@TheEmperor Because we are talking about something should be allowed or dissalowed in society. We are talking about a toppic, where people either in favor, none caring or against it. Because a moral judgement is being maked.
Someone brings in, that being gay is not the "default position". I challenge that because I think being gay is a natural occurence, I don't believe human beings have 1 default position. Heterosexuality and homosexuality are just as a "default-position" as black haired people and redheads. Homosexuality is part of humanity for me. It excists, it will not go away. We have been through puritan times, with way more wide spread persecution and harassment then there is today. And it didn't go away. It's there. So we have to deal with it as a society. The sollution being brought for is too put gay people in the closet a little longer. So that we can all pretend it doesn't excist which will lead too some society that is better then the alternative. My stance is too accept it, get being gay on an equal level as being heterosexual so that eventually next generations don't have to do this debate again. And also to stop the suffering that those people that are in the closet are feeling, because the rest of society isn't mature enough to recogise a phenomena that is a part of reality. Mostly in favor of some personally held orthodoxy that needs to be maintained at all costs for some reason. But it's not going away, I want to get over the discussion so we can spend time on other, hopefully better toppics.
If you talk about "default positions" and "the norm" in that kind of discussion, you try to strengthen your argument. Because that's still what we are talking about. Just like when you add that you don't think you need to use words that only excisted for 5 minutes and mention how long civilisation excist, when trying to attack the legitamacy as word, you are trying to strengthen your argument in some strange way. If this is not the case, then why bring it up in this conversation at all?
And I do think it's important to understand who sets the norm in a conversation. For the example with the hair for instance, and I'm not being contrararion here, for me "red" is also the norm. Because I think the norm can excist out of more then 1 data set. Considering that all hair types are natural and are not rare where I live (for as far as I'm aware), it's quite normal to see a redhead on the street. People that die their hair in green and blue or something... those things would be outside of norm. Because I define it that way. Every studio that wants to invoke a "norm", needs to define that norm. The norm is always set by the person that defines it. I think being gay, is not rare enough to be outside the norm when it comes to sexual behavior while others might. I'm not going to let a discussion being won by someone that invokes "a norm" that my "norm" will not agree with.
And considering that we are talking about "the norm", "default positions" but also someone that mentions tastes in the sense of being "naturally repulsed". I think I might like to add that I actually agree with Bourdieu who said:
Tastes (i.e. , manifested preferences) are the practical affirmation of an inevitable difference. It is no accident that, when they have to be justified, they are asserted purely negatively, by the refusal of other tastes. In matters of taste, more than anywhere else, all determination is negation; and tastes are perhaps first and foremost distastes, disgust provoked by horror or visceral intolerance ('sick-making')of the tastes of others. 'De gustibus non est disputandum': not because 'tous les gouts sont dans la nature', but because each taste feels itself to be natural-and so it almost is, being a habitus--which amounts to rejecting others as unnatural and therefore vicious. Aesthetic intolerance can be terribly violent. Aversion to different life-styles is perhaps one of the strongest barriers between the classes; class endogamy is evidence of this. The most intolerable thing for those who regard themselves as the possessors of legitimate culture is the sacrilegious reuniting of tastes which taste dictates shall be separated.
This means that the games of artists and aesthetes and their struggles for the monopoly of artistic legitimacy are less innocent than they seem. At stake in every struggle over art there is also the imposition of an art of living, that is, the transmutation of an arbitrary way of living into the legitimate way of life which casts every other way of living into arbitrariness. The artist's life-style is always a challenge thrown at the bourgeois life-style, which it seeks to condemn as unreal and even absurd, by a sort of practical demonstration of the emptiness of the values and powers it pursues. The neutralizing relation to the world which defines the aesthetic disposition potentially implies a subversion of the spirit of seriousness required by bourgeois investments. Like the visibly ethical judgements of those who lack the means to make art the basis of their art of living, to see the world and other people through literary reminiscences and pictorial references, the 'pure' and purely aesthetic judgements of the artist and the aesthete spring from the dispositions of an ethos; but because of the legitimacy which they command so long as their relationship to the dispositions and interests of a group defined by strong cultural capital and weak economic capital remains unrecognized, they provide a sort of absolute reference point in the necessarily endless play of mutually self-relativizing tastes. By a paradoxical reversal, they thereby help to legitimate the bourgeois claim to 'natural distinction' as difference made absolute.
