track
July 20th, 2016
He’s back.
The Regressive Left on Wikipedia.
I’m off on holiday next week, so expect a resurrected comic, and a late draw for the raffle.
Latest book…
Random oldie…
September 20, 2017-
- NICE T-SHIRT (Thank you for not provoking my uncontrollable lust). Currently unavailable.
As a leftie, I’m getting annoyed by the regressive idea that some things cannot be criticised without being hateful…
Nails it.
Ken Wilber originally wrote about this phenomenon (regressive left) or regressive post-modernist, as the “Mean Green Meme.” He later clarified and discussed how every level of development has regressive elements, even rational atheists (). Steve McIntosh at the Institute for Cultural Evolution has written about how the post-modern meme must evolve quickly to help the modern and pre-modern worldviews recover from their regressions or we will all “regress” in the worst possible way.
while extremism, including extreme islamism, manages to occupy a lot of space through threats of violence and actual murderous violence, i would argue that, at least here in north america, moderate religion-driven ideology has a bigger and more verifiable impact on people in everyday life. abortion comes to mind: texas hasn’t seen much terrorism related to islamism, but aggressive legislation to make it harder to get an abortion is constantly being written, debated, and sometimes passed. this has a very concrete impact on tens of thousands of women every year (about 70,000 women in 2016, according to the guttmacher institute).
in other terms, although i’m not interested in justifying bigotry for the sake political correctness, and although i don’t like “communautarisme” or its zero-calorie version multiculturalism, i am concerned that obsession with one religion (especially one with barely 3% of the population in north america) wastes energy better spent fighting a judeo-christian ideology that has a very real impact in our daily lives.
in other terms yet, it takes less courage to face 3% of the population than to stare down a 98%-christian population with “laïcité” as jules ferry did in 1905.
That’s a cracker.
re “energy better spent fighting a judeo-christian ideology that has a very real impact in our daily lives.”
America will get it chance in Nov to fight back against GOP led Judeo/Xian misogyny
in contrast it has no such mechanism against extremist Islamic nations and therefore has to be more vocal
I get really frustrated when, in the name of tolerance, the left fails to criticize regressive attitudes (especially against women and homosexuals) when these stances are taken by minority ethnic/religious goups. Their tolerance is nothing less than polite condescension. Great cartoon Author!!
I wouldn’t normally post FaceTwit stuff but this is lovely.
Now, what the fuck is a “regressive left”?
Is that like a right prat?
Stereotyping pisses me off. I have no problem criticizing anyone who puts down anyone else. Don’t care what your ethnicity is, if you can’t see the individual rather than the stereotype, then don’t expect me to be polite to you. I do not believe hateful name calling is productive, but I don’t have to accept your behaviors if they are harmful to others. So does that make me a “regressive leftist?” Labels – we all use them, we all own some, and we all need to be careful with them.
Yes, you nailed it again Author. Bravo.
I was shocked and surprised when my very progressive left leaning relatives unfriended me on FB because I dared to support the idea that the niqab, the close relative of the burka, has no place in Canadian culture. As far as I can tell, we are in agreement with all other social issues, but my stance on that one apparently made me a racist. There is a double standard at play here, no question.
Please pardon the shameless self promotion, but this post on my blog explains my position, which I thought to be completely reasonable: http://www.darwinharmless.com/thoughts_and_comments/?p=1251
As if that was an excuse.
Brilliant. Thanks.
pink squirrel says:
‘in contrast it [you said America but you meant the USA] has no such mechanism against extremist Islamic nations and therefore has to be more vocal’
You mean like its ally Saudi Arabia?
More vocal against the 3% of US citizens who are Muslim – because you hold them accountable for the acts of Daesh? Do you hold your local Quakers responsible for extreme xian nutjobs bombing of abortion clinics?
You’ve completely missed jean-françois gauthier’s point.
I found this perfect quote that sums up my thoughts about all theists and a great wash of others:
“These people believe the souls of fried space aliens inhabit their bodies and hold soup cans to get rid of them. I should care what they think?”
…Valerie Emmanuel
Lovely, yes?
On the some pathway to The Ultimate Truth, we have:
“I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.”
-Galileo Galilei, physicist and astronomer (1564-1642)
Chances are that the latter quote is translated from a long-dead language. Not by me. I don’t do Welsh.
I don’t hold muslims accountable for daesh – I hold muslims and xians accountable for belief in ‘god’
I don’t get this one. He says he’s made a home w/ the regressives, but then he defends women? Color me confused.
Ah never mind. I was confused until I read the link. heh
jean-françois gauthier – good post. I think I agree, except possibly about ‘“communautarisme” or its zero-calorie version multiculturalism’. Care to unpack that a bit?
pink squirrel – still think you’re missing j-f’s point. I might add the USA had no problem with Islamicism when it was funding the Taliban to harass the soviet union, and as I said has no apparent problem now with the Saudis suppressing free speech, torturing political prisoners and bombing the hell out Yemen. I don’t understand what you mean by ‘more vocal’.
