Nephil Thief

So: a week since the OP. We've recapitulated the basics of whiteness theory, but otherwise I don't see much in terms of opinions on appropriation. Maybe just as well, I don't know. I may be looking in the wrong place.

For my part, I'm considering not making my fiction writings publicly available, anyway. I never really was interested in publishing for money - by all accounts I've read, this is a huge pain. And it's not like the world needs yet another rich white dude SF writer.

People can be as dishonest or disrespectful as they want to be. It's fine that people sometimes want to be those things. It is not immoral to be dishonest or disrespectful when you don't hurt anyone by doing so.

Vehemently disagree. IMO the principle matters - in part because you can't always be sure you're not hurting someone.

Hurt feelings, while often persuasive(either becasue of empathy or because people hurt your feelings for doing things they don't like), do not count for moral purposes.

I think it's very much a matter of degree, and also of pervasiveness. Verbal abuse hurts. Being systematically bullied hurts. I know that from (bitter) personal experience, and what I've dealt with is relatively not even that bad.

There's a difference between being offended or mildly embarrassed, and being made to feel humiliated or outright threatened. The latter far outweighs the former. Especially when it happens on a systematic basis.

Also IMO, while individual cases of appropriation may not do much harm, case after case can function to retroactively whitewash history. See for instance the "Harlem Shake" example mentioned in the article above.

the record labels tend to exercise a pretty heavy degree of creative control over what they produce and market, too. so yeah, being noticed by a big label isn't necessarily a triumph in terms of either material success or artistic freedom

Suddenly, the stuff I've heard on Top 20 radio stations makes a frightening amount of sense.

I remember when rap was new. The complaints then where that "white labels" wouldn't sign rappers. Now, you are complaining that "white labels" are signing rappers and making money off of them. In 30 years, rap has gone mainstream. That should be seen as a victory, not a theft.

I'm betting the record labels make more money than the rappers, though.

(And I believe there are a lot of problems with this model of "victory," much more than just who gets the money. But I don't have the knowledge to offer commentary on it.)

what makes you so sure that the bolded claims are always true? you' date=' as an individual, may not have much effect on the degree and type of discrimination that marginalised groups experience, but culture is formed by the actions of its members. you only have to look at social processes like gentrification to see how individuals making choices that seem to only affect themselves can have a harmful effect in aggregate. if there's a sudden fad for wearing turbans and that causes an increase in prices or a shortage of supply, then that fad has harmed the people who have an actual cultural need to wear turbans. look at the quinoa shortage in South America for an example of this kind of thing happening in the real world right now: quinoa becomes a fashionable food item in the West and people who rely on it to survive are priced out of the market. no individual quinoa-eating foodie is in a position to prevent poor Bolivians from starving because half the supply of their staple food is suddenly being exported to the US, but they're still a part of the social forces that are making that happen[/quote']

 

Wow. That is nasty. I had no idea the health foods/nutraceuticals industry was that directly harmful.

In my experience' date=' it's an indication of the speakers' complete disrespect and disregard for the subject and their reasoning, to the degree that [b']they don't even consider it worth their time to articulate why.[/b] Your family probably feels that way because the people demanding cultural segregation are far more self-righteous about very bad lines of reasoning than they have any right to be. Who the hell are you to tell me what I am and am not "allowed" to do?! And so forth.

[bolding mine]

And IMO that is a problem. Knee-jerk ad hominem responses may be emotionally satisfying, but they are unhelpful and alienate people.

If I, in a fit of monumentally poor judgement, want to take up wearing a turban because I saw it on the television and just like the look, that doesn't hurt anybody and policing it is a bad thing to do. That I would be treated better than a middle-eastern person doing the same is a result of preexisting oppression, not of my actions - that person would be discriminated against, in the same degree, regardless, and while it's not fair that we would be treated differently, stopping me doesn't help them and hurts, well, me. "Policing" people is generally a bad thing to do, and it's only sometimes acceptable because people hurting each other is worse. Wearing clothes, eating food, listening to music, dancing, learning a language, learning a history, all of these things can involve mimicking practices from different cultures, and they do not in general materially hurt the people comprising either one.

I agree that nobody should be policing the legal status of your turban-wearing privilege. OTOH, I don't think there's anything wrong with people telling you in such a case: "You know, that might be considered offensive." Likewise, I don't think there's anything wrong with you thinking about it, considering whether it's actually a good idea, and (eventually) rejecting the notion.

I don't like most forms of censorship, but this isn't censorship. Telling people when they're about to do something insulting is not censorship. Self-restraint is not censorship. Etc.

