But sometimes there is justice in claims of cultural exploitation and expropriation too. — unenlightened

Agree. Not trying to be silly here, but didn't Christians 'steal' Jesus from the Jews?

What do you think I’m saying?

Picasso said, some artists borrow but I steal.

What do you think I’m saying? — NOS4A2

I think the word is homogenization, or maybe more accurately, colonialization.

No, that’s not what I’m saying. A figurative statement is not to be taken literally.

Figurative with the belief that it ought to be literal?

"In an essay adapted for the Book Review last year, Henry Louis Gates Jr. warned, “whenever we treat an identity as something to be fenced off from those of another identity, we sell short the human imagination.” People can successfully project themselves into the lives of others. That is what art is meant to do — cross boundaries, engender empathy with other people, bridge the differences between author and reader, one human and another."

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/24/opinion/lived-experience-empathy-culture.html

The article is reactionary shite.

Do you know what it feels like not to be a white male?
— ZzzoneiroCosm

I do not know what it feels like to be a white male. — Jackson

Exactly. As if every white male has the same experiences, and as if every black man has the same experiences and needs that are different than white males. ZzzoneiroCosm is a racist and sexist - stereotyping people based on their skin color and sex.

If black actors can be cast as white characters, then why not the reverse? It seems that shared experience only works in one direction.

"Group solipsism" is a contradiction in terms.

Solipsism is the philosophical position that only one mind exists. — ZzzoneiroCosm

Well, yeah the group mind, as in group-think.

Its why anti-free-speech snowflakes are leaving Twitter in droves. They cannot cope with opposing viewpoints. Their viewpoint can be the only viewpoint, and any others must be "misinformation" :scream:

"Errors of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it."
Thomas Jefferson

Everyone should be able to say what they want as long as reason is free to filter it. A competition of ideas with reason being the judge is how progress is made, not by silencing any opposing viewpoint. Why do you think science has progressed as rapidly as it has compared to religions? Religions only seem to progress when science forces them to.

There are mixed race people and mixed culture people and life is complicated. — unenlightened

Not really. When we see each other simply as fellow humans, instead of focusing on our differences of race and sex where it isn't appropriate (category error), it becomes very simple. Why can't we all be like dogs? Dog breeds exhibit the diversity of the gene pool. Dogs of different breeds breed with no quarrels. The don't seem to notice the differences amongst themselves.

Alas it is the result of your thinking, not mine. I do not think cultural differences should be erased - you do.

and The Chinese communist Party agrees with you. — unenlightened

Then tearing down statues of a particular culture isn't trying to erase a particular culture?
https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/502492-list-statues-toppled-vandalized-removed-protests/

Does this mean that Nazi and Communist cultures should be free to express themselves?

No, cultural difference should not be erased, nor should they be the focus of your identity. People change religions, adopt the customs of other cultures, so the culture you grew up in and your ancestry does not necessarily define you. You are a human-being first, not a black man, or an white woman. Those are only PARTS of what it means to be a human-being, not the entirety of what it is to be a human-being. By focusing on those parts you only end up diminishing yourself.

There are mixed race people and mixed culture people and life is complicated.
— unenlightened
Not really. — Harry Hindu

No, really!

Then tearing down statues of a particular culture isn't trying to erase a particular culture?
https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/502492-list-statues-toppled-vandalized-removed-protests/ — Harry Hindu

No it isn't. One does not wish to erase the memory of slavers or colonial exploiters, or of Hitler or Stalin or Pol Pot or whoever. But one wishes to change a culture that lauds them as heroes and role-models. It is fairly clear that a culture that is defined by its oppression of others such as nazism or slavery, cannot coexist with one that defines itself as fair and open. so we object to graffiti swastikas and statues that celebrate slavers.

When we see each other simply as fellow humans, instead of focusing on our differences of race and sex ... — Harry Hindu

When we see each other through the lens of a well-intentioned but disingenuous ideological lens there is a danger of dehumanizing them. Our differences is what makes us individuals. Problems arise with how one regards and treats others in ways that are harmful on the basis of race or sex.

As to the OP, I think it is misguided and all too easily drifts to the absurd. If "lived experience" or "personal experience" is the determining criteria, then all representation must be limited to autobiography.

