Oddbean

i think the ability to put oneself in another’s shoes is one of the tools any individual can/should use for achieving wisdom, attaining more insights…kinda also like a way to ~stay humble.~ so, i think mentioning some of your character traits is highly relevant and also helpful to communicate many things apart from what’s explicitly written. appreciate hearing all of what you said. 🙏 the other guy who stopped reading made an irrational decision by instead having a very emotional reaction based on a cultish mindset of vitriol & hatred. ✨🖖

Thanks for your note. What I love about nostr is the countless opportunities to engage with people whom I may disagree with, yet share meaningful and thoughtful discussions and hopefully both come away having learned something, expanded our perceptions/understanding of a topic, and leaving the world slightly more compassionate than it was before

the nostr project is a beautiful thing, and i hope we all can keep this up and lead the way with what the world needs more of. it can be a new beginning of sorts. and it really & truly is very much a fount of goodness, unlike the increasing norms of endlessly escalating negativity, dis/misinformation or pointlessness found in other realms. thanks so much to you too :) ✨🙏🖖

While I agree with the sentiment, I feel I must say that neither “white,” nor “straight” nor “male” are character traits. Equating them as such is literally the problem, and is often correctly described as racism and sexism… because that’s basically what it is and why it causes nothing but problems and foolish assumptions. Now I don’t say this to play the “YoUr A RaciST” card, because ultimately what you said matters basically none at all, just like the overwhelming majority of people who think the same way about the world. But woke is nothing but “approved racism” as opposed to “racism we don’t like.” That’s it. And while I have no horse in the race in this conversation. I felt obligated to point that out, because such an equating is very backward and will never lead to actual understanding. It literally **demands** that we lead our thinking of each other and place a bunch of arbitrary racial and sexual traits (not actually meaningful ones) at the top of our judgement hierarchy, and leads to exactly the problems implied.

Appreciate you. Thanks for hopping in. I think I follow, in that there’s an underlying toxicity to the entire tribalism/rejection of “other-ness”. In general, I get that. To clarify/qualify my original answer to FD, I don’t think I was considering those descriptors (straight/white/male) as character/personality traits, per se. (Perhaps it’s a question of semantics, i’m not sure). The way I was looking at it, when asked what policies did Trump implement that took away my freedoms, was that his particular brand of nationalism includes a significant serving of xenophobia, and (as one example of many) began with blanket-actions that specifically reduced the rights and freedoms of a group of people who are predominantly brown and Muslim (Pretty sure nobody is debating that point). By the simple fact of the body and place I was born into, I was able to avoid that discrimination. There’s an analogy - if you were trying to build a video game character for “life on planet earth” who would encounter the least amount of resistance at any given level, there are certain combinations of traits that strongly impact one’s likelihood of experiencing various types of adversity, discrimination, etc. There are plenty of other factors at play, and myriad forms of adversity that any human, in any body, may at times face. But it just happened to be the case that Trump’s early presidency was replete with instances of policy/agenda that were specifically designed to reduce the freedoms of certain groups of people — groups who already face an outsized share of abuse and marginalization to begin with. And since my physical instance in this world lacks some of those traits, those freedoms were taken from friends of mine, but not from me. One huge problem with wokeness is how it has become this lightning rod for tribalism in its own right, and in doing so it has utterly demolished what I view as “originally” humanitarian aims. For example, the fact that one of my best friends — who has lived in the USA her entire life and has never run afoul of the law — is pulled into a private room for search and screening whenever she travels through an airport, compared to my “worst ever” airport experience being little more than a canceled flight. This drastically unjust difference in experiences, based simply on our skin colors, last names, and our extended familys’ places of residence, is an example of (conservative trigger warning 😉) “privilege”. A concept that has been entirely wrecked by culture war BS. The fact that the media paints the idea of social privilege as a shameful weight (in left MSM), or as a “reverse racist” way to target someone with fewer obstacles (in “right” MSM), is an example of institutions inevitably corrupt well-meaning social movements, due to the nature of the incentives around centralization. “Privilege” doesn’t mean that I’m someone who thinks I’m entitled to better treatment. It means that I frequently (and often unknowingly) have an easier time “playing through the levels of the video game of life” than another person who might otherwise be my exact clone, except for their skin tone, nation-of-origin, or religion. The point, as I see if, of trying to recognize these additional freedom that I have, is not to make me feel guilty, or to sacrifice my own self-interest for that of another individual. It’s simply to expand my awareness and compassion, and to recognize that billions of people experience a set of difficulties in life that I have never known. (And yes - everyone has been hurt, yes I have had difficult times, and yes, I will continue striving to live the best and most enjoyable/fulfilling life that is within my capabilities). I hope this exposition helps to articulate what I was getting at originally. I don’t think our society needs to be organized around the social constructs that make us different. Celebrate uniqueness, that’s beautiful, but we’re all human here together. The trouble is that many humans are stuck in lizard-brain (or at least cave-man-brain) and are motivated by their fear of the unknown in ways that cause extensive harm to certain groups of people who have less means to defend their own freedoms. When those people hold positions of power, we rarely look back in history at them with positive memories.

