What You Can't Say

[muskiefan82]

I would like to think I would be one of those people who would enjoy a conversation with you.

[paulxu]

Sniper, it was interesting.

ps. your inbox is full, so answering here.

[bigdiggins]

You can't say St I' s beat St X for the state title!

[Emp]

Would that Der Fuhrer Elect was sophisticated enough to read this. If it doesn't fit in a tweet, it's too long for him. He's never going to pick his fights....he's going to pick every single one.

[Snipe]

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[Masterofreality]

One thing that I apparently can't say- regarding something that will be proven to be a falsehood of epic proportions- That " Global warming, errrrrrrrrrrrrrrr....."Climate Change" is man made and will destroy the world and its civilization"- is pure and unfiltered Bull Sheet.

In 300 years, the Earth's citizens will read history books and have a huge guffaw over that one.

Thank Gawd the Perpretrator in Chief of such nonsense will be leaving office on January 20, 2017 and "Cooler" heads can prevail. (Pun intentional, thank you)

[vee4xu]

[Snipe]

A Dutch friend says I should use Holland as an example of a tolerant society. It's true they have a long tradition of comparative open-mindedness. For centuries the low countries were the place to go to say things you couldn't say anywhere else, and this helped to make the region a center of scholarship and industry (which have been closely tied for longer than most people realize). Descartes, though claimed by the French, did much of his thinking in Holland.

And yet, I wonder. The Dutch seem to live their lives up to their necks in rules and regulations. There's so much you can't do there; is there really nothing you can't say?

Certainly the fact that they value open-mindedness is no guarantee. Who thinks they're not open-minded? Our hypothetical prim miss from the suburbs thinks she's open-minded. Hasn't she been taught to be? Ask anyone, and they'll say the same thing: they're pretty open-minded, though they draw the line at things that are really wrong. (Some tribes may avoid "wrong" as judgemental, and may instead use a more neutral sounding euphemism like "negative" or "destructive".)

When people are bad at math, they know it, because they get the wrong answers on tests. But when people are bad at open-mindedness they don't know it. In fact they tend to think the opposite. Remember, it's the nature of fashion to be invisible. It wouldn't work otherwise. Fashion doesn't seem like fashion to someone in the grip of it. It just seems like the right thing to do. It's only by looking from a distance that we see oscillations in people's idea of the right thing to do, and can identify them as fashions.

Time gives us such distance for free. Indeed, the arrival of new fashions makes old fashions easy to see, because they seem so ridiculous by contrast. From one end of a pendulum's swing, the other end seems especially far away.

To see fashion in your own time, though, requires a conscious effort. Without time to give you distance, you have to create distance yourself. Instead of being part of the mob, stand as far away from it as you can and watch what it's doing. And pay especially close attention whenever an idea is being suppressed. Web filters for children and employees often ban sites containing pornography, violence, and hate speech. What counts as pornography and violence? And what, exactly, is "hate speech?" This sounds like a phrase out of 1984.

Labels like that are probably the biggest external clue. If a statement is false, that's the worst thing you can say about it. You don't need to say that it's heretical. And if it isn't false, it shouldn't be suppressed. So when you see statements being attacked as x-ist or y-ic (substitute your current values of x and y), whether in 1630 or 2030, that's a sure sign that something is wrong. When you hear such labels being used, ask why.

Especially if you hear yourself using them. It's not just the mob you need to learn to watch from a distance. You need to be able to watch your own thoughts from a distance. That's not a radical idea, by the way; it's the main difference between children and adults. When a child gets angry because he's tired, he doesn't know what's happening. An adult can distance himself enough from the situation to say "never mind, I'm just tired." I don't see why one couldn't, by a similar process, learn to recognize and discount the effects of moral fashions.

This essay is like layers of an onion, and you can keep peeling and read it again and realize it is one of the single seminal moments against "political correctness" and for free thought that was ever devised. As I said before, I couldn't do justice to try to paraphrase it. I am not worthy.

[Emp]

Labels like that are probably the biggest external clue. If a statement is false, that's the worst thing you can say about it. You don't need to say that it's heretical. And if it isn't false, it shouldn't be suppressed. So when you see statements being attacked as x-ist or y-ic (substitute your current values of x and y), whether in 1630 or 2030, that's a sure sign that something is wrong. When you hear such labels being used, ask why.

"Or he could go hang out with some Arabs. And trust me, personal hygiene is not high on their list, but inbreeding is. "

Nice. You like your labels, dontcha?

This is of course EXACTLY the labeling applied in the past to the horrific influx of Irish, Greek, Eastern European and Jewish immigrants by "nativists."

[Snipe]

Those are labels. They are also backed in fact. They have a word for inbred populations. You can tell which populations are more inbred. Now inbred to us is an insult. To them it is a way of life. The fancy word for interbreeding is Consanguinity.

Here is some of the academic research:

Consanguineous marriages
Preconception consultation in primary health care settings

Abstract

Consanguinity is a deeply rooted social trend among one-fifth of the world population mostly residing in the Middle East, West Asia and North Africa, as well as among emigrants from these communities now residing in North America, Europe and Australia. The mounting public awareness on prevention of congenital and genetic disorders in offspring is driving an increasing number of couples contemplating marriage and reproduction in highly consanguineous communities to seek counseling on consanguinity. Primary health care providers are faced with consanguineous couples demanding answers to their questions on the anticipated health risks to their offspring. Preconception and premarital counseling on consanguinity should be part of the training of health care providers particularly in highly consanguineous populations

You don't like that I call Arabs and Muslims Inbred. To you that is a sure sign that you are right and I am wrong. The sad fact that they are in fact inbred goes by the wayside to you, because you have already won by declaring me a bigot. But you are increasingly living in a world where your aversion to factual reality is increasingly called out. I called them a bunch of inbreeds, what a bigot! Turns out their society and culture foster plenty of inbreeding and cousin marriage, and that actually is a fact. Maybe now you will mount an argument that inbreeding isn't all that bad, even though our culture abhors it. Mount that argument if you may.

All you do is point and sputter. Wow what a bigot! Accept I am actually correct. What to do then? More point and sputter. That is your parties only game plan. Call them racist. I could be wrong, and if I am I will admit it. But I really think these are inbred populations. I would like you to consult the research and tell me how you feel. It only reads one way to me, and I am interested how you feel about it.

Now I think that I have written to much, and responded to your attacks from other threads. This thread is about What you can't say, and I have violated my own thread. This thread is a thought exercise, and you have me diving into the muck. I would have thought you would have done better than that. Your only intellectual response to the most seminal treatise that I could find is that "You are a racist". I honelty expected more of you.