Oh, really? Then what are astronomers wasting their time with? 🙄
Astronomer Hoyle would obviously disagree with you. He was not just a pantheist, but a panentheist, believing there was a conscious mind behind the visible universe, as this quote shows:
"Would you not say to yourself, "Some super-calculating intellect must have designed the properties of the carbon atom, otherwise the chance of my finding such an atom through the blind forces of nature would be utterly minuscule. A common sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a superintellect has monkeyed with physics, as well as with chemistry and biology, and that there are no blind forces worth speaking about in nature. The numbers one calculates from the facts seem to me so overwhelming as to put this conclusion almost beyond question." "
I think the word "woke" has been weaponized by the right. Like “politically correct” a couple of years before it, the word “woke” has come to connote the opposite of what it means.
@helenS Well that’s certainly not true in the UK. There’s nothing right-wing about being opposed to the antics of Extinction Rebellion, or opposing the claims of males who “identify” as females to be treated in all respects as if they were women - both, the latter especially, being key tenets of the woke agenda. In my more pessimistic moments I wonder if the Conservative Party isn’t more woke than the Labour Party. Certainly the Labour leader has made it clear by his pronouncements on various issues that he doesn’t subscribe to the woke agenda.
@TheEmperor You said: "And over here, ‘far right ‘ values are just the norm."
I live in both places: 6 months at home in the US and 6 months abroad (visa limitation) in Asia where men are men, women are women, and all planets have their assigned places in the cosmos. It is very much the same situation in America.
As you rightly pointed out, it is the woke fringe that perceives it has the mandate to dictate public policy and moral correctness.
There is no forgiveness with Woke, even when you’ve done nothing wrong. The only thing wrong is their warped perception of reality. It’s hate, and more hate. It’s the opposite of love, grace, and redemption.
@sree251 "Experts in academia"? I'm a non-dualist. I don't understand myself as "facing" an external material reality. We are an integral part of Reality (Even quantum theory would see us as ultimately inseparable from the whole)
Then again, I'm "religious", a Pure Land Buddhist. Pure Faith in Reality. Touch base, then we can differentiate. But first we must know in our bones that we are all the same in a fundamental sense (although each unique in another)
Sadly many view human consciousness and intelligence as some sort of accident in the midst of boundless stupidity. In fact - at least as I see it - there is an organism/environment polarity. One cannot be without the other.
Non-dualism. Not that "all is one", but that Reality is not-two
I really am getting tired. It has been a long day. But to finish, "right conduct" can only ever be a by-product of wisdom. Knowing/seeing correctly.
@SW-User You said: "Non-dualism. Not that "all is one", but that Reality is not-two"
So, The Reality of non-dualism is neither two nor one. We are using the language of duality to express non-duality. We will inevitably end up serving each other word salads. Let's try, anyway.
To simplify this discussion, let's consider that humanity is not 8 billion but just two of us.
I am indeed Reality, this entirety of my existence. I am that. Reality is all encompassing. Therefore, I am all encompassing.
This conversation is between two of us: me and you. Two voices within Reality. I am that.
Might be worth reminding ourselves what "woke" really means, by its etymology.
It is a slang contraction of "awoke", in the sense of being awakened, and to injustice and oppression.
It was coined by Afro-Americans in the 1930s and first appeared traceably in a blues song after a group of black youths were wrongly accused and convicted of raping a white woman. They were later freed, not least because the woman spoke up for their being innocent.
