AAaA Syr’Nj 4
Like in the previous strip, Flo here is doing something I generally think of as my technique, which I sometimes championed despite her active opposition: just coming up with a brand-new chunk of Arkerran history out of whole cloth, sliding it into what we’d already set up without feeling bound by earlier installments. Being forced to do this to create a race for Karmakat may have convinced her that the delicate construction of Arkerra wouldn’t collapse because of such additions.
(Flo would probably argue with me that she did improv all the time, but I think it’s a difference of scale, and of her investing earlier and more fully into the worldbuilding as it was.)
Be mindful you don’t get sucked into a radicalization bubble. I figure if you’re reading this strip you probably have to worry less about it, but I’ve still seen a lot of people I consider friends get more absolutist and uncompromising over time. Hard times increase the appeal of simplistic solutions.
Dang, that monster moonface in panel 5 is perfect. Again, it’s just scary enough, just ridiculous enough.
Her mentioning their ways ever-so-briefly as “off-putting” to other elves makes me wonder how much persecution the Moon Elves actually received that has been papered over in what was passed down to her.
I’d like to say that I’m really impressed with how smoothly you’ve handled the transition of discussing Phil’s –> Flo’s perspective/opinion/stance. I recognize you probably have to rewrite a fair amount, still, but _I_ appreciate it and I have to think Flo does, as well. Along with anyone else contemplating such a potentially fraught-with-fear-of-rejection transition.
Can’t agree with you about radicalization in general being a bad thing – holding beliefs which are extremely opposed to the political status quo can be a good thing, as long as those beliefs are correct. Protesting against keeping certain immigrant children in cages is radical now. Demanding that local cities move money from police weapons towards programs which are shown to reduce crime is radical. Demanding that the richest people have most of their money taken from them is radical. But these are reasonable things for a US citizen to want. As soon as anybody’s demands upset somebody who can legally use force to the point where they do so against the protester, they’re a radical.
I understand what you’re saying, but I can’t really get on board there. We lose something important when we let the crazies define the terms we use. If a thing is reasonable, it isn’t radical.
If it’s a fringe minority position, and the only way to achieve the goal is for your own brothers to be killed, then it’s radical. Who was more radical in tbe 1800s USA, the slaveholders or the abolitionists? It was the abolitionists, and they were considered madmen. If somebody advocates drastic action, is immensely unpopular for it, and then people very much like them are killed by the enforcers of the status quo for it, then they’re a radical.
Yeah, I think the issue is how you define “radical”. I, like T, usually interpret it as elevating some (possibly stupid, possibly entirely good, honourable and rational) line of thinking to a quasi-religious standing, and then discarding all other considerations in favour of this one. »If a thing is reasonable, it isn’t radical.«
I think you use the term to mean “a proposition that is very different from the current state, and probably rejected by lots of people simply because it’s such a big change”.
That’s not a “wrong” definition, of course. It is a bit more difficult to apply, though, because whether something is radical or not is then defined by how far it deviates from what the loudest voices in the public debate are saying, and those may not even be representative, and they may not even be the same voices to different ears — in other words, whether somebody finds something you propose radical would depend on their own ideas of what “everyone” thinks.
If the above is true, then I can agree to both you and T.
Except, you know, when the Overton window slides all the way into the fringe.
Which is where the US has been for about 20 years.
As an example: The GOP hasn’t been anywhere near a reasonable viewpoint in at least that long, and due to the broken way the slave-owning founders rigged the electoral system, if one party goes fringe, the Overton Window slides right along in that direction.
In such a climate, insisting on actual reasonable policies becomes radical in and of itself.
The problem is, *everyone* thinks their own positions are correct. White supremacists, for example. Radicalization doesn’t make you more likely to be correct, but it *does* make you more resistant to being shown that you’re in the wrong. That’s why it’s pernicious.
That doesn’t make radicalization an inherently bad thing, though. People should be stubborn in the pursuit of what’s right. People can be swayed by punishment, and manipulative rhetoric. If the nation bears an extreme insanity, why be open to compromise on that front? Why assign any merit to calls for unity with those who want the boot of tyranny to remain forever mashing on the face of the poor and the refugee? That’s the situation today.
Because tyranny comes in many flavours and just because one tastes better to you does not make it any less what it is.
That is why radicalism is dangerous. If you go fighting fire with fire with no care of what you burn, you just keep the fires burning just the same as your opposition.
And being stubborn, being steadfast in your beliefs and goals is not the same as being radical. Like a fan is not yet a fanatic, but they can sure end up being one.
https://www.thefreedictionary.com/radical
Radical:
1. One who advocates fundamental or revolutionary changes in current practices, conditions, or institutions: Example sentence: radicals seeking to overthrow the social order.
