#Whatever logical inconsistency you see in right-wing politics just know that it's there for a reason

[notthegrouch]

to expand upon that last comment:

people talk about "right" and "left" in politics so often, that we sometimes forget the definitions of why they are left/right and just see the general trends of what they do, so here's a quick reminder:

Right = a strong belief in hierarchy, often a small in-group destined to dominate over a larger out-group.

Left = a strong belief in social equality, which requires a lot of transparency, trust and cooperation, but if all goes well would benefit everyone.

centrists often mildy agree with one of these ideals, but think that the other is a necessary evil. This also means you can come at centrists believes from two different directions.

So EVERYTHING rightwingers do, can be understood by knowing that they don’t come to their conclusions by thinking about how it will affect others. They only think of how it will affect them and the people they consider their equals. The only way that right wing can actually come to power is by lying about how big the in-group actually is, and by falsely including people in the in-group so long as they don’t threaten the established order. This is where a lot of the internal logical inconsistencies come from: in right wing politics your place in hierarchy is more important than what other people think of you.

This is why JK Rowling despite claiming to be a feminist, can be friends with fascists. She’s doing everything in her power to condemn everything that falls outside of her narrow definition of women, which doesn’t threaten the established order of sexism in the way that other feminists would. 

This is why Ted Cruz supports Trump despite Trump always kicking him down. He has to take it, or else he loses his place in the hierarchy completely.

This is why, in my own country The Netherlands, right-wing parties often portray muslim immigrants as a danger to “dutch values“ like gay marriage, while at the same time not actually voting to protect gay marriage. They just say whatever they need to stay in power.

This is why so many low educated working class people vote against their own interest: right-wing people in power NEED to have low educated people that can be tricked into thinking they are part of the in-group, so that they can be used to divide-and-conquer the outgroup. As long as out-groupers have the hope that they could one day belong to the in-group, they can be tricked into voting for laws that will keep them poor and powerless.

This is why they think left-wing would do the same. Most conspiracy theories are based on the assumption that both sides of the political spectrum are secretly right wing. truth, facts and research don’t mean anything when you view everything through a lens colored by power, money and hierarchy.

and last of all, this is why they see no difference in crossdressing / drag shows / being transgender. There is no need to differentiate: it’s all the out-group anyway and no matter what, they are a danger to the sexist hierarchy that they uphold: the second that a “man wants to be feminine“ in public, they can’t uphold the lie anymore that men are inherently better than women. the second that a “woman wants to be a man“ they can’t uphold the lie that women are inherently fit for caring roles at home, and men inherently fit for leading and working.

Right-wingers aren’t stupid, they aren’t dumb, they don’t believe things that make no sense. They are a threat to public safety and their logical inconsistencies are a feature, not a bug. Even when their laws backfire, they don’t ever backfire in a way that actually affects the in-group, simply because their laws aren’t applied to the top of the hierarchy in the first place.

YOU know that drag performers aren’t usually trans people. *I* know that. Right-wingers don’t. The attacks on drag shows are anti-trans attacks.

[freedom-of-fanfic]

Many do not come from a genuine place of being anti against one particular ship. Trust me when I say the ship they love is just as problematic as the one they hate. It’s called jealousy, immaturity and being bored with a side of getting off on attacking others.

oh, trust me - I know anti-shippers have never met a double standard they didn’t like. I’ve talked at length, over and over, about how the ship that gets derided as problematic based on the Fandom Anti Trinity of Evil (Pedophilia, Incest, and Abuse) is nigh-arbitrary, decided after anti-shippers have collectively settled on their preferred ship(s) and have time to figure out what’s wrong with everything they don’t like. After all, with the expansive way that fandom antis define the Trinity of Evil, pretty much any ship can be classified as falling under at least one of them.

when I write about ‘why antis do the thing’, I’m not taking a look at the reality of the situation - which is that their standards for purity vary widely from ship to ship & their efforts to enforce their standards are mostly dependent on what kind of emotional/social/etc gains can be gotten out of enforcement. Because while I’m sure that some fandom antis are absolutely aware of their own hypocrisy … most of them honest-to-god have no idea that they’re so two-faced. They genuinely think they’re internally consistent and gloss over the evidence that they’re not.

