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Sounds perfect Wahhhh, I don’t wanna

Lefter than thou?

Someone on reddit asked for rationalist blogs to the left of SSC, and someone else mentioned me. Very kind of them.

Though the most bewildering part was the OP asking “Which of the views in this blog do you think Scott would find too far to the left?”

I don’t really know where to start, but any time something feels obvious but you can’t concretely prove it, is a good time for examination.

  • I advocate the overthrow of capitalism and the establishment of communism (if an anarchist, Christian form.)
  • I think the problem with social justice is that it does not stick to its principles enough and has been compromised by capitalism, and not that “it goes too far” as is the usual rationalist or centrist lament.
  • I draw a lot of inspiration from Zizek and Lacan, who Scott dismisses as “fashionably leftist.” (To be fair, Scott is a practicing psychiatrist and I am not.)
  • I emphasize class issues a great deal in my analysis.
  • Obviously we are both going to vote Democrat for the forseeable future, but I think the instruments of the left like unions are essential to American politics, and will do whatever I can to support them.

Anyway, if you want a good rationalist-adjacent blog, you should be reading @theunitofcaring . Her Patreon describes her as “blog posts about social justice, effective altruism, and elves.”

If you’re reading here anyway and trying to get a better idea of my writing, without scanning X most recent posts, remember to go to my effort posts page.

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“Can Demons Love?”

To write that a thing cannot love is to write that we fear that thing; that something in it is something we cannot grapple with; that we must shut down our empathy as we approach that point, project thingness onto it, deny it, hide from it, shut ourselves away inside ourselves and speak such words of it. We dare not love it, so we say it does not love.

Of course demons can love.

Exalted Sourcebook FAQ
Apart from the kafkaesque nightmare of it, I was very struck by how being In Activism was rather like playing Magic the Gathering or Warhammer - to stay in the hobby, you’ve gotta keep buying the new cards as they come out, or you’re no longer able to play in tournaments. Putting in all your free time into educating yourself and keeping up with the in vogue terms and issues and positions is 100% required for any kind of involvement at all. In the time I was out, they just issued a whole new edition of the rules I had to learn.

Tumblr arguments about when terminology changes.

Maturity Cycles

This goes in the bucket of “thoughts I assumed everyone had about aesthetics, but maybe they don’t.” If there’s a pre-existing term for it, let me know.

I’m talking about aesthetic preferences where fashions can move in one of two directions, but it’s always “a little bit in one direction” or “a LOT in the other direction.”

Let’s say we’re talking about fantasy novels. And the way to be cool is always to be a *little* more edgy than the last novel. More mature, more characters die, the ending is less likely to be pure good-beats-evil, more morally-conflicted-characters, more sex and blood, etc. This is cool, and eventually you end up with Malazhan Book of the Fallen.

It’s never cool to be slightly lighter and purer than the status quo.

HOWEVER, once the fashion is grim enough, then it’s an edgy move to throw the switch entirely in the other direction, with an embrace of “what made fantasy good in the first place.” A truly good superhero like Superman, or innocence like My Little Pony, etc, or just Oscar Wilde’s call for a return to sincerity. (At no point is there a call to jump to “the most grimdark extreme ev4r.)

You can look at it like elementary school, where the kids in each grade disdain the kids in the grade above them, but the high schoolers look back with envy on the simple joys of the kindergardners.

(This is somewhat similar to what Scott said about fashion and cellular automata, and I added to with class models, but those use a binary scale, whereas the directionality of this model needs a spectrum. In fact it has more resemblance to Balioc’s Tarot Ages of Humanity.)

Life Under Polyamory Ideology

There’s a lot of… dialogue about monogamy vs polyamory these days, in our cosmopolitan little bubble. No one wants to tell others which lifestyle you should choose so I wouldn’t call it a debate, but there’s a great deal of defending “how your lifestyle works, and why you’re happy with it” that can’t save itself from becoming discourse about the two main options.

This happens enough that we fail to recognize that no, polyamory just won. We all live in its world now.

Or more accurately, we all live free of monogamous ideology now.

Case in point. I have a friend, and she’s monogamously committed to her boyfriend. Sure, she hangs out with a lot of other boys. She even visits them by herself, and crashes in their bed. She’s generous with hugs and other mild displays of physical affection to men. And she kind of pines after some specific men, wishing for greater emotional attachment. This isn’t even hidden, it’s all openly acknowledged. But, this is the definition of monogamy she and her SO have worked out.

The reaction of people from her social circle, the people from our general social bubble is “fine. Whatever works for the two of you. If that’s what you call monogamy, I have no reason to disagree with you.” There’s no call for us to try to strictly define what monogamy should mean for them.

Let me assure you, this is not how it would work under monogamous ideology. In a society where monogamy was the reigning lifestyle choice, it includes a specific definition of monogamy, and “being too touchy with other men” would definitely violate that. Even with her partner’s consent, she would be found guilty of breaking social taboos. (Which is basically how her non-cosmopolitan co-workers react.)

