Yes… at the source of it, Bigotry was a double standard, but not just a double standard, but one that takes advantage of Masochistic tendencies. Half the people in this thread are trying to exploit what they preceive to be Masochistic tendencies in you, but are not inherently bigoted, as they in general prefer mayhem over intuitively grasping the thinking underneath rhetoric and are consistent in this mindset. They took a philosophical tool of rhetoric and took it to be a pleasurable culture of discourse.
The double standard old fashion bigots actually would maintain a solid double standard, informing and telling others the world is one way, and you of this persuasion, and therefor are of this method, while knowing it wasn’t a way they themselves held to. They had a seperate system of values for a seperate lifestyle. Think of a White Southern preacher to Slaves telling them that stealing was wrong, back in the era when we were still importing slaves into the south. That’s fucking bigoted as fuck if he was a slave owner himself. It’s not is he wasn’t though. His whiteness only in one circumstance would be a characteristic of bigotry- something we could categorize as ‘white bigot slaveowner’. However, you drop slave owner out of the persuasion, and the very reason for him being there changes pretty dramatically, if he felt the preaching the word of his god was important even to these slaves held in such a lowly condition. There is a level of hermeneutic evaluation required.
This is a common human condition, and I see it in myself as well as everyone else that I learn to any appreciable depth. It’s just part of our consciousness… we don’t think most ideas out. That vast majority of our thought processes end abruptly and are less than aspiring. The average person is a shithead, not a saint. The average saint knows that even they are shitheads more often than not, and set out to correct this. The methodologies differ widely, and are the basis of our systems of ethics and logic to this day.
It’s just categorization. As deeply annoying as it is in America to see everyone running around on the left screaming racism in regards to stuff that never was racism before- wouldn’t rationally be throught as such a generation or two ago and wouldn’t get Fredrick Douglas to bat a discerning eye at, much less actually discuss problems of culture produced from voluntary racial segragation, which is a very real but now untouchable concern in our society… or the right in bashing anyone in poverty as a inherent threat to our economy in assuming they only want more destructive taxation (which is realistic statistically, but isn’t the motivation of the individual- which a solution to poverty and getting out of a depression has to examine) and rules designed to further stagnate or flounder business and as a result the entirity of the economy… it’s a sign that we’re cognitively advancing.
Both sides of the political spectrum hit a rhetorical bedrock, and neither side will be able to push forward without the other… if they try, severe societal and economic destruction will result. We don’t need to solve racism or economics at this time, but the logical process both sides use in the first place that lead to this stagnation. It’s not a bad thing that both sides are in a position to express themselves coherently enough to counter the other in literally every aspect… means we’re following a debating policy of reactive alternativism… we always seek to grasp the ‘other’ well enough to derive a alternative to their position.
The end result is rather absurd… if you follow either given parties platform. One demands socialism, because people are understandable insecure, and Socialism has magic in it that fixes everything. You open up this package, marked Socialism… sprinkly it on, and it fixes fucking anything. Then you have another side that notes this childish psychological layover from our collective youth when Mommy could fix anything for us, and point out historically whenever we tried it, or anyone else, very bad results happened- much worst than currently, and lots of pain and death happened. They then take a look at the past, see people succeeded there, and demand a return to it, saying it is life/good, and the Socialist alternative is Death/Bad. Then the exchange balances out again, killing fetuses isn’t bad, it’s democracy, and democracy is good, while the army the other side promotes is bad, because it only kills. Then they get turned around and it’s pointed out the Army is good, because it protects and is largely a peace keeper force, and the American Army, even at it’s worst, has produced very good results compared to other militaries- European democracy is a good example, they would all be fascist.
The stupid exchange can go on forever… until we have the ludricious situation that suddenly the way people vote… because the person they are voting for is of a racial group, is now a racist. All that inhereted baggage from shit poor dialectic exchange- dialectics at it’s lowest threshold of standards, is unfortunately remembered. A person voting for person A or B is a racist, unless they themselves are in turn coincidently of the same race. And if that happens, a person of the same race voting for a candidate of the same race, then they are a racial voting block.
Yes… it’s deeply annoying thinking that guys volunarilty trained to kill with grenades and bayonets, and make a procession of it, are in actuality, when the statistics are analyzed, are more pro life as a group- men (as most in the military are men) than females, who abort on a scale much higher than men… but the statistics show this. It’s quite factual, and all the arguement for one way or another still affirms it. I can’t halp but notice in the end of it all they still are holding those grenades, and are still killers, though perhaps not nearly as efficient as your average 19 year old woman is… but that’s the kind of debate we wage, and the end result of it all is the stagnation we’ve reaped. Now, everyone across the ideological spectrum is buckling, and everyone is hurting.
