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RE: Reasoning with Leftists is a Waste of Time
Elitists is better than Leftist because it defines a specific attitude. There are elitists on the right, left, and all over the place. I'm trying to think of a better label for these people. They are essentially a horde of people that are reacting to words and have forgotten that words can be uttered and nothing happen. If they were reacting to actual actions then we might understand. Yet, they are rioting and destroying purely fueled by their imagination of terrors that have been inspired by words.
They are aimed like a weapon, and the media seems very happy at aiming them and adding fuel to the fire.
I think they call it cultural marxism...
I realised it's the same mindset as music purists but with real life impact and far reaching consequences.
Being an elitist is like being part of a music subculture that believes it has the best taste in music and that all other music is inferior, maybe because the person believes the genre to be technically superior, associated with high ideals or just trendy.
The adherence to that certain genre of music becomes an obsession and the person seeks to further identify with it believing each abstraction to be more virtuous or purer than the last until they are listening to total crap and are completely out of touch with what good music is.
I like the cultural marxist label, but they have to have a label because this ideology has to be called something derogatory, leftists are winning the war of words, and replacing all of the negative connotations with positive outlooks.
Truly I never really bought into the LEFT and RIGHT thing. The so-called "leftist" ideals do seem to be a heavy media push. Yet even when I've been knee deep as a delegate all the way up through state in the GOP in 2012 I still saw word play, corruption.
The truth of the matter is hijacking words and repurposing them has been going on for quite some time. I had I think blog posts on that subject three or four months ago. Some examples: Piracy, Terrorism, Occult, Conspiracy Theorist, Anarchy... all words that have been redefined. I use the term hijacking because it is always for emotional impact.
It essentially is them taking some emotional impactful metaphor and after awhile the idea that it is just a metaphor is glossed over and forgotten.
Though it does boil down to labels.
If we don't have labels for things it makes it far more difficult to divide us and fuel the bigotry.
Black,White,Right,Left,Male,Female,Heterosexual,Homosexual.
The only people I see benefitting from our generalizations over labels are those that use it to keep us divided rather than paying attention to what is going on with the state.
Do we want anarchy? (the true definition... not the hijacked variant) If so then we need to get rid of labeling our fellow humans. Labels are used to divide us.
Is the division of labeling, truly a bad thing?
Plenty of people out are actually advocating theft from the people who are just out of the taxation cut off, remember if you receieve earned income credits you actually are not paying taxes, while I am not advocating paying taxes, I am the guy who won't even ask family for help when I struggle, while others are perfectly content to live with their hand out to government, while also voting for bigger and bigger government and more control over my earnings. I don't wish to be unified with those people, I vehemently oppose them making my decisions for me.
While not being a slave, is the goal, it has never happened in history, their has always been a hierarchy of power, or someone seizing control
The original intent of The US, was to limit that hierarchy's power, and one group is trying to like hell to undo the limitations, label them.
It is a damned if you do, damned if you don't type of situation. I guess it is more how people use labels. You see I simply disagree with generalizations and suddenly this SMART person here decided that I too am leftist. He didn't research my ideology, he didn't recall my anarchist posts he has commented on and up voted, he simply received some criticism and suddenly I was leftist. He is not the only one that did this. The problem with LABELs and boxes is when people start using them in broad strokes and throwing whatever they want into those boxes. Examples: You disagree? You're a leftist. You disagree? You are a right wing extemist. You disagree? You must be white. I didn't challenge ANYTHING on the activities of the people he was describing. Not once. I only stated that it was a generalization. I also know that it is not the majority of the people that could be considered LEFT that are doing what he is saying. It is a very vocal minority. They also appear to be intentionally being stirred up by the media. So saying LEFTISTs cannot be reasoned with. I understood WHY he was saying that as I've encountered it too. Yet that is not even close to ALL leftists. They are a vocal minority that are very active. Yet by generalizing he vilifies them all, and the vast majority of them are simply people.
