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I'm an undergraduate at UCSD, and like any other undergraduate at an American public university, I have a number of very liberal friends. A number of them like to read, discuss, or even write what I'll put under the broad heading of "social justice blogs." Surely you've encountered these, too, but in case you haven't, a couple examples:
http://feminspire.com/how-do-we-defend-miley-cyrus-from-slut-shaming-while-calling-out-her-racism/
http://hiphopandpolitics.com/2013/08/30/from-miley-to-macklemore-the-privilege-spectrum/
http://raniakhalek.com/2013/02/17/the-best-take-down-of-hipster-racism-you-will-ever-see/
These blogs are, obviously, diverse and varied, but there's a few common trends. They tend to be very countercultural, feeling strongly that society as it is currently structured either has institutional problems, or has a number of members who adamantly oppose social justice, or both. They often try to be edgy, as countercultural things tend to be (in normal professional writing, it would not be considered acceptable to use the phrase "Fuck that!" in an article. Here it's probably encouraged). And they pretty much always have a utopian view of an egalitarian future in which the social justice issues they are blogging about will some day be eliminated. Everyone must do their part to end the troubling problems of race, gender, and orientation that plague our modern times!
I have trouble enumerating exactly what my problem with these social justice blogs is. I do believe that there are a lot of social injustices in our modern times, that many of them are along the lines of race, gender, or sexual orientation, and that it would do the world good to have more open and honest discussion of these issues. I don't personally mind the edgy writing style, and traditional standards of professional writing seem too archaic and stilted for the internet anyway. And utopian ideologies are a tad idealistic, but they can often be useful for bringing about desirable social change, even if the utopia is never reached.
And yet these blogs always seem to bug me. The social justice advocates themselves might say I'm just made uncomfortable because I don't want to acknowledge my white privilege, but I'm fully aware that as a heterosexual male born to a white upper-middle class family in the United States of America, I started out with a huge advantage over 99.99% of humans. And I'm not all that uncomfortable with discussing that privilege. No, I think my objection stems from the feeling that the ideological underpinnings of these blogs are faulty, so their results will be limited. As a student of chemistry, I think I would have gotten much the same feeling studying alchemy in the sixteenth century.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/dl8efyb.gif) I want to understand and predict the behavior of various substances, too! But I don't quite see how this will help...
For instance, a term commonly brought up by a number of these blogs is "cultural appropriation." Frustratingly, many of the blogs feel the term is so simple and definitional to their cause that they use it without bothering to give some operational definition, but if the wikipedia definition is to be believed, cultural appropriation is the phenomenon of individuals within one culture assimilating aspects of another culture. As you might expect, this often results in a certain degree of syncretism, in which the cultural element of the assimilated culture takes on an entirely new context in this new culture.
Sometimes this phenomenon is a minstrelsy-type problem, where another culture is imitated (badly) for the sake of making fun of it. In that case the problem isn't that you "appropriated" another culture; the problem is that you didn't understand it properly, and then used what little understanding you had to mock it. This is also not the phenomenon that is generally being discussed when cultural appropriation is brought up. Consider this quote from the article by Feminspire listed above, discussing Miley Cyrus's recent performance at the VMAs:
What’s wrong with Miley Cyrus coming onstage with an entourage of big-bootied black women, leading a dance (twerking) that is derived from age-old African dance rhythm, and then objectifying/sexualizing/fetishizing these women of the culture that invented this dance by grabbing and slapping their asses? The answer is cultural appropriation. The most basic definition of this term is essentially one cultural group taking on an element that is distinctively unique to an entirely different cultural group. The most obvious and problematic element of cultural appropriation in this situation is that Miley, who is white, used her privilege to take up aspects of a marginalized racial group for fun without examination of where the dance came from, what it can stand for, and without acknowledging that between her performances she can take off this aspect of “blackness” and go on with the privileges she possesses by being a white woman. This blatant disregard for a culture she has never lived within and could never truly understand is what should be making you sick to your stomach... (emphasis preserved from original)
Now I'm not in any regard a big Miley Cyrus fan, nor am I one of the few who enjoyed the performance, but I'm also a little confused as to the charges. The main charge is that Miley Cyrus has stolen a traditional African dance without fully understanding its rich cultural meaning, with a secondary charge that her backup dancers were all black, and she treated them as sexual objects rather than people. But twerking is not a traditional African dance, any more than rock and roll is a traditional African music genre. Both are American art forms, originating largely within black American culture; and in the case of twerking, much like any other pop dance, there's not a hell of a lot of deeper cultural meaning to be found. This is not to say that Miley Cyrus did not have to go outside her own culture to encounter twerking, since black American culture is still very much separate from the culture in which she grew up. But the performance was also not an attempt to imitate and mock black culture; it was merely Miley Cyrus, as a pop star, performing a common pop dance of our time. If she performed it badly, she may have failed as a dancer, but it's certainly not meant as a cultural insult, nor should it be taken as one.
The black dancers charge is not about cultural appropriation, but it perhaps deserves a digression. Backup dancers as a rule are sexualized and objectified, regardless of race. Personally I very much disagree with this phenomenon; the very role of a backup dancer is to be a) silent, b) sexy, and c) pretty much identical to the other backup dancers, so none of you steal too much attention from the main act. But aside from the fact that Miley Cyrus had backup dancers at all, it doesn't seem so bad that she hired black dancers (as opposed to a world in which white artists hire only white backup dancers and black artists hire only black ones). After that, sexualizing them is pretty much part of their job description.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/LISkQFG.jpg) If you google image search "backup dancers," you'll find plenty of examples of sexualizing female dancers, but probably not a lot of race bias.
