History is a pyramid of skulls.

[Kidlicious]

It's acceptable among those types to make fun of their own belief system as long as you are liberal. They know it's all bull****. They are actually making fun of regular people who know how horrible it is.

[Dinner]

Since we've got this thread about cultural politics, and it's starting to sink, why not: is this column intended to be satirical, or is it an honest set of questions and answers from a set of extreme contemporary leftists? I honestly cannot tell. It certainly seems ludicrous ("am I betraying the class struggle with artisanal carpentry?"), but I think if it were satire the author would play it differently. Also, the host publication seems quite earnest in its leftism, and it strikes me as unlikely that they'd either be an Onion-type publication that plays it straight that well or that they'd be an honestly prog paper with that kind of tolerance for poking fun at their readership. I'm not looking to start a fight here, I quite simply can't tell and don't know who else to ask.

Looking at the titles of her articles it appears not to be satire, you have to have some basic level of awareness to be able to come up with satire, and she does not seem to have such a basic level of awareness. In fact, I doubt she has ever questioned anything in her entire life and all she does is regurgitate other people's failed arguments. She seems to be one of those too stupid to actually live for herself sort of people.

[Ben Kenobi]

We sing negro spirituals all the time. It is true that there is no black name given, but that doesn't change them from being African American. (Swing low sweet chariot, there is a balm in gilead, and so on).

Swing low sweet chariot, sure. But 'there is a balm in gilead' goes back to Charles Wesley and the Methodists. Again, cultural appropriation isn't a one way stream.

I am saying that African American culture (which is an American culture and not an African culture) is very rich (much much richer then so called 'white american' culture).

That is very much an opinion, which I don't see has any basis in fact. The fact that white American culture dominates that same top 100 list of fiction bestsellers suggests to me that white americans have produced great works of literature.

BTW, Ballet, Waltz, Tango, Ballroom and so on are not White American culture. Swing might be.

Swing is. Again, you cited 'dance' as something with a substantial African American contribution. The only dance that's on the list is Jive. Is Jive dancing, and about 4 genres of music enough to argue that a culture is deep?

[Ben Kenobi]

Toni Morrison, for example.

Any figures on her total fiction book sales?

[Aeson]

I'm saying the fact that these titles piqued your interest is the reason for them. Advertisers pay whether people are there to nod their heads in agreement ... or rubberneck a horrible accident. Thus 99.99% of the non-porn internet is explained. Case solved.

[Kidlicious]

Why do all democrats hate white people?

[Dinner]

How long have you been beating your wife?

[Kidlicious]

How long have you been beating your wife?

Guess I hit a nerve.

[Kidlicious]

Because of my culture I am less likely to be a perpetrator of domestic violence. But when did democrats ever say anything that wasn't racist or made any sense.

[Lorizael]

Since we've got this thread about cultural politics, and it's starting to sink, why not: is this column intended to be satirical, or is it an honest set of questions and answers from a set of extreme contemporary leftists? I honestly cannot tell. It certainly seems ludicrous ("am I betraying the class struggle with artisanal carpentry?"), but I think if it were satire the author would play it differently. Also, the host publication seems quite earnest in its leftism, and it strikes me as unlikely that they'd either be an Onion-type publication that plays it straight that well or that they'd be an honestly prog paper with that kind of tolerance for poking fun at their readership. I'm not looking to start a fight here, I quite simply can't tell and don't know who else to ask.

I dunno. Nowadays I'm big on the principle of charity--that is, trying to find the best arguments for positions I oppose/don't understand. That means if I'm unable to find good arguments for a thing after considering it for awhile and listening to people I respect, then I choose not to engage with the thing at all. Why bother, for any reason other than mild amusement and distraction? So for things that seem to verge into Poe's law territory--like this column or Kid's peeing physics whatever--I just shake my head and move on.

For something like cultural appropriation, on the face it does seem pretty ridiculous to me. But a good number of people I follow online whose intellectual efforts I respect and appreciate seem to take this phenomenon seriously, so I'm trying to understand it. I still don't have any idea what we're supposed to do about it, though, and I've never even heard what a long-term solution that promotes cultural evolution might be.

