"YOU CANT BE TRANS BECAUSE ONLY 'MAN' AND 'WOMAN' CATEGORIES EXIST FUCK THEM!" — DifferentiatingEgg

I never said that or even implied that. Please read this post: this is what I think: https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/1030360

It welcomes transpeople as human beings the same as anyone else. I agree, this is stupid issue. There are about 15 transpeople in the world and everyone has to have an opinion about it. And no one knows how to speak about it.

You really have no idea who I am and how I regard people, or what I say to them. Please read my post above.

Regarding your quote above, my point is more like this: YOU CAN ONLY BECOME A 'TRANS PERSON' IF PRIOR TO THAT SEPARATE 'MAN' AND 'WOMAN' CATEGORIES EXIST, AND IF ANYONE TELLS YOU THAT IS METAPHYSICAL TRICKERY, FUCK THAT!"

Please read my post, and chill out.

As long as I'm allowed to show you what a failure you are at lambasting, and ignore your opinions when I have to pee at a public establishment, or when defending my designation when I apply for a Real ID, then who TF cares about "your category" whatever "your" means in that scenario? Transwoman can say they are anything they want and you can call me a skunk, or "not a man". That isn't the issue. Do I have to say it - that is the issue. Will the government force me act in some new way, choosing new bathrooms for instance. You have it backwards. The issue is, can you tell the world that the world's category of "man" that has been forced upon you, is being rejected by you, and that you are now forcing the world to see you as "whatever the hell you want" and forcing the world to speak accordingly and provide rights accordingly.

It seems there are a lot of people out there taking the absurd position that, "You cannot be what you are, because I do not know what you are."
— Questioner
Excellent. — Banno

I don’t think that is true but even if so, isn’t that a separate discussion?

I mean, you are right, it is disrespectful and oppressive to tell anyone “you cannot be what you are (maybe unless you wanted to be a sociopathic murderer.) But this thread is more about, Person A is trans and Person A is saying they are a woman, and Person A is saying they deserve “women’s rights” and that Person B needs to acknowledge and support that.

A person walks in to sign up for a women’s swim meet, and says they have a right to be there, and to point them to the locker room. And the swim meet lady says “You are telling me you have a right as a woman to compete and use the women’s locker room as a woman, and you are telling me this is a right that men do not have, but as a woman, you have that right.” Can we ever interrogate that person’s claim? Can the swim meet tell a man (or person who identifies as a man) “No you cannot enter” and also admit a transwoman?

Or do we need to throw away all policy distinctions between men and women, all allowances for men over here, and protections for women over there, so that we never have to make such an inquiry?

It just doesn’t seem practical to refrain from segregating men from women. Transwomen pose issues to what previously seemed like a natural segregation between men and women for simple reasons surrounding fairness, privacy and security. Transwomen flat out defeat these segregations in sports for instance. I agree they greatly threaten these segregations when it comes to privacy and bodily security (bathrooms, locker rooms, girls clubs).

It all seems like a valid discussion is needed to me.

It seems there are more people averse to discussing the issues than there might be people telling others what they can be. People can be whatever they want but why does it have to undo all of the institutions built around the notion “for women only”?

Maybe we don’t have to define men, women and transwomen to have the discussion (although I am amazed at how many philosophers seek to avoid defining terms), but, I’m not sure what to say if you don’t see any issues created by the more recent teaching that we all get to privately determine what gender means and what gender we are, as we publicly announce to others who they are and what words we are to use to refer to them.

I mean is gender purely a personal and private determination? Doesn’t it have a public component and even public function to it? Gender and biological sex were once considered deeply connected. Maybe a complete definition of “woman” is impossible, and maybe it includes many malleable, changing social conventions, but it used to also include by default things like “having a uterus” and a certain body found in nature.

Transwomen are people formerly considered men, and they even considered themselves to be male. They then seek to distinguish themselves from men and males, and no longer call themselves men and tell others not to call them men. This is their will and their reality - they were considered men, and now want to show their distinction from men. That all sounds like a workable start (if you ignore psychology and reproduction of the species trends, and maybe the way legal fraud protections are written). There are men who transition themselves away from being called men. Fine. Great. Be what you want to be and who you really are.

But do these people now transitioned and transitioning people get to take any word or any concept and use that to publicly declare who and what they are? Is that practical for anyone? Do these males, formerly named men, get to commandeer the word “woman” for themselves and demand one of her lockers? Is it reasonable or transphobic for a female born woman to see a transwoman as a new type of human being coming in from outside the group called “women” to redefine the shape of the community of women? Is it reasonable for the transwoman to expect others to give her the same protections and access as women?

So it’s not about telling people what they can and can’t be. Maybe a transwoman isn’t a man and can be something or someone else, but why do they get to take “woman” away from women? Why do they get access to all of the things held exclusive for women just because they say “I am a woman now”?

Can transwomen be women in a functioning society that has so many institutions for women only, built to exclude men? Does that not raise the issues for you?

And I’m sure the only reason many politicians support equating “transwoman rights” to all things formerly “women’s rights” is more cognitive dissonance training for a more easily manipulated population of sheep. It will help train people for statements like “you are better off today” and “it’s the right thing to do” despite all evidence to the contrary. But I digress from the metaphysics and the practical applications of the metaphysics into stupid idiot politics.

The point is to not project upon them the notion of "man as such" or "woman as such." — DifferentiatingEgg

Isn’t the point nothing anyone says means anything to anyone else but themselves? Meaning is a private invention - a choice.

But then, telling people they are wrong or have problems is fun isn’t it. Meaninglessness is a real pickle when you are as eloquent as Nietzsche.

Didn’t Heraclitus’ student Cratylus answer questions by just wiggling his finger? True commitment to avoiding the seductions of grammar. Also useless in a discussion.

the history of our interactions in this forum would suggest not. — Banno

So your problem is you think those two questions are the same? Since you’ve identified my problem I don’t think this is too bold.

Blah blah blah, — DifferentiatingEgg

That was fun.

Nice exchange folks! It’s not like there is any philosophy to discuss here anyway.

And Egg, Heraclitus said “it rests from change”. Rest is static. I don’t think you understand Heraclitus (or much of what I said above.) But I assume you aren’t interested in talking with me either.

And “human” is a category, an ideal, just as much as “trans” is. That makes my whole point (again) - no one is avoiding reification as and definitions of things in the world and then communicating with other people. You can’t help it. Which is Heraclitus’ point.

Is Philosophim’s question

“can people use ‘transwomen’ interchangeably with ‘women’ in a sentence coherently?”
Or is the question

“are transwomen women?”

I thought it was the latter. I thought these were two different questions. — Fire Ologist

There's your problem. — Banno

I'm interested. Can you explain that to me? My answer to the first question is "yes, by setting a context and defining our terms accordingly, we can create conditions where these two words create subtle distinctions but can be often be used interchangeably with coherence". My answer to the second question is "no, they are distinct things in the world."

So what is my problem?

experiences of becoming in order to discuss a "thing." — DifferentiatingEgg

Spot on. That is what is at stake. How do we identify a “thing”, (any thing, like a trans woman or a woman), and discuss it? Identity, and communication through language of identity. Spot on.

platonic tool forces a style psychology upon the person that is exceptionally seductive. — DifferentiatingEgg

Ok. But then the person who identifies as mom, sitting at her child’s public school play, in her dress with her beard, asks “where can I find a bathroom for me?” Don't forget, there are two bathrooms available with two different words on the doors intended to invoke distinctions among people for the sake of creating a sense of safety and privacy.

Do we need to read Plato and Wittgenstein first? She herself admits she can’t just pee on the floor, or anywhere she wants. Where do you tell her to go, and here is the real question, why do you think where you tell her to go makes any sense for her, and for everyone (since the signs don't magically change themselves)? The world around you fancy grammarians is making policy and defining terms. We all need more input. Is your final answer to this mom: "Man and woman are platonic concepts - I don't know - it doesn't matter to me."

A couple Platonic dialogues are implicated, but this isn’t just platonic theory - it’s policy. Can a person list “wife” on a benefits application if they are a transwoman, or is this fraud? That is really the exact same question as "are transwomen women." Or "what is a thing."

I am not denying context impacts definitions. I just asking questions in the largest possible context, and admitting the fact of definitions. This is all convention, I get it - so, what is the specific convention going to be?

And I’d argue this is Aristotle, not Plato. We are talking about immanent form (the intelligible aspect of a thing becoming a thing) not some battle of absolute ideal notions, pitting being against becoming. We are talking about particular people representing themselves through language to other people. There is a whole world of praxis in which these "platonic" ideals are being used. We are fixing definitions based on things in the world for the purpose of communicating meaning to others in the world through that language. The moving parts are not just the words. It’s a bitch.

Ignoring the issues as metaphysical folly says nothing. Maybe that is by design. Hope you never have to run anything or manage people.

But you seem to understand the question, as you highlighted "experiences of becoming in order to discuss a 'thing'." That is the nut of the issue.

So are you just not interested in the context of trans? Or are you seduced by fire, and you really think man and woman are concepts only? Maybe to avoid "thing" you've reified something else?

-------

Heraclitus was an opponent of BEING! — DifferentiatingEgg

That's what they teach us Socrates and Plato and Aristotle said. But Heraclitus wasn’t an opponent of being. We should all understand Heraclitus better. He recognized that the “ing” in being is the same “ing” as in becoming, and therefore, that being itself, is moving. He defined being as becoming. Our grammar broke apart Heraclitus' wisdom. We've mostly fabricated the importance of the grammatical distinction between being and becoming, when in experience, there is no such distinction, and "becoming" is the better term for all of it.

“There is an exchange: all things for Fire and Fire for all things, like goods for gold and gold for goods.” - Heraclitus Fragment 90.

Becoming things, is not just becoming - we need things too. You need to fix goods, to then exchange them for Fire. We need to carve out a man, to then notice he both steps and does not step into the same river. (See Fragment 49)

That doesn't therefore mean the goods, the things, are not in-themselves becoming and moving. That is another issue (one that makes defining things fraught with error). But we need not ignore the fact of things being things as we throw them back into the fire.

You guys staying so strong against the seduction of grammar, all sound like you only see Fire. Ok. But then how is there any distinct issue to clarify in the first place? If all is just Fire? Where are the woman versus men versus transwomen? And what are you doing when you see one thing distinct from another? What does the Fire consume? How come you even know what Philosophim is asking, or how Philosiphim formed his question?

You are saying there is no question. But the question still is, where am I supposed to pee without creating a shitstorm? The shitstorm is real, if protests and legislation are real. You seem to think we invent this metaphysical controversy by misunderstanding how seductive grammar is, and that the little girl who is shocked by the person in her bathroom invented her own shock because she reified “woman” beyond all practical application and expectation. Maybe it’s not the Platonic form and our discussion of forms so much as it is the beard and the deep voice. She needs a word for "beard" if she is to describe what happened to her in the bathroom. Or maybe she needs a word for "man" distinct from "woman" or "transwoman". Or is she just being a sexist little girl, or imagining beards, and her sense of shock can be trained out of her by an enlightened society (which would still require fixed things and definitions to do the training, just new things and words.)?

