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Post by Bill in the rain on Nov 27, 2021 13:36:34 GMT
No no, maybe I've not explained that well enough. I mean, even the most well meaning person can get left behind I imagine. I'm not excusing nasty behaviour as a purely generational thing. More that it's part and parcel of getting older to end up more and more out of touch or disconnected from popular culture. So I have some sympathy for old codgers like John Cleese that used to be young and with it and on the cusp of new and exciting things, who are now just a bit fuddy duddy and dated and say embarrassing things on social media. It just illustrates the pace of change within society. I mostly agree with this. It doesn't affect everyone of course, but a lot of that is simply down to the luck of the circumstances in which they encounter the new issues. It's not really a new thing. I mean, the python interview with Malcolm Muggeridge is quite famous. But he was a pretty liberal cutting edge guy in his time. It's just that by the time Life of Brian came out he'd been left behind. It's sad to now see the same thing happen to Cleese, but it is largely just a function of getting older. New issues arise to replace the issues you were passionate about, and you don't really understand them. If you then put a foot wrong and get criticised then your first introduction to the issue is hardly a positive one and you get defensive. Weirdly, it seems to hit liberals harder than conservatives. Conservatives have always been against all these newfangled ideas, so it just slots in nicely with the other ones. Liberals, on the other hand, have probably always prided themselves on their progressive thinking and support of human rights... and they now find themselves on the other side of the argument. A lot of them don't seem to respond well to that. (Cleese, Linehan, Rowling, etc..) I'm only in my early 40s, but I imagine if you searched back though early RPS discussions on trans rights, I probably said some stuff I wouldn't be proud of now. At the time I wasn't familiar with the issue, whereas things like racism and sexism and gay rights were things more of my generation that I felt strongly about. Luckily, I encountered some good discussions and sources and learned a lot and my views evolved, but I could imagine that if I'd encountered the issue in another forum, I might have gotten most of my information from other sources and ended up going down a rowling/linehan rabbithole. I know people who have been reasonable normal people, happy to live and let live even in less woke times, who suddenly just started spouting racist nonsense and conspiracy theories as they passed 60. I don't know if it's the famous Facebook radicalisation or if they just went wrong in the head at some point, but I find it genuinely scary. I know a lovely lady just like this. Last time she was telling me how she no longer watches any tv news because they're all part of some conspiracy to go soft on China, and she now gets all her news from youtube. Given that I've never actually seen a single thing on Japanese tv that was positive about china, I hate to think what she's watching now. There is actually a word in Japanese for 'extreme right wing housewife who spends all her time at home getting right wing news off the internet', but I forget what it is. It's definitely a global thing though. |
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MolarAm🔵
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Post by MolarAm🔵 on Nov 27, 2021 13:37:34 GMT
I forget where I read this. But apparently very few people ever read past the first paragraph or two of a news story.
Which would make me really fucking depressed if I were a journalist.
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Post by Aunt Alison on Nov 27, 2021 13:55:35 GMT
You could also make an argument of education, environment and experience being the causes of people having poor or out of date views. Someone like Cleese has the education and environment (time, resources) to be informed on issues. His opinion isn't needed, so if he decides to voice it on social media or in interviews, then he should be judged the same as anyone
People on this forum tend to dismiss people as being stupid but many situations are far more complex than an out of touch celebrity.
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dogbot
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Post by dogbot on Nov 27, 2021 14:18:45 GMT
I'd feel bad about using "boomers" as a convenience, if I wasn't only 10 years younger, I hadn't very narrowly qualified it and also, fuck Express readers and their feelings anyway.
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cubby
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Post by cubby on Nov 27, 2021 14:23:08 GMT
It's a shame Bob Geldof hasn't said anything antitrans or similar. Boomertown Rats would be a sitter
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lexw
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Post by lexw on Nov 27, 2021 18:45:55 GMT
You could also make an argument of education, environment and experience being the causes of people having poor or out of date views. Someone like Cleese has the education and environment (time, resources) to be informed on issues. His opinion isn't needed, so if he decides to voice it on social media or in interviews, then he should be judged the same as anyone
People on this forum tend to dismiss people as being stupid but many situations are far more complex than an out of touch celebrity.
