9k:RD/ whiteness (abstract concept) (Q618)
Main entry
- whiteness (abstract concept)
- Is Russia the whitest place on earth? -> this is a bit of silliness. this is an intentional deepity which doesn't inherently refer to anything. this is a kōan. but I just.... I started thinking. and my mind is going weird places.
the United States and Russia are not that different. in a way they're both kind of "full of bigoted White people". people think there's something special about Texas or Tennessee as some kind of quintessential home of White people that outshines the people of China and India and Alabama, but really, it's all nonsense, because if you wanted to go to the quintessential home of White people you could just as easily go to Russia and find it there. the people of the United States don't want to believe that, because Russia is 'poor' and 'starting wars against the United States' and whatever other negative connotations might come to their mind. I don't even want to get into all the stupid misinterpretations of Communism as being ""the same thing"" as what's happening today.
"White" doesn't mean anything biologically. not when Tucker Carlson, who for all I know probably doesn't even fully understand what science is, is trying to explain what it means. the most physical thing it could mean would have to do with boundaries between populations. so if you want to define the quintessential home of Whiteness what you're left with is taking arbitrary collections of people and defining how they supposedly came to be through abstract Ideals. - MLP G4 -> the next thing I'm about to say is insane, but I do have a lot of thoughts behind it that all led back here. MLP:FiM is one of many possible examples that can be used to partly demonstrate what "whiteness" really is, if maybe not the whole of the thing. why? the show is almost entirely made up of abstract Ideals, and "whiteness" is almost entirely made up of abstract Ideals; in the end they were created through the same method. if that weren't true I wouldn't think of this, but only because it is, I have.
- white: Celestia is bright white, which represents the light of the sun. this symbolism ties her to Twilight because if any of the characters is going to be writing something by lamplight, it's Twilight (or Spike). Twilight 'shines brightly' in her studies or attempts to apply her ingenuity and this intuitively ties her to Celestia. the sun, the moon, and Twilight's light that is shown through her characterization rather than her symbolism put the three together as comparable 'lights in the sky'. Celestia being bright white does not mean anything else.
- white: the United States sometimes speaks of "Western values" or "Western culture" (which are more or less the same thing). this is the culture of a large civilization spanning multiple continents and containing interconnected histories: North America, Europe, Australia, British, German, Dutch. whiteness is not defined through any particular characteristics, but the sum of many things that all lose their individual characteristics in becoming part of a bigger thing while in some ways they still have them.
- white: some fraction of all Slavic people are indistinguishable from "Western culture", although historically they have not been admitted into it. one example of that is languages like the English language or the Russian language scooping up tens of other languages, like in the previous bullet. (this is not a bad thing, although it can then raise the question of whether there's any point in Russian existing if English exists when the two languages have come to serve the same purpose.) another form of that is the concept of "white-bread" culture, in which societies with limited education and academia tend to all produce similar kinds of thought. "white-bread" culture is actually a much broader thing than any definition of "whiteness"; North Korea and some patches of Japan containing utter basement dwellers with bizarre definitions of 'artistic freedom' should both be included. (even though that produces some really strange contradictions in that it leaves no division between the First World and the Third World.) in the arts, "white-bread" culture tries as hard as possible to look like it is not promoting prejudice, while actually just sweeping away discussion of real-world issues and replacing real-world kinds of diversity and conflict with fake kinds of diversity and conflict. MLP or Zootopia can show diversity on screen without anyone getting upset, because nobody is a griffin or a unicorn, but everything it does with that diversity will avoid actually solving any philosophical problems, such that (even when the symbolism gets very overt!) racists can watch the show and feel like it educated people but never have to stop being racist themselves because the story has left them convinced that racism no longer exists and they could not possibly be part of that old outdated group called "racists". the art presents itself as educational, when what it's really doing is postmodernist statement-making where no actual statement is made and non-racists read it as anti-racist while actual racists read it as containing no message about racism and no call for them to become less racist. "white-bread" culture is having six ponies in rainbow colors and floating the idea of zebras or kirin once but 95% of the time keeping everything in the realm of ponies and acting like their differences as individuals are the most meaningful thing and are everything. MLP really did need to add seasons 5-9 to not look completely xenophobic and to even look like it was doing lip service to real diversity, geez.
- white: the overall concept of "Western culture", which we have to remember means British-French-German-Dutch-Californian-Texan-Floridian-Canadian-Australian culture (etc.), is frequently opposed to three different things. Communism, Third World countries, and crime. there are other subcategories or connected categories for each of them: Third World–poverty, crime–poverty, crime–starting wars–"terrorist attacks" (starting wars), Communism–poverty, and only in previous decades, Communism–starting wars. it's really a web of things, but they typically either get absurdly separated or all squished into one long oversimplified line. one possible line goes crime–poverty–Third World–Communism, another possible line goes poverty–Third World–crime–Communism. whatever linear order people have decided to die on, they decide that they have to find the beginning of the linear process and absolutely crush it so none of it will exist any more. there are multiple reasons. one is to "protect" the First World from attack. another is to supposedly "show mercy" or "show kindness" to Third World people by delivering them from their suffering and thus teaching them the power of abstract Moral Good and the magic of friendship. if the Third World suffers because of the sins of laziness, violence, or everyday people learning to form new sovereign states without other countries' permission (which is totally a sin), the First World can only be good and benevolent and generous and can never have hurt anyone, while only The Realms of Sin can possibly be doing bad things or have to stop or apologize for what they're doing, because nice people free from sin never deserve attack and people who attack them are Evil people. this is Starlight Glimmer, this is the Changelings.
