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Carrots may be good for your vision...
But whiskey can double your vision.
🥃🥃🥃🥃
Did you ever see history portrayed as an old man with a wise brow and pulseless heart, weighing all things in the balance of reason?
Is not rather the genius of history like an eternal, imploring maiden, full of fire, with a burning heart and flaming soul, humanly warm and humanly beautiful?
--Zachris Topelius
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truth. But you can lose your eyesight completely when your wife brains you for being two-faced.
Charlie Gilley
“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
Has never been more appropriate.
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Every time I come across some discussion about social justice warriors and "wokeness" I come to the conclusion this is 100% against a simple but fundamental value I was taught about when I was a kid: Tolerance.
I don't see how these can co-exist. Am I wrong?
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The only thing to intolerate is intolerance itself.
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Well, I mean, we shouldn't necessarily tolerate things like crime*
*assuming we're talking about just laws, applied evenly.
To err is human. Fortune favors the monsters.
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The problem is that even "just" laws, and "crime" in general, is highly culturally dependent.
Lots of laws that we today call "unjust" were highly "just" for as little as fifty to hundred years ago, in our own country. In other countries, they may still be "just" in lots of other cultures. It goes the other way as well: Laws that we call "just" are in other societies considered extremely "unjust".
To stay clear of the laws of one specific country, you may take a look at the UN bill of human rights, and consider how it applies to completely different cultures. Say, the right to regular vacations, with pay: How will you enforce that in a hunter-gatherer society void of any sort of 'employment' and void of money? In a region populated by nomadic tribes roaming the continent along irregular paths, how will you enforce the right to leave your country and to return to it? And so on.
If all your neighbor countries allow some action (in the sense: no laws forbid it), but lawmakers in your country have decided to forbid it, can you still argue that the law in your country is "just"? Do you expect people from your neighbor countries to agree? If you go to the neighbor country to do that action, is that "unjust" for you, but not for those you visit? Are you performing a crime, in a country where no law forbids it?
In our laws, we are extreme culture imperialists. Let me take one example: Parts of the Norwegian criminal law applies to "crimes" committed in other countries where the action is perfectly legal, done by a citizen of that country when he was living in his homeland. If he has later moved to another Nordic ountry, and comes on a temporary visit to Norway, he can in principle be thrown in jail in Norway for what was a perfectly legal action when and where it was performed, the "criminal" is not a Norwegian citizen or living here, and the action did not take place in Norway.
I don't know of any case where tourists have been prosecuted in Norway for earlier actions that are illegal here, but it certainly has happened for refugees who have had to flee their homeland and settled in Norway. If they, before they had to flee, lived according to the customs of their culture, they have had to answer to Norwegian laws for it, after arriving here. Even though the UN declaration of human rights say that anyone has a right to leave their country, there has been several cases of Norwegian authorities confiscating the ID documents of refugees to make it impossible for them to visit their old homeland, because Norwegian authorities believes that there is a great risk that back in their old country they might do actions that are still allowed there, but illegal here.
So, "just"ness and "fair"ness and "criminal actions" are all defined by culture. Claiming "universal" value to any such question is very likely to fall under 'cultural imperialism'. (You may of course think that cultural imperialism is both "just" and "fair", but those being culturally imperialized might disagree!)
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It's all sausage making. In democracies it tends to follow popular will, aside from checks that are put in place to prevent tyranny of the majority, but usually what those are based on is also ultimately decided by popular will. For example, in the US we have constitutional amendments that effectively (through legal rulings) carve out our right to privacy, our right to autonomy (currently under attack, but there it is), and helping to ensure equal treatment under the law - those are amendments that are bulwarks against legislative foolery. It's far from perfect - no system is, and no system can perfectly contain the potential for revolt.
In countries like Hungary, one man and his party backing decide for everyone else what's "just". I'm not endorsing that, just calling it like I see it.
