• themusicman@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Well that’s my attempt to understand a novel point of view for today… I can now hopefully say I’m no longer “ignorant”, I simply disagree.

    Any word which describes something seen as negative takes on a stigma. Those sympathetic to the victims of the stigma will blame the word and insist on a new one. The new word gains the same stigma while the old one loses its original meaning and takes on a new one based entirely on the stigma itself. Rinse and repeat and we slowly build a lexicon of words which are problematic for reasons forgotten by society. A special few retain or rediscover the original meaning, and thus we have a perfect misdirection from the vast and growing wealth and power inequality orchestrated by our capitalist overlords.

    • DessertStorms@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      You “disagreeing” (more like maintaining cognitive dissonance, and clearly not reading the links, especially the last one) doesn’t make it any less ableism. ¯_(ツ)_/¯

      E: also - ableism isn’t some thought experiment for you to “test out” your debating skills on, it’s an actual form of oppression that affects billions globally, and it feeds on deep rooted smug and dismissive attitudes like yours.

      • Maalus@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Kay, from now on, I’m ableist. I’ll also block you, so I don’t see your ramblings anymore.

      • moomoomoo309
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        1 year ago

        Yeah, after reading through, those articles equally contain cognitive dissonance. From how I read it, it’s ableist to insult intelligence because intelligence is primarily a proxy to insult mentally handicapped people, and because its criteria are largely arbitrary.

        What about doing something unwise? Touching a hot stove, poking a bear, trying to jump across a wide gap you’re not sure you can make it over, these are not good ideas. The thing is: the criteria for what is “wise” is equally arbitrary! The arbitrariness of a socially-constructed idea are less important than how important the cultural zeitgeist deems the idea to be. Most socially constructed ideas have arbitrary criteria because their definitions are not strict, that alone is not enough to dismiss them outright. Their harm to the mentally handicapped could be, but I see this as a red herring to solving that problem.

        Policing the language used won’t prevent them from being insulted for being mentally handicapped. People will just make up new terms, as has happened time and time again. If it becomes blasphemous to insult intelligence, another proxy for it will appear, and that will be insulted instead. They’ll insult the unwise, the foolish, the unprepared, etc. In my opinion, the attempt to stamp out ableism as you’ve described it is a thinly-veiled attempt to try to prevent people from insulting each other at all, which, while morally virtuous, is rather naïve.

      • GBU_28@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        So the suggestion would be to just declare that someone is perpetually wrong and misinformed and will never improve? Lol

        Seems like dancing around the topic.