Effectronica posted:

That's pretty arrogant of you, assuming that you're a person.

Venom Snake posted:

Are you guys still really arguing with the dude who wanted to nuke the entire Soviet Union.

TheImmigrant posted:

Be careful not to appropriate any culture when you suggest a grisly method of execution for me.

TheImmigrant posted:

Be careful not to appropriate any culture when you suggest a grisly method of execution for me.

hakimashou posted:

Human life is so precious, that if we had to kill a million people to save a million and one different people, we would have a moral duty to do it.

That's my position, what's yours?

Effectronica posted:

By the way, the last time I saw the "everyone is laughing at you" tactic, it was a guy who only ever talked in the third person yelling about how he was sharing this on facebook where literally thousands of people were laughing at you guys. Was that guy your smarter cousin or something

Venom Snake posted:

Not killing hundreds of millions of people in the name of capitalism.

hakimashou posted:

In the name of saving hundreds of millions +1.

Because one extra life saved makes it a duty.

Surely we can both agree that if the choice is between fifty million people dying and fifty million and one people dying, the former is preferable to the latter.

I refuse to concede that human lives are just numbers or statistics, venom snake, I belive they matter.

What if that one life was yours, or someone you loved very much?

ETA: to put it more simply, the marginal utility of a single life does not change under any circumstances. One person dying to save two is not morally different to a billion dying to save a billion and one.

Venom Snake posted:

wow I didn't know the Soviet Union killed a billion people, makes u think

Effectronica posted:

Scenario A contains a population in which everybody leads lives well worth living. In A+ there is one group of people as large as the group in A and with the same high quality of life. But A+ also contains a number of people with a somewhat lower quality of life. In Parfit's terminology A+ is generated from A by “mere addition”. Comparing A and A+ it is reasonable to hold that A+ is better than A or, at least, not worse. Addition of extra worthwhile lives cannot make an outcome worse. Consider the next scenario B with the same number of people as A+, all leading lives worth living and at an average well-being level slightly above the average in A+, but lower than the average in A. It is hard to deny that B is better than A+ since it is better in regard to both average welfare and equality. However, if A+ is at least not worse than A, and if B is better than A+, then B is also better than A given full comparability among populations (i.e., setting aside possible incomparability among populations). By parity of reasoning (scenario B+ and C, C+ etc.), we end up with a scenario Z where the population has a very low positive quality of life. Thus, the final conclusion is that Z is better than A.

hakimashou posted:

Well, I didn't want to bring it up, but Russia didn't have "hundreds of millions of people" living in it during the 1940s.

Really though, what does it matter?

If the marginal utility of a single life doesn't change based on any circumstances, then the figure given can't possibly matter. One dying to save two lives, a million for a million and one, a trillion for a trillion and one, either life is precious or it isn't.

Effectronica posted:

I dunno where to start. I think this really deserves to be broken down thought-by-thought, assuming there are any in there.

So let's begin at the top. You are refusing to engage with what I actually wrote, except in this vague way where you agree that the process I have outlined is a bad thing, but the remedies I proposed don't exist. Instead, you're arguing that although it may be a bad thing, I can't call it cultural appropriation because you've defined that word differently. I guess that, given the totality of this thread so far, I should probably start making burnt offerings to Hera Argeia for shared definitions, because that will be probably more effective than asking for common ground on them.

quote:

Suppose Springfield has a decent-sized Evangelical population. A few years ago, the Evangelicals (and only the Evangelicals) celebrated Easter. It was a solemn religious holiday where everyone went to church and then had a quiet meal with their family. Evangelicals said that solemn, religious, Easter was very important to them. This peaked in 1985, right when the current leaders were raising kids.

Recently, other people have started holding 'Easter' with egg hunts and bunnies and brightly colored baskets of candy. Evangelical leaders have noticed that fewer people are coming to Easter services. Evangelical kids are starting to describe Easter as "The Holiday with the Bunnies." Evangelical community leaders are unhappy.

Has Easter been appropriated? Should non-Evangelicals feel bad?

