This forum is in permanent archive mode. Our new active community can be found here.

Brexit

13

Comments

  • edited June 2016
  • I've advised friends and acquaintances, who were making very rational and reasons why they wanted to vote leave, before the results that leaving wouldn't give them any of those things that they wanted from leaving.

    That it would hurt any what progress that we was already struggling to make so on and so forth. I was really struggling to get anyone to understand that that economic arguments is only a portion of the whole referendum argument. That these sociological problems would be exacerbated.

    The divide between London and not-London is very real. Some Londoners just don't understand what happens outside of London and vica versa.
  • edited June 2016
    sK0pe said:

    This is kind of depressing and scary.
    [Images]

    Yeah, when politicians allow racists a mainstream stage and a seat at the table in order to advance their economic policies, it legitimizes racism and provides a forum in which it is less taboo to be openly racist. It's happening in the States at an alarming rate. People I've worked with for years have - since Trump became a candidate - outed themselves as bigots.

    My mother grew up in the South, and she liked that the racists there were easily identifiable - be it the David Duke white suits or the confederate flag toting yokel. She said that moving to the North made it incredibly difficult to know whom to avoid, because so many people were subtle about their racism. Now, the subtlety is gone and racists are easier to spot. It is heartbreaking that there are so many.
    Post edited by Kate Monster on
  • Dazzle369 said:

    I've advised friends and acquaintances, who were making very rational and reasons why they wanted to vote leave, before the results that leaving wouldn't give them any of those things that they wanted from leaving.

    That it would hurt any what progress that we was already struggling to make so on and so forth. I was really struggling to get anyone to understand that that economic arguments is only a portion of the whole referendum argument. That these sociological problems would be exacerbated.

    The divide between London and not-London is very real. Some Londoners just don't understand what happens outside of London and vica versa.

    The world used to be divided primarily based on geography. It still is, to some extent. But globalization and the Internet have made the young,educated,city/old,ignorant,rural the dividing lines of the 21st century. We'll win no matter what since we have the undefeated father time in our corner.

    Still, I wish I could have been born later. I would have to wait a lot less for the golden age. Also would have a greater chance of being able to upload my brain to cyberspace.
  • I am an extreme advocate of free speech.

    I'm also not a pacifist, and I believe that ideas thrive or die in the substrate of humans.

    Frankly, if I see white supremacist of confederate symbols displayed, and I have the opportunity, I will invariably deface them. There is a line, a gray zone, between allowing the free exchange of ideas, and committing to the destruction of an idea even as you support the right of any given person to express it.

    These particular ideas have a history. They have been tested, and the world has seen the results. I want to destroy these ideas. Their history warrants a higher degree of scrutiny. Their bearers warrant a higher burden of proof.

    These symbols should not be able to appear in any medium without immediate attack. They must be repudiated with such ferocity that weaker minds fear expressing them.

    Couterforce (attack the ideas and their symbols directly) as opposed to Countervalue (attacking the people themselves).

    Now, if these movements start to gain real traction, along the lines of 30s Germany... Countervalue is definitely on the table. You only suffer Nazis so far.
  • Churba said:

    you can hear the tiny cracks like rifle fire as spineless politicians break the sound barrier backwards.

    That's a powerful phrase.

    sK0pe said:

    This is kind of depressing and scary.
    [Images]

    Yeah, when politicians allow racists a mainstream stage and a seat at the table in order to advance their economic policies, it legitimizes racism and provides a forum in which it is less taboo to be openly racist. It's happening in the States at an alarming rate. People I've worked with for years have - since Trump became a candidate - outed themselves as bigots.
    There must be some age dynamic going on between our social media. I know a handful of Bernie Bros and a few Trumpers but only the people who I wouldve expected it from.
  • edited June 2016
    Rym said:

    Frankly, if I see white supremacist of confederate symbols displayed, and I have the opportunity, I will invariably deface them. There is a line, a gray zone, between allowing the free exchange of ideas, and committing to the destruction of an idea even as you support the right of any given person to express it.

