Ideas and Individuals

[cthulu2016]

All human beings deserve a baseline regard for their humanity. This idea is central to, for instance, supporting the First Amendment or opposing capital punishment.

This regard is not really respect, though. It is more akin to reverence. Respect is earned. Reverence is intrinsic. A mystic who literaly will not kill a fly doesn't really respect the fly and its views and accomplishments. He reveres life.

The move from reverence to respect is like demanding love instead of tolerance.

We are all entitled to tolerance. We shouldn't be burned at the stake for what we say, even if what we say is far too dumb or crazy for anyone to much respect on its merits. We revere human thought, human conviction, human creativity. And that reverence, like the fly, extends to even some really annoying stuff.

But to say we must respect all points of view is preposterous. Nobody does and nobody should.

Most members of the Hitler Youth were normal kids in an environment that happened to have the Hitler-Jugend instead of the Boy Scouts. Would anyone, anywhere, suggest that mean we should consider the Hitler Youth to have been just the same as any other children's values-indoctrination group?

But if we condemn the Hitler Youth aren't we being bigoted toward this little Bund Deutscher Mädel girl?



No? Why not? Oh... because our objection (and arguably bigotry) is to the Bund Deutscher Mädel, not to the little girls in it.

But if we spoke our minds about the Bund Deutscher Mädel I have no doubt that little girl would have cried. She identified with it.

So how can we criticize the Bund Deutscher Mädel without being bigoted toward these little girls? In other times in history people have been bigoted toward certain groups, so isn't our condemnation of the Bund Deutscher Mädel, a group of real people with real feelings, a dangerous step into intolerance?

Short answer—no.

Fucked up groups are fucked up groups. We should maintain the sense that the group is not the same as its members because that is common sense. But I doubt we want to hypnotize ourselves into universal respectful agnosticism about groups because they are composed of individuals.

[lumberjack_jeff]

1. I get what you're saying, and I agree.

The conversation has been circling back to the topic of the voting habits of white men recently.

There are two schools of thought;
a) We should seek to understand why they are not voting for Democrats and do what we can to tailor our message so we can communicate with them where they are.
b) White men? Fuck 'em. Why should I do anything differently to recruit a bunch of bigots?

The latter view is itself inherently bigoted.

It is possible to consider the people who vote for Republicans, people deserving of a fair measure of "reverence" while still withholding respect from Republican party.