In general, just because you have the legal freedom to casually insult someone's culture, doesn't mean you should.

The question in my mind isn't whether the author has a point or not. They have a point. The question is more about where (approximately) one can draw a line.

also fwiw it doesn't strike me as especially weird that you'd feel a degree of personal investment in Jewish culture given how you've described your background. even if you're not actively practicing Judaism as a religion, you're connected to cultural traditions that take more than a generation or two to completely fade imo, and those are going to affect the worldview of the people you grew up with and the way you were raised

Makes sense. A lot of my worldview does seem to be informed by Jewish philosophical concepts rather than Christian ones. At least for now...

my mother had the full second-generation-immigrant experience of being bullied at school for wearing weird clothes and eating weird foods, and of growing up with parents who had fled persecution (they were Ukrainians of Jewish background who fled the USSR to Western Europe during dekulakization in the early '30s; for some mysterious reason living as Ukrainian Jews in Western Europe in the 1930s didn't turn out so great for them either, so they eventually ended up in Australia) and moved to a country where they knew nobody, where few people could speak their native language, and where they had to learn all kinds of new rules, from laws to everyday social conventions. i can't know exactly what that was like for her or for her parents but i can still feel the echoes of it in my own upbringing

I missed this earlier... Ouch.

My parents' families were fortunate to get to the US earlier - my father's side from Russia, my mom's variously from Hungary and Poland, at the beginning of the 20th century IIRC. At this point we're all pretty Americanized.

(Though, my grandmother on my father's side would be a second generation immigrant. She just turned 90. I should ask her about it, some time, if she's willing to talk... Also, thanks.)

So yeah, possibly of note: when I mentioned this article to family yesterday, the response included an indication that people trying to police cultural appropriation can "jump off a cliff."

In my experience, when someone provokes a suggestion of self-injury or violence like that - even a sarcastic suggestion - it's often an indication that they have a point.

it's late here and i don't really have the energy to respond to the rest of this thread in detail, but: high five, my fellow vaguely Jewish poster

*high fives*

Err... Sorry. In retrospect, I think the Chanukah music example was a terribly really bad one. I was fishing for analogies, but there aren't any - because Jewish culture has not been, well, colonized in the same way that African-American culture has.

As for the article I linked to, well - my feeling is that, seeing as I'm more closely attached to the colonizing culture, I don't get to ignore the author. Even if what they're saying annoys me at first glance.

I don't know. I'm just getting some conflicting messages, and trying to make sense of things. Hope I'm not being too pompous.

You can't always be the hero.

I hope this article is not too excessively political for here...

http://everydayfeminism.com/2013/09/cultural-exchange-and-cultural-appropriation/

Because I found it pretty thought-provoking.

...

I'm reminded of my high school's a capella group singing Chanukah songs, back in ~2006. That kind of got under my skin. It felt like an intrusion into my territory - not sacrilege or insult, but an obnoxious blunder. Which is really kind of amusing, when you think about it; seeing as I'm only Jewish by ancestry, certainly not by religion, and barely by culture. My last visit to a synagogue was over a year ago (and I'm surprised I didn't burst into flames when I walked in).

On the other hand: my family is full of white jazz musicians. I enjoy cooking curries. I listen to all manner of music myself.

Is that not a bit inconsistent?

...

I have a hard time classifying my feelings on this. Where does one draw the line between appropriation and not-really-anyone's-business? Between being respectful, and being needlessly self-limiting? Between promoting cultural equality, and promoting a kind of cultural protectionism?

For my part, I feel that if a Christian chef wants to cook latkes, that's their own business. But Christians singing Jewish holiday songs in front of a mostly Christian crowd feels like a bit much. On the other hand, why don't I feel the same way about jazz and soul food?

Like I said: inconsistent. Not good.

...

More to the point, I'm a (very amateur) writer of fiction. And I feel like I'm pulled in several directions there.

On the one hand: "Appropriation is bad."

On the other: "Your default setting is politically counterprogressive."

Between those, if I want to be a reponsible writer, there's not much I could write about.

(Mind, I wouldn't mind a Christian writing about a Jewish character, culture and all; as long as they actually did the research and got things correct. But how much of a litmus test is that? Different kinds of oppression are not equivalent.)

...

tl;dr

If I want to at least try to make the world a slightly better place, what are sensible best practices for navigating the seas of intersecting privilege and oppression?

(And should I even be asking that here?)

Ouch. Phantom Unicorns are quite tough.

*digs around in pockets for a Ring of Resistance*

... I'm like the only one anywhere near Boston, aren't I.

Wheee! Thanks!

