I’ve read Orwell and fully agree.

I hadn’t seen that column from Frye however - his statement about levels of language and thinking akin to levels of math was something I hadn’t seen put into words before and really enjoyed!

Words are wonderful and descriptive when you know how to use them and I’ve always felt that there is no perfect synonym for most. If you study language (at least in English), some really strange shit has happened over the last 20 years or so. Language via political pushes has happened way more often than any time I can find throughout recorded history thanks to the internet and flat-mass culture.

Left-wing language seems to have been pushed to obfuscate, and right-wing wording is pushed towards blame. Either way, linguistically it makes zero fucking sense sometimes. Broadly applying misunderstood terms has always felt like a dumbing-down to me (see the recent breakage of the word “literally”) and I feel it only hurts discussion and understanding of others.

For more function and clarity, I wish we created more terminology for edge cases instead of breaking specificity to apply to everything. As a reminder, I’m not here to spread my ideas, I’m here to discuss all ideas. Feel free to pick these apart!

Some examples (and please don’t be offended, I’m speaking about words and their usage, not accusing or maligning anyone):

1. Bigot - This is a massively overused word that is only partially understood since it became a slang. Why? Because the definition is “a person who is obstinately or intolerantly devoted to his or her own opinions and prejudices.” So by definition it is anyone not accepting of other ideas, no matter how dumb those ideas may be. Vehemently don’t like anti-vaxxers, flat Earthers, liberals, leftists, the religious, atheists, Nazis, or conservatives? You’re the textbook definition of a bigot. This makes the word incredibly easy to overuse by anyone, because damn near everyone is a bigot about something, but you’re intended to simply intuit the kind of bigot the user doesn’t like from the usage and assume it’s an insult.

2. Gender - (Edited from our Gender weekly topic) I still don’t understand the purpose of gender beyond a useless classification akin to classifying people by hair colour and the definition doesn’t help. Take trans issues, for instance. If you are “transgender,” that means “I changed my gender” which in turn means… nothing because gender is so effusive. Even if it indicates change, then it changed from what to what? Does it mean you had surgery? Does it change daily? Maybe! But conversationally, it seems to only serve to mask things about a person rather than clarify them - it’s a useless term. On the other end, the term “trans-woman / man” makes sense. You immediately get more information about someone upon hearing it. It is additive instead of obfuscating language and means that that person is one sex, but presenting another. Easy, more accurate, and as a bonus, would sidestep some needless culture-war bullshit instead of wallowing in it.

3. Retarded - An obvious one, but why is that? We all know that it was a medical term and became an insult, but so were the words “dumb,” “dork,” “idiot,” and “imbecile.” Once it became a mild slur, people stopped using “retarded” as a descriptor and started using “special.” Then “special” became a pejorative. Quite literally any word implying that someone is less intellectually-abled is available as an insult. Really, I’d like to understand it, but someone already said it much better than I could.

4. Fascist - Seems to be a very popular slang among leftist communities from what I’ve seen and not really used much by the right wing (and yes, I can warrant a guess as to why some may think that is). Tends to mean “bossy / slightly less leftist than me / right-wing / independent / centrists that disagree with me on this particular issue.” I’ve had this entire sub reported for being “fascist” according to one user despite not adhering to any of the values that make up the definition and quite literally upholding the polar opposite values in most cases. Funnily enough, if you wanted to be fascist, you wouldn’t discuss things and encourage discussion with people with varied takes on a situation, you’d try to silence opposition.

5. Centrist - (From our weekly topic on Centrism / Independents) If someone says that they are “centrist” they are not telling you that they base all of their opinions on being dead-centre in the middle of the US “Left” and “Right” positions. That would be an astoundingly stupid position to undertake. Centrists are not a cohesive group and each have their own ideas - they may be a centrist because they take many positions that don’t adhere strictly to party lines. I think they only reason this take is as popular as it is on Lemmy is because people like to bad-faith strawman any arguments that aren’t theirs. It’s much easier to insult someone than it is to understand them.

I know that humans play with words and that language moves, but feel these are examples of political movement of words instead of natural linguistic movement. It’s certainly not an exhaustive list, just a few off the top of my head to test the waters.

Gah! I missed this thread. Hope it’s not too late to contribute. I am the C.E.O. (and an Economist) of a medium-sized I.T. firm in Canada and designed the company to be as ethical as it could possibly be from the ground up.

