This comes across as a salad of harsh accusations with only a smidgen of supporting evidence.
What racism and sexism did “redacted” experience in the rationalist community? What “uniformed things” do we say about “non-white non-Western ciswomen”?
I’m pretty sure most of us here are aware that racism exists. In particular, I personally experienced it and my parents and further ancestors experienced a lot of it. This has little to do with “keep your identity small”. The latter is about avoiding having particular maps entangled with your sense of self-worth so that you don’t distort your beliefs out of emotional self-preservation. It is not about pretending as if your membership in particular groups has no consequences whatsoever. Personally I have some qualms with “keep your identity small” but this is not it.
Btw what did you mean by “your identity is trivial and superficial”? White people have a “superficial” identity and POC have “deep” identities? It makes no sense to me except invoking the meme that “privileged = bad” and riding its associated affect heuristic. And, we like (some thing about) Francis Bacon, Francis Bacon can be connected to [bad thing] in some roundabout way which doesn’t say much given the time and place in which he lived, therefore we are complicit in [bad thing]?? Taint percolates through any number of degrees of separation?
How do we “unthoughtfully disrespect” tradition? The only example given is meditation with which I have little experience. Although, I do think it is strange and to-be-discouraged when people here starting talking about “Buddhism” while referring solely to meditation techniques. Btw I have “mystical” experiences even without meditation, and I don’t need tradition for that (nor do I consider having such experiences an important goal).
As a queer person I can attest that tradition has done much to make my life miserable, and when I disrespect it I believe I do so quite thoughtfully. I don’t owe courtesy to the Chesterton fence which is the wall of my prison. And, consider that it might be a “harmful, insensitive” thing to tell me otherwise (but also I think that whether something is true is more important than whether it is sensitive.)
By “trivial and superficial” I mean stuff like your favorite programming language, Linux distro, keyboard input and television shows. I did not intend to include European descent.
This comes across as a salad of harsh accusations with only a smidgen of supporting evidence.
What racism and sexism did “redacted” experience in the rationalist community? What “uniformed things” do we say about “non-white non-Western ciswomen”?
I’m pretty sure most of us here are aware that racism exists. In particular, I personally experienced it and my parents and further ancestors experienced a lot of it. This has little to do with “keep your identity small”. The latter is about avoiding having particular maps entangled with your sense of self-worth so that you don’t distort your beliefs out of emotional self-preservation. It is not about pretending as if your membership in particular groups has no consequences whatsoever. Personally I have some qualms with “keep your identity small” but this is not it.
Btw what did you mean by “your identity is trivial and superficial”? White people have a “superficial” identity and POC have “deep” identities? It makes no sense to me except invoking the meme that “privileged = bad” and riding its associated affect heuristic. And, we like (some thing about) Francis Bacon, Francis Bacon can be connected to [bad thing] in some roundabout way which doesn’t say much given the time and place in which he lived, therefore we are complicit in [bad thing]?? Taint percolates through any number of degrees of separation?
How do we “unthoughtfully disrespect” tradition? The only example given is meditation with which I have little experience. Although, I do think it is strange and to-be-discouraged when people here starting talking about “Buddhism” while referring solely to meditation techniques. Btw I have “mystical” experiences even without meditation, and I don’t need tradition for that (nor do I consider having such experiences an important goal).
As a queer person I can attest that tradition has done much to make my life miserable, and when I disrespect it I believe I do so quite thoughtfully. I don’t owe courtesy to the Chesterton fence which is the wall of my prison. And, consider that it might be a “harmful, insensitive” thing to tell me otherwise (but also I think that whether something is true is more important than whether it is sensitive.)
By “trivial and superficial” I mean stuff like your favorite programming language, Linux distro, keyboard input and television shows. I did not intend to include European descent.
This is the core point I was trying to get across. It sounds like you understand it perfectly.