Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
If you have an email ending in @hotmail.com, @live.com or @outlook.com (or any other Microsoft-related domain), please consider changing it to another email provider; Microsoft decided to instantly block the server's IP, so emails can't be sent to these addresses.
If you use an @yahoo.com email or any related Yahoo services, they have blocked us also due to "user complaints"
-UE
If you use an @yahoo.com email or any related Yahoo services, they have blocked us also due to "user complaints"
-UE
Comments
On a forum called "it just bugs me"? =P
Jokes aside, I was hoping for a de-escalation early on, but I don't foresee one actually sticking.
Frankly speaking, I'm thankful you shared this sentiment.
I hadn't really thought through it that way before, nor had I really re-examined that incident and the chain of events surrounding it until you brought it up again. And I'm sorry you felt that way, though this is an absurdly belated apology and I'm aware of it.
But with 20/20 hindsight, in part thanks to you reminding me of this and filling in some details, at least I know I goofed on that call.
As for your last line, amusingly, I share something like that feeling right now, though directed at a different situation.
But the way I foresee it is, it's just going to be a temporary lull until the next time I or fourteenwings posts something opinionated in here and then we'll just end up in another argument anyway.
I'm not sure they'd count as active/frequent posters, aside from Blue who does still post occasionally. Though it was nice to see them show up again.
(Edit before anyone takes offense: I don't mind them in general either, it was about the circumstances.)
Like I said earlier, burying these disagreements is not a desirable outcome either. What a dilemma... yeah, we definitely could be using more users who are actually commited to these issues and willing to argue over them, but it's not like our user base is going to grow back. Hmmm...
I still think it doesn't warrant that, but if someone is going to write something, it shouldn't be me.
History is written by the
winnerhistorian?I think you're a bit too concerned about the accuracy/transparency/neutrality of the akashic records on forum hullabaloo.
Well, if I were to write it now I'd just, like, state things.
By the way, umm... I appreciate that you held back on the arguing and tried to de-escalate things, especially after that three-way battle battle back then, which I know is not a comfortable situation to be in.
Ah, thanks! I am actually starting to learn to reign things in a bit. I don't want to wholly agree with what you said earlier, but I think that's my own ego talking.
I kind of looked at myself a bit, and saw somebody who was really really worked up about everything. I still see that, essentially. That's the guy that, overall, I've always sort of derided. As I said (sort of, I think?), the world will move without me. However, I will never move without me. There's only one me to go around, after all.
"Clean your room", sit up straight, and all that jazz (ironically I still won't really give Jordan Peterson the benefit of the doubt).
The past couple of days, we've all been inundated with a lot from the outside world. It's a feeling where you want to ignore it, but it feels morally wrong to. So maybe the correct position for one's wellbeing is to act in a morally incorrect way!
I mean, sure, but I think I'll try and work on not responding as much. After all; it's just like, your opinion man.
I think we almost worked it out right at the start of current events but then the world wouldn't stop happening.
You still haven't figured it out, have you? Reducing someone debating my right to exist to "posting something opinionated" as if it's a harmless difference of opinion is the entire problem.
It's not like this is a petty disagreement over what style of streetlight you'd like to see installed in your neighborhood.
If you want this forum to be a place where people of all gender identities and gender expression feel safe and welcome, you're going to have to stop tolerating blatant transphobia.
Meanwhile, Stormtroper observes rightly that I am referring to the myriad of topics of arguments I've had here with fourteenwings over a variety of...basically everything, most recently including the recent waves of protests (and how they are characterized), the general issue of racism in the United States, the various responses to COVID-19, the Trump administration's handling of a variety of things, etc.. Trans issues are among these topics. And while they're very much not my wheelhouse, I've been arguing with him over them too anyway.
If you're asking me "Why haven't you banned him?", that's because, at least up to now, I don't think that removing him is a useful idea. Same thing with "Why haven't you banned the topic from coming up?". I'd rather he post his crap here, where you and I can see it and thus react to it, rather than simply shoving him or his crap out of the room, out-of-sight-out-of-mind. Rather than shying away from discussions of issues of such gravitas, I'd rather it be possible to talk openly about them, so that I and others can, out in the open, take his ideas apart and address why they're bad.
@Stormtroper: I tried to de-escalate things earlier, but after a few rounds it had already become clear to me that that wasn't working, as fourteenwings seemed too invested in not just his opinions but specifically his desire to express them.
