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Luxury beliefs are status symbols (2022)

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Re: Luxury beliefs are status symbols (2022)

#311

Post by notfromhere »

junofan wrote: post #267
indigo945 wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, the examples correlate with affluence, which is a necessary condition for them to be included in this article; but it is obviously not a sufficient condition, as all "luxury beliefs" from elsewhere on the political spectrum are excluded. My point is that this is a bad faith argument. The author pretends to care about "luxury" beliefs, but in truth, all he cares about is finding a cheap shot against feminist posi…

I dunno, I read it apolitically. Normal working-class people don’t give a shit about any of this stuff, and as soon as they do, it’ll become unfashionable, and we’ll move on to the next thing.

White working class people don’t, others definitely do. You can’t just generalize like that.

Working class people aren’t even inherently apolitical, they just don’t vote and aren’t taught that voting changes things like middle and upper class folks are

Re: Luxury beliefs are status symbols (2022)

#312

Post by dragonwriter »

nec4b wrote: post #308
neilk wrote: post #106

Let’s consider the contrary. Do poor people sometimes hold highly questionable beliefs, promulgated by institutions, and does professing these beliefs in expensive and flamboyant ways confer status? Religion ticks all these boxes. In some contexts, so does patriotism, racism, worship of the military, publicly dumping cases of Bud Light, etc etc etc. In some ways, even disdain for education is a sort of expensive stat…

>> Let’s consider the contrary. Do poor people sometimes hold highly questionable beliefs, promulgated by institutions, and does professing these beliefs in expensive and flamboyant ways confer status? I would consider those beliefs pretty harmless compared to what intelligentsia believes in, even after 100 millions of people died because of their social experiment in the 20th century.

> I would consider those beliefs pretty harmless compared to what intelligentsia believes in

Is it that the beliefs are inherently less harmful or that poverty inherently involves less capacity to affect the material conditions of others?

That is, are poor people's dangerous beliefs less dangerous than those of richer people because of their content, or simply because the people holding them are less powerful?

Re: Luxury beliefs are status symbols (2022)

#313

Post by jwarden »

jyounker wrote: post #139
RubberbandSoul wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> defunding (i.e. demilitarizing) Redefining words in order to win arguments. Nice. Defunding means exactly that. I know this because that is what happened to the police forces that were defunded. Not entirely defunded, but they ended up with less money in their budget. > the typical day-to-day work for a police officer doesn't require violence or the threat of violence Says who? Are you a cop? Do you have cops in th…

> Redefining words in order to win arguments. Nice. Defunding means exactly > that. I know this because that is what happened to the police forces that > were defunded. Not entirely defunded, but they ended up with less money > in their budget. The poster is not redefining the term. The "Defund The Police" movement has very specific and very well documented goals: Use police only for law-enforcement, and use speciali…

The claim that the "defund the police" movement had any goal other than defunding the police is an example of "sanewashing":

https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=sanewashing

Re: Luxury beliefs are status symbols (2022)

#314

Post by sudosysgen »

JanSt wrote: post #132
indigo945 wrote: post #101

> When I was growing up in foster homes, or making minimum wage as a > dishwasher, or serving in the military, I never heard words like “cultural > appropriation” or “gendered” or “heteronormative.” > > Working class people could not tell you what these terms mean. But if you > visit an elite university, you’ll find plenty of affluent people who will > eagerly explain them to you. I figured out as soon as I saw the l…

cultural appropriation As a european, I just can't wrap my head around this. How is it racist if I like a food of an other culture so much I cook it? Or I like a hairstyle of different culture so I also want to wear it. Or clothes. Or making music. Or.... I mean, I admire all that stuff so much that I want it to be part of my life. How is this racist?

That's not the point of cultural appropriation. The point is people in the dominant culture using symbols of other cultures in a way that is socially acceptable for them to use, but non-socially acceptable for them to use. It's kinda fucked up if I can't wear my natural hair style or I'll get fired from my minimum wage job, but that isn't the case for someone of the dominant cultural class wearing the same hairstyle.

If it's acceptable for everyone, then it isn't cultural appropriation, it's just culture sharing. It's when society takes it away from those who grew up with it but allow others to use it that it's cultural appropriation.

