In most normal day to day parlance "Extremist" is sort of loosely defined under the "It's okay to think X, but not okay to do Y because X told you to" or some vaguely equivalent or comparable framework. The idea generally being that ideas can't really be extreme, only actions can.
Problem is from where I'm sitting this usually is functionally equivalent to "It's okay for you to think X, it's not okay for you to act like a person who honestly thinks X is true" and... I don't think that's a fair place to force people into. It don't think that center can hold for long and it creates the paradox of if you step back and think about most of the time "Extremist" is a just functional, street level word that means "Person who acts like a person who thought they thought would logically act" and that's... off to me.
Let's address the elephant in the room and get it out of the way. Religious Extremism. This is the weirdest one to me. The idea that the "standard" we've as a society have sort of come to an unspoken agreement on is to accept, laud, and defend the idea of holding the opinion that there an all powerful being that holds opinions about how we should act and could hand down unbelievably extreme levels of either reward or punishment while demonizing ever acting like a rational person who actually held that belief would act is... like really weird if you think about it. We've basically forced religious people into the position of "I literally believe that performing or not performing this action will lead to you either being rewarded or punished on a level you or I can't begin to comprehend literally for eternity... but I mean it's no big deal, you do you."
Social and political extremism is slightly less extreme but only a little. David Wong in one of his Cracked.com articles explain it well:
And you can see that here all the time, a post in the political subforum of "Political thing X is so bad we should be arming for the next Civil War and mercy killing the babies to spare them the horror" in on thread and 30 seconds later a post about "OMG I can't wait for the next season of Doctor Walking Breaking Thrones it's gonna be so awesome!" down in the entertainment subforum.
I get that most of that is just try-hard edge-lords thinking that speaking in the most hyperbolic language possible gives them extra credit on the purity test and we question how much they actually "mean" any of it, but it still raises the question of accepting a statement that would never except acting on.
I get that this is gonna sound like a defense of "Thought policing" to a lot of people, but I'm just talking about simple disagreement, not having jackbooted thugs carry you off in the night to the Clockwork Orange Chair at Area 51. If you're okay with someone saying "I hold opinion X" but not okay with them acting like someone who holds opinion X would logically act, that's.... off.
Problem is from where I'm sitting this usually is functionally equivalent to "It's okay for you to think X, it's not okay for you to act like a person who honestly thinks X is true" and... I don't think that's a fair place to force people into. It don't think that center can hold for long and it creates the paradox of if you step back and think about most of the time "Extremist" is a just functional, street level word that means "Person who acts like a person who thought they thought would logically act" and that's... off to me.
Let's address the elephant in the room and get it out of the way. Religious Extremism. This is the weirdest one to me. The idea that the "standard" we've as a society have sort of come to an unspoken agreement on is to accept, laud, and defend the idea of holding the opinion that there an all powerful being that holds opinions about how we should act and could hand down unbelievably extreme levels of either reward or punishment while demonizing ever acting like a rational person who actually held that belief would act is... like really weird if you think about it. We've basically forced religious people into the position of "I literally believe that performing or not performing this action will lead to you either being rewarded or punished on a level you or I can't begin to comprehend literally for eternity... but I mean it's no big deal, you do you."
Social and political extremism is slightly less extreme but only a little. David Wong in one of his Cracked.com articles explain it well:
Quote:
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I spent every Sunday growing up hearing that the Apocalypse was imminent -- within the year, maybe within the month or the hour. I would call the congregation "doomsday preppers," but here's the thing: They weren't prepping at all. They talked like the apocalypse was coming, describing in chilling detail how soon, the godless government would start beheading Christians. But they weren't spending their spare time stocking water, canned goods, or fuel. They walked out of those sermons about the impending starvation and pestilence and then went home to watch the Chicago Bears. I don't think they were lying about their beliefs; it's just that those beliefs didn't exist anywhere outside of their skulls. They certainly didn't extend to their feet, which could have carried them to the hardware store to get water purification pills and a [crapload] of batteries. They never propelled them to the library to study insurgency and guerrilla tactics. They "believed" the climactic battle with Satan was at hand, but they didn't believe it. I'm bringing this up now because today I can open up my Twitter feed and see a meme about how only guns and guillotines will end the Trumpocalypse, followed minutes later by that exact same user lavishing praise on Red Dead Redemption 2. ("I'm 70 hours in and barely scratched the surface!") So now, on the eve of a vote that can reverse the tide of history, I'm curious to see. All that talk for the last two years about how we're living under the new Hitler, do people really believe it? Or is it just, like, a thing we say? |
I get that most of that is just try-hard edge-lords thinking that speaking in the most hyperbolic language possible gives them extra credit on the purity test and we question how much they actually "mean" any of it, but it still raises the question of accepting a statement that would never except acting on.
I get that this is gonna sound like a defense of "Thought policing" to a lot of people, but I'm just talking about simple disagreement, not having jackbooted thugs carry you off in the night to the Clockwork Orange Chair at Area 51. If you're okay with someone saying "I hold opinion X" but not okay with them acting like someone who holds opinion X would logically act, that's.... off.
via International Skeptics Forum https://ift.tt/2YF5942
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