“How can anyone hide from that which never sets?” - Fragment 16 This cuts both ways - Fire, for all things.

"For though all things come into being in accordance with this Law, men seem as if they had never met with it (sleeping), when they meet with words (theories) and actions (processes)..." - Fragment 1.

“To those who are awake, there is one ordered universe common to all, whereas in sleep each man turns away [from this world] to one of his own.” - Fragment 89.

Sounds like a warning against private languages. As in "I identify as a X" as if we were good at identifying anything. Sounds like he recognizes language, law and becoming - not just becoming (in its sense that we've made it an opponent of being).

Ever since Plato, Heraclitus has been pigeon-holed as only speaking of fire and flux. He just wisely recognized that defining terms, seeing the law, was precarious and perilous, so his language confused people. “The path of writing is crooked and straight.” - Fragment 59 "Nature likes to hide." - Fragment 123

I would agree there is no platonic form of "woman" or "man" - but there are things that we call men, and things that we cannot call men. I'm not trying to reify any notion or idea - I'm trying to talk about particular things that come to be in our faces, or bathrooms.

---------

As we both grapple with this: "experiences of becoming in order to discuss a 'thing'." here is the only thing you need to explain: How is the person who says "Transwomen are women is true" not using language to subvert clear communication among all women, men, transwomen, transmen, kids, people? Do we really think we can take a convention so simple and basic as gender, and allow individuals to privately shuffle all of the moving parts without breaking down communication, confusing our laws, shocking children, angering moms and dads, disappointing athletes, sparking allegations of fraud, and in some cases, harming the individuals who were told they are trans?

The metaphysics here needs to be addressed better than "seduction of grammar". We need to use grammar to influence policy, and impact particular lives and situations. There are consequences to playing with words and meaning this way.

I just like how people use language to subvert communication, and talk about it, and think they have said something, that doesn’t contradict themselves.

So you are saying there is no metaphysical issue here, it is a misunderstanding of what language does, and the question “are transwomen women” is more of a psychology issue, or legal status issue, and the philosophy part is easy peasy?

Is Philosophim’s question “can people use ‘transwomen’ interchangeably with ‘women’ in a sentence coherently?”
Or is the question “are transwomen women?”

I thought it was the latter. I thought these were two different questions.

(“Latter question” cannot point to my first question above, or you will be confused, and language no longer serves its intended purpose.)

Are the above two questions the same question, or does one relate individual words to language, and the other relate words and language to things in the world that are talked about?

Can’t a man, who transitions his body so that it presents as a woman, call himself a “man”, a “woman” and a “transwoman” functionally? Sure he can, depending on the context. And if we all retrain ourselves we might not be confused when s/he speaks.

Here is a question: if there is any difference in the world between the two things that “man” and a “woman” used to refer to, can a transwoman in the world be referred to as a “woman” or a “man” whichever he/she chooses without reshaping both the man AND the woman? Does it make sense for us to agree that “woman” now meaningfully refers to that person with a penis and a dress, since she told us that is what she refers to herself as - is that how linguistic communication or “grammar” as you call it, is supposed to work, and does that make sense when trying to move people around in groups, with sports/bathroom policy, in the world?

Or dare I ask “what is a woman anyway?”

The bathroom thing is a stupid issue but it demonstrates the metaphysical point. What distinction in the world (if any) produced the first male/female segregated bathrooms, and can we meaningfully squeeze transwoman into the ladies room without subverting or ignoring whatever that distinction was?

There was the feminist line “a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle.” Great line. It’s funny. Or if you are a man, you might be insulted.

But it’s only funny or insulting if you have a solid sense of what a fish is, what a bicycle is, and what a man is and a woman is. As things. In the world. As objects named “fish, bicycle, man or woman.” The words only have meaning because of the things they refer to. The line is only funny if you’ve met a few men, women and fish, and bicycles, and you are keen enough to spot some differences among them.

So is a transwoman a woman?

Are differences similarities?

Does a language that fosters miscommunication function as a language?

Do two different bathrooms meant for two different groups of people serve any purpose unique to each one?

Bizarre indeed.

Or maybe everyone is a Heraclitean, embracing the absurd paradox it is to be an human being, and “the way up and the way down are one.”

Heraclitus wasn’t much of a communicator or community builder either.

———

ADDED:

Seduction of Grammar... this whole thread... — DifferentiatingEgg

You forgot to use the word “is”.

By “Grammar” do you mean “bicycle”? Or does this thread need no being, despite your presence in it?

This is an online forum to communicate. Words are about all we have. Grammar is always at issue. But is it the only issue?

Really? We need to get into this.

For all of the relatively tough calls, let’s hope the people involved can show courtesy and maturity and charity and just work it out. No policy covers 100% of use cases. I don’t think we need to toss all of the penises and vaginas into one big bucket and resort things and redraft a simple policy because of newly manufactured genitalia on a few people. People are still pretty private in the bathroom. Transpeople should give others privacy and expect their own will be honored. Pick a lane in the spirit of “men’s room” or “ladies room” and be courteous.

This is the problem. We’ve skipped to making policy before defining membership in our groups.

The groups should likely be men, women, transmen and transwomen. We are talking about bodies. So nothing is equal here. As persons, as humans, all are equal; as bodies, like male or female child, things are unequal. Why did we think of separate men’s and women’s rooms in the first place? Whatever drove that, (privacy/security while vulnerable) seems to now beg for more types of bathrooms. I would disagree that because of genital surgery we now need to work up a new theory about how some penises now belong with the some vaginas, in spaces they never belonged before.

But at this point, we’ve recognized men, women, transmen and transwomen, as different and distinct from one another.

So you are coming around to the need to hold terms down with clear definitions in order to make policy, or just communicate clearly?

Or can you and me have totally different ideas of what a bathroom is and still communicate? Can we have any genitals, whether naturally occurring or manufactured, and identify as any gender we want when choosing a bathroom, or competing in “women’s sports” or expecting people to remember who is a she and who is a he?

I’ve got the bathroom thing all figured out. That really isn’t an issue. It’s one application of the issue.

The issue is the language. Are transwomen women? We need to define things to answer that. We need to define things to write down a policy, about bathrooms or sports or rights or whatever. I think there is a clear answer. I think it is easy to say, no, women are not the same as transwomen. Easy. All the linguistic acrobatics ensue for the people who want to stay confused about it, or the people who think they are the same gender. (Ironically, they don’t think they are using clear definitions in any of their acrobatics.)

As far as who gets to get naked in what public rooms, it’s probably best to keep all the penises segregated from the vaginas. Maybe as a temporary provisional solution while we sort out whether transwomen are women. If transwomen can’t stand using the men’s room, they really do have a problem when nature calls. But why on earth would we think all the girls, ladies and women should be forced to help transwomen with their feelings? Why would we think there would be no conflict created by letting persons with penises who identify as a woman into the “ladies room”? And why would we think we can just reassign the function of what “ladies room” was meant to signify and things would play out smoothly? It is bad philosophy at the least, if not bad psychology leading to such bad policy.

What does this have to do with bathrooms? — Ecurb

The issue is language. Bathrooms provide the laboratory to apply our changing languages. Bathroom choice is just one consequence. I’m interested in the cause of the confusion, not so much the traffic jam at the ladies room door.

Surely the way to allow people to feel comfortable in bathrooms is to allow those looking like and presenting as women to use the Ladies Room, and those presenting as men to use the Mens Room. — Ecurb

Surely? Millions of people disagree, so surely you don’t use “surely” the way I do.

Men’s rooms and ladies rooms kept separate had to be invented. Ladies rooms don’t grow on trees. So do you think the reason the two rooms were first kept separate was to facilitate comfort with being around people who “present as” certain genders, or to facilitate comfort about being in a space where people with vaginas can only possibly bump into or see or be look at by strangers with vaginas?

Perhaps women would be uncomfortable if someone who looked like a man entered their domain -- but why would anyone care if someone presenting as a woman did? — Ecurb

Maybe ask some girls. As a man, in today’s litigious society, if a woman walked into the men’s room while I was peeing at a urinal, my only concern would be whether I might accidentally do or say something that might instigate some insane lawsuit. I wouldn’t be afraid for my body. Girls might also be afraid they could get hurt. Girls have been hurt by penises in bathrooms, and bathrooms make all people vulnerable, naked, embarrassed.

This isn’t deep psychology or sociology.

you can make that argument without referring to the definition — flannel jesus

How about without any definitions, can you argue (speak words) making distinctions between two different things using words with no fixed definitions? I’m still trying to show that we need definitions at all. “Woman” is just the latest foil.

We can’t escape how language serves to communicate between two people. What is communicated, the shared understanding, cannot be an amorphous changing blob, or nothing is communicated and no one understands what is shared.

cis man and trans man cannot refer to the same human. Those are antonyms. — flannel jesus

I don’t think we need to exaggerate the distinction into “antonym” but you admit here, in the man (not the word) there exists something that would make application of the terms “cis” and “trans” contradictory.

Well how about “woman” and “transwoman” - any distinctions of note there at all? Anything present in the transwoman that would beg use of a different term than “woman”? Is it just cis man and trans woman that cut clear lines as antonyms do and contradictions do?

“Fixing a difference” like “stipulating”. The real question is can “cis man” and “trans man” refer to the same object in the bathroom, like “woman” and “transwoman” seem to do today in some bathrooms.

You gave up on me.

You know what I mean? — flannel jesus

I honestly don’t, if you are not talking about fixing definitions of words in order to allow two different people to share one understanding.

practical justifications — flannel jesus

In this context, isn’t a practical justification a definition? A fixed use of a word relative to fixed things the word refers to? That’s practical. That allows for an agreed justification. Some girls don’t transition from males, and don’t transition into males - we can fix a word for that. Let’s call it “girls”.

Transwomen no longer want to hide in confusion. Great. So let’s not think “she” can be applied to “John with a beard” and also think we are clearing things up.

trite things like semantic arguments — flannel jesus

Ok, then why not just agree with me? If this is trite. Throw me a bone and say “yeah, I guess words have some degree of static fixed components to them in order to function as a communication between people at all.” It’s just trite semantics at bottom anyway.

You are merely leaving the conversation leaving things unadressed.

Cis men don't have that, trans women do. — flannel jesus

So are you fixing a difference between “cis men” and “trans women”? Because if not, why bother pointing out something that one has and another doesn’t? If you are, that explains your static, fixed distinction between “cis” and “trans”.

The bathroom obsession…is ridiculous — Ecurb

The bathroom provides a context that makes this debate about words and people’s habits of any significance in our lives. It’s not just about what to do when it’s time to pee. It’s about saying “hi, ma’am, can I help you?” Such a statement can become a declaration of war today. As we all debate the meaning “woman”. This debate would be similar if Philosophim asked “Are snowfalls rainfalls?” The bathroom provides a practical application to our policy about language and the words “man” and “woman”. If I get to decide today that snow is rain, will I still earn equal treatment with other meteorologists? Will people come to me when they are interested in the weather tomorrow? Or am I only communicating confusion? Can it snow in a bathroom? Is taking a shower, standing in the rain? Is there nothing we can fix to clear up any confusion?