If nobody’s allowed to be a billionaire, that’s a fundamental change. If nobody were to be thrown into prison unjustly today, then that would mean that the most influential 40% of the population has been shut out of the democratic process, because that’s what the man they voted for stood for. If people start looking at studies and evidence for how to best implement a justice system instead of going off a feeling that they have to be “tough on crime”, then the justice system would look quite different than it is today.
Dictionary definitions notwithstanding, I don’t think that’s what T meant by radicalization. Radicalized people don’t look at “studies and evidence” to find the best solution for a problem. They only pay attention to evidence that confirms what they already believe. The mob that stormed the Capitol were fully convinced that the Democrats had stolen the election, despite all evidence to the contrary.
Furthermore, radicalized people believe that their ends justify the means. If they win, they just become the next boot mashing faces. Like Robespierre. Like Pol Pot. Like ISIS. Like the Bolsheviks that murdered the Tsar’s children.
Semmelweis’ ideas about hand-washing were considered radical, but he didn’t burn down hospitals.
Aren’t the people who burn American flags outside of an ICE containment facility, or smash windows, or who even agitate for the overthrow of the government for leftist causes radical??? Wasn’t Nelson Mandela radical? You’re focusing on the people who were successful in using massive violence to overthrow governments abroad, but you don’t focus on the leftists who were using minimal or nonexistent violence to overturn the oppressive establishment in America, b/c they tend to get murdered and arrested.
This is a matter of public record – the Red Scare, the murder of MLK, the mass arrests of Black Lives Matter protesters[1] and Occupy Wall Street protesters[2].. It’s US Army policy[3] that people have to get killed in support of suppressing insurgencies in other nations. I see no reason to believe that that’s not policy in their own nation, as well.
[1]About 14000 arrests according to https://www.forbes.com/sites/roberthart/2021/01/07/figures-show-stark-difference-between-arrests-at-dc-black-lives-matter-protest-and-arrests-at-capitol-hill/?sh=7b8fabf75706
[2]About 8000 arrests according to https://www.huffpost.com/entry/occupy-wall-street-arrests_n_3326640)
[3]A field manual for the US military, see Chapter 5, and sections 20 and 21 of Chapter 2: https://www.amazon.com/Tactics-Counterinsurgency-Department-Army/dp/1463511108
When the radical right is in control, they suppress the left. When the radical left is in control, they suppress the right. I’m not going to defend the government’s suppression of political dissent, but I don’t believe that violent overthrow of the government is a solution either. Might does not make right.
And that’s all I’m going to say on the matter.
That sort of stance hasn’t aged well.
It boils down to “fine people on both sides”, just with a negative slapped on.
Fact is, when the right is in power, people are *MURDERED*.
When the left is in power, the rich pay some of their taxes.
Anyone who fails to notice a difference is undeserving of living in a democracy (which is good, because they’ll also be unable to maintain one).
I’m late to the discourse, I just wanted to add a meta observation: It’s fascinating to see that in this (almost) unmoderated forum many discussions end with very sensible conclusions. That means that not only
1) smart people are inclined to discuss as long as it takes until they are content with the point reached, it means also that
2) there aren’t people that don’t get it but continue arguing.
If you’re perceived as a radical, it’s harder to win other people over to your point of view. There’s a reason why MLK Jr gained more respect than Malcolm X. And I suspect that William Wilberforce did more for the cause of abolition than John Brown did. Radicalization is counter-productive.
And you know who MLK jr. said he was most disappointed by?
He said:
“I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to ‘order’ than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice.”
Being a moderate is not a good thing when what is critical is social change. Being perceived as reasonable can be, but I’m not as confident as you are that it’s absolutely vital. I think Malcolm X probably did help out the cause of racial justice a lot.
I never regarded MLK as radical, mainly because he never resorted to violence or similar. He did not “smash the system” because he wanted peace for himself and the people he represented, which also implied peace for everyone else. There seem to be three categories here: Those not willing to speak up for fear of looking bad, those willing to raise some eyebrows and upset, and those who know only one purpose and will disregard anything else, including ethics, in their pursuit.
That’s right, I consider the DHS and ICE radical organisations (by my definition…), and BLM and anti-ICE protestors, for the most part, not.
MLK jr. lived knowing that he may very well be killed for what he said, and he wasn’t always popular with people during his day, which is why I called him a radical. Under the definition of radical you are using, you would have to include all of the founding fathers under the third category – they chose violent revolution. Possibly also the Union side in the American Civil War would fall into that category, there was an anti-war movement going on within them during that time.
