Ironically, the St. Louis hacker who first suggested urbit would be a great fit for Strange Loop (hi Justin!) is an African-American.
An obsession with collective identity and collective characteristics - all proletarians are noble, all Germans are masters, all rednecks are racists, etc, etc - is common, perhaps for obvious reasons, in the democratic era. And in particular, all parties responsible for the atrocities of the 20th century - Nazi and Communist alike - were thinking very much this way.
This insistence on generalization would seem very strange to most of our ancestors, who would find the leap from collective differences to collective uniformity quite irrational. For instance, Cardinal Wolsey, who governed England for Henry VIII, was a butcher's son. Englishmen of his time did not find this at all strange, though hardly any of them agreed that nobles and butchers were statistically identical.
Also, for some reason which is perhaps less obvious, not all of us have to "represent groups." It does not seem likely that either Alex Payne or Alex Miller sees himself as representing white males, for instance. Perhaps this freedom to see oneself as just an individual is the most subtle form of privilege - but I think everyone should have it.
"He has literally written that several of his co-speakers are genetically more fit to be slaves while he, a white male, is genetically designed to be a master."
Certainly a powerful use of the word literally.
Frankly, I'm actually considering recanting. Who wouldn't rather be Galileo than Giordano Bruno? But recanting is a serious matter - it's the sort of thing you need to get right the first time.
To appear at future conferences without my fellow speakers worrying that I'll enslave them or kick off Holocaust 2.0, it'd be ideal if someone can tell me what I have to believe. I'm guessing it's either:
(a) all human beings are born with identical talents and inclinations.
(b) human beings may be born with different talents and inclinations, but these talents and inclinations are distributed identically across all living populations.
Let's face it, Strange Loop is an awesome conference - there's a reason I applied. And I think Alex's decision is totally understandable for practical reasons, as someone downthread explains. If there's a chance of being invited back next year, I could totally go for (b). But if it has to be (a), I might still be all "e pur si muove" and stuff.
An obsession with collective identity and collective characteristics - all proletarians are noble, all Germans are masters, all rednecks are racists, etc, etc - is common, perhaps for obvious reasons, in the democratic era. And in particular, all parties responsible for the atrocities of the 20th century - Nazi and Communist alike - were thinking very much this way.
This insistence on generalization would seem very strange to most of our ancestors, who would find the leap from collective differences to collective uniformity quite irrational. For instance, Cardinal Wolsey, who governed England for Henry VIII, was a butcher's son. Englishmen of his time did not find this at all strange, though hardly any of them agreed that nobles and butchers were statistically identical.
Also, for some reason which is perhaps less obvious, not all of us have to "represent groups." It does not seem likely that either Alex Payne or Alex Miller sees himself as representing white males, for instance. Perhaps this freedom to see oneself as just an individual is the most subtle form of privilege - but I think everyone should have it.