Some school districts are grappling with actual policy and the provision of bathrooms to the public. These are physical objects we are naming “boy” or “girl” and “bathroom”, not just mental notions. I am saying no one gets to make any policy about anything without fixing terms. Is saying things in the world have differences between that we can acknowledge in our language. What is the significance of the “men’s room” sign on the door? Is anyone thereby excluded? What is the sign purporting to facilitate?

What is ridiculous to me is the willingness of people to say something, and say they have referred to nothing fixed. Language doesn’t function that way. It’s too late for all of us - we keep fixing ourselves by speaking at all.

One cannot say what gender (or anything) is not without simultaneously defining something about what gender is. If gender, signified by words like “man” and “woman,” can be defined and applied as I alone see fit, then no one can tell me what is not a man or what is a woman. So no one can correct my use of these words either, and their confusion is all on them.

This isn’t just about words changing. There are solid situations we are struggling to describe, like when a person with a penis chooses to enter the room called “ladies”. Some people see something unexpected in that situation, because “ladies” and the person with a penis didn’t used to line up. Some people see this situation and think we need new words for the door, or we must not need the old words to mean what we expected before, what our shared understanding once was. Other people see men in women’s rooms under the name “ladies room” as risky, as harmful to the expectations of people already in the ladies room formerly exclusively identifiable as women, and through the misuse of language, divisive of community and communication.

Bathrooms provide one theatre for the conflict between the postmodern musing about language as only use and the practical functions of communicating.

Are transwomen women? This is a biological question, a psychological question, a sociological question, and a philosophical question. (And a practical one when it comes to where we are allowed by policy to pee.). I am focused on the philosophical question, and the fact that the “language is use” model provides only a means to seek definition while avoiding finding a definition, which subverts the purpose of language, which is communication between two different minds. Language isn’t just about words and word usages. It’s used to move bodies in the physical world. It captures practical policy.

If I get to identify myself as a woman, and everyone is confused by that, the postmodern solution is to tell everyone else “words change”. It’s not to correct me and my misuse of a word. The postmodern solution to confusion is, “live with the confusion”. But maybe, just maybe, the confusion stems from thinking anyone gets to identify objects any way they want and still communicate in a shared language, about a shared understanding. That seems like a cause of confusion to me. I’d rather take advantage of the fact that we can use words to fix things.

How do you guys not see that, in order to dialogue with me, we are each relying on fixed, static uses of words? I am assuming by “static” you don’t understand me to mean “amorphous and changing”. That is how language works. We make our moves standing on fixed points and moving.

Women are women. So how can transwomen simply be the same as women? Aren’t there any differences between women and transwomen worthy of any acknowledgment? What makes “trans” aEd or mean anything if “transwomen are simply women”? If there are differences, do you really think using the same word (such a basic word as “woman”) for these two different things is a clarifying solution to the question”are transwomen women?”

This debate truly is ridiculous. It isn’t rational to seek to use the same almost axiomatic word and concept “women” for distinct bodies, especially given that we keep distinguishing men from women. We need a new word for the distinction transwomen are carving out for themselves, as they they distinguish themselves from the men they once were lumped in with. It is impractical, non-biologically supported, socially confusing, and philosophically unsound to think “trans women are women.”

Transwomen are people, deserving of our love and kindness and respect, and equal rights as fellow citizens. That all really has nothing to do with this philosophic question. Women people deserving all of these as well. And men. A few people (and a political ideology) don’t get to hijack the function of language and repurpose the word “women” just because they think that is the only way equal rights and respect can be distributed to the people who distinguish themselves as “trans”.

It’s not about bathrooms. “She” no longer has meaning if it can refer to males, females, men and women. “She” used to clarify who you meant - now it causes confusion. I’m sure it feels good and validating and supportive for a transwoman to hear herself referred to as “she”. That doesn’t mean it’s not going to be confusing for everyone to keep trying to distinguish her from him in our language as we communicate.

People who seek to change the function/use/meaning/efficacy of such basic terms can probably chill out while still protecting their dignity.

So the word “woman” only functions relative to other words. That is the source of the confusion. I am saying the word “woman” functions relative to certain things. Otherwise, when a dude with a beard in a three-piece suit walks into the ladies room, we can’t tell him “Ladies” means “not you dude.”

People decide what words mean, — flannel jesus

So are transwomen women or not? What is our decision? I’m saying if you all decide yes, you are breaking the simple defining characteristics of women, and transwomen. We need two separate words for these or we will end up finding penises in girls rooms.

People decide what words mean, — flannel jesus

That doesn’t refute the need for stability and the static in language. It just states how stability is reached.

definitions come later. — Ecurb

I think I’m trying to speak to whether definitions come at all, ever.

You guys and your magical functioning use.

Nobody said that though, — flannel jesus

The only way for you to know nobody said that is to fix meanings. Otherwise, are you sure you aren’t saying that? Absolutely “nobody” is saying down with all the rules? Gender is so fluid, “ladies room” could have anything in it? Or no?

as long as it's static enough — flannel jesus

That’s my take. You just agreed with me, (which is also bizarre).

In order for the definition and use of a word to change (at all) from “x” to “y”, the word has to first be defined as “x”. Static enough is essential to communication among different people.

Can we define “woman” today, for right now, and for use tomorrow? Or not?

just relatively stable. — flannel jesus

Relative to what, the beginning of time, or the last time I spoke, or relative to what I meant by a word yesterday in my mind, or relative to what Shakespeare meant, or relative to what most people meant, last century versus last night? Relatively stable will get you to a single functioning definition if you let it. People can grow new uses and words can change, but that is a different topic isn’t it?

We act like it is impossible to fix a definition and stick with it.

It only seems to be impossible when people don’t like the word.

If all words had fixed meanings, there would be one true correct language and all other languages would just be wrong. — flannel jesus

I don’t see how fixing words within a language makes one true language (as opposed to other false languages). I’m just saying language isn’t language without fixing words with meanings. Meanings and uses can change. But a word is never useful at all if it is not fixed to some degree by all who attempt to use it, and if the word is never fixed first, how do we know its use changes, how to we mark its change?

Nice used to mean foolish. Today it doesn’t. In order for those two sentences to function at all to communicate your point, we need to fix two different meanings to the one word “nice”, one of them for a few hundred years ago, and another different one for now. There is a ton of relatively stable, static enough work being done to make things “nice”.

When it comes to “woman” for some reason people think we can let everyone say who/what it means differently everyday, for themselves, and for others, and yet believe language will function. Yesterday “woman” would never include “having a penis” but today, some think “woman” can include it while keeping “woman” functional in our language. Language doesn’t work that way.

We could redefine women to include people with a vagina and people with penis, if we want to, and find it useful. But we have a word for that group - person, or human being. Woman means something more specific.

Words like woman and man aren’t fixed labels; their meanings come from how we use them in our lives, in law, in society, in everyday practice. Language isn’t a static system of definitions—it’s a web of practices, habits, and shared understandings. — Banno

Maybe, but you say it in such absolute terms, it casts some doubt on your own view. You make “language isn’t a static system” the static description of all that language ever is.

What if language would never have gotten off the ground if “language isn’t a static system of definitions”?

I know it’s all clear to you, but it seems to me, if I was you, and all I saw in language were blurry, shifting (not static) temporary practices, I wouldn’t be using dogmatic sounding terms like “language isn’t a static system.”

If language didn’t contain the static, ever, the notion of “shared understandings” is silly. How can two people share the same understanding if not even words can be fixed? What is left to fix as shared?

Uh-huh. And this fluid, ever shifting approach then applies directly to words like "child" and "adult" and "consent." We're no doubt supposed to understand these words, not as a static system of definitions, but as a web of practices, habits, etc, so that we can't point at a statute and say, "This person was underage" because words like "underage" can't be understood in such static, rigid terms. — BenMcLean

Exactly. Once you downplay and subvert the function of language to define itself and fix its terms, you destroy the ability of two communicants to coalesce on a shared understanding. Once you try to argue that “woman” need not mean the same thing to me and to you, today and tomorrow, then why bother trying to clarify anything? Whatever is clarified is not actually clear, and the words used to clarify it are not clarifying.

A man is a whole thing. Gender, biological sex, psychology and desires, etc. We have made the word “man” to distinguish this from that. Or are we all mumbling to ourselves, hoping some context might make it make sense to whomever hears us?

multiple legitimate uses — Banno

If language needs nothing static about it to function as communication, and foster “shared understanding”, how can you say “legitimate” and mean anything whatsoever by it? What, or who, legitimates? Legitimate here serves to make each use “static” so you’ve contradicted yourself.

Meaning is contextual: truth isn’t fixed by biology alone nor reducible to private claims. — Banno

That is all accurate. But it doesn’t mean that nothing static forms. It precisely means there is a particular (fixed) context for a particular meaning to cash out as “truth”. (Why do you bother with the word “truth” - you mean to say “function”. And you still don’t avoid what is fixed and static in order to say something that others wouldn’t also understand as truth.)

Statements like “transwomen are women” can be true in some contexts (social, legal, identity based), and false in others (strict biological categorisation) depending on which use of the term is salient. — Banno

But the only way to navigate through a conversation and make statements that “can be true in some contexts and false in others” is to fix things, and make our definitions concrete. The very statement you just made is meaningless to anyone and everyone until you fix something for us to measure it against. Why would I agree with anyone on earth about what they find salient when I am questioning the meaning of statements like “men are also not men, because the meaning of ‘men’ is not fixed?”

Language itself is the only salient thing now, because it seems to be slipping away, as we speak.

Attempts to privilege one use as “the only correct one” ignore the plurality of language functions and tacit prejudices about what counts as “rational” uses of terms. — Banno

I think this is the source of the flaws in the “language is use” model. The flaws are above (namely, language can simply be derived from itself and its functions; language contains nothing static; context is the locus of meaning to the detriment of the thing that is meant; words seem to function despite themselves.). So it’s not a flaw inside the model, but it’s the source of the flaws.

No one is attempting to privilege one use as the correct use. (You raised “correct” - you are the one raising “true in some contexts and false in others” - that is a conversation that would seek the “correct” - so someone must be trying to privilege the correct, but this is a digression.)

It’s not about correct use among many uses. The attempt is to find one single use of a word, at all. You miss this point, and skip right into the fray of “the plurality of language functions and tacit prejudices about what counts as “rational” uses of terms.” There is no plurality absent any individuals. The attempt is to individuate one clear term, to focus on the individual with its context. Fix an individual for all to share. The attempt is to count a single rational use. If you leap to the flux of context battering anecdotal instances without concern for fixing any words, context in flux devours all meaning. If language is not static, then “language” will one day not mean what “language” is spoken (like “woman” used to specifically exclude “with a penis” but no longer does.)

So the source of the flaws is a prejudice favoring flux and motion and its affects on any attempt to fix terms.

The flux is real and ubiquitous. But so are the things moved, the objects we similarly grasp and understand and fix.

Language as mere use, renders “meaning” fairly useless. Language is more than use, and that more, includes the fixed.

