#Distance Liberation

[dengswei]

you know what i love the most about my liberation notes? it's the lack of physical touch. how they show two people can care for each other so deeply without needing physical affection.

i feel like media nowadays uses physical affection to "prove" that two people love and/or care for each other when that isn't always the case, phyical affection or lack thereof doesn't mean two people love each other any less or any more than another might and i love that

[aueua]

My will and [Hers] the veil. Grant me no absolution. Cast judgement unto my last breath. For my people, I alone bear sin.

Heretic. | Coward. Tyrant. | Traitor. No matter the title: My resolve is firm.

[im-the-punk-who]

Racism isn't evil because evil isn't real. And racism very much is. See, when white people describe racism as being evil they mythologize it. By calling racism evil, white people either knowingly or unknowingly create distance from themselves and the system of white supremacy that makes racism and all its permutations possible.

     F.D Signifier     Bo Burnham's Inside and "White Liberal Performative Art" | Video Essay (Black Media Breakdown #12)

[yloiseconeillants]

i have got to quit this job and get out of this town, moving back to a small town was a MISTAKE and it’s been more than a year like i could find another job in portland again, even on a part-time basis would be better than just. this.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

Note: Definition of Liberalism:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberalism

Liberalism is a political and moral philosophy based on the rights of the individual, liberty, consent of the governed and equality before the law. Liberals espouse a wide array of views depending on their understanding of these principles, but they generally support individual rights (including civil rights and human rights), liberal democracy, secularism, rule of law, economic and political freedom, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of religion, private property and a market economy.

--

1/ There's a small but vocal minority on the right which claims either:

Liberalism is wokeness, or a type of wokeness.

or

Liberalism decays into wokeness and wokeness is an inevitable result of liberalism.

Both claims are wrong and I'll explain why.

A Thread🧵

2/ How can they claim wokeness and liberalism are the same thing? There's two ways:

1. They might conflate agreement on political policy with ideological agreement.

2. They might argue liberals and wokies agree on worldview and ideology, and the differences are merely cosmetic.

3/ The first point is easy to refute: two people can agree on a policy for different reasons. A wokeist and a Libertarian may both think the Iraq war was a mistake; that doesn't mean they agree ideologically. This is obvious, it is the next argument that is far more interesting.

4/ The next argument claims that liberals and wokies really have the same goals, worldview, values and largely the same agenda. This view claims disagreements between wokies and liberals are merely surface level disagreements about how best to enact their shared vision.

5/ This is a mistake. Wokeness and liberalism are totally different worldviews. The liberal worldview says: 1. Reality is accessible by humans 2. Humans can have objectively true knowledge of reality 3. Truth is not relative 4. We can communicate truth clearly and accurately

6/ They make more claims then that, but those are the claims that we will focus on here, because the woke worldview would take issue with all four of those points because the woke world view thinks about knowledge and truth entirely differently then liberals do.

7/ The woke would say: 1. We don't have access to reality only to our expreience of reality 2. Knowledge is created with 'standpoint epistemology' where people's 'knowledge' is rooted in their identity. That is, your social identity is what allows you to know what's true or false

8/ 3. Knowledge and power are intimately connected, and the process of creating and legitimizing knowledge is a political process meant to increase and perpetuate the power of the people doing the process. 4. All truth claims are also justifications to wield power.

9/ In other words, liberals think that rigorous epistemologies (knowledge production guidelines and processes) can give us knowledge about the world that is objectively true. While these can go awry because humans are limited, over time they do give us truth about the world

10/ Wokies deny this. Wokies think what is really going on is each group wants to control the process of deciding what's true because the group that controls that process can say THEIR beliefs are the true beliefs. Whoever decides what is true in society has tremendous power...

11/ And the process of creating "truth" is really just about who gets to decide which beliefs in society are true, who gets believed, and therefore who gets the power.

Obviously these are VERY different views.

12/ So one might argue "sure, liberals and wokists disagree about science and knowledge, but they agree politically, and that's the point."

That's a step away from the original claim, but let's look at that claim for a moment because it will help set up the rest of the thread.