My criticism wasn't just of that blog, it was of the larger social justice blogosphere and its use of the term "cultural appropriation." But I think that blog is a good example of the problem I'm discussing. Miley Cyrus's performance was certainly problematic. If not racist, it was at least very much guilty of over-sexualizing women (both Cyrus and her backup dancers). But the terminology and discourse of these social justice blogs was of extremely limited use in understanding or highlighting this. The term "cultural appropriation" is meant to be some bombshell that will, in just two words, identify everything wrong with an artistic endeavor which borrows across cultural lines. But in fact it winds up being fairly useless, since absolutely no discussion goes into how cultural appropriation is actually perpetuating racist attitudes or racial inequality, or for that matter why artistic cross-pollenation is being discouraged here when cross-pollenation is otherwise thought to a be an essential ingredient to art.
When someone tells you that you are mentally incapable of rationally understanding why they are right and you are wrong, there's not really a logical way for you to debunk their claim. In the same way there's not really a response I can give to someone who says I can never understand the true evil of cultural appropriation because I've grown up steeped in white privilege. The bit from that quote above about how Miley Cyrus has never lived in black culture and as such, can never understand it is this same type of argument.
But here's the problem with that argument: if you believe in some kind of utopian future on issues like race or gender, like many of these social justice blogs, you can't just disregard the white majority and declare, in angsty teenage fashion, that they'll never understand you. To reach that goal, or even to move closer to it, you have to achieve a social change in which this majority becomes more informed about and tolerant of your culture. At some point these uninformed whites have to start learning about your culture, bit by bit and with plenty of error, until you reach a point where they can integrate cultural elements of yours with cultural elements of theirs without misrepresenting yours entirely. That means, among other things, allowing white artists to experiment with artistic elements of other cultures, and when they mess up, informing them how they can improve rather than yelling at them for trying.
As a classic example, take the song Tutti Frutti. Consider Little Richard's classic performance of his song. Then consider the unfortunate cover by Pat Boone, which enjoyed somewhat more success than Little Richard's:
+ Show Spoiler [Little Richard] +
+ Show Spoiler [Pat Boone] +
Little Richard's version is clearly far superior. Little Richard had some success with the song, so record executives went to the more established name Pat Boone and asked him to sing the song, since it seemed to be a hit. Pat Boone was not especially familiar with the style, and his version had none of the shout to it that makes Little Richard's version so classic. Despite this, Pat Boone was a more established name and was less likely to scare parents, so his version sold a bit better than Little Richard's.
In social justice court, we would promptly find Pat Boone guilty on one count of cultural appropriation, punishable by public shaming, and call it a day. But what did Pat Boone actually do that was wrong? He covered a song from a different musical style, which derived from a different cultural and musical background, and as a result of his unfamiliarity he didn't do a great job. Certainly we should tell him to get better at singing in this style, or else stick to songs that are more suited to his own vocal talents; but he had no intention of offending another race, and his attempt shouldn't be taken this way. He made an attempt at understanding something outside his own background, and due to his unfamiliarity with the style, it didn't quite go as planned.
Of course, social justice bloggers weren't around at the time, and no public shaming commenced. Instead, white artists continued attempting to perform black hits, with varying degrees of success. Some were actually quite good at it. Consider Elvis's pretty good vocal performance on the same song:
+ Show Spoiler [Elvis Presley] +
This incorporation of black musical trends into pop music sung by whites, as well as blacks, was what gave rise to rock and roll. That white artists were always more successful is certainly evidence of racial issues, but it's hard to see how the artists themselves are to blame. If Pat Boone sold more records than Little Richard, is Pat Boone to blame for allowing himself to become too popular? Or is the record-buying populace at fault for preferring recordings by white artists, even when the recordings are inferior? If anything Pat Boone was doing good for racial equality by forcing the white populace into contact with black musical forms. Rock and roll could have even helped to bring about the social attitudes that caused the civil rights movement to really take off. Wouldn't that be enough to get Pat Boone acquitted on his cultural appropriation charge?
I'll close out this blog by saying that if anyone can explain to me how the discourse going on in these social justice blogs winds up being especially useful, I'm interested to hear it. It seems to me that the discourse always assumes far too much to reach its conclusions, and uses such abstruse terminology that the only people who even understand what you mean are people who already agree with you. That is to say, such discourse is about as useful for achieving positive social change as whining about it in your diary or screaming about it into a pillow. But I'm sure Team Liquid has a few members of the Internet Social Justice Squad who can tell me how, for instance, the linked articles are helping to bring about a better world. Because it seems to me that a lot of it distills down to some countercultural attitudes and badly-defined terms.
  
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Wait, are you telling me that random undergrad blogs on matters of social justice are.. *gasp*... essentially trash? Who would have thought!
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Most of them are not by undergrads. For example, I'm pretty sure none of the ones I linked are. Undergrads are probably, consciously or unconsciously, the target demographic, though
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I study English at a German university and cultural studies was a big part of my last three semesters, so I'll try and throw in my two cents.
The first blog is pretending that the issue with the explosive criticism on Miley Cyrus' performance is the fact that she is "slut-shamed, body-shamed and woman-shamed" while what we should be criticizing is the fact that she was engaging in several acts of "cultural appropriation". Cultural appropriation is hereby defined as the act of "stealing" an element from a culture and using it for your own benefit aka her performance.
