Effectiviology has run an excellent though miserably uncredited article detailing the importance for all persons in supporting their own arguments, by delivering and carrying the burden of actual proof themselves. I passionately agree with its sentiment. These unvoiced limitations of socialized reality involve points which long-time readers of mine will recognize peppered throughout this essay. Because, consistency matters.
This is unbelievably pertinent. The masses have grown so accustomed in this virtual world of having avatars and proxies to hide behind, like books striving to be judged by their covers with studies showing most folks do not even read beyond headlines, that they want that face value BS to transfer to IRL, thus giving unto the physical world identity politics and the like. Perpetual teenagers, they want to be judged (and judged positively at that) for their packaging and Halloween costumes they present to the world, instead of provable merits, such as having one’s work speak on their behalf. What they’d like rather than who they truly are. And as a one-two punch, the general response is that not enough persons put their proverbial or literal money where their mouths are but where they want their mouths to be.
But disingenuous people notwithstanding, so much of what gets branded as fake news, as a key and topical example of the inconsistency, really is a mere matter of undesirable opinion or inconvenient truth though. Just because we really, really like or despise the idea of a thing, or vice versa, does not make it concrete and provable. That’s voodoo, not reality, and irreversibly self-destructive. The opposite of monopoly is diversity, in terms of ideas particularly, and in genetics, the opposite of diversity is inbreeding. Monopolistic thinking, my way or the highway, is counter-intuitive to the point of no return, self-detriment and ideological suicide. Greed distances everyone and consumes itself.
I recall a thread at Hacker News from when I was just skulking years ago, where the importance for anonymity of candidates was weighed. Like, applicants would be masked so that there’d be no idea who was male or female or black or white or straight or gay, with the only variables observed being what they have accomplished and what they aim to get accomplished, and how they intend on going about it. Imagine if the societal norm was nothing more or less in regards to politics. No groups to be lost in, and the chances to explicitly vote against whichever persuasion completely disenfranchised. And equally, all would be forced to look deeper than surface level ornamentation. Being male or female or black or white or straight or gay should reasonably never, ever be used as a selling point, because persons of extremely different motives can share any of those attributes. For that reason alone, is pride for any of those or comparable traits nauseatingly shallow, and so nobody should logically care about any of it. What a singular person actually does is what truly defines them and sets them apart for good or ill, from kindred or strangers.
Unfortunately, what we instead know to be status quo can be sampled in this richly asinine article from Brian Resnick, wherein he makes the claim that self-control, a thing only possible through self-awareness, is actually a bad thing generally incapable of leading to positive outcomes. Which reads like a total cop-out, pardoning persons who prefer the comfort zone of mere reaction and repetition without any consideration of their actions, of basic cause and effect. Way too eager to rationalize faults and weaknesses. The path of least resistance as opposed to the road less traveled, even should it lead us to where we most need to be.
Behold, as I explain in few if any uncertain terms precisely why modern society is as miserable as it is. This is an ode to Truth, and of course shall be taken as a personal attack by those parties insistent that their own personal fantasies and personal demons are shared by all, or that such nuances deserve to be shared by all and that their illusion trumps all else no matter greater truths or the illusions of others. Because for such incomplete personalities, the universe already revolves around them without equal measures of both give and take. Plastic surgery and photo filters as replacement for having nothing interesting to say, contribute or share. Replacing reality with fantasy, while asserting said fantasy holds more meaning and value than said reality, and forgetting the fantasy is a personal experience while the reality is shared by all. It neglects experiences, thoughts and feelings of the world outside and beyond themselves.
