Labelling (or correctly identifying, words which you may prefer) these identities as constructs does not negate them. Language, mathematics, computers, the internet are constructs. These constructs are useful. I do not think that your real contention with my identities is that they are constructions.

These identities as constructs still retain power, they still retain use. They contribute to our collective intersubjectivity. Also, there is the issue which proceeds which, the referent or the reference? My position still stands within your own framework, so I don't find it necessary to belabor this point.

Perhaps you point out these identities are constructs in effort to get me to vacate my positions. Perhaps I am willing to do so. The question is, is it possible/are you willing to persuade each person you happen upon, these people who fills our lives and contributes to our collective intersubjectivity, that each and every one of their identities is constructed, is a dissimulation of reality, is a falsity? It would be an exhausting endeavor. I would be unable to do it out of lack of energy, nor do I think I have the animating moral forcefulness to try to convince these people that the way they view themselves (and subsequently how they treat others accordingly) is wrong. Besides, what is Right and what is Wrong? I think most people on this subreddit (and probably reddit in general) don't actually believe in concrete, objective morality. All things should be understood within this context.

Same to you as well. Have a blessed day.

"How in the world do you get that from anything I said?"

I should have simply posted this in response to every single one of your replies to me. You do not ask questions in good faith. Okay, that is fine. You don't have to ask questions in good faith. If this is the case we don't have to speak to each other.

You are not elevating the non-human, you are denigrating the Human. Feigning outrage is cliché and banal. You asked a question and I answered. You are upset because I did not answer in the way you liked. Accusations of -Ism's (and the assignment of any kind of moral weight to such accusations) is the last refuge for the incompetent.

It is difficult to take the moralization of -isms seriously from someone who doesn't place any importance on being human to begin with.

and I would privilege Chinese people if I were Chinese, or females if I were female, and Armenia if I were born in Armenian. Yes, those things would be permissible, and that is okay. If I am what I am, why would I not support that?

I agree. Our good care of animals, the environment, etc, should be predicated upon us being good stewards of our lands, not because animals are cognitively capable. A good deal of philosophy tries to decenter the Human in its attempts at systemization. There is no death of the author though, we remain. I will continue privilege being human in my value-system because I am human.

Hahah I appreciate the remarks. I don't mind being downvoted, but I do wish they allowed only upvotes. That way if someone disagreed with a post they would be compelled to write out why they disagree instead of clicking merely one button. It would be a good way of fostering the discussion.

I was talking about the people within these organizations that make decisions about marketing and PR on behalf of the whole organization. You're right that corporations are not moral entities, but people are, and corporations are full of people and the entities that make decisions within corporations on the behalf of corporations are people. None of these business decisions (PR, advertisement, hiring decisions) are metaphysically neutral.

If all the efforts of a corporation is done in pursuit of profit, and the majority of Fortune 500 companies put out this kind of advertisement (BLM, anti-racist, female empowerment, etc), then it follows that such endeavors are profitable, that a sufficient number of people support such things, and my assertion in my original post that our society isn't a New Jim Crow follows.

Yes, I am privy to Mark Fisher and how capitalism commercializes the dissent of capitalism. But this neglects possibility that there are true believers of such ideology at the helm of these businesses, or the decision-makers of such businesses feel compelled (or pressured) internally to make outward professions of said ideology either through personal statements themselves or through PR and advertisement, or even that some people within businesses use this ideology in subterfuge against competitors within the business.

I agree with the assessment that corporations, all things equal, will pursue profit above all else. My statement about corporations is said in response to the ideological ecosystem (and wide spread belief/assumption) that asserts that our institutions are racist. I mentioned in a comment in this same thread about how our reality is far more heterogenous than how it is presented to us in news, social media, which is captured in your examples.

Yes, happens is that people more often than not speak past each other in referencing different topics/aspects of society in relation to racism/oppression. As much as we would like it to not be (as it would bring mental and ideological comfort) the reality that we collectively experience is heterogenous, striated, and uneven. Cops in rural Alabama aren't the same as cops in San Francisco aren't the same as cops in Washington DC. The Fortune 500 of today aren't like the corporations of 100 years. We truncate our own agency and understanding when we delegate our thoughts to an ideology.

That's true, they are not incompatible. They are incompatible only when viewed through a certain ideological lense (yet one that many have due to erroneous education), one that casts corporations as upholding something akin to a new Jim Crow. That is the crux of this issue: the dominant ideology of the regime is one of anti-racism. That is why Shell supports NHJ, because they support anti-racism.

Conversations like these (not between you and I, but in general around this topic) usually have this song-and-dance. There is an assertion that The Powers That Be are racist, oppressive, etc, and when someone provides evidence contrary to this the retort is usually "well they're good then, what do you have against these corporate practices?". This rhetorical bait-and-switch is a sort of inverse celebration parallax.

"The notion of formerly separate people becoming “groups in fusion,” which come together united by a desire for radical social change, was first theorized by Jean-Paul Sartre in his Critique of Dialectical Reason (1960) – a radical re-adaptation of Marxism.."

This is interesting to hold in juxtaposition of the fact that BLM rallies received major institutional support, not just from universities, professional sport leagues like the NFL and NBA, but also from the super majority of Fortune 500 companies. It reminds me of Nikole Hannah-Jones speaking at an event that was sponsored by Shell.