The blogger gets it both wrong. People are so appalled by Miley's performance because for years and years, we watched that child grow up on television. My younger sister did. Miley is only two years older than her. If I saw my sister do what Miley did at the VMAs, I would cry. But Miley, as much as we watched her grow up, is not our younger sister - she is a person whose life is part of the celebrity world news. People react that way and that extremely because it is a way of saying that it is inappropriate on an extreme scale, that scale being Miley's influence on every girl which still is a Hannah Montana fan. The critics' way of exploding and overdoing the "slut-shaming" is a way of exerting cultural control, comparable to a cultural reality check for everyone who googles "Miley Cyrus VMA performance reactions" to find out if his wtf-moment is an appropriate reaction. It has nothing to do with cultural appropriation whatsoever, it is more comparable to telling your daughter/son to cut contact with the girl who was caught cheating on her two BFs with the football coach.
The second blog is a classic example of cultural studies professors creating or highlighting problems which are not as relevant as their job description tells them to make them. It was Jensen who referred to the "blackness problem" as a "whiteness problem" and I can only stress how true that is when we realize that this http://libarts.wsu.edu/ccgrs/faculty/leonard.asp pseudo intellectual white hipster is telling us that we are racist, in collaboration with this http://www.idec2013.org/speakers/jlovecalderon/ clearly underprivileged woman. Who in their right mind can be convinced that any event of the size and medial impact of the VMAs could be so stupid as to actually act racist? Only someone who doesn't understand that racism doesn't sell while multiculturalism is hot, aka someone who still thinks the VMAs are a cultural event and not a business like most of what we refer to as cultural practice today. It would be a non-profitable decision to be racist, but people who are paid to look for exactly that in "cultural events" (professor of cultural studies/activists of a culturally praised subculture) cannot acknowledge that and are also sure to find "the problem".
Let's leave out the third blog for the time being for hipster culture (which is NOT a counterculture by any means whatsoever) is an entirely different matter.
None of these blogs are countercultural. A counterculture is a subculture which has enough followers to start a revolution. The people of '68 were a counterculture. Suffragettes were a counterculture. Even the Nazis were a counterculture in the late 1920s/early 1930s. These blogs are no revolution. They are part of culture. They are integrated and essential because they keep the mainstream culture in constant focus of interest. A king needs at least one enemy to defend himself against, and these bloggers are but a fly in mainstream's soup.
I cannot speak for you, but my personal problem with these "social justice blogs" is the fact that these kids don't actually change anything. Feminists burning their bras instead of being outraged about the injustice against women going on in India or Africa or China. Professors of cultural studies telling me to look out for my Turkish underprivileged neighbors instead of being outraged that this even has to be said out loud. Of course these blogs and words bug us, but bugging us is not enough. Hence, no counterculture.
"Cultural appropriation" is another issue of these blogs. It is treated as something bad, while all it does is taking an element of a culture and integrating it in your own cultural practice. Failing to see these cross-over changes in and between cultures as a way of communication does not only make you a dumbass but also racist for you are against changes in your own cultural practice brought about by integration. WAIT.
Your description of the development of music as cultural appropriation in progress is excellent. Please don't let someone tell you ever that cultural appropriation is bad or unnatural, these people are morons. Or Nazis. Or both.
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On September 01 2013 19:08 ChristianS wrote:
Most of them are not by undergrads. For example, I'm pretty sure none of the ones I linked are. Undergrads are probably, consciously or unconsciously, the target demographic, though
Ah ok, then I misunderstood your opening sentence, where you said that you as an undergrad had a "number of very liberal friends" out of which a few liked to write and discuss blogs. I immediately assumed that the vast majority of them were undergrad, including the ones that wrote and discussed blogs. Fair enough.
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Morality is probably even more stupid than religion. At least religious people have some semblance of an argument saying 'Well, it's written in this holy book' or 'Well, who else created all this?', it's a bad argument, but at the very least it's an attempt at one. If you ask a moralist while killing is "bad" you will invariably get back 'If you can't see that it's bad then you are lost!'.
There is no such thing as right and wrong, cultural appropriateness, justice and what not. Ultimately every human being is an agent towards his or her own goals which most of the time are selfish and if they are not selfish they are selfish in disguise. That doesn't make it right nor wrong what people do, it just means that they do it.
And as you touched upon, morality is worse than religion, religion is more often than not wrong, morality is 'not even wrong'. If someone says 'The earth was created 6000 years ago by a dude with a beard and dinosaurs never existed' you can say 'Well, seeing these fossils, either that dude set out to troll us massively or what you are saying isn't true.' at least what religion claims is some-what specific. Morality is worse than wrong, it's vague. Moralists will say 'Well, x is evil', what does 'evil' even mean? Define evil? Define 'good' while you're at it, these terms are about as vague as 'this is a beautiful painting'. But at the very least most people realize that paintings aren't objectively beautiful or not.
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United States15275 Posts
There are far better rationalizations of morality out there than religion. However moralists often fetishize the concept of morality until it reaches the ranks of a deity.
And if there is no such thing as right and wrong, then there is no such thing as selfishness either.
