safe spaces in universities

[vixnix]

I thought utiliarianism sprang from the existential concerns of uber privileged and over educated rich guys lazing about all afternoon wondering how they could justify any of their actions, if it turned out that there really was No Ought from Is

[redbreegull]

well your system was contingent on the founding of our system is what I am saying. also I don't think your system is any less rooted in the values of human rights, equality, freedom from suffering, etc. It's in fact just a better perfected and less hypocritical version

[redbreegull]

Originally Posted by vixnix

I thought utiliarianism sprang from the existential concerns of uber privileged and over educated rich guys lazing about all afternoon wondering how they could justify any of their actions

this is the origin of all philosophy before the last 200 years or so.

utilitarianism is a humanist ideology which basically take the ideas of Enlightenment democracy about life being about pleasure and happiness and attempts to further those values by quantifying them. it's like the addition of a scientific worldview to humanist/democratic values. similar origins to socialism, which is why utilitarianism seems so closely related, even though they were kind of parallel until the post-Marx age and the rise of the fabians brought em together

[vixnix]

Originally Posted by redbreegull

like if you want to take taxes as an example, there are a lot of compelling arguments for no taxation at all. How is it compatible with the ideals of freedom to force people to incorporate into the revenue stream of a vast government which does many things you won't agree with using your money? What if you morally reject the social contract? Is it not some kind of sacred violation to non-consensually take something off another human? Is that not oppression? Well it all sounds good in the vacuum sealed chamber of ideology, but in terms if real life, more people will suffer. Same with unlimited free speech.

I think we are basically in agreement, but I think it is also clear democracy has some serious problems right now, and the current trajectory is not making things better. So time to course-correct.

also, I just want to say that just a few years ago I would have hardcore agreed with the idea that de-platforming is wrong and socially silencing people is mostly wrong. Having a populist quasi-authoritarian ELECTED in your own country kind of changes your perspective on shit

I think one of the things that the left in the U.S STILL isn't talking about, is how the DEMOCRATS utterly failed a large proportion of the people who ended up voting for Trump. It was the people who were supposedly centre-left, who didn't do a thing for their own constituency, that created this problem.

The same thing happened in the UK. It's very hard to see the problem if you live in Boston, or London, or Washington DC. Forming free trade agreements with multi-nationals benefited a lot of people, but it also closed down a lot of local industry. Generations of people who counted on jobs as factory workers were left with nothing, and nobody has a solution for it, except Jeff Bezos, who doesn't seem to appreciate democratic principles like equitable distribution of wealth and power creating social harmony. The terrible ideas that people bring onto a university campus aren't a problem during the good times. It's only when you have an economically vulnerable population, who have no employment or accommodation security, that those solutions start sounding good.

And we act as though we're helpless bystanders, as if our decisions to become musicians and writers instead of teachers and social workers has nothing to do with the decline of democracy. We've all spent years of our lives posting at a message board for a band that hasn't been relevant pretty much since the board started lol and now we point the finger at Trump and people who agree with him. They're scapegoats; a place to load all our guilt onto. When we say things like "Show them the door" we're basically engaging in this superstition that if we just stop them from thinking stupid things, the millions of people who need stable employment will magically find it.

I dunno, that's how it seems to me, anyway

[vixnix]

Originally Posted by redbreegull

well your system was contingent on the founding of our system is what I am saying. also I don't think your system is any less rooted in the values of human rights, equality, freedom from suffering, etc. It's in fact just a better perfected and less hypocritical version

No, it wasn't - our system was contingent on the founding of the UK system, which is why it is named after it...

[redbreegull]

Originally Posted by vixnix

I think one of the things that the left in the U.S STILL isn't talking about, is how the DEMOCRATS utterly failed a large proportion of the people who ended up voting for Trump. It was the people who were supposedly centre-left, who didn't do a thing for their own constituency, that created this problem.

well this is something that bernie sanders speaks about constantly, so I don't think that's true. I think the moderates and the party leadership won't acknowledge it.

