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This even happens in the arbitrary experimental ones, like the ‘blue eyes/brown eyes’ experiment they do. The first step is to take some people and tell them they have a single salient feature, & that this feature will define how they’re treated. Everything else stems from there
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Replying to @the_wilderless
Go on
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So of course it’s predictable that if people are treated as a single group, and treated very badly because of that, they do build camaraderie, sympathy, and community within that group.
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And when the opportunity comes to push back, it’s the most predictable thing in the world that they’ll go “you said we’re bad/evil/lesser because we’re X; but actually, we’re Amazing because we’re X! X pride!” This seems very much like a “masters tools” situation.
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It’s the same mindset, same model—just flipped in the mirror, or with the scoreboard reversed. Which, very predictable. The energy flowing through a pendulum will naturally move it back, forth, back, forth.
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It’s utterly understandable that people who have suffered because of an arbitrary feature chosen to define them centuries before Will at the first opportunity follow the pendulum the other way and try to bring something good out of that same arbitrary grouping.
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Which… seems to not be working very well. Identity politics in general seem to do a lot more to divide than to unite. Which, again, I think is inevitable. Can’t dismantle the master’s house with the master’s tools.
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If the pendulum is swinging back and about to knock someone in the head, the tantrika’s job is to redirect that force into an either harmless or beneficial direction.
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Which to me seems like the thing needed in the identity politics arena in general. This swing from “you have x feature and are thus bad” to “no, I have x feature and am thus great!” Back and forth seems to be a dead end. Ever more and stronger identitifications.
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