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On September 01 2013 21:12 missefficiency wrote:I study English at a German university and cultural studies was a big part of my last three semesters, so I'll try and throw in my two cents. The first blog is pretending that the issue with the explosive criticism on Miley Cyrus' performance is the fact that she is "slut-shamed, body-shamed and woman-shamed" while what we should be criticizing is the fact that she was engaging in several acts of "cultural appropriation". Cultural appropriation is hereby defined as the act of "stealing" an element from a culture and using it for your own benefit aka her performance. The blogger gets it both wrong. People are so appalled by Miley's performance because for years and years, we watched that child grow up on television. My younger sister did. Miley is only two years older than her. If I saw my sister do what Miley did at the VMAs, I would cry. But Miley, as much as we watched her grow up, is not our younger sister - she is a person whose life is part of the celebrity world news. People react that way and that extremely because it is a way of saying that it is inappropriate on an extreme scale, that scale being Miley's influence on every girl which still is a Hannah Montana fan. The critics' way of exploding and overdoing the "slut-shaming" is a way of exerting cultural control, comparable to a cultural reality check for everyone who googles "Miley Cyrus VMA performance reactions" to find out if his wtf-moment is an appropriate reaction. It has nothing to do with cultural appropriation whatsoever, it is more comparable to telling your daughter/son to cut contact with the girl who was caught cheating on her two BFs with the football coach. The second blog is a classic example of cultural studies professors creating or highlighting problems which are not as relevant as their job description tells them to make them. It was Jensen who referred to the "blackness problem" as a "whiteness problem" and I can only stress how true that is when we realize that this http://libarts.wsu.edu/ccgrs/faculty/leonard.asp pseudo intellectual white hipster is telling us that we are racist, in collaboration with this http://www.idec2013.org/speakers/jlovecalderon/ clearly underprivileged woman. Who in their right mind can be convinced that any event of the size and medial impact of the VMAs could be so stupid as to actually act racist? Only someone who doesn't understand that racism doesn't sell while multiculturalism is hot, aka someone who still thinks the VMAs are a cultural event and not a business like most of what we refer to as cultural practice today. It would be a non-profitable decision to be racist, but people who are paid to look for exactly that in "cultural events" (professor of cultural studies/activists of a culturally praised subculture) cannot acknowledge that and are also sure to find "the problem". Let's leave out the third blog for the time being for hipster culture (which is NOT a counterculture by any means whatsoever) is an entirely different matter. None of these blogs are countercultural. A counterculture is a subculture which has enough followers to start a revolution. The people of '68 were a counterculture. Suffragettes were a counterculture. Even the Nazis were a counterculture in the late 1920s/early 1930s. These blogs are no revolution. They are part of culture. They are integrated and essential because they keep the mainstream culture in constant focus of interest. A king needs at least one enemy to defend himself against, and these bloggers are but a fly in mainstream's soup. I cannot speak for you, but my personal problem with these "social justice blogs" is the fact that these kids don't actually change anything. Feminists burning their bras instead of being outraged about the injustice against women going on in India or Africa or China. Professors of cultural studies telling me to look out for my Turkish underprivileged neighbors instead of being outraged that this even has to be said out loud. Of course these blogs and words bug us, but bugging us is not enough. Hence, no counterculture. "Cultural appropriation" is another issue of these blogs. It is treated as something bad, while all it does is taking an element of a culture and integrating it in your own cultural practice. Failing to see these cross-over changes in and between cultures as a way of communication does not only make you a dumbass but also racist for you are against changes in your own cultural practice brought about by integration. WAIT. Your description of the development of music as cultural appropriation in progress is excellent. Please don't let someone tell you ever that cultural appropriation is bad or unnatural, these people are morons. Or Nazis. Or both.
Thanks for your perspective. I hadn't bothered to look up the authors on the second blog, but now that you mention it, I'm not especially surprised. I generally assume blogs like this are written by people with graduate degrees who wanted to become academics and write about culture studies and social theories, but didn't quite have the chops to make it at universities. So they write what they wanted to write in blogs online, and do something else with their life for a living.
I think we're using different definitions of the word "countercultural." I meant it to refer to cultural movements which are subversive and opposed to the mainstream; you mean it to refer to any cultural movement which successfully starts some kind of revolution. In other words I think I'm using the term to describe any movement which aspires to achieving your use of the term, whether or not it is successful. But the terminology doesn't seem too important; I suppose something like "subversive" might be better suited to my meaning, if you prefer. I chose countercultural because unlike subversive, I think it captures the fact that these groups don't just happen to be opposed to the mainstream; they define themselves by that opposition.
I suppose my complaints were at least related to the problem that social justice blogs never bring about meaningful change. That wouldn't bother me so much if it were just that our social problems are so intractable that these blogs are doing everything they can, and still can't make anything budge. Even if all they were doing was starting a conversation that helps us understand these problems better, that would still be valuable work. The issue is that I don't think they're even capable of bringing about any kind of change, and the conversations they start are formulated on terminology that prevents any kind of useful conclusions from being possible, right from the outset.
I'm pretty certain that in most contexts where I read the words "cultural appropriation," I disagree with the criticism, and I'm trying to figure out if they're just over-applying the term to situations where it doesn't really work, or if the term itself is useless. The example I found that seems like "cultural appropriation" is doing the most work as a term is that of hipsters wearing Native American headdresses as a casual clothing, which seems bad because it's misunderstanding the original culture and, if not intended to mock the native culture, it certainly could be easily misunderstood that way to a casual observer. But it still seems like the issue is not that they're borrowing culturally, just that they're doing it badly and in an insensitive manner.
On September 01 2013 23:17 SiskosGoatee wrote:
Morality is probably even more stupid than religion. At least religious people have some semblance of an argument saying 'Well, it's written in this holy book' or 'Well, who else created all this?', it's a bad argument, but at the very least it's an attempt at one. If you ask a moralist while killing is "bad" you will invariably get back 'If you can't see that it's bad then you are lost!'.
