There’s this hypothesis in social justice psychology that in an oppressive relationship the oppressed cannot find liberation alone. The oppressor is also trapped and both have to find liberation together (iirc that’s the logic behind “none of us is free until all of us are free”)
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The tldr of my reverse argument is: if you’re on the top of a hill, you’re likely to die trapped there, because it is hard, often impossible, to see the point of getting off. If you’re at the bottom, there’s a reason to try. Both can move, only one has a default reason to.
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There’s some intriguing arguments and a pretty elegant power calculus theory underneath modern social justice politics, if you have the stomach to look past the warrioring and end-times clusterfuck. I don’t entirely buy the psychological axioms, but there’s a there there.
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When the Great Woke Meltdown is done and a decent period has passed to let the dust settle, I plan to take another look at this stuff. Claim some of the better intellectual turf at firesale prices, repackage them in libertarian language to confuse people, and resurrect them 😎
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The chapter on the master/slave dialectic in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit kicked off the debate you’re describing. It’s also pretty short and uncharacteristically gripping (still turgid in absolute terms, pun intended). marxists.org/reference/arch
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Oh yeah I think I picked that up from Fukuyama’s gloss on it via Kojeve, which retains the basic psychology without going down the Marxist path with it
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From Rousseau's "Emile": "Power itself is servile when it depends on public opinion; for you are dependent on the prejudices of others when you rule them by means of those prejudices." (Foxley's translation, page 49) The work he does around this sentence is solid


