Cue six year old me not understanding what the fuck a ‘Vichy’ was and why I fought weird guys with weird guns for the first level before I got to kill Nazis.
And yeah, the obvious rejoinder to that is that it wouldn’t be experiencing qualia, and wouldn’t be actually conscious. To me that feels like solipsism, but I admit that it’s impossible to know. This whole thought experiment might be circular, actually. If a purely physical thing can experience qualia, then qualia must be physical, but if qualia aren’t physical then a purely physical thing couldn’t experience them. That question might be irresolvable.
This is essentially what it comes down to, and why I say my theory is mostly just conjecture; there's simply not enough information at the moment nor is it clear there will ever be.
This is good so far, but isn't proportionate with the level of racism and toxicity we've seen.
In addition to this, there should be:
I. A purge of racism ala transphobia, primarily focused on the recently on-boarded reddit people as they seem to be the element most responsible for this reactionary tide.
II. An end to any sort of official partnership or 'merging' with VCJ. People from reddit or anywhere else can be invited and judged on their own merits, but I'd rather not have this unmitigated deluge of reddit radlibs who are convinced they're leftists.
This is conjecture more than anything and I could be proven wrong, but I don't this is another 'science will figure it out when it gets advanced enough' issue.
You can theorize of a hypothetical being that knows the exact atomic make-up of a red object down to the smallest molecule and exactly how it triggers the color-cones in our eyes but that being would not phenomenally know the experience of redness unless they had observed it for themselves subjectively.
I have the outlier position of free will absolutist, though I'd readily admit my rationale isn't necessarily the strongest.
tl;dr: Qualia and phenomenal sensation are non-physical phenomenon; thus if we are able to perceive non-physical phenomenon then that must logically entail we can react to non-physical phenomenon which means the machinations of our minds / consciousness aren't necessarily bound to physics or notions of casuality as we understand them.
There’s an indigenous user that created basically the exact same thread 7 times who began with essentialist rhetoric that implied you can’t be indigenous and vegan. They framed it in the opposite direction, attempting to say it’s excluding of the indigenous to tie veganism to leftism.
Said user, in question, weenuk, was subject of some pretty heinous rhetoric, including attacks on their mental health I spoke with them in DMs and they shared a sentiment that I found particularly relevant:
"The tone policing is so exhausting, not to mention the insistence on the most correct and careful speech and usage of words and rhetoric. The expectation of perfect elocution is, in itself, a manifestation of white supremacy. If we don’t react calmly, and respond in a non-confrontational manner, we are simply not heard."
Nowhere, to my knowledge, have they stated or implied for veganism to be incompatible with being indigenous. On one occasion, they stated they have been vegan before and tries to live their life in that way whenever feasible and they've posting a thread in support of NSFWing posts with meat in respect to our vegan comrades which I agree with.
What they, I and others have qualm with, is the cavalier attitude when this particular issue is pushed and how it can affect POC or indigenous communities -- never implying that non-veganism is an perquisite to be apart of these communities, don't understand where you got that from honestly -- and how our issues with certain comparisons, analogies and dialogue are brushed aside or openly belittled, which is pretty evident at this point.
I repeatedly tried to engage on this respectfully and carefully with effortposts and received continual bad faith responses from the same cast of characters.
I'm assuming you're referring to this thread. An 'effortpost' isn't inherently good faith because they're eloquent with a veneer of amiability, liberals commonly employ long-winded, paternal dismissals of our concerns.
Your response, where you explicitly deny there's any gaslighting involving dismissal of their concerns when weenuk has repeatedly and explicitly stated that they feel that they have experienced significant prejudice and was tired of being gaslighted about it was completely lacking any 'good-faith' and I'm not surprised they and a significant amount of other individuals that I've spoken to have decided to depart.
And yes, I responded with an :agony-immense: and I candidly feel like that was totally appropriate when you tell us what we see and feel and have been confirmed by numerous others to be happening isn't happening.
Ridiculing objections to the slavery comparison is something I participated in. There are many very reasonable criticisms to be made of that position and both black and indigenous comrades have been making them. Summarizing this as racism is whitewashing us. With that said, your description is wide enough to also include one or two comments that were ambiguously racist and several comments that require assigning societal racism to individuals here without any deeper analysis or minimal assumptions of good faith.
We often speak of black and indigenous comrades in tandem because there is often a shared struggle, especially when facing prejudices, but as I said, our experiences are not identical and often diverge. If you participated in ridiculing a black person getting upset that chattel slavery is being compared to animal farming even after they've expressively said it is a very sensitive topic and they'd prefer you to express the issue in other ways, then I'm entirely comfortable with calling that behavior problematic or racist. There's no is 'deeper analysis' or assumptions to be made when a person blithely refuses to stop using a very sensitive analogy even when you explicitly ask them to.
is it time to strike “socialism or barbarism” from the site’s lexicon? If the term barbaric is to be used at all, pointless violence against animals includes it. English is overloaded with white supremacy and I can find it just about everywhere, so the question always has to be whether it was actually a racist accusation vs. you being aware of a racist context for it that bothers you, and where the two meet. I sure as shit don’t see the barbarism comparison as racist in the former sense. If we want to get rid of the latter sense then this whole space needs to be decolonized and most of the flippant memes will be banned, as well as shitposts, because they all use language that’s been imbued with endemic and usually unrecognized white supremacy.
No, unless 'barbarism' was being used directly in relation to marginalized groups and it was continued to be used despite constant protest against it, which is what we're discussing here.
Well our interaction has been fine, we’re having a fairly productive disagreement imo. This is far from typical in my experience here on this particular issue, however. People have wrapped themselves in my identity and used it to brow beat me over and over again as if I can’t tell that 95% of what I said was ignored or as if suddenly chapos don’t know how analogies work.
Why are you asserting that the numerous POC and indigenous people who do have an issue with these analogies, including myself, are just trying to abuse you rather than the more likely outcome that we have genuinely experienced these issues in a manner that we feel defies characterization of handwaved 'misunderstandings'? Why do you demand 'your friends' be constantly treated with 'good faith' while positing that the people who have an issue with some of their rhetoric are merely 'internalizing settler logic' and 'gatekeeping' indigenous identity?
And I saw that pattern of behavior from indigenousness anti-vegan posters, internalizing settler logic
Could you elaborate on this?
Sick of seeing my friends invalidated because some babies on this site can’t handle a good-faith discussion of their anti-veganism.
I've seen POC be ridiculed in a thread on /c vegan about objecting to the slavery comparison, called barbarians, a black person DMed and harassed about being an animal, and experienced some of it myself. This pattern of behavior has been substatinated by numerous examples and, I think, a majority of the site agreeing that it is a issue that has to be comprehensively tackled. I don't think it's about 'babies being unable to handle a good-faith discussion of their anti-veganism' especially when most, including myself, are repeatedly emphasizing veganism itself is good and the issue is with the dismissive rhetoric that frequently lapses into chauvinism and racism.
I’m sure there are POC and indigenous among the vegans here with different views. That’s fine, our experiences are far from universal, what matters is that there is a consistent pattern of negative behavior that a very significant amount of the POC and indigenous community here have found very harmful and not without reason, as I’m sure you’ve seen by some examples now.
·4 years ago
·4 years ago
More and more people are saying it, folks.