[ SECRET POST #2525 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #2525 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 03 pages, 063 secrets from Secret Submission Post #361.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

I think those three conditions are what the description "has a conscience" is attempting to gloss.

But, again, I'm not so much defending the point as saying that it's not insane. Something that you disagree with =/= something insane.

[feotakahari]

If that was a gloss for all three, that would only make sense as saying that all white people in the United States are directly engaging in violence against black people. When laid out that way, that's an obviously nonsensical statement. But I see chains of "logic" laid out that use it as an implicit premise--they start with the explicit premise that all white people engage in racism*, they treat racism as a form of "violence," and then halfway through the argument they start talking as if all white people were going out and punching black people in the face, and making arguments that are proportional to that premise. I don't like the word "insane," but I feel like we need a word to describe self-breaking logic chains--"nonsensical," maybe?

*I'm not even gonna try to argue with that one, because racism is so embedded in American culture that I've even seen black people be racist towards black people.

[(Anonymous)]

I think "benefiting from, ignoring the existence of, and being somewhere between passively and actively hostile towards efforts to remedy racism and oppression" is the chain of logic, and I think the argument (on their side) is that this is enough to qualify as violence, in the sense that its effect is violent - whether the intention is the same or the action is the same as if every white person was going around punching every black person in the face, I think the argument is that if the result is the same, it merits some kind of response in that regard.

And I don't think that we do need a word, except "wrong." We disagree with them and think they're wrong. I don't think we need a special word to describe why they're wrong any more than we do in any other political situation. I mean, arguably, any political position you disagree with, insofar as you disagree with it, is going to have some gap in its chain of logic.

[feotakahari]

The first paragraph still doesn't feel acceptable to me, in that it doesn't feel like it creates the potential for violence to serve a purpose. Killing all white people is an impossibility, so if you're hurting white people just because you think all white people hurt black people, your violence won't bring about any form of social change. Suffering is not and can never be a meaningful end in itself, no matter who you're making suffer.

(To be clear, my argument is against attempts to justify suffering, not attempts to explain it. Taking out your pain on convenient targets is easy and popular--ultimately, it's the same impulse that drives poor white men who have no opportunities and no hope to go out and beat up black folks so they can feel better than someone for once.)

As for the second paragraph:

"I mean, arguably, any political position you disagree with, insofar as you disagree with it, is going to have some gap in its chain of logic."

This is not a true statement. Under reasonable circumstances, a position you disagree with is one that has premises you disagree with. If the conclusions follow logically from the premises, that's something you can discuss, argue with, and maybe even change someone's mind on. But if the conclusions don't follow logically from the premises, you can't even debate it, because discarding logic means there aren't any rules left to debate with. (For instance, this is why I've stopped trying to argue with white supremacists--they start with the conclusion that black people are inferior, but the premises they use to justify this can completely reverse from one sentence to the next, and they don't seem to realize they're changing anything.)

[(Anonymous)]

The first paragraph still doesn't feel acceptable to me, in that it doesn't feel like it creates the potential for violence to serve a purpose. Killing all white people is an impossibility, so if you're hurting white people just because you think all white people hurt black people, your violence won't bring about any form of social change. Suffering is not and can never be a meaningful end in itself, no matter who you're making suffer.

well I think the idea is precisely that it will create a possibility for change - it is, or at least it can be, a political action with political ends. Through (1) creating an awareness of the reality of violence and oppression which exists and the stakes surrounding the situation and (2) making the maintenance of the situation more costly and more painful and, ultimately, untenable for the powers that be. That's the idea behind it. I think, ultimately, that's the case however you define violence as a condition, and I think even if you disagree, there is a logic behind it. So it definitely can be something to bring about social change, and I think that it frequently has been, and I think there have been times where it has brought about social change.

This is not a true statement. Under reasonable circumstances, a position you disagree with is one that has premises you disagree with. If the conclusions follow logically from the premises, that's something you can discuss, argue with, and maybe even change someone's mind on. But if the conclusions don't follow logically from the premises, you can't even debate it, because discarding logic means there aren't any rules left to debate with.

I accept your point, with the caveat that it's often a tendentious question whether or not the conclusion does follow from the premises, so the circumstances where you can out-and-out say that the position is simply illogical are, I think, relatively small.