13/ The wokies think science and knowledge creation are political processes they want to use political legislation as a means to influence it. Liberals want the opposite. One of liberalisms highest priorities is removal of politics from science as much as possible

14/ In fact, the wokists read politics of all sorts (almost always identity politics) into everything in that happens in society. Liberals are against this. The liberals believe certain things must remain outside the political realm. Science being one such example.

15/ Clearly these are different worldviews. But this is important because it sets up the second part of our thread regarding The claim that liberalism either decay's into wokeness, or enables forces that cause the decay into wokeness.

Let's turn to that next.

16/ The claim that liberalism decays into wokeness rests on the idea that once you have liberalism, wokeness is unstoppable because liberalism has no defences against wokeness. Liberalism is "thin civilizational gruel" as @SohrabAhmari says here:

17/ The claim here, that liberalism is civilizational grues misses the point. Liberalism is not SUPPOSED to be the thing that gives your life meaning or purpose. Liberalism is a way to resolve conflict within a democratic society without resorting to guns and warfare...

18/ For example, political disputes are resolved through voting, knowledge disputes are resolved through science, value disputes are resolved through the market, and moral disputes are resolved through legislation or through freedom of association. Now, I see the rejoinder:

19/ Liberal systems have been hijacked by wokies because liberalism can't stop a group like wokies who refuse to play the liberal game and instead hijack the liberal system for woke ends. IE: Cancel Culture, getting people fired, and using the education system, to teach wokeness

20/ While it's true that systems of liberalism can be put to misuse, (an achillies heel of liberalism no doubt), I would say the only reason wokeness got a foothold was because we, the liberals, did not react to it quickly enough. It was complacency on the part of liberals....

21/ Which allowed wokeness to metastasize in the space between the academic left and the radical political protest left. This is not good and it should never have been allowed. But the fact it happened does not imply that liberalism necessarily rots into wokeness. After all...

22/ There are woke priests, woke bishops, woke rabbis and so on. Lots of religions that are not "civilizational gruel" have had large swaths accept wokeness. Given just HOW woke the catholic Church is getting, I'm surprised people think Catholicism is wholly immune to wokeness

23/ Besides, liberalism properly construed is not supposed to be civilizationally sustaining, it is supposed to allows competing claims about what is good, true, and meaningful to be resolved peacefully and fairly. That's the goal.

Now, there is one last point to deal with...

24/ It appears to be the case that some people have accepted postmodernism on the right. They have decided that Foucault was essentially correct and that given that foucault was correct, liberalism leads to wokeness because it rejects postmodernism and thus disarms itself...

25/ by refusing to use postmodern tools and postmodern weapons.

This critique is that in the age of technology where all knowledge production is de-centered, it really is a fight over who gets to decide what is true, and power is both to be used, and to be won, in that fight...

26/ I would argue that in such a scenario, the person able to develop the best technology and have the most effective results will rise in prestige in a decentralized environment. That means whoever gets closest to truth will be the winner of whatever power is available...

27/ In which case the best way to proceed is to take as much of the politics out of knowledge production as possible and have a fair method for resolving disputes. This is liberalism.

Those arguing for illiberal methods of defeating wokeness seem to have one thing in common:

28/ They have a desire to use force to just "make things right." This is wish casting, not a solution. If any of the people proposing using force to defeat the woke were capable of gathering the resources to use that force, they would have done so by now. They have not.

29/ Now, I am fully aware that my mentions will be flooded with illiberal people telling me that I just need to accept some postmodernism, or that just a little bit of authoritarianism is needed.

I decline on both counts.

30/ Finally, I have not dealt with every argument one might have made against liberalism. I am aware of this too. I dealt with the arguments that I have seen most often in my feed. I freely admit there are arguments that I have deemed to obscure to be worth dealing with here...

31/ Thanks for reading, lets defend liberalism ok people? It really is the best thing going.

/fin

==

Jonathan Rauch wrote what is often regarded as one of the most definitive - or sometimes even the definitive - books on liberalism and liberal ethics, Kindly Inquisitors.

It should be noted that critique - in the Marxian sense, i.e. rejection - of liberalism is explicit in Critical Theory, the doctrine which underpins the theology of Woke fundamentalism. Delgado and Stefancic's Critical Race Theory: An Introduction, for example, has an entire section on it, titled literally "Critique of Liberalism."

