toksik: i dont get your point at all, seth.
Hopefully you do now, dude. Does Petey’s response make it clearer?
BTW, Fly: thanks for clarifying that. I had a brief WTF moment and then thought that you must have been meaning something else.
Petey: Do you think that Legba is unfairly misrepresenting these people by exaggerating the frequency and universality across the group of the things they do and say which trouble him? Or do you think that he is unfairly misrepresenting them through omission? Perhaps he is. Perhaps they are really nice to their pets or elderly relatives.
Neither is really what I’m saying, but the second comes closest. But it’s nothing as simple as balancing their good against their evil in order to judge their worth as a human being in order to decide what is *the right thing to do.*
Any behaviour is understandable – but not necessarily excusable – in the context of the person. Perhaps this is the source of some of the misunderstanding, because I may use the term “friend” differently to Legba. When I think of friends I think of people who I have put effort into knowing and understanding, people who I’ll deliberately try to anticipate so that we can be a good fit together. There’s a non-negotiable love and the need to get to know why a person does the infuriating things they often do. Hopefully they’ll do the same thing with me.
Ganesh understands this when he posts: How old were you as part of those groups, Seth? I think we get involved in all sorts of dodgy peer group stuff when we're children/adolescents. It’s effectively a way of asking, “What mitigating circumstances might have explained your abhorrent behaviour when you acted like a Grade A prick and told that guy he looked stupid in a turban?” It’s a lovely gesture on his part, in that it offers me a way of contextualising the horrible things I’ve done to people. Once you look at the whole person rather than things they’ve done at one or more points in their life it’s harder to judge them as unworthy of friendship because they’re humanised.
So when I hear things about powerful imprint experiences from families with bigoted police backgrounds, it’s easier to trace the root of where these things come from and think about the forces that shape a person. Of course this has to be balanced with the fact that people have a choice, at which point I reiterate that I mean understandable, not excusable.
It looks like I was wrong to assume that these people were ever friends as I would put it. There’s been no effort here to talk about people, just people’s actions divorced from anything else apart from the horrible effect they’re having on other people. I’d be willing to lay money that those same actions are also hurting some (if not all) of the people doing them, but to say that is putting myself in danger of sympathising with the evil doer, which to some might be equivalent to excusing, condoning or endorsing their actions.
However, they’re not equivalent. Hopefully my feelings about the actions of Legba’s friends are self-evident, in addition to the fact that I can chose to place my love and respect with both the victim and the perpetrator. Even when I know next to nothing about them I can see no point in operating from anything other than the assumption that they can be loved until I’m proved otherwise.
Seth: It is possible to be friends with people who are racist and homophobic or prejudice about class.
Petey: I'm sure it is, however I'd suggest this is dependent on how one feels/thinks about racism, homophobia and class prejudice, and how one prioritises those feelings/thoughts.
You’re absolutely right. And here’s how I prioritise them: with love. Because love of people is what should cause a hatred of injustice and the need to take action against prejudice. If that’s not the directing principle then those things are worthless and legalistic, an inflexible straitjacket. An understanding of what is racist and what isn’t, what is homophobic and what isn’t, of what is classist and what isn’t is only possible because of the deeper truth that it is good to be kind to that-which-is-not-you, that there’s a kind way to treat people, that all people should be honoured and respected. All of that is dictated by love. So if you strike out against racism in a way that is not loving you’re only ever obeying the letter of a perceived law, never the spirit.
The thread concerned dumping a friendship group, and the way I approached it was from the way in which I would act in Legba’s place with a bunch of people I loved and understood but nevertheless thought were acting dreadfully. I now understand that this is not the case, that Legba doesn’t seem attached to them and kept them around to avert loneliness. My mistake was not to pay enough attention to the “best of a bad bunch” comments: not the kind of things you say if you have a great deal invested in the people you’re talking about. But there’s nothing compensatory about wanting context. It’s not about weighing up good works and sins, which is one of the most fruitless and agonising ways of life I can think of. By attempting to understand what we find monstrous we better ourselves. It means we spend a lot more time thinking and soul-searching, but it’s a lot more rewarding than thinking of ways to expose people in order to show that we are not like them, to make sure that everyone present knows who we are because we publicly distance ourselves from that-which-is-not-what-we-want-to-be-seen-as.
then I can only conclude that they do this rarely - which sounds quite different from what Legba is describing.
Nope. I do this for a living these days. I normally deal with at least two to four hate crimes a week, which I attempt to get to the bottom of from whatever limited and biased information I’m presented with which often includes challenging the caller in a manner that remains professional and keeps their faith in the police (an impossible task a lot of the time). That’s often very hard to do when they’ve called because they’re in a high stress situation, dropped a racist comment, and you have to pick them up on it regardless of whether you feel it’s a battle you strictly need to fight at that point, just in case anyone listens to the call and thinks you’re endorsing it. I do this more often than most, and in more difficult circumstances. The pay’s good, though.
If we were to always prioritise other people's opinion of us over our own principles, we'd be empty shells, swayed by the slightest flicker of disapproval or dischord, believing in and standing for absolutely nothing except a generalised sense of amiability.
Is that what you think I’m doing? Wanting to be accepted, bending and breaking myself in order to achieve it? If it is (and be honest with yourself: is it?) then what does that say about what you think of me?
Of course, it can’t be what you think of me and my approach, because all the available proof would tend to contradict you. Hopefully this thread is ample evidence of me being amiable and sticking to my principles.
Haus: If you think they're worth it, chip away at their reasons for hanging out with people who _do_ do that, or indeed their reasons for doing it themselves.
You’re aware you just said “doodoo” in my head, right? |
