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Being alone

jessepollak.me

131–140 of 167 posts

Re: Being alone

#131
post #6

Stopped reading after > Preface: As a white, heterosexual, cis, male, I’m granted, from birth, an extraordinary amount of privilege I wasn't actually aware people outside of the Tumblrverse said things like that. (Over on Reddit there is /r/TumblrInAction for things like this)

There are lots of people who are aware of the concept of privilege but do not make it one of the major subjects of their conversation. Some of them are even white het cis males.

There are even people in technology who are not white, het, cis males.

Re: Being alone

#132

I come to HN for intriguing, inspiring and educative news/items followed by proper discussion. For the life of me I fail to comprehend why this diary-blog-post managed to get, at the time of writing, 144 points and still not have a [dead] tag prepended to it. This is Hacker News. Not Tumblr-privilege-core. The only thing related to HN I could find in that entire article was Watsi. And then even that was taken downhil…

Social isolation and difficulty in meeting people are going to be problems for some people on HN.

> For the life of me I fail to comprehend [...]

You just failed to spot the market opportunity, the problem that people have that needs to be solved.

Re: Being alone

#133
post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is the total going down in the after picture? Because our points only belong to the set of natural numbers ;)? We're assuming in this totally contrived example that points are a measure of total resources + opportunity in our closed system, since we're implying a redistribution of a fixed pool of resources^1. So, the total in the "after" picture would still be 94 and thus the mean would remain at 9.4 and the medi…

Oh, I see! I wasn't really considering a zero-sum situation. In the argument from justice, you think it's a moral mandate to take money away from people because other people have less money?

Well, if you're going to compare two scenarios using a numerical example, I think the assumption that the total pool of opportunity would decrease is a rather strong one!

>In the argument from justice, you think it's a moral mandate to take money away from people because other people have less money?

Well, not because other people have less money.

My politics are roughly "people should do whatever they want, but they should have to pay the price of the externalities of their actions", sprinkled with "reducing overall human misery is virtuous".

More like, because in order for the massively wealthy to exist there's a strong argument that there has to be a massive underclass to go along with it. In this light, being rich creates the externality of forcing people to be poor, and as a result it's perfectly moral to redistribute some of that wealth.

Another argument goes, we have a more vibrant and stable society if we ensure that a) everyone is healthy and gets a good education and b) no one person or group in particular can amass so much power as to be capable of destabilizing society as a whole.

There are a few other argument, but at the time of writing I think those two are the strongest. We can talk about right wrongs from the historical record, we can talk about the duty to minimize misery, we can talk about private property is a state-regulated right and thus it's legitimate to argue over it, we can talk about theological underpinnings, etc etc.

You may disagree, of course.

Re: Being alone

#134
post #129
post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you’re straight, consider a commitment ceremony but don’t get married until all people can share in that legal right should they so choose. If you’re a white person with wealth and children, choose to invest in and send your children to a local, public, neighborhood school or at least a private school with a strong commitment to diversity and inclusion rather than a lily-white private place with connections to the…

How does asking people to consider choices "make things harder or worse for those with privilege"?

The article is asking people to make their lives worse. The suggestions are predicated on the assumption that the alternatives listed are less desirable.

Re: Being alone

#135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>But at the end of the day, it's this culture that is often hostile to white dudes on principal, and just... okay? So, the premise that this begins with starts not with the notion that you're a bad person who doesn't deserve to live but more from the notion, popular in lefty circles, that your opinion about the plight of less privileged people doesn't matter precisely because you have no experience in the subject mat…

The key thing to keep in mind is, if you're not a white dude, you've spent most of modern history totally shut out of the conversation. The key thing you are forgetting when you say 'shut up, straight white boy'[1] is that throughout most of history (and still today), even if you were a white male, you were statistically speaking poor and fairly unimportant, and also shut out of 'the conversation'. There is a fairly…

>even if you were a white male, you were statistically speaking poor and fairly unimportant, and also shut out of 'the conversation'.

Well, it's not about your individual, direct contribution but your place in that system of power.

Just because you're not directly related to powerful rich white men doesn't mean that their decisions - while mostly targetted at "rich" rather than "white and male" - haven't also and continue to benefit you to this day.

My great-great-great-grandfather may have been a penniless shmuck of no importance - but whoever he was he was still the head of his household and had some modicum of rights. His wife on the other hand, would have been largely considered to be his property. Had he died after her first born son came of age, she might not even inherit anything he leaves behind - or be forced to marry his younger brother, or etc etc.

And woe betide you if you were born black 50+ years ago.

