Artfully layering an axe bodyspray deodorant and two different perfume oils to create a tasteful mixture of amber, oud, mint, lavender, moss and petrichor, producing a scent that smells exactly like damp, stale, rotting laundry.
There are a lot of philosophical concepts that I wish were in more common parlance, but the one I wish people broadly understood most is 'merely verbal dispute'.
So, not infrequently in philosophy you'll have a debate with someone, go back and forth for hours, and eventually realize... you don't actually disagree on any point other than the definition of a word or two. Your actual positions are the same, you're just calling them something different. You see this a lot in some of the slipperier areas of metaphysics, like in debates over free will. But it's everywhere.
Once you get to that point in the debate, there's simply no reason to continue. You're not going to be able to logically compell someone to use different words, it'd be pretty pointless to even try, and there's nothing else at stake. For a philosopher, realizing that you're in a merely verbal dispute is realizing that you're arguing about nothing, and thus, that it's time for the debate to end.
I don’t think we ought to normalize or justify bullying as a means to keep people from being annoying — a sentiment that in and of itself could make for a whole article’s worth of conversation — but I do think we should make a habit of politely but directly telling people “hey I didn’t like that”, “that wasn’t funny”, “you are mistaken”, and the like if it’s called for, and more importantly, you should be able to take a “that wasn’t funny” for instance without taking it personally, because protecting a polite harmony where no one can criticize each other, not even politely, is also really, really bad.
heated rivalry au set on 2012 tumblr where they both have huge blogs and one of them is on the fandom side of tumblr and one of them is on the hipster side and they're supposed to hate each other but they've secretly been mutuals for years. inspired by this classic post:
Aang when he is told he’s the Avatar at age 12: *has a melt down because he understands the seriousness of this function and the consequences his new responsibilities will have on his personal life*
other Avatars at age 16: I’m the avatar? Cool! Hey look it comes with a glowing eyes feature!
I will never not laugh at the bit where Aang is like "finally, an Air Nomad, you get me, right?" and Yangchen just says "sorry bud, I also vote murder".
A close second on that note is of course the trial of Kyoshi in which she manifests in the courtroom just to say "Actually, I did murder him and I'd do it again. But consider: the bitch had it coming".
#tbh I think there's something to be said for the fact that Aang was 12 when he ran away from home#and how there's more than a bit of evidence that the adult airbenders had a less strict pacifistic approach#Aang was purposefully sheltered by Gyatsu to protect his childhood and so he has the ethics of a child#and when he awoke there were no other air nomads around to sit him down and have The Violence Talk#about how yes we're pacifists and murder is bad but there are exceptions#like Gyatsu was a kindly man of the highest order but uh#he didn't just lay down and die on a pile of skulls he just found#man went out taking like 20 fire nation soldiers with him#Aang: ''I could never kill! Gyatsu taught me to abhor all forms of violence“”#Gyatsu: deals out death to attacking soldiers like he's got a side hustle as a claymore mine
And the fact that he figures out a more technically complex and socially stable way to remove Ozai without making him a martyr just shows that he has a lot more skill at the problem at hand than most the previous ones.
To me, that whole scene was very much the previous avatars saying “when all you have is a hammer” and Aang going “okay, but what can I do with this Swiss Army knife?” and they don’t give very useful advice about it.
Personally I also don't think the prior Avatars were all that helpful, but they weren't all saying murder was okay. Aang's there asking for help with Avatar skills because he'd had so minimal training, maybe there's something in the toolbox he doesn't know how to use yet, but they're all trying to make him comfortable with using the hammer he already has and knows how to use. What they were saying was what they thought he needed to hear, based on what they regretted most from how they'd acted as Avatars, and what they thought was most needed here.
Roku regretted not killing Sozin specifically because it gave him the opportunity to come back and kill him, then the Air Nomads. His lack of decisive action led to a lot of tragedy, and so his advice was to make sure whatever he did, make sure it was permanent, or Ozai would come back.
Kyoshi regretted not moving sooner on the threat of Shin the Conqueror and waiting until he was at the very edge of Kyoshi Peninsula before actually doing anything. She allowed a lot of destruction on the continent because she didn't move fast enough. Her advice is to move swiftly instead of allowing Ozai more time to act.
Kuruk basically did nothing as Avatar by his own admission and basically just said that Aang had to do something, and not to back off of his responsibilities because it was hard.
