An Interesting Read: A Leftist Frustrated with Leftist Culture
(source, CC 2.0 license)
I read a very thought-provoking post from the Independent today with the title Why this radical activist is disillusioned by the toxic culture of the left. It started as a post on Medium along with a follow-up post both written by Bailey Lamon (UptheCypherPunx on Twitter). As someone who doesn't really like the left/right paradigm (I prefer no rulers), I have to be careful promoting a post that appears anti-left because many will immediately assume I'm well over to the right (please, try to understand me as a human, not a label).
Aspects of this post really stood out to me and got me thinking. Here's an example:
This is because the process of conflict resolution is now driven by ideology rather than a willingness to understand facts.
To me, this article explains well the rise of what some are calling "the regressive left." Freedom of speech has to be at the forefront of any movement claiming to care about wellbeing because the absence of it leads to no communication which leads to tragic expressions of unmet needs (violence).
Yes, words can cause real harm. They shape our thoughts which dictate our actions. They can cause emotional pain or other physical responses due to past trauma. Empathy, compassion, and love are key. Ideally. IMO, we should all work towards having no emotional buttons to be pushed. For those who are too vulnerable for that ideal, we have to ensure our efforts to help don't end up creating systemic problems of their own.
The ultimate goal, I think, is to raise the wellbeing of those who are victimized by bad actors. From a logic perspective, things break down if we create systems to police actions alone since they are not, by themselves, an accurate indicator of a bad actor.
For example, two people might say something racist or sexist or whatever. One may be ignorant and lacking self-awareness, simply repeating what their community says often without realizing the very real emotional pain it causes others. The other may know all-to-well the impact of their words, and they choose them carefully to inflict the most pain. It's a tragic expression of their own unmet needs.
The bad actor will continue finding creative ways to cause harm, no matter how much activity policing is done by the community around them. The ignorant actor can be educated, maybe even someday becoming a helpful advocate.
Understanding facts with good communication is key. We can't have healthy dialogue and understanding if we can't agree on what is. This is another reason why epistemology is so important.
Reading these posts will take up 5 minutes and 6 minutes of your time, and I think they are worth reading. Any attempts to silence communication will ultimate hurt us all, so we should be aware of the various movements out there which are effectively doing just that.
I appreciate Bailey Lamon's perspective, because her experience gives her an insight into the issues I won't ever be able to fully understand. I learned a lot from her perspective and her experience sharing it. I hope you enjoy it also.
- Why This Radical Leftist is Disillusioned by Leftist Culture
- A Follow Up: “Why This Radical Leftist is Disillusioned by Leftist Culture”
Another voice I appreciate along these lines is Dave Rubin of the Rubin Report. Check out his stuff, if you haven't already.
If you read the posts mentioned above, what did you think of them?
Thankyou lukestokes,
no doubt one of the greatest voices of reason and solid ground on steemit today.
Note to self, read lukestokes.
Thank you!
Curious about your thoughts on self-voting comments. It seems to be coming more of a hot issue here and some have even created bots to flag those who do it too often. I've advocated a different approach by just asking, "Why the self vote?" I see you vote up all your own comments. Do you think this increases noise about what is a worthwhile comment and what isn't while taking rewards out of the pool that might be better allocated elsewhere to help promote great content on Steemit?
Ironically, this may relate to the original post here. Some are trying to police self-voting comments. Maybe it'll work, maybe it won't. Some self-voters and have no problem with it. Others do so on meaningless spam like "Thanks!" and are, well, kind of greedy in the eyes of the community. How are we to tell the difference?
I think it starts by asking. So why do you self-vote all your own comments?
MAIN POINT:
Thank you for replying. I'll respond to your longer reply on the other thread here.
I think everyone should be free to do whatever he wants with his / her SP , i mean nobody bats an eye to some one liking his own post on Facebook ,or upvoting his comment reddit
If someone is on the position where his auto-vote can significantly increase the payout or visibility of a given comment , its because they have earned the SP that gives me ability to do so , by either contributing content and being reward or investing on the network
So i think they deserve the benefits of doing so and if some one denies them the right , it might just give the impresion that you are not free to chose what your do with your earned influence on the network
My opinion on groups who monitor account activity or content produced( with the exception of spam or extremely low quality contents ) is on the same line
Thanks for commenting. Have you seen my full post on the topic? Hundreds of comments there as well. It's a complicated issue with multiple rational arguments for and against. The one I'm currently leaning towards is "What if everyone did this"? If everyone only voted up their own comments, their would be no way to discover good content and people would lose interest in this site or in writing good content. We'd see more of this.
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Stop making multiple accounts in PALnet
I agree
I've definitely struggled with various people on 'my' side (a bit lefty) trying to shut down free speech. For me, it is sacrosanct. I'm "left" of some people when it comes to some things, but on the free speech issue I'm pretty dug in.
