~~ of wank, ethics & graffiti
Oct. 15th, 2003 05:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
reenkaThere's nothing quite like the glorious nothingness of wasting time. And there's just no new H/D porn anywhere in sight to relieve the horrid image of actually -working- from hanging over my mortal soul. This is actually like... the evil of lj. 'Cause I can always just... write something utterly insignificant instead of anything else. People who don't have a friends list of more than 20 definitely have the right idea, man, especially if they're addictive types like me. No, seriously. You should never really take comments to comments as indicators of -anything-, let alone whether someone likes you (and then if they -do- like you, it's not like you can now run for the president of the United States). But sayin' it is easy, man. Sayin' it is easy. Damn, I'm glad I'm antisocial, or I'd be embarrassed every time I spoke (why did they say that? why didn't they say that? why didn't they say that to -me-? why -did- they say that to me, I don't deserve it, it's not the right time, it doesn't make sense, this means... this means....) This means I have to step -away- from the computer. -.-
So I was away-- in the dining hall-- and I was reading the student newspaper with its front page story about the offensive spray-painting in one of the residence halls, and the whole kerfuffle about it the administration's making. Sigh.
Dude :T
I'm really easily offended by things, I really am. I also hate offending anyone whatsoever. I don't want to upset people and pretty much do whatever i can not to come close, simply because it's too much for me to deal with. I shut up, mostly. But my university's lastest reaction to another stupid brush with "hate crime"-- which is to say, racist slurs and genitalia spray-painted inside a dorm, possibly as part of `50 Cent' lyrics-- disturbs me. It's all "how could they" and "those tasteless morons don't belong in a university". Sigh.
This got me thinking about how interesting it is that "hate speech" isn't covered by the First Amendment. It's not "sticks and stones" by a long shot, but people have refused to hear/tolerate certain things since time immemorial, no surprise there. Even so, it's hypocritical as all hell, and it's making me question my professed distate for certain phrasings (like the word `gays', which I've ranted about before).
It may offend me, but I'd never agree to penalize anyone for it. People will say things that will offend others-- if not this particular thing, they'll invent another. "Hate" and "offensive", after all, depends on whether the group that's supposedly targeted feels "hated" and "offended" or not.
I was particularly disturbed when one student got quoted as saying, "It's just wrong. Since I'm Jewish, I really don't like it." So now he's including himself in the targeted group just because his group has been discriminated against in the past. What kind of crack-monkey logic is that? I understand "hate crimes" being actual -actions- that hurt groups of people or individuals-- beatings, direct harassment, biased treatment, assault of any kind. Now that I say this, I can imagine how lots of people won't agree with me and might even be offended -by- me-- but I'm not saying this to be agreed or disagreed with. I'm just saying it because I -can-. Free speech, man.
Speech of any kind shouldn't be discriminated within, because once you start, where do you stop? Why is it so morally right that what offends a minimum, large-enough number of people is thusly worth labelling "harassment" or "hate speech"? Why don't we outlaw what offends 2 people, or 12, or maybe just one? Does their pain matter less? But of course it does. The needs (or rights) of the many outweigh the rights of the few or the one, right?
Sigh. I don't know. This also reminds me of many a fandom kerfuffle that started because people simply couldn't bear that another fan has just said something unpalatable-- and it's not that they're understandably hurt, it's that they're indignant and self-righteous like it was a moral or ethical issue somehow. I realize that people will always try to shut up anyone who causes discontent, whether there's good reason (whatever -that- is) or not. But it seems to me that if one is going to support free speech, one should support free speech that directly hurts you as well as directly helps you as well as being meaningless to you. Maybe this is too much to ask of human nature, but the sheer hypocrisy of it all just annoys me.
If the -victim- is human and has rights, then the -attacker- is also human and has rights-- you can't have one without the other, because always, always, the situation is going to arise where the victim will become the attacker in turn and vice versa. I realize I probably sound like some bleeding-heart relativist liberal softie, but I don't give a fuck, man. It makes sense to me, and it's the only thing that -does- make sense to me, so what can I do?
