"The funny part about human beings is that while no one likes to *be victimized*, many of us sure do like *feeling* victimized. Acknowledging progress interferes with the victim narrative that gives you a reason to blame everyone except yourself for your problems."
There is some degree of "liking to feel victimized" but I believe that muc…
"The funny part about human beings is that while no one likes to *be victimized*, many of us sure do like *feeling* victimized. Acknowledging progress interferes with the victim narrative that gives you a reason to blame everyone except yourself for your problems."
There is some degree of "liking to feel victimized" but I believe that much of what we call victimhood cultures is about gaining power over others through exaggerated exposition of one's victimhood, rather than about actually wallowing in one's pain. If it didn't pay off in power, without that incentive, I believe a lot of it would die down. But if some professor having published something you don't like, and you can claim it makes you feel 'unsafe' to enter a campus where they work, the goal is less to feel sorry about yourself so much as to get that professor shut down - power.
And yes, I've come to believe that the Prime Directive for neo-progressives is "Reinforce the Narrative at all costs". Promoting the Narrative is their source of power, so any dissent which might undercut it at all must be suppressed. Research that shows a lessening of bias needs to be deep sixed, but anything which can be interpreted as supporting a narrative of oppression is to be highlighted.
One example was when at a certain stage of facial recognition the software was better at recognizing white faces than Black, this was portrayed as embodied white supremacy. The systemic racism in which white programmers were steeped was presumed to have leaked through their fingertips into a racially biased algorithm. The truth was that there are many more white faces available for training, and they on average have better contrast than the available Black faces, so the early iterations were better at one. Over time, by artificially biasing the training data not to proportionately represent the population, and general improvements, it will even out more. But suppose that it had for similar technical reasons been better at recognizing Black faces at that stage. I have no doubt that would be considered systematic racism as well - designed to detect Black criminal more than white. Being more easily identified by surveillance is not necessarily a privilege, after all. The reliable thing in common with either scenario is - Reinforce the Narrative at all costs. Find a way to accentuate the narrative of oppression, suppress anything which weakens that narrative. In the narrative lies power. Protect the narrative.
(I have more sympathy for what I consider the roots of that approach than it might sound. While I believe it has become dogmatic and corrosive today, I think that in part it's a bastardization of the call for moral integrity from sources like Dr King. However, it has mutated into something more malign today - a divisive tribalism rather than a unifying message among other things.)
"The funny part about human beings is that while no one likes to *be victimized*, many of us sure do like *feeling* victimized. Acknowledging progress interferes with the victim narrative that gives you a reason to blame everyone except yourself for your problems."
There is some degree of "liking to feel victimized" but I believe that much of what we call victimhood cultures is about gaining power over others through exaggerated exposition of one's victimhood, rather than about actually wallowing in one's pain. If it didn't pay off in power, without that incentive, I believe a lot of it would die down. But if some professor having published something you don't like, and you can claim it makes you feel 'unsafe' to enter a campus where they work, the goal is less to feel sorry about yourself so much as to get that professor shut down - power.
And yes, I've come to believe that the Prime Directive for neo-progressives is "Reinforce the Narrative at all costs". Promoting the Narrative is their source of power, so any dissent which might undercut it at all must be suppressed. Research that shows a lessening of bias needs to be deep sixed, but anything which can be interpreted as supporting a narrative of oppression is to be highlighted.
One example was when at a certain stage of facial recognition the software was better at recognizing white faces than Black, this was portrayed as embodied white supremacy. The systemic racism in which white programmers were steeped was presumed to have leaked through their fingertips into a racially biased algorithm. The truth was that there are many more white faces available for training, and they on average have better contrast than the available Black faces, so the early iterations were better at one. Over time, by artificially biasing the training data not to proportionately represent the population, and general improvements, it will even out more. But suppose that it had for similar technical reasons been better at recognizing Black faces at that stage. I have no doubt that would be considered systematic racism as well - designed to detect Black criminal more than white. Being more easily identified by surveillance is not necessarily a privilege, after all. The reliable thing in common with either scenario is - Reinforce the Narrative at all costs. Find a way to accentuate the narrative of oppression, suppress anything which weakens that narrative. In the narrative lies power. Protect the narrative.
(I have more sympathy for what I consider the roots of that approach than it might sound. While I believe it has become dogmatic and corrosive today, I think that in part it's a bastardization of the call for moral integrity from sources like Dr King. However, it has mutated into something more malign today - a divisive tribalism rather than a unifying message among other things.)