Radical members of X group expressly believe some outrageous bit of stupidity, like that video games are "corrupting youth" or that having sex is somehow "sinful" or that non-believers ought to be viciously murdered or that humans are "destroying the planet" or whatever. Then, when some better person says "you X's are idiots for believing this bit of outrageous stupidity" some marginally-less-radical X comes along and says "I'm an X, and I don't believe that, therefore X is perfectly fine!"
WRONG.
The correct interpretation of the statement "I'm an X, and I don't believe that!" is not "X is perfectly fine!" it is "But I self-identify with X regardless of the fact that I don't actually believe in X thus granting sanction to the outrageous bit of stupidity and encouraging the people who do believe it".
Bottom line: if you disagree with the actual tenets of a belief system, don't identify yourself as a follower of that belief system. If you go ahead and call yourself an X anyway, guess what, you *deserve* to be tarred with the same brush. Heck, you're WORSE than the radicals--they at least have the courage of their convictions. Or the courage to HAVE convictions. YOU are a disgraceful milquetoast hypocrite parlor pink.
Hmph.
1 comment:
Part of the confusion is that most, if not all, such X's are arbitrary, contradictory, and fluctuating bundles of concretes and package deals rather than consistent and integrated systems. Many people, especially those ignorant of Objectivist epistemology, lack the tools to disentangle the bundles, and likewise, to evaluate an opinion or conclusion on its own. It's the best they can do to tweak and reassemble the bundles that they find, and of course, some do so dishonestly.
Thus they end up with a proliferation of bundles that have common elements and appear to be similar, and even have the same label, but are actually quite different from one another. Add in the fact that these people are left with no way to communicate their beliefs other than by slinging bundles, whether by label or by their defining ideas (which, considering the nature of the bundles, can't be pinned down), and chaos reigns.
Post a Comment