Information Warfare Education, Propaganda, and How to Tell the Difference

Town Square
1044

Your approach with your daughter is beautiful and powerful. You’re teaching your daughter to be a healthy woman, that does not look for nor demand others to validate her sense of self.

The progressive ideology that biological sex and gender assignment are purely a construct is seemingly at play here. If we “follow the science”, the greatest determinant for behaviors in population is in fact biological sex/gender.
Would you advocate enabling children to choose their gender? And at what age would this be appropriate?

When you read FL 1557 what were your thoughts on age appropriateness and transparency? What specifically was oppressive or egregious?
And perhaps what was specifically Amber or Orange or Green or Teal?

1045

The progressive ideology that biological sex and gender assignment are purely a construct is seemingly at play here. If we “follow the science”, the greatest determinant for behaviors in population is in fact biological sex/gender.
Would you advocate enabling children to choose their gender? And at what age would this be appropriate?

The four quadrants are the only answer here. Sex and gender live in all four quadrants. There is no healthy conversation on this that doesn’t employ all four quadrants. It’s constructed and it’s not. It is just both. The gender fluidity is so new. My daughter is 14 and this didn’t exist in my uber liberal world when she was 4. I think we are all learning a lot right now. I know I am.

Personally, I don’t see harm in letting them explore. I wouldn’t teach my child that it’s all a construct because I don’t think that is real. I wouldn’t teach her that her physical body is the singular determinant of her interior experience either. I think this conversation can have an age appropriateness at any age, just like how babies are made. The idea that we are forcing it is pretty overstated, because I don’t think gender and sex is all constructed, I don’t think it actually can be forced. I know there are unhealthy parents out there that do push it in strange ways, it’s not an unreal concern. I think it is being used to mask discomfort with a new issue a bit though too.

The bigger issue is when is medical intervention appropriate. I would have to leave that to the experts and be forgiving if mistakes are made. It’s a massive decision. I have only had one friend transition. He was late 30’s early 40’s. It’s pretty magical really, but I think when it’s right is very personal.

The one thing I do like about all this is it seems like kids are talking about sex so much that they are not having it! Let’s keep this up for at least another 5 years

When you read FL 1557 what were your thoughts on age appropriateness and transparency? What specifically was oppressive or egregious?
And perhaps what was specifically Amber or Orange or Green or Teal?

I can’t read the laws directly, my brain doesn’t work that way. I read a legal analysis of it. What it said is the issue is the preamble and the bill are contradictory enough that it will have to be settled by judicial interpretation. This just seems like what is it accomplishing? I think this is my main issue. What is the real intention here? If it’s to have standards for “instruction” wouldn’t there be a better way? Of course I don’t want teachers giving authoritarian “instruction” on any issues, but skillful management of conversation and lessons, having age appropriate material and books that expresses diversity, and of course being able to directly address bulling all seem like important tools to empower schools and teachers with. Muddling that with scare tactics seems strange.

I would love to hear your take on it.

1046

This is a healthy and powerful stance, in my opinion.

FL 1557 reads to me like State of Florida is reaffirming that it’s the Parents decision (hence the naming Parental Rights) if/what/when gender/sexuality discussions occur with their 8 and younger children, or face criminal charges. There is nothing in it about Lesbian or Gay or Bisexual or Transsexual or Queer or Investigating or Straight.
It’s really that simple.

The way our system is supposed to work, is the officials directly elected by you, me, Corey, LaWanna create our Laws. These are then handed to the Administrative Branches for implementation - President w/ 2M employees, agencies, Dept of Education, Dept of Justice, etc - Governors and their State Agencies. What many Leftists forget is that Consitutionally our Federal government is by design limited in scope, with States having “all powers not enumerated for the Federal government”. I point this out since we don’t have a King and their Feudal courts by design. Now does it currently work more like a Feudal system - yes, some might argue.

So, to the punchline, our Federal and State agencies have vast leeway on what they implement. This leeway is always subject to being overridden or redirected by the Legislatures.
So it’s a misnomer when every says Gov DeSantis did X. Technically he simply signed the Bill that the Florida Legistature (50 legislators maybe?) turning it into law.

Good news is if it’s a deal breaker for folks, most State Legislators are up for election/reelection every 2 years and the laws can be changed. It’s very simple really.