Glad to see other people on our side coming to the same conclusions. A lot of the more libertarian-leaning stuff I read already quadruples-down on free speech, but I wish the left would just as much. As soon as protected speech can get shut down, so can the political ideals you're trying to get across. And that can't happen.
Agreed. Speech and open communication are the main alternatives to violence and totalitarian control. It's interesting though, because it happens on both sides. The right effectively censors speech that isn't approved by the "tenants of faith" which shall not be questioned. I find that so interesting now... most of my life I lived in communities which literally had a piece of paper with a bunch of things written on it that you are never supposed to question if you wish to remain part of that community.
What you are hitting on brother @lukestokes is basically this: the incapacity of using critical thinking. At its ideal form from the time of Socrates, it has died in all spheres of our society, where status quo is widely accepted (sometimes and many times if not most of times in form of nothing more than rumor) and this does not exclude big parts of scientific community. Great article bro, upvoted.
Thanks Jan. I agree, critical thinking needs a rebirth. Hopefully it's happening on places like Steemit.
Good stuff.. this carries over to many things. And this directly applies to my steem activity recently even. I was mean once, but I tried to stay nice, and I was nice afterwards. And now I feel like personA is becoming a helpful advocate. Or trying to find the happy medium between staking his investment and making his shares more valuable over time, by contributing to the community.. it's good a thing to witness when it happens
And as far as the articles, as a libertarian I completely agree with Bailey. I get it, the being comfortable is a form of privilege in and of itself part is definitely something to think about. Seeing the people get mad at Dave Chapelle when he came back made me realize, it's a new world. The old Dave Chappelle was much more outrageous, but there weren't any complaints back then. Now the 'triggering' is so sensitive. The old 'I may not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it' should always be adhered to..
Great post @lukestokes! I remember the days when it wasn't just the words that were said which were taken into consideration but the meaning behind the words. Without considering intent and meaning, we live in a world where college campuses need "safe" zones where they don't have to hear words that may "hurt" them.
Alas, the good ol' days!
I appreciate the Steem platform because so far, in my short experience with it, it seems to give people an opportunity to share in an encouraging and uplifting environment. This makes us all work extra hard to put out good content.
I just discovered your writing and am happy!
Thank you, Karen! It's amazing what happens when good behavior is incentivized. People start acting civil. The great comments and conversations are among the things I love most about Steemit.
I know! I've only been on for a few weeks and my husband asked me the other day why I keep saying I'm so in love with the Steemit community when I kept my distance from other social media platforms... my first tweet in 9 years was that I was a Steemian. LOL. And, I told him it was because there's a kindred spirit I see with some, not all, Steemians because I know that we see this as a platform that can help us reach our goals and dreams in a way that feeds our soul. I think he's warming to it because he sees I'm happy here. Have a great night or day whereever you are!
In the first article Bailey talks about "activists", as she puts it, and how they claim to care about people but they really do not. I'm afraid that this does not only apply to activists. I find that it is quite common for people not to care about their fellow man, woman and child. And this is important, but I'm not so sure I agree with her when she says that people need to throw themselves into dangerous situations to really be able to make a difference in the world. She calls being safe in a world of hate and violence a "cop out". I don't think that at all. There are better ways to help make a difference though and it starts with giving, not only monetarily but in tangible ways, when one sees someone else needs help, and I'm not necessarily talking about the vagabonds that come up to us on the street. If we look around, we can see people in need in our own neighborhoods, at church, or at work or school. But, it's a "that's not my problem" world. And nobody can save the world, but everybody can make some type of difference.
I agree. I wrote about activism six months ago with some of the same conclusions. Spreading ideas, I think, is really powerful and brings long-term change.
Thanks for sharing. If more people simple educated themselves on the true issues instead of parroting the media it would make such a difference because they'd be able to pick out the truth and catch the propaganda when they hear leaders talking . The problem with censoring free speech is who decides what is censored. The moment you give government the right to censor speech you've opened the door for them to do other things. I appreciate the perspective.
Thank you! I agree, it's not a good plan to give those with a monopoly on the use of force the sole decision making process for what can and can not be thought, said, or done. We all tell ourselves stories and well fall to tribalistic thinking, but with practice we can rise above it, to some degree.
I got to give you props your post had tons of replies and they were all pretty lengthy yet you still responded. Didn't even think you'd get to read mine. Thanks for taking the time.
For sure. :)
I have fun here on Steemit.
I never left the left.... it left me. So I embraced libertarianism.
It actually took 6minutes of my time. It was worth reading. I obviously think deliberately bad actors choose their words to inflict the most harm, also they can as well deliberately choose the word to produce the most positive impact. Perhaps, education with self willingness would be the major ingredients.
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