#in fact most likes/dislikes are completely subjective and arbitrary and don't really have a moral dimension!! | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

him-e · 7 years

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I feel like that cavalier attitude of 'don't ask questions about my beliefs' is one of the reasons we got Trump. It's ignorant, and running away from something challenging your beliefs is a prime tactic of the KKK & other like minds. Being ignorant isn't cool.

If we’re talking about political beliefs, then sure. You should always do your research and look deeper into the ideology that’s at the root of the political party you chose, even if (especially if) it claims it doesn’t follow any traditional political ideology or is “neither” right nor left leaning (that’s where modern day populism usually lurks). You should always ask yourself the most uncomfortable, hardest questions, even before other people ask you.

But I have the feeling you’re responding to this post, which was evidently not about socio-political beliefs but about completely mundane stuff like “why do I prefer ship (x) over ship (y)” or “why do I like this actor or dislike that musician” or “why do I spend my money buying tickets for (x) movie rather than (y)”. If that’s the case, I’m afraid you’re derailing the conversation and turning it into something it absolutely wasn’t.

The message of that post was not that you should entrench yourself in your blind hatred for (x) thing and accept no dissenting opinion, but that it’s OKAY to dislike things just because you do, and you don’t have to ruin it for other people or aggressively guilt trip people to dislike it as much as you do by coming up with a laundry list of “why X is bad”. Similarly, it’s okay to like things for superficial reasons, without coming up with all sorts of surreal and often deceptive or plain false arguments to explain why Y is Good and Progressive.

If this isn’t clear, this is about FANDOM STUFF.

I’m not comfortable with attaching arbitrary moral absolutes to things that belong to the realm of subjectivity (like fandom things, to which we’re supposed to respond empathetically rather than rationally). I don’t appreciate the idea that in order to prove your “goodness” (or perfect performance of feminism, social activism etc.) you need to like the “right” things and hate the “wrong” things. It leads to laughable but also really toxic extremes, like people glorifying some new tv show for being sooooo feminist and good with representation when it doesn’t deserve to only to justify the fact that they love it, or doing the opposite and berating (x) narrative or ship for perpetuating “bad” tropes or whatever to justify their visceral hatred of it.

Not everything is or should be turned into a topic of discourse. Some things have moral implications that are worth being examined, but other things don’t. And fandom things often don’t (I’m constantly baffled by this site’s inability to discern what is important from what isn’t, tbh). Most fandom things aren’t that deep; even when they are, fiction and art are supposed to be free spaces in which you’re allowed to experiment and get in touch with concepts and ideas for no reason other than because it’s FUN. It should be okay to engage with fictional stuff that isn’t perfectly aligned with your rl beliefs, or be passionate about things without feeling the urge to defend their alleged moral integrity, or dislike things without the moral imperative to label them as pernicious for humanity as a whole. I think that’s what that post is about, and it’s the entire opposite of “running away from something challenging your beliefs”. Allowing yourself to like diverse things for diverse reasons keeps your mind active, open and functional, less pliable to the sort of dealing-in-absolutes, group-thinking, black and white logic that is the biggest weapon in the hands of the various populisms and trumpisms of the world.

#anon #asks #the discourse #fandom discourse #discourse #politics for ts

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