Which is to say, by condemning the others who condemn, we condemn ourselves. I'm not saying that ethics has no place in discourse and everything is relative, blahblah. Rather, that I wish for a different basis for those ethics. It's more that one can and should still bother giving the people currently in the wrong the benefit of the doubt, the benefit of still treating them as human beings and not "The Other", people who should be shunned and persecuted in return. Like that cop saying that those people "don't belong" on a college campus, for instance. And you know, maybe they don't-- but let me just say that a lot of other people don't, either. Maybe -I- don't. I'm a huge procrastinator, barely do any work, completely goof off all the time-- I just don't -offend- anyone by speaking wrong.
For instance, I don't approve of the way Lib (whom I generally admire and like as a person, from what I know of her) has generally "celebrated the wank" by flaming Aja (all possible humor value aside, since that's so subjective). Basically... it's mean and unworthy of her, I guess, and I really like Aja and don't want her upset. On the other hand, I will staunchly defend both Lib's right to say it as per her own judgement, and her overall worth as a human being regardless. I would do this for -anyone-, man. That's what ethics is about, I thought-- about being all-inclusive, about being a guideline for behavior in general. Ethics can -only- be about trying to insure a sort of balance, a sense of peace within a society. And yet, human beings are the way they are-- they don't lend themselves easily to either peace or balance, and any ethical system has to take that into account.
You can't just say, "oh, we have to root out and punish this source of discontent" without treating the -cause- and -inquiring- into the cause, because there will -always- be discontent. Human beings will always act like 5 year-old morons & mystical wisemen both (sometimes at once!), and there's little one can do but accept it, but try to deal with it non-violently and sanely instead of descending to the juvenile level of the incident in question and slapping people's wrists and acting all shocked and pure. If there's one reason I actually like the reigning Christian ethic, even though most people don't see it this way or rather, don't -act- on it, it's because it does say `we're all sinners', and that really resonates with me, if you ignore the actual details of how and why we `sin' and the Christian idea of sin itself. The basic idea behind this being, we're all equal. We're all lowly, and human, and beautiful and ugly at once. If we don't help each other, if we don't help our friends and our enemies both, no one else will help us.
So I was away-- in the dining hall-- and I was reading the student newspaper with its front page story about the offensive spray-painting in one of the residence halls, and the whole kerfuffle about it the administration's making. Sigh.
Dude :T
I'm really easily offended by things, I really am. I also hate offending anyone whatsoever. I don't want to upset people and pretty much do whatever i can not to come close, simply because it's too much for me to deal with. I shut up, mostly. But my university's lastest reaction to another stupid brush with "hate crime"-- which is to say, racist slurs and genitalia spray-painted inside a dorm, possibly as part of `50 Cent' lyrics-- disturbs me. It's all "how could they" and "those tasteless morons don't belong in a university". Sigh.
This got me thinking about how interesting it is that "hate speech" isn't covered by the First Amendment. It's not "sticks and stones" by a long shot, but people have refused to hear/tolerate certain things since time immemorial, no surprise there. Even so, it's hypocritical as all hell, and it's making me question my professed distate for certain phrasings (like the word `gays', which I've ranted about before).
It may offend me, but I'd never agree to penalize anyone for it. People will say things that will offend others-- if not this particular thing, they'll invent another. "Hate" and "offensive", after all, depends on whether the group that's supposedly targeted feels "hated" and "offended" or not.
I was particularly disturbed when one student got quoted as saying, "It's just wrong. Since I'm Jewish, I really don't like it." So now he's including himself in the targeted group just because his group has been discriminated against in the past. What kind of crack-monkey logic is that? I understand "hate crimes" being actual -actions- that hurt groups of people or individuals-- beatings, direct harassment, biased treatment, assault of any kind. Now that I say this, I can imagine how lots of people won't agree with me and might even be offended -by- me-- but I'm not saying this to be agreed or disagreed with. I'm just saying it because I -can-. Free speech, man.
Speech of any kind shouldn't be discriminated within, because once you start, where do you stop? Why is it so morally right that what offends a minimum, large-enough number of people is thusly worth labelling "harassment" or "hate speech"? Why don't we outlaw what offends 2 people, or 12, or maybe just one? Does their pain matter less? But of course it does. The needs (or rights) of the many outweigh the rights of the few or the one, right?
