chamerionwrites

[chamerionwrites]

Person A, reblogging a post from me and leaving rude commentary in the notes as if I can't see it: Hey maybe you should read a dictionary you stupid idiots instead of terrorizing people by discussing systemic violence

Me: Okay. Here is what the dictionary says this word means. The usage is correct and also it's perfectly fair and valid to discuss systemic violence

(Sometime later) Person XYZ: christ alive why are you citing the dictionary who cares what words mean grow some fucking principles

Me: .......................because I was responding...to a person...that snarkily told me to read a dictionary? Also just for the record, caring about how language is used and having principles are not in any way mutually exclusive, see also "collateral damage," "enhanced interrogation," and other such weasel words

I swear to god this hellsite is absolutely teeming with people who can't wait to jump down the throat of someone who is on their side over a post that they didn't properly read

[chamerionwrites]

On an entirely different note, men really went off with wearing one dangly statement earring

[chamerionwrites]

Well then frankly: you're flat out wrong. The dictionary definition of "complicity" is involvement in, association with, or implication in a crime (in the latter case it's literally the same Latin root). At the most fundamental level, the sense and meaning of the word is that of connection to wrongdoing without being the active or primary perpetrator, which can involve guilt but does not automatically imply it. I am not proposing that anything should change, because the word is already used in exactly the sense I am describing (to indicate proximity and/or connection to wrongdoing, both with AND without the connotation of blame or guilt).

I'm not being derogatory when I say that if you are unaware of that usage then that is 100% a lack of knowledge on your part rather than a lack of precision in anybody else's communication.

Words that encompass several closely related meanings are in fact extremely useful for communication. A word that means "proximate/connected to wrongdoing, including but not automatically implying blame" is in fact an extremely precise, useful, and meaningful word. The ability to say "Simply by virtue of participating in society you are implicated in (and bear some diffuse responsibility for) violence, which is not a knock on your character but simply a truth about how these systems work" is both an EXTREMELY useful and meaningful thing to be able to communicate and very definitely new (sometimes paradigm-shifting!) information for many people and the way they think about and experience the world.

crawling on my hands and knees begging you to be able to understand yourself as being complicit in a violent system without getting all defensive and going "so you think I'm an inherently evil person??" if we could just personal choice our way out of this we wouldn't be in this situation babes

[chamerionwrites]

Involved: (1a) having a part in something, included in something; (3) being affected or implicated

Associated: (2) related, connected, or combined together

Implicate: (1a) to bring into intimate or incriminating connection; (1b) to involve in the nature of operation of something; (2) to involve as a consequence, corollary, or natural inference

There are degrees of complicity. A person can be actively complicit (your friend robbed a bank and you drove the getaway car), but also more passively complicit (your friend stole $100 out of my wallet, claimed they weren't feeling well, and then caught a ride home in your car). In the latter case you are implicated/involved in/associated with the theft, without being legally or morally guilty of wrongdoing.

So yes, the fact that your taxes pay for bombs (or that you buy clothing or food or electronics at a price that is only possible thanks to the violent extraction of resources, again often made possible by your tax dollars) definitionally makes you complicit in that system. That is - very directly! - what the word "complicit" means. There is nothing meaningless about saying this. The word simply has a broader meaning than you seem to think it does, which is precisely what makes it meaningful and useful for communicating about people's complicated moral entanglements and responsibilities wrt systemic violence without necessarily implying condemnation or guilt.

crawling on my hands and knees begging you to be able to understand yourself as being complicit in a violent system without getting all defensive and going "so you think I'm an inherently evil person??" if we could just personal choice our way out of this we wouldn't be in this situation babes

[chamerionwrites]

'Kay.

Complicity: association or participation in or as if in a wrongful act.

Complicity: involvement in a crime or some activity that is wrong.

Complicity: the state of being an accomplice; partnership or involvement in wrongdoing.