[softpastelqueer]

As someone who didn’t grow up with Santa or Elves on the Shelves I have to say the upgrade from the more casual being vaguely watched by some old white dude who rewards you for good deeds to a creepy physical elf actively watching you in the same room with you reporting on your every single action is… bizarre to me

[shredsandpatches]

wip wednesday (this bit kinda has my name in it edition)

Here’s a bit from earlier in Anne’s coronation sequence. Anne was crowned in Westminster Abbey two days after her wedding to Richard, which is why Richard’s POV here is so intensely starry-eyed (and horny). It’s all still really new to them.

It was standard practice in the Middle Ages for kings not to attend their wives’ coronations unless the two of them were being crowned together, although the Liber Regalis does contain instructions for what to do if he does want to attend. The idea, though, is that having him there would pull the focus (I have Sir Simon Burley explain this in an earlier sequence). Henry VII and Margaret Beaufort attended Elizabeth of York’s coronation in a sort of officially-unofficial way behind a curtain (I learned this from @feuillesmortes) but since nobody wrote any detailed accounts of Anne of Bohemia’s coronation, preferring to grumble about her appearance, stature, and lack of dowry, I just stuck Richard in the galleries instead.  

--

The galleries in Westminster Abbey are very high up, enough that it makes Richard a little dizzy. He can see right down into the shrine of Edward the Confessor, although he tries not to look directly down, as it makes his head spin when he tries it, and the monk that Abbot Litlyngton has sent to accompany him (and probably to keep him from doing or saying anything too conspicuous, or embarrassing) puts a nervous hand on his shoulder to steady him.

“I’d stand back a little, if I were you, your Highness,” the monk says, and Richard nods a little unsteadily. It’s good advice, after all. Below, the Abbey glitters in the candlelight; Richard wonders if all the candles have made it any warmer. Upstairs, it is cold enough that Richard can see his breath.

But then the great west gates open and the procession is approaching and Richard forgets to be cold. First comes Edmund Langley, bearing the scepter, and John of Gaunt, bearing the crown, and then Anne comes into the church, escorted by Archbishop Courtenay and Bishop Braybrooke, as the barons of the Cinque Ports carefully withdraw the golden canopy they have borne over her head between the palace and the Abbey. She looks tiny, from so far away, in her purple robes with her hair falling down her back in golden-brown waves held in place by a jeweled circlet, but her very presence fills the whole nave with light and warmth.

The procession stops at the entrance to the church, and Archbishop Courtenay holds up his hands to pray over Anne.

“Omnipotens sempiterne Deus, fons et origo totius bonitatis...”

He prays that God will bless and protect Anne, and that, like the holy women Sarah and Leah and Rachel and Rebecca, she will rejoice in the fruit of her womb. Even from this height, and this distance, Richard can sense that Anne is blushing now. His own face is blazing—he remembers what Anne had said, yesterday morning. We are blessed, she had said, and he had been amazed. I think God must have meant me for you, she had also said, and Richard has no doubt that she is right. When they come together tonight to celebrate Anne’s coronation, it will also be blessed.

He probably shouldn’t think too much about it right now, though.  

Below him, the two bishops are leading Anne down the long nave through the choir to the altar, which has been prepared with a pile of carpets and cushions. Anne kneels down upon these, very carefully, her hair and her purple robes flowing around her. She smooths her skirts carefully over her thighs and then raises her eyes—when her gaze falls upon Richard, beaming down on her from the galleries, she rewards him with a smile that is so radiant Richard feels he might weep. He presses his fingers to his lips and risks holding them out over the railing towards her, just for a moment, as she smiles up at him, and then she lies prostrate on the cushions and Archbishop Courtenay stands over her and blocks his view.

“Deus qui solus habes immortalitatem…” the archbishop intones. Richard is startled into unchurchly amusement when Archbishop Courtenay reaches the words proximam virginitati palmam continere queat—that she may hold the palm next to that of virginity, the heavenly reward of the faithful wife—and while Richard cannot see Anne’s face, he is certain her eyes are full of mirth. He can see her rosy-cheeked smile in his mind’s eye. Now I want to do this every night for the rest of my life, she had told him yesterday. They have just prayed for her fertility, after all. Richard smiles to himself—they have both been doing their part, and they have every intention of doing their part some more tonight, if Anne isn’t too tired after the banquet. Richard’s face is now very warm even in the cold church, and he is uncomfortably aware that if he keeps thinking along these lines he is going to embarrass himself quite severely, and in the church too. He shifts his weight uncomfortably from one foot to the other and bites his lip.