• All employees have equal votes after their initial 3 months is up in any part of the company that they are engaged in. I can (and have) been outvoted.
• After employees are here long enough (a few years), they can purchase shares if they like.
• I am the lowest paid full-time employee at the company by design. I do not take dividends.
• We operate on a Matrix org chart meaning that the “boss” on every project changes based on who is best suited to lead it and who has experience in that area.
• We have it in our charter that there are never any outside shareholders allowed. If you leave the company, your shares are purchased by the company for current market value. This includes myself. This is why employees owning shares is a good idea; it becomes a retirement plan. Unlike most corporations, we don’t want solely financially invested shareholders as they’re in business to extract value. They are parasites.
• We have acquired other companies. We have never had to pay for one. Our procedures are so thorough and ticket counts so astronomically low compared with other I.T. companies (which are called MSPs) due to our subsystems and customizations that they literally give themselves to us.
• We are as environmentally conscious as we can be. We redo and donate old systems to nonprofits and schools where we can. The only waste we put out is utterly dead hardware - no forced upgrade cycle. Electricity bills also drop dramatically at clients we take over due to more efficient machine use.
• During COVID, we gave away over $500k in free support. I figured it was more important that our nonprofit clients stay open than we stay open.
• We have a full FOSS stack that we can deploy if a company is open to it (and would like to save a bit of cash to boot).
• In nearly ten years, we’ve never had an employee leave, and never had a client leave (well, we had one restaurant client close during COVID, but I don’t count that).
• We have full benefits.
• We have zero interest in “infinite growth” as it’s not a functional model. We have turned down clients because they don’t “get” us and would be a headache for our staff.
• Our current goal is a 9-5 (not 8-5), four-day workweek for all staff.

I understand that not every business owner is “good.” I believe that with proper regulation, however, we can make them at least behave way, way the fuck better than they do now. It’s what I call Social Capitalism and it’s exceedingly functional from my experience.

I’ve built this model out in hopes it will catch on. I feel that if most companies operated under Social Capitalism that we’d be substantially better off. Certain aspects of it are so important and such a step up from the norm that I don’t understand how they weren’t obvious to other owners. But… greed I guess. Greed hurts every system it’s in.

Also of interest, we don’t have an issue with The Peter Principle as you’re never forced to move out of a position of competence or interest. You’re not salary-limited simply because you don’t want to be a manager; in fact, there are no managers.

Well. My child is that age and I very much relate to the protagonist. Was not expecting a gut-punch this afternoon.

The Jaunt by Steven King

One of my favorites short sci-fi stories ever.

Trailer here.

A few recommendations for various reasons, some known and some less-so:

Romance:

• What Dreams May Come - Robin Williams in a kind of version of Dante’s Inferno. Deals a lot with death and a non-religious afterlife. I’m a stoic 6’4 dude and weep openly every time I watch this.
• Love Never Dies - Did you know there’s a real official sequel to the musical Phantom of the Opera? There is. It’s okay, not great, but pretty fascinating more as a cultural artifact. I think I remember a decent song, but nothing like the first. It would have been better to make it straight up fucking weird like Starlight Express.
• The Fountain - This is one of the most artistically-sound and crushing love beyond time movies I’ve ever seen. I’ve watched it about a dozen times and swear there’s at least three movies in here once you understand it. Amazing visuals, and great performances and one of my favourite films of all time period.

Thriller / Horror:

• Dave Made a Maze - So a guy makes a spatially-impossible cardboard structure in his house. It’s… fun. There are minotaurs. Also made of cardboard.
• Cigarette Burns - From the series Masters of Horror. It’s 1 hour long, but is extremely well-done and handles dread amazingly with a great pay off.
• 1408 - The best version of a “haunted room” movie I’ve ever seen, actually creepy in many places, and one of Sam Jackson’s all-time best “MOTHERFUCKER” moments.
• Dog Soldiers - This one is a tad more common, but it’s the best werewolf movie I’ve found and gets the monsters 100% correct. Low-budget, but astounding creature effects for werewolves. A lot of Alien vibes.
• Drag Me To Hell - Another common one, but it’s one of the best things Sam Raimi has done outside the Evil Dead series, and definitely the closest he’s come to Army of Darkness since. If you’re even a casual fan of Evil Dead or horror-comedy, and haven’t seen it, what are you even doing?

Comedy:

• The Birdcage - Was big at the time, but I haven’t seen anyone mention it in ages. One of the great Robin Williams performances for both comedy and drama. He runs a drag club with Nathan Lane.

Action:

• Equilibrium - Came out roughly the same time as The Matrix and got completely buried. Excellent action scenes. Christian Bale does a 1984 / F451.
• Batman: Assault on Arkham - One of the best DC Animated movies ever. Yes I know that Mask of the Phantasm is better, but this is still really good and legitimately funny.

“Bad” Movies That Aren’t At All Bad:

• The Sorcerer’s Apprentice - Nick Cage does basically a Pirates of the Caribbean and it’s a shitload of fun.
• Drive Angry - More Nick Cage. It’s needlessly badass in the dumbest way possible and is hilarious.

I… Am kinda taken aback here and legit don’t know what you’re referring to. I could delete my posts if it would help?