It's a problematic/flawed concept, but that's the core idea and it makes some sense.

Re: Luxury beliefs are status symbols (2022)

#315

Post by steveBK123 »

gizmo wrote: post #129
cmcaleer wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Defund the police was an inherently absurd idea. It especially bothers me that proponents gave no reasonable explanation for what happens next after defunding[1] and many seemed to have no appetite for reform. Portland was kind of a poster child for this. Just look at how things have changed after their budget slash. - Police staffing levels are at critical levels [2] - Violent crime has shot way up in 2021 (along wi…

Your comment is pretty incendiary so I won't go through it point by point, but I'd like to emphasize the distinction between defunding (i.e. demilitarizing) and abolishing the police. Abolishing the police altogether is more of a utopian goal and very few people think society can function today without some kind of police. That said, the typical day-to-day work for a police officer doesn't require violence or the thr…

Do you have the same benign interpretation when a politician says defund say.. Social Security, or Medicare?

Re: Luxury beliefs are status symbols (2022)

#316

Post by notfromhere »

mortify wrote: post #306
surrTurr wrote: post #114

On the point of success and the rich believing it is just luck whilst the working-class beliefs it's hard work: Maybe both is true. Becoming successful in working class jobs often *does* require hard work, whilst becoming successful in upper-class jobs depends more on other factors such as luck. For example, to become a great construction worker, you need physical strength, stamina, and a strong work ethic, as the jo…

The belief that success is mostly luck, while sometimes true, is useless when it comes to making decisions. There is little that I can do to increase my luck, while there is plenty that can be done to work toward a goal. One who has benefited from luck or can afford to buy their own luck, can state this and mean it. Anyone else who holds that position assures their own failure.

Luck is definitely something you can increase to a point.

Luck is basically seemingly random events going your way in a positive way. If you do more things, you’ll have more interactions and more chances those go well.

Luck is just probability. You have to keep playing the board for it to work. Too many people think luck is just sitting and doing nothing and hoping it turns out well.

Re: Luxury beliefs are status symbols (2022)

#317

Post by steveBK123 »

ameister14 wrote: post #199
jyounker wrote: post #142

The poster's entire article is based on a strawman. The "Defund The Police" movement has very specific and very well documented goals: Use police only for law-enforcement, and use specialized responders for non-law enforcement interactions. For example, you send mental health specialists when someone is threatening suicide. This reallocates funding from the police to more capable responders, but allows the remaining…

You posted this elsewhere but to be clear, you are wrong. The defund the police movement, at least the one in the US that gained popularity between 2017 and 2021, was explicitly aimed at eliminating the concept of policing. The belief is that because policing began with South Carolina slave patrols (it did not, but that doesn't matter) that the whole concept is corrupt and changes in execution won't fix the heart of…

It's like the orange man and whether you take him seriously or literally argument that many of his defenders used.

When the defund movement had people marching with ACAB & abolish posters regularly, it's hard to argue it meant anything else.

A thought exercise for the word re-definers defending the term:

If your CEO walked on stage and said "we are defunding __" where __ is the division you work in.. would you be like "oh good it means I'm going to work on better stuff now" or "oh shit let me get my resume up to date".

We can make lots of arguments like "they chose the wrong word" but I don't think we should argue that the word means something else just because it helps the slogan make more sense.

Re: Luxury beliefs are status symbols (2022)

#318

Post by steveBK123 »

ameister14 wrote: post #199
jyounker wrote: post #142

The poster's entire article is based on a strawman. The "Defund The Police" movement has very specific and very well documented goals: Use police only for law-enforcement, and use specialized responders for non-law enforcement interactions. For example, you send mental health specialists when someone is threatening suicide. This reallocates funding from the police to more capable responders, but allows the remaining…

You posted this elsewhere but to be clear, you are wrong. The defund the police movement, at least the one in the US that gained popularity between 2017 and 2021, was explicitly aimed at eliminating the concept of policing. The belief is that because policing began with South Carolina slave patrols (it did not, but that doesn't matter) that the whole concept is corrupt and changes in execution won't fix the heart of…

>> The belief is that because policing began with South Carolina slave patrols

Yes! This one always cracked me up and is so American centric. As if history began in 1776 or 1492 or 1619 or whatever date people want to use. No other civilization in the history of humanity ever had law enforcement? We had to invent it, and of course the bad people invented it.