When i ask why antis do what they do, it’s me trying to understand their internal world. 

What lets them maintain the fiction that they are logical and fair-minded? What mental flowchart do they follow? what internal justifications do they maintain for the inconsistencies they can’t hide from themselves?

simply speaking: Making an effort to understand the thought processes of fandom anti-shippers makes them less frustrating for me. But this approach doesn’t work for everyone.

“It’s called jealousy, immaturity and being bored with a side of getting off on attacking others.” 

I get you. you’re not the first person to tell me that actually, anti-shipping is very simplistically and obviously motivated, and all the posts on this blog talking at length about how and why antis do what they do seem like a waste of time.

and hey: I have little doubt that jealousy, boredom, and the pathology of the empathy-deficient, immature mind* all play a role in this. tearing down popular people out of envy has always been a motivator for cruelty, and every year anti-shipping activity spikes during the northern hemisphere’s summer and falls again in autumn. Obviously, a lot of antis are still in school in some capacity.

and yet, I can’t see it as quite so simple.

it’s too controlling.

this isn’t just bored teens looking to pick a fight: it’s steady, sometimes fanatical, devotion to the cause of Cleaning Fandom Up. It’s a two-sided coin: a sense of justification and superiority when they enforce the rules on others … and fear of what will happen if they don’t enforce them. 

and the people who fall ass-backwards into this … wanting to be controlled.

It’s antis warning each other when they reblog from someone who is not among the anointed and the warned anti rushing to clean up without hesitation or further investigation (’omg ew thx for warning me #deleted! #ugh #pedophilia apologists dni’). It’s adolescents writing in to popular anti-shipper blogs and asking if it’s okay to ship a ship. It’s the popular anti-shipper blog mods saying ‘cut off anybody who disagrees with us. Cut off everyone older than you.They’re vile, evil, and want to hurt you’ - while simultaneously rewarding those who dig up proof of ‘problematic behavior’ by their enemies. While simultaneously being older than many of their followers themselves.

It’s the fact that so many anti-shippers simply parrot each other, and respond with a flounce or intense, personal fury when others contradict them - like you invalidated their very being, not just their arguments. It’s the widespread lack of interest in engaging with any counterpoint longer than a sentence. Its their absolute conviction that they are right and you are wrong. It’s their utter lack of interest in figuring out why they are so right and you so wrong on their own - a lack of desire to do anything that involves expanding their horizons beyond their little anti-shipper yard.

and fandom antis aren’t the only young people I see this kind of behavior in. many shippers just parrot what they’ve been told, or echo some part of anti-shipper rhetoric (’ship whatever you want - except if [x]’ is their rallying point.) Many fandom adolescents agree that we need rules, boundaries, people who tell us what’s okay to do or not do; they just disagree on what those rules should be.

It’s left-wing baby’s first authoritarianism, is what it is.

and the reason it’s worth detangling is because if we don’t starve and fight off the social and mental processes that lead us to yearn for a strong despot leader that we can rally behind, crushing all our political opponents before us, all we can hope for is a population that elects more world leaders like Trump - with politics more or less liberal than his, but inevitably controlling and always deadly.

tl;dr: anti-shipping is petty, sure. but it’s training - or continuing the training - of young people in submitting unthinkingly to authorities, avoiding critical thinking, and tearing down or destroying anyone to whom they consider themselves inherently superior (while feeling justified in doing so).

it’s hard for me to shut up about that.

EDIT: addendum post! (tl;dr version: “maybe ‘wanting to be controlled’ isn’t quite the right phrase. But ‘scared to make their own decisions without approval from the closest authority in their life’? yeah - a lot of fandom youth seem to be pretty into that these days.” )

(*adolescent brains are unusually preoccupied with themselves and how they ‘fit in’ socially; at the same time, they haven’t outgrown the childlike self-centered worldview that makes it hard for them to understand the thoughts and behavior of others apart from the effect it has on themselves. That’s why they’re particularly vulnerable to any school of thought that says ‘if it hurts, bothers, or otherwise inconveniences you, it’s actually evil and you’re within your rights to destroy it.’ (There’s a reason high school is a particularly hellish social experience for many people.))