The good news is… this is very simple to change, and it’s all has been to our advantage. We’ve in the end developed a form of morals and values that label ‘death’ as bad, and ‘life’ as good. The fact we lost sight of what that actually means on a existential level in seeing one another as human is besides the point… we’ve become inhuman in the debating process- in our rhetorical approach. We simple need to put emphasis on the human, the real in each of us, once more.
Once this is done… all that bullshit argumenting that lead us to fight over every dead last issue would be in a position to reset… while preserving knowledge on both sides of that issue. We’ve inadvertently gone out and collected a shitload of knowledge and sociological facts of just about everything in our society as a result of this stupid ‘my side your side’ method of checking the other side. The bullshit will be seen though if approach with the understanding humans sit on that other side, and that knowledge can be put to work.
It would be like turning someone from the KKK or the hardcore faction within the Nation of Islam over into dropping the racism. The unexpected result is a person who has a wide range of knowledge of the racial divide, and coincidentally, are in a better position in picking out the sociological elements that cause the divide and antagonism in the first place, perhaps more so than a trained sociologist. The two sides after all spent their life in studying the ‘bad’ in the other and the ‘good’ in them.
We’re going to make a better democracy in the long run from this. However, for the moment, we don’t have much of one. Since Obama is in, I’m involuntarily stuck being a racist everytime I get up in the morning to take a piss in my ‘white toilet’, under my ‘white light’. I drink fruit juice, and I’m a stereotype. This is confirmed when I am told i am a racist when attending a book reading by a black author and never opened up my mouth about shit. Cause I am a racist, because I am the wrong race, not the correct one. Yes… this is deeply inane and annoying. But once the mindset is reset, they will see a guy in enough detail to know he gets up out of bed like them to piss in the morning… reads books and drinks juice, and goes to book readings. That is who I will become, whereas before, had they never given it any effort, I would of been much less. A statistic, something lacking relevancy to their life. I would be something to be taken advantage of as I would be less real, or worst, ignored.
And that brings us back to the insecurity issues. As much as the insecurity is economic, or social… it’s more a growth of our communities up the Needs Pyrimid. There isn’t a group in America who are that bad off as a hundred years ago. We’re finding social issues at the core of our problem. The founding fathers of the US were much more self sufficient ironically in the late 18th century than now, and self actualized a damn good system- very advanced philosophically, the pinnacle of what we can conceivably become. We simply can’t life up to it currently… we’re groping our way back to it since the Civil War, Great Depression, and WW2 kept us knocked down repeatedly. We were in repeated threats of invasion and destruction- all life on earth nearly got wiped out.
Now that things are relaxed a little bit, we’re becoming more selfish. Now that technology is allowing us to talk to anyone, we’re sticking to the little cliques and groups that traditionally given us support. We know unconsicously this isn’t enough to support us in a complex world, so we’re branching out into new ways of living… but not thinking. We’ve carried our old associations and made them stick to new problems and new needs. Hence the wildfire spread of abortion. It’s somehow piggybacked on women’s rights, even though it’s pure infanticide, and another era would of tried to outlaw it under the guise of women’s rights for that very reason, because children were everything to women once. Now… women are told they will be nothing if they have a child at the wrong time, and will kill their own offspring as a result.
In America, it’s gotten so silly at the moment that white conservatives are accused of being racist for noting liberals are heavily targeting black women for abortions. That’s genocide by alot of definitions… but they are racist. So… both sides now just troll one another, and have good reasons to doing so. The motivations to doing so… seeking out a better life, isn’t wrong. Of belonging to a group isn’t wrong. It’s the absurd end results.
I myself, be I called a bigot or not, do not hold to political parties. I take John Adams position that political parties are a inherent threat to democracy. For the moment, the US isn’t a functional democracy. It’s at best a Despotism of one faction over another. Neither side tries to compromise anymore, nor to grow in their believes, or even question them. But we are growing in knowledge- however twistedly we’re applying it. We’re suppost to be a nation of laws, not of laywers… but that’s all we’re becomming. For the time being, we gotta focus on becomming counter-intutively to our creed a nation of men… for only men can see the men in others… to see the brother in one another. This current spectrum of thought is taking the humanity out of us, and seems addicted to becoming ever more irresponsible.
The current emphasis in politics on bigotry is a example of wat not to do. if you want to change it, talk to such people in a way that forces them to see you as a man worthy of a destiny, worthy enough to be a leader, a neighbor, a friend. There will still be a need to categorize, as logistics and leadership requires it, but we need to return to competent use of it. Study of strategy, statecraft, managerial and leadership skills used by the wisest and far seeing minds from every culture around the world, be it antiquity or modern, is a damn good startng place.