SedanChair posted:

Yes but Evangelical Christianity is not a real culture. I think you all take my meaning.

falcon2424 posted:

His post seemed to be engaging with what you wrote. You're both looking at the link between "Outsiders adopt a diluted form of some cultural practice" and "Insiders end up with a diluted meaning". You're disagreeing about who's doing the dilution. You're saying that outsiders are diluting the insider's understanding of X. Rudatron is saying that insiders are still free to practice X however they want. If they choose to adapt their practice, then that's not a problem. A specific scenario makes it clearer.


This looks like a clear case of appropriation. (Unless we go with the "it only counts when it's exotic" definition)

I don't see why the non-Evangelicals should care. They don't have a duty to preserve Evangelical culture. In particular, they don't have a duty to preserve it's state in some semi-arbitrary year.

I agree with Rudatron's argument. The non-Evangelicals didn't dilute Evangelical-Easter. How could they? They weren't the ones going to church. Outsiders don't get to vote when we ask about a thing's meaning within a culture. Instead, the non-Evangelicals created their own holiday that shared some trappings with Evangelical-Easter. Evangelical practices changed because Evangelicals decided to skip church in favor of egg hunts. That's a grass-roots change happening within a culture.

The shift might make the cultural leaders unhappy. But ultimately, if the average member of the culture wanted to be in church, they'd be in church. And while parents have a right to introduce their kids to their culture, it's ultimate the kid's decision to accept a practice or not.

Effectronica posted:

You understand that I am not talking about "sharing some trappings", right? And your example is on the one hand stupid for using misleading terms (evangelical interpretations diverged from mainstream ones, there was no real appropriation or borrowing beyond the initial act of people adopting German traditions for Easter in much of the USA, which is not appropriative in my definition because of the relationship between the two cultures) but also very appropriate, because the exact phenomenon I outlined as a way to preserve culture- retreating from the broader society- is something that actual evangelicals have done, which is why you have Christian bookstores and a whole series of ways for people to avoid interacting with mainstream culture. Is this the best practical result we can expect? If not, what should we do instead.

SedanChair posted:

Yes, but that culture is not "evangelical" any more than their culture would be McDonald's if they ate a Big Mac.

7c Nickel posted:

Ok, let's try something.

In 1993, at the Lakota Summit V, the assembled members unanimously passed the "Declaration of War Against Exploiters of Lakota Spirituality."

Now are the practices described in this document

A. Real problems with cultural appropriation that the council was attempting to address.

B. Real problems, but not cultural appropriation because *INSERT 50 PAGE TANGENT HERE*

C. Not actually problems and those dumb minorities should have better things to worry about.

quote:

WHEREAS the absurd public posturing of this scandalous assortment of psuedo-Indian charlatans, "wannabes," commercial profiteers, cultists and "New Age shamans" comprises a momentous obstacle in the struggle of traditional Lakota people for an adequate public appraisal of the legitimate political, legal and spiritual needs of real Lakota people

quote:

4. We especially urge all our Lakota, Dakota, and Nakota people to take action to prevent our own people from contributing to and enabling the abuse of our sacred ceremonies and spiritual practices by outsiders; for, as we all know, there are certain ones among our own people who are prostituting our spiritual ways for their own selfish gain, with no regard for the spiritual well-being of the people as a whole.

5. We assert a posture of zero-tolerance for any "white man's shaman" who rises from within our own communities to "authorize" the expropriation of our ceremonial ways by non-Indians; all such "plastic medicine men" are enemies of the Lakota, Dakota and Nakota people.

Let us English posted:

This is kind of the inverse of the racism inherent in exoticicing other cultures. Instead engaging in the typical noble savage fallacy you deny them agency and insist that their choice of how to develop their culture isn't real.