[Kidlicious]

I dunno. Nowadays I'm big on the principle of charity--that is, trying to find the best arguments for positions I oppose/don't understand. That means if I'm unable to find good arguments for a thing after considering it for awhile and listening to people I respect, then I choose not to engage with the thing at all. Why bother, for any reason other than mild amusement and distraction? So for things that seem to verge into Poe's law territory--like this column or Kid's peeing physics whatever--I just shake my head and move on.

For something like cultural appropriation, on the face it does seem pretty ridiculous to me. But a good number of people I follow online whose intellectual efforts I respect and appreciate seem to take this phenomenon seriously, so I'm trying to understand it. I still don't have any idea what we're supposed to do about it, though, and I've never even heard what a long-term solution that promotes cultural evolution might be.

Maybe if peeing standing up gives you an advantage in physics there's something we can do to evolve culturally. Joking. We already know what good culture is, and we are quickly going in the wrong direction. Let's start again by promoting marriage, patriotism and fatherhood. Let's stop protesting every damn thing. Let's stop all the race baiting etc.

[ricketyclik]

I've only read the first page of this, but WRT the OP: Superpowers are gunna be superpowers, CA or not. Whether they think they have an appreciation of another culture or not, they're gunna do their superpower thang. It's probably better that they have some understanding, however superficial, of the others they crush under their feet. Maybe they won't crush so hard.

[Elok]

For something like cultural appropriation, on the face it does seem pretty ridiculous to me. But a good number of people I follow online whose intellectual efforts I respect and appreciate seem to take this phenomenon seriously, so I'm trying to understand it. I still don't have any idea what we're supposed to do about it, though, and I've never even heard what a long-term solution that promotes cultural evolution might be.

I've met lots of intelligent people who believe things I find ridiculous. I conclude that they are beginning from different axiomatic beliefs about what should be valued, or differences in outlook on life (or other things which are not really amenable to logical argument), and shrug. For example, libertarians. I don't believe in libertarianism first because I don't believe it's accurate to think of human beings as fundamentally individuals, second because I am prone to pessimism and can easily see all the ways excess liberty can go wrong. Now, I don't think either position can be proven; there's too much data to draw on and no unequivocal way to say it all leads to one particular conclusion. Ultimately, my views on life and the libertarian's are rooted in emotional impressions and gut feelings, probably biased largely by early life experiences, and even if I realize that there's no way to adjudicate between our opposing sets of biases. I listen to what they have to say if they strike me as generally reasonable people, but of course even my own conception of "reasonable" is necessarily bias. But since removing bias in this context would amount to rewriting my whole personality, I find I'm not that interested in being "right," especially since I have no way of knowing what "right" is in the first place because that would depend on an unbiased person existing, and our being able to prove and trust his/her lack of bias.

[Elok]

I don't know if that made sense, I was trying to put it in Lorizean terms. Short version: their logic is sound, based on unsound beliefs. I can't disprove an axiom. It's only that their axioms repulse me.

EDIT: in the case of CA, it's that people who oppose it place an enormous value on cultural purity based on race. Since I can't exactly quantify their feelings, and said feelings are meaningless to me in any case, the question is whether the price they ask me to pay strikes me as worth paying for the value I place on their increased happiness. It does not. Which doesn't mean they're wrong, per se; just that we have different prices and can't come to an arrangement, so to speak.

[Lorizael]

I've met lots of intelligent people who believe things I find ridiculous. I conclude that they are beginning from different axiomatic beliefs about what should be valued, or differences in outlook on life (or other things which are not really amenable to logical argument), and shrug.

Sure, but I'm perfectly willing to admit that my axioms are just as, if not significantly more, whacked out than those of other people. So I find value in discussions between people with very different starting foundations not because I might be shown to be wrong (again, I started crazy), but because the overlap between differing perspectives gives me slightly more insight into how I should interpret the world around me.

(This is of course predicated on me thinking another person's differing perspective is based in the kind of thoughtful, careful consideration I like to imagine mine is, which inevitably runs into the same problem of my personal biases that you mentioned.)