ondoyant

ondoyant, hace 8 meses

maybe i’m just not smart enough for this, but the idea of free will as a concept has always seemed pretty poorly constructed in the first place. like, what would it even mean to have the will to act freely while existing conditional to your environment? we are placed into chaotic and uncertain circumstances, and have evolved the ability to navigate those circumstances through cognition. simple as that. there is no future that is “pre-determined” for us to follow, just chaos that we must navigate through until we die. i feel like the idea was kind of borrowed from theology and we’ve been ruminating on it ever sense, but its just never been a very compelling thought to me. like, of course our decisions are shaped by our environment and physiology, how else could it possibly work?

i feel like, for the people who argue for free will, its kind of like arguing for the existence of an afterlife. they’re motivated to continue advocating for it because it seems scary not to have it, but nothing about the way we work requires us to be able to make meaningful decisions that are out-of-context to our conditions, just like nothing about how we work indicates we continue to exist outside our physical conditions. if we free willed ourselves to do something that wasn’t constrained by our physical bodies, the stuff we know about the world, and the immediate sensory input we’re receiving, that would look like fucking magic or something, and if it is constrained by that stuff, then its just another word for cognition.

ondoyant, hace 1 año

thats weird. i never get called a fascist, and nobody i know gets called fascists, and i've never had to worry about other people calling me a fascist when i disagree with them. huh...

ondoyant, hace 1 año

sure. i’ll bite. how about you tell me exactly what opinions have gotten you branded in this way? please. tell me what exactly are the kinds of things you say that get other people to call you a nazi.

ondoyant, hace 1 año

i’ll drop the tone. i’ve looked at your other comments, have a general clue about what you’re about. i’ll just say this: there are specific patterns of behavior and ideas which are either attributed to or linked to the Nazi Party, or more generally to fascist ideologies, which have, throughout history, led to oppressive regimes. when people see these patterns or ideas expressed, there is a tendency on the left to reject these ideas because of that association, because they have proved to be potent tools for the spread of fascism, and encourage the dehumanization of minority groups.

transphobia, and specifically appeals to the pedophilic nature of queer people? this is unambiguously Nazi shit. trans people were the some of the very first people the nazi’s actually threw into concentration camps in nazi germany. this process included the burning of medical literature describing the proper treatment of transgender people. it also included the denial of an explicit description of the gender spectrum, as observed by medical professionals of the time. so if you are dismissive of or make a political issue out of trans identity, call queer people groomers, any of that bullshit, even if you are “not a nazi”, many of the information sources publishing anti-trans rhetoric today have explicit ties to real neo-nazi organizations, or are politically aligned with movements calling for the “eradication” of “”“transgenderism”“”.

to anybody with an education on the historical circumstances of Nazi Germany, this exact rhetoric and the modern political movement against trans people, is unambiguously mirrored by the actions of modern republican politicians, including legislating restrictions against cross-dressing (happened in nazi germany), restricting transgender medical care (happened in nazi germany), and revoking the ability for trans people to be recognized legally as trans (happened in nazi germany). people who are queer or trans both do not necessarily want to be confronted with this rhetoric wherever they go online, as it can be extremely distressing seeing people parroting literal nazi talking points in the modern era, and do not want that kind of rhetoric to spread, because it was nazi propaganda that lead to the execution of human beings.

while theoretically somebody might “misuse” this label, call somebody a transphobe or a nazi when they aren’t explicitly talking about this stuff, you may be able to follow the logic from here. if transphobia, questioning the validity of transgender identity, calling for the restriction of transgender medical care, restricting access to books about queer people, if this has explicit links to nazi ideology and activity, what do you call people that want to open up a space for these people to spread their beliefs? what do you call people who accommodate or legitimize these beliefs which have led to the genocide of people groups? well, for a lot of people, if you accommodate the people who accommodate the fascists, that really isn’t that different from letting the fascists run about.

maybe you don’t think of yourself as somebody who does that. maybe you really do think of yourself as a moderate who wants productive discourse, and believes that if everybody just talked to each other, all these political divisions would be easier for us to solve. for the people who would be impacted by the threat of violence behind these beliefs, that isn’t so easy. for the people who see the striking similarity between the modern transgender panic and the genocidal escalation of yesteryear, it isn’t worth the risk to allow in the would be monsters, willing to execute the people who are not like them, even if that means that some reasonable people are caught in the crossfire. hopefully that gives you at least some insight into why productive dialogue isn’t a very convincing argument on this side of the fence. you’ve called yourself a moderate in other posts. tell me, what is the moderate position between genocide and tolerance? between eradication and acceptance? if you’re moderate about that shit? well, that just sounds like bigotry to me.

i would encourage you, if you aren’t just a nazi concern troll, to look into the Institut fur Sexualwissenschaft, and the history behind the persecution of transgender and gay people in nazi germany, and try to conceive of why people believe that they are right in rejecting those who display sympathy towards the right wing of the United States, especially in light of their modern retreading of old bigotry. i would love to give people the benefit of the doubt, and assume that they are truly just advocates for free speech, concerned about authoritarian censorship, all that jazz, but the content of what opinions people like you are defending the right to have are historically ruinous for minority groups, a harbinger of a horrifically violent regime which killed countless people, and burned the records of what had been learned about their humanity.