    Burning a book is just as much an exercise of free speech as writing one. Likewise, defacing a racist symbol or flyer is just as much an exercise of free speech as displaying said symbol.

    Post edited by Kate Monster on
  • Rym said:

    Frankly, if I see white supremacist of confederate symbols displayed, and I have the opportunity, I will invariably deface them. There is a line, a gray zone, between allowing the free exchange of ideas, and committing to the destruction of an idea even as you support the right of any given person to express it.

    Burning a book is just as much an exercise of free speech as writing one. Likewise, defacing a racist symbol or flyer is just as much an exercise of free speech as displaying said symbol.

    As long as it's not the government doing the burning.
  • Apreche said:

    Dazzle369 said:

    I've advised friends and acquaintances, who were making very rational and reasons why they wanted to vote leave, before the results that leaving wouldn't give them any of those things that they wanted from leaving.

    That it would hurt any what progress that we was already struggling to make so on and so forth. I was really struggling to get anyone to understand that that economic arguments is only a portion of the whole referendum argument. That these sociological problems would be exacerbated.

    The divide between London and not-London is very real. Some Londoners just don't understand what happens outside of London and vica versa.

    The world used to be divided primarily based on geography. It still is, to some extent. But globalization and the Internet have made the young,educated,city/old,ignorant,rural the dividing lines of the 21st century. We'll win no matter what since we have the undefeated father time in our corner.

    Still, I wish I could have been born later. I would have to wait a lot less for the golden age. Also would have a greater chance of being able to upload my brain to cyberspace.
    You're right. Old people are very much in the way of progress. Solutions too many persisting problems exist, but there is no political will to implement any of them. Unless you're Estonia/ Iceland.



    @Rym you're absolutely right. Fortunately we're not all racists, and our Prime minister is condemning this behaviour. And we have we people actively reporting on incidents and countering racists protests. I really hope this dies down fast.
  • edited June 2016
    I find a lot of my white friends are shocked by the extent of racism that has oozed out recently. It comes as much less of a surprise to poc who *bonus* get to engage with racism on a daily basis. Kind of like how women are going to spot the faulty stair guy faster than the dudes to whom "he seemed ok to me”; it's a survival thing. My highly tuned sense for when people aren't as righteous as they consider themselves is absolutely one of the reasons I've become increasingly reclusive. Venturing among strangers, occasionally acquaintances, will inevitably result in racism or sexism or queerphobia. And the hidden entitlements that go with that, you must play along, or risk upsetting their volatility.

    Going hiking the day after Orlando, I was wearing a hooded shirt & was stared down in the park bathroom by a woman with a US flag tshirt. She wasn't the only one giving me dirty looks, scrutinizing my appearance, or being outright aggressive. So many levels of ignorant.

    Obviously the US has its own issues. Just pointing out that many of you are sheltered from seeing the worst of people.
    Post edited by no fun girl on
  • Rym said:

    I want to destroy these ideas.

    This is stupid. I wholeheartedly agree with everything you said except these six words. Replace these words with the words "I want to make these ideas laughable" and I'm right behind you. We live in the age of the internet. Destroying an idea is like trying to get a picture off the internet. Good. Luck. With. That.

  • Naoza said:

    Rym said:

    I want to destroy these ideas.

    This is stupid. I wholeheartedly agree with everything you said except these six words. Replace these words with the words "I want to make these ideas laughable" and I'm right behind you. We live in the age of the internet. Destroying an idea is like trying to get a picture off the internet. Good. Luck. With. That.

    "I want to make these ideas laughable" is the same thing as "I want to destroy these ideas." It's what we do as a culture - we excise those ideas which do not "belong."

    People have the idea that the earth is flat. Nobody believes them. The idea is laughable. The belief might as well not exist.
  • Call me an insufferable pedant, but I disagree. "I want to make these ideas laughable." != "I want to destroy these ideas." One means I want these ideas to exist but not be taken seriously, the other means I want these ideas to have occurred to nobody and not exist. That may have been possible before easy exchange of information. The church of the 13th century could conceivably "destroy ideas" but not any more.
  • Naoza said:

    Call me an insufferable pedant

    I was literally half way through a post saying exactly that. That being said, I expect such a level of pedantry from this Forum.
  • edited June 2016
    Naoza said:

    the other means I want these ideas to have occurred to nobody and not exist.