There is no such thing as right and wrong, cultural appropriateness, justice and what not. Ultimately every human being is an agent towards his or her own goals which most of the time are selfish and if they are not selfish they are selfish in disguise. That doesn't make it right nor wrong what people do, it just means that they do it.
And as you touched upon, morality is worse than religion, religion is more often than not wrong, morality is 'not even wrong'. If someone says 'The earth was created 6000 years ago by a dude with a beard and dinosaurs never existed' you can say 'Well, seeing these fossils, either that dude set out to troll us massively or what you are saying isn't true.' at least what religion claims is some-what specific. Morality is worse than wrong, it's vague. Moralists will say 'Well, x is evil', what does 'evil' even mean? Define evil? Define 'good' while you're at it, these terms are about as vague as 'this is a beautiful painting'. But at the very least most people realize that paintings aren't objectively beautiful or not.
Morality, like language, is only useful for discussion when there's a large body of common ground and experience between the participants in that discussion. If I say "eating meat is wrong, because it involves killing animals and that's murder," then I am appealing to the intuition that I have, and that I assume my listener has, that killing another human is in some way bad.Whether this is justified on utilitarian grounds, or some Kantian grounds, or some religious grounds, the discussion is useful only if myself and my listener are on the same page (just like the discussion is only useful if myself and my listener both speak the same language).
To say that because morality is meaningless because its rules are not innate, but rather depend on common ground between people in the discussion, is to say that language is meaningless because the significances of its vocalizations are not innate, but rather depend on a common understanding between people in the discussion as to what those sounds mean.
Its odd that you choose the example of a beautiful painting, because while there is a great deal of subjectivity in art, there are, in fact, commonly accepted rules of artistic production that produce better art. You will often hear people say something is a "good" or "bad" painting, and those sentiments are not meaningless. A painting may not be beautiful in a fully objective sense, but it can be said with some objectivity that some artists and their works are good and powerful and beautiful, while other artists and their works are bad and poorly done.
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Okay, my thoughts may be numerous and random, but I hope you can sort those out:
1. For me, being a part of counterculture nowadays means to posess the following, strange qualities: a) being a superficially boring person b) ignoring stupidity that begs for attention c) reacting to stupidity that does concrete harm d) reading and listening more than speaking and typing e) using correct grammar f) acting with respect, even towards those who don't deserve it and f) casting doubts on own actions, motivations and judgements.
2. The mainstream culture was always all about a small number of powerful "cultural channels"* through which the stuff is transmitted to mass society. After the internet and mobile phones made the culture more "spread out", those channels started to gradually lose their power to attract mass attention. The easiest way to make up for it was to gross out people with bigger and bigger stupidities and / or openly immoral, shameful content. Surprisingly many people took the bait and stupidity + immorality recieved a silent seal of approval. The results of that today are evident.
3. According to point 1, letter b), Miley Cyrus deserves nothing but being ignored till the time she does something remotely meaningful, aka recording good music or starring in an ambitious movie. Ultimately, whatever she did or said there is hollow, because it's impossible to distinguish from a marketing scheme she, as a brand, is. Also, putting that event in ANY context and analyzing it scientifically looks to me like a waste of time and thought, because stupidity is, by definition, something that cannot be put in a rational context and explained reasonably.
4. This is the first place I ever heard about the term "cultural appropriation". I think the blogs you quoted miss the truth completely on this part. The culture is only worth something if it lives, evolves, transforms. Cultural diffusion is a part of it, perhaps even an essential part those days, because the number of components creating our Western culture is both limited and rather exhausted. Yes, people will show their ignorance of cultural context while showing off the components they blindly imported, but that's always the risk of progress.
* - I'm not educated in social science, but I hope this term explains itself.
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On September 02 2013 03:12 ChristianS wrote:
To say that because morality is meaningless because its rules are not innate, but rather depend on common ground between people in the discussion, is to say that language is meaningless because the significances of its vocalizations are not innate, but rather depend on a common understanding between people in the discussion as to what those sounds mean. Terrible analogy, the point of morality is that people who believe in morality claim that their vision of it is the only one true holy morality and objectively 'correct'. It's analogous to saying that say English is the one true language and all other languages just do it wrongly because they are not English.
Its odd that you choose the example of a beautiful painting, because while there is a great deal of subjectivity in art, there are, in fact, commonly accepted rules of artistic production that produce better art. You will often hear people say something is a "good" or "bad" painting, and those sentiments are not meaningless. Of course they are meaningless, because you can never prove your argument. Can you device a scientific experiment which will demonstrate that what what Da Vinci made is better than my 3 year old daughter? I highly doubt it. If I claim the paining my 3 year old daughter made is superior it becomes a yes vs no game and therefore terribly uninteresting and useless to spend your time on.
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On September 02 2013 03:52 SiskosGoatee wrote:Show nested quote +On September 02 2013 03:12 ChristianS wrote:
To say that because morality is meaningless because its rules are not innate, but rather depend on common ground between people in the discussion, is to say that language is meaningless because the significances of its vocalizations are not innate, but rather depend on a common understanding between people in the discussion as to what those sounds mean. Terrible analogy, the point of morality is that people who believe in morality claim that their vision of it is the only one true holy morality and objectively 'correct'. It's analogous to saying that say English is the one true language and all other languages just do it wrongly because they are not English. Show nested quote +Its odd that you choose the example of a beautiful painting, because while there is a great deal of subjectivity in art, there are, in fact, commonly accepted rules of artistic production that produce better art. You will often hear people say something is a "good" or "bad" painting, and those sentiments are not meaningless. Of course they are meaningless, because you can never prove your argument. Can you device a scientific experiment which will demonstrate that what what Da Vinci made is better than my 3 year old daughter? I highly doubt it. If I claim the paining [sic] my 3 year old daughter made is superior it becomes a yes vs no game and therefore terribly uninteresting and useless to spend your time on.