[deanvspanties]

I'm in love with these fanfiction asks: 1, 6, 11, 43, 49! :D

1.) How old were you when you started writing fanfiction? Oh jeez… I would say I was probably 11 or 12 and I’m pretty sure it started with Dragonball Z and Yu-Gi-Oh. I didn’t even know what fanfiction was I just wanted Vegeta and Bulma to be a thing (eventually they were lmfao). I used my grandma’s laptop when I was living with her at the time.

6.)  If you had to delete one of your stories and never speak of it again, which would it be and why? Seeing in Black 😂😂😂!!!! Oh god it’s a train wreck. People like it but it’s just… The problem is it’s long and it’s slightly popular but it’s TRASHHHHFdskjl;afda. The supernatural fandom can be described as this: Hungry, rabid boars. They will consume any and all content you feed them when it comes to Dean and Cas. I wrote it in 2014 and it’s been incomplete ever since and It is one of my greatest achievements and also one of my greatest shames. I would want to revamp the entire thing and reupload if I ever had the time or the energy to get back into Supernatural. I’m just a very different writer now like I literally JUST learned how to properly write dialogue so can you imagine what a work back in 2014 must look like? Oh my GOD. I really like the story but it’s just too much to even think about. I feel bad because I literally just got a comment on it asking my intentions for the fic and I’m so sorry. Someday I’ll post an update about the status of the fic but the shame burns too hard.  . .

11.) Have you ever amended a story due to criticisms you’ve received after posting it? I’ve done this with HTTYSO a few times, mostly because of inconsistencies or grammar, but there are a few things that were bigger edits and it happened recently. I didn’t realize there was a stigma against gender reveals though I suppose I should have with the political climate we’re in. While my omegaverse doesn’t really have the same kind of human rights fight we do IRL (at least not actively), I made an edit after I received a pretty harsh criticism against my word choices. I didn’t even know ‘sex reveals’ were a thing, but if we’re going to fight against the word, we should just fight against the entire practice altogether. To call it a sex reveal is just a bandaid. Reveals in general are ‘problematic’. To this logic, you shouldn’t even care what sex your child is, so reveals at all are a toxic practice. Even further in this logic, omegaverse is the most toxic universe a person concerned about that kind of thing could land in, so anyone who is actively fighting for gender equality probably shouldn’t endorse omegaverse unless they’re fighting against the toxic system in the story. In my omegaverse, while omegas are fighting the status quo, there’s a heavy focus on the sex of a person and it’s referred to as their ‘gender’. Everyone except betas has a primary gender and a secondary gender. In most omegaverse stories they refer to the sex of a person as those things. I technically didn’t even have to change anything about what I wrote in HTTYSO, but to me, the reviewer made me think that perhaps I should just call it a ‘primary’ reveal, since their gender works on two levels, this is just the first. So changing it wasn’t even for the reasons they wanted me to change it, but it made my story more consistent to call it a Primary Reveal so I did. 

43.) Has anyone ever guessed the plot twist of one of your fics before you posted it? Yes! I have some very crafty readers and a lot of them like to tell me their thoughts and ideas about where the story was going. I’m glad people pay attention enough to figure out my mind process and it’s very flattering when it happens. I had a lot of people very worried about a certain element of the plot and this reader came in with the solution I already had planned and I had to let them know they were right. You all rock though! I get so many awesome theories all the time!!!

49.)  Can you remember the first fic you read? What was it about? Oh jeez… So my first fic was from an anime I’ve never even watched (still haven’t!). It was a BDSM Gundam Wing fic about Duo and Heero entering a dom and sub relationship after the war (Heero didn’t know he was signing up with his commander and rival or whatever their relationship was). It was called Enslaving Heero and It was printed on like size 6 font and given to me in either 8th or 9th grade to read between classes (ah childhood *sweatdrop*)… and then return when I was finished. I was told “it’s a really good story I know you’ll like it :D” lmfao… . It was so explicit and nasty and perfect. It’s 216 thousand words of perfect. It’s still on 1x2x1 but it was posted again on AO3 in 2007 and it’s a podfic and it’s still one of the best damn BDSM stories I’ve ever read even though I had (and still barely have) no idea who the characters are. I might have to give it a reread ngl.