There are mixed race people and mixed culture people and life is complicated.
— unenlightened
Not really.
— Harry Hindu

No, really! — unenlightened

My point was that it was not complicated, not that there are not mixed race and mixed culture people. I thought that would be obvious had you read the rest of my post.

No it isn't. One does not wish to erase the memory of slavers or colonial exploiters, or of Hitler or Stalin or Pol Pot or whoever. But one wishes to change a culture that lauds them as heroes and role-models. It is fairly clear that a culture that is defined by its oppression of others such as nazism or slavery, cannot coexist with one that defines itself as fair and open. so we object to graffiti swastikas and statues that celebrate slavers. — unenlightened

That's a fair point. But we should also take into account people are products of their time, and the progress that was made since could not have been made if we didn't start somewhere, and that there are other places on the planet that are far more oppressive than the U.S. I also don't think that having a statue of George Washington causes people to be racist, nor do I think that taking it down stops racism.

When we see each other through the lens of a well-intentioned but disingenuous ideological lens there is a danger of dehumanizing them. Our differences is what makes us individuals. Problems arise with how one regards and treats others in ways that are harmful on the basis of race or sex. — Fooloso4

We have differences and similarities. It all depends on what you or someone else wants to focus on. If someone dehumanizes you because of your differences, then it is the differences that we should be ignoring, not focusing on. Identity politics includes focusing on your own differences as well as focusing on the differences of others. Both are wrong because they are both forms of racism and sexism.

As to the OP, I think it is misguided and all too easily drifts to the absurd. If "lived experience" or "personal experience" is the determining criteria, then all representation must be limited to autobiography. — Fooloso4

True, but then we'd be focusing on our differences again. We have both differences and similarities. There must be a reason to focus on one or the other.

If someone dehumanizes you because of your differences, then it is the differences that we should be ignoring, not focusing on. — Harry Hindu

It is not that the difference should be ignored but rather that such differences should not be regarded as exclusionary factors for what it means to be human.

There must be a reason to focus on one or the other. — Harry Hindu

It has been said that extreme views on opposite ends of the spectrum come close to each other. Rather than a straight line with two poles they are more like the Greek letter Omega:Ω. Both extremes come close together in excluding what is regarded as 'other', even though they do so for very different reasons.

Sometimes we are better able to see others than we are able to clearly see ourselves. It is like a brick on a wall able to see the wall across the street, but unable to see itself.

Also, relationship is important. I am something different to my brother than I am to myself, something else again to my wife, something else again to my pet, to my boss, to my food animals, and so on. You might argue that we are largely relational, not really being anything in ourselves.

A man doesn't generally know what it is to be encountered as a woman. A woman must tell him. There is something to be said about men that is for women to tell. There are things about women that men can see well that women have a hard time seeing, and vice versa.

I have recently spent some time overseas and am getting ready to move there to live with my wife. As I learn more about this foreign culture, integrating some of it, inhabiting it to some small degree, I become better able to see what it is to be American, what American values are, and so on. Also, I am able to see many things about my wife's culture that she doesn't readily see.

Things are revealed by comparison, by relation, by difference.

What we constantly are is the background we cannot see, like the water the fish swims in that the fish is unaware of.

It makes perfect sense for someone of one identity to make portraits of another.

Personally, I like asking others what they see in me. I get insights into myself otherwise unavailable to me.

We have inadequate models of ourseleves. We don't actually really deeply know ourselves. We cannot contain ourselves. It isn't necessarily the case that we are in the best position to explain ourselves.

In my experience, it seems hard for people to psychoanalyze themselves. We are too embedded in our own shit, too invested in our own defense mechanisms, and so on. Everyone knows the good psychologist who can't solve or even see her own problems.

Observations made from the inside and from the outside are both useful and interesting.

Also, relationship is important. I am something different to my brother than I am to myself, something else again to my wife, something else again to my pet, to my boss, to my food animals, and so on. You might argue that we are largely relational, not really being anything in ourselves. — petrichor

Your whole comment was very good, thank you.

Hume's critique of identity is that everything is relational. A hand is five fingers but we call it one thing, a hand. We are many different things to different people and even to ourselves.

Also, as for appropriation, it is a good and important thing for various entities to learn from and incorporate aspects of one another, no? What if we were to stop doing this? I can't think of any cultural form or technology or whatever that doesn't have some appropriation in its background. Should Russians not have computers? What culture first painted? Should the rest of the world leave painting alone? We use arabic numerals and algebra. Bad?