It appears to have become a term of American political slanging-matches generally only within the last few years, and to become merely abuse meaning only what its user wants it to mean - if anything at all.
@ArishMell It's not from the 1930's, "Woke" has always been a part of African American Vernacular English(AAVE)..it is a grammatical error in plain english, it means to awaken. The political use of the term really comes from the late '60's-early '70's & didn't really catch on until recently in common usage. Like most of AAVE, it's just english with poor grammar & syntax.
@SamInAZ Even older than the 30s then? A song, I think it was said by Leadbelly, is the first actually recorded use.
I said it is from "awaken" and slang, but perhaps the poor grammar reflected the standard of education given to those who coined it 90 or more years ago.
I don't recall ever hearing it used in the 1970s but it certainly became prominent in the last few years, when it also crossed the Atlantic to be used probably even further removed from its own reality.
@ArishMell it was becoming more popular in left-wing radical academic circles within the universities in the 70's. With theorist types. But yeah, it originates from Ebonics a.k.a AAVE, which is basically just a southern dialect, rural whites in the South have used woke instead of awake for a long time too.
Yes it does, I should know, I’ve worked as an account and fund raise for several companies and charities and currently run several 6 figure international companies and charities and know what I’m talking abou
That's anecdotal evidence. Generally speaking, corporations will do anything to say money no matter the situation. Republicans are constantly cutting taxes for the rich, it never results in less outsourcing, lower prices, or higher employment.
“Immigrants are less likely to become dependent on welfare’. Source.
"Once refugees and U.S.-born children are excluded from the data, most research shows that immigrants are not welfare prone. On average, immigrants consume 27 percent fewer benefits than U.S.-born who have similar incomes and ages. Furthermore, some programs are utilized as a source of temporary support."
Social welfare programs raise birth rates, especially ones that specifically make it easier to have kids, such as like maternity/paternity leave, free school lunch, child tax credit, and so on. This worked in a bunch of European countries. We do have to accept that as a country becomes industrialized, birth rates drop significantly because people no longer need ten kids to work the fields. But social welfare programs at least get people to have a replacement level birth rate.
Woke equates to triggered. I tell people that I hate trump and tesla and apple and air travel and smoking/vapes and credit cards and guns and religion and I awaken the woke dragon in the alt right movement!
@whowasthatmaskedman It's not that they prefer to live in those conditions, it's just that with democratic leadership in that state, they cant afford to move. You've got to be a pretty horrible person to see someone in that condition and think "I'll use their suffering as a cheap political jab".
@Aami1 I am with you on this. So many of the arguments Americans make are presented as blabk and white. If I am right you must be wrong, where in fact the shades of grey are infinite. People still come to America to escape worse treatment in other places. Yet there are better places than America that are simply not as easy to get into since the black economy there is essential to keep the system running.. Then you add the competitive nature of American society where not being a "winner" makes you a "loser" and so many then look for people who have lost worse to support their fragile egos.. Its a very complex problem I am glad not to be a part of..😷
I never thought affirmative action would disappear. The Supreme Court has made it a very sad time. If only the corrupt right wing of the Supreme Court could “wake up”. Sad thing for Justice Thomas is that he and others are up for sale.
But are they wrong about other people being insensitive? Same as being cancelled, who has been cancelled with out good cause, Andrew Tate, Alex Jones, Tucker Carlson? They all still seem to be shooting their mouths off when ever they feel like it.
@TheEmperor But you know sometimes that is the case, right? Like I know people are complicated, no two people agree on everything, but when it comes to certain issues, a lot of people just blindly tow the party line and repeat whatever their media says. If nothing else, that's what Trumpism taught us.
It's like whenever people want to prove "science" is on their side, it's always a figure between 90-100%, it's never like 82%, because that doesnt have the same effect.
That's because science isn't an opinion. The scientific community generally agrees on facts, even when they disagree on what to do regarding facts.
