The gradual loss of the childful optimism and joy.
When I was a (hungry and impoverished) child, I was optimistic that hunger and poverty could be solved.
As an adult who teaches the study of humans, it is quite clear that the solutions are convenient enough, so will not be attempted.
Hungry children it is.
There is no careful use of language that can stop people from preferring hatred. Humans are machines for making the world worse, and they will continue to do so, and while they do it they will rationalise doing it, and while people get hurt (including themselves) they will blame the victims.
“It’s not fascism!” they complain as minorities are scapegoated and children die. Just get used to the fact that anything that is pointed entirely towards harming people for fun and profit is going to attract a range of derogatory words, and maybe think about how to stop humans from hurting humans instead.
I really don’t agree with your last sentence though. “Fixing” problems before they arise is exactly why we, particularly governments, already spend millions on the promotion of wellbeing and heathy lifestyles in order to prevent health issues in later life.
I’m pretty familiar with the differences in life expectancy statistics caused by health inequality. I’m not sure that you can truly promote wellbeing in a world where people are treated like they’re vastly less valuable.
Because being hypnotised prophylactically can easily come across as creepy and controlling, even if it’s well-meaning.
Let’s give an example that is both well-meaning and at least a little overbearing: “Hey, let’s hypnotise our kids to really want to try hard at school.”
Freedom means the freedom to be unhappy, make mistakes, and differ from others, as well as the freedom to be happy, succeed, and conform.
If you want prophylactic hypnosis, maybe try self-hypnosis? However, from everything I have read and tried myself in that field, it’s still used reactively. You realise your thoughts and behaviour cause a problem (e.g. over indulging in some vice), and you try to hypnotise yourself to not. Imagining potential problems and trying to fix them ahead of time could be based on poor assumptions, and lead to you trying to change your thoughts and behaviours in maladaptive ways. Fixing a problem before diagnosing it doesn’t make much sense to me.
So, a visible difference that some other people react to with prejudice is not like racism. Got it.
You ask: “Why assume they react to your VISIBLE ETHNIC DIFFERENCES in particular?”
- The VISIBLE DIFFERENCES are visible.
- People have made fun of me for having those VISIBLE DIFFERENCES before.
- I can see facial expressions when people perceive THOSE VISIBLE DIFFERENCES, and notice features of judgemental reaction in their speech and behaviour after.
I’m sure you can comprehend why removing the controversial topic of ethnic differences [controversial because e.g. some people want to claim racism is does not happen any longer, or is not of any importance when it does because ‘it’s illegal to discriminate’] to replace it with another visible difference made it a suitable metaphor. I’m sure that you knew this, in fact, when you called it ‘dumb’.
Your annoyance is, therefore, possibly more at me saying that a woman is allowed to believe she is being targeted for racist reasons, and that such a woman should be listened to fairly. Feel free to clarify on that, if you wish. As for me, I logically believe that racism exists, as I have seen it. And that people can intuit when it is happening, as I have seen it. And that other people can disagree with it, because they profit from racism being ignored, as I have seen it.
It’s about as likely as someone starting and ending all of their writing with ellipses, with some of those ellipses being incomplete.
I have a birthmark that reads ‘VAGINA’ on my face.
Some people treat me differently from the moment I meet them.
I say, “I think that those people are reacting to my birthmark.”
You ask: “Why assume they react to your VAGINA birthmark in particular?”
Now, apply this to OP’s wife. OP says this about her:
If I hadn’t seen the blatant discrimination she’s faced job hunting, I’d be more skeptical. She’s Filipino, but that’s “Mexican” to many. When I say blatant, I mean to say heads would roll if we had some of this on camera. She’s mostly unhurt by these things, just figures that’s the way of the world. But damn. One lady asked if she was Asian and was visibly appalled. Another said she would have to attend their church, and barely stopped short of asking her to renounce Catholicism. There’s much more I’m not remembering ATM.
I’m heavily autistic. I’ve figured this all out logically, as a person who has experience discrimination myself. It wasn’t easy, because I don’t grasp social cues natively. I thought I’d been doing something wrong for a long long time when people initially appraised me as ‘other’, but it turned out they were just being judgemental assholes. If you’re not heavily autistic, I believe it should be easier for you to figure all this out, right?
I don’t know if they’re all bastards
As it’s not likely that all people who work in HR have unmarried parents, it’s probably less literal language that labels them as belonging to a group of people who would harm you if it suited their interests.
All the HR people I’ve known who were not like that eventually left their job, because what they were asked to do went beyond their moral boundaries. Leaving HR to be the ones who were, indeed, those who didn’t feel such qualms.
No one else at this company requested such. Was he way out of line?
People who experience discrimination develop a sense for when someone is othering them. It’s not always correct, because it involves intuition, and you can misread people. But will still develop a sense for it.
Now, apply this to OP’s wife. OP says this about her:
If I hadn’t seen the blatant discrimination she’s faced job hunting, I’d be more skeptical. She’s Filipino, but that’s “Mexican” to many. When I say blatant, I mean to say heads would roll if we had some of this on camera. She’s mostly unhurt by these things, just figures that’s the way of the world. But damn. One lady asked if she was Asian and was visibly appalled. Another said she would have to attend their church, and barely stopped short of asking her to renounce Catholicism. There’s much more I’m not remembering ATM.
I initially read it as someone saying ‘Arab’ in a stereotypical Southern drawl, and I was confused.
I was a little bent when she told me he had asked her to remove her blur filter “to have a look at her working environment, make sure it’s not cluttered” (something along those lines).
Creepy.
leading you to understand things
I don’t understand anything. Therefore I have no ideology.
You have failed to show that it is an ideology. You have explained that you disagree with it, but that’s not the same thing.
It’s an empirical fact that living beings don’t like being hurt. Therefore, it avoiding hurt is good. That’s not an ideology, it’s reasoning based on observable facts. An ideological position would be “we need to hurt living beings to further our interests”. The ideological position involves those interests.
Seeing all living beings as equal (e.g. in terms of prioritising not harming them, just as I would prefer not to be harmed or to harm myself) is about not having an interest, and therefore is clearly not ideological. It’s also objectively true, because in terms of cosmological time, the consequences of all living beings become equal.
Will me being infantile stop humans from hurting each other? If not, why would I be motivated to change?
Will me growing up (to stop being infantile) get in the way of my refraining from hurting others? If yes, why would I be motivated to change?
In my infantile state, I can clearly see that - even in a complex world - harming other living beings is wrong. I don’t like being harmed, so why would they like being harmed?
Maybe you need ideology to simplify the world. But that doesn’t mean that I require it. That’s part of the complex world you assert we live in, yes?
It is an objective fact that a harmful act harms someone. That one observer likes that outcome does not alter the objective moral weight of the act. Harmful acts are objectively wrong, regardless of preference.
From a basic empirical observation of the effects of harm, one can arrive at a moral system based on objective reasoning. In this way, ideology can be avoided.
Two different people can disagree on whether a table is a table: this does not alter objective fact.
There is no inherent objective truth to these value questions.
I disagree. These values are based on objective observations.
I’m a simple person. I take people at their word, until it doesn’t work, and then I hate them.
I will wait for humans to decide to feed hungry children.