History is a pyramid of skulls.

[The Mad Monk]

Yet.

[Lorizael]

What kind of regulation do you propose?

I mean, that's why I posted the thread. I am trying to imagine a solution that doesn't involve inevitable cultural imperialism and failing. Like, again, you said it bothered you when some non-Orthodox Christian-y person used a Byzantine icon for her book, that she had no business using it. Well, what could she do differently that would make you okay with her using it?

How would it be enforced? Who decides when it's being broken? There's no culture cops.

We all sit around and talk about it and try to find a better way forward. Free expression trumps not getting offended, but being allowed to offend people doesn't mean we have to.

[Elok]

I think the fundamental problem is a lack of mutual trust. Put simply, neither side of the American cultural divide believes the other is acting in good faith, and is terrified of letting the camel's nose under the tent. The right wing says: hey, kneeling during the anthem is an insult to our country and its soldiers! Left wing hears: we want to sweep unpleasant matters under the rug, and further the militarization of society while we're at it. The left wing says: these terms are offensive to minorities! Right wing hears: we are attempting to passive-aggressively police others' speech by affectations of delicacy. Unless and until a baseline of trust is achieved, no progress will be made on this front.

And, now that I've reflected on it, the icon wasn't a big deal. Most people are scarcely aware my church exists, and the more knowledgeable are unlikely to think we favor the speaker's position. The people who made that icon would be revolted by its use--but wherever they are in the afterlife now, this is unlikely to be a major concern for them (if you don't believe in an afterlife, of course, it's even simpler). Bottom line, it's too bloody easy to talk yourself into a righteous lather over your hurt feelings. Superficially, it would seem helpful to express your feelings clearly, but in practice it's very easy for this to turn into a way of making everything be about yourself. And the more you dwell on your hurt, the bigger it gets. The world is so much bigger than my indignation.

[Lorizael]

Bottom line, it's too bloody easy to talk yourself into a righteous lather over your hurt feelings. Superficially, it would seem helpful to express your feelings clearly, but in practice it's very easy for this to turn into a way of making everything be about yourself. And the more you dwell on your hurt, the bigger it gets. The world is so much bigger than my indignation.

Having long ago reconciled with the fact that I believe crazy things, I tend not to get offended by much. In general, I'm of the opinion that it's up to each of us to decide how we react to hurt, and that with effort, we can choose to react positively and not become mired in negativity. But I've also come to understand that this is an easy opinion for me to have that probably misses the psychological reality.

There are two significant aspects of my identity that might be attacked by others: my beliefs and my mental health. I have the freedom not to expose either of these aspects to others, and thus I have the freedom to avoid attack. Yet this misses a critical vector of attack: myself. And in fact, I hurt myself repeatedly and frequently by attacking my self-esteem, history, emotional maturity... uh... well, as all my depression threads show, this list can go on for awhile. The point is, it's taken a loooooot of mental health treatment to even get a tiny handle on all this.

So when I hear that minorities feel attacked by society in a pervasive, inescapable way, I ****ing understand that, and I also understand that just telling people not to be offended isn't helpful. My therapist doesn't say to me, "Hey Lori, have you tried not getting so worked up when you emotionally abuse yourself?" No, she suggests that I not, in fact, emotionally abuse myself (and gives me strategies for doing so).

Yes, each individual only has control over their own actions, and so for each individual, it might make sense to work on not being hurt by the offense that others cause. But we also have to realize the psychological limitations of that approach, and that we do have better options: trying to build a society in which people don't have to shield themselves from constant tiny insults that add up to something unbearable.

[Elok]

But a lot of the tiny insults are thoroughly unintentional. "Microaggressions" (AFAICT) frequently consist of people having ugly but non-malicious notions about minorities, or talking about/to minorities in a tone-deaf and thoughtless way (e.g. carelessly assuming Asians eat dogs, or using your one black friend as a referee every time you're accused of being insensitive). Yet they're called "aggressions," as if they're a direct and deliberate offense. And a lot of the cultural superstructure around it follows that general pattern, of conflating speech or emotional harm with physical violence and working everything into an armageddon. The word "white supremacy" gets used to describe incidents of racism which appear to be isolated and one-off, as though it's all part of a massive conspiracy. In some cases they appear to be purely subjective assumptions of racism; not long ago, I read somebody trying to explain how The Cat in the Hat looks like he might be derived from blackface imagery and is therefore hurtful to children. Likewise an official Disney Halloween costume of Maui from Moana, because the guy's mostly naked and the costume consists of a suit in his skin tone covered in his tattoos. It's "brownface," and never mind the practical impossibility of making a costume of him any other way. And so on. This is not a helpful way of approaching our country's racial problems. Conflicts do not get resolved by assuming bad faith in everyone and seeing monsters everywhere (and yes, I'm sometimes guilty of that myself). Sometimes people are just oafish and inconsiderate, and you can either politely explain to them that they're getting it wrong, or accept that they're oafs. This would free up attention to focus words like "white supremacy" on actual white supremacy. I think you'd find a lot fewer people willing to defend them if the word weren't used to define anybody who so much as looks like he might be racist.

And as for "white privilege," it's like the phrase is custom-designed to annoy and offend. You do not get people to listen to you by trying to guilt them for who they are. Then disingenuously denying that you are, in fact, trying to guilt them for who they are, when really you're only trying to educate them about how difficult it is for others, and the way they're so defensive is their white privilege asserting itself subconsciously. Why are they being so unreasonable?