When Archbishop Courtenay has finished praying, Anne, with the support of two of the bishops, raises herself to her knees, and four noblewomen come to the altar bearing a golden canopy. Richard feels a sudden shiver, remembering his own anointing, years ago, how the air seemed to shimmer in the summer heat and the scent of the holy oil and chrism overwhelmed him. From here, he can barely smell it.

If Richard can trust his memory of time—and he’s not certain he can—it takes much less time for Anne to be anointed. He vaguely recalls that queens are not anointed in as many places as kings are. Anne is also not called upon to divest herself of her robes, which, given where Richard’s mind has persisted in going, is probably for the best. Then, almost before he knows it, the canopy is being moved away and Anne is visible again. Richard remembers wondering if he seemed different, when they took the canopy away. He had felt different. He wonders if Anne feels different. When Archbishop Courtenay has finished saying a short prayer over her, he steps aside to signal for the regalia. Anne looks up toward the galleries again, her face flushed and her eyes shining. Richard has to admit that she doesn’t look different, but he wouldn’t want her to look any different. She is perfect the way she is.

[angelx1992]

[eledhrim]

//

[simulationcowboy]

i have my cam on in class today because no one else does, but like i had such a bad night last night i just wanna turn my cam off and lay in bed ;-;

[aro-oak]

I just moved and I purchased a new bed and it's so comfy holy shit

[oatmilkovich]

so far an incredibly tiring day as a customer service worker

[qualidude]

watching the news makes me want to rip my hair out but I can’t stop

[waltz-numbertwo]

Scientists: To prevent the spread of coronavirus, we ask you all to self-quarantine and wear masks.

The Trump administration:

[wyattjohnston]

I’d like to be friends but I don’t think you like me that much

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

If you want to know why the Woke ignore statistics, science, facts, and reason, And instead use feelings, emotions, intuition, and "lived experience" then you need to know what the woke mean by "ways of knowing.' So let's talk about it A THREAD

Ways of knowing refers to one of the ways the woke think about "epistemology." Epistemology is the study of human knowledge. That is, the person doing epistemology wants to know what "knowledge" is, how we get knowledge, and what knowledge can be used for.

In the liberal tradition we think knowledge is a belief that is: 1. Truth. (The belief corresponds to reality) 2. Justified. (The person is "justified" or has good reasons to hold the belief. In the liberal tradition our epistemology revolves around science and reason... 

That is, for the enlightenment liberal, if you want to know about the world, you would use the scientific method, and the faculty of reason to determine whether or not a belief is true.

Further, in the liberal tradition. any belief is open to challenge and "falsification."

This means any belief can be challenged by other people and no belief is off limits. Thus I may argue a belief is false no matter how sacred that belief is to you, and I may try to "falsify" it by showing that the belief is false.

Along with those principles the enlightenment liberal holds to the law of non-contradiction: That contradictory beliefs cannot both be true in the same sense at the same time (if two beliefs contradict they cannot both be true in the same sense, one of them must be wrong)

These beliefs added together provide us a picture of something like "objectivity," which is the idea that ideas, beliefs, and propositions about the world can be "objectively true or false. That is, they are true or false regardless of what anyone says. And that means...

a belief like "The earth goes around the sun" is true regardless of what anyone says or thinks. The belief "the earth goes around the sun" isn't RELATIVE to anyone's opinions, and was true even back in the 12th century when people thought the sun went around the earth...

Because the truth does not depend on what people think. Enlightenment liberals think people in the 12th century who thought the sun went around the earth were OBJECTIVELY WRONG because the TRUTH is the earth goes around the sun, and that was true in the 12th century too.

The result is the enlightenment liberal epistemology uses science and reason to determine objective truths about the world. the enlightenment liberal believes success of the scientific method in allowing us to make predictions about the world is a demonstration of it's... 

validity and claims to be an objectively correct method of determining which beliefs about the world are true, and which are false.

So, if you want proof that the scientific method is true look no further then the correct predictions it allows us to make about the world. 