the topic is so complex & getting messier by the day, week, month…esp w the media wars many are trying to escape from. but yeah… in a utopia, (maybe) it would be absurd to mention certain characteristics, traits, whatever of oneself when having conversations about many things. but in this world, it’s definitely relevant a lot of the time. no one demands it, but it gives a lot of context. also in this world, as that one guy did some replies earlier where my original reply started…it’s more absurd and questionable to have a knee-jerk reaction of stubborn self-earmuffing…and declaring it…than it is to mention different aspects of oneself to establish greater context, understanding, or even relatable-ness. these things like straight, white, male are not arbitrary traits… they’re very real concepts that heavily frame the way people think. and they’re very real concepts that intentionally or subconsciously influence, heavily, the way people harass, target, & harm people. and that’s kinda the force of it… if in this world people get uncomfortable about merely talking about these things, that really does just show that these things need to be talked about more…until, it gets to what i think you’re saying, which is something like~~~ “i wanna be able to talk with most people like i talk with my close friends or family whom i love deeply—without having any need to establish common ground of all being humans whom are loved.” i don’t think it contributes to racism or sexism to acknowledge what’s actually going on in the world. i think the more we can talk easily about whatever means there’s no issue…and we wouldn’t be talking about it…but we are definitely talking about it… 🙏🖖

Very well said, brother. A world where we can treat each other with the simple assumption of “human-ness” as we do our loved ones is a beautiful idea. Best we can do is cultivate that universal love and compassion within ourselves and bring it into the world through our daily interactions. (Lol because “See, it’s simple - just find enlightenment!” is kind of what I’m saying 😉)

I don’t think that’s the first step. The first step is honest acknowledgment of where things are at. “Taking inventory” as some might say. I hear you that more “separation” is unlikely to lead to genuine interpersonal compassion and connection, and it’s true that wokeism has evolved into something gross, because corrupt incentives and institutions use culture war tactics to divide us. However, the real point of acknowledging privilege (whether physical, cultural, or financial) as I did in my OP is not to sew further division. The intent is to recognize the (obvious and indisputable) fact that looking a certain way (white/male/“normal” in the USA) inevitably confers on an individual the freedom and safety to avoid those unique flavors of repression, violence, and marginalization that people in minority groups have repeatedly experienced, at a much higher rate than anyone else, over the course of this nation’s existence.

I disagree. Imo, thats analogous to the first step to getting rid of fiat is printing just a little bit to help the poor. It’s axiomatically losing the fight before even beginning. Minority groups have been negatively affected explicitly by the thinking that has been targeted to *help* them. The govt “assisted” communities have been utterly decimated by a bunch of people stuck in a racist mindset with the “good intentions” of helping them. But failing to separate race from condition. Literally, the problem would fix itself if we stopped making it the most important part of dealing with each other. But we can’t, so it won’t.

And it doesn’t matter if you want to sow division or not, when you say “as a straight, white male” to preface your position, you sow it regardless. Because you literally establish the mental framing that this is a critical part of your argument, and the next time the reader listens to someone else, they immediately think “I wonder if this is a straight white male?” Because you taught them to. How you think about the problem precedes the solution. EVERY time

