Lizard People: When Social Control Masquerades as Social Justice
Contains references to Gummo - Viewer Discretion Advised
Description:
Contains Gummo. Warning!
When ideas and movements that threaten to overturn established hierarchies of power are absorbed into elite institutions like Ivy League universities and for-profit corporations, they get transformed into ideas that support the status quo, while remaining cloaked in the language and symbols of radicalism and egalitarianism. The replacement of the word “equality” by the word “equity” in the worlds of academia, NGOs, activism, and corporate HR departments, is an example of the attempts by elite people and institutions to transform historical movements for racial and gender equality, into ideas that promote the interest of elites - in particular, economic inequality and the division of the working classes. In this episode we explore how forms of oppression based on cultural factors like skin colour or gender or religion, etc, can only be understood and effectively combatted by understanding them in the context of economic exploitation and economic competition which is what the human propensity to discriminate evolved for in the first place.
James, thanks for sharing that fairly recent David Abrams video; his mind has fascinated me from his first book on, and he needs more exposure. What doesn't make perfect sense about Eairth? Another smothering Western concept deflated!!!! I'll catch up to Lizards now.
That was very interesting. I think he's right about most of it. My one quibble is that I don't think "instinctive" in-group/outgroup dynamics are "so we c an exploit people in the outgroup." I think it's because people who live in tightknit tribes revel in the opportunity to have an outlet for the tensions that fester in any such group, which social cohesion requires them to suppress. So if you have to get along with the guy everyone admires, who married the girl you wanted; and you have to get along with your mother-in-law, who interferes with your child-raising and keeps implying that you aren't good enough for he
r daughter...hey! THOSE people a cross the river! They're evil nasty Bad people! Boy do you hate 'em! It provides emotional relief, to project your suppressed hostilities on strangers.