Tópico: 5 Helpful Answers To Society's Most Uncomfortable Questions

[Barata Tenno]

5 Helpful Answers To Society's Most Uncomfortable Questions

How many of you are old enough to remember "We Didn't Start The Fire," that shit-awful Billy Joel song in which he unconvincingly insists over and over that he didn't cause the apocalypse?

<a href="https://www.youtube.com/v/eFTLKWw542g" target="_blank" class="new_win">https://www.youtube.com/v/eFTLKWw542g</a>

Well, what I am finding as time goes on is that we are all secretly Billy Joel. Write an article on the Internet about racism or sexism, and there's always this annoyed backlash. "I did not cause slavery! I'm a white guy who works for minimum wage at Comcast, running the Random Call Disconnection machine! Would you please just move on so we can finally talk about something else?"

Then, every reply to that guy seems to come down to, "No, you really don't get it! Slavery and Jim Crow weren't just bad, they were really, really bad!" And then he rolls his eyes because, well, who doesn't know that? "But I still didn't start that fire. Don't make me flip this table!"

Personally, I think everyone's understanding of these problems is completely backward. And I think that's why people feel like they're never getting satisfying answers to questions like ...


#5. "Why Do People Shit On Me Just Because I'm (White/Male/Straight/Etc.)?"

I'm going to tell you the weirdest and, yet, most obviously true thing you've ever heard:

You're not a person.

This is going to sound like some real Rust Cohle shit, but bear with me because deep down you already know all of this.

For instance, you already know that you are, to a certain degree, a product of your genes -- they go a long way toward determining if you would be physically imposing or weak, smart or stupid, calm or anxious, energetic or lazy, and fat or thin. What your genes left undecided, your upbringing mostly took care of -- how you were raised determined your values, your attitudes, and your religious beliefs. And what your genes and upbringing left undecided, your environment rounded into shape -- what culture you were raised in, where you went to school, and who you were friends with growing up. If you had been born and raised in Saudi Arabia, you would be a different person today. If the Nazis had won World War II, you would be a different person, still.

God knows we would be different.

So, even when personal choices finally come into play, you're still choosing within that framework -- you can choose between becoming a poet or a software engineer, but only because you were raised in a world in which other people had already invented both poetry and computers. That means every single little part of your life -- every action, every choice, every thought, every emotion, every plan for the future, everything that you are and do and can potentially be -- is the result of things other people did in the past.

These mostly dead people shaped every little molecule of you and the world you inhabit. You are the product of what they did, just as they were the product of those who came before them. You are, therefore, not a person any more than a leaf is a tree. It makes far more sense to think of yourself as one part of a whole (the "whole" being every human who has ever lived) than as an individual -- you benefit from the whole's successes, and you pay for its mistakes as if they were your own -- whether you want to or not.

As evidenced by you being the one to read this on your laptop, rather than being the one who paid pennies to assemble it.

This is not abstract philosophy, this is not something you can choose to believe or not believe -- this is a statement of physical fact. Refusing to acknowledge it will only leave you endlessly confused and frustrated. For instance, when you show up at a job interview, or a trial, or the set of a porno, that whole context will walk in the door with you. Everyone in that room will be making certain assumptions about you and will hold certain expectations, based on the greater whole of which you are a part.

That means you can't think of your life as a story. You have to think of it as one sentence in a much longer story ... a sentence that doesn't make any sense out of context. But, understand the context, and you will understand your life.

Very few people are really able to do this -- I sure as hell can't -- which is why we get frustrated and say things like ...


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[Buckaroo Banzai]

Eu não entendi.

[Barata Tenno]

Eu não entendi.

Leia o artigo original....

[Buckaroo Banzai]

Uma longa e arrastada defesa de generalizações politicamente corretas contra brancos, basicamente. Nesse caso, não é necessário se ter qualquer cuidado com linguagem e etc. Argumentos análogos para "culpa" ancestral de outros grupos não são permitidos.

"Um homem branco heterossexual não pode ser vítima de racismo ou sexismo porque ele está no time vencedor, que desfruta de todos os privilégios". Lembra até aquela paródia do Eddie Murphy "undercover" como homem branco.

[Moro]

sem sentido.

[Buckaroo Banzai]

Não é totalmente "sem sentido", é mais um dos casos onde o certo é uma posição meio centrista que é ao mesmo tempo óbvia e difícil de frasear sucintamente.

Brancos/asiáticos e homens mais comumente, mas não universalmente, terão menos desvantagens na vida em comparação a mulheres e negros ou índios. Racismo e sexismo existem mais não estão onipresentes e nem são a única explicação de todas essas diferenças de vantagens e desvantagens. Classe explica mais.

[Moro]

That means every single little part of your life -- every action, every choice, every thought, every emotion, every plan for the future, everything that you are and do and can potentially be -- is the result of things other people did in the past.

These mostly dead people shaped every little molecule of you and the world you inhabit. You are the product of what they did, just as they were the product of those who came before them. You are, therefore, not a person any more than a leaf is a tree. It makes far more sense to think of yourself as one part of a whole (the "whole" being every human who has ever lived) than as an individual -- you benefit from the whole's successes, and you pay for its mistakes as if they were your own -- whether you want to or not.

Isso não quer dizer nada nem serve para algo, isso o que quis dizer

[Buckaroo Banzai]

Nessa eu acho que ele quis sofisticar demais a idéia de que "somos produto do meio e da história", mas mal entendo qual o ponto exato, que no caso não pareceu ser o daquelas refutações da falácia do mundo justo. Daí que eu não entendi.

Mas é só uma parte do texto, e com isso ele provavelmente quis fazer parte do embasamento de que é OK ser racista com homens-brancos-heterossexuais-e-inerentemente-privilegiados  -- já que você não é bem "humano". Mas nesse sentido politicamente correto de dizer que não são humanos, claro. Você é um "ícone", alvo da generalização de um grupo privilegiado Generalização essa que não é aceitável para indivíduos de grupos desprivilegiados.

[Moro]

somos produto do meio e da história e as pessoas interpretam as coisas de acordo com sua cultura e criação.

ficou algo fora de todo o nhenhenhe?