See also this etymological explanation on the Merriam-Webster entry for complicit:

Complicit is a relatively recent addition to English vocabulary, arriving in the mid-1800s. It is a back-formation from complicity “association or participation in a wrongful act,” which came straight from a French word of the same meaning, complicité, in the 1600s. The oldest English word in this family is the now-obsolete complice (pronounced /COMP-liss/)—defined as “an associate or accomplice especially in crime”—which dates back to the 1400s, when it came from French. These words ultimately derive from the Latin verb meaning “to fold together,” complicare, formed by combining com- (meaning “with,” “together,” or “jointly”) and the verb plicare, meaning “to fold.”

This literal meaning evolved into a figurative one: the definition of complicit, “helping to commit a crime or do wrong,” describes individuals who are “folded together” metaphorically. Complicity and the its cousins accomplice, complicitous, and complice are all part of this gang.

Complicare, in a second of its Latin senses, “to twist together,” is the root of another English word, complicate, which originally meant “to unite intimately by intertwining.” In this case, the idea of things “twisted together” makes sense as an image of something composed of many elements, that is, something complicated. The -pli- of these words is from plicare (“to fold”), which is also the root of ply, the verb meaning “to twist together” or the noun meaning “one of several layers.”

Other words that derive from plicare are also illuminated by their etymologies: explicit “revealed without ambiguity” ultimately comes from Latin explicare, meaning “to unfold,” while implicit, meaning “implied,” descends from a Latin verb whose roots literally mean “to fold in.”

TL;DR:

(1) The op is a perfectly correct usage of the word "complicit,"

(2) It's entirely fair and valid for people to discuss the systemic nature of violence and the way that systems by their very nature make many of us complicit (involved, associated, implicated, folded together) in their reproduction; and

(3) Characterizing this kind of discussion as "terrorizing" people seems like the real OTT twisting of language here, but I guess YMMV!

crawling on my hands and knees begging you to be able to understand yourself as being complicit in a violent system without getting all defensive and going "so you think I'm an inherently evil person??" if we could just personal choice our way out of this we wouldn't be in this situation babes

[chamerionwrites]

Also - and I say this with all the love and respect in my heart for their efforts - can retirement-age organizers please stop scheduling meetings on weekdays at 9 am

I'm venting about this here because tbqh it's perfectly understandable and irl I'm gonna be very patient, but I need a dark laugh about how the boomers can't even figure out Signal. we r so cooked

[chamerionwrites]

The government’s relationship with humanitarian aid groups like No More Deaths and the Samaritans is often antagonistic. There’s evidence that Border Patrol agents vandalize food, blankets, and water jugs that volunteers leave in the desert, sometimes slashing the jugs so the water pours out. Volunteers have been arrested for leaving water jugs in the desert. Four No More Deaths volunteers were charged with operating a motor vehicle in a wilderness area, entering a wildlife refuge without a permit, and abandonment of property for leaving water in the Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge. “All of this, in addition to violating the law, erodes the national decision to maintain the Refuge in its pristine nature,” the federal judge who convicted them wrote in his decision.

The desert — even in federally protected wildlife refuges like Cabeza Prieta and Organ Pipe — is far from pristine. There are hidden cameras and sensors everywhere. There’s detritus left behind by migrants passing through and tracks left by Border Patrol’s off-road vehicles. The signs of human movement through the desert are impossible to miss; so is the evidence of the government’s expensive, futile attempt to stop people from crossing.

The one thing that’s invisible to the untrained eye is the presence of the people making the journey. Those who make it go to great lengths to not be seen. Those who don’t — the ones who succumb to the elements despite their best efforts — often disappear into the landscape before they can be found. De León, the anthropologist, is the executive director of the Colibrí Center for Human Rights, an organization that helps locate migrants who have gone missing in the desert. In 2012, De León was part of a team of researchers who killed three pigs, dressed them in clothes similar to what migrants wear, and placed them in the desert. Their goal was to see how long it would take for the sun, sand, and scavenging animals to claim the pigs’ bodies. After a few days, turkey vultures feasted on their carcass. After five weeks, the researchers were only able to find 62 percent of one of the pigs’ skeletons. “With enough time,” De León wrote, “a person left to rot on the ground can disappear completely.” The Sonoran Desert isn’t an untouched wilderness. It’s a massive unmarked grave.

