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Post #1219329

Author
Warbler
Parent topic
Politics 2: Electric Boogaloo
Link to post in topic
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/1219329/action/topic#1219329
Date created
23-Jun-2018, 4:00 PM

Post Praetorian said:

It would seem, on the whole, that the longer one allows words to retain negative power, the less progress society seemingly has made in overcoming its past…or, from another view, is not the continued giving to an opponent the absolute power of knowing precisely which words will reduce one to emotional ruin necessarily providing said rival unnecessary strength and credibility at each outcry of its usage? For imagine an instance in which an American at large might be considered to be so emotionally slain by use of some specific epithet (Yankee, or perhaps more considerately phrased as the “Y” word, for instance) that it assumes an overwhelming and unjustifiable weight: would such a society truly be ameliorated by encouraging each successive generation to yet quail at the very nearness of the word so that an opposing nation might use it with impunity and redundancy to detrimental effect? Or might it not be an improved situation to teach, instead of fear, horror, and outrage of the word, the patent absurdity of reacting in any given fashion to any mere arrangement of letters…? For most certainly a word may retain emotional weight, but how is it best to deprive it of same? Is it to encourage all to view it at its greatest weight…consistently and repeatedly underlining its ability to wound and cause irreparable harm…? Or is it perhaps an improvement to strive at all turns to instead merely trivialize those who might consider it to be yet potent in light of today’s more reasonable era?

I’d be interested in hearing you say this to the NAACP and the ensuing conversation.

To clarify, if a word were to be used against my children that appeared to cause them abject misery due to its ability to recall to them their cultural suffering at the hands of some previous power, it would seem to me to be bad policy to encourage them to feel outrage and to stagger into the field of battle,

If you ask me, it is bad policy for someone to deliberately use a word with the intent of causing them abject misery due the word’s ability to recall cultural suffering.

already so wounded, demanding an apology (thereby greatly exaggerating the hurt being afflicted and thereby delivering themselves directly into the power of the bully at hand)

I see nothing wrong with demanding an apology from someone that tries to insult you(to be clear, I am not saying that is was the guy from netflix did).

…it would seem instead a more plausible escape from the past to derail the significance of the word itself and to teach my children to laugh at each and every instance of same…stripping it of its power, removing any desire for an opponent to use it for fear that they will merely be laughed at and labeled a fool rather than being labeled a victor over another’s emotional stability…

I also think the bully/name caller should be taught a lesson too.

I get kind of upset when we concentrate on how the bullied should react to the bully and as opposed to how the bully should have acted in the first place. To be clear I get upset, because I was once the bullied and instead of just simply stopping the bullies the punishing them, it seems like they wanted to concentrate more on how I reacted to them.