The opening to “A Tale Of Two Cities” but it’s about thinkpieces on Millennials.
We were The Greatest Generation, we were The Lost Generation; we were a generation of misers and a generation of wastrels, we worked ourselves to death and we did not work at all, we were too delicate and too rough and too reliant on others and too independent and entrepreneurial; we needed to buy more essentials and fewer luxuries unless it was just the other way around; we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way…
In short, this generation was so far like every other, before it and after it, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on us being received, one way or the other, as the final herald of the downfall of all civilization.
I was thinking about Jon Ronson’s book about public shaming and about recent debates about political tactics and something came together:
When making arguments about ethics, white men consistently ignore power as a lens of analysis. For many of them, actions are either right or wrong regardless of power differentials between the people involved, the stakes for those with less power, and the options they have available to them.
Protesting to have Milo disinvited from your campus therefore becomes *just as bad* as Milo’s own actions towards marginalized people, despite the vast disparities in harm done and options available. (This is not a strawman. When y’all say, “This makes you just as bad as them,” that’s literally what you’re saying.) That Milo’s talk, as planned, would’ve caused serious, measurable, and irreparable harm to specific students, and that protesters had exhausted all “proper” channels for months beforehand, doesn’t seem to matter in this analysis.
All that matters is the specific action taken. “Preventing a person from speaking.” “Destroying property.” “Public shaming.” These actions are seen as unethical regardless of who did them and why, what consequences they face if they do not take these actions, and what other options–if any–they have available.
I keep coming back to MLK’s quote about riots being the language of the unheard. For the most part, people resort to tactics that fall into ethical grey areas because other tactics are unavailable or have already failed. I’m sure that there are people who do so despite having better options, just as there are always people who act unethically in other ways.
But unfortunately, for an outside observer with no skin in the game, it’s very hard to tell whether or not that’s the case. I saw so many posts patronizingly chiding Berkeley students for not trying other tactics before protesting and/or destroying property (although most did not destroy property, and the oft-used phrase “violent protest” implies much more than that). They had no idea of the lengths to which the protesters went to utilize “appropriate” means to keep themselves and their community safe. It didn’t work. They remained unheard.
Any ethics that ignores the role of power will privilege the powerful. Our Republican members of Congress don’t need to riot, set fires, and block the streets in order to get what they want. They do appropriate, ethical things like draft policies and have debates and vote. Because they have the power to. The specific actions they take–drafting policies, debating, voting–are not seen as inherently unethical things to do. Yet they’ve destroyed lives, families, and communities. They’ve achieved a level of destruction that even the rowdiest masked protesters never could, not that they’d want to.
“Any ethics that ignores the role of power will privilege the powerful.”
I get making fun of America for its flag worship and stuff but Brexit should be all the reminder you need that you don’t need flags in every classroom and a pledge of allegiance every morning for the people of a country to turn out absurdly xenophobic.
LOUDER FOR THE PEOPLE IN THE BACK
i used to feel like america’s flag worship thing was really creepy and fucked up, but now i think that america is so big, it’s actually a necessary. america has a ton of different states, environments, and cultures, plus the stated values of independence and individuality. state governments clash with the federal government and different chunks of the country absolutely don’t understand—or like—each other. so maybe the constant reminder that we all wave the same flag around and are part of the same nation is important to keep everyone from just breaking apart. we’re signaling to each other that we’re all, ultimately, on the same side.
These are two of the most misguided comments I have seen on tumblr in a long time.
1) The UK most certainly does have a flag-waving, poem reciting masturbatory sense of xenophobic nationalistic pride that is more than just comparable to the US’s. “The Sun Never Sets on the British Empire”, “God Save the Queen/King”, the whole myth about how the Brits ~held the line in Europe all alone against the Nazis and saved the world~. This is the nation that literally created the idea of ‘White Man’s Burden’. They slap the fucking Union Jack on everything.
2) The US was founded during the rise of Nation-State Identity and thus was allowed to nurture its propagandist idea of what made it “unique” within its borders from the early days of its inception. The whole “oh, American states are all just sooOOoooOOoooo different from each other” is part of the myth of American Exceptionalism. US culture is not actually that diverse when compared to, like… almost anywhere else in the world (just think for a second about places like: India, China, Indonesia, Spain, Nigeria, etc.) Most of the US’s diversity comes from immigration and subsets of oppressed minorities that the US government has traditionally tried to silence, sideline or snuff out (the same as in my country or any other predominantly-white ex-colony). These are the kind of people who feel disunity with the flag, for good reason.
3) Nationalist ideology in general seeks to erase diversity. The American flag, for many, is a symbol of oppression and cultural (or literal) genocide. I understand that you, nowhere in your post, said that this is how people should feel, but it’s an incredibly naive call for unity with a cultural idea that is especially hostile to those who don’t fit its parametres; an unconscious reinforcement of Nationalist Exceptionalism in a time when such ideologies should be dismantled. The people who feel disunity with the flag are not the people breaking the USA apart, and the people who worship it absolutely will not respond to any call to unity with those who don’t fit what they feel the flag represents. It is not a necessity – its a symbol of the ideology that caused those divides in the first place.