The goal of all this is becoming human. I honestly don’t care about equality so long as I can be me, and can seek to live the best life that is possible for me. That was Ghandi’s philosophy, as it is mine. We don’t differ in this respect.
A good exercise when confronted with bigotry… is to just have them list the reasons why they are a bigot in the first place. It might be disturbing, but useful, as it allows you to respond with a more advance mode of reasoning. Some of their reasons might in cases be valid… white boys chain us and drag us on the back of their trucks is a damn good reason to be weary of white boys if it happens consistently, especially if that’s the only time they tend to come around. None the less, introducing the new form of reasoning matters. It will jog their mind, and make them rethink the situation. It can have a accumulative effect in the long run. They might be able to change the underlining situation (if it even is as they think it is, alot of times, it’s a cover for another issue their not brave enough to confront, as they never learned to cope with it- hence the reliance on old values even when we leave our old lifestyle).
This is one of the important aspects of the classical Cynics. It wasn’t the poverty or extremities of life we lead that everyone focused on, but in the freedom it allowed us to evaluate how others viewed society, and hit it at it’s weakest and most absurd. We in out daily lives do alot of crazy, absurd things and call it common place and good. Why do we do this? Anything in particular? Questioning it doesn’t make it inherently wrong… but are we rational in doing so? Are we seeking long term productive changes, or short term predatory gains, that benifit our own poorly understood and self destructive vanity and greed.
Right now, we live in a era when we know from looking at history, one political party isn’t as harmful as the other- Democrats are forcing everyone off a cliff of destruction at a quicker rate than their counterparts… but that’s largely accident, as the republicans tended to be the faction in charge immediately after recovering from the largest of our disasters. When unchecked, starting in a relatively uncharged political enviroment, either side would look to the common good with a more discerning eye to public well being. However, they tended to be the ones who inherited the impulse to do so first. After the civil war, Lincoln tried to give the slaves as well as the only recently pacified southern states a fasttrack way back into the American system. He had the rational inclusive way in, taking it from a position of humanity. He died, and it went to hell, and ever since, both sides flip flopped over whatever issue they had… just the conservatisim of the republicans can point back to sound economics, and sound social relations at a early point, so it has a tendency when they are lining up their views under a common synthesis to equate conservative=life. And life is good. However, the trend began with someone who killed a shitload of Americans and now has a temple built for himself in the center of a secular capital- abraham Lincoln… we do some silly shit sometimes. WW2 a democrat, but we quickly switched to republicans. They came in during a widely uniform period of america… and the checkerboard began again.
But it needs to be noted it’s a checkerboard flip-flopping. Both sides started as well intentioned, good americans. Both sides hold to well informed, yet terribly rude and destructive tendencies in reacting to the other. It also needs to be observed both sides tend to periodically reset. This is very important to not. It’s also important to note the reason why as well. One side is MORE DESTRUCTIVE in tendency than the other. It’s the legacy of the civil war as far as I am concerned. We play this out quite often.
Luckily, as a Cynic- on a selfish level of gloating, this current slow grinding collapse isn’t going to hurt me as much as it’s gonna hurt pretty much everyone else. This stuff only happens when we can’t, or won’t, think our problems through and accept the poor arguemetns of others. WW2 wouldn’t of happened if it wasn’t for the great depression, and that wouldn’t of lasted for so long if it wasn’t for the semi-fascist form of socialism we copied off the Europeans. Had we a more coherent economy, and everyone worked in bettering themselves instead of coming together and doing nothing… we could of given a economic prop to Europe to emulate, or at the very least not be a tempting target to drag into a war. Few countries want a war with India, China, or the US because our economy is too strong, and population too high, and too well educated. Each rests on republicanized (the ideology, not the american political party) principles of social authority, and each has some democratic imput into that process. They wouldn’t of fucked with us or dragged us into the war if we weren’t a tempting target to bully, or thought easy to push aside. It’s largely because we gave up in trying to better the individual self, and lost ourselves in a collective. We stopped trying, and the machinery of state wasn’t up to the challenge. I can walk around pointing this out. However, pointing it out wouldn’t be enough though, if I am to live up to the task of being a philosopher. I have to find solutions, means to applying them.
The bigotry issue presents us with just such a scenerio. It’s a excellent way for the philosopher to insert position themselve into the core of the issue. To push past party platforms, past the insanity, into how we’re each individually conditioned to think. There is justifiable advantage in such thinking processes… it’s quite natural, but not the best, nor is it usually even advantageous, and can be very destructive when carried as far as we are. It’s us climbing back up the needs pyrimid towards the self actualization of our forefathers. We are not there yet.