I know the above isn't in question but what I'm getting at is - we still benefit in some way from all of this and the fact that our feelings get hurt, or we aren't personally responsible isn't particularly interesting.

I'm not defending the practice - I too lean towards saying "it's way too abrasive" but I fundamentally sympathize with the underpinning. Anything I say is likely to be in my interests.

Re: Being alone

#136
post #98
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am thinking the same things. At some point you have to make friends from scratch. They aren't just given to you. As for the "doing things alone" I've noticed that people don't like doing that. Traveling, going to see a movie, or attending an event all seem to be things that have a stigma attached to doing them solo.

I went to a restaurant alone once. I was a teenager; this was almost 10 years ago. I remember my conversation with the hostess going something like this: Hostess: "So...just one today?" Me: "Yep." Hostess: "Oh.. Do you want me to bring you a magazine or something?"

Reminds me of this scene from Steve Martin's The Lonely Guy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQ7CNUuoe3E

Re: Being alone

#137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's more of an original sin you can never be absolved of and are supposed to continually prostrate yourself for. Of course there are people in situations for which the advice in this article is a non-starter. But does that preface actually specifically address them, or is it just a cargo-cult disclaimer to keep the responses from being derailed by feel-good plighties? And how should one feel if they are so "privileg…

Yeah, exactly. I'm deeply sympathetic towards lefty activists and activism, but I just cannot get over how much privilege "politics" [sic] sounds like original sin. 1. Being racist is bad 2. All white people are racist (by virtue of being born into a racist culture) Ergo... all white people are bad. And I've seen several facebook posts by people of color that say things like "I'M DONE WITH WHITE PEOPLE." And I'm even…

Your more astute social justice commentators tend to point out that everybody is racist (and sexist and transphobic and and and). Including people of color against their own race, because they are not immune to the constant messages that they are "the other".

I think it's good to read those frustrated messages with some sympathy. I don't think they're saying they're completely done with ever talking to white people for any reason (like at a party); I think they're just expressing their exhaustion with having to have the same Racism 101 conversations about race with white people. Because white people, as a whole, when hearing about the experiences PoC have, tend to dismiss or question or rationalize rather than listening and considering.

I'm white. I've only recently started paying attention to this shit and already I've seen the repetition of the same tired ideas put forth, especially in HN threads like this one. I can roll my eyes and stop having to think about it for a while (or forever, if I wanted to), but people of color don't really have that luxury.

Re: Being alone

#138
post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having your status considered the baseline is a part of privilege. Folks who fall outside of that baseline face real negative consequences for it. Both "the majority is privileged" and "the minority is disadvantaged" are true at the same time.

OK so the majority has some privilege just from being the majority. But that isn't a moral failing, something they should be ashamed of, something they shouldn't take full advantage of, or something they can change. So it doesn't seem to have anything in common with, say, racism or sexism.

[deleted]

Re: Being alone

#139
post #11
post #6

Stopped reading after > Preface: As a white, heterosexual, cis, male, I’m granted, from birth, an extraordinary amount of privilege I wasn't actually aware people outside of the Tumblrverse said things like that. (Over on Reddit there is /r/TumblrInAction for things like this)

Do you disagree with the author? Depending on where you live, his point is very valid. As a resident of Canada, I feel that I live in a fairly progressive, culturally diverse society. Yet even here, I have heard friends of different ethnicities complain about racial issues. Not all racial or gender divisions are obvious; exclusion or denial of privilege is harder to spot.

I am European, but to me that sounds racist "I am white and heterosexual, I have the privilege". Like other people are worth less because they do not have privilege?

I understand there are bonus points for this in America. But it also means that rest of the article is very likely going to be a political rant

Re: Being alone

#140
post #80
post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you explain a bit more, why exactly does this advice "just get out there" not apply to anyone who isn't either white, heterosexual, cis or male?

It's still sadly the case that in many parts of the world, if you're, say, gay, and you "get out there" and end up talking to the wrong person, they might gang up on you in the parking lot as you leave and beat the shit out of you. It's fairly unlikely in a civilised surrounding, but civilisation is rarer than you think. As a straight white male, your potential downside from getting into a chat with someone at a part…

I assumed we're speaking about the first world. I totally agree that different people are treated differently by the (majority of the) society, but to speak of privilege... Maybe women are more likely to be touched by strangers in a club, but most of my male friends have already been assaulted, either in clubs or in the street. I was assaulted in broad dailght. I don't personally know any woman that had anything similar happen to her, which of course doesn't say much, but claiming that one sex (or race) has it uniformly better or worse than another seems a bit of a stretch to me.
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