I get that these posts came from a good place, however when I saw this cross my dash I actually had to double-take because what this one-two-punch says – entirely due to thoughtlessness and not malice – is: “Hey, the UK doesn’t have exactly the same kind of xenophobic nationalism and the US does, so I guess that maybe aspects of the US’s xenophobic nationalism aren’t that bad and flag worship can be a good thing!”
Flag worship is still creepy and bad. More nationalism is not the solution to nationalism.
I am very seriously having trouble not thinking about the bill that would allow employers to put employees through a genetics test. I am having trouble seeing the benefits of such a bill. I am having trouble not seeing it as a selfish allowance. I am having trouble not seeing it as literal eugenics.
You’re having trouble because there is no benefit to employees. It will only be for the benefit of employers, and will allow them to discriminate. It’s terrifying…
That is a conversation that I should have voluntarily, with my doctor, under no penalty, and kept private. It should not be permissible to sell it, and I should not have to incur a 30% fine for not participating in a ‘wellness activity’ with an unqualified person who may or may not use this information against me.
Healthcare should be affordable to everyone, regardless of their predictive health and the health of their families.
Removing the anonymity of genetic information has acutely horrifying implications.
I know I’m kind of preaching to the choir right now, but like… I can’t get it out of my head. I shouldn’t read this stuff before I go to sleep.
hello naughty children its GATTACA time
More than that, it could also be an attempt to “catch” trans people. And I know it’s going to have unexpected results…
See, once upon a time, the people running the Olympics thought they could catch cheats by checking the competitors’ chromosomes. IDK why. Maybe they thought some men were sneaking into the women’s contests so they could win gold medals. Whatever.
In order to not appear like sexist shots, they tested EVERY competitor. And they were all set to land like a ton of bricks on any cheats…
BUT…
The results showed quite a surprising amount of MALE competitors had female chromosomes.
So the whole idea was trashed in short order.
(This story comes second hand from MeMum and may be inaccurate)
Soundarajan, a female runner who was denied entry to the Olympics because of her Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome (which she was unaware of) failed the required genetics testing. Mandatory genetics testing has been removed from the requirements as of 2004, but still is practiced in the event that a competitor is being investigated for a fraudulent claim.
Intentionally misrepresenting your sex or gender as a means to cheat in sports has happened before. It is not a common method because the risk is very high. It is also… rarely successful in terms of having ‘easier competition.’
The idea that this bill would effectively out trans and intersex persons at the workplace is just one of the major issues that I have with it.
There is the very obvious problem of racial bias and the prevalence of white supremacy in our country. I should not need to expound upon why I have a problem with that.
But there is also the major issue of the bill’s claimed purpose: to find congenital conditions and enact ‘preventative measures.’ There are lots of people in the work force who are on the Autism spectrum, who have Down’s Syndrome, Cerebral Palsy… who are capable of working with their symptoms and do their jobs. These are also a target for discrimination and there are employers who are more than willing to justify it.
If the only benefit to come from this bill is that companies would be able to save more money, then I am unable to find any good in this bill.
For a good summary, see the Washington Post’s article (linked below, I’m on mobile). This would be straight up breaking the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act, and the Americans with Disabilities Act. This is absolutely ridiculous, and yet another extreme breach of our privacy.
Just a friendly reminder that the Constitution does not have the word “God” once.
But it does contain the phrase “promote the general welfare”
Declaration of Independence does.
“Promote” does not mean “Provide”.
Also, general welfare, not individual welfare.
Declaration of Independence is not the founding document of our Government, the founding document of our government does include this interesting part though,
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion (x)
The recognition of “God” is the government respecting monotheistic religions, which is also why you will not find it once in the Constitution.
Also, I am opposed to individual welfare, such as corporate tax cuts, bailouts and the like. I firmly support general welfare, such as a Universal Basic Income and Single Payer Healthcare.
General welfare is the welfare of the union not the individual people.
Since this is confusing to you, let’s look at it in context:
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
If you notice, the people of the United States are declaring that that would like a few things:
Form a more perfect union
Provide for the common defense
Promote the general welfare
Secure liberty
Because of those reasons, We the Peopled are establishing a Constitution.
The people are trying to promote their general welfare is the literal meaning of that statement. They also want to have a more perfect union, but that hasn’t been established yet, so asking to promote the welfare of a union that does not yet exist is rediculous.
The general welfare is the aggregate of individual welfare. Look at the median. If there’s thousands of people one bad break away from starvation but a couple hundred who could bankrupt a Fortune 500 company and walk away with most of their houses, that’s still not a good General Welfare.
The union is made up of individual people, how can someone be this dense, it’s like the most privileged dehumanizing thing ever just because they don’t like the idea of sharing.
Capitalists: It’s human nature for a small number of individuals to take control of the planet’s fresh water supply and demand that people pay in order to use it.
