I feel like I've been shilling this idea on Hexbear since I signed up but, to rehash it once again:
The terminally-liberal brain is so steeped in this reflexive (as in "a reflex", not as in "turning the concept inwards" - fuck I hate autoantonyms smh) equality that they take their own personal experiences and universalise them, completely whitewashing the fact that there are vastly different people, classes, cultures, worldviews etc.
It's nice to think of everyone as ultimately equal, don't get me wrong, but when that idea gets overextended then it becomes "my (hegemonic) worldview and my experience of and relationship to the world is the same as everyone else's" it becomes toxic because it becomes a barrier to truly understanding something like intergenerational trauma or the effects of serious poverty or even just understanding that some cultures are more communally-minded than individualistic.
This is clearly demonstrated by those r/ABoringDystopia posts of homeless people wearing VR headsets. Bruh, do you not spend time at home on leisure and escapism? Would you not want to engage in escapism if you were homeless? I get that you think you're special and you've done something unique in order to earn your station and that, if you were homeless, you'd pawn that VR headset and use your entrepreneurial spirit to bring yourself back to your current (earned) station but... that's not how homelessness works, buddy.
Hence why they just assume that because they confer a special degree of importance to their little social media comments then therefore so would Xi Jinping and Putin, obviously.
It's this feigned sort of overextended empathy which is ultimately chauvinistic in nature that ends up becoming a parody of itself.
Edit: One essay that really shines a light on this attitude is To Hell With Good Intentions written by the anarchist Ivan Illich who delivered this speech at the dawn of the era of voluntourism.
Libs just think that voluntourism is inherently beneficial and that they can just go somewhere and deliver a better way of living to the poor, backwards masses in underdeveloped/overexploited countries because their way of doing things is inherently superior and all that shit without a moment's consideration for what it means to be on the receiving end of voluntourism because "if my intentions for voluntourism are good and beneficial then the recipients will obviously receive this gratefully because they will also consider it to be good and beneficial" (except that's giving too much credit because I don't think people even go so far as to entertain the consideration for what recipients of voluntourists might possibly think, it's just dogmatically assumed that voluntourism = good. No question!)
Meanwhile there's troubling reports that there are "orphanages" running in the developing world which are actually engaging in rampant child trafficking in order to lure in voluntourism bucks by promising life changing experiences™ and doing good for the world™ etc. by letting westerners spend a couple of weeks teaching the trafficked kids how to say a few english words and shit like that...
I feel like I've been shilling this idea on Hexbear since I signed up but, to rehash it once again:
The terminally-liberal brain is so steeped in this reflexive (as in "a reflex", not as in "turning the concept inwards" - fuck I hate autoantonyms smh) equality that they take their own personal experiences and universalise them, completely whitewashing the fact that there are vastly different people, classes, cultures, worldviews etc.
It's nice to think of everyone as ultimately equal, don't get me wrong, but when that idea gets overextended then it becomes "my (hegemonic) worldview and my experience of and relationship to the world is the same as everyone else's" it becomes toxic because it becomes a barrier to truly understanding something like intergenerational trauma or the effects of serious poverty or even just understanding that some cultures are more communally-minded than individualistic.
This is clearly demonstrated by those r/ABoringDystopia posts of homeless people wearing VR headsets. Bruh, do you not spend time at home on leisure and escapism? Would you not want to engage in escapism if you were homeless? I get that you think you're special and you've done something unique in order to earn your station and that, if you were homeless, you'd pawn that VR headset and use your entrepreneurial spirit to bring yourself back to your current (earned) station but... that's not how homelessness works, buddy.
Hence why they just assume that because they confer a special degree of importance to their little social media comments then therefore so would Xi Jinping and Putin, obviously.
It's this feigned sort of overextended empathy which is ultimately chauvinistic in nature that ends up becoming a parody of itself.
Edit: One essay that really shines a light on this attitude is To Hell With Good Intentions written by the anarchist Ivan Illich who delivered this speech at the dawn of the era of voluntourism.
Libs just think that voluntourism is inherently beneficial and that they can just go somewhere and deliver a better way of living to the poor, backwards masses in underdeveloped/overexploited countries because their way of doing things is inherently superior and all that shit without a moment's consideration for what it means to be on the receiving end of voluntourism because "if my intentions for voluntourism are good and beneficial then the recipients will obviously receive this gratefully because they will also consider it to be good and beneficial" (except that's giving too much credit because I don't think people even go so far as to entertain the consideration for what recipients of voluntourists might possibly think, it's just dogmatically assumed that voluntourism = good. No question!)
Meanwhile there's troubling reports that there are "orphanages" running in the developing world which are actually engaging in rampant child trafficking in order to lure in voluntourism bucks by promising life changing experiences™ and doing good for the world™ etc. by letting westerners spend a couple of weeks teaching the trafficked kids how to say a few english words and shit like that...