Well done. Thank you for this. The Beghossian video was hard to watch. Can you imagine when these people actually get to the gulag they are inadvertently advocating for?! Talk about an unsafe space!
And here’s hoping we don’t live to see what that gulag purgatory looks like in today’s world. Though I believe some have already experienced it to a degree (Alex Jones, among others who have been totally excommunicated from a literal or financial presence online—a quiet and slow death).
The Boghossian video is an instructive case study in what drives the progessive left and how it can short-circuit constructive conversations. Though I will say that was a pretty tame interaction.
Two things can be true: 1.) That the people from that social work school genuinely care about reducing harms for those they empathize with. There is a moral component to what they do.
We can disagree of whether they are identifying harms that require a moral remedy or are of a sufficient transgression that requires someone to intervene. You'll recall one woman asking if there was an advocate around to help in the event a trans person is triggered. So the disagreement on the fundamentals propelling the moral impetus complicates matters.
2.) Then it is further complicated by the drive for social credit. Is this entirely an act borne of the desire to help, protect, acquire justice for; or may we consider selfish motives as well? The credit one receives for being a defender, for protecting the weak. Again, complicated by whether we see them as needing a defense.
Boghossian himself presents a problem in the way he carries himself in that video. He's deferential to a fault; as he keep repeating "more than happy to" about changing the sign, he's backing himself into a corner and has to play defense. Which he does to the end of the video.
He might have said, "I like the sign as it is precisely because it's provocative within this campus context, where I expect it would be noxious to a significant number of people. And it's the exchange with those people that I'm looking forward to.
He also should have said, "You know, because it's just me and a couple of people here, I feel threatened and unsafe by you as a crowd. Because I'm not speaking to you one at a time, person to person; I'm speaking to all of you, such that even when I do speak to one of you, I'm really engaging in a hivemind that will not relent until I agree with your ideas of how I should act, where I should express myself, what constitutes a harm, and what signals a harm has occurred. And that's before we get into whether I"m allowed to be true to myself and my beliefs."
Boghossian made things worse by bringing up the "screaming from the rooftop," because he was trying to turn the tables on them as the "reasonable one in the room," and that was just inviting them to be assholes because they would have to realize that they had been assholes, which undermines the "I'm a moral person" self-conception. Lucky for him, they weren't assholes.
It also revealed that they didn't come to understand; they came to lecture.
I would like for Boghossian, if he's in that circumstance again, to say:
"You are coming to me as if I'm an immoral agent in need of being corrected. But I see myself as a moral agent attempting to prevent and correct the harms that occur when society can't have a conversation with itself. And from my perspective, society can't have a conversation with itself when one side of that dialogue makes maximalist claims like 'You, by simply stating your beliefs, are harming those who don't share them.'
"I don't agree that I am causing that harm. I think that harm is being intentionally willed upon the individual by themselves because you've conditioned them to see harms everywhere and to be a victim that requires moral sympathy.
"Further, I think that you, by virtue of seeing me as merely an avatar for "white, cis, male," empower yourself to act inhumanely or at least disrespectfully toward me. You don't see me as a person first; you see me as a vessel carrying ideas you don't like. Therefore, you can say, 'Fuck you,' to me, you can condescend to me, and you can disregard that I'm acting in good faith, because that's a much faster pathway to feeling good and brave and moral about yourselves.
"You abhor unjust power structures, but have no problem wielding such power. And what you fail to recognize is that there are more people than you who are just as convinced they are right as you are convinced they are wrong. And 'but I went to college and learned this,' isn't the devastating argument you think it is."
Hopefully I will remember all of this if/when I get in a situation like this. Thank you.
Well done. Thank you for this. The Beghossian video was hard to watch. Can you imagine when these people actually get to the gulag they are inadvertently advocating for?! Talk about an unsafe space!
Thanks for reading! :)
And here’s hoping we don’t live to see what that gulag purgatory looks like in today’s world. Though I believe some have already experienced it to a degree (Alex Jones, among others who have been totally excommunicated from a literal or financial presence online—a quiet and slow death).
The Boghossian video is an instructive case study in what drives the progessive left and how it can short-circuit constructive conversations. Though I will say that was a pretty tame interaction.
Two things can be true: 1.) That the people from that social work school genuinely care about reducing harms for those they empathize with. There is a moral component to what they do.
We can disagree of whether they are identifying harms that require a moral remedy or are of a sufficient transgression that requires someone to intervene. You'll recall one woman asking if there was an advocate around to help in the event a trans person is triggered. So the disagreement on the fundamentals propelling the moral impetus complicates matters.
2.) Then it is further complicated by the drive for social credit. Is this entirely an act borne of the desire to help, protect, acquire justice for; or may we consider selfish motives as well? The credit one receives for being a defender, for protecting the weak. Again, complicated by whether we see them as needing a defense.
Boghossian himself presents a problem in the way he carries himself in that video. He's deferential to a fault; as he keep repeating "more than happy to" about changing the sign, he's backing himself into a corner and has to play defense. Which he does to the end of the video.
He might have said, "I like the sign as it is precisely because it's provocative within this campus context, where I expect it would be noxious to a significant number of people. And it's the exchange with those people that I'm looking forward to.
He also should have said, "You know, because it's just me and a couple of people here, I feel threatened and unsafe by you as a crowd. Because I'm not speaking to you one at a time, person to person; I'm speaking to all of you, such that even when I do speak to one of you, I'm really engaging in a hivemind that will not relent until I agree with your ideas of how I should act, where I should express myself, what constitutes a harm, and what signals a harm has occurred. And that's before we get into whether I"m allowed to be true to myself and my beliefs."
Boghossian made things worse by bringing up the "screaming from the rooftop," because he was trying to turn the tables on them as the "reasonable one in the room," and that was just inviting them to be assholes because they would have to realize that they had been assholes, which undermines the "I'm a moral person" self-conception. Lucky for him, they weren't assholes.
It also revealed that they didn't come to understand; they came to lecture.
I would like for Boghossian, if he's in that circumstance again, to say:
"You are coming to me as if I'm an immoral agent in need of being corrected. But I see myself as a moral agent attempting to prevent and correct the harms that occur when society can't have a conversation with itself. And from my perspective, society can't have a conversation with itself when one side of that dialogue makes maximalist claims like 'You, by simply stating your beliefs, are harming those who don't share them.'
"I don't agree that I am causing that harm. I think that harm is being intentionally willed upon the individual by themselves because you've conditioned them to see harms everywhere and to be a victim that requires moral sympathy.
"Further, I think that you, by virtue of seeing me as merely an avatar for "white, cis, male," empower yourself to act inhumanely or at least disrespectfully toward me. You don't see me as a person first; you see me as a vessel carrying ideas you don't like. Therefore, you can say, 'Fuck you,' to me, you can condescend to me, and you can disregard that I'm acting in good faith, because that's a much faster pathway to feeling good and brave and moral about yourselves.
"You abhor unjust power structures, but have no problem wielding such power. And what you fail to recognize is that there are more people than you who are just as convinced they are right as you are convinced they are wrong. And 'but I went to college and learned this,' isn't the devastating argument you think it is."
Thank you, sir. It takes courage to push against the position and narratives others assume you should take. Stay strong and focused.