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jackWhich things are not import about #piggate
I was completely unable to resist spending about 12 hours making puns about this. But I was probably wrong in that.
Which things are import about #piggate
The idea that the book was written by Ashcroft as an attack for not acceding to more of his influence over the conservative party. This seems likely, I hope it will quickly become apparent how certain it is, and who is to blame for the influence-peddling. But "not giving in to blackmail" is generally a good thing: even if I condemn Cameron for lots of other things, this isn't something I should criticise him for.
Which things are not important about #piggate
I think raising animals to be slaughtered is a bad thing AT ALL. But once the animal is ALREADY DEAD, I don't think it's harmed any more by being used for sexual purposes than for food purposes, it's just a matter of which penis goes in which mouth.
We should be critical of things that are harmful, not things we personally are disgusted by[1]. It can be hard to do that, our instincts often encourage us to be judgemental based on personal disgust, maybe for good reason. But we should avoid that. Lots of people object to being anything-other-than-straight mostly based on their "ugh" factor, even though they try to come up with good justifications for it. And for many other issues. And we don't accept that. But it's harder to accept things that we personally haven't emotionally accepted, or to say "I'll never personally like it, but I'll fight for other people's right to do it." And why shouldn't that extend to dead animals -- it shouldn't be a maybe, it should be a definite.
And that's not because I care about Cameron, it's because the accusation hurts other people who might be accused of it.
I don't know if that actually applies to many people! But shouldn't we practice being accepting whether we need to or not, so when we do need to, we're on the right side?
Except that, my argument sounds intellectually convincing, but I'm not sure I'm actually convinced by it. Surely there have to be SOME things we can mock people for? Or don't there? Am I right?
[1] Insert humorous exception here :)
I was completely unable to resist spending about 12 hours making puns about this. But I was probably wrong in that.
Which things are import about #piggate
The idea that the book was written by Ashcroft as an attack for not acceding to more of his influence over the conservative party. This seems likely, I hope it will quickly become apparent how certain it is, and who is to blame for the influence-peddling. But "not giving in to blackmail" is generally a good thing: even if I condemn Cameron for lots of other things, this isn't something I should criticise him for.
Which things are not important about #piggate
I think raising animals to be slaughtered is a bad thing AT ALL. But once the animal is ALREADY DEAD, I don't think it's harmed any more by being used for sexual purposes than for food purposes, it's just a matter of which penis goes in which mouth.
We should be critical of things that are harmful, not things we personally are disgusted by[1]. It can be hard to do that, our instincts often encourage us to be judgemental based on personal disgust, maybe for good reason. But we should avoid that. Lots of people object to being anything-other-than-straight mostly based on their "ugh" factor, even though they try to come up with good justifications for it. And for many other issues. And we don't accept that. But it's harder to accept things that we personally haven't emotionally accepted, or to say "I'll never personally like it, but I'll fight for other people's right to do it." And why shouldn't that extend to dead animals -- it shouldn't be a maybe, it should be a definite.
And that's not because I care about Cameron, it's because the accusation hurts other people who might be accused of it.
I don't know if that actually applies to many people! But shouldn't we practice being accepting whether we need to or not, so when we do need to, we're on the right side?
Except that, my argument sounds intellectually convincing, but I'm not sure I'm actually convinced by it. Surely there have to be SOME things we can mock people for? Or don't there? Am I right?
[1] Insert humorous exception here :)
no subject
Date: 2015-09-21 02:20 pm (UTC)I suppose there are two dimensions here:
1) "Friendly banter" - if the target is actually your friend and the mockery is actually good-spirited and you both trust each other implicitly, then mockery can be an expression of that trust. Hint: make sure the person you're mocking really is OK with it all.
2) Something to do with hypocrisy and relevance. The trouble is that with enough spin, you can come up for reasons for everything to be relevant to everyone else (see Meehl's observation of everything correlating with everything else in "soft psychology", six degrees of separation, etc.), you
can come up with principles that make people seem hypocritical[1] too easily, etc. But nevertheless, assuming you're doing it right, then maybe. So the Tory ministers who got caught in sex scandals when they'd been peddling the Back To Basics campaign, maybe. For Cameron, on the other hand... there doesn't seem to be anything relevant.
[1] It always annoys me when people complain about people who are pro-death penalty and anti-abortion being inconsistent, and I'm pro-choice and anti-death penalty. There's this thing some moral philosophers like to talk about called the Innocence Principle, which says that you don't kill or harm the innocent; this covers their position quite well. OTOH it doesn't let them claim to be "pro-life".