I honestly think it mostly comes down to personality and how innately reasonable people are, and whether they think they know everything. Dementia can factor in too, but let's rule that out for now because all the screaming ageing jerks claim they don't have it. Like, take my dad. He's an inherently reasonable person, and whilst he knows a lot, he's basically open to new ideas, and always has been. He's 73, and whilst politically I think you'd call him a "centrist", he has absolute no problems understanding and working with "new" ideas on gender and so on. He's very well-educated, but so are some of the worst of these people. And I know other people (mostly in the US) who never went to college, maybe didn't even do well at high school, who are a similar age and similarly reasonable. And it's because they're reasonable, rational, open-minded people. If you know them, you pretty much always learn they always were, too. The less reasonable and rational people are, the less capable of understanding people different to them (or less willing to), the more likely they're rating about "THE TRANSES!!!" or whatever. JK Rowling fits this model perfectly, note. She was always a bit of a nasty bigot, and basically thought a kind of bigotry was cool. Harry Potter is riddled with this stuff (as wells "unfortunate" shit like the borderline anti-Semitic stuff with the bankers). It was significant enough that it was a major reason I dropped HP on book 4, there was just too much judge-y birth-obsessed shit (including HP being born the chosen one, note). So her going all TERF wasn't particularly surprising to me. I strongly suspect if we looked at the history of most/all TERF-types we'd see they were judgemental, often irrational, and not really capable of/willing to understand others different to them (or beyond certain margin of difference). |
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Post by Aunt Alison on Nov 27, 2021 19:01:07 GMT
You could also make an argument of education, environment and experience being the causes of people having poor or out of date views. Someone like Cleese has the education and environment (time, resources) to be informed on issues. His opinion isn't needed, so if he decides to voice it on social media or in interviews, then he should be judged the same as anyone
People on this forum tend to dismiss people as being stupid but many situations are far more complex than an out of touch celebrity.
I honestly think it mostly comes down to personality and how innately reasonable people are, and whether they think they know everything. Dementia can factor in too, but let's rule that out for now because all the screaming ageing jerks claim they don't have it. Like, take my dad. He's an inherently reasonable person, and whilst he knows a lot, he's basically open to new ideas, and always has been. He's 73, and whilst politically I think you'd call him a "centrist", he has absolute no problems understanding and working with "new" ideas on gender and so on. He's very well-educated, but so are some of the worst of these people. And I know other people (mostly in the US) who never went to college, maybe didn't even do well at high school, who are a similar age and similarly reasonable. And it's because they're reasonable, rational, open-minded people. If you know them, you pretty much always learn they always were, too. The less reasonable and rational people are, the less capable of understanding people different to them (or less willing to), the more likely they're rating about "THE TRANSES!!!" or whatever. JK Rowling fits this model perfectly, note. She was always a bit of a nasty bigot, and basically thought a kind of bigotry was cool. Harry Potter is riddled with this stuff (as wells "unfortunate" shit like the borderline anti-Semitic stuff with the bankers). It was significant enough that it was a major reason I dropped HP on book 4, there was just too much judge-y birth-obsessed shit (including HP being born the chosen one, note). So her going all TERF wasn't particularly surprising to me. I strongly suspect if we looked at the history of most/all TERF-types we'd see they were judgemental, often irrational, and not really capable of/willing to understand others different to them (or beyond certain margin of difference). Is being reasonable, rational and open minded innate (I don't think it is) or does it come from life experience and/or education? I'd say the same for JK Rowling as Cleese, she absolutely should know better. I just don't think you can let someone like Cleese off for any other reason than he was on the telly and you used to like him. He's as responsible for his opinions as JK Rowling is
My other point was that I think people on this forum take it for granted that they're generally of above average means and intelligence when they lay into "the general public" (we are the general public) as having stupid opinons. You should hold celebrities and normies to the same standard, but if you're going to be more understanding of people, it shouldn't be the rich, successful, famous ones
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Post by Sarfrin on Nov 27, 2021 19:56:53 GMT
I think if you're (one is, not you personally) arguing that you should have an inalienable right to attack a group of people without anyone calling you out on it, you're probably just a whiny arsehole.
