sj_zero on Nostr: In short, optimizing for brevity in this political and philosophical environment ...
In short, optimizing for brevity in this political and philosophical environment means too much meaning is lost to be meaningful. That's why so many people want to talk to each other but end up talking past each other. (and if you don't like effortposting, you can stop here!)
If the conversation is nothing but platitudes and nobody is understanding each other and everyone is just talking at each other uncritically, then maybe it's a conversation worth killing. The Internet (and places like Twitter in particular) are filled with discussions like that every day, going nowhere except dragging the people involved to Hell.
The problem is a rhetorical tactic called dialectic, initiated by Hagel and promoted by Marx, but today used widely because we're all living in a post-Marx civilization, which requires all words to have a double meaning, so you can say a sentence with words that are designed to have different connotations to different groups listening. It means you need to lay out your argument in its entirety because if you're relying on words meaning to carry shorthand, you're not communicating effectively with anyone outside of your tribe.
An example of this is the word "hate". To the non-left, we've been trained to think of it as the robotic recitation of the isms and phobias. "racist sexist misogynistic homophobic transphobic" as we've been 'educated'. To the left, it's understood that you can hate all sorts of people and it's not hate. Men? Toxic! Whites? Privileged! Heterosexual? Just plain evil! Conservative? Nazis you should immediately punch! It's amazing how liberating it must be to reject hate by hating almost everyone! Of course, you might think "ok so the right can just use the same definition!" no, it doesn't work that way.
One thing I noticed a lot and eventually stopped listening to is experts who would take an innocuous thing Trump for example says, and they'd say with authority "When he says this he really means" and then lays out a completely different, usually bigoted thing he didn't say. Eventually I had to stop listening to those "experts" because they were lying and trying to rewire my language centers. Their statements were baseless, but people listening to them uncritically nodding along and then would hear people outside their tribe and assume the worst, and no conversation could actually take place without long form explanation.
An example of this is "Make America Great Again". While imperfect particularly for marginalized groups, the postwar period was a great time for the average American working class family. They were able to own a home, buy a car (or even two cars), their homes were constantly seeing amazing new technologies that were making the average person's life better -- 75% of refrigerators on earth were owned by Americans, for example. A single earner could support a family, and households could afford several kids and had the space to raise those families. It was also a high trust society. People felt like they could let their kids play outside alone, keep their doors unlocked, and knew their neighbors, and often had social connections such as friendships. By contrast, today most young people feel like they'll never own a home, most young people can't afford cars or fuel, technology is relatively stagnant and the last major new technology was decades ago, two earners are required just to make ends meet and households feel like they can't afford kids at all, let alone several, and even if they thought they could afford several they don't have the space for kids often living in crowded apartments, and people feel atomized, anonymous, and uncared for, often not having many or any friendships. Wages as % of GDP are lower every year, and individuals pay most income taxes. When Trump says he wants to "Make America Great Again", he isn't saying he wants racism and sexism back, he says he wants the ordinary American worker to be empowered again, and yet the left spits on that phrase. The knee-jerk assumption that everyone who wants to "Make America Great Again" actually wants to make America white supremacist again shows the strong de facto disconnect between the left and the working class.
If the conversation is nothing but platitudes and nobody is understanding each other and everyone is just talking at each other uncritically, then maybe it's a conversation worth killing. The Internet (and places like Twitter in particular) are filled with discussions like that every day, going nowhere except dragging the people involved to Hell.
The problem is a rhetorical tactic called dialectic, initiated by Hagel and promoted by Marx, but today used widely because we're all living in a post-Marx civilization, which requires all words to have a double meaning, so you can say a sentence with words that are designed to have different connotations to different groups listening. It means you need to lay out your argument in its entirety because if you're relying on words meaning to carry shorthand, you're not communicating effectively with anyone outside of your tribe.
An example of this is the word "hate". To the non-left, we've been trained to think of it as the robotic recitation of the isms and phobias. "racist sexist misogynistic homophobic transphobic" as we've been 'educated'. To the left, it's understood that you can hate all sorts of people and it's not hate. Men? Toxic! Whites? Privileged! Heterosexual? Just plain evil! Conservative? Nazis you should immediately punch! It's amazing how liberating it must be to reject hate by hating almost everyone! Of course, you might think "ok so the right can just use the same definition!" no, it doesn't work that way.
One thing I noticed a lot and eventually stopped listening to is experts who would take an innocuous thing Trump for example says, and they'd say with authority "When he says this he really means" and then lays out a completely different, usually bigoted thing he didn't say. Eventually I had to stop listening to those "experts" because they were lying and trying to rewire my language centers. Their statements were baseless, but people listening to them uncritically nodding along and then would hear people outside their tribe and assume the worst, and no conversation could actually take place without long form explanation.
An example of this is "Make America Great Again". While imperfect particularly for marginalized groups, the postwar period was a great time for the average American working class family. They were able to own a home, buy a car (or even two cars), their homes were constantly seeing amazing new technologies that were making the average person's life better -- 75% of refrigerators on earth were owned by Americans, for example. A single earner could support a family, and households could afford several kids and had the space to raise those families. It was also a high trust society. People felt like they could let their kids play outside alone, keep their doors unlocked, and knew their neighbors, and often had social connections such as friendships. By contrast, today most young people feel like they'll never own a home, most young people can't afford cars or fuel, technology is relatively stagnant and the last major new technology was decades ago, two earners are required just to make ends meet and households feel like they can't afford kids at all, let alone several, and even if they thought they could afford several they don't have the space for kids often living in crowded apartments, and people feel atomized, anonymous, and uncared for, often not having many or any friendships. Wages as % of GDP are lower every year, and individuals pay most income taxes. When Trump says he wants to "Make America Great Again", he isn't saying he wants racism and sexism back, he says he wants the ordinary American worker to be empowered again, and yet the left spits on that phrase. The knee-jerk assumption that everyone who wants to "Make America Great Again" actually wants to make America white supremacist again shows the strong de facto disconnect between the left and the working class.