One source on MLK knowing that he might die for what he did:
https://news.gallup.com/poll/149201/Americans-Divided-Whether-King-Dream-Realized.aspx?utm_source=alert&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=syndication&utm_content=plaintextlink&utm_term=Politics
An article which touches on historical polling of how MLK was viewed:
https://news.gallup.com/poll/149201/Americans-Divided-Whether-King-Dream-Realized.aspx?utm_source=alert&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=syndication&utm_content=plaintextlink&utm_term=Politics
Hmm… so really, there are two variables here: How far is someone willing to go:
1: in terms of their own ethical/moral limits
2: in terms of the lengths which others (mainly authorities) may go to to thwart them
The first variable maps the degree to which someone is still able of other considerations than their main cause, and the second maps how much personal risk somebody is willing to take for what they’re convinced is right. And I guess that most theoretical combinations of them also exist IRL — from passive resistance (0/100) to ordering genocide (100/0), from doing nothing (0/0) to fanatic cardboard cliché terrorists (100/100)*.
…and to try and bring this to something of a conclusion: I think everybody here agrees that going all the way on number 1 is pretty much the road to evil, but going very far on number 2 can be (but is not necessarily, depending on where you are on 1, and how mistaken your beliefs are) bold and heroic.
Risking your own life to help others is much better than putting others in danger for your personal priorities. I think for both you’ll find enough people who’d call them radical but they’re totally not the same thing.
* There’re some hints that many terrorists who put themselves in harms way are actually not quite (100/100) but actually psychologically in a very complicated state, but let’s not have that discussion now, this one is long enough already.
How does one define “radical” if not by comparison to “mainstream”?
Then, if the mainstream is wrong, not being wrong becomes radical.
If the mainstream is corrupt, insisting on decency becomes radical.
Or, of course, we could be radical about it and look to the root of the word “radical”, which is the latin for “root”.
In that sense, any viewpoint is radical if it seeks to return to the root meaning of some term.
This, I believe, is the sense in which “Radical feminism” was formed : it is a movement seeking to place women as supreme, rather than the common sense of feminism, which seeks simply equality and fairness between the sexes (and genders).
This is also why some radfems hate trans women, because they (mistakenly and perversely) see it as literally being about inherently inferior men usurping the superior status of “woman”.
But! Even with such a terrifying example, even in that sense it’s really down to what the term is currently meaning and what a returning to a root meaning would entail …
Of course, you know, if we’re talking about channers, gamergaters, incels, terfs, then yes, those examples of radicalism are defo bad.
»How does one define “radical” if not by comparison to “mainstream”?«
Well, how do you define the mainstream, then? I read about a funny study once, among college students who go drunk every weekend. Most said they didn’t enjoy it but “had to” do it because everybody did ii, so it was expected. But actually the mainstream view was that getting smashed on a weekend wasn’t particularly enjoyable.
I have always used and interpreted the word “radical” as “make no compromise, whatsoever”, more or less synonymous with “fundamentalist”. (whether it’s roots or foundations: It’s about the one thing which somebody believes to be the cause for all their actions. In that definition, becoming radical is pretty much always bad, because it’s the point where people stop listening and critically evaluating their actions. So to me, MLK was not radical. He had a strong idea, and demanded huge changes, but he was not willing to forsake his own ethical convictions in order to reach his goals. Quite contrary to some politicians some decades later, who looked kind of happy to have an excuse to “take the gloves off”.
You do have a point, though: If “radical” is not the word for “big departure from the status quo”, then what is? There needs to be some word for describing the difference between “baby steps” moderate movements which are afraid to upset anyone, and the bolder ones which are driven by strong convictions which are willing to make a fuss. But those in turn, need to be differentiated from those who turn a good cause into an excuse to berzerk.
Fundamentalism is another term that meant “returning to the [basis]”, now just with a building (Temple/Cathedral?) metaphor rather than a plant metaphor.
You should perhaps consider that IF the usage of “radical” you’re used to is coined inside a deeply corrupt system (such as the US political system), it’s fairly transparently what the status-quo WOULD say about any movement insisting on not making the particular set of corrupt compromises that system has chosen to make.
Again, slave-owners calling abolitionists “dangerous extremists” were not exactly incorrect. It’s just that the dangerous extremists were right, and the slave-owners were despicable scumbags deserving of annihilation.
Sometimes the system is wrong and needs to be torn down.
