linkspam is clearing out tabs

[kaberett]

• Human systems, incentives, and tax policy in Japan
  
• Training train drivers in the UK context (a Twitter thread)
  
• Solidarity versus charity: go for yourself
  
• Who decides when pain is "intolerable"?
  
• Sentence spacing: a typography blog (I have been very much enjoying rolling around in the delightfully nerdy archives)

Comments

[kihou]

That Japan article is fascinating.

[kaberett]

isn't it! HUMAN SYSTEMS.

[recessional]

*squints at solidarity vs charity link* I have nitpicking-seeming but to me significant thoughts that I can try to find more words for but which I think are mostly about "it's a bit odd to have all sorts of word-root-chasing to which you are assigning all kinds of meaning and yet to ignore the track of charity-->caritas-->agape, especially when you're making a lot of moral connotation judgements based on said word roots."

[kaberett]

That link is entirely there because the author is a rabinnical student (IIRC) in my extended community and I found it chewy and thought-provoking, but more word-root-chasing is absolutely definitely chewy and thoughtful that I'm interested in. :-) (I'm viewing it as the start of a conversation, not a fixed conclusion? If that's a useful wording.)

[recessional]

*thumbs up*

So fundamentally I think the issue revolves around one of those "words only mean what people agree they mean" problems: etymology isn't pointless, exactly, but it's also not everything (see also: the probable etymological origins of the word 'bad', aka the point where one really has to acknowledge that Non-Problematic Words Don't Exist); so if you're assessing concepts and connotations of words you have to weigh both modern-connotational AND origin-meaning/connotation and there's no clear "objective" point where the one overwhelms the other.

So the article-essay-whatever linked is also directly engaging with that in that the Biblical-Hebrew phrase he wants to contemplate has in and of itself no meaning in modern Hebrew. And that's cool: in fact THAT part of the article I quite like, and as you might imagine I'm not even averse to the thematic thread he pulls out with the idea.

In zero position to judge it on its own merits, mind, as my Hebrew both Biblical and modern is rather lacking, but not at all averse.

My problems and sense of "heyyy woah buddy" start coming in when he then jumps to the modern English and specifically social-justice-linked concepts and dialogues around "solidarity" and "charity"?

So taking my first paragraph-babble: I personally have really strong negative-flavoured Wariness about the word "solidarity". I think it has its uses? But I also think that of "charity". And more importantly I think it's a really dangerous erasure-potential trap that is often used without regard to how power dynamics play into its usage, and then with the added danger of having a huge load of baggage from its modern-connotations of Marxist thought - not because Marxism is bad as such but because the entire socialist-communist Marxist context really likes to ignore its own inbuilt power structures and how they work, in favour of the assertion that it is fundamentally all about "the subaltern" (like this is a single, identifiable and stable position and you always know who it is) resisting their oppressor.

To whit: "solidarity" is the sheep standing in solidarity with Boxer in Animal Farm. I also don't think it's insignificant that the Aboriginal activist he cites was active . . . in the 80s.

Indigenous activists have in the ensuing decades (ime in Canada and the sense I get of readings done from Australia, since as you can imagine there's a lot of dialogue involved there) learned to be incredibly wary of "solidarity" and of a lot of Marxist underpinnings to thought: they found out in a lot of cases that open uncritical arms to that stuff ended up meaning in practice "what do you mean our Marxist class analysis is as colonialist and settler-privileged as anything else? Also hush, you're holding back the movement, also also what wait you're really strongly concerned with your sacred spaces and spirituality and religious freedoms - "

Etc.

"Solidarity" to me means a lot of men wearing "#Time'sUp" ribbons and then finding out - hahah! SUPRISE! - like six of them are in fact The Problem, and six others turn out to be really spineless when it's their buddy/best friend/etc on the rocks!

For that matter, "solidarity" is Avital Ronell [nb: link for summary of scandal not by any means entire agreement with some of the Tone that Jezebel brings to it, and c/n for "this sexual harassment case looks exactly like all the others except this time the perp is a woman with standing in certain feminist-theory circles so the latter have lost all sense of irony and also moral compass"] and all those who signed the Support Letter for her because Only Men Are Bad, after all. Or something.

"Solidarity" is as potentially toxic and poison a word as "charity", in short, as far as I'm concerned, and as loaded down with reminders of power-positions and so on.

One might - reasonably! - go "ah, okay, but that is a MISUSE of the concept: what it's SUPPOSED to mean is - " and this is fair! And even reasonable in a discussion that starts with a root-analysis of words . . .

. . . except then you do in fact need to do the same thing with "charity".

Which comes, as you know Bob, from caritas, used by the Latins to translate agape, used by the Dorics to mean a deeply esteeming kind of love and then borrowed by the early Greek Christians to mean God's overwhelming generous love for creation, and which is conceptually hardcore linked to the concepts of love thy neighbour as thyself.

. . . .aka view other people's needs and wants and struggles and so on as being part of your own, view them as part of your "self". Be, in fact, in solidarity with them. Which connotation of usage continued until really VERY recently, as you can see references as late as a hundred years ago to being "in charity" with someone meaning "we're getting along and our goals and feelings are pretty much the same."

Its strictly hierarchical meaning and that hierarchy meaning unwanted humiliation for the "receiver" isn't inherent in the word, any more than "four legs good, two legs BETTER!" is inherent in "solidarity".

And one might think "why does this matter", but a) I'm hardly the only person who is Wary of "Solidarity", so if you're going to posit it as an uncomplicatedly good concept you'd REALLY best be aware of that, and of the subtext you're sending to people, but also b) I think it's actually more important that almost ALL of these words do in fact constantly trace back (much like "kindness") to the same IDEA, which is an idea of sameness, connectedness, these-are-also-me-ness, "we" concept that is the empathy that humans root morality in.

Which is pretty significant ESPECIALLY if you're then going to try to make the moral argument that writer is out of the biblical Hebrew idiom he is choosing to make it out of.



*I am p sure kab knows this but for anyone who might not and wishes to know my entire take on the Ronell thing is "wow it's REALLY disgusting when people are THAT unaware of their own hypocrisy, also PhD systems are SO FUCKING TOXIC, also shit Ronell says makes me PERSONALLY OFFENDED on behalf of queer Israeli friends who - SHOCKINGLY - are very, very able to differentiate between comfortable closeness and fucking sexual harassment".