Being human wreaks of the absurd. But to say more than that, to say “the absurd” with clear meaning and understanding is to refute this absurdity existed in the first place. If we don’t want to recognize the fixed and the understood and the things about language that can never change, then it seems ridiculous to argue with anyone, about anything.

Basically “transwomen are women”, once true in any context, subverts any solid sense of “true” or “context” by dismantling any reliable use of the words “transwomen” or “woman”.

/.../ why you believe it as true (although it is false).
— Bob Ross
This is Bob Ross feeling superior to me. — baker

You don’t know how Bob feels. Unless Bob says or acts like “I am superior to you” then you have to make this judgment about how Bob feels from outside of Bob.
True/false judgments aren’t banishing people to hell, or inferiority.

You seem to be laboring under the assumption that feeling superior to others is somehow wrong, or that I am criticizing religious/spiritual people for feeling superior to others.
It's not and I don't. If anything, it's evolutionarily advantageous to feel superior to others. — baker

Feeling superior, that’s a short-coming. One can feel something and it not be true, like I am so happy I bet I could fly, so off the cliff I jump and then, dead - no evolutionary advantage to feeling superior or having any false feelings. I am not sure what you think, because you reduce Christianity to feeling superior, but then say the reduction is an evolutionary advantage. My opinion: feeling superior to fellow brothers and sisters is specifically something Christianity teaches against. Those who feel superior to others and compare themselves to others because they have been blessed to know God through Christ, don’t know God very well at all either, at least not who God is by seeing Christ. Me believing this and saying this means nothing as to who is superior. Me knowing God and still sinning makes me worse than the person who doesn’t know God and otherwise does what I do.

Christians who feel superior to non-Christian’s, like they are God’s elect, like they know who is NOT elect or who gets into heaven, don’t understand at least half the gospel. If that is what they really feel.

And a little boost of false superiority doesn’t equate to Christianity’s appeal across all cultures and ages, if you still think superiority matters to Christians.

”The core Christian message is that God is trying to bring us to know and love him. There is no such thing as knowing someone or loving someone without their free, honest willingness.” - FireOlogist

But there's a catch: We have only one lifetime to do it, and if we fail, that's it, hell, forever.

“This in itself is more universally appealing.” - FireOlogist
Under the pressure of only one lifetime for action, it becomes absurd. Even more absurd when one considers the possibility that one could die at any time.

“Christianity democratized human value, not to each other, but to a God who loves each one.” FireOlogist

How is it an act of "love" that God grants some people the privilege of being born and raised into a religion and thus never having to struggle with choosing a religion and joining it -- but witholds that privilege from others?
That's not love, that's sadistic perversion. — baker

Don’t believe any Christian or anyone who tells you they know who is going to hell, or what hell is. All such things are up to God, and between God and the individual. Christ showed us the best way to follow him, but there is wisdom from the Hindu, from Buddha, from Moses, and many others - who are we to judge how God brings people to him and saves them from death.

Hell is something we make for ourselves. Eternal hell isn’t a punishment as much as it is a condition, and it is a condition we can only freely choose. There are no people thrown into hell on a technicality, or because they didn’t say enough Hail Mary’s. It’s up to God what “accepting Jesus Christ as your savior” means in practice. It’s up to an individual to see God face to face and reject Him or not. No one else besides you can know your own heart like God does. In between you and God is where heaven and hell exist. Be not afraid, or so superior to God that you can know He’s a sadistic pervert. Because God would die on a cross to reach out and make you see who he is. He just wants you to be an adult too, be good, and gives you power like He has over your own life and own choices, so you can add goodness to the universe yourself, like a gift that even God would be pleased with.

Piss on hell. Don’t be so anxious, or quick to judge God’s plan for our lives. Love is a good thing, and if we have to suffer for it, and in our suffering we start to hate and fail to love, and start to harm others and ourselves, God is ready to welcome us back in an instant. Who knows what happens at the instant of death?

The only hell to worry about being in is the one you create for others, and the simple way to avoid it is to make life better for others.

So this behavior of Christians is not to be taken as exemplary of Christianity, and that behavior of Christians is not to be taken as exemplary of Christianity. But then what is? — baker

Christ. That’s it. Zero further examples available, (at least none are as good).

forms of normativity that are historical, situated, and contingent without collapsing into “anything goes” — Joshs

what promotes wellbeing — Tom Storm

So to my mind, “forms of normativity” and “what promotes wellbeing” serve as placeholders for objective, universal, natural foundations for moral truths. But I think you might agree with this.

I’m tempted to say that no one really has a foundation for morality, some just think they do and therefore believe their views are grounded. — Tom Storm

Yes, so instead of saying morality requires fixed foundations and authority (which is where I am headed), you seem more inclined to admit fixed laws are hard to come by, and maybe impossible to come by, so “no one really has a foundation for morality.”

I think that is right. That is what morality is about. Maybe Nietzsche was right and we need to move “beyond good and evil.” So your question and intuitions are valid.

What really matters is the world. I can still vote, belong to organizations, and support values based on my own view of what constitutes a better way of organizing society. Do I need any more than this?

Our society is a messy clusterfuck of pluralism, competing values, and beliefs. All we can really do is argue for the positions we find meaningful — Tom Storm

I get what you are saying. I just think this is a retreat from the can of worms you opened up.

Morality doesn’t begin, to me, until there are at least two people interacting, and a law or other (objective) source of authority to which both people are subject. Morality is the objective umbrella under which human interactions can be judged. Together, under their law, we enter a moral life. If we lose the objective moral law, or say the law will shift and change (so no real law), I don’t think anyone can really argue positions meaningfully. We each become locked in our own subjective positions with no means to show others why our stance is the only good stance, or the morally better stance. We can convince ourselves if we want that our own position is the better one, but faced with someone else who disagrees and calls us bad, there is no common ground or foundation upon which the two in disagreement can appeal and adjudicate right from wrong. And however we work through such a disagreement (force, utility, avoidance), there is no reason to call this working things out moral. It’s practical at that point, or just will and power, and non-moral.

It’s like this: checkers involves a certain checkerboard, and pieces that distinguish two players (red and black typically) and certain rules. If someone removes entirely one of these things, and suggests some other game, that’s fine, but it’s no longer checkers. I get that morality has way more at stake (to us) than a game of checkers, but I don’t see how we can tell anyone else “that is wrong” or “he is bad” meaningfully, absent something objective they both stand under.

So to me, we can’t avoid playing the morality game, so we are all forced to figure out the rules. But if we don’t admit this, and do not subject ourselves and others to the exact same rules, we are just resisting the game we already play.

It sucks. We are blind, adrift at night in an ocean, groping for something solid and fixed. We can either keep groping for a shared port to remove our blindfolds, or just keep swimming. But if we choose to forget the port, like everything else in the ocean, no one can say they have the fixed, moral, good, true, objective, wellbeing-promoting certain position.

Thanks for the good faith exchange. Well done.

What I am interested in here is whether it is possible to make moral claims from either (relativist or anti-foundationalist) position. I can certainly see how simple relativism makes it a performative contradiction. Hence the relativist fallacy.

Anti-foundationalists, by contrast, hold that we can still justify our views through shared practices, shared goals and reasoning, even if there’s no single universal truth to ground them. — Tom Storm

Where does this leave the original question? It seems there remains an inconsistency, or something left incomplete, when asserting there can be “shared practices” and “inbuilt awareness that needless harm and suffering are bad” or “moral naturalism”, while also maintaining aversions to beliefs in a “single universal truth.”

Is it possible to grapple morality away objective truth and universal oughts?

Christians believe they are God's chosen people — Athena

Christians believe we are all, every single one (not just Jews and believes but all human beings), God’s children. God is Father. And brother. Your heart isn’t into Christianity, so why would think you could clarify what Christians believe to me, a thoughtful, practicing Catholic?

I hate seeing politicians invoke religion, and hate seeing the church be political and weigh in on public policy. Both institutions screw up everything when they muddle morality with polity. Th muddling effect is why people see maga and Muslims as wanting a caliphate, and why people see leftists as making politics their cult-like moral compass.

So you are not helping your political case at all by invoking what Christians believe.

Weren’t Newton and Galileo and many, many other builders of the science you seem to hold up so high, Christian? Why do you think there is something inherent about Christianity that is incompatible with science? If the two are actually compatible, then all anecdotal evidence of a Christian who was bad and that scientist or politician was better, are different conversations, and don’t necessitate the opinion that religion is a net oppressive and ignorance building force.

the question itself is already posed within the paradigm of "why did this ideology take off," rather than, for example, "is Christianity a doctrine of love?" — Astorre

Fair. I just think that without a sound, basic understanding of what Christianity is, one won’t be looking in the right places for how and why it succeeds. So I’m volunteering my understanding of what Christianity is.

It’s like wondering why the core tenants of the US constitution took off and proliferated in various forms in so many newly formed nations - if one asks why, but sees the US itself as only a colonialist, racist, freedom crushing, economically enslaving, exploitative land of uneducated cult members, then you probably won’t understand why it’s constitution became so appealing. One needs to look at the lives of the people in the US that flourished to explain why the US flourished, and why its constitutional inventions allowed for that flourishing. One needs to honestly categorize the poor US citizen, or even the US prisoner, and their station in relation to the rest of the world’s citizens and the rest of history to judge the success of the US. One wouldn’t be anything more than astonished by the success of the US if it’s constitution was merely a new mask for tyranny and crowd control.

Why does Christianity appeal to anyone? That may be enough of the answer for why it was so successful. And the answer to why it is appealing has to include some information about what it is (at least what it is to that person) (and once you dig into what Christianity is, you need to at least ask “who is Christ” and “what is His message”). And my suggestion for what Christianity is to most insiders has to do with living lives of love, charity, service, and seeking knowledge. These qualities draw non-Christians to Christianity without any effort of the Christian to convert anyone. These qualities build stronger individuals and communities. So it’s inherent appeal spread itself, and it survived/flourished by design of what it is.

The Christian desire that everyone should worship Jesus and insistence that they do so and should be compelled to worship no other gods far exceeded that of the Jews, however. It eventually lead to the destruction of pagan world, though that world survived in certain ways through the Christian assimilation of certain pagan religious traditions, and sometimes even pagan gods via the cult of the saints. — Ciceronianus

Are “compulsion to worship no other gods” and “assimilation of certain pagan traditions” a bit at odds? There was the Inquisition, and its coercion, but that was not close to assimilation. (And that wasn’t Christlike or Christian, so should account for any “success” of Christianity.)

High universality for its time – Christianity's ability to explain various areas. — Astorre

That makes sense. And it explains Christianity’s ability to assimilate new people’s traditions. Christians came to a new culture, sought what was universally good in it and in its people, and found what was good about that culture’s relationship to the divine, and thereby found the universal spirit of their one God already working in that new culture. Assimilation was growth for everyone.

High productivity – Christianity's ability, once accepted as the norm, to generate new, logically necessary, non-trivial consequences that could not be derived from previous experience. — Astorre

You are talking about high productivity of ideas. I agree, and would link that eventually to the production of universities. And notice the word “universal” in the university. (And the word Catholic means universal as well.)

