Dasein, hippybear: It will probably shock you to hear this, but you're not the first person(s) to tell me that my tone is pompous. However, I will follow the lead of a philosopher that I admire when I claim that accusations of pomposity like these are just dodges on the substance. You may not like my tone, but my tone (damn near any tone) is justified in the furtherance of shit that matters. And some shit does matter. The issues in this post are of central importance to questions about what is just and why. While I deny that the phrase you quoted actually does sound pompous, we can assume for the sake of argument that you're right. It is more important to articulate and defend claims about justice than it is to safeguard your sensibilities from exposure to pomposity. If you wish to argue that the substance of the post is irrelevant to questions of justice, do so. If not, don't resort to saying things that amount to nothing more than "you sound mean and/or arrogant." Maybe I do, but that doesn't even come close to mattering.It was the first comment we deleted from the thread and then we axed a bunch of arguing about it afterwards and then there was this MeTa thread. And yeah, I hear what people were saying "Delete and tell the OP to repost later" may have been the way to go. Unfortunately even though we mean that in the best way possible when we do it, it's still a route that sometimes makes the OP feel punished and sometimes not a path of less hassle [for us or for the community] so we try to weigh the variables to see if we can maybe keep a post around that seems to be sparking good discussion versus axing it and dealing with grumpy email from the OP, other commenters, and a possible MetaTalk. It seems pretty obvious from looking at the last few days of MeTa that for whatever reason we've been tending towards with the "Let's leave it around and see if it can be salvaged" direction. I think we've had more people around to keep an eye on things which often results in us being more lenient about things we might find problematic. That's not an excuse so much as an explanation. We figured we could keep a close eye on that thread [something we can't always do] and figured between that and a note to the OP about how it was phrased [which we did] that might be enough.
Now, let's get clear on the logical implications of my post. I said that if you care about X, Y, and Z, then you *should* read this. We can read this "should" as "will want to." By modus tollens, we can say that if you do not want to read this post, then it follows that you do not care about X, Y, and Z. This entails no censure of those who have no desire to read it. Only by the incorporation of auxiliary hypotheses about the praise- or blame-worthiness of certain forms of caring can we can to a conclusion of "shame." I can countenance claims that it is no moral failing to not care about bioethics, medical decorum, women in academia or the ethical behavior of philosophers. It is, however, a moral failing to not care about feminism and/or justice. I stand by the claim that those who fail to desire to read the blog in the link are worthy of censure insofar (and only insofar) as they fail to be interested in things that they ought to be interested in. Maybe this insults you. If it does, it probably should. The appropriate response to this feeling of shame is not a tantrum. Rather, it's to expand the scope of your moral concern. In short, this is an opportunity to become a better person. If indeed you would find it unbearable to be told regularly that there are certain things that you have an obligation to care about, then you stand in serious need of some policing, either by yourself or by those around you. If you wish to argue against the proposal that the things you're being told to care about are worthy of your involvement, go for it! The floor is yours! But you're owed no apology for being told that your failure to care about certain things is worthy of censure. So here's to self-policing! And here's to the hope that it pushes us towards more than just keeping Dasein and Co. from being offended.
Why was my MetaFilter post deleted?
When a thread is deleted, it is closed to new comments and is removed from the front page but can still be visible at the permanent URL for the thread. There is a brief "reason for deletion" given when a MetaFilter thread is removed. The most common reasons are
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- axegrindfilter - you posted on a hot-button topic that you frequently post about and/or used heavy-handed editorializing language.
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Please note: Your FPP is no indication of your value as a human being. (Unless you are self-linking, spamming, or deliberately causing a problem. Then, you suck.)
Ideologies and worldviews tend to be self-sealing. The Marxist ideology sometimes has this quality. If you fail to see the truth of the Marxist ideology, that just shows that your social consciousness has not been raised. The very fact that you reject the Marxist ideology shows that you are not yet capable of understanding it and that you are in need of re-education. This is perfect self-sealing. People who vigorously disagree with certain psychoanalytic claims can be accused of repressing these facts. If a boy denies that he wants to murder his father and sleep with his mother, this itself can be taken as evidence of the strength of these desires and of his unwillingness to acknowledge them. If this kind of reasoning gets out of hand, then psychoanalytic theory also becomes self-sealing and empty. Freud was aware of this danger and warned against it. [...]It's a tricky one. Clearly many objections to feminism and transgender issues come from a deep insecurity about these issues that prevents understanding. But does every objection come from that place? Almost certainly not.
[This kind of argument can] counter criticism by attacking its critics. Critics of Marxism are charged with having a decadent bourgeois consciousness that blinds them to the facts of class conflict. The critic’s response to psychoanalytic theory is analyzed (and then dismissed) as repression, a reaction formation, or something similar. Here self-sealing is achieved through an ad hominem fallacy. We might call this self-sealing by going upstairs, because the theorist is looking down on the critic.
posted by fuq at 8:25 PM on January 24 [12 favorites]