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lexw
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Post by lexw on Nov 27, 2021 20:28:43 GMT
@aunt Alison
All evidence I'm aware of is that it's significantly but perhaps not mostly innate, whether that's genetic or from early upbringing or whatever is unclear and whilst education can give you tools to help with it, it definitely does not determine whether you are open-minded or reasonable. This is not hard to see. Plenty of people with incredible education are irascible twats of the worst kind - the senior Tories are great examples, but there are countless others. Hateful people are often well-educated on paper (whether they actually learned anything is another question).
You also see the inverse with some regularity, people brought up by racists or in difficult situations and within a year or three of leaving, or even whilst still in it, some people are still reasonable and open-minded and others are fanatics.
And part of the problem is that people like Cleese are delusional, seeing themselves as open-minded when it's easy to demonstrate that they are not and indeed never were, particularly.
People absolutely can work on themselves, but that takes significant and conscious effort and admitting they have a problem.
I'm not suggesting people should be more understanding, note, quite the contrary.
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Post by Aunt Alison on Nov 27, 2021 20:55:44 GMT
Innate to me means something very specific (nature vs nurture). Personally I think people are extremely complex (a result of nature and nurture) and I wasn't suggesting educated means you're open minded and vice versa. Intelligence and education can, of course, lead to arrogance and feelings of superiority and ignorance. Adversity and abuse in early life can lead to people being extremely empathetic and open minded. Any number of things in life can lead to the person you ultimately become
My comments are very much just addressing the idea that you can just pass Cleese off as an old fuddy duddy (you shouldn't, unless you're going to do the same for everyone else)
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Post by Aunt Alison on Nov 27, 2021 21:16:08 GMT
I'm not suggesting people should be more understanding, note, quite the contrary. See, I think generally people should be. In this setting where we're discussing things, it's really important to be understanding of people. It's much more difficult to do in a perosnal or real world situation but I think trying to fix a societal problem through understanding it is more helpful than dismissing or attacking someone (even if they are attacking someone themselves) Individuals have to accept personal responsibility and consequences but writing people off as stupid/chavs/boomers/gammons/karens/anti-vaxx, etc is really unhelpful |
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dogbot
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Post by dogbot on Nov 27, 2021 21:22:51 GMT
Bloody hippies.
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Post by Nanocrystal on Nov 27, 2021 21:50:39 GMT
I forget where I read this. But apparently very few people ever read past the first paragraph or two of a news story. Which would make me really fucking depressed if I were a journalist. God, that must be depressing for journalists. |
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Post by 😎 on Nov 27, 2021 22:00:29 GMT
It’s intentional for journalists, or at least red top ones. You lose something like 80% of readers by paragraph 7, so you can have a story like “IS MOLA A SEX OFFENDER?” with several paragraphs of rambling supposition about the sex offenses and how bad it could be followed by “anyway, no he isn’t” in paragraph 8 and job done. You’ve covered yourself legally and most readers have accepted the opposite of reality as truth.
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Post by Nanocrystal on Nov 27, 2021 22:06:19 GMT
More people need to know about Betteridge's law of headlines.
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Post by Sarfrin on Nov 27, 2021 22:08:18 GMT
More people need to know about Betteridge's law of headlines. I assume that's the one where if the headline poses a question the answer is always no? |
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Post by Nanocrystal on Nov 27, 2021 22:09:41 GMT
That's the one.
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Post by Jambowayoh on Nov 27, 2021 22:09:50 GMT
So just to check, is Mola sex offender? Many people I hear are talking about it.