[chamerionwrites]

ultimately you have to be willing to relinquish the spoils of the in-group if it's demanding moral bankruptcy of you. you have to not accept the bribes of power. and you have to do this over and over again even if you lose materially

[chamerionwrites]

“Burr was talking about justice, “When I get to run the world,” he announced comfortably to the steaming lake, “I’m going to hold the Nuremberg Trials Part Two. I’m going to get all the arms dealers and shit scientists, and all the smooth salesmen who push the crazies one step further than they thought of going, because it’s good for business, and all the lying politicians and the lawyers and accountants and bankers, and I’m going to put them in the dock to answer for their lives. And you know what they’ll say? ‘If we hadn’t done it someone else would have.’ And you know what I’ll say? I’ll say, ‘Oh, I see. And if you hadn’t raped the girl some other fellow would have raped her. And that’s your justification for rape. Noted.’ Then I’d napalm the lot of them. Fizz.””

— The Night Manager, John le Carre (via tobermoriansass)

[chamerionwrites]

Beyond the obvious, what offends me the most about these arguments are the people assuming that anyone who objects to compromising principles for comfort has a cushy life in which they've never faced hardship. "You would do it too if you were desperate enough" o rly? You don't know me, my finances, my health situation, what any of those things have been at various points in my life or whether I HAVE in fact turned down jobs that would afford me a higher standard of living because I had moral qualms.

Some of us can safely say we would rather starve in the streets, and anyone claiming that "everyone would" is just projecting their own moral bankruptcy in an extremely revealing way

Not to curse us all by speaking it into existence, but I wonder how long it'll be before we get earnest arguments amongst the extremely online about whether it's morally permissible to take a paycheck from the gestapo ICE because (checks notes) good health insurance and student loan forgiveness

[chamerionwrites]

Not to curse us all by speaking it into existence, but I wonder how long it'll be before we get earnest arguments amongst the extremely online about whether it's morally permissible to take a paycheck from the gestapo ICE because (checks notes) good health insurance and student loan forgiveness

[chamerionwrites]

job search

[chamerionwrites]

I don't actually have to put warnings on things and the more people get worked up about Putting Warnings On Things For The Children the less I feel like it, not least because what gets warned for and what doesn't always betrays the idiosyncrasies of a certain worldview amongst many things, but especially really fucking sucks at delivering warnings for structural rather than inter/personal violences/harms/hurts. Which again, betrays a very specific worldview in which these warnings are designed and also assumes singular, neat categories of warnings designed around neat, discrete harms, which AGAIN, betrays a very specific worldview!

[chamerionwrites]

A thing about me is. I am a longtime spy & detective novel enjoyer with a background in research and editing. If you lie to my face (especially if you do it poorly) I WILL ferret your not-nearly-as-sneaky-as-you-think-you-are ass out

[chamerionwrites]

“I don’t know if I believe in rage as something always acting in opposition to tenderness. I believe, more often, in the two as braided together. Two elements of trying to survive in a world once you have an understanding of that world’s capacity for violence.”

— Hanif Abdurraqib, from “Board Up the Doors, Tear Down the Walls,” in A Little Devil in America

[chamerionwrites]

Having a father who fixed computers for a living gave me a MASSIVELY inflated sense of the tech-savviness of the average baby boomer I fear

[chamerionwrites]

I'm venting about this here because tbqh it's perfectly understandable and irl I'm gonna be very patient, but I need a dark laugh about how the boomers can't even figure out Signal. we r so cooked