But none of us (which I assume includes most of my readers) give a fuck. Call yourself polyamorous, monogamish, what the fuck ever. As long as you both are happy what business is it of mine? And that is the true spirit of polyamory - anarchism towards society wide definitions of romantic relationships.

You might individually choose to snuggle with just one person, and hopefully can get that special person to agree. But it’s very different when that’s a private agreement between two people (one which can be altered at any time they want), than when it’s an arrangement coded and enforced by the whole social world. And we just don’t have that in liberal cosmopolitania any more.

After all, one of the main benefits of monogamy was that you don’t have to negotiate shit. You’re together, you’re just dating each other, these are the default rules, and for people who don’t want to process and explicitly lay out their preferences, this is a lot easier. But that’s gone now - any couple does have to figure out whether they are poly or mono, and even if they are mono, where they feel those boundaries lie, because ain’t no one else doing that regulating for them.

currentaffairs.org

How Identity Became A Weapon Against The Left | Current Affairs

During the 2012 presidential race, Cory Booker went on Meet The Press and defended—of all people—Mitt Romney against criticism of Romney’s work for Bain Capital. Booker, evincing more sympathy for the financial industry than for the disproportionate number of black people affected by the financial industry’s bad acts, told voters to “stop attacking private equity.” Booker was wrong to do so. During the 2016 primary, Representative John Lewis unfairly impugned Bernie Sanders’ character, implying that because Lewis hadn’t personally seen Sanders in the crowd of hundreds of thousands at the 1964 March on Washington, Sanders was probably lying about having gone. Lewis, likewise, was wrong to do so. Democrats defending Hillary Clinton’s support of the 1994 Crime Bill relish pointing out that two-thirds of the Congressional Black Caucus voted in favor of it. But those members, too, were wrong—despite being black. The other members of the CBC, the ones who opposed the bill, were right. Likewise, the contemporary equivalent of that dissenting third—the black voters who supported Bernie Sanders in the primary—should not be erased because other quantities of black people disagree. Any statement about what “black people” think or support automatically discounts the perspective of very large numbers of us, because—as is often said but rarely internalized—black people are not a monolith. Identity is, at best, a loose proxy for a person’s political commitments, and individual identity groups contain incredibly diverse perspectives. Failure to recognize that fact can result in dangerous consequences: it can lead us to support policies contrary to the best interests of a community simply because of optics, and it can turn us into a “firewall” to lean on, rather than a constituency to be won.

wirehead-wannabe
beesmygod

once you realize you can dislike someone for petty stupid reasons and you dont have to build up a case against them to legitimize yourself, you can be free

crypel

This realization also freed me from having to label everyone i dislike as like, a white supremacist or a misogynist or whatever to justify my dislike. Even though they might have been those things, those aren’t actually the criteria on which I like or dislike someone.

Source: beesmygod
rasienna
argumate

it’s disturbing how well PUA concepts apply to business and sales negotiations where you typically have two entitled assholes employing peacocking, negs, shittests, last minute resistance, the whole nine yards.

discoursedrome

Yeah, I’ve talked about this before elsewhere – IMO this is actually the central insight of PUA: it’s an attempt to apply salesmanship techniques to courtship and flirting. People often dislike that definition because they want to emphasize how “rapey” PUA is and how it treats other people’s boundaries and wishes as desires to be overcome, but, like, that’s exactly how sales and negotiations work. The fact that we consider it unacceptable when it comes to sex is a rare example of us actually having a high degree of scruples about the matter.

wirehead-wannabe

In the context of a business deal, though, there’s rarely an underlying threat that the other party is going to beat, forcibly rape, or even kill you if you don’t comply with what they want. Also I do in fact dislike pushy attempts to get me to buy shit, it’s just not socially acceptable to be rude to salespeople in the way that one might be rude to catcallers.

discoursedrome

This is definitely a subtext underlying a lot of sexualized interactions, but I don’t think it explains the attitudes toward PUA specifically, because they really don’t seem to be about this. PUA “game” is about sales tricks, not force, and I get the sense that even a totally misogynistic pick-up artist would disdain relying on the threat of force to achieve success, if only because it demonstrates a lack of skill.

What criticism I’ve seen mostly seems to emphasize that hard-sell techniques and emotional manipulation undermine the legitimacy of consent, violate boundaries, and push people into agreeing to things they might regret later. Those are completely legitimate objections, but they do apply to sales generally.

akaltynarchitectonica

Most sales decisions are reversable in a way that sex isn’t.

Also, its less tied to people’s particular identities. The quality of a product and the needs of a customer are separate from the person, so people are not as emotionally invested.