I would also add charity in deeds is very productive and convincing of would be converts. Seeing a new priest share his only loaf of bread with family, or teaching the poor to read - that draws people together. And led to the eventual production of hospitals.

People are quick to equate religion with so many ascetic rules and with earthly-looking power structures. And they equate its spread with earthly tactics of spreading earthly ideologies, including coercion and psychological tricks. But Christianity was always different as it requires freedom to achieve its ends. The core Christian message is that God is trying to bring us to know and love him. There is no such thing as knowing someone or loving someone without their free, honest willingness. This in itself is more universally appealing.

Christianity democratized human value, not to each other, but to a God who loves each one.

In my view, it is easy to see why Christianity spread so far and wide.

It makes them feel superior — baker

What position is the person in who says about another person “it makes them feel superior?”

That doesn’t seem right. Pots and kettles scrapping for the superiority of their color.

How do you measure success to a Christ hung and bled to death on a cross in the public square? You have to account for Christ at least a bit when you ask about Christians. Christ is the message. Christ is what Christianity is. Not human history.

“feel superior” - how many times did Christ implore anyone who would follow him to serve, to never desire to be first or greatest? The night before he died he washed the dirty feet of his students.

Feel superior - that’s soft analysis of the legacy of Jesus Christ, if you ask me.

the ideal has always been supremacy — baker

For the first approximately 300 years (that’s 3 centuries) how many Christians felt superior then?

Seems like a solid foundation in humility to me. Not supremacy at all. Christ was God, and he never did anything but what his father told him to do, unto death, on a cross, at the hands of we pigs and rats. Find the superiority over others in that!

What is the “success” of Christianity, anyway?

The fact that so many people call themselves Christian? Is that the bar for success?

If it is some sort of worldly dominance, or numbers game on converts, that’s worldly, that comes and goes, that’s petty. That’s not Christian success, if you hear what the gospel preaches. That’s stuff for people who count stuff as “success”. Christ didn’t count such things.

My understanding of a Christian success would be sainthood. How many saints do you think there are? Having met many people in my life, I suspect not many. Who gets to judge the most successful religion now?

But my straight answer, talking history or psychology, Christianity is the most widespread through history and across the globe because it is the most practical (easy rules) and welcoming of all religions, calling sinners first and foremost (so every single soul is wanted). And my answer talking theology is that the success is mostly because God wants it that way. The success of Christianity is more proof of the existence of the Holy Spirit in the world, working through history, despite all of our competing earthly “success” stories.

:up:

It was basically a transwoman’s argument, so I thought it was worth considering.

the absurd position to polysemy means we cannot clarify our use of words. — AmadeusD

:up:

People seem to affirmatively want language to be as confusing and unclear as possible. Things are in flux. We all get that. Plus the context for things is amorphous and fluctuates too. We all get that too. Flux begets more flux. Including in the language it begets. We get that too.

But in all this flux, we can control our language.

But does anyone really want to clarify our use of words?

———

Sex and gender are complex, taken individually, or as two aspects of a single, whole person. Granted. We need psychology, sociology, biology and philosophy at the very least to sort this out.

I stumbled across an instagram reel of a transwoman analyzing the question “Is it true that transwomen are women?” Her answer was no, and her argument was pretty simple, but interesting.

She asked, “what is the one thing common to all transwomen?” And her answer was “they are all men.”

Then she went on to say “transwomen who say they are women are taking rights and hard earned gains away from actual women” and that the notion of “cis woman” was something used by people to hijack and claim “women” for themselves, and take something away from women.

So I think this needs to be parsed and distinctions between ‘man, woman, trans and cis’ need to be clarified, but the long and short of it seems to be:

Men are males.
Women are females.
Transwomen are something new/distinct, being that transwomen are males who give a female presentation of themselves though they are (or were in the case of surgery) male.
Transmen, a fourth distinction, are females who give a male presentation. (Although she didn’t get into ‘transmen’ in her reel.)

This is at least workable and clarifies the use of the new word “transwomen”. Women’s rights and women are different than men and men’s rights (at least some rights are unique to women - special healthcare, special safe spaces). Neither women nor men should be allowed to infringe on the unique rights and needs of women. AND more importantly to the transwoman’s reel, transwomen should not be allowed to infringe on women’s rights either, because transwomen are not simply women and need their own unique rights.

This all cashes out to me. I agree with the transwoman in the reel. She is not exactly the same as a man or a woman - she is a man who presents like women, or in other words, the new gender called ‘transwoman’.

Things are only made more complicated than that because some transwomen don’t think they will have true equal rights unless they are regarded and treated exactly the same as women - same women’s sports and lockers, etc. According to the transwoman in the reel, this is denying all the work women did to stake out their own rights, and denying the fact that all transwomen are men who present as women; they are not simply “women”.

To cash this out further for sports and locker rooms, and protect rights of privacy and security and fairness among differences, for all, we would need 4 different locker rooms, and another sports league (or for all sports leagues look to biology alone to define eligible members since competition among females called ‘women’s sports’ is one key reason for the whole competition).

All seems logical and practical to me.

We can’t force people not to see the full beard and the penis on the transwoman who (otherwise) presents herself as a woman, just as we can’t see beards and penises in all of the females formerly called by our shared language “women”.

———

One result of this is, the notion of “I identify as x…” needs to be clarified (or tossed out as folly). This goes back to language. If words are to function, we can’t just link new things to old words, and privately redefine words, to thereby think we are redefining the things those words are used to refer to. Is a vagina also a penis? Is ‘XY’ thr same word as ‘XY’ yesterday, or is it now also tautologous with ‘XX’ today?

We don’t get to say “I think woman means ‘Y’ and I think I am ‘Y’ so that means you have to recognize that I am Y.”

Language doesn’t work that way.

So it never should have been a question “are transwomen, women?” The answer has to be no, because people who want to be trans need to be able to identify the gender to transition into, so that gender needs to be something for them to choose. That’s a man or a woman. And then for the person who transitions, in order for it to be a transition from X to Y, the transition is precisely changing what that gender already is to some new thing, namely a new gender needing a new word to speak of it without confusion.

———

So really we should invent a wholly new word (‘transwoman’ or ‘transman’ will do) to mean what transpeople precisely are calling people to recognize, and respect, and that is: “although we are different than males who are men and females who are women, we deserve the exact same human rights and protections.” If transpeople want to be able to communicate about what they want and who they are and what is being done to them by whom and by what, we all need to clarify our language, so we can speak, and actually communicate with understanding - and this begs for us to reject “transwomen are women” as an abuse of women and language, stemming from allowing people to define their own private identities (ie. “I identify as a woman”), as if we all can’t see for ourselves things that we already have identified and named together (like penises and breasts, and chromosomes and motherhood and fatherhood, and masculine men and feminine women, etc….)

In other words, if all along, all words were in flux because all identities are in flux, then the male once thought to be a man who wants to transition would have nothing new to transition to, nor anyway to talk about it whatsoever. So “transwomen are women” actually defeats both “woman” and “transwoman”, by not meaning something clear, and by confusing everything that is observable.

I found this draft I hadn’t finished before, but thought I would revive this post.

to understand the assertion "Being is”, — Astorre

I think we all grapple with this here on TPF, whether we talk about it or avoid it, an understanding of 'being/becoming' is under every surface, attached to every question. And you apply a very precise lens, namely, the difference between the structure of eastern and western languages surrounding how we think and speak, about this 'being/becoming'.

Although I don't think this is the main point of your post, what may be a theme, and something I agree with, is that "becoming" is a more descriptive definition, or better word for the concept or function of "being" (if we could truly divorce becoming from the thing becoming that ever-newer thing, and still define its being qua being, we would see “becoming” not something dead). Being and becoming have "ing" in common, and "ing" is moving, changing, living, not fixed and immobile.

Being is a sense of becoming. Becoming is the definition or essence of being.

We struggle "to understand the assertion 'Being is'" because substantively, "what being is" bumps immediately up against the "what" of things and not just their "being". Words like "what", or words like "things being things" put things in the way, obfuscating and distracting from the ‘being’ we seek to focus on. It forces being to keep becoming, to become elusive.

And western language makes this even more obfuscated. That is interesting to me.

Yet simultaneously, being remains simple, at the same time. We are always just sitting here, breathing, and we continue becoming, right now, as you are reading words such as "words" and "reading". Being is somehow simply always here, always immediate, and always simple.

Here is a comedy, or maybe a tragedy, of what happens when you try to say what being is:

John and Paul are in a room talking with each other and John says, “I don't know what a dog is, but I understand they are animals that make a sound called ‘barking’. What is this 'barking dog' all about?”
Paul says, “Oh sure, wow, you really have had a sheltered life. I can explain what a dog barking is.” And as he begins to explain, immediately three dogs rush into the room, barking loudly, jumping up and running around - barking and barking. Paul yells, “Ignore that and listen to me.” He yells, “A barking dog creates a loud, agitating, repetitive shout.” John, trying to understand says, “Did you say shout?” Paul says, “Yes. And I’m sorry about the noise, but ignore it, and I’ll talk louder. I can give you a clearer description, starting with a succinct definition of ‘dog’ and ‘barking’.” John says, “Maybe if you define ‘barking’ first or ‘dog’ first I think I might be able to understand.” And Paul yells, “What?....Please ignore the noises and the animals." And John yells “what is it that is that is making it impossible to understand what a dog barking is??”
Defining being is like that. The very words used to make clear what 'being' is, draw the understanding away from the object it is trying to understand, and all the while, in every same instant, ‘being’ is right there already understood, in every utterance, screaming in your ear, a perfect apprehension of what it means 'to be'?”

But I digress, because your question sits at one of the great crossroads, where "being" intersects with its language or its concept, and with all and nothing, or just every ‘thing’. So it is no wonder it is so easy to catch ourselves digressing - confused by our own language at how we cannot say something so ubiquitous as what 'being is'.

I agree with you that understanding being is hampered by the language we use to think and speak of being, and this is more so in the western language. But our agreement, if it is truly an agreement, is like a fixed, unchanging, thing. We have objectified something about 'being'. It is not becoming so much. So our agreement being fixed is at odds with my prior conclusion that becoming and the unfixed are better estimations of how we should "fix" being. This reflects again that speaking about being puts us at cross purposes, set between you and me communicating with each other in language, and each one of us trying to understand and think and speak about "being in the world" individually.

As Heraclitus says "the path of writing is both crooked and straight." - Fragment 59

Words get in the way here. And the words from the east that are in the way are in the way differently than the words from the west that are in the way. And these two distinct grammars “getting in the way” of the same being/becoming, lend a new insight or provide more tools to measure being/becoming.

since philosophy speaks about the world relying solely on language, this creates difficulties for both the researcher and the reader. — Astorre

I agree. If you think of lived experience like an onion, to look directly at “being,” it seems to me one must discard too many layers to continue speaking very well, and the last layer is language itself. It is there, after this last layer, when one wants to speak to point and say "being is". But as we get closer and closer to saying what ‘being’ is, we start to lose sight of anything solid from which to form a word clarifying such solid thing, because to say what being is, we need to remove all such solid things (being they are things and not being), and just speak of their being. To say “what is being” we need to leave “what” behind. But then it again becomes impossible to speak.