Sigh. I don't know. This also reminds me of many a fandom kerfuffle that started because people simply couldn't bear that another fan has just said something unpalatable-- and it's not that they're understandably hurt, it's that they're indignant and self-righteous like it was a moral or ethical issue somehow. I realize that people will always try to shut up anyone who causes discontent, whether there's good reason (whatever -that- is) or not. But it seems to me that if one is going to support free speech, one should support free speech that directly hurts you as well as directly helps you as well as being meaningless to you. Maybe this is too much to ask of human nature, but the sheer hypocrisy of it all just annoys me.
If the -victim- is human and has rights, then the -attacker- is also human and has rights-- you can't have one without the other, because always, always, the situation is going to arise where the victim will become the attacker in turn and vice versa. I realize I probably sound like some bleeding-heart relativist liberal softie, but I don't give a fuck, man. It makes sense to me, and it's the only thing that -does- make sense to me, so what can I do?
Which is to say, by condemning the others who condemn, we condemn ourselves. I'm not saying that ethics has no place in discourse and everything is relative, blahblah. Rather, that I wish for a different basis for those ethics. It's more that one can and should still bother giving the people currently in the wrong the benefit of the doubt, the benefit of still treating them as human beings and not "The Other", people who should be shunned and persecuted in return. Like that cop saying that those people "don't belong" on a college campus, for instance. And you know, maybe they don't-- but let me just say that a lot of other people don't, either. Maybe -I- don't. I'm a huge procrastinator, barely do any work, completely goof off all the time-- I just don't -offend- anyone by speaking wrong.
For instance, I don't approve of the way Lib (whom I generally admire and like as a person, from what I know of her) has generally "celebrated the wank" by flaming Aja (all possible humor value aside, since that's so subjective). Basically... it's mean and unworthy of her, I guess, and I really like Aja and don't want her upset. On the other hand, I will staunchly defend both Lib's right to say it as per her own judgement, and her overall worth as a human being regardless. I would do this for -anyone-, man. That's what ethics is about, I thought-- about being all-inclusive, about being a guideline for behavior in general. Ethics can -only- be about trying to insure a sort of balance, a sense of peace within a society. And yet, human beings are the way they are-- they don't lend themselves easily to either peace or balance, and any ethical system has to take that into account.
You can't just say, "oh, we have to root out and punish this source of discontent" without treating the -cause- and -inquiring- into the cause, because there will -always- be discontent. Human beings will always act like 5 year-old morons & mystical wisemen both (sometimes at once!), and there's little one can do but accept it, but try to deal with it non-violently and sanely instead of descending to the juvenile level of the incident in question and slapping people's wrists and acting all shocked and pure. If there's one reason I actually like the reigning Christian ethic, even though most people don't see it this way or rather, don't -act- on it, it's because it does say `we're all sinners', and that really resonates with me, if you ignore the actual details of how and why we `sin' and the Christian idea of sin itself. The basic idea behind this being, we're all equal. We're all lowly, and human, and beautiful and ugly at once. If we don't help each other, if we don't help our friends and our enemies both, no one else will help us.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2003-10-15 03:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-10-15 03:44 pm (UTC)(Ok, now Im done. And sorry if I repeated a few things in there. My mind doesnt always work properly at the keyboard. :D)
no subject
Date: 2003-10-15 03:54 pm (UTC)It bothers me when this quite admirable drive for peace gets used to completely to overreact to things and punish the smallest infraction and get all high-and-might and "look, this is -awful-, these people aren't -like- us as -all-" whereas that's bullshit. whoever spray-painted that wall was really not -that- weird and different from your average binghamton student, i'd bet anything on it.
i'm not good at coming up with solutions that really apply in practical terms, but that doesn't mean that the whole crazed hive-mind behavior of "let's condemn the lame-legged freak who got caught, haha" isn't just disgusting & hypocritical ^^;
no subject
Date: 2003-10-15 04:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-10-15 05:22 pm (UTC)Oooh. You just made me appreciate the Christian concept of sin. That makes you special. :D
(And yes, yes, yes. 'This is America,' says the patriot of my country, 'and we rock the mostest because, here, you can say whatever you want. Except for the Dixie Chicks.')
no subject
Date: 2003-10-15 08:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-10-15 10:49 pm (UTC)no subject