Also we have pretty strong norms about where and how it is appropriate to sell things, you can do a hard sale technique at a car dealership or in finance, but you couldn’t o it in a lot of industries, and you certainly can’t do it to random friends and family. (Indeed the stereotype of MLM scams is people selling in inappropriate situations )

discoursedrome

This is true, but a lot of the mitigating factors in sales were put there by the government against the wishes of the people doing the selling, and in many cases they’ll go to considerable lengths to prevent people from reversing their decisions. Moreover, I’d say it’s probably easier to wreck your life by buying the wrong thing in the wrong way than it is by fucking the wrong person in the wrong way – unquestionably that’s the case if you discount STD’s. Destroying people’s lives, intentionally violating their boundaries, and otherwise harming and parasitizing the vulnerable in the pursuit of profit is a core component of sales as a field, even though any given sales job may not involve it. This bothers people less than I think it probably should.

With small-scale sales that happen in a designated selling place, I’m much less troubled by it, but there are a lot of sectors of sales where making a bad decision could ruin a person’s life and everything is optimized to make sure that as many people as possible do so. The industries where it’s most acceptable to be predatory are also the ones where it’s most destructive to the mark – car sales and finance are big ones, as you note in your examples. And while things like door-to-door and street sales are stigmatized, they’re certainly not stigmatized anywhere near as much as the equivalent style of flirting. So I think it’s fair to say that there is an actual double standard here, particularly in light of the fact that most PUA stuff seems to happen at places where flirting is considered appropriate.

I don’t exactly know where I’m going with all of this, admittedly. I wouldn’t say salespeople should be viewed as negatively as pick-up artists, or that both are benign. But I will say this much: I think that viewing consent and coercion as topics predominantly related to sexuality and the politics of sex – or of having a completely different standard when applied to those fields – warps our ability to think and talk about them.

rasienna

#reblogged especially for the last paragraph

Source: argumate
discoursedrome
allmymetaphors

My whole problem with the “I do makeup for ME! I’m EMPOWERED when I put on makeup!” discourse is that it completely erases the fact that women aren’t actually given the ability to MAKE that choice. It’s impossible to say that you’re doing it for self empowerment, or that “if it wasn’t so much fun I wouldn’t do it” because that’s just not true. Women who enjoy doing their makeup and women who don’t enjoy doing it both have equal pressure to wear makeup. Whether you enjoy the process or not, you will be taken less seriously as a woman, valued less, respected less, considered ‘unprofessional’ at work, etc. if you choose not to wear makeup. Men aren’t faced with the decision to get an extra hour of sleep or to be taken seriously. By writing it off as a cool empowering fun thing women do as an exciting entertaining hobby we’re just…. erasing the entire institution of makeup and of beauty standards that seriously harm women. If you enjoy doing makeup that’s great, that’s fine, and you should keep it up! But wearing makeup in the first place wasn’t ever your choice. We don’t GET a choice. I hate people saying “oh you don’t have to wear it! If you don’t like makeup don’t put it on!” As if I’m expected to just be cool with the way the world will treat me if I don’t conform to modern beauty standards! If you’re worrying about your eyebrows or lip plumpness or skin tone evenness that’s not you making a free willed cool decision to feel insecure and concerned about facial features that men never have to think twice about. That’s you thinking in a way you’ve been trained to think! And people wanna pretend that putting on makeup is Empowering… what the hell is empowering about making a choice that’s been forced on us since we were old enough to be seen as sexual objects lmfao… that’s bullshit that doesn’t empower me and having to give up valuable time and money and energy that men are never asked to give up makes me feel like shit!! It makes me miserable! It makes me dread every single morning because I know I’m gonna be putting forward all this bullshit labor just to exist and be taken seriously in my stupid body

fierceawakening

I think this depends on what work you’re doing or what social environment you interact in. People tried to humiliate me out of being butch by saying things like “you’ll never keep a job if you don’t wear makeup” and “you’ll be considered unprofessional if your short hair looks like THAT rather than like THIS.” 

I let myself be terrified for years. Then I decided I didn’t care if not hating what I saw in the mirror meant getting a dress code lecture.

It didn’t.

I haven’t worn makeup in years, much less panicked over hairstyles.

I’m not saying don’t talk about this as a problem! I’m sure it sometimes is! That’s how people were able to use it to scare me!

But I worry about universalizing it to this degree.

isaacsapphire

It’s absolutely not universal. My employee handbook explicitly prohibits visible makeup, and wearing makeup will get you NOT taken seriously in blue collar jobs, period.

discoursedrome

I’m jumping into this thread at random just to vent, because god damn it’s this topic again, isn’t it? Apologies.

I can really feel for the OP here, but nothing is more exhausting to me than the “this thing is totally benign and positive and people who criticize it just have issues” vs. “this thing is inherently oppressive and people who defend it have false consciousness” boxing matches, because both those positions are terrible, god damn it.

I think the degree to which consumer capitalism has coopted girl-power feminism is pretty worrying, because there is a lot of sketchiness underlying a lot of theoretically empowering stuff, but the argument that people’s wishes don’t count because they’re shaped by their environment and in a correct environment everyone would agree with the speaker, is just so incredibly sketchy. There has to be something in between those positions, where it’s possible to break down oppressive norms without treating everyone who likes the things those norms encourage as pawns of the enemy.

Source: allmymetaphors
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