Tags
discrimination, philosophy, podcast, rationalism, soh, son of hel
So, like I said, we’ve broken 500 posts here on A Heathen’s Path, and hopefully with that come a few changes for the better. Growing the site, moving forwards from there. One of these things is podcasts and vlogs. Well, I have the first one for you here.
I’m sorry if the audio is bad. The mic is ancient and I had to use the windows movie maker that came with the computer, since my vega program apparently doesn’t want to render sounds as part of a video.
I can’t say this first one is all that spectacular. I have recorded one I like better, which I am likely to post in a few days if I still like it. Anyways. Check it out, and tell me what you think and what you’d like as subjects to future podcasts and the like. 🙂
Son of Hel 
So essentially, what you are saying is:
“One vs group discrimination is okay if the one feels endangered.
Group vs group discrimination is never okay. ”
I would argue that discrimination is always occurring, no matter which of the two situations that exist (one vs. group; group vs. group), but that there are different levels of discrimination depending on the context of a situation.
For simplicity’s sake, I’ll use “low level,” “medium level,” and “high level,” and demonstrate an instance of each.
If a woman, for example, is being harassed by a group of people because she’s black and they’re white, that’s “high level” discrimination.
On the other hand, if a woman is being harassed by a group of people because they saw her do something criminal, like kill someone, for example, then that is still discrimination. You could then argue that the woman isn’t being discriminated against because she committed a crime. But no one in the group knows why she killed the person. Maybe the person she killed threatened her children, maybe she killed someone who was trying to rape her – the list goes on. So, in essence, she is being discriminated against due to the belief of the group in her crime, which would put this at a “medium” level on my scale.
If that woman, however, is being harassed by a group of people because she violated a societal norm – like, say, stripping nude and running through the street or something – that’s “low level” discrimination.
So the scale basically runs this way:
“High level” – No reason at all for discrimination that still occurs
“Medium level” – Discrimination that occurs due to a potential valid reason for that discrimination, such as the committing of a criminal act.
“Low level” – Discrimination/ridicule that a person brings upon themselves.
Applied to a group vs. group situation:
“High level” would be a group of Wiccans and a group of Heathens discriminating against each other (and this seriously occurs way, way too often)
“Medium level” would be a group of Pagans and Christians discriminating against each other (this is at a medium level because the polytheistic and monotheistic worldviews are necessarily incompatible, so such discrimination is understandable)
“Low level” would be a group of students against the general public, for example, when creating a video for a class project in a public area.
To go back to the “one versus group discrimination is okay” – I’d argue that it both is and isn’t.
If the woman in your example is afraid of Muslims attacking her, does she have a valid reason for the fear? Has she been attacked by them in the past? If the answer to that is “no,” then her discrimination is unwarranted.
I have a friend who despises Mexicans because she was gang-raped by seven of them. Does that mean all Mexicans will rape her? No, of course not. But her fear, her discrimination against Mexicans, is based in reality. She experienced a traumatic event at the hands of one group of people, and discriminating against Mexicans was the method she found to cope with the trauma. Does that make her discrimination “right?”
I don’t feel I have the authority to decide “right” and “wrong” for other people.
You stated that you consider yourself a “moral objectivist” but I feel that is misleading, because I believe that you would be much more hesitant to call the actions of one person, or of one group, “right” or “wrong” if you held a morally objective viewpoint.
As someone who does hold a truly moral objective viewpoint – pretty much required from a Heathen who is equal parts Lokean and Odinist – I would say that you failed to view the concept of discrimination from all the angles in which it can occur, and are stuck too strongly on the idea that “discrimination is wrong” to acquire true objectivity on the subject.
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well, let me start by stating that you came up with an excellent meter for discrimination. I may have to use that in the future, if I may.
I am an moral objectivist. I do tend to view things without judging right or wrong in the act. I think the lack of objectivism you note in the podcast is due more to the fact that it was my first podcast and I haven’t had much practice at this. I was trying to argue (from a morally objectivist view) that those who preach discrimination is wrong, but go on to practice it, are committing an act of hypocrisy. I then tried to justify how discrimination might then be right, so as to remove the hypocrisy. Or at least a situation that is slightly less hypocritical.
If I failed to do that, I apologize. Hopefully I’ll get better at these podcast things.
As for the woman who discriminates against muslims, I actually have a podcast recorded about that, and I may post it up, because it actually lists the ten reasons for why she is discriminating against them (and my judging of her logic). So look for that in the near future as I might put it out.
And yes, I failed to explore discrimination from all angles. The podcast was running close to a full hour by the end and I figured the shorter it was, the better chance people would actually listen to it. Though I will likely do more podcasts on the subject in the future, so hopefully I can make up the deficiencies.
Thank you so much for your thoughts, hopefully it will lead to better podcasts. 🙂
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Feel free to use that meter if you’d like. Perhaps the issue with the podcast, then, is that you created it in a stream-of-consciousness manner rather than sitting down and planning it ahead of time?
I don’t know if you had notes or anything that you pulled from, but I do know that podcasts/videos are like giving presentations and that it is important that you know exactly the message you are trying to get across so that the audience doesn’t get lost/confused.
As for the hypocrisy you mentioned – discussing hypocrisy is incredibly difficult because it’s almost impossible to discuss hypocrisy without coming across as hypocritical. Loki in the Lokabrenna comes to mind here, as he had good reason to act vindictively towards the others at the feast, but many Heathens are quick to condemn him for crashing the party because they view him as this ultimate “evil” (which he’s not), and fail to consider that the others are the ones being cruel (and he’s just getting his own back). This story is so misconstrued that people use it to discredit Loki, and when they do that, they are committing a type of hypocrisy (but they’d never admit to that, of course). But that demonstrates what I mean – hypocrisy cannot be discussed without an element of hypocritical behavior involved (and I’m sure this paragraph contains something hypocritical as well). It’s an amusingly exasperating difficulty that arises (so, of course, Loki has to be laughing at us every time we attempt it ;p).
That aside, I enjoy reading your blog and plan to continue to listen to your podcasts as you post them, and the main reason I follow you is because you are always willing to take criticism the way it’s meant and not view it as a personal attack. That level of maturity is refreshing to me, considering how little of it I have a chance to see anymore.
I’ll be on the lookout for the podcast of the woman’s ten reasons, and I will try to make it a point to respond to all of your podcasts when I can. 🙂
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