Thanks for the questions!!

[logothanatos]

The Insufferably Simplistic Scientistic Harris v. The Philosophically Clueless and Politically Confused Peterson

Introductory Evaluation of Sam Harris and Jordan Peterson as People

After my New Atheist days, I pretty much saw Sam Harris as largely, intellectually irrelevant. On the other hand, I have a rather more complicated opinion on Jordan Peterson because he sometimes seems well-meaning but at the same time philosophically and politically naive. That being said, the Zeitgeist seems to be signaling that Peterson has acquired a relevance, even if in a small cadre, and that some people still take Sam Harris seriously (which seems to in turn indicate that mass deconversion is still an ongoing process). I can only imagine Harris still being relevant to budding atheists who still hold on to aspects of conservative thinking and libidinal attachment as well as the Christian rights' historically muddled and confused political categories. Or alternatively to insecure right-wing evangelicals fearful of the recent church exodus of a good number of Americans (whether due to being SBNR or atheists), and thereby politically emboldened into repackaging purely intellectual issues of Christianity into a secular moral quest of maintaining the hegemony or integrity of white identity (white folks as "meritous" representatives of Western civilization and values and tasked with "saving" it). Admittedly that's about the same demographic I could imagine Jordan Peterson appealing to.

Granted that would make sense, as the atheist budding out of theism, especially if having a background in Southern U.S. culture and white, is likely to implicitly run with this politics of identity that incorporates an apocalyptic or "rapture" vision of the clash with Islam as a greater evil than Christianity. In addition they are likely stuck, within their performance of Americanism, in the historical mangle of highly simplified Cold War political categories, just like these evangelicals, leading to politically confused criticisms (it's no wonder many of them get confused when a Facebook meme page that frequently criticizes liberals and has some critical takes on identity politics turns out to be highly left-wing). In fact, there is a temptation amongst some of these atheists, I suspect, to reaffirm the social function of religion as a strategy in this perceived cosmic struggle, hence why some of them side with Peterson and betray the anti-theistic sentiments of the majority of the New Atheist crowd (especially those influenced by Dawkins in particular). It's a Hitchens-esque move.

In sum, both Jordan Peterson and Sam Harris are cheap supermarket preprepared packaged ramen noodles for evangelicals or atheists who just discovered philosophy as politics. As you can tell, these sociological aspects are a lot more interesting than the debate itself--I am not here using them as a counter-argument contra Harris and Peterson (that would be an ad hominem), but it is certainly something to consider given my assessment of them as persons already suggests a larger normative framework that potentially does clash with both Harris' and Peterson's assumptions. In other words, this can function as entry point. In any case, it at least justifies, sociologically, why I'd be wasting any time on these two people, although especially on Sam Harris at this point in my life (at least Peterson is a newcomer into the public intellectual scene).

Onto the Meat and Bones of this Lame Debate

But here's what I think of the (insufferable) debate here, which assesses both Harris and Peterson as debaters as well as philosophers, in addition to both their rhetoric and argument--keep in mind this is an original Youtube comment I made on the video, but all redacted and divided into sections:

Basically this video could've been renamed to "largely unworkable implicit logical positivism / pure correspondence theory of truth v. poorly argued and inconsistent pragmatism from philosophical novice," the former being Harris and the latter being Peterson.