Yangchen is complicated because, well, she isn't talking about one of her own regrets. She's the one trying to give the 'Violence is sometimes necessary' talk to Aang, because she's the best person to tell him his duties as Avatar have to outweigh his duties as an Airbender. Arguably she is the one telling him to murder Ozai, but personally I read that as more 'you need to do what's right for the world, and I am giving you permission to break our cultural rules to do that. Because I am the only person you can ask for absolution.'
They were all trying to offer him spiritual guidance and support, but Aang wasn't looking for emotional support here, he was looking for solutions. Because he had already decided he wouldn't kill Ozai. No advice or absolution was really going to change that he already knew he wouldn't do it.
[ID: Tags that say, "#LMFAO #aang is that one kid in the group that actually does the project n everyone else fucks around #we know this coz in korra he straight up gives her the avatar state back n everyones like 'shit wait spirit avatars can do that'?? #well yeah if theyre competent #aang was a 4.0 student stuck w/ 4 ppl on sports scolarships to help him save the world". End ID]
I get it. These emotions are common and understandable. But let's not succumb to these sentiments as a guide for policy.
I would like to gently push back against this black-and-white thinking and show that it is possible to change people's minds.
"Don't debate fascists" means not giving their views any publicity. Fascist propaganda appeals to emotions and easily changes form. Arguing against it only creates two more arguments in its place, just as nonsensical as the last.
That does not give you permission to give up on your casually racist relatives and coworkers. Giving up means leaving fascist propagandists unchallenged. Fight for the masses. Fight today!
While a particular person may be exceedingly difficult to persuade, evidence shows that in aggregate you can have a surprisingly positive impact even with just a single brief conversation—even when they don't care about science, even when they are at first hateful, including specifically about trans people.
Educating people leaves a long-lasting impression that withstands further right-wing propaganda (see evidence and examples below). We don't need to match Jeff Bezos in agitprop funding. Which is why the CIA and other agencies around the world are so worried about communists all the time.
Pick your battles. Don't waste time going in circles with conspiracy nuts. Find uneducated people. Find those on the fence. Have uncomfortable conversations. Earnestly, without judgement.
Study 1: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0003055419000923
Drawing on insights from psychology, we argue that non-judgmentally exchanging narratives in interpersonal conversations can facilitate durable reductions in exclusionary attitudes.
We support this argument with evidence from three pre-registered field experiments targeting exclusionary attitudes toward unauthorized immigrants and transgender people.
In these experiments, 230 canvassers conversed with 6,869 voters across 7 US locations.
In Experiment 1, face-to-face conversations deploying arguments alone had no effects on voters' exclusionary immigration policy or prejudicial attitudes, but otherwise identical conversations also including the non-judgmental exchange of narratives durably reduced exclusionary attitudes for at least four months (d = 0.08).
Experiments 2 and 3, targeting transphobia, replicate these findings and support the scalability of this strategy (ds = 0.08, 0.04).
Non-judgmentally exchanging narratives can help overcome the resistance to persuasion often encountered in discussions of these contentious topics.
Study 2: https://doi.org/10.1080/00224545.2010.522622
Participants who read a story about the friendship between a member of a stigmatized group and the member of another outgroup scored higher on outgroup admiration than a control group and felt less threatened by the prospect of interacting with a member of the target outgroup.
However, reduction of outgroup disgust, negative stereotypes, biased beliefs, and anxiety was or tended to be highest among participants who read a story about the friendship between a member of a stigmatized group and an ingroup member.
Example of how that looks in practice: https://www.newsnationnow.com/lgbtq/next-phase-transgender-rights-listening-people/
The approach is called "deep canvassing" and could be a way a bring understanding and decrease discrimination against the transgender community. It's costly and labor-intensive, but it brings a non-judgmental approach into an emotional and polarizing issue.
The Massachusetts campaign had around 50,000 conversations with voters in the lead up to the vote, all with the intention of having empathic conversations.
"We really focused on that personal connection with the canvasser and humanizing the face of what the law was," Topping said.
He did caution, however, that this form of canvassing shouldn't be seen as a silver bullet. He noted that for about every 20 conversations during the canvassing experiments, one person became more supportive of the cause. Topping said the conversations often take about 15 minutes.
They knocked on doors and had 15 minute conversations (just talking, no hours long debates), and it was enough to convert a percentage of uneducated people to supporters and even outright voters for the cause.
Agitprop works. If it didn't, Bezos wouldn't spend money buying up newspapers.
Exercise your community outreach skills, it's extremely rewarding.
