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by belovedeagle
3388 days ago
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> How do you fight against harmful, unjust beliefs such as racism without making it socially uncomfortable for people to express them? I've got a better question: in what way is making it dangerous ("uncomfortable" is an underhanded euphemism) to express certain views advancing the "fight" against them? It's really an attack on "those [other] people", and not at all on their beliefs: since ideas can't be physically and verbally attacked and abused, if abuse happens (it does), it can only be directed at people. In fact the liberal elite has largely abandoned the "fight against racism". It's entirely likely that a legitimate treatment of the subject, an "Against Racism", would be attacked (or rather, its author would be attacked) as "normalizing" racism. I'm entirely serious: I have observed claims by everyday liberal elites in their safe spaces (e.g., HN, reddit) that it's not acceptable to explain why certain views are bad because doing so normalizes them. |
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Because the inconvenient truth of liberty is that authoritarianism gets results fast and delivers "solid" security. So in theory, it shouldn't matter how racist someone is, or how much they disagree with the current government/religion, or whatever; our ability to hurt or kill them should override that need for self-actualization.
And it works. If you are (or feel- being implies feeling) in danger, it's much less work to trust another individual if you already know they share the same values as you; and a community that has very rigid standards helps suppress the values they don't share with you. You can see this work in poor countries; extremist groups and local communities in general aren't attractive without their moral strictures (religion is usually the tool for this task).
The downside, of course, is that authoritarianism by its nature fails far more violently when enough of the people under it gain the power to disrupt it; and since oppression breeds resentment they tend to be very angry and negatively affect a large cross-section of that society. Liberty doesn't fail like that and allows for a far more flexible society, but it also takes longer to work and depends on other forces to make that happen (usually for company profit, like if a business makes enough money on Sunday to pay a fine levied on businesses open that day).
So liberty is the long-term solution... but since authoritarianism is the short-term solution it's way more likely to be preferred by society. And you can't stop the human bug of desiring short-term gain unless you make that preference dangerous to express in which case we've come full-circle.