Effectronica posted:

SedanChair posted:

There is no "inverse." Turning it around is not meaningful. And giving money to polo shirt wearing pastors is not "developing your culture" it's being a sucker. A racist posted pictures of rambunctious Africans like it was kryptonite to me, but I'll call them suckers the same as I would white folks who do the same. Anybody who has a problem with that needs to discover their own racism before looking at others.

rudatron posted:

Refusing to engage? I did engage, I pointed out that you're linking, without justification, the act of cultural appropriation (the copying of elements) and cultural destruction (the loss of elements). I've made this point several times now, each time you've dodged it. If they are necessarily linked, you must show that. The logic you've provided so far have relied on this assumption. You handwave it around with words like 'confusion', but there's not enough explanation there to satisfy me.

Now, naturalness: Natural is always a bad word to use because it has subjective qualifiers attached to it, but doesn't disclose them that easily. I've preferred to use the word 'normal' because that's very obviously a subjective word. I and most people would recognize imposition as a violent action - it should be avoided when possible. You've continually linked appropriation with imposition, and I've been attacking that link each time, to show how bad it is. But I have seen before attempts to show how important cultural diversity itself is, as a goal, with analogies to biological diversity, to show why cultural diversity should be a priori valued. Now perhaps you don't believe in that, that you have other reasons for valuing it in and of itself, such that any action that may lead to a loss is automatically bad. But the bio-analogy is very common.

But then we come to your example. I dunno effectronica, is banning a cultural practice at all like cultural appropriation? It's clear imposition, you're stopping people from what they want to do without just cause. If, on the other hand, a culture can die without it being imposed to die, then it means its practitioners have abandoned it. Their values have changed. Obviously there's no 'ethereal plane' action here, but cultures definitely aren't people. I said it before, they're tools. If nobody wants a tool, it has no value.

Now apply that to your crossing-the-street example. Black people are not a 'thing', their welfare matters (and it is definitely not abstract), so you can consequentialist your way into saying 'that's bad'.

And now, for tolerance: you have asked to me to do a great many things that you have not done. Where is your justification? You say tolerance is not an ideal, where is your proof? I have at least provided some kind of argument, all you done is just make demands. If you don't agree, you don't agree, nothing I can do about that. I don't have iron-clad proof, but neither do you. And neither does anyone else, or racism would already be over. I'm not discussing this because I want there to be a 'smackdown', I do it because its interesting. So let's see you put your cards on the table, and maybe they'll be something new to talk about.

Effectronica posted:

You have done nothing to respond to the actual argument that was made, which sought to show a way by which borrowing could become destructive, and have not even acknowledged it in passing. If you're not going to respond to people meeting your demands and just repeat yourself, there is no reason to engage further beyond pettiness. Unless maybe you have some sort of objection you're not being clear about, in which case you're merely an rear end in a top hat.

The big problem here is that you're using definitions that are different from mine, and then treating them as inherent truths, presumably as Platonic Forms, so I am personally disinclined to use your definitions, connotative as they are of you being a prick. So I can't really respond very well because you're using, e.g. a definition of the term "imposition" that I find nonsensical and I have no reasons to adopt your definitions, several reasons against, and several reasons why I feel that my definitions are good in their own right. Maybe you could address this, but I doubt you are inclined to do so.

Now we get to the meat of any D&D thread- arguing over how well a figurative statement fits the given situation. The only real response to that is "Go gently caress yourself". I guess the next part would also be worthy of a "Go gently caress yourself" for puking libertarianism, but I know that you don't really mean that and are just operating under bad definitions.

I guess that there is room for another "go gently caress yourself" for dodging away from the point of how you are measuring such harm, but that's a cruel thing to ask consequentialists to do and I don't want you to hurt yourself in the attempt.

You know, you're the one who started with the assertions, and yet you're demanding that other people prove their statements first. Why don't you just abandon your claim, which you admit is something you can't support? Because among the things that would be better than listening to semantical claims that neglect basic semiotic principles and then arguing about them, I can count:

-pouring boiling water over my head
-going for a swim in freezing temperatures
-discussing what fictional characters people masturbate to.

TheImmigrant posted:

You sound angry. You should get laid. Pay for it, if you must - I'll lend you the money if you need it. Just remember not to appropriate any cultural taboos while you engage in gay prostitution, because, like, racism.