I appreciate this nuance. In fact, I can agree that it’s probably not helpful to lead with that, the way I did. (I do think it was unnecessary for my original discussion partner to get so triggered by it that he left,, and I appreciate your ongoing engagement and thoughtful approach to joint truth-seeking even more than I might normally, by contrast). You may be right, in that it would have been a far more powerful answer to the original question of “how did trump take away freedoms” to simply recount his many policies and orders that explicitly or implicitly limited the rights of specific groups of people, and authorized forms of repression against individuals who historically and statistically/invariably already face a dramatically higher share of “poor treatment” by those in our society who hold power than others. Not sure if I recommended The Color of Law in a previous reply, or if I just thought of it. But it felt very bitcoiner-y to read and I would recommend. It’s decidedly not a woke culture piece… I would zap the fuck out of a Guy Swann audiobook, just sayin…

There’s another piece to this that I’m thinking about. If the only point in question is whether leading with the point about differences is beneficial or not, the discussion is pretty straightforward. Where it gets tricky and toxic, though, is the part where many people continue to willingly ignore or deny the existence of “privilege” (defined as the fact that people in the racial/religious majority experience a significant type of ease or freedom in society that’s frequently defined to minority groups for no reason other than their physical traits). The term “ignorant” (another word that’s been corrupted by woke institutional incentives) actually comes from “ignore”. It doesn’t mean “stupid” or “uninformed”, but rather, “intentionally disregarding the truth” (generally because the truth is painful or uncomfortable). So yes, beginning the discussion with “my life is easier because I’m white” may be counterproductive (and I’m not so sure that it is, but I get your point), the flip-side is a common cultural knee-jerk reaction to deny or debate the existence of racial privilege (or institutional racism, systemic injustice/imbalance, etc., call it what you will) and get lost in the weeds there, instead of acknowledging the significant and real impacts of existing cultural dynamics, and then being free to proceed with honesty, compassion, and a goal of increasing every individual’s freedom to maximize their own potential in the world, the market, and within themselves.

I do agree that breaking down false barriers between individuals is necessary, by the way. But to do so without acknowledgment of the real differences in lived experience that relate to different appearances would be inauthentic, incomplete, and undermining of the beautiful and *very real* opportunity to deeply recognize and honor the humanity in each person. My two sats.

it depends who the audience is. one way of speaking doesn’t fit all. and mentioning stuff in one context & particular audience situation is not the same as equating the whole being of someone to those things mentioned. imho, you’re right too that in many scenarios, talking about race, gender, or whatever is counterproductive. totally true that in many cases it’s gone way too far with classifying people’s “traits” or “characteristics” or whatever. it’s like, “ser, this is a wendy’s.”

I agree with you entirely, and I’m decidedly *not* equating on’s character with one’s physical body. What I’m saying is, people in certain bodies experience significantly more abuse and marginalization in a society than people in other bodies. That doesn’t define who they are, or what they’re like or are capable of. Full stop. It is a fact of this world that an inordinately outsized share of the total discrimination and violence is shouldered by specific minority groups. Recognizing this truth, and by extension recognizing that I have absolutely no real idea what it would be like to experience life through that lens, because my physical incarnation simply isn’t one of the usual recipients of racism. That’s the simple meaning of racial privilege, and it’s purpose is not to shame or put down someone who experiences that privilege/freedom from oppression. Recognizing it just means that I can honor the truth of my own and others’ experience, and live with more truth and love as a result. Not turn away from it because some things are hard, and not try to explain it away for fear of how one will be received. In my experience, it’s only when our movement comes from a place of truth and honesty, can we actually honor and love one another. Acknowledging difficult truths doesn’t mean placing circumstances and physical traits above or before interpersonal communion; rather it creates the space and freedom to move into deeper states of relation, connection, presence, understanding, compassion, and joy. It’s sort of like how, if you “push away” or repress a painful experience, it doesn’t actually go away, and will actually continue to be a part of your consciousness - but it controls you. It’s only when you acknowledge, feel, and honor that pain do you become bigger than it, and free from the suffering associated to it.

“these things like straight, white, male are not arbitrary traits… they’re very real concepts that heavily frame the way people think.” I agree and I’m saying that it’s an ignorant and unproductive framing that shouldn’t be embraced, but challenged. It’s exactly how you get stupid laws or sudsidies that are race based rather than income based. Framing is everything, and if you accept the framing of those hate based on sex and race, you will only encourage everyone to think like that. And no it isn’t useful because other people adopt it, imo. There are real, valuable means by which to judge people, reasons to provide assistance, and models for thinking how to better society… none of them that don’t contribute to more problems start by judging people by their race and sex before actually meaningful characteristics.