It's a good analysis but misses the central issue with today's "culture war": people in a B type society aren't actually overly concerned with their emotions, they just pretend to be mentally fragile in order to exert power by demanding compliance. It's a sanctioned form of violence. Sure, some fragile nutcases exist too, but they're just exploited by the majority of SJW folks.
War over Being Nice
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Re: War over Being Nice
#12I think framing this A/B divide in terms of sex is needlessly conflating different topics. Surely there's a statistical bias of some sort, but it doesn't really add to this conversation.
Re: War over Being Nice
#13It's a good analysis but misses the central issue with today's "culture war": people in a B type society aren't actually overly concerned with their emotions, they just pretend to be mentally fragile in order to exert power by demanding compliance. It's a sanctioned form of violence. Sure, some fragile nutcases exist too, but they're just exploited by the majority of SJW folks.
To be responsible for the feelings of others requires the assumption of good faith on the part of the "feeler".
Personally, I want to be able to make this assumption, to have this trust. Because the A/B balance seems to be tipping.
But it's so easy to say "I feel Less Safe when you say X". It's only human to notice that some words and phrases take on power. Only human to want to use that power to protect yourself.
So instead of owning your own feelings, you own that of everyone in the group. And online, that's everyone. Some people online will claim injury even when there is none, or when they imagine they're speaking for others who are staying silent.
The result is a discourse so sanded-down and smooth that it achieves only the distinction of offending no one.
Re: War over Being Nice
#14It's a good analysis but misses the central issue with today's "culture war": people in a B type society aren't actually overly concerned with their emotions, they just pretend to be mentally fragile in order to exert power by demanding compliance. It's a sanctioned form of violence. Sure, some fragile nutcases exist too, but they're just exploited by the majority of SJW folks.
Psychological fragility is a real thing. It may well be more common than we realize.
Re: War over Being Nice
#15It's a good analysis but misses the central issue with today's "culture war": people in a B type society aren't actually overly concerned with their emotions, they just pretend to be mentally fragile in order to exert power by demanding compliance. It's a sanctioned form of violence. Sure, some fragile nutcases exist too, but they're just exploited by the majority of SJW folks.
I don't think you can fairly say that type P pretend to mentally fragile. There are plenty of people who will be genuinely upset.
Isn't the issue that it allows bad actors to pretend to take offence and we don't have a mechanism of validating whether the offence is real or malicious?
Re: War over Being Nice
#16I get it, but the author completely misses the point when it comes to the exchange of power between people.
Think man vs women Black person vs police Boss vs employee
suddenly culture A breaks down because people in power get upset and then abuse their power. I guess you can say "they are only in charge of their emotions" but when people can be fired or killed, it stops being a thing.
I've been in culture A (the military / still identifying as male): and there is a good time for it, you don't care about someones feelings in the middle of the mission
I've been in culture B (civilian life / out as a transwoman): Culture B is nice because when done correctly (sure it's hard), it lets people show their own emotional vulnerability and allows others to understand and take into account that there are people out there that grew up with widely different experiences other than yourself.
Also when the default norm is basically white male culture, once you see it from the other side you realize how bad it actually is.
(I'm aware I will probably be down-voted)
Re: War over Being Nice
#17Is this related to attachment theory? Culture A seems like Insecure-Avoidant attachment and B seems like Anxious attachment. Could B's anxiety cause the group to overanalyse every negative situation and do what they need to do to avoid stress? Did A's people grow up in an emotionally distant household with snobby parents that cause them to compare themselves against and constantly one-up each other?
Re: War over Being Nice
#18Tolerance traditionally means tolerating people. This has been shifted (some would say cynically) to mean tolerating ideas. The traditional meaning allows you to have a society. You can live next to someone who you disagree with. The new meaning is a profoundly negative one. It means that if you are tolerant, then there is something wrong with you, because you are tolerating bad ideas. A society that embraces the sec…
I'm curious how to be intolerant of an idea while being tolerant of people? Because practically, aren't ideas tied to people? I don't think you can have an idea survive without people keeping it alive. So how do you express intolerance for "bad" ideas without letting that expression bleed into an intolerance for the people propagating the "bad" idea?
You can hold the idea that a certain religion or philosophy is vile and evil, yet respect and even like certain individuals that are followers or adherents of those beliefs, because individuals are often more than just the essentials of those beliefs.
Take a certain popular religion, for instance. This religion can be judged as evil if you are secular or pro-reason (as opposed to faith). But individuals who practice this religion do so as individuals, and may place more emphasis on certain parts of their religion over others according to their own personal values. In fact it's impossible not to place emphasis on certain aspects of a religion or philosophy when adopting it - even religious zealotry implies an emphasis on perfect obedience and adherence. You can tolerate, accept, or even like a person holding an idea that you can't tolerate due to your own beliefs, for the personal values and virtues exhibited by the individual which are reflected in their emphasis of certain parts of their beliefs.
Re: War over Being Nice
#19Really great insight and framework for discussion. However: "B in a healthy way requires huge skill" ... it requires more than skill it requires magic. When people are allowed to determine, arbitrarily, that they have been 'transgressed' by some other action, they will abuse that any which way. Or at least some people will. The 'threshold' for 'intolerance' will move consistently in a direction until the offended par…
Edit: I should also add, that my examples are very personal and anecdotal and only crudely illustrative. I don't mean to imply that 'Rugby Players' are 'great leaders' or that 'Leaders must have a team sports background' - not in the least. It's just something that I, a non-athlete who came to such things later in life wherein I was way more introspective about it than your average 19 year old, picked up some perspective from being embedded with these groups. It's highly personalised, but I would hope there's enough common ground among us for people to grasp the connotation.
Re: War over Being Nice
#20I'm not sure I understand what's wrong with constantly asking consent. I guess saying "no" could be roughly like responding on request for the Moon - no, darling, you can't have the Moon on your palm or in your room. Is it a contradiction - factually "revoking consent" while doing that (as much as possible) in culture B style? Is it possible?