(The path of writing about being, without simply writing "being," and nothing else, is both crooked and straight, but mostly crooked.)

grammar is crucial… For native speakers of these languages, "is" is not just a word, but a mode of thought. It's woven into consciousness like a thread into fabric. To say "Socrates philosopher" without "is" is impossible… — Astorre

Yes - being still impregnates anything that doesn't expressly say "is". 'Socrates philosopher', captures the same experience as 'Socrates is philosopher', but the more eastern way allows one to move more quickly from 'Socrates philosopher' to some other thing towards which Socrates or Socrates philosopher moves and relates. The eastern grammar animates a motion from within the subject by begging the unspoken predicate, calling from elsewhere in the information being provided. Whereas the western grammar, by expressly saying "is", the pregnancy of becoming and urgency of being in motion that are built naturally into the eastern grammar is halted, fixing the motion of the sentence in stillness, hovering at best around 'Socrates' and the 'philosopher', two nouns with no needed further predication, or even context, not begging for any more motion.

'Socrates is a philosopher' - this focuses attention on a fixed Socrates, who could simultaneously be may other things, and then entices you with a fixed ‘a philosopher’.
'Socrates philosopher' - this immediately focuses more on a Socrates doing philosophy - it turns a noun into a verb, like a gerund - Socrates philosophizing - and immediately we are already carried along with the becoming of it, looking ahead beyond for what is becoming of Socrates philosopher unfixed by "is", just like any conceptualized, fixed being is really already becoming next and next ahead...

I am trying my best here to make any sense. (So tightly have you placed us in between language and what language does to conceptualize "being").

The verb "to be" in Russian is not a frozen snapshot of a state, but a process, movement, becoming. — Astorre

The absence of the copula "is" makes the question "What is being?" alien. Instead of seeking substance, the Chinese language emphasizes relationships and processes. — Astorre

This is truly interesting. Thanks for pointing this out.

My sense is this. Both the eastern and western minds, or somewhere in both eastern and western thought, all of the distinctions we are making have been recognized - however, the point you are noticing might be that the eastern way of thinking and speaking leaves being/becoming more room to keep breathing, whereas the western way of thinking and speaking makes things express, but by doing so, expressing something less than what the 'becoming' actually is.

The west scrutinizes and strangles still photos; the east leaves hands off and beholds motion pictures.

The western fixes what the eastern allows to continue becoming. And never fixing, but continuing to become, more aptly describes 'being', than fixing a concept does.

This means, to me, that the west is suited best for explicating essence, whereas the east is suited best for acknowledging becoming/being/existence.

A person does not "exist"; they become—a scientist, a father, themselves. — Astorre

Right, so we never fix the 'being' qua 'being' of the scientist. The scientist, being a scientist, is really an act of becoming a scientist. The best way to say this in western language might be: "Scientist becoming," is what is happening.

But here I think I digress again, away from discussing existence or becoming and its language, and instead starting to discuss essences or things, like "Scientist" is a fixed thing we can divorce from any particular being. Where I always end up at this digression point is that, language, or the concepts we have to make of otherwise moving/becoming things, language always re-fixes them, in order to facilitate communicating our thoughts with each other.

Words are the only fixed thing in the universe. They are the possibility of being, in a universe that otherwise becomes.

We can't, between us, speak of becoming if we do not also fix something. So we end up discovering things that are becoming, but in order to speak of them, we fix them as if they are not becoming but are just being. We say "Socrates is a philosopher" even though we are meaning that "Socrates philosophizing makes philosophy come to be" We speak of a conceptualized fixed version of things for sake of speaking, and it is often to the detriment of the things spoken about.

"The path of writing is crooked and straight."

Philosophy deals not with an object, but with its concept. — Astorre

This is a key clarifying insight. Philosophy, by objectifying, fixes something that was previously moving, and still becoming an “object”. A focus on moving/becoming is always forced to refocus on objectifying a snapshot instant of being, and this snapshot, this now fixed and immobile thing, the concept, is the object of philosophy, not the living, becoming moment of the thing anymore, but its concept.

And we are back, hovering around the crossroads again.

The absence of the copula "is" makes the question "What is being?" alien. Instead of seeking substance... — Astorre

That remains interesting. I wish I the capacity really learn Chinese and Russian. I'd love to try to think through these things with a whole new set of tools and grammatical boundaries.

the linguistic structure with the obligatory copula "is" often directed thought towards the search for substance. — Astorre

This seems to recognize the essence-existence struggle through language I mentioned above.

It's like the west pushes you into brick walls to fix predicates on top of subjects. And the east won't let you sit still to finish identifying where the walls are fixed. Is that something you would say?

It also leaves the eastern mind more amenable and open and receptive to, and immediately grasping of, the more mystical aphoristic expressions in language of becoming. In the west, when faced with the contradictions of becoming, the west either dismisses the line of reasoning too quickly, or seeks to resolve the contradiction in an idealism. (Parmenides) The east is more willing to 'rest' with a paradox, to strain linear logic for sake of something more dynamic (Heraclitus), and say what isn't easily said.

the Chinese language emphasizes relationships and processes. — Astorre

In the end, the fixed and its becoming, are both always there. East and West have always shared this same experience and this same struggle to express it in their languages. But it is really interesting to see how their leanings (fixed versus moving) may have been driven by how the languages are structured.

“It is the same thing to think, and speak thoughts, as it is to be” - to paraphrase Parmenides. It is a messy struggle of of permanence with motion. “It rests with change.” - to paraphrase Heraclitus.

we are just as intolerant because we don't accept their intolerance — unimportant

Isn’t “we don’t accept” essentially another way of saying “we don’t tolerate” or “we are intolerant of…”? I’d say your “we” and “they (their)” are both intolerant of something here. But you seem to imply that the left is not tolerant of the right, maybe for good cause.

I take your point to mean: we on the left are reacting to the particular way the right manifests its intolerance. From the view on the left, intolerance on the right looks like racism, religious intolerance and fascism (etc.), so when the left becomes intolerant of the right, it is intolerance of bad righty things, which makes the left’s intolerance good.

So your above quote seems to involve the question: whose intolerance is the good kind and whose intolerance is the bad kind?

And “more“ intolerance now becomes a question of how you measure intolerance - are 50 intolerant lefties worse than 10 intolerant righties by sheer obnoxious volume, or do 10 righties generate way more harmful intolerance than 100 intolerant lefties? Or do we measure the nature of what each side won’t tolerate, or measure how each side won’t tolerate, and is this purely subjective or somewhat objective measurement…?

But whose intolerance is worse, left’s or rights?

I am also closed minded for not liking them. — unimportant

Yes. People all seem to align so firmly as right or left, and think of each is good or bad, and easily close our minds to seeing any goodness from the opposing side.

We need to be mindful of our own closed-mindedness, of our implicit pre-judgments like “I just don’t like you, because you are bad, and intolerant like a racist, like a tyrant, etc…”. That’s bad-faith though. Tough to avoid, because we are so wrapped up in our politics, but an impediment to truth or progress nonetheless.

Accusations of who is MORE intolerant puts everyone in a tough light to start. From my experience, if someone merely knows I am left or I am right, and from that also already hates me for it, they are not going to discuss my ideas, but stay focused on me and my hateful qualities.

So is left or right more likely to let their hate for their opposition render any discussion almost pointless, if not tedious or loathsome as well?

———

Individuals on the left tend to define their personal identity and their morals based on others, and groups, and a consensus of like minded people. They identify who the good ones are, the ones they like and who like them, and who the bad ones are, and left-leaners align with the good ones, and learn to do and say what the good ones do. Because a leftie gets their moral standing from alignment with a group, if someone outside the group challenges the group or challenges one aspect of the group’s ideology, it is simultaneously a challenge to the leftist’s personal identity (since this identity is tied up with the group identity). This is why lefties often can’t even tolerate other sub-groups of lefties. Feminists and Trans folks are clearly left - but they often can’t stand (can’t tolerate) each other, and won’t accept each other into the ultimate group that defines their own identity.

Leftist’s identities therefore don’t have crisp lines, can change drastically while keeping moral justification in the fact that the whole group might change with them as they change the whole group…

All people, left and right, do this to some degree, but it seems to be more essential to leftism that classes of people fall in line, and one’s own good group has members who all pass some sort of litmus test (which can be simply showing up to protest, or raising an American flag), and unite against the bad classes of other people.

Individuals on the right tend to define their personal identity based on some ideal - like a religious figure, or a nation, or family and blood. Their identity is more rigid, and relies on things that are more permanent, have stood the test of time so to speak. So when someone challenges a rightie or a right-leaning idea (“x” country first) by saying “you do bad things” and “your group are baddies” or “you are a hypocrite and don’t really value freedom” it doesn’t affect the right as much; they can chalk that up to bad judgment and ignorance of left. But when someone in the left challenges a rightie by saying things like “your God wasn’t actually a good God, and doesn’t even exist” or “your country isn’t a good country,” the righty’s own identity is challenged and they become intolerant too.

So who knows who is worse. Maybe we should just ask: who is more capable of having a debate with the opposing side? Who can stand each other the longest?

All that said, in my experience, not everyone on the right is racist/sexist etc, (so some are very tolerant) and not everyone on the left is good at all (so some lefties are racist and sexist and facist etc.).

On the narrow question of who is more intolerant: the left is more intolerant. I’m a rightie. :grin: I don’t tolerate people on an individual basis.

Some of those folks are liberal (nuts and screamers) and some of them are conservative (arrogant pricks). I also love some people on the left who appear to hate me.

But of the two ideologies on paper, and most times in experience, I less frequently meet a person on the left who truly respects people on the right. It’s a rare wonderful pleasure. (Some of my family are like that - burning, emotional libs who still love me when I tell them they are wrong, again.)

Religious righties (particularly in America) are often intolerant of non-religious people. This is sloppy of them - this is religious intolerance and really has nothing to do with right or left. It’s also, to me another topic, because right doesn’t equal religious.

Lefty Christians are just as likely to say righty Christians are not real Christians, and righty Christians are as likely to say leftie Christians are not real Christians. They are both wrong, mixing religion with politics (like the Muslims do, also from the right) because left and right need have nothing whatsoever to do with good and bad Christians or good and bad anything. Religious intolerance does manifest from the right, but using left-leaning tactics and leftist type identity politics, subsuming religious identity under political identity. All it does is make bad politics, and provides a weak basis or justification for political argument.

But staying political, generally, more lefties hate righties, and with more passion, in a personal way. Lefties have an archetype for the righty - the rich, white man. Lefties don’t personally tolerate us for very long if at all.

For righties though, due to Hollywood, the news media, the K—PhD education system, and secular, modern culture in general, righties have long been conditioned to tolerate leftism and lefty arguments and left argument style. Righties have to reassure lefties that “I’m not a racist.” Or “I respect women” just for permission to join a conversation. Righties have to get out of the way of the protestors, or else the righty is part of the problem and may as well join ICE. Etc..