I’m sorry if I pushed buttons I should not have, but I genuinely do not grasp the friction here and would very much like to. I was enjoying the discussion and was happy that a thread actually took off for us for once.

If this is a touchy subject that you would rather move on from, then we will.

I wanted to make sure I came back to this when I had the time in real life. For what I state, you should know that I was an extremely meek child and hardly a troublemaker.

• When I lived in Saudi Arabia as a white 14-year old male. I was held at assault rifle point multiple times and robbed.
• When I lived in Thailand at 15, I was sexually assaulted by a trans-woman.
• When I lived in Cincinnati at 16, I was beaten by a group of African American kids I went to school with.
• When I lived near Edmonton at 17, I was beaten by a teacher for missing my homework.
• When I lived in Medicine Hat at 10, I was punched in the face by a teacher for sitting in the wrong spot.

None of these are made up or exaggerated experiences. Cruelty wasn’t the point of any of these. The point was (in order) robbery, sexual gratification, power, power, and power.

Misassigning motive is harmful because it stops you from addressing the issues presented and assumes that people are “lost causes.” I don’t believe that to be the case. You can’t fix something where the point is cruelty, because people can’t get a fix of cruelty in other ways. You can try to repair other issues however.

We want the same outcome, but I want to find out how to get there without pushing people out of the solution.

Why were they acquitted? I have no idea as I was too young at the time to be following trials, but it doesn’t mean anything about my previous statement was incorrect.

People can be cruel, but the goal is not often cruelty. In this instance, the goal for the officers was most likely to regain a feeling of power in my best estimation - a “how dare you not do what I say” attitude and they used cruelty to get it.

Again, their motivation doesn’t explain why they got off, however. I disagree with that decision wholeheartedly.

I could very much see how, by not being able to understand certain situations, someone might assume that cruelty was the point, but it dismisses the reasons a person or group might attempt something. Cruelty is rarely the point.

The only way we can stop abuses is by doing away with simplistic “chant”-like phrasing and finding the real issues behind things.

To use your example, policing. It’s a complex one, but I can assure you that in no police training ever tells the trainees to be massive dicks and injure every minority they see. The point can be power. The point can be maintaining the letter of the law, and at their sole discretion. The point can be self-preservation out of fear for themselves. We can’t know all of them, and they change in the moment depending on the situation.

If cruelty was the point, then we could just appoint non-cruel people to be officers and the problem is solved, but that isn’t the case. We have to address the underlying issues which are different for every officer. That’s why it’s complex. We can start with systemic corrections such as de-escalation policies being the default, choosing different response teams for different issues, removal of lethal weapons, and harsher punishments for missteps. Those have been found to be effective. But simply hand-waving away things as “cruelty is the point” doesn’t help fix the situation, it dismisses it. We must come at bad situations with ways to stop them, not simply be angry at them.

I know it does, and that’s a massive pet peeve of mine (if you couldn’t tell from other threads). To be clear pre mini-rant, this isn’t aimed at you, it’s just something that bothers me and I wanted to get it out.

I think clarity and unity of terms use is one of the major issues that need to be addressed, especially now. It’s also one of the reasons I often will add the definition of a term being used in our weekly threads, because I don’t like people claiming to be correct because their “personal definition” obscures the truth. We have words. They are effective, powerful, and can be wielded to great effect. Changing what they mean in order to shock with a worse term is a horrible thing to do and is a dumbing-down that serves to undermine the original definition. It makes communication worse.

I despise forced political movement of words and don’t like turning words into the personal equivalent of morality.

I’ll probably be using this as next weeks weekly thread, but I would argue that current immigration policies hurt the non-wealthy which would include any white men who aren’t wealthy. It’s one of the few policies where I don’t agree with any political party.

Not to break into my Econ schooling, but also DEI initiatives, social assistance policies, scholarships, grant funding, many hiring initiatives, and almost everything I experienced in many predominantly non-white countries overseas could be framed as “hurting white men” in the same way the policies you listed above. It really depends on the lens you use to view things.

Most of these (including things you mentioned) are put into place by the wealthy to maintain things as they are, and yes, some white men are wealthy. I’d remove race and sex from things though and draw the battle lines elsewhere, say “gross and abusive amassing of wealth.”

I don’t and would never label non-cruel policies as leftist or liberal, but the phrase is commonly used by those groups. I feel that nearly every group thinks their policies aren’t cruel, however.

“Cruelty” is not always unwarranted, nor is it the same things to every person.

Remember that German guy that had himself eaten by another years back? That’d seem cruel to me, but it was a fetish for both of them and they didn’t think it was cruel at all. It’s a moral definition and changes for every person.

• Some people would call me cruel for having a cat.
• More would call me cruel for keeping it indoors permanently.
• But many others would yell at me for allowing outside.
• Some would give me hell for drinking a glass of milk.