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Post by Nanocrystal on Nov 27, 2021 22:10:48 GMT
It's certainly an important question.
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MolarAm🔵
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Post by MolarAm🔵 on Nov 27, 2021 23:52:15 GMT
I have a laminated card that says I'm not!
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Post by Baines on Nov 28, 2021 0:50:29 GMT
I forget where I read this. But apparently very few people ever read past the first paragraph or two of a news story. Which would make me really fucking depressed if I were a journalist. It is believed 21% of American adults are functionally illiterate, while more than 50% of adults are considered to be literate below a 6th grade level.
I ran into that tidbit when I read a book that claimed 30% of American adults never read a book. That claim was inaccurate. Instead, it is around 22-24% of American adults didn't read a single book, or apparently even part of a book or listened to an audiobook, in the previous year. Though other surveys produced wilder and/or more headline grabbing claims like 1/3rd of high school graduates never read another book in the lives or 80% of families didn't read a book in the previous year.
Though I admit I skimmed some articles for that info, probably didn't read more than a paragraph or two of the news stories...
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Post by Sarfrin on Nov 28, 2021 1:06:32 GMT
Claims like that stun me but at the same time no one else in my family ever reads a book.
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Post by Bill in the rain on Nov 28, 2021 4:55:31 GMT
There have been years where I didn't read a book. That's mainly down to free time.
Being open and understanding *is* a good trait, but I think it's important to try and understand where they're coming from and why they might feel that way. This doesn't mean you can't then strongly disagree with their opinions.
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hedben
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Post by hedben on Nov 28, 2021 9:23:34 GMT
Yeah I've definitely had years where I didn't read a book, seems like there's never time any more. Audiobooks were a way of keeping up with new fiction for a while, but it turns out I prefer podcasts these days.
I'd put books in the same category as phone/tablet screens where people can be weirdly snobby about how little or how much they're used rather than how they're used. I haven't read a book in ages, but I read online articles all the time - so I'm not going to feel somehow inferior to someone who's reading the latest Richard Osman or just bought Dune because they liked the film.
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Post by dfunked on Nov 28, 2021 9:41:36 GMT
Yeah, I've had a few years where I haven't read a single book. There are just too many other distractions around me. Quite sad, but it's just so much easier to pick up your phone and doomscroll, or watch a couple of episodes of something/catch up on YouTube subs.
Absolutely love it when I do get back into it and often find myself still reading after midnight when I get into a good one.
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MolarAm🔵
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Post by MolarAm🔵 on Nov 28, 2021 9:47:20 GMT
For me they're worth the time investment. I get a lot more out of a good book than watching the same thing in a film. And I'm a fairly fast reader anyway, so it's not like I'm spending hours and hours on it.
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MolarAm🔵
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Post by MolarAm🔵 on Nov 28, 2021 9:51:30 GMT
(though I'm probably biased because I have to read books for my job)
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Post by Chopsen on Nov 28, 2021 10:16:44 GMT
Regarding old people getting a bit reactionary. That Douglas Adams quote about tech definitely applies equally to ideas generally:
Also, a significant process at play currently *especially* on social media is an example of the old cliche that the right seeks converts while the left seeks traitors. It doesn't really matter what other credentials you have from past actions. If you use the wrong term, or express the wrong opinion or even get seen going to the wrong coffee shop and using a non-recyclable container - you are *toast*. The hostility on social media especially I think is particularly divisive. It polarises the debate and it's no surprise to see people either double down or just disengage - so you get a diametrically opposed echo chambers that generate a lot of heat and light and noise when they clash but signify nothing.
(I hate framing it as a left/right thing, but I can't be arsed expanding. There are plenty of people who would identify themselves as being on the left who are quite reactionary. Also first person to say I'm just "both sides"ing this can fuck off for not being able to read properly)
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Post by Jambowayoh on Nov 28, 2021 11:14:14 GMT
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Post by Danno on Nov 28, 2021 11:29:02 GMT
I have a laminated card that says I'm not! Ah, the Homer Simpson defence |
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