I think too many people erroneously presume that free speech somehow guarantees an audience and acceptance, and when neither one happens then they feel their rights are being violated. Yet if life, liberty or the pursuit of happiness are contingent on expecting others to conform to our individual standards of interpretation, it’s not equality that is sought, but fascism. Words themselves have the inherent power to be more destructive, and certainly more creative, than any sword or weapon, but hurt feelings are not a societal concern, however, and to suggest otherwise is ego-maniacal. The inability to be loved is not an infringement of any rights, because nobody is owed love. The compulsion for everyone to love everybody undermines what makes those deserving of our love special. Mandated acceptance is still mandating opinion, still limiting speech. We do not all have to get along. People are entitled to their own experiences, their own thoughts and feelings, and disagreeing stop the presses is neither a crime or a sin. Failure for others to mindfully uphold your individualized self-perception is neither a crime or a sin, as they have their own to fret about.
How others elect to act upon their personal thoughts or feelings is another matter, one which abundantly has everything to do with personal responsibility, and the lost art of common sense. But personal sacrifice, even as sublime as textbook accountability, is the least popular thing throughout western civilization.
I feel there should be legal protections for all speech, but not protections from social ramifications. By this logic, I am totally fine with the idea of punching fascists or pedos. Which itself could be hit with assault charges, but then, how many juries would disagree with the reasoning for the violence? Let the masses decide for themselves, basically, individually. It’s what bothered me about the firing of James Gunn and Roseanne both despite their polar opposite politics. The companies that employed them cared so much about what the public thinks or feels that they couldn’t be bothered to let the public decide for themselves to support either celeb or not. (And I know Gunn has since been rehired, but this happens so often, my point stands.) That’s not license to lie or cheat or steal from people we personally disapprove of, and certainly never under any circumstances ever to kill anybody regardless of perceived reasons, of offended feelings or disgruntled thoughts. But we do not all have to love one another. Forcing extremes at either end of the spectrum is wrong and unnatural. People can define their own reality. They actually must, for their own sanity, but never for others. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
That is genuine equality. Never a view at the expense of others.
Your self-perception is yours and none can take that away from you. But then, so too does the same apply for the self-perception of others. They cannot compel you to share in theirs and to comply with and abide by theirs anymore than you can to them. A shared belief or perception or worldview is special explicitly because of its rareness. The shared fantasy is where alliances come from, where friendships come from and where romantic relationships come from, and obscurity is what makes those connections special.
I believe that those voices insisting their views be applied to all, are not capable of understanding where those connections come from or how they work, intimacy issues and all, because they cannot help but to view forests in lieu of trees. They do not want to see what constitutes individual people, or what makes those familial connections plausible, sight unseen, especially when demanding it for themselves. If you cannot care about and prize the hopes and dreams of everybody else, of which even the most earnest and well-intentioned are still every bit as intangible and ethereal as the rest, then why should everybody else take yours any differently?
People of today’s world are fucking miserable because they have jointly mistaken for culture self-worship without self-reflection. This is the reason why nationalism is poisonous regardless the sigil beared. This is the reason why religions invariably lose their flocks of followers. This is the reason why greed is ultimately a legal suicide.
And society completely blows goats because of it, the hollow self-idealization of effervescence. People loathe me, but then I do not allow others to define who I am. Nobody is owed love. It sucks, but to say otherwise belittles the genuine experience. If everyone were uniform we’d have nothing to learn from each other. It’s a logic with no place online, where the status quo is to develop masks of artificiality to hide behind and misrepresent as 2-dimensionally as possible. And this is a two-way street. Nobody has the right to tell others how they should think or feel, but everyone has the right to learn firsthand how badly those selfish, fascistic tendencies invariably end. Nobody wants to abolish the whip, only to wield it themselves. On a really good day I’d like to believe I might be a brilliant writer and editor, and that would be the same even were I to get into an accident leaving me with third degree burns from head to toe and paralyzed from the waist down with the hospital mistakenly giving me a sex-change operation. How we wish to relate to people, to be seen by others, is not who we are, it’s just packaging. Like Nolan’s Bats said, it’s what I do that matters, and that goes for everyone. How I wish they might be or react has no bearing on reality. Trump’s followers and Obama’s followers wanting their hero to be the Second Coming did not make it reality. Their mistaking reality for what they want actually rendered dismal effects the world over. What is fascism, but the assertion of individual will, the insistence of personal quirk, and based only on say-so?