Anyone know where the Unicorn Graveyard dungeon is? I've never been able to find it.

I didn't actually expect a sympathetic response, or any response really... Err, thank you. Very much. I mean it. But it was my fault.

idk if it's intentional or not but that link seems to be set to private

Whoops, right you are! Fixing momentarily.

Edit: on an unrelated note, how does almost everyone here grow their hair so long and pretty?! I always lose patience with it before it's even past my ears.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B7EgLkt64WtabUV1UWdTMWFXUXM/view?usp=sharing

I don't know where I'd be without cats.

[Edit: fixed link, whoops]

So... I realize I'm still a bit of a stranger here, but...

I want to apologize for the various times I've hijacked threads on social privilege, etc. with my own whining and personal issues. That was really not cool. I should have given people space and been respectful, instead of seeking reassurance at others' expense.

Mea culpa. I'll do better.

It's been a long, long time since I watched television... Let's see...

Earth: Final Conflict was good while it had an interestingly ambiguous protagonist, then they got a new guy who was a total Mary Sue. Sigh.

Enterprise and Star Trek: Voyager, ugh, awful.

Star Trek: The Next Generation, some very good episodes, far too many awful ones. Notice a pattern?

Star Trek: Deep Space 9 didn't feel like Star Trek, and I think that was a very good thing.

Firefly, hmm, I have mixed feelings. When it's good, it's good. But a lot of times, it falls into the very stereotypes it supposedly tries to subvert. See the ending of Jaynestown for a good example of this, or the whole character of Jubal Early.

Who is John Doe was good and creepy until the title character discovered martial arts and went all Mary Sue. Sigh.

More recent stuff? Well, I once saw five minutes of The Walking Dead. Most of it was some huge musclebound guy beating up three women at once, followed by them getting rescued by another huge musclebound dude, with loud rock music in the background. Because zombies aren't gritty enough I guess? Anyway yeah, how about no thanks.

Euroclydon - that sounds a lot like some of the stuff I went through, after I dropped out of college. And am stilll going through, really. That sense of not knowing who I am is familiar. Likewise the apathetic contemplation of suicide.

Please do stay with us. I know it's hard to see, but you are worth something.

*hugs*

Okaaay, but https://www.politica.../uselection2012

Wow. Sorry! I was taking it as a given that the US skews way to the right, but didn't realize how far to the authoritarian right we skew even by current UK standards.

https://www.politica...-7.88&soc=-6.77

Economic Left/Right: -7.88

Social Liberterian/Authoritarian: -6.77

For whatever that's worth. My answers on some things would skew more authoritarian by the standards of a multiple-choice test. To be honest, that is in part from observing my own lack of scruples at times; I think I'd be doing more good in the world if I were mandated to, rather than just on-and-off encouraged. And likewise, less ill if some of my worse habits were actually illegal.

(Not an excuse, mind. But.)

[Edit: for some reason I find it amusing, given the above, that my current forum title is "Mercenary."]

Oh, and on a different and rather depressing note:

https://www.politica...-7.88&soc=-6.77

I'd heard the UK's left kind of imploded last year (and read all about it on a very acerbic blog), but... wow.

http://i.imgur.com/Vum0h9u.png

These days I use Linux exclusively... not so much because I like it, as because there is no alternative.

(And I'm not letting you see my desk. There's so much stuff on it that the bottom layers of paper are starting to compost.)

[Edit: deleted, thought better of it. Dumping one's existential nausea on a public forum is also unethical. Sorry, all.]

Found the problem! Finally!

Additional Features menu -> uncheck "Terrain Animations Play" -> no more CPU churn.

I would suggest this feature be turned off by default, but I'd bet it doesn't cause nearly as much resource usage in the cross-platform port.

This scenario is like a James Bond novel written by C.S. Lewis.

No, really. It derives a lot from Christian concepts, and even from Christian conspiracy theories. The thing is that, while the latter would probably strike me as toxic in a modern setting, it seems entirely appropriate for epic fantasy; especially this epic fantasy, set as it is in a vast bureaucratic empire. The messianic story fits okayish; the creepy conspiracy notes fit like a glove. Or, rather, a steel gauntlet.

My main criticism is that there's too much of the messianic and too little of the conspiracy, especially towards the end.

The scenery is great, too. The city of Keptus feels legitimately old. The Prazac Dam all but hums with modern energy. The Spine really does feel like a beautiful-but-dangerous mountain landscape. For the limited scope of a 2D game, this is an impressive feat.

I would say this scenario definitely deserves a BEST rating, rough edges notwithstanding. Also I kind of hope the author found a career in writing or game design or something, because he has got some serious talent.