alt Hacker NewsIf the actions and beliefs of a group are fundamentally morally repugnant to me, I think that it is reasonable to not expect me to be able to find "something positive" in it. We are not amoral automata with grocery-list style utility functions.
I have people in my personal sphere that make this sort of argument and it honestly feels like gaslighting. The undercurrent is: "Look, you don't like this guy, I get it. But if you can't see that he does some good, then you are the one who is irrational and not really in a sound state of mind." Meanwhile completely preventable, life-threatening, life-destroying diseases such as measles are back because of the obscurantist beliefs that come with this "new refreshing outlook". This is a bit like saying: "look, you can say what you want about the Spanish inquisition but they kept rates of extra-marital affairs down."
Corporations love this sort of feel-good campaign (the same way they love performative LGBTQ / feminism / diversity when the culture wars swing the other way) for two main reasons: (1) they distract from fundamental issues that threaten their real interests; (2) they shift the blame on big societal issues completely to the public. They do this with climate change, they do it with increase of wealth inequality and they most certainly do it with public health.
All developed nations have a problem with processed food. Granted, it is particularly severe in the USA, but the ONE THING that separates the USA from almost every other developed nation in our planet is the absence of socialized healthcare. This is the obvious salient thing to look at before all others, so also obviously, a lot of money will be spent to misdirect and distract from this very topic.
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> If the actions and beliefs of a group are fundamentally morally repugnant to me, I think that it is reasonable to not expect me to be able to find "something positive" in it.
I'm not sure you appreciate how symmetrical this statement is. You are on Team A, saying it about Team B, but nothing in the statement actually depends on that permutation of teams -- it could be equally compellingly said by a Team B member about Team A.
> If the actions and beliefs of a group are fundamentally morally repugnant to me, I think that it is reasonable to not expect me to be able to find "something positive" in it.
No it isn't reasonable. In fact it is one of the stupidest things you can do. If you read any history, you will see that failures in military, politics, science etc. (really pick anything) are often due to key people simply refusing to learn from their opponents and/or refusing to adjust to the new reality. Often this is done because they find their opponents morally repugnant, or lacking in some virtue they happen to hold as important.
It is fine if you don't like the current US Administration. However if they do something that happens to be good, it is fine to acknowledge it as such, while still pointing out what else they are doing wrong. Otherwise you just come off as a sore loser and people will stop taking any notice of you.
Well done. This might be one of the most childish comment I've read all day.
This give off an air of virtue signalling to the extend of self destruction. Almost funny thinking about it.
That is misinformation. Very few developed nations have socialized healthcare. Many of them do better in terms of universal coverage and cost control but they don't have a single-payer system or force healthcare providers to be government employees. For examples see Germany, Switzerland, Japan, Australia, Israel, etc.
Those diseases are back because of rampant immigration. People from other countries bring them here. It has nothing to do with "obscurantist beliefs", whatever those might be.
>If the actions and beliefs of a group are fundamentally morally repugnant to me,
sure, although if tribal differences are always experienced as fundamentally morally repugnant one might think the moral calibration is screwed a bit too tight.
>I think that it is reasonable to not expect me to be able to find "something positive" in it.
Sure, I do think it is possible that some groups are so morally repugnant that they have absolutely nothing to offer whatsoever. For example that tribe of cave dwelling cannibals in the film The 13th Warrior, man those guys sucked! But the comment seemed more to be about how it is weird that when you find some group does some things that you find morally repugnant then they have nothing they do that can ever be good.
I have lived in places in which I find much of the surrounding culture to have behaviors that I found morally repugnant, or intellectually repugnant for that matter, but even at my most contemptuous of a culture and a people I will at times be forced to admit, honestly, that they have behaviors that can also be considered admirable (in many cultures the repugnant bits are so tightly bound to the admirable bits though I can see how it is difficult not to condemn everything)