- St Augustine said, “Cum dilectione hominum et odio vitiorum,” translated by Gandhi as: hate the sin and not the sinner. This beautiful phrase has been so often used as a put-down in recent years, but the sentiment it reflects saves worlds. When we’ve held false beliefs, succumbed to addictions, became sick in the mind and hated ourselves or others, the people who held us up did so by loving us and rejecting the lies we were clinging to, all at once.
I don't, and I won't, and weev is still an asshole, and the fact that this woman insists that loving psychopaths instead of shunning them somehow makes the world a better place is laughable. Twitter didn't cause any divides. It gave disparate tribes a place to Thunderdome. It is not a commons that suffered a schism it's a frontier being fought over by ideological homesteaders. I don't ever need to turn the other cheek to weev. He doesn't want in my tribe and I don't want in his. Our disagreements are ideological and, by the author's own admission, sourced in deeper wounds than I can salve: Nowhere in this paean to St. Augustine is there argument or evidence that all this lovey-dovey changed anyone's opinions one iota. The argument is that somehow being friends with weev makes us better people, and I'm sorry but fuck off with that shit. More than that? When I sit with monsters they show me the monster in me. Sure. But when I sit with those the monsters hate more than me I see what the fuck I'm fighting for.Amongst my friends (and family) I’ve counted people who kill for money, drug dealers, criminals living on the run, fucked up teenagers, Ren faire runaways, alcoholics, rapists, alcoholic rapists, more people who kill for money (but also get praised for it), employees who routinely break monopoly law, homeless psychotics, an FBI agent, a whole troop of gutter punks, a couple of private investigators, several delinquent parents, sex addicts, a passel of sociopaths, people cheating on their spouses, and probably a bunch more ne’er-do-wells I can’t think of right now.
In the case of my friend weev, I see a tragedy. I believe he is trying to strike out at the people who hurt him, but by propping up the same white supremacy that gave them their power in the first place. What he’s doing supports the very people who ordered violence on him, who took away his freedom, and tortured him. The same power structure that hurt him pays him a wage and gives him an attaboy now, as long as he keeps hurting people, just as he was hurt. The situation of his birth primed him to fall for a trick, and he did.
On my drive home yesterday I heard a story on NPR about a new bill being debated in Congress that would make websites liable for content posted on their site that promotes or engages in sex trafficking. Some internet lobbyist was mad as hell about how this new law would have made it impossible for "the internet as we know it" to have evolved. The merits of the law notwithstanding, I found myself thinking, "What the fuck is so great about the internet as we know it?"Twitter didn't cause any divides. It gave disparate tribes a place to Thunderdome. It is not a commons that suffered a schism it's a frontier being fought over by ideological homesteaders.
My question is why shouldn't companies be liable for how their product harms people? Paypal fucks people all the time, because payment providers can be fined if they're facilitating illegal business. Car companies get sued like every day for making unsafe cars. Gun manufacturers are statutorily protected from lawsuits by victims, and we [thinking people] all think that is wrong as fuck. Fuck you if you're providing a platform to peddle humans. You deserve to die as a person and a business. Also, is eBay still a thing?
Because "harm" is not a binary condition, nor is "liable." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Aviation_Revitalization_Act Regulation shapes commerce. Fettered capitalism isn't always better than unfettered capitalism. It's entirely rational to argue about the fetters. I personally believe that corporations should be more responsible for the externalities of their business models but I also know that innovation often races ahead of morality and then there's a correction. If every website policed their own content we wouldn't have bills like this but since they don't, the ones that ignore it make that money and drive out the ones that do. Textbook tragedy of the commons and before too long there's arguments about how much we want the sheriff to control grazing.My question is why shouldn't companies be liable for how their product harms people?
I don't think she's arguing that you should be friends with weev -- you're right, neither of you are in the same tribe and neither of you want to be in a tribe with each other. She's arguing that since she's already in a tribe with weev that she's better off maintaining a relationship with him rather than trying to kick him out of their common tribe or, more likely, removing herself from the tribe, as that seems to be how that sort of thing typically ends up. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/11/23/conversion-via-twitter-westboro-baptist-church-megan-phelps-roper https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/the-white-flight-of-derek-black/2016/10/15/ed5f906a-8f3b-11e6-a6a3-d50061aa9fae_story.html Outliers? Maybe so. From a personal perspective, though, my views on most political and social things have changed completely over the past 10 years, and I'm disgusted by some of the positions I used to argue pretty strongly for. I can definitely say that I would not have been able to make that change if I wasn't around people who took other viewpoints and, often unintentionally, educated me on a lot of stuff. I dunno. I don't think I'd be friends with weev, but I do think that long-lasting social change has to include changing peoples' minds.Nowhere in this paean to St. Augustine is there argument or evidence that all this lovey-dovey changed anyone's opinions one iota.