Exceptions don't prove a rule, they disprove it. That's kind of how logical proofs work.
Now it is very easy to remedy this if a person doesn't get defensive and lash out at criticism. The term LEFTIST implies all on the so-called left. VOCAL MINORITY IN THE LEFT or anything that qualifies is more specific and does not generalize the entire group of them.
You don't have to preach to me about what their policies are. I am no fan of any form of socialism. I'm not a fan of any form of governance. They all are corrupt, and they are all giving power of people to force other people to live a certain way. THAT was not something I criticized. All I criticized was the generalization, because I know what he was saying, but the generalization is a logical fallacy and thus it weakens his position. So that criticism could be viewed as constructive. Furthermore, I only posted that single reply. He responded with the platitude, told me to GTFO it, and said I sound like a child. He was someone I respected, so this was a bit shocking. So I responded multiple times as I'd write something, then I'd think, and I'd have more to say. My multiple posts were a reaction to someone I respected falling from grace figuratively speaking. Basically the idea was post something and maybe he'll say "Oh, yeah I had a bad day, sorry about that, I see what you're saying" Did that happen? No he lashed out more and more. When a person that claims they cannot REASON with (insert group) and they act like this then really I question whether they can reason with anyone. If this is his reaction to a simple criticism about generalization then how can he reason with anyone. Apparently his idea of reason is he says something and everyone agrees. If they don't then he can't reason with them. Kind of like a priest. My mentioning generalization made me into a blasphemer.
This is why he got reactions from other people as well. I had one person contact me and say while they agree with most of what Jared writes (which I tend to also) they learned he doesn't take any form of criticism well at all and is arrogant. So they still read what he posts, but they don't bother to say anything to him.
Is this reasoning with people?
EDIT: I was trying to think of a way to qualify so it is not such a broad generalization target. The people he is describing are really the Social Justice Warriors on the left. So simply saying SJW LEFTISTS cannot be reasoned with would have removed the targeting of every person on the left. There are a lot of reasonable people over there. There are people over there that are leaning towards Libertarian, and from there eventually maybe Anarchy. Yet his LEFTISTS generalization includes them. It is simple. If a person disagreeing means they are unreasonable then he doesn't really understand the concept of reasoning. Disagreement is natural, it is how you handle disagreement that indicates whether you can be reasoned with, or whether you yourself are reasonable. People are generally unreasonable if they believe they are RIGHT and leave no room to be challenged on their beliefs.
Well, what would you characterize the ideologies as, if not left or right?
If we as a nation have no common ground, which it would seem that we don't, with one side screaming for all manner of free things and control over the rest of us and our earnings, why should we be unified with those fellow humans?
Yes, this is a second reply. I do think we have common ground. We all want freedom. We all want opportunity. Yet, some people don't really know what that means. They do not understand why the bill of rights is as it is. They do not understand that FREE SPEECH is to protect the unpopular speech. They do not understand why we have the right to bare arms. They do not understand that when you ban something it only impacts innocent people, as those that plan to misuse something won't have an issue with the fact they are committing a crime to get access. They don't comprehend that there is no such thing as FREE STUFF. Someone pays for it.
The big issue really is they don't teach critical thinking and logic in schools, and it is taught less there now than it was in the past. So the more recent you went to public education the less likely you encountered such teaching unless you found it on your own. I am 46 and I didn't get a good exposure to it until I took an obscure course in college. What they taught about it in K-12 was appalling. I have 6 kids. I am familiar with the education system. They teach it less now then they did back then.
I've come to the conclusion that we should be teaching people how to understand appeals to authority, generalizations, ad hominem attacks, etc at a very early age.
If you know those things it is harder to be susceptible to them. If you do not know those things then mostly it is emotions, feelings, gut feelings, and guessing that guide us. We imagine things and suddenly we believe the thing we imagined is real. We delude ourselves.
This happens to smart people too...
Why do smart people fall for this?