Whoa there (Off-Topic)

by CruelLEGACEY , Toronto, Thursday, December 19, 2019, 08:06 (1801 days ago) @ Cody Miller

There have been several high-profile studies on this issue in the past couple years. The general finding is that the percentage of people in America and Canada that agree with PC culture of "woke" culture is in the single digits.

Don't move the goalposts or misclasify "PC culture". Way more than 9% of people believe in compassion and understanding.

Talk about moving the goal posts!

Of course more people than that believe in compassion and understanding. That ISN’T what PC culture is. PC culture is is essentially just another puritanical authoritarianism that tries to dictate what people are allowed to say or think, under the guise of compassion and decency. So the people pushing their authoritarian doctrines get to feel morally superior while they do it, with very little effort. It’s just another form of religious-level group compulsion. It’s also blatantly unhelpful, even by its own standards. Who says that being shielded from offence actually helps anyone? All the clinical literature on the subject shows that it only pushes people towards being more emotionally brittle and fragile. Some of the most important and meaningful things that have ever been said to me were things that offended me in the moment.

More simply, it’s along the lines of how Bill Mahar describes it: Being politically correct is being compelled to lie in order to avoid hurting some hypothetical person’s hypothetical feelings. And in a world as interconnected as ours, that basically leads to a situation where you can’t say anything about an important topic, because when you’re talking to the whole world, you’re bound to offend someone, somewhere. I am NOT advocating for people to go around being purposefully hurtful. I AM saying that any steps we take to eradicate the possibility of people being mean or hurtful will actually cause more harm than the people saying mean things. Should we push back against people who are hurtful on purpose? Of course. Make it illegal? Absolutely not (and if you don’t think that PC culture is trying to do the latter, you need to read more).

Anyone who knows me knows that I am a kind, compassionate person. I put a lot of thought, energy, and focus into doing the right thing, helping those around me, and bringing as much good into the world as possible. And after years of careful thought and work and practice, I’ve come to the conclusion that for me to be a good person, I can never lie. I mean that literally. I will never say something I don’t believe to be true. I’ll make mistakes, I’ll get things wrong, and I’ll learn and grow and adjust in the process. So when proponents of PC culture come along and start trying to tell me “these are the things you can and cannot say”, I’ll politely tell them to go to hell. I’ll be responsible for my own thoughts and words, thank you very much. And I certainly won’t be lectured to about how to be good to people by some 20-year-old undergrads who barely know anything about how to take care of themselves, much less how to be good to others. Grow up, live your life, gain some experience, then come have a conversation with me. I will always be up for talking, sharing points of view, and arguing ideas. But I will not be lectured to, especially by people who have not proven themselves deserving of moral authority in any way, shape or form.

that's a pretty good indicator to me that I am going to really enjoy this special.

Did you? He basically did a version of "I identify as an attack helicopter". So new, original, and insightful! 2012 called and wants its meme back.

It’s also more and more relevant, particularly where I live. Do some reading on what’s happening with the laws up here. Things are going crazy, and it’s starting to undo a lot of the good work that has been done in the past 30 years to help people who need it.

As far as the special overall, I thought it was hilarious. I wouldn’t score it at 99%, but I’d rate it closer to that end of the scale than the critic score.