But even so, it's a lot harder to figure out how to help them when they literally vote against everything the Democrats do which would improve their lives. I don't know what the answer is. If you go to West Virginia and western Pennsylvania, the culture is based on coal and the attitude does really feel like they would rather die than change. Municipalities create programs to retrain people, and no one goes. They try to introduce initiatives to bring in more green energy, and people vote em down or the local governments themselves sabotage them. I agree with you on this but I also have no idea how to get through to people like that.

[redbreegull]

Westminster system of democracy is many decades younger than American democracy. Remember, we fought a war against people who didn't believe democracy was even possible and they later tried their hand at it... different organizational system, same basic values. Same origins of those values. If the US had lost the war, I believe democracy would still be around but it to say that the US establishing a democracy successfully did not lead to all these other places wanting democracy is kind of a stretch for me.

[vixnix]

Most left leaning voters still support the Democrats and would have supported Hillary Clinton, who at best, would have just postponed a result like Trump being elected, for another term. He was voted in because he acknowledged that life is pretty shit for a lot of people in the U.S. right now. Kids are hungry and parents are not receiving healthcare. It isn't a time for establishment politics and that is all the Democrats will ever offer, because the poor and working class are actually not their constituency.

Unfortunately, their numbers are growing all the time, and they're under-educated now, after the Democrats allowed what I would call 'beshittening of the minds of the general public' policies like charter schools to flourish. So if you don't pitch to that level you won't get the votes. The Democrats have actually stopped talking to the working poor. The working poor talk in the language of free food, and more stuff for them - they don't care if they don't get it - that's their normal, they can handle that. They want the wildcard that gives them at least the chance. The democrats need a wildcard candidate but they need one as rich and shiny as Trump. They can't win by offering to use a system that has failed the people they're trying to get votes from. They'll win by promising to dismantle it, IMO.

[redbreegull]

The very poor are not who voted Trump in though. The median income for a Trump voter was about 60,000 dollars a year. The rhetoric that won him the presidency was the racism.

[vixnix]

Originally Posted by redbreegull

Westminster system of democracy is many decades younger than American democracy. Remember, we fought a war against people who didn't believe democracy was even possible and they later tried their hand at it... different organizational system, same basic values. Same origins of those values. If the US had lost the war, I believe democracy would still be around but it to say that the US establishing a democracy successfully did not lead to all these other places wanting democracy is kind of a stretch for me.

The Westminster system of democracy is influenced by things like the Magna Carta and the English Civil War, both of which happened hundreds of years before US independence...

[redbreegull]

in fact the median income for Trump voters is HIGHER than that of Clinton voters. There is truth in what you are saying, but it it's still a story of the elite using the poor, just in an even worse way

[redbreegull]

Originally Posted by vixnix

The Westminster system of democracy is influenced by things like the Magna Carta and the English Civil War, both of which happened hundreds of years before US independence...

none of this happened in a vacuum. democracy did not gain popularity worldwide separately in every country it developed in. The US framers invoked the magna carta during a time when it wasn't even regarded with a lot of importance in the UK.

[vixnix]

That's interesting, and even more terrible that what I originally thought. I wonder what the median income is, of the 40% who didn't vote...

[vixnix]

Originally Posted by redbreegull

none of this happened in a vacuum. democracy did not gain popularity worldwide separately in every country it developed in. The US framers invoked the magna carta during a time when it wasn't even regarded with a lot of importance in the UK.

I agree that nothing happens in a vacuum. You do seem to have some weirdly patriotic ideas about how important U.S. democracy has been, to the world. That's some real Bush rhetoric. What next, exporting it to the oppressed people of Iran, who are having trouble selling their own oil?

The U.S. has always been an oligarchy dressed in democratic language. If it has perfected anything, it is image crafting, IMO...