That doesn’t mean “tearing down the system” is going to be a lighthearted, wholesome activity.
It’s always going to be dangerous and extreme.
But sometimes necessary.
And again, you have quietly inserted your own definition of everything into my text. There are two very different things we’re talking about. I’m arguing against blind rage.
There needs to be a word for this, and I don’t see anything wrong with assigning “radical” to that duty. You don’t seem to like that, so feel free to suggest another. If you do: What *would* you call a person/movement who has lost sense of proportionality? Because not having a word for that means not being able to call it out, and that’d be a problem in my book.
»You should perhaps consider that IF the usage of “radical” you’re used to is coined inside a deeply corrupt system (such as the US political system)«
Fun fact: If an Englishman walked into a German bar and gave the barman the two-finger salute, he’d get two beers. If a German walked into a British bar and did the same … there’d be consequences. That does not mean that either of them were using the gesture the “right” or “wrong” way, or that any of those countries were in urgent need of a bloody revolution. It’s just that there are things which need to be expressed, and people in different places chose different ways to do that. Duh.
Why did you feel the need to insert an opposition to a caricature?
Is it that important to defend an absolute that you’re ready to retreat into an absurdist corner of pure semantics to get it?
I won’t follow you there.
But I will say again: Sometimes it’s perfectly fine to tear everything down.
That is, when popular complacency has combined with far-right insanity, like in the daily-day of the modern day.
By all means defend a tautological stance that “too far is too far”.
Too far is not today.
When “the common people” have been thoroughly fooled by fascism, there’s no nice path back to normalcy.
Zak, would the words “violent” or “extremist” be of any help to you?
Perhaps I misread T’s intent in the original annotation, but it didn’t seem to me like he was arguing against “radicalism” in the sense of “views different from what’s considered/defined to be mainstream”, but rather “radicalism” in the sense of “this is right and this is the only thing that’s right and everything else is wrong and I don’t want to even hear your arguments or alternatives”. The comment threads here seem to be arguing the semantics of the first sense, and missing the point of the second sense.
That last bit of the second sense, the “I don’t want to even hear your arguments or alternatives” (embodied in the “bubble” part of “radicalization bubble”) is the most problematic, at least in my view.
There’s definitely something to be said for disengaging from time to time or tuning out particularly bad/frequent offenders to avoid burnout, but if we take it to the point that we can’t even talk to the people we disagree with, there really isn’t a path forward that doesn’t end in violence.
And please don’t take this as a unilateral condemnation of violence as a means. What I mean is that constructing a system in which the only words the “losers” can employ that the “winners” will hear involve violence is a lose-lose situation, regardless of whether you happen to be among the “winners” or the “losers”.
I’m not familiar with the second definition of radicalization you mentioned, and I couldn’t find it in thefreedictionary, or the merriam-webster dictionary. I guess the specific reason I got so upset, beyond the general extremeness of the situation, is that the current president of the United States, Joe Biden, has been more conciliatory with the Republican party than the left-wing of the United States.
Here’s how he talks about the Republican party, note that he says that “we still need the Republican party”, and doesn’t call for anybody’s resignation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ByaPsDHEWiw (All the interesting things are said in the beginning of the clip)
And here’s how he talks about Black Lives Matters: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wfiZy4xvhu4&ab_channel=ABCNews&t=1m36s (the mass arrests of the occupy wall street protesters happened under Obama, and not a single banker was arrested)
This has left me worried that people who identify as moderates, who think that the other side has much good to say will fail to do anything to oppose the far-right when people get fed-up with the Democrats, and the far-right returns to power, and is even worse than before.
I don’t really know how to respond to your last point, or what to do about the situation. A lot of people voted for Donald Trump, and there was vanishingly little reason to want Donald Trump in office. I guess the large numbers of people who voted for him, and the incredibly destructive weapons of war that the US government has amassed are a very strong reason that outright war is a very bad outcome. And there are options of resistance involving lesser quantities violence. I probably did imply that a war would be acceptable, I’m sorry about that.
‘Sall right.
This whole debate seems more semantic than philosophical, best I can tell. And the dictionary is sometimes a rough guide, especially as culture shifts. Radicalization is what led almost anyone to participate in the events of 1/6, and conservative extremism is far more dangerous in our current environment. But just becoming as extreme in the opposite direction isn’t necessarily an answer.
I can imagine taking up arms in defense of my nation against its own radicals. In fact, I was part of a counterprotest in D.C. against the Neo-Nazi-aligned “Unite the Right” group.
