The fantasy land of Utopia has been a plague on humanity. If we could only do this, or believe that, everything would be just ticketyboo. It’s not too bad if the idea just stays in your head. It can remain as a relatively harmless daydream, like winning the lottery or being able to fly.
Can't. Stop. Smiling. Like. The Joker. Utopia, meaning ideal perfect society. Eutopia, meaning no place in existence. Thomas Moore used both knowing full well why he did it. Sadly (since he was a white man?) he is no longer read.
Plato sure has a lot to answer for, inventing the entire genre and idea of the perfect society being something you strive towards by setting up a scaffold of principles and moral codes. Which is to use analogy as if you'd put a lantern on the bowsprit and called it a lighthouse. No matter how you turn, as if by magic yoy are still striving for your (e)utopia.
A better society (as perfection means eliminating all possibility of change) than the current is only ever achieved by identifying actual, factually existing problems and eliminating those. Don't like the Thames being thick enough to walk on? Build better sewers, waste handling, sluices and dams and regulate the water flow.
Not write down a visionary programme of "Clean Our Water", with lots and lots of workshops and committees and so on. When you have visions, seek a doctor as a german politician put it.
Also, that brand of racism the pox in your clips display, it is uniquely USAmerican and second or later generation migrant. The africans of various background I've met or worked with were so conservative (using western metrics) that you could have bent nails around their convictions. Any white westerners espousing views such as they did freely would have been woke-mobbed to death; the ethiopian man who daily informed his unmarried colleagues that they were going to Hell for sinning against god by being promiscous, that they shamed their parents by not marrying and so on? He was cheered and cherished for being such an honest and original old-fashined guy. It was as if my limp-wristed fellow academics just couldn't climd down from their ivory twin towers of the white woman's burden and the noble savage, really. Quite the experience, me who thinks Enoch Powell was too much a liberal on the migraton issue being disgusted by their belittling racism, while the ethiopian and I agreed on most political points - such as migrants who don't respect the laws and customs of their new nation shall be deported for life or that a people has an indelible and non-negotiable eternal right to its territory.
I wonder what a US woke-pox (POCs I guess but pox brings out the idiocy of thinking changing labels changes content )would say about that?
So all the white gay and bi people I know are actually het? They are going to be shocked when they get the news.
I had a gay neighbor who had just bought a small tractor with a backhoe to do some landscaping on his land. A few months later he told me jokingly, "I thought this tractor was going to turn me straight, but it didn't work, I'm still gay!" I told him he'd gotten ripped off. So if the tractor didn't work, apparently being white will do the job.
Irrelevant aside: I wish words like "ticketyboo" were used here in the USA. "Boffin" is another one.
Edit: I realize that the tweet was talking about non-binary, but I was extrapolating to a future where someone would claim that "white supremacy created heteronormative oppression, so you can't be gay if you're white."
Symptoms of a greater disease. The issue isn't which room to piss in, the issue isn't which slot B you want to insert tab A into, the issue isn't even the amount of melanin in one's skin. The issue is sanity, rationality and delusion. I think you summed it up well with, "It’s even harder to figure out how to have a meaningful dialogue with such a person."
"It’s like the saying “there’s more than one way to skin a cat”. When was cat-skinning such a popular pastime that several different ways were invented?" Far beyond classic! Also, I admit, with pride, not knowing what AFAB and AMAB meant until now. I still wish I didn't. On the plus side, if I hear anyone use those terms, I can classify them a dumb as shit and have no further dealings with them. #WinningAF
Can't. Stop. Smiling. Like. The Joker. Utopia, meaning ideal perfect society. Eutopia, meaning no place in existence. Thomas Moore used both knowing full well why he did it. Sadly (since he was a white man?) he is no longer read.
Plato sure has a lot to answer for, inventing the entire genre and idea of the perfect society being something you strive towards by setting up a scaffold of principles and moral codes. Which is to use analogy as if you'd put a lantern on the bowsprit and called it a lighthouse. No matter how you turn, as if by magic yoy are still striving for your (e)utopia.
A better society (as perfection means eliminating all possibility of change) than the current is only ever achieved by identifying actual, factually existing problems and eliminating those. Don't like the Thames being thick enough to walk on? Build better sewers, waste handling, sluices and dams and regulate the water flow.
Not write down a visionary programme of "Clean Our Water", with lots and lots of workshops and committees and so on. When you have visions, seek a doctor as a german politician put it.
Also, that brand of racism the pox in your clips display, it is uniquely USAmerican and second or later generation migrant. The africans of various background I've met or worked with were so conservative (using western metrics) that you could have bent nails around their convictions. Any white westerners espousing views such as they did freely would have been woke-mobbed to death; the ethiopian man who daily informed his unmarried colleagues that they were going to Hell for sinning against god by being promiscous, that they shamed their parents by not marrying and so on? He was cheered and cherished for being such an honest and original old-fashined guy. It was as if my limp-wristed fellow academics just couldn't climd down from their ivory twin towers of the white woman's burden and the noble savage, really. Quite the experience, me who thinks Enoch Powell was too much a liberal on the migraton issue being disgusted by their belittling racism, while the ethiopian and I agreed on most political points - such as migrants who don't respect the laws and customs of their new nation shall be deported for life or that a people has an indelible and non-negotiable eternal right to its territory.
I wonder what a US woke-pox (POCs I guess but pox brings out the idiocy of thinking changing labels changes content )would say about that?
So all the white gay and bi people I know are actually het? They are going to be shocked when they get the news.
I had a gay neighbor who had just bought a small tractor with a backhoe to do some landscaping on his land. A few months later he told me jokingly, "I thought this tractor was going to turn me straight, but it didn't work, I'm still gay!" I told him he'd gotten ripped off. So if the tractor didn't work, apparently being white will do the job.
Irrelevant aside: I wish words like "ticketyboo" were used here in the USA. "Boffin" is another one.
Edit: I realize that the tweet was talking about non-binary, but I was extrapolating to a future where someone would claim that "white supremacy created heteronormative oppression, so you can't be gay if you're white."
Symptoms of a greater disease. The issue isn't which room to piss in, the issue isn't which slot B you want to insert tab A into, the issue isn't even the amount of melanin in one's skin. The issue is sanity, rationality and delusion. I think you summed it up well with, "It’s even harder to figure out how to have a meaningful dialogue with such a person."
"It’s like the saying “there’s more than one way to skin a cat”. When was cat-skinning such a popular pastime that several different ways were invented?" Far beyond classic! Also, I admit, with pride, not knowing what AFAB and AMAB meant until now. I still wish I didn't. On the plus side, if I hear anyone use those terms, I can classify them a dumb as shit and have no further dealings with them. #WinningAF
I would definitely patronize an establishment with “possessors of trouser truncheons” on the men’s bathroom. But what would it say on the women’s?
Just 5:AM here and already smiled and laughed. Nice. Cheers, mate.
I would go out of my way to patronize establishments that have AMAB and AFAB on their restroom doors. Kudos to Phoenix Bar & Grill.
Real-life trolley problems...
You reminded me of this story I just heard last night! https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-oxfordshire-25793358