I need to disagree with you on the labels thing. It's been my experience since I was quite young that most people strive to fit into categories. They look for some movement or some fad to swear allegiance to and they put a lot of effort into maximizing their conformity.
This is everywhere. From the MAGA fools to whom "Trump won" is an …
I need to disagree with you on the labels thing. It's been my experience since I was quite young that most people strive to fit into categories. They look for some movement or some fad to swear allegiance to and they put a lot of effort into maximizing their conformity.
This is everywhere. From the MAGA fools to whom "Trump won" is an iconic declaration of crazy to the "trans" crowd with its inane ideological rigidity to the enthusiastic adoption of fads.
I am on a job site called Braintrust that has turned out to be utterly useless. When I started to gripe about 90% of the jobs being marked "US only" when half the the freelancers on there reside outside the USA, I got a message from one of the staff that opened with
"I am reaching out to share [the rules of online engagement]," (which I had not violated at all).
Reach out? Share? WTF does that even mean? Why not plain speech like "I am emailing you to remind ..." but this is the new corpspeak and everyone is doing it.
Nobody had to indoctrinate them. They saw other people writing this burble and leapt right on board.
Most people are compulsively conformist. Most people look for something to join. Political attitudes in the USA are not a continuum like height or intelligence, they are a bimodal distribution and we are getting ever further apart. Under Bush we could live with each other; since Trump, we are divided into distinct camps and I see little chance of this reversing anytime soon.
You've probably heard the one about an alien invasion from outer space being the only thing that would unite humanity. Right now I would not even bet on that.
When the new corporate speak was beginning, we made paper buzzword/bullshit BINGO cards and some of us took them to meetings. When someone, usually a manager, used one of those ridiculous words if it was on our card word mark it. At some point in the meeting someone would say, "BINGO! that a good point you were making" or some other nonsense to make it less obvious that we were making fun of corporate speak. it didn't stay a secret long.
Sadly, making fun of some of the new words could get you fired.
I'm in agreement with that but you also address the idea that I expressed. In the new order of the 21st Century it is hard to cling to the group identities of the old order. They have become so fractured that people increasingly either reject them outright or clarify their subgroup.
You for an example, a long-time proud liberal, do not fit under the Orwellian new definitions the radicals impose. I am seeing an increasing number of people seceding from groups they were previously comfortable in.
I think it is the result of subgroups trying to claim membership where they don't fit. A glaring example is LGBTQ[whatever else is being added]. The L & G people have an attraction to their own sex (something in common). Sex is fun. The B people are happy to have it with whomever will participate with them. If they have a preference, they seem to be able to get past it. The T people are split between the dysphoric and non-dysphoric. The Q people are outrage junkies. I don't see it as a unified group/tribe and think that some actually despise or hold one or mor of the others in contempt.
Perhaps it time to dust off our copies of Saul Alinsky's "Rules for Radicals: A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals." in a strange new world where it is radical to be rational. While I dislike the "enemies" world, sometimes we do have genuine enemies. Hopefully without thinking we must kill them, rather than their ideas.
I need to disagree with you on the labels thing. It's been my experience since I was quite young that most people strive to fit into categories. They look for some movement or some fad to swear allegiance to and they put a lot of effort into maximizing their conformity.
This is everywhere. From the MAGA fools to whom "Trump won" is an iconic declaration of crazy to the "trans" crowd with its inane ideological rigidity to the enthusiastic adoption of fads.
I am on a job site called Braintrust that has turned out to be utterly useless. When I started to gripe about 90% of the jobs being marked "US only" when half the the freelancers on there reside outside the USA, I got a message from one of the staff that opened with
"I am reaching out to share [the rules of online engagement]," (which I had not violated at all).
Reach out? Share? WTF does that even mean? Why not plain speech like "I am emailing you to remind ..." but this is the new corpspeak and everyone is doing it.
Nobody had to indoctrinate them. They saw other people writing this burble and leapt right on board.
Most people are compulsively conformist. Most people look for something to join. Political attitudes in the USA are not a continuum like height or intelligence, they are a bimodal distribution and we are getting ever further apart. Under Bush we could live with each other; since Trump, we are divided into distinct camps and I see little chance of this reversing anytime soon.
You've probably heard the one about an alien invasion from outer space being the only thing that would unite humanity. Right now I would not even bet on that.
When the new corporate speak was beginning, we made paper buzzword/bullshit BINGO cards and some of us took them to meetings. When someone, usually a manager, used one of those ridiculous words if it was on our card word mark it. At some point in the meeting someone would say, "BINGO! that a good point you were making" or some other nonsense to make it less obvious that we were making fun of corporate speak. it didn't stay a secret long.
Sadly, making fun of some of the new words could get you fired.
They indoctrinate each other.
I'm in agreement with that but you also address the idea that I expressed. In the new order of the 21st Century it is hard to cling to the group identities of the old order. They have become so fractured that people increasingly either reject them outright or clarify their subgroup.
You for an example, a long-time proud liberal, do not fit under the Orwellian new definitions the radicals impose. I am seeing an increasing number of people seceding from groups they were previously comfortable in.
I think it is the result of subgroups trying to claim membership where they don't fit. A glaring example is LGBTQ[whatever else is being added]. The L & G people have an attraction to their own sex (something in common). Sex is fun. The B people are happy to have it with whomever will participate with them. If they have a preference, they seem to be able to get past it. The T people are split between the dysphoric and non-dysphoric. The Q people are outrage junkies. I don't see it as a unified group/tribe and think that some actually despise or hold one or mor of the others in contempt.
Perhaps it time to dust off our copies of Saul Alinsky's "Rules for Radicals: A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals." in a strange new world where it is radical to be rational. While I dislike the "enemies" world, sometimes we do have genuine enemies. Hopefully without thinking we must kill them, rather than their ideas.