- You have the freedom to be fake news
- You have the freedom to shut up
- You have the freedom to …
Stderr
All the unbuffered error messages
I was fortunate to grow up almost completely irreligious; I’ve never felt a need to replace some “lost” faith or to seek my meaning in the gift of the gods. Reading a lot of history as a kid teaches you that the gods elevate and destroy everyone more or less randomly. Epicurus was right – if they exist, their affairs are complex and elevated enough that they’re more or less irrelevant to us.
It seems that the current trend in conflict is not to merely defeat your foe, but to humiliate them afterward.
Freedom of Speech is not some magical thing: like all freedoms in politics, there’s got to be a justification for it. In the case of the US – on paper, at least – individual liberties are defined in terms of, “other than the things the state says you cannot do, you’re free.” So, because the state has not legislated that I cannot dye my hair blue, I can dye my hair blue. Freedom of speech is specifically called out, though, as a positive freedom. It’s not that “because the state has not told you what you can’t talk about, you can talk about anything else” – it’s specifically stated:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
I lose track of the number of times someone has called me a “leftist” because of my views on social justice, privacy, demilitarization, and opposition to weapons of mass destruction. And I have no idea how many times I’ve been referred to as a “right winger” because I own firearms and am generally suspicious of authority. But actually my suspicion of authority is suspicion of everyone, and it’s only authority that I worry about – and it all gets complicated. When I was in college and someone asked me to label myself, I sometimes would say “I am a radical righto-leftist.” That’s the sort of thing that seems funny when you’re a sophomore (hence the label: sophomoric) but, like most other labels, it wears out.
I came late to this particular party, since I had my head up in the clouds of my own cyber-despair. I don’t know how you are collectively feeling, but I feel like there’s plenty of despair to go around. And, living up here in the deep dark south, like I do, Transgender Visibility [wikipedia] is definitely a problem. So let me tell you about something that happened in 2004, which made me feel so good about a few of my fellow human beings. I can only hope it was a positive moment for them, too, but I didn’t spoil it by asking.
When someone says “Epicurean” what comes to mind? Usually, it’s hedonism – life spent in the pursuit of pleasure. If we were raised in a christian tradition, we might even hear “Epicurean” as slightly louche or sexually promiscuous. Epicureans, many of us think, are the sort who wear velvet smoking jackets and snort cocaine off the upturned buttocks of prostitutes.
I’m not sure what the correct term for this is, perhaps “halo effect” or maybe it’s “transferrence” or just plain old “confirmation bias” but there’s a weird thing humans do, when they notice that someone is knowledgeable about X they sometimes get super impressed and assume that person is also knowledgeable about Y and maybe Z. I think it’s “confirmation bias” – but I’m skeptical of terminology in general.
Jean Meslier
Let us proceed to the pretended visions and Divine Revelations, upon which our Christ-worshipers establish the truth and the certainty of their religion.
In order to give a just idea of it, I believe it is best to say in general, that they are such, that if any one should dare now to boast of similar ones, or wish to make them valued, he would certainly be regarded as a fool or a fanatic.
I started writing this as a sort of open snark-gram to Caitlyn Jenner, but I just couldn’t do it. As I started to think things through from different angles, I just got more and more depressed. So, I hit “Move to Trash” and tried again.
Root cause analysis, for me, always comes back to privilege, which is an instance of exceptionalism.