Re: Luxury beliefs are status symbols (2022)

#319

Post by prewett »

cmcaleer wrote: post #124
neilk wrote: post #106

Let’s consider the contrary. Do poor people sometimes hold highly questionable beliefs, promulgated by institutions, and does professing these beliefs in expensive and flamboyant ways confer status? Religion ticks all these boxes. In some contexts, so does patriotism, racism, worship of the military, publicly dumping cases of Bud Light, etc etc etc. In some ways, even disdain for education is a sort of expensive stat…

Defund the police was an inherently absurd idea. It especially bothers me that proponents gave no reasonable explanation for what happens next after defunding[1] and many seemed to have no appetite for reform. Portland was kind of a poster child for this. Just look at how things have changed after their budget slash. - Police staffing levels are at critical levels [2] - Violent crime has shot way up in 2021 (along wi…

The Social Justice movement has two kinds of people. The thought leaders in the universities are functionally revolutionaires: "Justice" doesn't mean fairness in their thinking, it means "privileging" the oppressed group and de-privileging the oppressor group. (See the book "Cynical Theories" for a thorough--and left-leaning--analysis of the development of the academic ideas from disillusioned Marxists Foucault/Derrier to the current state.) This isn't really "justice" in the sense of fairness, it is retribution: attempting to right a wrong by wronging.

Then there are the masses, who think "Justice" means "justice" and more or less buy the narrative. (At least, as far as I can tell.) These days, activism is how a lot of people seem to derive their meaning in life. So, "defund the police" advances the revolutionary cause, while being a pithy cause activists can rally around if they are not of the critical thinking persuasion.

The lack of thought about the after-effects is from the academic thinking. The goal is simply to tear down the oppressive system; there is no thought given to a replacement system or how that system would avoid simply being a different oppressing system. Or whether a replacement system would actually be less oppressive than the current system, which by historical standards is one of the least oppressive.

Re: Luxury beliefs are status symbols (2022)

#320

Post by MisterBastahrd »

lelanthran wrote: post #201
indigo945 wrote: post #101

> When I was growing up in foster homes, or making minimum wage as a > dishwasher, or serving in the military, I never heard words like “cultural > appropriation” or “gendered” or “heteronormative.” > > Working class people could not tell you what these terms mean. But if you > visit an elite university, you’ll find plenty of affluent people who will > eagerly explain them to you. I figured out as soon as I saw the l…

> I figured out as soon as I saw the link title that the author's examples for "luxury beliefs" would just so happen to be associated with a feminist and anti-racist outlook. Isn't the author's point that the examples correlate very highly with affluence? The fact that it may/may not be correlated to something else might be relevant, but I'm not seeing the relevance.

This article might be the single most vapid thing I've read all day, and I just read a Bari Weiss article for context.

Author leans in quite heavily to his own bonafides... somehow able to rise from foster homes to the military to graduate from Yale.

Neato.

And then he gets REALLY basic shit wrong.

"Working class" does not mean "lower middle class white folks." Go ask 10 "working class" black folks whether this country is racist. Then ask them whether it occurs at all levels of the country. They don't even need to know what the term "systemic racism" is to be able to describe it to you.

"Defund the police" had a pretty fucking specific meaning. It meant removing all the military surplus gear from police organizations in an attempt to reduce the amount of machismo and brutality from LEOs. Nobody should ever feel safe around a person who barely graduated from high school and yet has the authority to brutalize you and legally steal your shit. Go ask people if they think body cams on cops are important.

Is it now a "luxury belief" for women to be afraid that they live in a state that might attempt to jail them for the crime of having a failed pregnancy, or is that an actual valid concern? Don't want to do that? Okay, then let's look at the number of OBGYNs who are choosing to leave states with oppressive anti-female laws because THEY don't want to be prosecuted for the crime of providing healthcare, and follow that up by examining the cities in places like Texas that want to prosecute women for using state highways to LEAVE the state in order to receive proper reproductive healthcare.

Luxury beliefs my ass. It's only a luxury in his mind because these things don't impact him.

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