The usual refrain is that these things "don't matter", or that these institutions are insincere with their support, but I believe that these refrains are just a coping mechanism with those who are unable or unwilling to recognize that the regime ideology isn't "New Jim Crow".

It is non-falsifiable and intentionally ambiguous as to mean anything you want it to mean at any rhetorically advantageous juncture.

Yes, just like George Soros as well.

I think the issue is that the topic of "Epistemic Trespassing" isn't limited to just expert testimony in court. Yes, that is what the article is talking about in particular, but in wider national discourse the phrase is used to silence dissenting opinion in regards to policy proposals, ie covid lockdown regime. In fact that is the first time I've ever seen the phrase used (which is tangentially mentioned in the article). In such discourse the phrase is used in regards to accusing laymen of ignorance and lacking education in the face of people crafting policy that often adversely affect said laymen. People who are affected by policies ought to have a say in the creation and implementation of such policy.

"Who will watch the Watchers" yida yada. But the truth of the matter is the Experts are people like the rest of us and are prone to error and using their position as a vector to implement their personal politics (which is unavoidable, but manifests in egregious ways in particular instances). Also, their credentials and position allow them to buffer themselves from the negative consequences of their actions/inactions. Relying on your credentials is always a sign of lacking a proper argument/case/judgement.

Not that I have a single citation on hand but, Nietzsche is all about the creation of new values. The Overman is so, not because he has monstrous strength, but because he is the creator of his own values. He bounds over the sclerotic values contemporary to himself that seek to chain him. It sounds paradoxical, but in order to fully imbibe Nietzsche's philosophy on vitality, value creation, Overman, etc, you will eventually come to the point of having to overcome Nietzsche as well. Its been about 140 years since his writings and many philosophers have built upon, expanded, written in reference/contrast to Nietzsche. The most Nietzschean thing to do is to break free from the crystallized form that the discourse has taken.

A true Nietzschean would be obliged to overcome Nietzsche himself. I haven't read all of his works, but I am certain that Nietzsche has made this same remark.

I know it's hard to understand but you shouldn't trust your political philosophy to cartoons.

The Simpsons is a cartoon. The reason why you shouldn't give much weight to the political philosophy of the Simpsons should not need to be further explicated.

ctrl + f "Carl Schmitt"

It would do people well do understand that politics is premised on the Friend-Enemy distinction. All other aspects are secondary to this.

Yes, when I say control I mean, "control as a means to an ends", as in control as a means to end malevolent acts. I agree with your point about taking many things into consideration. My original post was more about agreeing and amplifying the lamentations of the panel.

We can take the Nietzsche route and say that Good vs Evil binary took the place of Good vs Bad binary: Good once meant strong, healthy, having vitality and bad meant weak, impotent while Good now means meek, humble, self-sacrificing and Evil (bad) means selfish, greedy, and condemning the strong for acting upon their strength (among other things ofc).

But most, such as those on the panel, would reject the Good/Bad along with the Good/Evil binary as well because the Good/Bad binary exalts strength and power as virtues and it is quite clear what 21s century western academics think about power structures.

Yet this is just all descontruction with no corresponding construction. Even if there were conscrutction of some kind of moral frame that exists outside previous models the rejoinder will always be, as you said yourself, "why should we believe him?" And around the carousel we go.

Brass tacks: Yes, the good/bad binary is about control, and this is a good thing. Theology is about control. Ideology is about control. Laws, politics, government are all about control. All the words that we say to each other are arguments that seek to control the way that the other views the world, behaves, and acts. And as Nietzsche remarked about 140 years ago, "God is dead", western countries no longer operate on the basis of Good vs Evil in this implicit Christian sense that we all understand it to mean. To speak though as if this is the case, that 21st century Anglophone countries operate on a Good vs Evil basis, is absurd.

Practical and pragmatic rules of society are sacralized into totalistic Good and Evil binary because simply having a good argument as to why someone should or should not do something isn't enough to compel some people. Try using persuasive rhetoric on the criminal as he is mugging you. Perhaps he will or won't be convinced by you alone. Maybe the criminal wouldn't even be deterred by the prospect of eternal damnation, which is what sacralization of the law (morality) seeks to imbue within its adherents (or subjects). But if that is the case then perhaps the criminal wouldn't have been moved by anything at all. There are many possibilities to consider.

It is true, good men don't need laws to be good, and bad men will break laws regardless. Adding a moralizing aspect to these pragmatic, positive reciprocal feedback loops is the attempt to really hammer home, on top of the text of law and all of the punishments found therein, that you shouldn't do x y or z.

And again, there is this refrain of demonstrating that there exists nuances, or other modes of morality, in order to demonstrate the limitedness/incorrectness of the Western Good/Evil binary. What if we stop calling these heinous acts of rape and murder evil? Does that stop those things from occurring in the world? No, they persist. Focusing on changing the words describing these heinous actions, instead of seeking limit these actions, is just cope. Often times we get more upset at each other for the words we use to describe criminals and transgressors than at the criminals and transgressors themselves.

"Good/Evil binary has been used to perverse ends" and so has every other belief system of historical importance. All things are vectors through which violence enters this world, the one constant being man himself. I am not moved by this line of rhetoric, and neither should you be.