For what it’s worth, I share your concerns that the current administration is not seeing the world as it really is when it comes to the Republican party and the continued Trumpist threat, though I suspect they’re more aware of certain things that they’re letting on.
Bottom line, describing what I consider to be rational beliefs as “radicalism” feels too much like letting other people set the terms of my own reality. It’s useful to know how certain other people might see me when I, say, advocate severe changes to how search engines parse results or propose that Fox News be sued and legislated into oblivion or impotence. But I don’t let a small cell of people tell me what to think, and I don’t think most people, even those very far from me, are motivated solely by spite.
Most importantly, perhaps, I feel that you can take almost anything too far, including a lot of things I promote. The radicals, to my view, are not those who go too far for others, nor even those who occasionally venture too far for themselves. The radicals are those who would get angrily offended by the idea that “too far” even exists.
I pretty much use “radical” in the same way, and share the same idea about not taking anything too far.
But at this sentence I just had a thought:
The radicals are those who would get angrily offended by the idea that “too far” even exists.
At least part of that angry reaction might be because “don’t overdo it” is way too often used to mean “don’t do anything that might upset anyone”. Which in turn makes it easy to then take any remark about not going too far as an attempt to shut them up. Of course, if you start seeing anything that is not agreement as an attack, that’s a good sign you’re in too far …
But I suspect that at least some radical-seeming people can be reasoned with, but it requires carefully-chosen words.
And it makes people like MLK even more admirable, who stayed very civil and well-mannered through years and years of facing very unfriendly headwinds from much of society.
This is a very difficult subject to navigate, because everything is relative (allowing an overused phrase to actually be literally true for once).
Let’s take some of the relative viewpoints. The reluctantly replaced president, a literal Nazi who if his followers had been a bit more willing to kill and die, would have destroyed democracy on Jan 6th, like Hitler did before him after HIS period in elected office ran out. To him, anyone who isn’t rabidly in favor of Trumpezian misrule is a “dangerous radical”.
Ultra-mainstream Dems, on the other hand, feel that anyone who doesn’t feel that More of The Same is the only way to deal with a crisis is a “dangerous radical”.
Almost everyone on the political spectrum feels that anyone even mentioning Reparations for slavery and institutionalized racism is a “dangerous radical”.
In such a climate, I (as evidenced above) feel it’s rather unwise to strongly communicate “don’t go too far” as absolute wisdom.
Because there’s a deeply corrupt status quo saying exactly the same thing, and listening to it is going to lead away from necessary changes.
See, that’s the thing. I don’t believe everything is relative.
My point is that there comes a time when you have to put down the “relative viewpoints,” especially when it comes to self-assessment. I’m asking you to use your own rationality and make sure you aren’t sliding into two-dimensional thinking or wild, irresponsible generalizations. (For instance, you don’t have to say “all 70 million Republican voters hate the environment and want to burn the world” to say that Republican environmental policies have been disastrous. Institutional brainwashing is a hell of a drug.)
Radicalism isn’t what you think as much as how you think. The further outside the norm it is, the more likely it is to be diagnosed as such, but the norm is often an unreliable guide.
As a linguist by training, I have to stick to the fundamentals of communication:
Meaning is not transferred from speaker to audience.
The speaker, at best, can pick means that they hope the audience will construct into the meaning the speaker seeks to communicate – but the parts that meaning will be built of is entirely those available to the audience.
This is a little bit different in cartoon media, because there is more bandwidth available… but I digress.
When it comes to text, it’s one-dimensional – a linear string of signs – and the signs are restricted by economy into a finite set, denoting a matrix of quite vague meanings.
Communication is not precise, which is why I am wary of messages that unintentionally segue well with a harmful society-wide discourse.
OTOH, I also think I get what you mean, I’d just use different words to build it from.
A coupld of examples, to check if I got it right:
Bandwagoning around an unanalyzed ideal, then letting that ideal herd you along, without ever checking how reality matches up.
Bunkering down in an echo chamber of Enlightened Pioneers, rejecting all visions not perfectly parallel to one’s own, thereby disregarding the people who follow those visions as irrelevant or worse, unworthy of consideration.
Both of those are pretty complex, a simpler one might be:
Losing track of reality in favor of an idea.
That one should apply pretty universally. I first had “ideal” instead of “idea”, but even the anarchocapitalists who are motivated entirely by selfishness would be painted with “idea”.
I also first had “without caring about how to achieve that ideal”, but that’s implied in “losing track of reality”.
Anyway, good discussion.
I like this bit of lore. Your Moon Elves are not Svartálfar nor Drow. They are their own thing (if a bit Elric-esque in appearance) Kudos to all involved