I had previously tried to use this thread as more of a place to make note of interesting observations, with some amount of emotional distance, rather than a dumping ground for personal opinions. But given that fourteenwings made it a dumping ground for his opinions (again note that calling them "opinions" does not at all mean that they're inconsequential), that just paved the way to the thread lighting up.
And my thought is that, since I'm gonna have to deal with this sooner or later, I'd prefer to have the flamewar actually happen than have it smouldering in the background, likely with some number of backhanded comments and oblique allusions.
Well, those are my thoughts. As always, do feel free to post your thoughts. (Unfortunately I'm still sorta in charge here which means that I can't just post my thoughts then walk away until whenever.)
As for the smouldering in the background, I'm under no illusion that there'll be no problem only because there's no argument about it, but I figure at some level of intensity you two could argue it out without wings running you out of MP like it's been going on until now.
.* If you want to elaborate further on what you want of wings, it's probably a good time to do so.
Man, mediating is hard.
(Edit: Clarity. I should've noticed this sooner.)
But then I got a direct reply and it seemed like I should probably actually address the contents of that reply.
I dunno if I should have. Though I am pretty sure I'm well past the point of "I'll keep my mouth shut so I won't say something stupid." (Exactly what is stupid may vary based on the reader.)
Still, if there's something I can do, I should definitely do it.
I don't know if you mean very recently, or just in terms of this dust up, but I have actually made efforts before not to post anything.
For example, this post is followed by eight posts from you (two of which you could discount as observations of real life events, to be fair). I read them and kept quiet about it. I commented on one, and I thought we had a productive discussion. Then you mentioned another hot button issue (immigration), and I thought that argument we had was productive. As I saw it, we came to an understanding there where it turned out we had a few similarities at least.
As far as I can see, things got out of hand when we started discussing what we said we wouldn't (which appears to be my fault) and then it seems neither of us really stopped.
I'd like to say I try to set less landmines than GMH, but that's only true if you use total post count as a metric. GMH will post things when they become relevant to him in separate posts, whilst I'll collate lots of things in my head and then do one giant megapost. These two habits are essentially the same thing.
I don't appreciate being talked about in the third person like this. I... don't mean this in an aggressive way or anything, I just wanted it noted.
I don't think your ideas are bad, GMH, I just disagree with them. The battle of ideas has many good ideas that are opposed to one another. Assigning moral values to them can lead to out-of-hand dismissal. And even if it hasn't, it makes me think you might.
Like here, I don't know if you mean "his ideas" or "his obviously bad ideas".
I don't think it has to? I mean, we've gone after a lot of sacred cows and as frustrated as I get at times I don't think we've ever approached something where it looked like it'd blow out of proportion.
That happened once, I will admit, but it was over PMs. Anyways, that incident gave me thicker skin in terms of not processing observations about me as personal attacks.
Also, I'm too sleep deprived to understand exactly what "blow out of proportion" would look like, but I'm pretty sure this was... I dunno what I should put here, I'm kinda not capable of using words correctly right now, I guess I'll just say that this was and still is a big problem.
A few days ago (possibly over a week ago) I said I'd be quick to align myself with "Christian values" and thought it was better than "secularism". I've come to realize that it was a situation where uh... I'd forgotten how bad things were under the former (and like, are, for a lot of people).
I was also making a false dichotomy. Secularism isn't a religion, rather it's the philosophy where those who understand alternative facts about the universe (likely from the agnostic to atheists to possibly some faith systems) can stand together based on many, many variations of thinking. In fact, transhumanism (again I'm talking about the general concept here of going "beyond" human capability like somehow the human experience is basic) is only party to certain modern kinds of secularism.
[There was a discussion on the prevalent modern form of secluarism here but it was probably going to start a fight so I cut it].
[and then this line came] Anyways if I were to argue in the language of Cultural Marxism, if the current strain of popular secularism has ceased the means of cultural production and injected it with socialism*1 then when Christians were at the wheel (and are in some places), they injected it with constant tyranism (not a word but it works).
I mean, it turns out when you constantly gloss over people talking about how gay people are persecuted under Christianity so as to not get pulled into an emotionalized argument*2, you also gloss over the fact that "Christian values" promote an exclusive form of heteronormativity known as... heterosexuality!