Your whole comment... — Jackson

Thank you!

Hume's critique of identity is that everything is relational. — Jackson

Yes! Even in QM, as Rovelli points out, basically what it means to have a property is to be measured, which means to be interacted with, to be encountered. Or, as in Madhyamaka philosophy, nothing has "own-being". All things instead co-arise interdependently.

If someone dehumanizes you because of your differences, then it is the differences that we should be ignoring, not focusing on.
— Harry Hindu

It is not that the difference should be ignored but rather that such differences should not be regarded as exclusionary factors for what it means to be human. — Fooloso4

Exactly - to be human. For us to understand that black men and white men can have the same experiences is to understand them both as being human, not black men and white men. We do not have black man and white man experiences. We have human experiences. All humans have different experiences when they are in a place where a majority/minority of of one skin color exists. The fact that there is a majority/minority of skin color in a particular corner of the world is just a basic unavoidable fact. What we can avoid is using those distinctions against someone, which starts with ignoring those distinctions in situations where they do not matter as in hiring someone vs being diagnosed with a disease.

There must be a reason to focus on one or the other.
— Harry Hindu

It has been said that extreme views on opposite ends of the spectrum come close to each other. Rather than a straight line with two poles they are more like the Greek letter Omega:Ω. Both extremes come close together in excluding what is regarded as 'other', even though they do so for very different reasons. — Fooloso4

If the reasons are different, then what is it that is shared by the extremes to say that they are close to each other?

We do not have black man and white man experiences. We have human experiences. — Harry Hindu

That is not always the case. You are conflating an ideal with reality. The fact of the matter is that prejudice has not been eliminated. A white man in the US will not experience this discrimination when buying a house or applying for a loan or applying for a job or being stopped for a motor vehicle check.

If the reasons are different, then what is it that is shared by the extremes to say that they are close to each other? — Harry Hindu

The banning of books is a topical example. "Cancelling" is another. Restrictions on speech.

That is not always the case. You are conflating an ideal with reality. The fact of the matter is that prejudice has not been eliminated. A white man in the US will not experience this discrimination when buying a house or applying for a loan or applying for a job or being stopped for a motor vehicle check. — Fooloso4

Yes, but I don't think that is what "experience" means.

Yes, but I don't think that is what "experience" means. — Jackson

I don't follow. How is being on the receiving end of such discrimination not an experience of discrimination?

I don't follow. How is being on the receiving end of such discrimination not an experience of discrimination? — Fooloso4

I don't experience myself that way, it is just an event. I know this seems to trivialize discrimination, but there is a distinction to be made between things that happen and my experience of the world.

there is a distinction to be made between things that happen and my experience of the world. — Jackson

I would make the distinction between what is experienced, in the sense of what happens to someone, and how it is experienced, in the sense of how one responds or is affected you what happens. Both the what and the how are part of experience.

I would make the distinction between what is experienced, in the sense of what happens to someone, and how it is experienced, in the sense of how one responds or is affected you what happens. Both the what and the how are part of experience. — Fooloso4

As a social being I understand that others see me as a type. I know others may see me as a type. But I do not experience the world as a type. I am not really disagreeing with you, but I think experience is mostly how I see the world, not just how I am treated as a type.

But I do not experience the world as a type. — Jackson

I agree. My brother and I may experience the same event differently.

I think experience is mostly how I see the world, not just how I am treated as a type. — Jackson

And yet, how I am treated will influence how I see the world.

And yet, how I am treated will influence how I see the world. — Fooloso4

Yes, not disagreeing. But just because others treat me as type 'white male' does not mean I must treat myself that way.

not disagreeing. — Jackson

Understood.

But just because others treat me as type 'white male' does not mean I must treat myself that way. — Jackson

Bringing this back to your OP, the assumption addressed in the article is that we can only see things according to our 'type'. It strikes me as stereotyping in an attempt to overcome stereotyping.

Bringing this back to your OP, the assumption addressed in the article is that we can only see things according to our 'type'. It strikes me as stereotyping in an attempt to overcome stereotyping. — Fooloso4

Yes. Imagine being in a philosophy class and constantly hearing, why are we studying dead white European males?

When I was teaching I had to address this challenge on occasion. When I taught courses in Chinese and Japanese philosophy the challenge was usually limited to the authors being dead.