the macedonian splendor.


Great amazing city


There's probably more history in that single city than in all the americas

[giblets]

Yes.

There were basically none before 1970, and post 1970 there were a few of limited attacks against those that promoted homosexuality as an acceptable lifestyle and part of culture (so these could be considered as a violent response to a nonviolent attack on the common culture) and not an open broad attack against homosexual people (which would be against closeted people too).

There was never anything like what happened in Nazi Germany (unlike what the US did to the Japanese and Native Americans) or against the African Americans. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persec..._the_Holocaust for example of a sustained open attack against homosexuals (some African countries may be trying to copy).

JM

So... essentially you're saying "homosexuals weren't persecuted before 1970 because they were all hiding for fear of what would happen to them if they were public about it"...? This is as insane as the things kidicious or ben kenobi would say. Really.

[Kidlicious]

What's the most insane thing that I've said. Please be honest. No bull****.

[Elok]

Conventional extermination campaigns of the type wielded against religious or racial minorities would be pitifully ineffective against homosexuals. They don't form organic communities, it's difficult to distinguish them from the general population without catching them in the act, and more are always being born to random families. You could make life miserable for them, and if you were really dogged wipe out what's currently thought of as "gay culture," but barring a substantial advance in biology and twenty to forty years' concerted effort you couldn't make them not exist anymore.

It should also be noted that gay identity as such hasn't been an actual thing for all that long historically, and our understanding of it could easily change for any number of reasons. As late as the sixties the (extremely lesbian) novelist Mary Renault argued against the idea of gay identity as too confining . . .