As you shift further and further away from your starting point ideologies, it's very easy to get wrapped in a world where you know the things you know, but then start merging them wrong in your head. At the same time, as you shift further and further away from left-leaning ideologies, the more Christians you'll encounter.
I'm not saying they're individually bad people, but when you start hearing things like "The Church was where Science emerged*4. I mean, even with the Galileo thing; Galileo was sort of a jerk!*" and "Progressivism told us things would work out if only we listened to the experts, but look at our experts now!*5" you should really try and like... listen to the wider points in terms of where Western civilization came from and it's value, but probably trash a lot of the Christian stuff.
Because, in all honesty, [okaaaaaaaay there was like six more paragraphs here but that's a topic for another day].
So yeah, I did a cognitive dissonance. I guess I remain a secularist. Probably like a humanist, somewhere closer to primitive humanist than futurist.
1*Just arguing in framework, I'm not partial to Cultural Marxism, it's way too organized a theory -like the whole "It's the illuminati!" canard in most conspiracy theories- and probably what got the Wikipedia page cut (drama for another day). I will always think that most people involved in the current stuff are good people, or at the very least believe they are fighting for a good cause.
2*By the way, I'm only using the LGB stuff here as an example, there's a lot of hullabaloo in Christianity but I didn't want to offend anyone or start an even bigger row
3*To rebut: That's because the Church was the all-encompassing hub of knowledge before Universities, and then this ties into the Cultural Marxism thing if you want to go in that direction, where it kind of starts sounding like Christians wish they'd thought of framing university culture rather than that they genuinely wanted lots of diverse viewpoints.
4*I'm not kidding, I've heard this and I didn't immediately do a double, maybe triple-take. I kind of bought it, almost wholesale, though it did take me aback for a second.
5*Incompetence and office politics in no way diminish expertise.
Not a direct response to you, but just as a sidenote, I have yet to figure out what this actually means, and I've concluded that it's probably not very important. At least, when I see it come up in a political discussion, I've found that it's a useful sign for telling me I should probably just not bother with the discussion, because at that point it's either gotten way too deep into ideological/philosophical territory for relevance to me or it's being bandied about to complain about something.
> Christian values
As for values that actual Christians hold and credit to their faith, there's quite a bit, ranging from the very gracious and helpful to the jerkish and busybodying (is that a word?).
Probably an oversimplification to simply condemn or espouse them in a broad swath.
Then again that's basically what I keep saying to the internet over and over again, complaining that people are judging stuff in needlessly broad swaths...
Meanwhile, I wanted to post about how there's a big spike of cases in my state, again. And there's finger-pointing over it, not surprisingly.
inb4 fourteenwings and I end up in another argument over this
cultural Marxism: a good day to thee dear sir, I do say I am quite thankful of the transfer of ownership of means of production to the people that you hereby accede to
I could properly explain this, but it would require background in Deconstructionism, Social Constructs, the IDE framework (Inclusion, Diversity and Equity, less charitable men than I use a different acronym) and the Wider Points of Identarianism which I mean, I'm guessing you'd just glaze over it anyways. Plus I actually did write it out earlier but cut it.
I still haven't figured out the DeSanctis stuff properly so not really? I would, but I think that'd involve getting overly involved in Floridian politics.
Anyways; In the context of current goings on, there's been a facetious campaign by conservative commentators to -hashtag- Cancel Yale (and Harvard and basically every other place of higher education?) because of this guy.
It's been quite a blast because like, these are the jokes, but then there's the odd person every now and then who is unironically like "Yes this is a good idea!".
Which is why I said "a lot of the Christian stuff" rather than "literally all". Of course Christianity played an important role in bringing Western civilization to where it was, but that came from very specific aspects of it.
I have a lot of respect for Christianity, and I think we all have a lot to learn from it's teachings as the bedrock of Western culture. I think it should probably be taught in schools (yes, as in given primacy over other religions in Western countries), but in a historical and moral values context in line with aspects of evolutionary biology.
There's yet another wider thing to be made here (Grand Narrativism) but I don't feel like discussing it right now.
Just because I say "trash a lot of the stuff" doesn't mean I suddenly gain the authority to claim it's bunk in a society-wide context. It's part of ideological plurality. Again, I just don't believe in it.
I will say however that if somebody claims to be of a certain religion and basically limits their beliefs to <40% of what that religion espouses I think they're really wishy-washy.