On Peterson's Egregious Failings

A lot of pro-Peterson Youtube commenters seem to agree with Peterson's conclusion and are reconstructing Peterson's argument to sound better than it is. Guess what--even if Peterson's main claim and conclusion were right, it doesn't mean he argued it well. He did not. Sam Harris made some PHIL101 points that made Peterson look out of his element due to Peterson's elementary missteps in building a conceptually precise and consistent argument (whether or not Harris' conclusion is wrong). Peterson instead made a suggestive, appeal to intuition, which is not the same thing (which is fine if this were merely a discussion, and not a debate, and if Peterson had admitted as much). Saying that, given Darwinism, it may be expedient to treat truth in terms of usefulness, and this seems to be what conceptions of truth would be selected for, goes against the very rules of rationality intuited by people which makes Darwinism conceivable as demonstrable--Sam Harris makes this same point. Consequently, while Peterson shows its a suggestive possibility, an obvious flaw is there that Jordan Peterson does not address, instead wasting time on clarifying what he is trying to get at as if the issue were Harris not understanding what he quite literally said rather than his weak argument. To be clear, Peterson does have a problem with clarity or at least transparency of purpose in the rest of the debate, but on this particular point I'd say that was not at issue.

I also think it would've been more helpful if Peterson had just accepted Harris' definitions of truth, but tried to demonstrate how truth and usefulness are nonetheless related in the way he thinks they are as opposed to how Harris thinks they are. (This can be done through internal critique, or simply convincingly pointing out that there is a non-accidental correlation between truth, whatever it might separately or differently mean, and usefulness, whatever it might separately or differently mean.) This would've lead to some clarity or, if not clarity, some nonetheless straight-forward argumentation on Peterson's part. Instead he fumbles around trying to avoid using the word 'truth' inconsistently given he conflated another idea with it that isn't always interchangeable. It's like Peterson can't tell the difference between a definition (that meaning of a term according to its general usage) and a meaning (the many associations and possible directions the term can take) as well as the difference between an abstraction ('truth' emptied of any of the different meanings or uses the term might have, and just in its general potential for use or signification, or 'truth' in all its possible senses) and a concept ('truth' understood through a synthetic, consistent system of relations amongst ideas or propositions). This is why he unproductively, and, in fact, counter-productively resists Harris' initial, basic point. In fact, out of desperation, Peterson shifts the goalpost to showing that truth and the good are the same. This is an age-old position that Peterson could've drawn on for his arguments, but he can't manage to even at least problematize the is/ought dichotomy Harris is drawing. Peterson just reiterates his intuition that there is some special relationship between truth and the good not found between the good and anything else without really defending why the relationships he sees between the good and the true are suggestively special compared to the relationship between the good and other things.

On Harris' Rhetorical Banality and Lack of Nuance as well as the Laughable Accusations Harris, but especially Peterson, throw at Each Other

On the other hand, Harris' responses were uninspired and extremely limited, failing to provide nuance where opportunities were available (not surprising, since Harris sucks at that). His own position is also, while common-sensical, philosophically uninteresting, insufficiently systematic and too scientistic. In addition, Peterson's ignorance is on full display when he accuses Harris of postmodernism--Harris may or may not be wrong, but a lot of what Harris says would be heavily criticized by the archetypal postmodernists if there ever were any (e.g., Lyotard & Baudrillard). 

What is Postmodernism? Neither Sam Harris nor Jordan Peterson Really Seem to Know

One of the major points of the archetypal postmodernists is that the very fragmentation and isolation of identities and disciplines create contradictory normative contexts that constrict rationality in such a way that rational discussion cannot fully penetrate or resolve disagreements. Basically, for a lot of postmodernists, intellectual disagreement are often expressions of social power struggle, desire, etc., that are not rationally resolvable. (Notice that rationality here is just constricted; this means its still conceivable some truths are still objectively decidable, even if largely context-sensitive. The rules of logic still apply.) There are some postmodernists one can argue go the full length into pure relativism (i.e., the position that, not only is nothing or most nothing rationally resolvable and fully accountable, but nothing is rationally decidable), but this is over-all a strawman. One can also argue this particular [aforementioned point] leads to relativism, but that's not the same as to say that postmodernists deliberately endorse relativism. Not to mention that requires more leg work from Peterson, for example, beyond using "postmodern" as a pejorative stand-in for relativism (which he never conclusively demonstrates to be present in the argument being made).

