Okay, so after you tried to trick me, had me tell you that you were trying to trick me, decided to go ahead with it anyway, then had me point out that your trick was foolish and that you completely (willfully?) misinterpreted the result of it, you decided to play a similar clever trick on someone else.
I’m just saying.
One more time:
You disingenuously asked why people mock people who bring up critical theory (knowing in your head that it’s because we’ve all be brainwashed by it) and were treated to a perfectly reasonable response that is verified by the respect paid to you in this thread, but you still maintain that your initial suspicions are right.
You disingenuously asked me for a definition of justice (knowing in your head that I would think it was culturally relative) and found out that I am a materialist who things justice probably has a volume and mass and might be objectively measurable but still you persist in thinking that everyone here is steeped in cultural relativity.
You disingenuously asked @Mindysan33 to critique the institution of marriage (knowing that she would interpret that phrase as asking for a historical critique and thus would apply it to heterosexual marriage) then dropped the other shoe, only to find out that she is just as capable of thinking critically about contemporary marriage including homosexual marriage, but still you persist in thinking that she can only be critical about conservative institutions.
What evidence will it take for you to realize you are wrong? If not about critical theory, then about the people you are arguing with? Maybe in your past experience people you argue with about this stop talking to you and you take that as confirmation that they can’t handle your truth, but have you considered the possibility that you are just insufferable?
While a call for equal criticism on both “sides” is often employed to try to create an appearance of “fair and balanced” discussion, some institutions are genuinely less problematic than others.
While problems will undoubtedly emerge within the realm of homosexual marriages eventually, it’s still pretty new, and represents an expansion of opportunities for homosexual people to share love, rather than a contraction. Marriage between men and women, historically, has not been particularly about choice or an expansion of ways of humans being together. It has been restrictive, prescriptive and being under it’s narrow definition was long held as the only acceptable arrangement for men and women who wish to share time and love together. Again, most of the arguments you’ll find about heterosexual marriage are about the history, execution and baggage not the basic, abstract concept of men and women pledging never-ending love for each other.
Your comment also highlights the difference between “gay” marriage and hetero marriage, which are in fact, to many observers, the same institution. The complaints about marriage as being legalistically and moralistically prescriptive all still apply to “gay marriage” aside from those that specifically pertain to historical gender power imbalances. It is possible to criticize the institution, while still celebrating advances in same said.
Marriage equality as cultural assimilation of a tribe that developed powerful subcultures within oppressed conditions…holy rich vein batman. Do you have any good links for this? I’d be very interested…
P.S. heteronormantive, while clearly a simple typo, made me imagine a somewhat more politically charged follow-up to Paranorman…
Do you have some kind of well-defined (relatively concise) cultural character sheet available for inquiring minds? After much murk and allusion, I’d be dying to know what the essential character, attributes and boundaries of your culture are…
Not to mention that the ascendency of individualism is pretty recent. Conformity was the highest value of 1950’s America. The UK suffered a decades long bombing campaign in order to maintain that a particular group of people were part of the UK while those doing the bombing were killing people to say that they were Irish. And WASPs have fought bitter battles with their Catholic cousins for a long time. Not sure how that fits with individuality trumping group identity.
Who talks about individuality a lot? People with enough money that they have the illusion that they don’t need other people.
If your culture is so fragile that the mere asking of questions destroys it, perhaps you should think about purchasing a more robust culture (perhaps one Made In America! By Union Labor! instead of that tissue-thin culture you’ve appropriated from elsewhere).
I don’t off the top of my head, actually. I know that Andrew Sullivan, a long-standing advocate of marriage equality, used to have an ongoing “death of gay culture thread”. Plus, I’ve had some gay friends express to me personally reservations about the marriage equality movement specifically for that reason. He in part embraced being gay because he knew that meant he didn’t have the expectation to marry and have a family over his head. Goes along with people who are more into non-monogamy, I’d guess. I think some consider marriage equality as very bourgeois.
So, I’m not worth an honest straight up discussion? I’m a fucking experiement to you? WTF, dude.
You don’t know my professors. You’re making broad based assumptions about hundreds of thousands of people you’ve never met. And there is plenty of push back on the Frankfurt school, believe me.
How exactly has your “culture been destroyed”? Please tell us how the 1950s were so much better than today. Please tell us how great it was to be a woman who could be fired for being pregnant or a black man who could be lynched for no particular reason what so ever. Please, enlighten us poor brainwashed saps and tell us how we are so misguided to think that talking about problems within our society is going to further destroy “your” culture… as if the rest of us don’t make up that culture too.
A culture is always in the process of being destroyed. The question is what the dominant themes of the new culture that emerges will be. That’s what is at the root of the GG conflict, for instance.
I’ll have to think about this more, but I’m not sure I entirely agree with this… I think capitalism has a strong bias towards constant novelty in the economy, but it’s more like cultures often get co-opted? @TrollsOpinion believes “his culture” is being destroyed, but is it? I’d argue that the strength of the capitalist system is its ability to consume and commodify particular kinds of culture. When we think of the destruction of cultures, I think we need to think more about cultures that have actually been destroyed by the imperialist system - entire peoples and languages, wiped out. The question is if that was unique to the early modern/modern period, or if it was always part of imperial systems… I’m not sure I know enough about medieval and ancient history to say. I do think the Romans and Persians were pretty good at incorporating groups into their ruling system.
Men could wear hats without being called a “f****g hipster douchebag”.
THANKS FOR NOTHING, JFK!
I think capitalism has a strong bias towards the appearance of constant novelty in the economy, hence planned obsolescence, tail-fins on cars*, and all that.
* Mad props to the 1950s, as this admittedly non-functional “enhancement” looked pretty cool.
I think this is probably just how the word “destroyed” is being used. I read “A culture is always in the process of being destroyed” the same way I would think of a person constantly dying from one moment to the next.
Going back to the beginnings of recorded history we keep finding old people complaining that young people are ruining everything. The last little while things have gone really, really fast, but things are always changing.
Kind of. The idea of the Death card in Tarot crossed my mind – that it represents transformation, often a good thing, and usually not literal death. I’m thinking of how, as a gamer, I’m not at all afraid of the “death of the gamer”, because I understand it to mean a transformation of that subculture in ways I’ve long favored.
Or a giant stone calendar, whose end means the rebirth of the world, rather than total destruction…wait, were the Mayans the first true Frankfurters, or did the Frankfurters develop a time machine to spread their insidious message throughout time???@#?!