She is. That ain't the royal "we." Nowhere does she say "I have decided" she consistently speaks about what we must do. It's not about who we already know, it's about "we must give love to those whom the gods put in our paths." In bold. In green. The stupidest thing about this sort of argument is it presumes that we shun and upbraid those we meet for holding views contrary to our own as if we treat acquaintances the same as we treat random passers-by in a Facebook thread. We don't. We all know this, we all acknowledge this. As humans we bend over fucking backwards to be civil and commiserating with those we must share space with. The closer our orbits the more empathy we show in a linear relationship. This is exactly the mechanism used in your links: Both Megan Phelps Roper and Derek Black were apostates. Both of them lost their faith individually, not through direct confrontation (Megan Roper over the horrific realization that Westboro Baptists could celebrate the death of Brittany Muphy, Derek Black by being publicly shunned for his beliefs and privately welcomed for everything else). Sure, love the sin and hate the sinner and I'm really glad there were Jewish students around willing to sit at dinner with Derek Black but fuckin'A, it wasn't coffee klatsches that got him to renounce racism it was the unbending insanity of the home life that condemned him for those same coffee klatsches. You can certainly change someone's mind if their mind isn't made up. You can certainly shift someone's allegiance if their allegiances are unchallenged. But all this assumes that the people you're interacting with aren't truly committed to their positions. I'm gonna be human to people who deserve humanity. Sociopaths? I've met a few. No thanks.I don't think she's arguing that you should be friends with weev -- you're right, neither of you are in the same tribe and neither of you want to be in a tribe with each other.
“Derek,” a friend responded. “I feel like you are a representative of a movement you barely buy into. You need to identify with more than 1/50th of a belief system to consider it your belief system.”
I feel like this is a sideways continuation of this conversation. If I was in better shape, I'd share some deeper thoughts, but it's been a really long week and I'm absolutely lacking in anything that comes close to resembling clarity or eloquence. If I could just share on this though, and thank you for your patience and humoring me in advance . . . In the most basic of ideas, and I will admit I'm saying this not reading the original article, sometimes helping others is the best way to help ourselves, and I'm not talking about the emotional high people get from sharing warm fuzzies. When we interact with people who are difficult to interact with and do so with a goal of positive growth in mind, for them as well as for us, we may not always see positive growth from them, but we almost inevitably see positive growth in ourselves. We learn to become more patient, to become more compassionate, to become more sympathetic and empathetic. These are all skills and virtues that, as they develop, become more and more useful to us in every relationship we're in, from families, friends, and coworkers, to random people in traffic and in public. If each of us were able to grow to just be a little more patient for example, situations like difficult in-laws or heavy traffic would frustrate us just a little less. Then we see the power patience has on us and the situations we're in and seek to develop that attribute even further. It's a positive feedback cycle that builds on itself and the benefits from it, both for us as individuals as well as society, has the potential to grow. Further more, when we interact with people with the goal of conflict resolution in mind, we benefit even further. The skills and strategies that we learn can be shared with others and help them to overcome their own conflicts. Success is never guaranteed, but growth is. We have to take care though, because negative growth is always a possibility. It's okay to avoid situations because we think they're beyond our ability to handle. That said though, we also need to keep in mind that thoughts and behavior that are unproductive will do nothing to help the people who are trying to help in those situations. A lot of the time, people seem to think that this kind of growth, this kind of personal development, is something we instill in children and adolescents and when they grow up, we call it a day. We teach our children how to share, how to be patient, not to beg for candy at the check out line at the store, on and on and on. The thing is though, when we grow up, we don't all of the sudden become incapable of furthering development of these skills. The only thing that changes is now the responsibility for the growth of these attributes changes from our parents to ourselves. In the previous thread, you linked to an article that insinuated adults were incapable of change. The more I think about it, the more I think that's not the case. I think there's nuance there, that we are capable of change, but that more often than not we either consciously or unconsciously choose not to change. While I think Hubskiers tend to be on the bit more special side, I don't think there's a single one of us on here that would look to ourselves thirty or forty years from now and say "Yeah. I'll probably give up. No need to keep on growing." Anecdotally, I have a family member who is in their 70s and is working through anger management. The difference between them now and when they were in their 50s is absolutely stark. Change is possible, but we have to choose it, and sometimes in order to choose it, we need to be shown the value in it. Let me ask this as a rhetorical question, to you as well as anyone reading this, no need for answers. If we believe this to be true, and I think we all do to some extent, why would we not think the opposite to be true? By sitting with us, wouldn't those men see the good in us, and therefore, the potential for good in themselves?The argument is that somehow being friends with weev makes us better people, and I'm sorry but fuck off with that shit.
When I sit with monsters they show me the monster in me. Sure.