I know lefties can say all the same things about the right, and I know it is is easy to be a racist, sexist king from the right, but in my experience, there are many more righties who just get it, and understand freedom, and hate racism and facism, etc; and there are more leftists who seek to create a world where all but an elite are under one government control, everyone left subject to a headless tyrant.

———

ADDED

Economically, socialism can’t function best in a capitalist world, because capital reserves flee the socialist system (the oligarchs and elites have to hide their wealth so they remove it from the socialist system - this is why they say the rich will shrink from NYC). So socialism, in order to function best, and keep capital inside itself, has to be a closed system. It can’t coexist with any other economy and function best.

Socialism, is therefore, an intolerant economic system.

Capitalism doesn’t care what you do, just as long as everyone can make and visit and retreat from, a marketplace.

Ok you win. Religion is the problem and the enlightened ones like Mandani and AOC and Kelly are our only rational hope for a better world. I’ll tell everyone at Mass this Sunday not to read the Bible or hope in “God” anymore. Should help speed up the process towards utopia.

It’s been 300 years since the enlightenment. When do you think people will reason this out and we can all have affordable health insurance and free cocoa pebbles? Maybe as soon as Trump is ousted?

I am not saying we should ignore immigration laws. I am saying we should be decent human beings and treat everyone decently. NEVER, EVER SHOULD CHILDREN BE TRAUMATIZED. NEVER SHOULD A HUMAN BEING BE HUMILATED BY FORCING THEM TO BE NUDE IN PUBLIC. LOOK AT OUR MORALS, AND WHEN ORDERS VIOLATE MORALITY, THAT IS A PROBLEM TO BE CORRECTED. The behavior of ICE is worthy of a country run by thugs, not a civilized nation. And for crying out loud, the US is not the only country with an immigration problem. This is a global problem, and it will require a global solution. — Athena

You are a good person. I can see that. I don’t mean to sound like I am attacking anyone else, except maybe when I am atracking all of us, me included (if “attack” is even the right word).

I may disagree with your analysis, and your appraisal of certain facts.

But I do agree that we can no longer ignore immigration laws (totally agree). The world of civilized people (which is everyone who wants to join) can, if we want, settle our borders, and protect all our cultures.

We need to ignore those who want to destroy each other, make the peace, and then enforce it against those who keep destroying. Right?

Instead of picking on ICE agents, shouldn’t we figure out what their job should be, by writing better immigration laws, clarifying reasonable suspicion, facilitating due process, whatever we must to make borders and immigration rational? We don’t simultaneously fight our own law enforcement. Quite the opposite, local police should be working really closely with ICE, not against them, because they know where trouble is in their towns, and more importantly, where it isn’t. There are so many things we could do better.

No one wants to harm children or terrorize otherwise law abiding, hard working people - that is not anyone’s goal!.

And yes, this is a global problem. We do not know how to walk and chew gum. We don’t know how to protect our beloved cultures without hating someone else’s. That is the main struggle of history, both inside the tribe and among the many tribes. Muslims don’t know how to be Muslim in a liberal democracy of free men and women. Christians don’t know how to be saved without damning everyone else. Americans don’t know how to be proud and “first” without judging all others “third world” and over-exploiting opportunity. Poor people don’t know how to be grateful and content. Rich people don’t known how to be humble and charitable and sacrificial. Trump doesn’t know how to be strong, but not a bully. Righties don’t know how to be absolute, yet merciful and vulnerable. Lefties don’t know how to stand with the oppressed without oppressing and moralizing the “bad people” (or this group or that group….).

It is because all of us are too content to be divided up into our safe groups of victims, blaming the other groups for our own self-inflicted wounds. We love our precious misery. It feeds our cathartic anger, that we take out on our own brothers, who we should love, and instead allow ourselves to stomp on the immigrant or stomp on ICE.

And we refuse to learn anything.

Well, we’ve learned a lot, but that is just for yelling against each other - we haven’t learned how to actually do better, to build a true civilization, where justice is present for at least most of us.

I still don’t mean to attack anyone.

Many countries need to almost stop new immigration for some time, figure out how to offer amnesty even to millions of migrants who are currently in those countries illegally, find out if they want to stay, and be done with the framework. But even rich America can’t assume responsibility for the world’s poor indefinitely, so as borders open up again on solid ground the border can never look like Biden’s border ever again. This will cost everyone a lot (so we will wallow in hell and Hope shit works out….)

We need all countries to love their own identities and take responsibility for their own identities, clarify where the lines are, and clean this shit up. This means there are different laws in all of the different countries and when in Rome, we all assimilate as the Roman’s do. We don’t go somewhere to change it. It will change if it’s own, just like each who immigrates will be changed. Everyone, of course keeps their own heart and culture and religion, but everyone also makes room to find goodness and inspiration in the culture that welcomes you home, your country, or if an immigrant, your new country.

There are as many reasons for all of us to love each other as there are to hate each other.

We choose to find the reasons to hate. We don’t have to, but we do. Hating the other tribe is the easiest way to escape our own guilt for hating in the first place (“they are the haters and the evil ones!”) - we only hate other people and cultures out of our own weaknesses, and no one wants to admit they are weak.

We have made a complex problem for ourselves. We keep handing it down to the next generation. When will there be enough people who are brave enough to forgive past injustice, and heal, and claim justice instead for an actually better future we might participate in? The solution is not whether left or right is wrong; It’s in how both are inadequate without each other - something new, that carries with it the same good that was and is always there.

You speak of coping skills — Athena

I do? I spoke of the shallowness of identity politics.

You … defend the actions of the German Gestapo — Athena

Really??

Where did I do that? You seem to say things like the above so easily. You come off as divisive and extreme, as you bemoan the division in America.

Anyone who breaks the law deserves punishment, including ICE employees. Period. But that goes for immigrants too. All people who immigrate to the US without honoring our due process of immigration law should expect a visit from ICE. Period. Time for everyone to take some responsibility for the mess that is US immigration. ICE are just doing what we all hired them to do.

Work to change the law if you don’t like what ICE has to do to enforce the law. Yell at the leadership and the legislators. But leave the boots on the ground out of your fantasies about what the Gestapo was.

I feel sorry for the people used by ICE and those sent to war. — Athena

Then don’t call them Gestapo to make some political point. Would you say “Gestapo!” to their spouses and children? As they leave in the morning to go off to work?

I think we need to be more specific. — Athena

Please do.

The belief that a God made a man from mud and a woman from his rib, goes against science, and what good can come out of anything that is that far from science?
This involves morals and justice, so it really matters to me. — Athena

So I heard someone explain that the religious person sees her new baby as a gift from God, while the scientific person sees her new baby as the wondrous workings of cellular biology. But that is stupid. The religious person can see her new baby as the wondrous workings of cellular biology AND a gift from God. And it’s the same thing with creation. Life evolved from primordial soup into men and women over billions of years AND, God created man and woman, male and female, to complement and complete one another, and be as one flesh in marriage…... Thousands of years of good have followed from that story (and I venture to say, always will).

People who think the earth is 6000 years old, or that there was an actual adult male rib involved in the birth of the first woman, on day 6… - that’s weird stuff. The Bible isn’t a science book. But you thinking science can replace religion is missing the point of both science and religion if you ask me. How about the Broadway play Wicked - can any good come out of that being as it is so far from science? Or when someone says “Broadway has to be banned because nothing good can come from something so far from science,” do they maybe not understand what Broadway is for people? Or science?

You sound authoritarian about all religion. Some of us religious folks can walk and chew gum at the same time.

Look at the problem of Islamists taking over European and North American cities. Who cares what Muslims all believe about God, and what their religion says is truth. Just like who cares what any religion says. It’s not the religious beliefs that actually cause the problems for anyone who doesn’t agree with them. It’s when religions try to enforce their religious law in secular, shared society. It’s when political leaders use religion to spark emotion to bolster political action and law. We only have to care if politicians tell us to wear face coverings, stone people for not being Muslim, yell out their prayer calls in front of a Christian Church stopping traffic while banning public Christmas celebrations (or crashing cars into them) etc. We don’t have to care what religious leaders think and say (remember free speech? Freedom of religion and assembly?) - we only have to care about the politics and the criminality - are these lawful in our society or not? Do Islamist takeovers of Western cities allow for freedom and equal rights and prosperity for anyone? Or not.

I agree with you that religion masquerading in politics needs to tamp itself down. I hate hearing politicians sound like they are preaching, under any religion. It’s shitty marketing - of religion AND whatever stupid political point they are failing to make as they bring in “God” and “evil” to turn the conversation emotional.

The closest religion should get to politics is in a way that is utterly non-sectarian. Government leaders should not appear to favor this faith over that one, nor favor atheists over theists.

My mother got indignant and said we are American — Athena

Love it!

I love all our differences like I love a field full of different colored flowers. I love that my city celebrates the Day of the Dead from Mexico, and we have an annual Asian Festival that used to represent all flavors of Asians — Athena

There really are so many things like that in America - totally agree. Nothing better than to hear some old guy with an accent talk about how much they love being American, while they are staying proud of some of the good things from their heritage at the same time - that’s the way to be.

Not since our Civil War have we been so divided. — Athena

We are all being groomed to hate. It’s our own faults for hating at all.

ICE is behaving as badly as Germany's Gestapo. — Athena

That’s not really true. There are some individual instances of abuse, maybe too many, but ICE has a dirty, dangerous job, so if we can’t stomach the hard parts and the ugliness, we should change the law, not stand in their way throwing rocks like we live in the Wild West and need to form vigilante gangs to fight the rogue cowboys. Hating ICE agents is misplaced. Hate Trump and Noem if you want, blame our legislators for not making the case their enabling laws are being abused, but it makes no sense to me to blame the grunts whose lives are hard enough.

decisions should be based on the protection of children and family values. — Athena

I agree with that. The world would be a more peaceful place if everyone reminded themselves of just that everyday. Love is all you need, so let’s try to get there.

I am wondering if the US will exist for another 100 years. — Athena

Me too. I fear what leftists want to make of NYC and what Newsome has made of California and what Democratic leadership makes of the political dialogue in Congress and in the press, and how the press always runs with whatever the Dems say and run against whatever Repubs say. The left is as likely to win as the repubs are to save what we have, but if the left wins, that will be the end of America (even though many leftists honestly love America). Immigration will be fixed if the left wins, because no one will want to stay here and they’ll be more likely to close the border from the inside, like the rest of the socialist states always do. If we are not an Islamic caliphate.

Mankind needs to up its moral standing and womankind might help, but the women supporting Trump sadden me very much because maybe womankind will not do better than mankind. Unfortunately, female Christians can be the worst. — Athena

I don’t think I agree with all that. No more divisions for moral arguments. We all need to up our moral standing. Enough judging others first. That said, American Christians (not Republican Catholics as much) but the Christians can be too quick to pontificate and moralize using Jesus’ name to hide weak political arguments. But that said, the secular moralizing is the worst to me. I’ll take a Christian woman preaching how I am going to hell, over a secular lefty telling me how much I am not a Christian or how much of a rape supporter and fascist and racist I am any day.