[redbreegull]

I totally don't know enough (barely anything) about the UK government to judge how important Magna Carta is to them vs. the United States, but this article is interesting in how important it is considered by Americans

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/history/...gna-Carta.html

[vixnix]

Well, I don't know a lot about the UK government either, but as a history and law student in a former British colony, and a country still part of the British commonwealth, I was taught that it represented a turning point in English history.

[redbreegull]

Originally Posted by vixnix

I agree that nothing happens in a vacuum. You do seem to have some weirdly patriotic ideas about how important U.S. democracy has been, to the world. That's some real Bush rhetoric. What next, exporting it to the oppressed people of Iran, who are having trouble selling their own oil?

The U.S. has always been an oligarchy dressed in democratic language. If it has perfected anything, it is image crafting, IMO...

I think you are purposely distorting my point and muddying the waters by randomly invoking Bush and right wing patriotism because you don't want to feel like anything is owed to the US. Which is not even what I was really saying. I don't think you can really credulously deny that US democracy changed things globally and signaled a huge shift... but you also don't want to admit that

[redbreegull]

It's not even like I'm saying the US is so great blah blah, I think our system is incredibly outmoded and corrupt and unfair. But can you really say that the USSR did not inspire other people to start communist revolutions?

[vixnix]

I mean, how do you feel about the opinions of say Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn? My opinion of U.S. democracy is informed by that sort of bias I suppose.

In terms of an idea for a great society, the U.S. has produced a lot of nice theories and rhetoric. But in terms of actual democracy, it has really produced the same oligarchy that exists everywhere else...and then used its fictionalised account of itself as a justification for aggressive military action against other sovereign nations.

[vixnix]

In that sense, you could say that U.S. democracy has influenced countries like Saudi Arabia, who are now also presenting fictionalised accounts of themselves while invading other sovereign nations...I mean why not? The U.S. is doing it, so why shouldn't we?

[redbreegull]

Originally Posted by vixnix

I mean, how do you feel about the opinions of say Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn? My opinion of U.S. democracy is informed by that sort of bias I suppose.

you say that but your original position in this debate was right out of the Federalist Papers with me arguing the progressive stance. This is exhausting, because you turn arguments around so you don't have to concede anything.

[vixnix]

My original position in this actually comes from lining up in New Zealand for three hours as a teenager, to hear Noam Chomsky speak, about 20 years ago. And watching the largely liberal audience try and shout down a man who was presenting a very right wing critique, after the talk had finished. And then being really surprised when Chomsky held up his hands and quieted the audience, pleading with us “Let him speak, let him speak.” And then replying.

It made me think... dialogue is better than shouting people out of the room.

[vixnix]

Originally Posted by redbreegull

you say that but your original position in this debate was right out of the Federalist Papers with me arguing the progressive stance. This is exhausting, because you turn arguments around so you don't have to concede anything.

I have no idea what you are talking about. But it is also exhausting having you talk about how your #globalinfluencer #democratic country which was once great, is now in the shitter, and part of what can fix it is telling people you disagree with, to shut up and gtfo

[redbreegull]

Originally Posted by vixnix

I have no idea what you are talking about.

I'm sure you don't.

[vixnix]

I looked it up...me not knowing about the Federalist Papers is I guess the ignorance equivalent of you not knowing if the Magna Carta was important in any countries outside of your own.

[redbreegull]

Originally Posted by vixnix

I looked it up...me not knowing about the Federalist Papers is I guess the ignorance equivalent of you not knowing if the Magna Carta was important in any countries outside of your own.

This is such a twisting of my words it is bordering on a lie. You are incredibly disingenuous when you don't get your way in an argument, but I only blame myself for not having learned my lesson many times before.

[vixnix]

Ok, I thought that was exactly what you said.

[vixnix]

I mean, do you know if the magna carta is important to any nation, other than the U.S.?

[vixnix]

You have a bit of a mansplaining/whitesplaining/elitesplaining history IMO. If people disagree with you and turn out to be right, you often pull the "you are deliberately misunderstanding what I'm saying" card

[vixnix]

quickly retreating into the

basically, I think we agree (because I have retreated from my untenable position)