[Lanny_McDonald]

Originally Posted by CliffFletcher

The truth is contestable. And to contest it, you need an environment where challenges and research won't be denounced on ideological grounds.

In your mind. To most people, truth is synonymous with fact, which is many times irrefutable. Unfortunately, in the current political environment, and post truth world, we find ourselves engaged with a perspective where facts don't matter and truth has become subjective. That is, unfortunately, an ugly truth.



If you really want to pick a fight and battle over something that should be egregious to all, maybe you should focus in on that fact. We can all have different opinions, but we should never be able to claim different facts.

Today's social justice movement is built on several ideological assumptions:

1. The essential political identity of every citizen is their race, gender, or sexual orientation.
2. Those identity groups are engaged in an unrelenting power struggle.
3. It’s the moral obligation of every decent person to strive for the equality of outcome for those identity groups across all aspects of social, cultural, and economic life.
4. The source of all disparities is systemic oppression by the dominant patriarchal, cis-gendered, white elite.
5. Any suggestion of other sources of disparity are morally unconscionable, and render the person making the suggestion a party to systemic oppression.
6. This issue is so vital, and the people affected by it so vulnerable, that traditional norms and values around free speech and open, challenging dialog must be abandoned.

Where did these supposed assumptions come from? There is but one assumption when it comes to social justice.


"All people are equal."


Period. No further qualification required. If you're looking for the rule to inform your interpretation of social justice, try on "treat others as you yourself would expect to be treated."

Challenging these assumptions is not treated as intellectual debate, but as morally defective or hostile attacks.

Well, when you make assumptions and place qualifications on compliance, then yes, you are going to see people who those assumptions or qualifications impact seem hostile. Hence why your list of assumptions would get some people pissed off. You're already establishing loopholes allowing for your non-compliance based on your frame.

#5 is key. In the search for truth, we uncover many aspects of human behaviour that make us uncomfortable or run contrary to your ideals - reality doesn't care how we feel. An example Haidt cites is the strong empirical correlation between single-parent homes and poverty. This truth is attacked when discussing the different outcomes of groups because A) it might make people feel bad (blaming the victim), and B) it's the kind of thing conservatives often raise. We also can't discuss the heritability of intelligence and temperament the role they might play in intergenerational economic mobility for the same reason.

Bull. Whether heredity plays a role in the development of intelligence is a question considered by a number of social sciences. To claim it isn't is either ignorance of the research or disingenuous while trying to establish a narrative. Trying to drag inter-generational economic mobility into the mix is a classic red herring meant to confound rather than narrow discussion. The two are not directly related. The later is systemic and based on social and legal means constructed by the very people who most greatly benefit from the mobility.

There are a host of other examples of empirical truths that are virtually taboo to introduce without arousing ferocious moral condemnation and accusations of oppression and malice. Which is why many observers have commented on how much today's social justice movement is like a kind of religion. It's why researchers like Steven Pinker, and the entire evolutionary psychology field, are attacked by identarian activists. Any explanation for different outcomes besides systemic oppression cannot be tolerated.

Taboos are cultural. You should go back and re-read Haidt, as taboos greatly inform our morality and our reactions to things alien to us. You have adopted a certain perspective where you project and enforce your taboos on others. Hence all the rules for how you perceive social justice.