Yes to "I find the link with Protestant ethics, a spiral of purity, an interesting angle." I will take an historically well known episode of that ethic : prohibition.
I not consume much alcohol. I mostly hate the effect it has on the attitude of people beyond a quite low threshold. But I think most will agree that the prohibition was an awful social experiment. But it did not prevent the "war on drugs". But in the latter case there is a strong argument that it was introduced with full awareness of the negative consequences, and that they were the true motivation. I do not know if the advocates of doing this new moral push top down are aware of the probable major side effect : a even greater inability to communicate between "left" and "right"; and probably a further splintering of the "left". You can propose new ways of expression, if they take hold it's all good. Imposing them is mostly counter-productive. On Sat, 4 Mar 2023 at 07:45, paul <p...@denknerd.org> wrote: > Hey all, > > I read this article yesterday: > > https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2023/04/equity-language-guides-sierra-club-banned-words/673085/ > (or https://archive.is/iPQ2D). > > I'm almost concerned to open this can of worms, for reasons that > are touched on in the article i'm sharing -- one takes a risk by > asking questions about the Inclusivity™ orthodoxy. I hasten to > add that i am all for more diversity where often there > isn't/wasn't much, for more equitable outcomes in society, > etc. etc., because clearly, we (i can only speak for those places > i have experienced living) are a very long way away from living in > just society. Having said all of that, i jokingly refer to > Inclusive™ language since it seems to indeed be something co-opted > by? invented by? pushed by? commercial entities to display their > credentials, similar to how we might observe "greenwashing". > > Like the author of the article, of course there are linguistic > habits that are best relegated to history. But more and more i'm > observing New Inclusive English being suggested: people in my > circles avoid talking about things like "brown-bag sessions" (a > phrase i already disliked, but for other reasons - it's so > American! [sorry, US-ian]). Something that rubs me up the wrong > way about a lot of these euphemisms is that their etymology (as > far as i can tell) has no racist meaning - surely a brown-bag > harks back to bringing one's lunch in a... brown paper bag? It's > almost as if, indeed, people have sat down to look for potentially > offensive words. Scraping the proverbial barrel of offence. > > The thing is, though, i'm looking for something of a sense-check > -- because i'd be sad if i'm being taken in by a right-wing rag > (is it?), or by conservative agendas (is it?), etc. Is this just > me worrying about becoming apostate as the article describes, of > being a "bad person", basically. Because my upbringing makes me > want to say the right things, rather than think too hard for > myself. I find the link with Protestant ethics, a spiral of > purity, an interesting angle. But i'm wondering if folks here > have more nuanced things to say about the little article, or will > i just be shooting fish in a barrel? > > All the best, tell me i'm not a neocon, > p. > # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission > # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, > # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets > # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l > # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org > # @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject: -- Frederic
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