This is absurdly stupid, even for you.
They’re not mutually exclusive. The vast majority of “ordinary individuals” don’t realize that ordinary situations in their culture deserve to be “called out” as “misbehavior” until an activist has publicly made some noise about it.
Cultural change is generally started by activists speaking out and getting ignored or scolded or laughed at by “ordinary individuals”.
Sure, the eventual change of the culture requires lots of ordinary individuals getting on board with the activists’ cause, but it’s generally un-ordinary and unpopular activists who pointed out that it needed to be a cause in the first place. If it weren’t for activists, you and the rest of the culture’s “ordinary individuals” would doubtless still be complacently disparaging homosexuals as limp-wristed “faggots” and “fairies”, for example.
You have to be an utter moron to argue that activists don’t change culture. The activists are the ones who convince the ordinary people about the things that are wrong. Why the hell would I, a cisgender white male, know anything about what’s going on in the LGBT, black, immigrant, etc. communities if not for the activists who stand up for them?
Of course, Steophan may not be stupid. He may just be saying this to support his authoritarian beliefs. This is how you can support the cops when they go after the activists. It’s how you can support the shutdown of dissent by pretending that dissent is never helpful.
Activists challenge the status quo, and start the chain towards change. If they didn’t, people wouldn’t try and shut them down. No one would care about BLM, the Tea Party, the alt-right, the SJWs, etc. They’d just be accomplishing nothing.
You could get out of your fucking basement occasionally and meet them. They are not exotic species, they are the people you work with, live with, and socialise with. And that’s how normal people change their opinions - by actually talking to others, and understanding them.
Not by having someone scream in their face.
If an activist is screaming in BigT’s face, then BigT has met the activist, no?
When I specifically explain to someone something they didn’t know about the situation of a group about which I know more than they do in order to change that someone’s perception of that group, and whether my additional knowledge comes because I belong to that group or otherwise, I am being an activist. When I go to a demonstration, I am being an activist. When I sign up someone else’s petition, I am being an activist.
A few days ago I went to buy several pairs of jeans. The storekeeper is an inmigrant woman, and we got to talking about dresscode differences. We ended up going through some of her clothing separating “good for interviews” from “bad for interviews” from “depends on the job”. I mentioned several details about the local dresscode which she hadn’t realized. I was being an activist, I was actively helping her with her business and her clients with finding jobs.
Being an activist doesn’t equal being a screaming harpy, but it does include explaining things to others who would never learn them firsthand.
This is what is going on of course. Stupidity is a force of nature, driven sometimes by dull wits, but usually by psychological incentive, often weak character. The strong can handle the cognitive dissonance associated with conflicting considerations. Tribalists can’t.
Believing that social change occurs independently of things like, oh the American civil rights movement of the 1950s, is sadface. Stupid? Yes, but not because Steophan is a moron. He just lacks character.
Pero, ¿porque no los dos?
…como el fallecido Earl Warren
The point is, at least if you accept the idea of zeitgeist, that the civil rights movement (for example) is the change, it is not the cause of the change.
This advert, of course, is solid proof that the change has happened, otherwise a large company would not have done it.
No, the change is happening. Maybe Gillette is hopping on the bandwagon, but look at the comments by sociopaths on the ad. The change is not complete.
Great so Gandhi and Rosa Parks were the Zeitgeist, not the cause of… what are we talking about again?
Seriously, while your comment successfully muddies the waters, to say that social change occurs solely because of Zeitgeist (gesundheit), without any actual human initiators is kind of silly, almost parody. Face it Steophan, activism is an empirically necessary condition for social change that compromises existing power structures, though not a sufficient one. No feminists, no feminism. No civil rights movement, no voting rights for African Americans, at least in the South in relevant numbers.
Thanks, y’all, for setting him straight. I just figured he was literally too stupid for words.
So we short P&G then
The change will never be complete; doesn’t mean we shouldn’t start it. Which of course is what Steophan would have liked. Lesser beings should know their places, and a woman’s place is in the kitchen with a broken leg.
In the case of Rosa Parks, yes, exactly. She wasn’t the first to sit where she wasn’t allowed to, and her actions were years into the civil rigts movement. That she was able to safely do what she did, and get positive publicity for it, shows that the change had already happened.
There are two things, historically, that lead to progressive change. Firstly, increased communication, so that different groups of people are no longer seen as “the other”. And secondly, increased wealth, and especially stability of wealth, which reduces the perception of risk from “the other”. All the activism in the world, all the protests and marches and campaigns and so forth, won’t change the fear that someone who’s livelihood is (apparently) threatened of “the other” that he believes is threatening it.
Rosa Parks was not able to safely do what she did. She got arrested for it, and she could have gotten beaten for it. The fact that, in the event, she wasn’t beaten does not diminish her courage.
I’ve no idea how you can get that from what I’ve written but no, not at all. As far as I can tell that was a ridiculous, outdated stereotype well before I was born, and the only place I’ve ever encountered it was in evangelical churches - one of many things that turned me rapidly away from religion.
Rosa parks considered herself an activist. Guess she was wrong about what she was doing?
If only Steophan could have been there to set her straight.
On second thought, never mind: folks of a similar mindset firebombed MLK’s house a few days after the boycott started. There were plenty of people ready to set the activists straight.
To be fair, Steophan is upset that she was able to do it safely. In his world, the cops should be beating more uppity negroes.