tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15644559.post6658619636472856584..comments2024-03-21T03:55:51.565-07:00Comments on Omniorthogonal: “Anarchist Conference Devolves Into Chaos”mtravenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02356162954308418556noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15644559.post-13217588052021168802014-05-14T13:13:44.908-07:002014-05-14T13:13:44.908-07:00Well, politics is all about the conflation of idea...Well, politics is all about the conflation of ideas and groups of people. I don՚t think the internet has changed things much in that regard. The problem here is bad ideas. <br /><br />The general tendency of the left to stick up for the rights of the powerless (a good thing imo) has somehow morphed into the idea that victimhood is the most important thing ever, and that people should organize around their particular brand of victimization rather than what changes they want to implement. And the liberal idea that speech is rigidly decoupled from action and should enjoy complete protection, which is always a bit of a tough sell, has been trampled in the process. <br /><br />My 5-cent diagnosis: it is too hard to be oppositional relative to the actual powers of the world these days, for a bunch of reasons (they are too amorphous, there is no real excluded class (workers, minorities) to organize around). But there is still the oppositional impulse, for better or worse, and in the absence of a real cause it thrashes around in displays like this.mtravenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02356162954308418556noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15644559.post-5126540534730892512014-05-11T14:22:09.526-07:002014-05-11T14:22:09.526-07:00> People seem to feel they have a right to not ...> People seem to feel they have a right to not have their feelings hurt that trumps everything else. This is very broken and I hope it fixes itself[.]<br /><br />I agree! I suspect any achievement impossible, if no one is willing to pay an emotional price for it.<br /><br />On the other hand, how might such a disfunction fix itself? I imagine this being a stable problem if and only if these hurt feelings feel like the most important things that anyone in a movement is experiencing. In that case ... I'd hope something like dramatically improved empathy, and hearing far wider perspectives, and managing to focus on the problems a group has actually assembled to deal with, might help? Don't know how to accomplish <i>that</i>, though.<br /><br />Perhaps the internet has made it clear to activists that they are organizing themselves against <i>ideas</i>, rather than particular people or organizations. When ideas become enemies, squelching those ideas sounds awfully sensible.fiddlemathhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04534537898623601939noreply@blogger.com