I wonder how many times this post was reblogged from an iPhone
My latest Locus column, Wealth Inequality Is Even Worse in Reputation Economies, explains the ways in which “reputation” makes a poor form of currency – in a nutshell, reputation doesn’t fulfill most of the roles we expect from currency (store of value, unit of exchange, unit of account), and it is literally a popularity contest where the rich always get richer.
Reputation economics are closely bound up with the idea of “meritocracy,” itself a convenient, self-serving delusion that effectively declares the system to be fair because the people on top believe it to be.
Meritocracy and reputation economics were the subject of my debut novel, 2003’s Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, which, ironically, is often held up as an example of “utopian” fiction.
The story of ‘‘meritocracy’’ – a society that migrates wealth, status, and decision-making power into the hands of the most capable – is seductive. Rich people love the idea of meritocracy, because the alternative is that their lion’s share is unfair, the product of luck, or, worse, cheating. But many of meritocracy’s losers love it, too. In the words of John Steinbeck, ‘‘Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.’’
Meritocracy is a tautology, of course. There’s no objective measure of ‘‘merit’’ so there’s no way to know whether your society is meritocratic or not. Every famous, powerful, rich person owes their status to a combination of skill, luck, and persistence. The best luck of all is to be born to fortunate circumstances, well fed and well educated and well loved. We know for a fact that billions lack some or all of these forms of luck, and among those people are innumerable potential Stephen Hawkings and Steve Jobses and Albert Einsteins. The fact that Jobs was born to a Syrian refugee and that Hawking struggles with a debilitating illness just shows you how fickle luck is – unless you believe that evolution produced exactly one brilliant tech entrepreneur in the ranks of Syrian refugees and one brilliant scientist with ALS, then you have to believe that the others just didn’t get quite so lucky.
It’s bad enough when the meritocratic delusion takes root in a money-driven economy, but reputation’s one percenters are even more toxic. They can go spectacularly bankrupt, financially ruining their investors, and promptly raise another fortune to gamble on.
it’s just that it’s not NEW bad shit to someone who grew up under reagan and the bushes, exactly; what’s new is how blatant and hamfisted it is, not the actual agenda
also new is the fact that people care and are horrified
also new is the fact that people have anything better to compare it to
so we’re kinda like “aw not this shit again, i thought we were past this” rather than “end of the fucking world” about it, like “welp time to dig up those old dead kennedies albums”
even the nuclear threat is like
idk babies we thought about getting nuked a LOT when i was growing up, it was just this constant cloud following us around, we made nuclear apocalypse jokes and it wasn’t even that dark because it was just life
it’s been nice not thinking about mushroom clouds for a while but it’s not exactly a shock that it’s come back up
i’m not trying to make you feel naive here, i’m just saying history is dark as fuck, and while you maybe knew that intellectually, you’ve been living in a very bright time up until now
i wish you could’ve gone your whole lives without knowing your government doesn’t have a problem with getting everyone killed for no fucking reason except to add another zero to the already absurd bank accounts of a tiny handful of elderly white men, but since shit fell out this way, i guess i just have to let you know that it isn’t something new, it’s the same battle we’ve been fighting all along
anyway, i’ve got your back
this manages to be depressing and reassuring somehow
i have to admit i’ve been feeling a little bit surprised by the anguish, and i chalked it up to my autistic emotional weirdness that makes me not feel stuff all at once, but this is very true. i grew up thinking world war III was about to start at any minute and we’d all be nuked to death. i was waiting to be on the streets for pretty much my entire childhood. i knew how fragile the safety net was, and i knew how many people wished fervently to dissolve it altogether.
powerlessness is the lot of a kid, so i dealt with it, and lived through it, and became numb to it.
i was 21 when 9/11 happened, and i watched America bend over and look pretty for the patriot act. the libraries fought back (i was working at one) but all around me people were buying into right wing fuckery with a zeal i’d never seen before. they were terrified and they were sculpted into bigots by opportunistic fucks in the bush administration. i watched national security get scary like it is today. the TSA, the NSA, homeland security, FUCKING GUANTANAMO BAY, unprecedented pressures on civil liberties being accepted as the price for safety (because we’re so fucking into safety we’ll put ourselves in danger just to feel like we have it)
my dad and mom survived the vietnam war and the broken US welfare system. i was born into the Reagan years. i watched society grapple with the bullshit that was the 2000 election and i was scared but i expected worse any day now, and i lived like that for a long time until it felt normal.
i’m used to being afraid of the right on the rise, i’m comfortable with it
but this administration? this specific regime? fucking terrifies me.
the good news is, we can stop it, and we’re already making history with our resistance.
what’s missing this time, i think, is complacency. the obama generation that hasn’t grown up numb to constant fuckery is fucking pissed, and those of us who learned to live with the monster are starting to acknowledge just how bad it is, and how normal it ain’t.
it’s nice to be inspired, even if it’s angry inspiration. numbness is how you survive, but it’s no way to live.
well said. i feel like the people for whom this is all a fresh outrage are going to keep me from falling back into that numb despair.
just moving along like everyone else 