“What does ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’ mean?” is not a difficult sentence to form unless you have trouble forming sentences generally, and while we should certainly try to make every appropriate accommodation for people who have trouble forming sentences generally, I don’t think it makes sense to treat that as the baseline. This isn’t especially dependent on the particular social norms of a group within liberal society, the only point of conflict is if you come from some place so reactionary that asking a question during an informal meeting is regarded as speaking out of turn, and those institutions do exist (I was once part of one), but again I don’t think it’s reasonable to treat this as the baseline.
the only point of conflict is if you come from some place so reactionary that asking a question during an informal meeting is regarded as speaking out of turn, and those institutions do exist
Well, I did attend Catholic schools growing up. And those aren’t the most reactionary church institutions in existence, especially outside the US, but they’re not particularly egalitarian places either. I did get in trouble at times for asking a dumb question or asking at a bad time.
I have a good deal of second- and third-hand accounts about how reactionary some Catholic churches can be, so you don’t need to make any argument there. It’s kind of a cruel irony that the institution responsible for catechisms was so hostile to your questions, though.
Oh yeah, it’s odd. Those places are waking nightmares in broad daylight. It is funny in retrospect the insane crap that goes on in such institutions and is viewed as completely normal, though.
They might not have ever actually brought in secret police or the Spanish Inquisition (not that I’d have expected an inquisition over anything I was involved in, not even when I was stuck in it and believed the reactionary insanity was normal), but there was absolutely a “We’ll ask the questions around here!” vibe in several of the many facilities I bounced around for those 12 years.
Oh, the stories I could tell of men and women who’d be better suited to working for a fascist state’s surveillance apparatus than working for a primary school or for a church, screaming at me like I personally was responsible for anything from a lost pencil to the extinction of the dinosaurs. In fact, it’s so unbelievable to people who don’t get it, that it’d make a damn good Cold War action novel. At least if I ever finish writing that, I might be able to get something good out of that very long waking nightmare.
Yep. Exactly. Asking dumb questions that seem reasonable to me is generally how I get clocked as “weird” by people who don’t know what neurodivergence is on an intellectual level, but sure as shit knew enough to clock the weird kid in their first grade class and still unconsciously treat “the weird guy” badly as adults.
I think I definitely spent time around shitty groups that discouraged good faith questions when I was learning the basics of what an ML is, that’s likely.
I have seen several cases where groups of people are correct but are unable to explain why because they don’t have perfect recollection of what they read, or where they read it. They just absorbed the correct position without the ability to fully and totally explain that position.
This often leads to situations where people will dogpile someone who takes the wrong position but not be capable of explaining why that position is wrong and why they should change it.
In some cases, people know the correct information and are just particularly poor at conveying it. Teaching is a skill and every single communist needs to hone that skill. Many are failing in this regard.
Depending on how long it has been since I engaged with a topic it can also be extremely difficult sometimes to recall exact details without spending significant time doing a memory refresher. For example Afghanistan and Xinjiang, I know the correct positions on this and I’ve thoroughly explained them well to people in the past but my ability to fully explain it weakens with time. I now rely simply on linking to resources because my own explanations get hazier and hazier with lack of time between engaging in the content myself.
They’re complex topics with important highly specific details that often form major support pillars of explanations, without recent engagement with those details the support pillars of the explanation are missing.
It’s not difficult to ask a question. If it’s a shitty group, it’s a shitty group. If you’re presumptuous, then maybe you shouldn’t be.
Asking questions is hard, asking questions to groups you’re not a part of and don’t have a good handle on the norms for, is very hard
Neurodivergent people exist ya know
“What does ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’ mean?” is not a difficult sentence to form unless you have trouble forming sentences generally, and while we should certainly try to make every appropriate accommodation for people who have trouble forming sentences generally, I don’t think it makes sense to treat that as the baseline. This isn’t especially dependent on the particular social norms of a group within liberal society, the only point of conflict is if you come from some place so reactionary that asking a question during an informal meeting is regarded as speaking out of turn, and those institutions do exist (I was once part of one), but again I don’t think it’s reasonable to treat this as the baseline.
Well, I did attend Catholic schools growing up. And those aren’t the most reactionary church institutions in existence, especially outside the US, but they’re not particularly egalitarian places either. I did get in trouble at times for asking a dumb question or asking at a bad time.
I have a good deal of second- and third-hand accounts about how reactionary some Catholic churches can be, so you don’t need to make any argument there. It’s kind of a cruel irony that the institution responsible for catechisms was so hostile to your questions, though.
Oh yeah, it’s odd. Those places are waking nightmares in broad daylight. It is funny in retrospect the insane crap that goes on in such institutions and is viewed as completely normal, though.
They might not have ever actually brought in secret police or the Spanish Inquisition (not that I’d have expected an inquisition over anything I was involved in, not even when I was stuck in it and believed the reactionary insanity was normal), but there was absolutely a “We’ll ask the questions around here!” vibe in several of the many facilities I bounced around for those 12 years.
Oh, the stories I could tell of men and women who’d be better suited to working for a fascist state’s surveillance apparatus than working for a primary school or for a church, screaming at me like I personally was responsible for anything from a lost pencil to the extinction of the dinosaurs. In fact, it’s so unbelievable to people who don’t get it, that it’d make a damn good Cold War action novel. At least if I ever finish writing that, I might be able to get something good out of that very long waking nightmare.
Yep. Exactly. Asking dumb questions that seem reasonable to me is generally how I get clocked as “weird” by people who don’t know what neurodivergence is on an intellectual level, but sure as shit knew enough to clock the weird kid in their first grade class and still unconsciously treat “the weird guy” badly as adults.
I think I definitely spent time around shitty groups that discouraged good faith questions when I was learning the basics of what an ML is, that’s likely.
I have seen several cases where groups of people are correct but are unable to explain why because they don’t have perfect recollection of what they read, or where they read it. They just absorbed the correct position without the ability to fully and totally explain that position.
This often leads to situations where people will dogpile someone who takes the wrong position but not be capable of explaining why that position is wrong and why they should change it.
In some cases, people know the correct information and are just particularly poor at conveying it. Teaching is a skill and every single communist needs to hone that skill. Many are failing in this regard.
Depending on how long it has been since I engaged with a topic it can also be extremely difficult sometimes to recall exact details without spending significant time doing a memory refresher. For example Afghanistan and Xinjiang, I know the correct positions on this and I’ve thoroughly explained them well to people in the past but my ability to fully explain it weakens with time. I now rely simply on linking to resources because my own explanations get hazier and hazier with lack of time between engaging in the content myself.
Good post
This explains a lot, tbh. I also have noticed I have a lot of trouble explaining things I haven’t engaged with basic principles of in a while.
They’re complex topics with important highly specific details that often form major support pillars of explanations, without recent engagement with those details the support pillars of the explanation are missing.
Yeah, that checks out.