Situating Sam Harris in Relation to Actual Postmodernism

In any case, the point is Sam Harris seems to be committed to an entirely opposite claim than the postmodernists, since he basically puts a lot of stock on conversation, on language, for finding the truth. I feel his inability to take critiques of this position to be his most serious flaw, and it bleeds into his more minor flaws (its his prerogative to try and naturalize morality, but he fumbles in his attempts because of this invulnerable epistemological approach he takes). This is why Harris might seem "close minded" to people--it has nothing to do with his argument itself being somehow unwilling to entertain possibilities. Harris actually entertains possibilities all the time (just witness his unbound use of hypotheticals in the debate!)--the problem is that he is unimaginative when he tries to do it.

Situating Jordan Peterson in Relation to Actual Postmodernism

In addition, its ironic for Peterson to accuse Harris of being postmodernist because the pragmatist epistemologists (e.g., Richard Rorty) were the philosophers most famously and controversially heavily influenced by writers I'd think Peterson would often consider (albeit sometimes incorrectly) postmodernists or proto-postmodernists (e.g., Heidegger [more of a phenomenologist that was a precursor to post-structuralism as well as postmodernism] & Derrida [actually more of a post-structuralist than a postmodernist]). In fact, Nietzsche's Darwinian critique of rationality looks like an early version of aspects of the postmodernist critique of rationality. Yes, Nietzsche was critiquing rationality, not creating a theory of truth. The only thing close to a theory of truth given his critique of rationality was his concept of Will to Power, which is a concept Nietzsche created as an alternative to Darwin's idea of survival instinct/drive. The fact that Peterson endorses Nietzsche but subscribes to conventional Darwinism while applying this to the topic of truth is a sophomoric mistake. Indeed, Peterson is so ignorant that he frequently pairs Marxism with postmodernism as if there aren't disagreements or potentially conflicting implications in the positions and critiques of the two traditions (for example, postmodernism tends to challenge the Marxist notion of historical determinism and the proletariat as universalizing [therefore revolutionary] subject).

Conclusion

Harris is an absolutely terrible philosopher, but Peterson gives the impression of a fucking novice that can't grasp basic distinctions and is mired in the scientific world where data precision and gathering as well as inductive reasoning tends to matter a bit more than argumentative competence and deductive reasoning (scientists distribute this last task into a division of labor, whereas a philosopher is at least supposed to be competent in a holistic way when it comes to argumentation). It is embarrassing Harris sweeps the floor with him when his credentials as a scientist give him an initial advantage in terms of public perception and when Harris himself doesn't hold significant status within the larger philosophical community. It's interesting to point out (and I'm saying this as someone interested in sociology, a socially exemplar soft science for a lot of people), that his area of science isn't even as quantitatively heavy as physics and other sciences. In fact, the replication crises in science seems to be most glaring in psychology. The reason these observations are interesting is that Peterson likes to present himself as having a hard-on for science while making incompetent but confident forays into philosophy, the latter likely for the sake of validating his religious longing. This doesn't put him that far away from Harris' more secular philosophically boring scientism, and also may suggest insecurities about his own field. At the same time, he lampoons and tries to discredit the field closest to his own by psychologizing them in unwarranted ways as a replacement for actually criticizing and engaging sociological methodology. Here I'm psychologizing Jordan Peterson, but only after I've already assessed his debate performance.

The fact that anybody finds either of these two people in the context of this debate worth their while is laughable considering how fucking limited not only the positions presented here are, but how fucking limited either of their arguments for their positions were. The mistakes I pointed out here are the most egregious and most frequent, but there are others such as their oversimplification of the issue of identity politics. I suggest budding atheists and self-doubting evangelicals actually read books, and I mean primary source accounts about a representative array of a tradition or world-view rather than relying on secondary source discussion as if they were unbiased simply because they conform to popular folk notions of things and present and argue against positions within the narrow political spectrum that has prominent mainstream representation. In other words, I hope these sincere Christians leave the bad Biblical hermeneutics and deferral to a messianic figure behind for once for fuck's sake. Their concerns about religion are legitimate, but they'd get much more out of directly, critically reading Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Paul Tillich, etc., as well as the philosophers of modernity (both French and English) without force-fitting them into their monolithic and hegemonic preconceived boxes.