    We have different definitions of "destroy" in this context, then. Yours is complete erasure - past, present, and future. I contend such a thing is impossible, as an idea is a product of a complex thought process, and can occur again. Unless you physically alter brain chemistry in such a way as to prevent thought processes, such "destruction" is impossible.

    This is an essentially worthless use of the word, though, and narrow in scope.

    One can "destroy" a thing without erasing it. You can, for example, remove its ability to function in its context. You break it in such a way that it cannot be fixed. You leave it behind and move on.

    In this sense, an idea can easily be destroyed by a society that refuses to accept it. There is cause to have such distinction, because if we stopped at "breaking" an idea, we might go back to the drawing board. To destroy an idea, one must convince society of the utter worthlessness of said idea.

    And in doing so, you actually effectively accomplish your case definition of "destroy," as ideas will invariably come up in other forms in the future. Convince people that the fundamental notion is worthless, and workarounds will suffer the same fate.

    How many times have you heard an idea rejected because "it's just [this older refuted idea] in a new package?"

    Remember that exchange in Farenheit 451 between Montag and Beatty, where Beatty says something to the effect of "by the time we got to burning books, it no longer mattered, because nobody thought they were important anyway."
    Post edited by TheWhaleShark on
  • I think the only legitimate way of making racism extinct is to improve our education system. Swap military budget with education. How about it?

    Make education accessible, diverse and highly specialised.

  • You make excellent points, but my inner pedant still refuses to be swayed.

    I wouldn't go so far as to say that my definition is essentially useless though. While if an idea was ever truly destroyed by my definition, I couldn't know about it in principal. Some ideas were not destroyed as much as they were heavily heavily censored, and it's not a long mental leap to imagine them being "destoryed" through extremely extensive and effective censorship. This would require them to be rediscovered or someone to find a written work of theirs after all who knew about them had died.

    I acknowledge this is just me being pedantic, and maybe I should just loosen up. It's definitely been too long since I read Fahrenheit 451
  • I think destroyed is valid because it implies that the idea is dead, unable to be brought to life. But when you destroy a thing, the remnant is there and is existence can be seen until it's l cleaned up.

    I think the idea of an idea being completely removed from existence or at least a societies knowledge capacity is closer to deleted, or eradicated, or vaporized, or "reduced to its constituent subatomic particles" or something that implies complete and utter un-existence.

    If I destroy a tank there's still a tank there, its just useless. It doesn't work as a tank til it is rebuilt. But could go into a museum to show people what it was like in the future.

    But if you nuke the tank, there's nothing left, and no evidence to use later.

    And we need evidence. We need to know and face as much history and its ugly ideas as we can.
  • Racism is a toxic and viral concept. Saving a sample in a jar as an artefact, is just risking another outbreak.
  • To eliminate racism means eliminating thr concept of race itself right? By even allowing the word race to have any relevance to human 'types' automatically will bring some people to independently develop the idea of racial superiority/inferiority in some form or another.

    Besides, we will always have records of racism. A world where we censor or delete Tom Sawyer or WWII or the many many vatiations of slavery or any other number of bad things based on bad ideas from public knowledge, is a world I would want to destroy.

    Should we give racism or xenophobia or tyranny or religious persecution a pass to be mildly acceptable to preserve it? No. But we have to know what people are capable of thinking, why certain modes are bad and how to stop those ideas by showing them to exist and be wrong.
  • So Jeremy Corbyn despite the support of Labour members is being voted out by his MPs.

    Jeremy Corbyn is essentially the UK's Bernie Sanders...
  • In other news, the NYSE finally chilled the fuck out.
  • edited June 2016
    Post edited by Daikun on
  • lol classy
  • Bank of England continues to do the devils work during a crisis.

  • edited June 2016
    image
    Post edited by edifolco25 on
Sign In or Register to comment.