We’ve just seen some very draconian Abortion Laws enacted.
Colorado has just written that an unborn fetish/child has no rights and the birthing parent decision “shall not be infringed”. Reality is this legalized any and all abortions at any time in the pregancy upto and including day 8 months and 29 days into the pregnancy.
Meanwhile on the other end of the spectrum, Oklahoma has just passed exactly the opposite. Any and all abortions are a felony with the only exceptions being rape, incest, or mother’s life at risk. The only gray area would be morning-after pills.

With our current Supreme Court, likely both will stand as it’s an “Originalist” majority that unless enumerated, it’s up to the States.

1047

Exactly! You are not validating parents by circumventing them … My simple validating question would be what decisions do we want 5 to 8 years old children making without parental supervision?

1048

This is where I do value conservatives. My brain doesn’t think like this. Where it is hard is I sort of just don’t get it. What I see is a teacher in a classroom…what now? The law seems too vague and then punishes with criminal charges…THAT IS SCARY! If I were a teacher, I would be finding a new profession. It’s too much. That was what the legal experts were saying. Without clear definition this could be interpreted so broadly, and our teachers could end up, in prison?!, for what? Bringing a book into class that has two dads? What are people so scared of? Why threaten our teachers like this? Does this really not seem crazy to you? I get in two years, maybe you can get the law overturned but how many lives have you ruined in the mean time…again for what???

It’s this stuff that makes crazy left counter with more crazy. Seriously, there will be teachers arrested who let little boys use the little boy bathrooms. The left will argue that the teacher “instructed gender” with him. This is going to backfire BIG TIME!

1049

Do we really want to be “blind” to our differences, though? I think we need to find a way to celebrate our differences, while also recognizing our fundamental sameness. I think this sort of “blindness” is perhaps the opposite end of the pathology as “essentialism”.

Race exists. Ethnicity exists. Different cultures and subcultures exist. All of these inform our experience of life and how we interpret our reality. All of them are parts of our kosmic address. The question is, how do we relate to these differences? So far there have been several different answers:

  • Healthy Amber ethnocentrism (integrated into orange/green) — we take pride in our culture, race, ethnicity, etc. (without belittling others). It’s okay for black Americans to have their own subculture, for gays to have their own subculture, etc.

  • Unhealthy Amber ethnocentrism — our culture, race, ethnicity, etc. is superior to others. Rules for thee, not for me. Prefers interventions that are good for the in-group, and bad for the out-group.

  • Healthy Orange universalism — Despite our differences, we extend the same universal moral principles and behavioral expectations to all people. Content of character, etc.

  • Unhealthy Orange universalism (amber shadow) — “Colorblindness” that refuses to acknowledge cultural, racial, ethnic differences, even if outcomes are disproportionately skewed against certain groups. Focus on monocultural assimilation rather than genuine multiculturalism.

  • Healthy Green pluralism — We celebrate our differences while also recognizing our sameness. Multiculturalism requires that we allow multiple cultures and subcultures to co-exist, and create healthy bridges of communication between those different cultures.

  • Unhealthy green essentialism (orange shadow, amber regress) — We are defined by our differences, and only members of a group are qualified to comment on that group. Suspicious of the deep structures of orange (neutrality, objectivity, etc.) as products of colonial Amber/Orange assimilative culture. Lack of developmental awareness makes it difficult for this group to include ethnocentric subcultures in a pluralistic embrace, without themselves regressing back to ethnocentrism.

  • Healthy teal integration — Acknowledging developmental factors, four-quadrant factors, typological factors, etc. that contribute to our total ecosystem of kosmic address. Unity in diversity with common threads of spirit and humanity running through it all.

  • Unhealthy teal “above-it-all-ism” — Capacity to identify and locate other people’s kosmic address, but inability to locate our own in relation to others. Disembodied integral — possesses integral-ish cognition and capacity to see as object, but lacks kosmocentric empathy and capacity to identify as subject.

So for me, I don’t believe we are at a place where notions of “colorblindness” can be implemented in a healthy way, free from our own accumulated shadows. Oftentimes “colorblindness” is used to shift attention away from specific challenges and pain points faced by specific communities (e.g. “All Lives Matter”). Much of this comes from a selective focus on a single line from a single MLK speech — “they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character” — while ignoring all of the specific social transformations MLK prescribed in order for society to achieve that goal.

This is why I vastly prefer a “unitas multiplex” approach! Sort of a mashup of Bob Marley and Mr. Spock: One heart, one love, infinite diversity in infinite combinations.

