Queequeg wrote: ↑Tue Dec 18, 2018 5:43 pm
Dan74 wrote: ↑Sat Dec 15, 2018 5:16 pm
Well, for starters the progressive identity in recent decades has become synonymous with PC, the so-called 'cultural Marxism' though the term is silly. This change has, IMO, shifted the attention from the urgent socio-economic issues to the hand-wringing and the identity crises of the urban elites.
On one hand, I sympathize with critiques of the PC/TriggerPhobic/SafeSpace approach to identity. On the other hand, you're dangerously close to dismissing identity issues by conflating them with "identity crisis of urban elites."
Urban elites are by and large, white and hetero. Whatever identity crisis they have has to do with their own issues, if anything. I recently read about a sociologist who has called it
White Fragility". In progressives, it expresses as an exaggerated concern with "diversity" and "multiculturalism" (Consider - a few black and brown faces sprinkled into a predominantly white crowd is "diversity"; a few white faces in a predominantly black or brown crowd is, "WTF are they doing here?") For conservatives, it expresses as denials of racism and instead masquerades often as "law and order". Either way, the way I see it, most of the identity politics fight is about privileged white people disagreeing vehemently with each other.
If you are black, or brown, or yellow, don't fit conventional norms in terms of sexuality, or otherwise don't fit into the narrow scoped of appearance and behavior, you pretty much don't have a choice but to identify by those traits because you are not allowed, for a single moment, to forget who you are and "your place". BLM is not an urban elite identity crisis. Its a black protest against cops killing black men for no reason. LGBTQ agitation for marriage equality is about getting the law to recognize a broader scope of family structures.
By suggesting that advocacy that happens to concern identities as a diversion from urgent soci-economic issues (these are social and economic issues, by the way), you're more or less telling black people to stop being so uppity, and gay people to go back into the closet, in favor of the issues you privilege above others. (
Letter from a Birmingham Jail, one of the greatest documents defining what it means to be American, IMO, has a lot to say about the suggestion that protesters should not be so aggressive). Ask a poor black person - does being black or poor matter more to you? You might get a variety of answers on that, but a lot of people are going to say, "Both - and they're related."
The PC/TriggerPhobic/SafeSpace is a problem, but be careful about taking critique of a particular faction of identity advocates too far.
This was the mistake of the so-called Bernie Bros and why BLM activists pushed back on Bernie.
I don't pretend to have all the answers, nor do I even know enough to draw even tentative conclusions. Here in Switzerland, there is certainly a social net, but many still fall through. Recent report indicates that at least 600000 people in a country of 8 million live below the poverty line. This is in one of the wealthiest places in the world. But the majority of the problems are due to the folks simply not coping due to personal and family issues and in many case consequent drug abuse, societal pressures and demands of the system, rather than the actual lack of support.
Maybe we need more love. Maybe modes of being where concern for fellows in a compassionate and supportive way are required to address the problems we face. Procedural protocols only go so far. The state can't mandate that we look at each other and be, for lack of a better word, human, to each other. A support center can only go so far with joyous color schemes; at some point, we just have to care for each other.
We need global action.
Svaha.
Really appreciate the care you put into the reply, QQ.
Just travelled back to Australia, hence the delay in replying.
To clarify, I didn't mean to dismiss the concerns of the oppressed minorities at all. Perhaps my wording was due to the following.
1. My perception (right or wrong) is that the way these concerns have been pursued by the so-called progressive left in recent decades, has produced a great deal of hot air but seems to have led more to backlash than any serious systemic change for the better. This was not always so. So it's not the issues so much, but the way they are dealt with that concerns me.
For instance take racism and prejudice of other kinds. The most vocal of the progressives in the Anglophone sphere have turned what should be a positive campaign of connecting and embracing human beings of all colour, sexual orientation and genders, into something of a witch-hunt, with heightened sensitivities, micro-aggressions, etc. We tread as if on eggs with each other, which is a stupid unproductive attitude. People are racist, homophobic, etc. We are wary of the different. This is normal, it is how we evolved. And we should face it as a normal thing, feel free to voice our anxieties and fears, rather than add more anxieties and fears to them. That's how we work through things. And in practice, what I think we need is an openness to meet people, exchange stories, get to know one another in an atmosphere of honesty, not a neo-Victorian PC police. Nor the "I am a privileged white male, I am so sorry for everything" attitude that usually goes nowhere. If you are sorry, go and volunteer, help with your hands to make a difference. That's cool and doesn't need the guilt but is more about compassion and wishing a fair go for others. But these cultural neuroses we've developed perhaps as a reaction to the horrors of the Holocaust, the lynchings, the hate crimes, as well as other horrors we've inflicted on others and the planet itself are not helpful in my view.
2. I tend to see that our current system is fundamentally broken and unjust and the specific forms of injustice doled out to the minorities are more of a bitter icing on top of a turd-cake of a bad deal that the majority gets. It makes more sense to me to address these systemic issues first and foremost rather than try to put the proverbial lipstick on a pig, by trying to fix the identity issues, as real as they are.
Hope this makes a little more sense. I've kinda been saying this for 20 years so I feel like I am just a silly old fart repeating himself..
Going back to the OP, Olaf Stapledon in his visionary Starmaker 80 years ago described a humanity devoting their leisure to developing a truly synergetic mind-linked creative communities, while the machines took care of the drudgery, but Aldous Huxley in the Brave New World saw a consumerist society abusing its prowess at manipulating nature to mould itself in increasingly grotesque ways. Between these two visions (and possibly others), we have to find our way. But the foundation of what is to come is laid today, so we can begin to glimpse the future now..