[Cort Haus]

I've never suggested a ban... more like regulation.
...
How do the black kids feel about it? You can mean well and still be doing something hurtful, especially if the possible hurt is that other people don't feel you are listening to/respecting them. Like, "It's not racist to say black people are good at running!" No, you're still doing it wrong.

Regulation? Ugh. Should The Beatles have been 'regulated'? It's terrifying, and the idea of a authoritarian state enforcing some kind of cultural purity in the name of good intentions (and where does that particular paved road sometimes lead?) might actually make an interesting novel in the authoritarian dystopia hell-hole nightmare genre. Orwell would have been up for that, I'm sure, although there would probably be a clamour for it to be banned.

I've read the whole thread now, and there are countless points made by both you and Elok in a very interesting conversation which I'm not going to respond to because it would be too fiddly and time consuming to pick them all out for now, but I might get to a couple of them.

The car metaphor didn't really work for me, but you seem to have expressed a desire that there should be some kind of solution to this, but I don't think there has to be, so stop worrying about it. Contemporary black music is doing quite well for itself, as far as I can see. Identity politics enforces divisions and resentments on all sides by building barriers and searching for grievances.

The roast dinner is a popular dish in my country, and it was handed down to us by the Roman Empire. Curry is another popular dish, 'taken' from India by the British Empire. I've never heard of anyone who takes offense about either of these, they just enjoy the food. I've never heard any objection from black people to the assimilation of black London accents by white youth either. I played a gig once (I play bass) where an african drummer in another band on the bill came up to me and said that I have the 'rhythm of an african'. He meant it as a compliment and I took it that way, even though I don't believe that black people have a monopoly on a natural sense of rhythm. Would you say to him that he is 'doing it wrong'?

[Dinner]

"Microsaggressions"

People who use terms like that in a serious way need to grow the **** up. Talk about 1st world problems.

"Jenny at work gave out Halloween candy to her friends but I didn't get any. That was a MICROAGGRESSION!"

[Cort Haus]

As for Christmas and Easter, they diverged from actual Christian practice so long ago that they're essentially different practices that happen to go by the same name and get celebrated at the same time. I see nothing sacred about rabbits hiding eggs or magical fatties hopping down chimneys.

I know that it's not Dec 25 for you but I can't resist this:

(was just going to mention Mithras originally)

[giblets]

"Microsaggressions"

People who use terms like that in a serious way need to grow the **** up. Talk about 1st world problems.

"Jenny at work gave out Halloween candy to her friends but I didn't get any. That was a MICROAGGRESSION!"

Glad we have a staight white dude to sort things out.

[Dinner]

Race only matters to racists. Stop being racist.

Trying to pretend any perceived minor slight is an "aggression" is intellectual garbage from people trying to sell an endless victimhood narrative when they have run out of legitimate things to complain about. Hell, even liberal publicans sympathetic to "cause" recognize it is retarded.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.theatlantic.com/amp/article/405106/

[Elok]

I know that it's not Dec 25 for you but I can't resist this:

(was just going to mention Mithras originally)

Yeaaaahhhh if you look into it those are all spurious connections. Some are kind of true-ish, but in a very roundabout way; for example, Horus was a virgin birth in that his dad Osiris was hacked into bits, and the pieces scattered across Egypt. Osiris's wife Isis looked for the pieces, and found all of them except the penis, which had been eaten by a fish. So she put her husband back together with a wooden penis, and used her magic to somehow conceive Horus anyway. Also Isis and Osiris were both deities, and siblings to boot.

Which is not to say Christianity did not derive anything from other religions, but the true story ("it's what happened when Jews met Greeks") is much more interesting than hogwash made up by neopagans (or in some cases by fanciful Victorians).

Also, I'm new calendar.

[C0ckney]

this is an interesting thread and on a subject i was thinking about recently. though many interesting points have been raised, i shan't respond to anyone directly but just give my own thoughts.

here's a video that i saw on the bbc a little while ago:

http://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-40931479/is-it-ok-to-use-black-emojis-and-gifs

my first thought was that one could quite easily turn that around and say 'well, why is a black woman in western clothes using the english language, video technology and the internet to disseminate her views? stop appropriating my culture!'

of course that would be absurd. but it's no less absurd than claiming that white people shouldn't wear hoop earrings (this is a thing, apparently) or use black emojis, etc. moreover, one can't affirm that one is fine and the other isn't without setting some completely arbitrary standard about which bits of culture are for everyone and which bits are reserved for certain groups, notwithstanding the strenuous mental gymnastics that people undertake to avoid this accusation. far better for all concerned to let people do as they please.

it got me thinking about and looking into why these issue are pushed so much at present. time was when there was a lot of open racial prejudice in society and a relatively small number of people fighting against it; now, very few people are openly racially prejudiced, and they are despised by the rest of the society, but today there are 10,000s of people (perhaps more; it's hard to say exactly) who depend for their daily bread on fighting against a declining problem. it's a classic supply squeeze situation. so how can someone in the 'diversity/grievance industry' make their mark? a tried and tested method is to push the envelope, to go further than people have before, to open up a new front. and if one has been keeping up with this sort of thing, that's exactly what has happened. these attempts to create new supply can range from the silly, like digital blackface, to the frankly poisonous, like munroe bergdorf's comments, broadcast on national television, that all white people are racist.

all of this obviously has political consequences, and none of them are pleasant, but i'm probably off topic enough as it is for now.

[giblets]

Is it racist to use blue emojis?

[C0ckney]

smurfist!

[Proteus_MST]

smurfist!

Were Papa Smurf still alive, he would agree

Spoiler: