This will be a human problem as long as type 1 thinking is more efficient than the type 2.
White Privilege VS POC Disadvantage
- Thread starter checkbookdoc
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This will be a human problem as long as type 1 thinking is more efficient than the type 2.
Engorged On Unborn Gore
Well-Known Member
Efficiency is prized in a society that favors the value of property over the value of individuals. Investors want their ROI yesterday, and they do not care who the casualties are.
Humanists reason that the bare minimum of taking care of people costs society less money. But they essentially follow the doctrine of Descartes in their approach to the body as a machine that needs basic maintenance.
But a person is dehumanized by the machinations of the system. And dehumanized people invariably seek identities of strength, and lash out at those with power.
If we do not treat people as equals, the system necessarily self-destructs. We are watching it happen before us.
It is impossible to have equality with racial constructs that insist on the exact opposite of equality. So talking about privilege in the context of our antebellum constructs becomes just another veil over the same hypocrisy and the same racism. Because it shows an implicit desire to keep the status quo intact.
This doesn't really apply to my point about type 1 and type 2 thinking, so why bother to quote me?
Do you have what you consider to be a more constructive approach to the body?
On the other hand, removing the constructs completely invalidates the capabilities of the type 1 thinking system, which makes the removal of little worth in day-to-day living. It's easier to push for new type 1 associations than to remove them. As the new associations approach equal treatment, they will also fade into the background.
checkbookdoc
Well-Known Member
In my experience this is not true. We have evidence that messaging and phrasing matters in many areas of our life, so I don't know why this would be an exception.
So yet again, the feelings of white people are the most important in any discussion about the racial issues in our country. White privilege.
checkbookdoc
Well-Known Member
I am disappointed. I think of you as a poster that can be counted on to contribute to a discussion, but in this response you just dropped an accusatory and pandering phrase without explaining how it applies.
First off, what in my post made you think I was suggesting "the feelings of white people are the most important"? I don't believe I have ever implied that. Second, how would your point apply to this discussion? Is your point that the feelings of white people don't matter and shouldn't be considered no matter what (I doubt this bigoted point is your stance)? Are you trying to argue that the alternative phrasing is upsetting to non-whites (if true I would be interested to learn why) and therefore shouldn't be used to placate whites?
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Engorged On Unborn Gore
Well-Known Member
You insist that Type 1 thinking is "efficient". To what do you believe that efficiency is applied/utilized, if not to human value in a money-driven society?
Of course. If the body is not considered sacred, then of course they are eventually going to take a woman's rights to "who enters/who exits" away. Of course human trafficking will continue to be accommodated, and even re-institutionalized. Of course they are going to concentrate dissenters into camps, and of course the hierarchy will dictate who survives to utilize the remaining ecology. It is the logical conclusion from regarding the body as a machine (and thus, disposable), which is why Descartes's assertion is fundamentally nihilistic.
I am not religious. But I fundamentally agree with Jesus' assertion that the body is a temple, that it is sacred, and by extension that our autonomy is sacred also. This notion can be applied democratically to protect all people, but not if we don't give a ****.
We already kill, commit suicide, and abandon each other to suffering from day to day. So tell me again how valid it is to cater to Type 1 thinking as we do.
Removing the constructs would indeed cause a fundamental overhaul in how people view themselves and others, but this would found our relationships on notions of humanity that are far more concrete and robust than the current mythology. So I am talking about a pause of Type 1 thinking, not an "invalidation" of its capabilities, as you say.
You seem to think that I am throwing out a set of human qualities by removing false constructs. Taking a break from a misapplication is not an abandonment.
I'm sorry, but you cannot band-aid this problem. The painful lessons of history (that POC are reminded of from day-to-day) are part of any overhaul that will have any kind of positive, lasting effect. Destroying our American myths are part of that overhaul. Acknowledging our continued colonial abuses are part of that overhaul. Type 1 is going to have to be put on hold for a minute to make way for introspection, or the wound simply will not heal.
The fact that Eurocentric Americans have neither the time nor the inclination to change does not remove their absolute need for change. Our crisis could destroy us. And thereby make us vulnerable to the enemies that we have made.
Because the nervous connections operate faster and on less energy. I don't think you understood my reference. You could start here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking,_Fast_and_Slow
The people who want to end women reproductive autonomy are more like to consider the a body sacred than those who do not, and are much less likely to be humanists.
You don't need the body to be sacred to arrive at autonomy being fundamental. If anything, it usually interferes with the concept.
There is a difference between "catering" and "changing". In this context, they seem opposed to me.
I agree.
Any solution that runs contrary to the way human brains operate biologically is doomed to failure.
I agree.
Your premise is that the term "white privilege" is too upsetting to white people and needs to be changed to something else. And so the conversation ends there because white people are too fragile to handle those two words, much less the concept. If you use terminology like POC are "hindered," the average white person will go on believing that they have nothing to do with it, that they do not have to change anything on an individual level.
Robin DiAngelo, the author of "White Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism," is a white woman who makes a living being hired by companies to conduct diversity seminars. And how do these diversity seminars often go? With white people having their feelings hurt. They cannot look past themselves to have any empathy toward the POC in the room with them, and it is all about them and their feelings and how unfair it all is to them. The term "white privilege" is used because it describes exactly what it means to convey. But instead of learning something from the idea, society is expected to pander yet again to fragile whites - and racial issues are ignored yet again.
Engorged On Unborn Gore
Well-Known Member
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking,_Fast_and_Slow
From the summary of Kahneman's book in the article:
"The System 1 vs. System 2 debate dives into the reasoning or lack thereof for human decision making, with big implications for many areas including law and market research."
...which is exactly what I'm talking about. The law and commerce, the obvious. Your original insistence about efficiency may be true within the current context (defeatist, but true). I'm interested in changing the context to something that actually reflects humanity.
Only as a matter of lip service do they consider the body to be sacred. In practice, they are just as likely to leave the homeless on the street and let our military blow kids up in poor countries to further our commercial and security interests.
But on the plus side, their religious texts do give us a common language for discussing the primacy of the body and autonomy. Because as ****** as Christians can be, they do read the Bible.
It only interferes at the debate table. In practice, the concept works tremendously well. And we have ample examples.
Local police forces, for example, are treated as "sacred" and "untouchable". Before the Blue Lives Matter idea ever became a meme, everyone understood implicitly that this is a protected-to-the-point-of-worship class of human beings. And because of those protections, they have tremendous autonomy, political power, and cachet in their communities. They have robust benefits, pensions, and legal resources at their disposal. And they have the benefit of being made a mythologized class for free by many Americans.
Large corporations and their agents are also treated like sacred entities in this country. Their property is protected diligently by the aforementioned police, and they wield immense political power through their policies and ability to lobby. They even have the basic rights of an American citizen, albeit enhanced by their brand and resources.
Property value is treated as sacred in this country. To the point that if a mayor in Draper, UT brings a homeless person to a community meeting to discuss placement of a shelter there, both of them get booed out of the building:
https://archive.sltrib.com/article.php?id=5116759&itype=CMSID
So there are three examples for you of sacrosanct entities. Just because we do not use the usual terminology doesn't change the basic facts of how these entities are treated and venerated.
It's a cereal vs. milk argument. Type 1s do not exist in a vacuum.
Dropping our antebellum constructs abandons nothing that is human. It is our adoption of them in the first place (to justify human trafficking) that has caused a great many of us to act like insects.
We agree largely on goals, I think. We just disagree on their underpinnings and how they can be accomplished. I'm also interested in changing the context to something that reflects humanity.
However, those change will have to work within human mental processing. Type 1 constructs are created over our life experiences. If we change the cultural messaging, we change the Type 1 constructs. I agree they don't exist in a vacuum, but we have to recognize some sort of Type 1 constructs will exist, regardless. The realistic goal is to change from humanity-denying constructs to humanity-affirming constructs.