And all of them can justify their reasons.

People are quite poor at context and misusing and exaggerating words. I absolutely hate it and feel it’s one of our worst traits which is not an exaggeration.

That is an accurate example, but I don’t feel it’s true in every case (or even the majority) where the phrase is used.

For example, many right-wing policies (that I dislike very much) have the phrase in question used in discussions below them. More often than not it’s an ineptness, stupidity, lack of knowledge, or something else cause them to feel that the result would be beneficial. Maybe the intended result is power, or something economic, but it’s NOT them just trying to be mean.

I know you know it, but for anyone reading this… Hanlon’s Razor: Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.

I’ve spoken to plenty of limited-understanding people all over the world. Many of them are broadly kind and well-meaning and brutally misguided people. Many express regret at any cruelty they “had to” do, but felt their goal justified it.

Dismissing it as just being shitty to be shitty is stopping people from addressing the underlying issues in the same way that some would dismiss a drug addict as “just an addict” without thinking about addressing underlying issues.

“He wants to be high because he likes being high.” Well, maybe? But probably not, or at very least there’s way more to it.

Hopefully I didn’t overstep.

I agree that things done for an many reasons including ineptness, nonscientific views, fear, reactionary politics, poor training, or even doing things from a detached perspective can seem cruel, but the cruelty is not the point. The cruelty is a byproduct, not the goal. It’s a bad and oversimplified phrase and in nearly every serves to obfuscates issues.

For example, knocking down a big tree can seem cruel if you’re a squirrel and live there. But if you’re a human, maybe you know that that tree was damaged in a storm and is about to fall over and destroy a few homes and potentially kill someone.

A serial killer torturing a victim? Maybe the power is the goal. Maybe the rush is the goal. The cruelty? It’s a means to an end. Understanding goals is how we stop people. Hand-waving away true reasons behind things doesn’t help us understand and therefore stop them.

You can handily cherry-pick examples throughout history of people being outwardly psychotic, and I’d agree with you. However, when used in modern-day political contexts, most of the time it’s used in reference to the things I mentioned. Ineptness, fear, nonscientific views, etc.

I have a shitload of leftist beliefs, but I really hate this phrase and have never seen it used by someone who wasn’t left-leaning. I have corrected my initial statement (which is intended to be completely neutral and non-leading) to specify that this is solely my experience with it.

No, I do not personally believe this. I believe that this phrase is one of the shortest-form strawman “arguments” that exist and is usually spoken by itself with zero justification or understanding of the issue referenced.

And beside that, it should be obvious that it is very often not true. Most of the time with issues “the point” is cost-saving, stubbornness, cause & effect disagreements, or difference of opinion on how to carry things out. If there is cruelty involved, it is a side-effect, not the point. Even then, the side being accused may feel the cruelty lay on the opposing side because cruelty is a moral argument, and you can not apply morals universally.

The phrase is like saying “the point of drinking water is to touch your genitals while peeing.” It actively avoids the real point in order to make the entire act seem absurd and is a bad faith argument from the jump.

A good way to find out if “cruelty is the point” is to do a thought experiment. “If they could do / remove the crux of the issue and the perceived oppressed group would still be happy some other way, would this still be an issue?”

For example (and I am not passing a value judgment here, I’m simply doing the thought experiment with a real-world example), if a state passed an anti-transitioning law, but found a single pain-free pill to remove all dysphoria from the affected group, would they allow that pill? If yes, then the cruelty didn’t factor into the decision - the issue and how to deal with it did.

To be absurdist, if you feel they wouldn’t allow the “pill fix”, and cruelty is still the point, then why have they not made the suffering worse? They could say “you can have whatever treatment you want, but only if you allow us to torture you for 6 hours per day!”

If a person eats meat, but is grossed out by factory farming and avoids it, is the point the cruelty or the ease, nutrients, and flavour of a standard omnivorous diet? Rationally, do you really feel that their first thought before biting into a burger is “Fuck this cow, I hope it died screaming.”

No. That would be insane.

Thinking and speaking in this fashion only removes the ability to deal with difficult situations in a meaningful or rational way and simply shows others that you can’t even pretend to fathom other people. It shows that the speaker is not empathetic in the slightest, but sure would like to be perceived as such by their in-group.

!casualconversation@lemm.ee

Nice! Link updated in the sidebar. How has it affected the Community so far?

I didn’t mention it in my post, but you mentioned it. I’m not quite settled on the violence aspect. For the most part, no, violence isn’t needed.

But… what else do you do when the government won’t stop putting your future in danger? I truly don’t know how else to affect environmental policy because right now they’re backsliding on their goals and promises. I dunno. I’m definitely okay with any group who mass-sabotages big polluters.