This is NOT how the woke see knowledge and epistemology. The woke have a very different view of what "knowing" is, and as such reject the idea that science ad reason are the best way to know about the world.

Let's look at the woke understanding of "knowledge." 

The woke understanding of knowledge is different because the woke understanding of truth is different. In the minds of the woke a statement that is "true" is not considered to be "true" because it accurately describes the world, That is not how they think about truth...

The woke see that people can't agree about how the world really is. Thus, the woke think "truth" refers to the beliefs and ideas that have been elevated by a society or culture to a place of prominence by acclamation or agreement. They see truth as a SOCIAL phenomenon...

So they would say that if critical mass of people in society agree that a certain proposition is the right way to think about the world, then that belief gets bestowed upon it the social status of a "truth." Once that occurs that belief becomes "true" FOR THAT SOCIETY.

So different societies have different views about what is true, and thus each society has different "truths."

This means the woke always consider the fact that each society has a different way of determining what is true and therefore what counts as "knowledge."

Since the woke see "truth" as a matter of social agreement, they see the production of knowledge as being a social, and therefore political, process that is ultimately about power. After all, whoever decides what society thinks is true determines the direction of society.

For that reason the woke always see claims to knowledge as claims to power. That is, if you can persuade society to accept your claims as true, then you can use your claims to put your policies, rules, laws, and procedure into place; and this allows you to wield power.

For this reason the woke think that the enlightenment liberal science and reason are merely the method white european males agree with each other use to decide which beliefs are true (and thus who gets to wield power). The woke would say that the white european way of...

deciding what society believes and who should have power only applies to white European culture. The woke think when enlightenment liberals tell other cultures science is the correct way to know things, the liberals are forcing their culture on other people, colonizing them.

Why do they think that? Because they think the reason liberals tell other cultures science is the correct way to know things is so liberals can use the white European way of knowing to decide white European beliefs are "true" for society, to give the power to white Europeans.

In other words the woke would look at science and say "you are only saying science is the way to know what is true so that you can force your white European beliefs on other cultures and then be in charge of them by deciding what everyone believes."

The woke think the answer to this is to legitimize "other ways of knowing" so that white people don't go around trying to control all the other societies by claiming that science is the way to get things right. Let's look at an example...

Liberals might say the theory of evolution is true, and we can use that theory to set policy with regard to forests. The woke would say "you're just using the theory of evolution to justify controlling indigenous hunting lands." The woke solution would be to....

elevate the indigenous creation myth and say that the indigenous creating story is as true and valid as the theory of evolution, and therefore the theory of evolution can't be the arbiter of forest policy. See how it works?

Everytime we make laws, rules, or policy in the west we try to figure out what is objectively true (in the liberal sense) so we get the policy that best matches reality. The woke think that we are not being honest with them, or ourselves, when we say that...

They think we're playing a game they see right through, and what is REALLY going on in our example has nothing to do with the best policy. Rather it's just an excuse to control the forest and thus the indigenous hunting lands; a power grab to control indigenous people.

So the woke say the indigenous creation story is as valid and true and the theory of evolution, that way we can't use evolution as an excuse to set forest policy.

Thus the woke say indigenous creation stories and the theory of evolution are equally valid 'ways of knowing'

The point of "ways of knowing" is to pluralize the term used to discuss knowledge. Rather then talking about "epistemology" which indicates there is a study of knowledge with one proper conclusion, "ways of knowing" implies many different but equally valid conclusions.

This means the woke don't believe any method to gain knowledge is objectively correct. There's just different, equally valid "ways of knowing". This puts emotions, feelings, dreams, stories, and myths on the same level as science for understanding things like cancer research.

So when you see "ways of knowing" this is what they have in mind: declaring that there is no way to decide that one epistemology (way of knowing) is objectively better at producing statements that correspond to the external world than any other epistemology "way of knowing."

This means the woke believe all truth is subjective and in some sense relative.

That's no way to run cancer research, a Covid-19 lab, or for an engineering firm. However, it is what is being taught in our universities, and that should be a wake up call for all of us /fin

“Other ways of knowing” is a synonym for “alternative facts.”

Watch it take hold in mathematics, biology, statistics, ecology, broadly across science in general, and narrowly in niches like glaciology.