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flipshod's avatar

This is an excellent essay.

My own experience was more like "don't worry little one. I won't let us get in trouble. I'll adapt our language to new contexts and have ready an appropriate self-defense. Easy."

I've got plenty of anger and misery happening, and I can tie it to specific things, but it's not that shit.

And I don't feel pressure to be miserable coming from the ambient culture--indeed the opposite.

There's not really social ostracization just because a certain group snubs you, so the only concrete effect would be job loss (I don't think they're putting people in jail yet). Except in very specific jobs (and you may be in one), that's just a technical problem. "How to play this role." And there are always other jobs.

Again, great post.

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tonydanza's avatar

this is my favorite piece of yours yet.

"So as in the body, so too in the body politic: as we continue our mission of social sanitization and elimination of interpersonal friction, our ability to handle those inevitable pain points decreases. We become less resilient, to the point in which even the slightest insult or derision becomes a cataclysmic offense." I feel and think this same way. I feel as though in the last 3-4 years the social environment has moved beyond "anger is bad; frustration is bad" to an even more insane place of "asking for an explanation is bad; seeking clarification is bad". What used to (10 years ago) be the boundary of discourse, which was anything that causes anger, frustration, sadness, or unease is verboten, has morphed. The boundary has become smaller, so much that now anything with the POTENTIAL to cause those emotions in others must be avoided. This pain tolerance is decreasing in real-time and shows no sign of stopping.

I think in other words, many are like you and your other kielbasa eating neighbors: if the boundary for aPpRoPrIaTe DiScOuRsE is getting smaller and tighter, then most will experience a moment where they shrug their shoulders, stop trying, and say "nah fuck off"

(I cannot figure out hypertext / italics / bold, if I could I'd have a lot less Boomer Capitalization.)

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