Our media has become our worst enemy, — Athena

It certainly promotes division, and hides a lot of facts, to promote an ideology instead of just the news. At least they keep getting caught fabricating bullshit.

In a small tribe, morals will be kept because people know each other, and the well-being of the tribe is important to everyone. When the tribe is millions of people, everyone becomes anonymous, and the well-being of a group this large does not impress our consciousness with the same personalness as a small tribe. — Athena

That’s interesting and worth thinking about. I think that is why everyone accuses the other side of being a cult. We can’t imagine these broad groups actually are full of real people. A broad group like “maga” or “socialists” is a shallow box. Individual, actual people, are deep and too complex for such gross generalizations. But we get to feel better than millions of people if we allow ourselves to hate these groups. Viewing them as sheep in a cult lets us not look past the shallow boxes at the real people.

Religions made unnaturally large populations possible, but I don't understand how they can be maintained with modern science. — Athena

See, in one sense if people stayed in small tribes there would be constant threat of war right in your own backyard. Constant for all, until we formed huge populations. So if you think religion made this unnaturally possible (which is also an interesting idea), than that speaks well for religion, not badly about it.

Religion isn’t opposed to science. It can be if you want. But science doesn’t know very much either. And morality is an utter mess. Religion of sorts goes all the way back to the beginning of human history. Religion is literally what you make of it. It can be, and has been, a force for good. Like science can be, and has been, but is often wrong, and can be used to make life worse for many.

:up:

hate, violence and vitriol is coming from. Not. MAGA. — AmadeusD

For some reason that is a bold statement of opinion, and not just an observation of what is actually happening right before our eyes.

wtf — 180 Proof

Exactly.

MAGA =|= conservatism. — 180 Proof

True. These are all distinguishable terms: maga, conservative, traditionalist, rightwing, Republican.

So are these: woke, leftist, progressive, liberal, democrat.

I still disagree you’ve pinpointed “MAGA” if you see zero thinking in a maga supporter. But, at least you’ve focused the non-thinking paint brush with a little more precision.

So if we want to distinguish between maga and conservative, are there any thinkers who are conservative? Is it just MAGA who clearly don’t think? I assumed anyone who voted for Trump and votes Republican, and finds good in some things republicans do, was one of your “MAGA” non-thinkers. My bad I guess. Because conservatives have to vote for Trump, precisely because of the way Harris and Biden and leftists and socialists and some liberals support “empowering the federal government and restricting individual liberty.”

Lots more to think about.

I didn't claim or imply MAGA is "the only" symptom of not thinking, though at the moment MAGA is the most conspicuous symptom (re: "alternative facts" anti-intellectualism, anti-science ...) — 180 Proof

Cool.

I would argue that MAGA conservatism is only the most conspicuous example of not thinking because of the complicity of the major media and the conquests of leftist ideology since the 1960s. The left has successfully made the caricature of the white conservative common knowledge. The media says MAGA uses “alternative facts" and anti-intellectualism, and is anti-science. But an honest look at what conservatives say, and think, and do, and care about, is not what the media portrays.

And further, I find the left to be fairly conspicuous in their ignorance (for some). The left is anti-history (when has socialism ever worked at all even slightly?), anti-intellectualism (who on the left will allow in good faith a conservative to challenge their dogma and debate the possibility that they are wrong about something with that conservative, or worse learn something new?), and anti-science is shown in how ‘consensus’ among popular scientists and the authority of ‘peer review’ has replaced thorough skepticism and honest experimentation and falsification, ie, we honestly don’t know shit about the climate or medicine, even given how much we know, but “science” gets to make moral law (burning fuel is a sin) and set policy (no more nuclear power plants, get your Covid shot to save the planet…).

But fine, MAGA are the cretans - we’ve taken that abuse since the original Hitler (Ronald Reagan).

Define what you mean by "lefty wokeness"? — 180 Proof

The left. The not-‘MAGA’. (MAGA, that pejorative expression that helps “progressives” own the fascist/authoritarian haters). Maybe “wokeness” triggers a shut-down of communication, but so does just saying MAGA is the easy example of “not-thinking”. (Although it didn’t shut me down apparently.)

This statement is not racist but a truth for all humans and has been so from the beginning human time. — Athena

There’s an element of what I am trying to say that is tribal for sure. But there is a more raw tribalism that properly arises closer to home, like in your house and your town and your city, and then there is a different kind of tribalism that incorporates the broad differences between nations like England and Germany. America is a good example of the two types of tribalism. In America, there is a real difference between a tribe from Alabama and a tribe from Montana and a tribe from San Diego, but all of them have the sense of being American, because being American is more ideological, or better, cultural, in nature. America itself is cross-tribal, by nature. We are many different peoples, who together form a nation unlike Britain, which is unlike Portugal.

But when the Brit (of any color) seeks to save Britain from becoming France or Afghanistan, when he or she seeks to save British culture, he only looks like a racist Brit because he is white. This means the white British man becomes the worst representative of the British culture. Today, because of leftism and immigration, that apparent racism of white British men makes the whole British culture look unjustifiable and not worth saving. It even justifies actively changing the culture of “England”, turning England into a piece of land only, and no longer a culture. So it’s mixed with age old tribalism, but it’s a broad cultural landscape (called England or France) at stake.

If all the immigrants assimilate to the culture, like all these Europeans did when America formed (the Irish in the 1800s, the Italians in the 1900s, etc), we see American culture change, but we see the Italian immigrant also change and become Italian-Americans too. Of course each wave of immigrants must be allowed to bring their unique past with them, but they must seek to build something new, drawing from the country they emigrated to.

Like tribalism, racism is also in the mix. In America for example, the Chinese didn’t really assimilate as quickly as the Irish and the Italians, and of course Black American history is filled with racism. These are more tribalisms, but racial ones, and not so much cultural or ideological. And ultimately they are terrible growing pains underneath what American ideology and culture really are.

But my larger point here is that people let the issues of race dominate the whole separate issue of culture. The historic racism defines the whole culture, ie. “America is a racist country.” America is much, much different than just its racism. Same with Germany. Etc. But the only cultures we are allowed to promote are those of the downtrodden and the minorities. Else we sound “supremacist” or “prejudiced against X”. And during this distraction, the majority is being turned into a minority, and Europe qua Europe slips away.

My great-grandparents were from Abruzzi and Sicily, but I am a third generation American, so at this point, Italy may as well be Greece or Egypt.

you mentioned white people — Ciceronianus

I pretty much made my point above, but white people, who happen to be British, can’t really be proud to be “British” anymore, can they. White Brits are colonialist, oppressors. They aren’t allowed to be proud Brits without sounding racist.

Europe is giving up its various identities. Maybe some can say “so be it” a bye bye English culture, but that is what could happen. It offends people to even notice this. But race/ethnicity is not the point at all. This isn’t about putting down the other and balancing races. It’s about building or protecting something unique, as a good in itself.

Personally, I like all of the differences and don’t want to lose any of these cultures. But political correctness has trained too many too well. We are ordered to treat most traditional things, especially when they are white traditions, as hiding badness, so no one has felt safe enough to talk about any of the traditions (as they slip away, one institution at a time).

Government and discipline aren't absolute necessities for freedom though — ProtagoranSocratist

But there needs to be something in place, some structure, before freedom can be enjoyed. Something needs to be necessary.

they're means of structuring freedom which is the very conundrum that this thread is criticizing. — ProtagoranSocratist

It does seem like a paradox. I see the conundrum of sorts, but don’t see it as an impasse or contradiction to the possibility of freedom.

This is the highest wisdom that I own; freedom and life are earned by those alone who conquer them each day anew. — Goethe

This is rigorous discipline. We don’t achieve freedom and then simply remain free. We achieve freedom by achieving, a rigorous acting towards modesties we have set for ourselves. Freedom exists in living freely, not in some stagnant, unmoving free thing being free with no effort. But nevertheless, the stagnant unmoving structure is that out of which one might live freely.

Shifting boundaries, rethinking boundaries—that's truly necessary. This is the very essence of the process of becoming: humans, culture, and society exist in a mode of constantly refining and clarifying limits. But the abolition of boundaries is not the same thing. Shifting is work, responsibility, choice. Abolition is a renunciation of responsibility, replacing becoming with dissolution. — Astorre

That is great stuff. :100:

No being exists in an ontological void. When we shift boundaries, we always do something else: either we make room for another, or we take space from another. — Astorre

Yes it is like freedom may exist (or may not) in the space between boundaries and structures.

And this is something that is often forgotten within the framework of that very "freedom from everything": that any gesture of liberation is always a gesture of redistribution of space between beings. And remembering this is no less important than remembering one's own rights and one's own development. — Astorre

Yes. It is like one person’s freedom must have a cost, and that cost involves an imposition (an oppression) on some other thing, or space, or another person.

Today, liberalism has no ability to recognize what is worth preserving and cultivating.
— Fire Ologist

This is the key point. How can this be surpassed from within the ideology of freedom from everything? I have no idea.

As long as the Western world had a solid skeleton of everything it was gradually freeing itself from, everything looked wonderful. Today, it's become clear that not everything is as simple as it seemed. — Astorre

Yes, it is romantic to feel so free as we tear every institution down, but now we find ourselves in a world where we no longer know what to do, and this is a new limitation, a new enslavement of sorts with nowhere to look to direct our iconoclasm and revolution.

I have no idea either, but think it has to do with two things. First, the western reification of linear rational thinking has led us to overlook the importance and raw reality of the paradoxes of being human. We in the west run into a paradox or an antimony and we call it a dead end, and turn around and run away. We need to embrace paradox, and occassionally recognize the reality of the impossible. This is how freedom immerges, impossibly. Second, we are the cause of our own slavery. Like original sin, it’s in our nature to enslave ourselves. We sort of fear or just fail to recognize the goodness of the limitations inherent in freedom and we lash out, destroying our own possibility of freedom. (And of course this is a paradox as well.).

I think it may be as simple as maturity. We have a duty (so a limitation is put on us) to seek and build our own freedom. We have to take responsibility away from the society and the government and biology and the universe and place our freedom in our own hands. (We can seek help, but it must remain up to me for me to be free.). We cannot be made to be free anymore. We need to make ourselves free. And then freedom only happens in flashing instantaneous moments, before we fall asleep again and need to start all anew…

So I may have merely in all of this really just reframed the issue, offering a description but no solution or reasoning.

But then again, a linear reasoning comprised of fixed, immobile beings, will not do justice to the becoming that is the heart of the things that live, like freedom and learning, and knowing and most of all loving.

Think of love as the purpose of freedom. No such thing as freedom, and there is no such thing as love. But no such thing as fixed knowable boundary, and there is no such thing as freedom. (I’m moving too freely now, so I’ll set my boundary right here…)

It has nothing to do with white. It has to do with the political opinion that being British is a good thing to be. Or being German is a good person to be.

I’m of Italian decent. Italy’s current president is fighting back - but all of Europe is in trouble.

So what the hell are you talking about? You can’t out racism this greasy dago.