But if you really want to get down to it, is what's just is decided by those who win the wars.
To err is human. Fortune favors the monsters.
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I should add, this makes me want to wax post structural and argue the purpose, or rather the niche of the criminal.
They always exist, as a human constant, so necessarily, they find their niche within the machinations of the human social condition.
I'd argue that the criminal (scare quotes if you like) shows us what we can and can't tolerate (individually perhaps, but I'm speaking collectively more than anything).
I all but guarantee that murder wasn't a crime until someone bashed someone else's skull in with a rock.
The criminal in a way, acts as an innovator, propelling the evolution of what we can tolerate, at least in some respects. Not only are designer drugs legal until they aren't, conversely homosexuality was illegal until it wasn't.
We evolve. The criminal actually helps get us there, in some ways.
To err is human. Fortune favors the monsters.
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For a discussion about the difference between criminals and outlaws, read Tom Robbins: Still Life With Woodpecker.
(For a good time, read any book by Tom Robbins! Especially if you like writers who play with language.)
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honey the codewitch wrote: conversely homosexuality was illegal until it wasn't.
[disclaimer: I know little about American history, even less about gay history; the following comment based on a quick google!] It was only made illegal by European settlers; the indigenous American population recognised homosexuality as "two-spirited" - embodying both male and female spirits. Indeed it was the settlers who introduced the concept of "sin" to the continent. The number of different terms for two-spirited people in the various languages suggests they were far from unknown, and were even treated with "sacredness and reverence" according to one article. All of which pretty much underlines your main point! 
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Yeah, I realize that. I'm an informal student of gender and culture. I'm speaking specifically of the european flavored "west", where Greek Christianity took root and poisoned our own culture. *hides*
To err is human. Fortune favors the monsters.
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I always wonder how the gay/trans/lesbian/... community would react to a straight (hetero) section in the annual Pride parade.
How would you react? Should it be denied? Tolerated? Encouraged? ("You" are meant as any reader of this post.)
What if it grew bigger than any other section, dominating the parade? OK? Or should measures be taken to downsize the straight influence/dominance?
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Careful. You'll be wanting equality, non-discrimination and fair representation next! 
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dandy72 wrote: Am I wrong?
Not by any normal standard. But you have to remember that these idiots nice people believe that only they hold the correct views of the world (and maybe even the universe).
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My grandmother called it
A) Manners
B) Minding ones own business
But I'm probably tiptoeing into a subject I shouldn't here.
To err is human. Fortune favors the monsters.
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Totally agree and would add Respect!
PartsBin an Electronics Part Organizer is finally available for download.
JaxCoder.com
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ditto
"A little time, a little trouble, your better day"
Badfinger
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Oooh B) is sooo hard!
And you have every right to barge into this conversation.
(Until Chris decides this whole thread and everybody in it needs to be shut down!)
If you can't laugh at yourself - ask me and I will do it for you.
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???
"A little time, a little trouble, your better day"
Badfinger
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"Wokeness" assumes that they and their fellow travelers are the only ones who know the Truth. It is not a political movement, but a religious one. Like most religions, it is intolerant of any other gods.
Your conclusion is correct.
EDIT: see today's Dilbert.
People Who are Better - Dilbert Comic Strip on 2022-09-03 | Dilbert by Scott Adams
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.
-- 6079 Smith W.
modified 3-Sep-22 14:22pm.
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Daniel Pfeffer wrote: see today's Dilbert
This is actually what got me thinking about this...
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Wokeness preys on people's guilt about not being tolerant. So no, wokeness cannot coexist with tolerance.
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obermd wrote: So no, wokeness cannot coexist with tolerance.
Seems to me coexistence implies tolerance...so...is wokeness antithesis to tolerance?
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Yes, "wokeness" is a form of shaming.
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PIEBALDconsult wrote: Yes, "wokeness" is a form of shaming.
And then there's the self-loathing. Something else I don't understand - nor want to.
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