1050

Socially no. That would suck. I can only eat so much fried chicken and hamburgers. Thank heavens my lovely wife cooks her families “home cookin” that requires weekly trips to the “ethnic” grocery stores :slight_smile:

Do you recommend Legislation (Laws, Enforcement, Fines, Confinement,…) into all Quadrants, All Levels? Would you hold UnHealthy Teal to a stricter code than the Unhealthy Amber?

P.S. Thanks for posting the Healthy/UnHealthy’s.

1051

My issue with this frame is we are seeing the exact opposite argument being used in Texas, where parents of trans kids can be investigated for “child abuse”. So on the one hand, laws that many perceive as bias against trans people are being framed as “parents’ rights”, while on the other, laws that bias against trans people are framed as “preventing child abuse from parents”. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t!

Personally, I have some issues with the whole “parents rights” movement in education, which may not be very popular. I personally think this is one of the primary reasons that the educational system is suffering right now. When I was a kid, there was an unspoken alliance between parents and teachers, and that alliance reinforced the child’s perceived authority of the teacher. This was especially true for my parents’ generation. These days, however, there is much less respect in the classroom for the teacher, and much of this I believe is due to a shift over the decades from parent/teacher alliances, to parent/student alliances. Many kids these days see their teachers as powerless, which hastens the slide toward Lord of the Flies. Especially in impoverished communities that have a too-small tax base to properly fund the schools in those areas.

Now, in no way do I have a black-and-white judgment about this. There are times when a parent/student alliance is appropriate, especially if the school is teaching seriously regressive ideas and ideologies. However, when the educational culture as a whole shifts to emphasize the parent/student alliance over the parent/teacher alliance, it makes it that much more difficult to actually educate the child, because the perception of authority (healthy amber) gets lost.

It is somewhat like my opinion of home-schooling — an educational strategy that is usually taken up by the most developed parents who want their kids to be more capable of more critical thinking than the system can provide, and by the least developed parents who want to prevent their kids from developing any critical thinking whatsoever. A real pre-trans fallacy, that one :slight_smile:

1052

Say more about that? I am not sure what exactly you mean.

1053

I mean, to be fair, some fetishes have more rights than others :wink:

Just kidding. The phrase “unborn fetish” struck me as funny. Reminds me of a line from one of my favorite TV shows, Community. “I hope this doesn’t awaken anything in me.” :rofl:

I personally wish that sane people on the left and the right can recognize that we have fundamental agreement here, in terms of our shared goals — to make abortions both safe and rare. The issue as I see it, is that each side has taken their preferred slice of that goal and made it their primary issue. Conservatives only want to make it rare, progressives only want to make it safe (which includes making it available in the first place).

If we were to take a truly sober view of this, we would recognize that the very best way to make abortions “safe and rare” are for both sides to be willing to deal with some degree of compromise. For the left, their compromise should be that abortions are only allowed before fetal viability, while late-term abortions are reserved for medical issues only. And if modern science increases the window of viability, then further compromises probably need to be made.

For the right, their compromise should be accepting that the best way to lower the rate of abortions, is to provide more robust sex education to kids, as well as easy access to contraceptives. As I’ve said multiple times, here in Colorado we cut teenage pregnancies and abortions in half, largely through a free IUD program that was made available to young women. Progressives were accomplishing conservative goals of making abortions more rare. However, this was later upturned by conservatives in the state, who insist that “abstinence-only” preventions should be taken to solve this problem, that sex education and contraceptives only lead to more promiscuity, and therefore are only willing to implement solutions that reinforce women’s chastity.

At which point, the progressives scratch their heads and wonder, “what is your actual goal here, to reduce the total number of abortions, or to control what women do with their bodies?” And suddenly, the culture war erupts once again. The left digs back in, the right digs back in, and now we have lost our original shared goal of making abortions “safe and rare”.

It’s a real conundrum, and I really do think our concepts of “bodily autonomy” should be paramount, for conservatives and progressives and libertarians alike. Otherwise, we admit that we exist in a system that affords men 100% of their own bodily autonomy, while women’s bodily autonomy is limited to her biological functions. And I don’t think “women are biologically unfit to have full autonomy over their bodies” is an argument that flies very far in 2022 :slight_smile:

Which is why I continue to think Ken’s holonic frame is so important here. We need to be able to recognize that there are stages of pregnancy where the fetus is more a part of the woman’s own body, and therefore subject to her own autonomy, and that the fetus becomes more of a genuine individual holon as it approaches viability. And once it does, it becomes deserving of all the rights we extend to individuals. But every one of us begins as a literal part of our mother’s own body, until we individuate enough to possess our own wholeness.

