Rex Kerr
3 min readMar 20, 2023

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I find the entire adversarial group-based nature of this description entirely inadequate. At best, if not outright encouraging immorality, it is an invitation to entertain immoral ideas.

Taken at face value, this argument justifies the far-right approach in full: they're trying to take our power, and what happens is a fact regardless of moral implication, so the fact is we either get trodden on or we fight back and keep our power. We don't want to get trodden on; we're fighting.

The problem with the argument is that it centers group identity. It is extremely hard to find a moral justification for centering group identity. If you care about human feelings you need to care first and foremost about individual people. Group identity is only important inasmuch as the group is an effective custodian of the individuals comprising it. If you care about the most fundamental aspects of existence, well, humans are one species; groups are only important inasmuch as the group is an effective custodian of the human species and life more broadly.

Identity groups can't feel anything, and they're not fundamental to existence, so the purchase you have to launch an argument with any moral weight is very minimal.

(There's also the paradoxical definition of "privileged" to mean "the ones who now have no power and have to learn how to avoid alienating those with power", but because the whole argument is flawed, I don't think that ultimately even matters.)

There is a far more powerful argument to be made that is rooted in the fundamental moral worth of all people. That is: customs that have been established, for whatever reason or lack of reason they may have been established, may contain elements that are unnecessarily or unintentionally (but actually) hurtful to some people. Therefore, when people say something is bothering them, but it is not bothering us, we should listen. When they say how bad it is, we should listen. We should take them seriously. It is possible that some people will exaggerate to try to gain unfair advantage, but that is all the more reason to listen even more carefully so we can understand. And when something is bothering us, we should speak about it clearly and with dignity: just because we may be resilient enough to put up with it, it doesn't mean we ought to have to, and we should explain to others what the issues are so they, if they act with kindness, know how to lessen the burden we bear.

Because society is most robust when its members are both resilient and compassionate, with ample reserves of both, we must be careful not to demand a great deal of resilience from some to compensate for the lack of compassion for others. Speak clearly, listen closely.

If we are going to be both resilient and kind--and promote resilience and kindness in others--can we predict from where the least-attended complaints might come? Probably from groups that have been targets of prejudice or disinterest in the past. We shouldn't be surprised, and if there happen to be a lot of complaints from one group, we should not dismiss them. As always, we listen, understand, and ask: can we change our customs to make things better for everyone overall, or at least not gratuitously bad for people who already have a great deal to put up with?

An approach like this is fully grounded in well-established moral principles, it coheres with human psychology, and it avoids provoking identity-group conflict.

The flavor you describe, while nominally aimed at some of the same things, does not appear to have any of those qualities.

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Rex Kerr
Rex Kerr

Written by Rex Kerr

One who rejoices when everything is made as simple as possible, but no simpler. Sayer of things that may be wrong, but not so bad that they're not even wrong.

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