You're over-generalizing what people who believe in morality claim it means. Some believe in some absolute moral quantity that can be maximized or minimized, invisible but just as real as magnetism or gravity. But for most people, morality is a set of principles for how to live one's life. Obviously such a set of principles is contingent on what your goals are in your life, as well as on what you believe about how those goals can be achieved. But for people who have similar sets of goals and beliefs, morality is a useful terminology for discussing how one should act.
For many people, it is important to them to work toward making the world a better place, "better" being defined not in some absolute sense but rather in terms of the individual's preferences for how the world should be. For instance, many people on this website would like to live in a world where video games as professional sport is culturally accepted and widely celebrated. A large number of people throughout the world would like to live in a world in which people can live to old age without being murdered. Sometimes when sets of people share beliefs about how the world should be, and term actions that would act to bring about this world "moral." They then discuss "morality," which is the set of principles which will best bring about their goals. So no, it's not like saying "English is the true language, and all other languages are false."
By the way, most things in the world cannot be justified in terms of the scientific method. Where you can apply it, that's great, but for most decisions you make in life, and most things you "know," scientific analysis either hasn't been done, or its results were inconclusive and open to interpretation. If you say you love your daughter, or if you say that playing Starcraft makes you happy, the scientific method is not backing up your claims. That does not, however make them any less true. So if someone claims something, and you say "well that's not true because you haven't done a scientific experiment to prove it," you're being an idiot.
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On September 02 2013 05:10 ChristianS wrote:Show nested quote +On September 02 2013 03:52 SiskosGoatee wrote:On September 02 2013 03:12 ChristianS wrote:
To say that because morality is meaningless because its rules are not innate, but rather depend on common ground between people in the discussion, is to say that language is meaningless because the significances of its vocalizations are not innate, but rather depend on a common understanding between people in the discussion as to what those sounds mean. Terrible analogy, the point of morality is that people who believe in morality claim that their vision of it is the only one true holy morality and objectively 'correct'. It's analogous to saying that say English is the one true language and all other languages just do it wrongly because they are not English. Its odd that you choose the example of a beautiful painting, because while there is a great deal of subjectivity in art, there are, in fact, commonly accepted rules of artistic production that produce better art. You will often hear people say something is a "good" or "bad" painting, and those sentiments are not meaningless. Of course they are meaningless, because you can never prove your argument. Can you device a scientific experiment which will demonstrate that what what Da Vinci made is better than my 3 year old daughter? I highly doubt it. If I claim the paining [sic] my 3 year old daughter made is superior it becomes a yes vs no game and therefore terribly uninteresting and useless to spend your time on. You're over-generalizing what people who believe in morality claim it means. Some believe in some absolute moral quantity that can be maximized or minimized, invisible but just as real as magnetism or gravity. But for most people, morality is a set of principles for how to live one's life. Obviously such a set of principles is contingent on what your goals are in your life, as well as on what you believe about how those goals can be achieved. But for people who have similar sets of goals and beliefs, morality is a useful terminology for discussing how one should act. Yes, and as soon as you extend it to how others should act you are making it absolute and universal. And if you just limit it to how you yourself should act it's nothing more than 'this is how I like to live my life.'
For many people, it is important to them to work toward making the world a better place, "better" being defined not in some absolute sense but rather in terms of the individual's preferences for how the world should be. For instance, many people on this website would like to live in a world where video games as professional sport is culturally accepted and widely celebrated. A large number of people throughout the world would like to live in a world in which people can live to old age without being murdered. Sometimes when sets of people share beliefs about how the world should be, and term actions that would act to bring about this world "moral." They then discuss "morality," which is the set of principles which will best bring about their goals. So no, it's not like saying "English is the true language, and all other languages are false." And herein lies the difference, people don't think it is 'evil' if esports does not succeed, then they're just 'I wanted it to to, and I'm pissed about it, but I can't call this evil or whatever, it just wasn't meant to be'
But if people are being murdered they call it 'evil', not 'I didn't want this to happen but it is neither good nor evil', and therein lies the difference of morality and simply being an agent towards your goal.
By the way, most things in the world cannot be justified in terms of the scientific method. Where you can apply it, that's great, but for most decisions you make in life, and most things you "know," scientific analysis either hasn't been done, or its results were inconclusive and open to interpretation. If you say you love your daughter, or if you say that playing Starcraft makes you happy, the scientific method is not backing up your claims. That does not, however make them any less true. So if someone claims something, and you say "well that's not true because you haven't done a scientific experiment to prove it," you're being an idiot. "love" again is an extremely vague and meaningless term and one which I don't use because it doesn't communicate or mean anything.
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On September 01 2013 21:12 missefficiency wrote:
None of these blogs are countercultural. A counterculture is a subculture which has enough followers to start a revolution. The people of '68 were a counterculture. Suffragettes were a counterculture. Even the Nazis were a counterculture in the late 1920s/early 1930s. These blogs are no revolution. They are part of culture. They are integrated and essential because they keep the mainstream culture in constant focus of interest. A king needs at least one enemy to defend himself against, and these bloggers are but a fly in mainstream's soup.