The Thriller
Well-Known Member
I haven’t read this book yet although I’ve seen it on amazon now a few times. Was it you who suggested the book, “Just mercy” a while back?
Engorged On Unborn Gore
Well-Known Member
Yeah, agreed.
Then it has to be as authentic as possible. The whole argument over Colin Kaepernick reveals just how inauthentic our myth of America is. Yet our nationalist fanatics regurgitate it as a set of unimpeachable truths.
If someone’s parents came from Belgium, then there is nothing mythic on the level of “whiteness” to speak of. It is a legitimate regional identifier, and birth is an authentic event.
“White” and “black” are the ultimate stereotypes, and they are on our federal forms. They represent a monstrous mountain of pseudoscience that intended to justify our trafficking. Now, because of our reliance on these old constructs, large swaths of our children are still spoon-fed that malarkey as if it were true:
https://www.thenation.com/article/scientific-racism-isnt-back-it-never-went-away/
If this pseudoscience never went away, then that tells you something about the “usefulness” of our constructs.
Yep. And people are thrown for a loop. As they should be when their humanity is comatose to the point of shrugging their shoulders at concentration camps operating on our southern border.
What else could possibly cause the type of fundamental overhaul that we are talking about? A punctum is required.
There is nothing that insists that our constructs be falsehoods. We are finding out on a daily basis that the foundation that we have built our society upon only works if everyone is either i) “white” by relegation of their Euro identity to the background, or ii) passes as “white” by obeying certain norms just like any muppet created by Jim Henson would perform.
That’s not freedom, nor is it diversity. It is idol worship. Being in such thrall can only dehumanize, and thereby inevitably leads to violent revolt.
I haven't read it yet, so I didn't recommend it. But my friends who have read it loved it and found it very informative.
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AlaskanAssassin
Well-Known Member
Just remember, this lady is not racist. She said so, and we are supposed to believe people when they say they are not racist, right?
https://www.snopes.com/ap/2019/08/23/candidate-michigan-city-should-be-as-white-as-possible-video/
https://www.snopes.com/ap/2019/08/23/candidate-michigan-city-should-be-as-white-as-possible-video/
I’m more inclined to believe them than I am others about them based on one quick interaction.
But neither are terribly compelling in most cases.
jimmy eat jazz
Well-Known Member
What I find interesting are the white folks who get all butt hurt and morally outraged about the term 'white privilege' but who for centuries, decades, and years (or heretofore in their lives) could never work up any moral outrage of the daily moral outrages committed by white folk against people of color.
Similar to to men who get all butt hurt and morally outraged about the minute possibility of being falsely accused of sexual harrasment or assault but who for centuries, decades, and years (or heretofore in their lives) could never work up any moral outrage of the daily (millions upon millions) sexual harassments and assaults inflicted by men on women.
Many of these same people are those who are also now crying about the scourge of identity politics (eyeroll).
In my view, taking issue with the concept of white privilege is, more often than not, dog whistle/code for white folks unsettled by traditionally marginalized people of color asserting their rights and flexing (finally) their power and who would seek to maintain the status quo (e.g., their dominant place in society), and this is one way they are pushing back.
I should add, either that, or conservatives whose knees jerk uncontrollably (for God knows what reason) anytime the topic of civil rights for POC comes up.
Similar to to men who get all butt hurt and morally outraged about the minute possibility of being falsely accused of sexual harrasment or assault but who for centuries, decades, and years (or heretofore in their lives) could never work up any moral outrage of the daily (millions upon millions) sexual harassments and assaults inflicted by men on women.
Many of these same people are those who are also now crying about the scourge of identity politics (eyeroll).
In my view, taking issue with the concept of white privilege is, more often than not, dog whistle/code for white folks unsettled by traditionally marginalized people of color asserting their rights and flexing (finally) their power and who would seek to maintain the status quo (e.g., their dominant place in society), and this is one way they are pushing back.
I should add, either that, or conservatives whose knees jerk uncontrollably (for God knows what reason) anytime the topic of civil rights for POC comes up.
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