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by imh 3823 days ago
Do we really have such poor social skills that candor and niceness are at odds? Really? I get that it can be a difficult goal to achieve both, but goddammit we're all adults here. We should all have developed those skills! Just because you're going to be frank doesn't mean you have to be an asshole about it. This whole idea seems to justify people taking the easy way and putting nice and candid at opposite ends of a spectrum.
1 comments

While I agree with everything you said, have you (speaking with candor) not been paying attention the past decade or so? A lawsuit-trigger-happy populace coupled with millienials entering the workplace has caused such collective scarring that institutions like academia and workplaces are reacting. We're now equating emotional distress with material injury, and it's having vile reverberations that won't be fully felt for decades. It's censorship wrapped in hip new packaging. It's nightmarish to witness.

This is what happens when children are raised in frictionless environments. The real world doesn't care about your feelings.

(Can't wait for the downvotes)

We're now equating emotional distress with material injury

This is not the problem; while we can't measure emotional or psychic distress directly we can infer the severity of it by observing the instance of suicide, which is motivated by emotional rather than physical pain. Rather the problem is that reminders of emotional trauma are often carelessly equated with the initial imposition of trauma. It is of course absurd for students in a class about sexual assault and the law to object to the very existence of the subject matter; on the other hand, to dismiss emotional injuries as immaterial is equivalent to saying that it's OK to terrorize someone as long as you don't harm them physically. If someone broke into your bedroom tonight and hold a knife to your throat but them left without any further assault, you woouldn't have suffered any material injury but I am pretty sure you'd have trouble sleeping.

This is what happens when children are raised in frictionless environments. The real world doesn't care about your feelings.

I hear this sort of thing a lot from people who have been through a little bit of friction and now think they're immunized against it. Having grown up in a very high friction environment, I find your argument weak.

(Can't wait for the downvotes)

Don't do this, it's only a step away from trolling and debases the discussion by unilaterally putting it on a confrontational footing.

Well, yes... downvoted because it's the kind of copy-pasted drama mongering you find on r/news, where people pile on millennials and wax about the 'state of the world' because of a small, vocal minority, mainly on college campuses. It's not serious analysis...
There is a huge difference between racism, and telling someone that their idea isn't fully thought out. The social justice movement doesn't care about the latter in the slightest. Discouraging racism and sexism in a workplace isn't censorship any more than discouraging swearing is.
The problem people have with Social Justice is that they are perceived as "going overboard"; they attach the same importance to staring at someone's chest that they would attach to grabbing said chest, which is equated to straight-up rape.

This is, of course, a vocal minority speaking--a group of people who attach their entire self-worth to the idea that they're fighting evil. They can't bear to think that the fight is over, because then their life becomes devoid of meaning, so they insist that the fight must be taken even further.

The issue is further complicated by what I call the Villain Effect. Because the other side is opposed to you, they are evil; therefore, any compromise is immoral. This happens on both sides, leading to a destructive stalemate in which everyone fights for an increasingly extreme version of their original vision, with no end in sight.

Because of course the concept of social etiquette was just recently invented this generation.