I cannot speak for you, but my personal problem with these "social justice blogs" is the fact that these kids don't actually change anything. Feminists burning their bras instead of being outraged about the injustice against women going on in India or Africa or China. Professors of cultural studies telling me to look out for my Turkish underprivileged neighbors instead of being outraged that this even has to be said out loud. Of course these blogs and words bug us, but bugging us is not enough. Hence, no counterculture.
I'd argue that they aren't counter-cultural but hypercultural. They are highly particularized, but nevertheless they are the necessary conclusions drawn from the premises of modern culture.
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On September 02 2013 05:34 SiskosGoatee wrote:Show nested quote +On September 02 2013 05:10 ChristianS wrote:On September 02 2013 03:52 SiskosGoatee wrote:On September 02 2013 03:12 ChristianS wrote:
To say that because morality is meaningless because its rules are not innate, but rather depend on common ground between people in the discussion, is to say that language is meaningless because the significances of its vocalizations are not innate, but rather depend on a common understanding between people in the discussion as to what those sounds mean. Terrible analogy, the point of morality is that people who believe in morality claim that their vision of it is the only one true holy morality and objectively 'correct'. It's analogous to saying that say English is the one true language and all other languages just do it wrongly because they are not English. Its odd that you choose the example of a beautiful painting, because while there is a great deal of subjectivity in art, there are, in fact, commonly accepted rules of artistic production that produce better art. You will often hear people say something is a "good" or "bad" painting, and those sentiments are not meaningless. Of course they are meaningless, because you can never prove your argument. Can you device a scientific experiment which will demonstrate that what what Da Vinci made is better than my 3 year old daughter? I highly doubt it. If I claim the paining [sic] my 3 year old daughter made is superior it becomes a yes vs no game and therefore terribly uninteresting and useless to spend your time on. You're over-generalizing what people who believe in morality claim it means. Some believe in some absolute moral quantity that can be maximized or minimized, invisible but just as real as magnetism or gravity. But for most people, morality is a set of principles for how to live one's life. Obviously such a set of principles is contingent on what your goals are in your life, as well as on what you believe about how those goals can be achieved. But for people who have similar sets of goals and beliefs, morality is a useful terminology for discussing how one should act. Yes, and as soon as you extend it to how others should act you are making it absolute and universal. And if you just limit it to how you yourself should act it's nothing more than 'this is how I like to live my life.' Show nested quote +For many people, it is important to them to work toward making the world a better place, "better" being defined not in some absolute sense but rather in terms of the individual's preferences for how the world should be. For instance, many people on this website would like to live in a world where video games as professional sport is culturally accepted and widely celebrated. A large number of people throughout the world would like to live in a world in which people can live to old age without being murdered. Sometimes when sets of people share beliefs about how the world should be, and term actions that would act to bring about this world "moral." They then discuss "morality," which is the set of principles which will best bring about their goals. So no, it's not like saying "English is the true language, and all other languages are false." And herein lies the difference, people don't think it is 'evil' if esports does not succeed, then they're just 'I wanted it to to, and I'm pissed about it, but I can't call this evil or whatever, it just wasn't meant to be' But if people are being murdered they call it 'evil', not 'I didn't want this to happen but it is neither good nor evil', and therein lies the difference of morality and simply being an agent towards your goal. Show nested quote +By the way, most things in the world cannot be justified in terms of the scientific method. Where you can apply it, that's great, but for most decisions you make in life, and most things you "know," scientific analysis either hasn't been done, or its results were inconclusive and open to interpretation. If you say you love your daughter, or if you say that playing Starcraft makes you happy, the scientific method is not backing up your claims. That does not, however make them any less true. So if someone claims something, and you say "well that's not true because you haven't done a scientific experiment to prove it," you're being an idiot. "love" again is an extremely vague and meaningless term and one which I don't use because it doesn't communicate or mean anything.
"This is how I live my life. I do so because my goals are x, y, and z, and I think this is the best way of achieving those goals. Goals x and y are universal enough that I can usually assume any other random person also shares those goals, so if they're behaving in a way that betrays those goals, I tell them they should stop because they are betraying the goals we both believe in. Of course if they don't share those goals, my criticisms are not cogent, but for most people I can assume they have at least similar goals, so I use fairly universal terms like "good" and "evil" to describe behaving in favor of or in opposition to these fairly universally-held goals."
What's incoherent about that position? Because so far you're just straw man-ing everyone who believes in any type of morality into some kind of absolutist God's Holy Law type of morality, and then telling them why the position you're attributing to them is bad.
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What you're talking about is not unheard of. "Cultural appropriation" is being used in a context that is described a "bad" or "evil" to our culture, when in reality, the whole concept of mimicking ideas regardless of their intention being bad/evil or not, is part of a much grander scale of social evolution.
These utopian ideals as you said are wonderful, but they cannot be implemented as we see them instantly. That's the reason communism doesn't work. It's possible it works but requires a lot other social changes to take place. In order for those to happen you either force people to believe a certain thought or ideal or you let them come to their own realizations. It could take thousands of years to reach that sort of utopia and in fact longer based on how many people inhabit the earth and the amount of cultures or societies with general principles exist within that population.