DarwinH, I read your post a while ago and thought it was a good honest wrestle with the question. I’m glad to read that your wrestle with mortality is going better.
From Wikipedia:
“In March 2016, Joseph Burnstein, a Buzzfeed reporter on web culture, wrote that according to Google Trends, interest in the term “shot up” in late 2015. He notes that instead of criticising “cultural tolerance gone too far”, the phrase has “become a catch-all for any element of the dominant new media culture that the anti-SJW internet doesn’t like.” He also suggests that even though the term can be sourced back to liberal commentators like Nawaz, Maher and Dawkins, it is currently heavily used by alt-right people on Internet forums and social media as part of their rhetorical warfare.”
I have seen this way too often. But maybe it’s because I spent too much time arguing with Gamergate people on Twitter.
Mayoses, Mohammond & Jesus Clarkson have bought an old banger for a series of challenges. If only they could carry out the challenge of seeing the nonsense they believe for what it is.
Thank you, Author, once again, for presenting an important point w/succinctness & clarity.
hackney martian: yeah, that was an opaque pronoucement! here’s the long and winding version…
the french- and english-speaking worlds have wildly diverging views of integration, assimilation, melting pot(s). from my point of view, progressives will typically be against “communautarisme” in france, québec progressives will typically be against multiculturalism within the canadian federation.
in france, cultural communities as an organisational unit of society, even if informal, are anathema to jacobinic conceptions of a unitary republic. the french, as a former colonial power and as a nation-state built partly on top of suppressing basque, provençal and breton political identities*, (cf turkey with kurds and armenians, although on an entirely different scale), the french see communities as fundamentally undermining the social contract and the integrity of the state.
québec progressives have an important overlap with québec separatism. their reasons are different. they see canada’s multiculturalism as trying to put new cultures (“nouveaux arrivants”) on an equal footing with founding cultures, namely english, french and pre-columbian identities. in that worldview, the immediate corollary is that the french identity within canada will ultimately be called on to “melt in” like recent immigrant communities.
communautisme is seen as leading to a “multiple nations within one state” dystopia whereas multiculturalism, at least in canada, is much more vaguely articulated as a mishmash of general tolerance, harmony, and positive celebration of identities within the canadian ideal. “just one calorie, not evil enough”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FcGLveebwjo
*alsace being a special case, you might be surprised that laïcité doesn’t apply there.
jean-françois gauthier:
totally OT, but are you the same as the jean-françois gauthier that was active in the ITSC VMS forum before it was butched by HP?
— if you do not understand the question, then obviously not. 🙂
john: my parents chose the best camo name for me (my mother might be reading this so i’m choosing my words carefully). same league as john smith in english. if somebody ever decides to put one of us on some no-fly list, they would effectively be grounding thousands of québeckers of my age : )
(i have briefly worked with vms but i don’t know that specific forum.)
is ‘québeckers’ correct ?
I would have thought it would be ‘québecans’
québecker or québecer; sometimes the cultural identity is referred to as “québécois” in canadian english.
jfg:
Well, at least that makes you one of a small minority that even KNOW the best operaring system ever!
_I_ do not remember seeing your name, except in that forum so you may understand my curiosity.
Tnx anyway for the info.
john: he he, i’ve always enjoyed bringing vms to the table when people start an operating-system religious war!
jfg:
The best wars are the ones you don’t have to fight.
jfg:
Afterthought: did you enjoy the surprised faces of the “OS-warriors” as much as I did when you soooo easily trumped them?
Disclaimer: I _AM_ a fervent, and I daresay knowledgable, VMS-bigot.
The best wars are the ones you don’t have to fight.
ok – but could such still be called a war
john — I never used VMS, but I used to work with VM/CMS, and I’ve always been aware the spectrum of possible operating systems is much broader than what we seem to have ended up with, and I wonder sometimes about roads not taken. Do you think you could name a few of the features that, in your own opinion, made VMS “the best operating system ever”?
jb:
– once (2001, iirc) they (3 VMS ambassadors) brought a VMS system to DEFCON (the international hackers gathering). They did not compete in the hacking, only inviting to be hacked. Everyone was told how to get an account on the system, and how to get the full online instructions how to do anything. After two days, ~4300 people tried in vain. The conference leaders declared it “Cool and unhackable”. They also stated, that from then on only Microsoft, Apple, and U*x systems would be allowed at DEFCONs.
– from 1979 on, on average less than ONE security patch per YEAR was needed.
– system uptimes of > 10 years are no exeption.
Sounds incredible? It IS true.
john: many of my colleagues weren’t born when the first version of windows afflicted the world but they are well-behaved enough to pretend to be interested when i mention things like (open)vms, irix, cp/m, or segmented memory. as for nearly-unassailable os’s, my e-mail system runs on macos 9 on a beige g3 box—security through obscurity!!!