TheImmigrant posted:

You sound angry. You should get laid. Pay for it, if you must - I'll lend you the money if you need it. Just remember not to appropriate any cultural taboos while you engage in gay prostitution, because, like, racism.

SedanChair posted:

Jock poo poo.

hakimashou posted:

Cultural appropriation is bad because its dilutes the exotic authenticity of a culture, but a culture's exotic authenticity only matters to people outside it, because our own cultures aren't exotic to us.

So, cultural appropriation can only be bad from an outside perspective, since diluting or diminishing the exotic authenticity of another culture is only bad from the perspective of someone who values it because it is exotic.

So, for people who believe they are part of a culture but also are alarmed when its exotic authenticity is diminished, there is a contradiction. Somewhere along the line they identified with a culture but never really came to see or value it from an insider's perspective.

Fundamentally, if we think our own cultures have intrinsic values rather than extrinsic ones- for example "I like this about my culture because i think it is good" vs "I like this about my culture because only we do it-" then we can't possibly see cultural appropriation as wrong, since at worst, it is just people trying to imitate something we think is good, and we should want the best for one another.

quote:

Suppose Springfield has a decent-sized Evangelical population. A few years ago, the Evangelicals (and only the Evangelicals) celebrated Easter. It was a solemn religious holiday where everyone went to church and then had a quiet meal with their family. Evangelicals said that solemn, religious, Easter was very important to them. This peaked in 1985, right when the current leaders were raising kids.

Recently, other people have started holding 'Easter' with egg hunts and bunnies and brightly colored baskets of candy. Evangelical leaders have noticed that fewer people are coming to Easter services. Evangelical kids are starting to describe Easter as "The Holiday with the Bunnies." Evangelical community leaders are unhappy.

Has Easter been appropriated? Should non-Evangelicals feel bad?

Effectronica posted:

You understand that I am not talking about "sharing some trappings", right? And your example is on the one hand stupid for using misleading terms (evangelical interpretations diverged from mainstream ones, there was no real appropriation or borrowing beyond the initial act of people adopting German traditions for Easter in much of the USA, which is not appropriative in my definition because of the relationship between the two cultures) but also very appropriate, because the exact phenomenon I outlined as a way to preserve culture- retreating from the broader society- is something that actual evangelicals have done, which is why you have Christian bookstores and a whole series of ways for people to avoid interacting with mainstream culture. Is this the best practical result we can expect? If not, what should we do instead.

blackguy32 posted:

I don't know whats worse: the people who deny cultural appropriation exists or the people who basically want to tell minorities what they REALLY should be angry about.

You basically got it. It's not that people are just wearing poo poo. It's people wearing poo poo without understanding the context in which it is worn or what it signifies. In Iggy Azalea's example, its about her taking on this persona while not even getting it right. I mean, for as terrible Macklemore is, he at least doesn't do near the amount of stupid poo poo that Azalea does.

blackguy32 posted:

Yes, a white girl from Australia who is even clueless about the racism in her home country and how it relates to Aboriginal housing, comes to the United States, adopts rap music as her platform, then proceeds to poo poo on minorities using a myriad of stereotypes while making money off a "hood" persona.

http://black-australia.tumblr.com/post/86986108822/in-this-video-iggy-azalea-is-interviewed-by-the

http://piggyazalea.tumblr.com/

Also, note how I never called it black culture. I mean Eminem while receiving many of the same criticisms has never poo poo on his audience in the way that Iggy Azalea has.

FourLeaf posted:

Honestly I think the problem with the term cultural appropriation is that, like "problematic," it's a really weaselly coward way of not hurting people's feelings by saying "racist." Like that picture of the Redskins fan isn't cultural appropriation, it's a loving horrendous racist caricature of actual living people.

Lowtechs posted:

Seems to me that the best way to stop cultural appropriation by Whites is White Pride World Wide. Have White people reject non-White cultures and learn to love their own White culture will stop cultural appropriation.

Effectronica posted:

You could have just written "Native Americans aren't real" and gotten the same point across much more efficiently.