That is social evolution at work though - Different groups of people working together, and sometimes against each other because of the rationalizations of their ideas that lead to certain actions that are learned by both observer and actor both. Take not killing for example - While it's agreed by the majority at large, it hasn't progressed to a point where NO one kills each other, but it is getting closer to that. There are debates about the origination of violence, and I'm considering a theory I blurted out in a drunken rant a few nights ago, but this isn't the time or place to discuss. The point is that not killing is a tradition passed down through families, or religions, or various organizations that we as people feel should be a part of and should take up the mantle of those organizations, along with general principles they stand for.
In the example of not killing, we can see that slowly yet surely it may reach a point where it is a completely accepted idea in society and then new ideas will spring forth because of that. There will be countless counter-revolutions or ideas that will attempt to argue that killing is good, but if it is indeed not and it's elimination from our society is a required stepping stone in social evolution, then that's how it will be. The acceptance of ideals that will help us reach whatever pinnacle human society or civilization can reach is an inevitable truth, but does not mean that every change a long the way will be one we either planned for or agree with. This isn't to suggest that the ends justify the means but it is to suggest that not every means is good that leads to an end that is good. We should not accept evil with the justification that it is a necessity for progression, but we should accept that we cannot change supposed evils with one swing. It is a continual process that enacted by all human beings and even living things that donate themselves to the environment that surrounds humans and their nature, and therefore if we desire change around us, then we must start with ourselves and those we can directly affect.
As a side note: I'll write a blog about morality that I think will make sense. As an atheist, there is a true morality, but it is not so easily defined as being this or that without a lot of inspection of what makes something a moral.
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Gosh is the basis of morality in an atheist viewpoint not the point of this blog. I suppose I should have just ignored SiskosGoatee's derailing, but when someone is being a) ignorant and b) a dick about it, it sure seems like you ought to say something. Even calling religion nonsense in such dismissive terms is a pretty dickish thing to do, but then dismissing everything countless moral philosophers have said about what makes good and evil by pretending they're some kind of absolutist moralists that believe in a universal order of good and evil... well, I'll just say attitudes like that are why despite being an atheist myself, I still think /r/atheism is one of the worst places on the internet.
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The whole "slut shaming" thing is getting out of hand. People didn't like Miley's "performance" because she's getting out of hand ridiculous and embodied all that is wrong with modern pop culture more than modern pop culture itself. I can't imagine any of us actually give a crap, we just look at this whole mess and cringe. Everybody can rest assured that we do the same thing when "male" idols, like Justin Bieber, do the same thing. The public reaction can't be solely appropriated to sexism, there's also a healthy dose of proper indignation - what the fuck are those asshats trying to sell us?
Also that whole thing about cultural appropriation is fucking retarded. I eat Italian food made by Greeks and Canadians, am I a monster? Am I offending people when I eat pastas? People can steal other people's dances, even Miley. No need to read a book and know why they shake their asses in such a way rather than some other way.
Fuck people and their political correctness shit. It has gotten to the point where people can't have a negative opinion about anything without being accused of having some Freudian daddy issues.
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On September 02 2013 07:07 Djzapz wrote:
The whole "slut shaming" thing is getting out of hand. People didn't like Miley's "performance" because she's getting out of hands ridiculous and embodied all that is wrong with modern pop culture more than modern pop culture itself. I can't imagine any of us actually give a crap, we just look at this whole mess and cringe. Everybody can rest assured that we do the same thing when "male" idols, like Justin Bieber, do the same thing. The public reaction can't be solely appropriated to sexism, there's also a healthy dose of proper indignation - what the fuck are those asshats trying to sell us?
Also that whole thing about cultural appropriation is fucking retarded. I eat Italian food made by Greeks and Canadians, am I a monster? Am I offending people when I eat pastas? People can steal other people's dances, even Miley. No need to read a book and know why they shake their asses in such a way rather than some other way.
Fuck people and their political correctness shit. It has gotten to the point where people can't have a negative opinion about anything without being accused of having some Freudian daddy issues.
I mean... I try to be a little more charitable and assume there's more value to people's ideas, but on the other hand... you're not wrong
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I don't think I'm all that dismissive of other ideas, but I don't have much to go off of. I just think the whole cultural appropriation thing is just another one of those political correctness problems that we have made up for ourselves because we're bored. People in other countries imitating American culture is unequivocally fine but somehow Americans imitating other cultures is "cultural appropriation"?
It seems to me that there's a double standard here, and I don't know what it stems from, but I can only imagine it's from those fine folks who don't realize how patronizing they are toward other cultures, and feel the need to protect them from harmless "attackers" because those poor little cultures don't defend themselves.
Anyway I could be completely wrong, I'm not too familiar with this debate. It just doesn't seem useful. It's a completely artificial thing to be outraged about.
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Certainly I share your skepticism about cultural appropriation, as indicated by the title of this blog. That said, a quick googling finds this post which might explain some of the double standard you're talking about:
http://mycultureisnotatrend.tumblr.com/post/781005138/on-reverse-cultural-appropriation
This blog seems to be mostly about people appropriating aspects of Native American culture, for instance feather headdresses, for the sake of fashion, or being trendy, or what have you. She sees this as misunderstanding an often-abused culture, misrepresenting it, and disrespecting it. And I can see how trivializing sacred aspects of another culture, without really understanding what they mean, would be offensive. Of course I would figure being disrespectful to someone's culture is offensive whether or not you're appropriating it across cultural lines, and the issue is one of cultural ignorance and disrespect, not appropriation. The answer to cultural ignorance would seem to be educating people about other cultures, rather than yelling at them for being curious. And disrespect, again, doesn't really have to be across cultural lines.
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EPT