1054

LOL

We know you’re always on the look out for your next @corey-devos Kink.

"reduce the total number of abortions, or to control what women do with their bodies?”

Answer: None of the above.

And we all know you know that your framing is intentionally exclusionary of those that don’t share your political beliefs. Even Ken included the complete framing in his last discussion that included abortion. :slight_smile:

1055

On the abortion issue - there is a fundamental problem with the differing of opinions.
The fundamental problem is what to do with unwanted children. Whether its a baby from a rapist, a downs syndrome, a baby from incest, a baby with a more horrific condition that is not “viable” without life support, or yes even a healthy baby to a mother who just doesn’t want it.

Do we have anything in place that has reliable funding to support unwanted children?
No, we do not.
As long as we as a nation do not have anything to care for and provide happy lives for unwanted children, it’s a crime to force them into lives of horror.
Then there is the issue of the “nonviable” babies. I personally think it’s a crime to force any creature to live in daily pain with no hope to ever unplug from life support. At that point it’s just people trying to feel good about themselves in some kind of nightmarish saint rescuer syndrome.

When the Untied States as a nation has established secure funding for all the unwanted children, I think it is cruel and inhumane to force babies into a living hell just so some portion of the population can feel god about themselves as being “Good Christians”.

1056

How was it exclusionary? I lauded the conservative goal of making abortions rare, and then presented a set of very reasonable compromises in order to achieve that goal.

If I was exclusionary toward the conservative pole, I was also similarly exclusionary to the progressive pole.

I was simply pointing out that there is actually much more overlap between ordinary people on the left and the right when it comes to this issue. The major difference is, the type of moral arguments we use to limit our ability to strategically achieve those goals.

If a program is successfully cutting the number of abortions for young women in half, I say we absolutely should not let “abstinence only” strategies take us further away from that goal.

If it’s genuinely “none of the above”, then why did CO conservatives end the hugely successful IUD program while also arguing for abstinence-only approaches, which by definition is an effort to control women’s behavior?

1057

I agree … and a further concern to me is that if every single group, sub-group, agenda, concern, argument, challenge of oppression gets pushed into legislation for government to control we will never improve.

We become a litigious society and now we sue for being served. Someone puts a hot cup of coffee between their legs in a moving vehicle and that’s McDonald’s fault. This craziness seems to be on the rise everywhere … and this Florida thing is front and center this week on this insanity.

1058

State run Minority Report

1059

As far as I know, we do not yet have a way to accurately predict the future.

So no, I am not on team “kill baby Hitler”.

Neither am I interested in legislating peoples interiors, or policing their cultural outputs. I’m more interested in enforcing rational-plus standards of behavior in the UR, and more equitable inequities in the LR.

1060

Not just women’s behavior, by the way.
One of my personal theories is that religion co-opted marriage as a means of ultimate power and control over sexual expression of all humans. Pre-Christian marriage (aka “Pagan” or “primitive”) was not about limiting sex or abstaining if you were not officially married (which is why there is a concept called “common law marriage”.

1061

So what would you call the “but zer/zim’s feelings might get hurt” sole justification for state employees to on the down-low “teach” 8 and younger kids about gender fluidity?

Feelings are interior quadrant and isn’t gender fluidity by definition detached from physical reality? Would that make it 100% interior quadrant?

1062

That’s likely the rationale some conservatives do in fact hold, but not the mainstream conservative stance.
By the way, I’m not saying you have to adopt conservative framing, but you will never “bridge the chasm” without understanding it.

Hint - It’s recently covered in the thread.

1063

Not all, but many many mammals and birds expect monogamy from their women to insure the male is motivated and supporting their own children. Women have for many millennium looked for males that could bring home the bacon, and have known that the men want/expect/need to know they are raising their own children - as a general rule.
And of course men, more than women like to spread their seed around.

I wouldn’t give Christianity all the credit for monogamy. Do you really blame Christianity for co-opting “ultimate power and control over sexual expression”? Is sexual expression the only consideration for humanity?

Just saying Ray - you might be a Horn Dog. LOL