- white: White armies. that is a sense perfectly in line with and yet totally unrelated to the global empire senses.
- white -> there are maybe three totally different motifs here that are "white". Celestia being a bright light has nothing to do with the concept of whiteness as a lot of people on separate continents joined together, and yet they're both there, and there might be even more unrelated related things there. what a headache.
- white: backward, uneducated, prejudiced. Dugin, actual Nazi Germany, and Florida all have that one in common. they're all equally white at that moment.
- white: oppressed under the weight of empire and looking to unravel it. rare, but there. this is the sense in which a bunch of Stalinist writings including Mao (!) occasionally get slammed as "too White". this is one of the most admirable ways something could be White if you ask me, because it's one of the only ones in existence without negative connotations.
this one is how Dragon Ball can claim to present themes of anti-imperialism after Saiyans are defined wholly as an evil empire and the Japanese empire is silently defined in parallel with it. "white" is a funny concept, because it doesn't actually align onto nationality and if we're going to be honest sometimes "Japanese" is the exact same thing as "white". look at any clear instance of "white-bread" culture and you'd understand. ever heard of 'why is everyone on this anime show the same skin color'? yep, mild not-so-noticeable symptom of "white-bread" fantasy stories.
"whiteness" is a contradiction of two things where one oppresses the other. and where we hardly ever see that other one.
Main entry
- Celestia almost never helped / Each time Equestria was threatened, Twilight was always more important for defending it than Celestia / Celestia almost never helped in defeating these villains / (9k) -> I need to note: I tend not to interpret the starting bag of lore this way because I think it's interesting when Celestia occasionally does something. but if you take the show very literally, yes, you'll quickly notice this. Celestia is nominally the ruler but all the actual power of enforcement for any of Equestria's most important "moral standards" etc tends to be handed over to some diffuse and unclear body of citizens. for me, the most obvious literal interpretation after watching the show all the way through is that this is a kingdom slowly passing over to control by the bourgeoisie, and the show just doesn't want to name them with any kind of identifying name. the Elements of Harmony are effectively the power of the First World bourgeoisie all linked together in various fractions of the total body of them (hence, there can be just 6 at a time) to exercise their power as a combined unit in order to dominate and control others not already in their group; the Elements of Harmony and the kingdom of Equestria standing behind Celestia both represent the same thing at different levels of 'literalness'. (I don't know the proper inflection of that word right now)
- Elements of Harmony () / (9k)
- Elements of Harmony as representational art / Q56,46-RW / (9k)
- elements of harmony (philosophy) / abstract Ideals which when put together overcome class processes of countable populations (business territories, demographic identities, etc.) competing against each other and eroding social connections, making social connection or coherent society possible / (9k)
- Every Tory believes in elements of harmony -> people will get mad when you point out what's entirely true. for a society to get away with doing "Evil" (I use that term only to analyze the way Christians and Tories reason), it has to present itself as all its internal parts being composed of Good so you can never trace where the "Evil" could have come from. you could take a room full of the worst racists and show them the concept of friendship consisting of various good things that create society, and on a philosophical level, they'd probably still agree with it and think it was just fine.
the Elements of Harmony do not prevent Twilight or Celestia from being Evil; all they suggest by themselves is that Twilight has the power to team up with others to do Evil. - If being nice can solve all problems, then why is there Armageddon? -> I know it sounds silly and like a newbie question but it's a very legitimate question for Christians. when you look at everything written by Christians or for whatever reason based on works by Christians and rack up more and more examples, it increasingly makes less and less sense.
entries like this are a major reason why analyses of fiction exist on here. - It is impossible — in practice — to both believe in the concept that unpredictable human individuals create the future and the concept of rational actors -> as it is usually formulated, the concept of "rational actors" presupposes that there is a correct answer to problems, but if the future is created according to whatever people arbitrarily want and not what is the correct answer, there is no correct answer for people to rationally choose. this at first sounds like it isn't a paradox. it sounds like you could just solve the problem by everyone choosing what the right answer would be at once, creating a right answer. but when you realize that human minds don't work like that and they all must operate independently, then you realize there really is a paradox.
this question is important because if you believe in rational actors, then the United States forcing other countries to become part of global capitalism one arbitrary cluster of people at a time should be tyranny and in violation of the concept of rational actors. if you don't believe in rational actors, then it does make sense in its own dark way because the only logical assumption is that you couldn't guarantee people would make the desired choice unless you diabolically took away all their agency and forced them to do exactly what you say. really explaining how the United States has treated countries like the Soviet Union, Vietnam, China, and Afghanistan. trying to believe both in rational actors and the power of individuals is just laundering not believing in rational actors so that you can present utter abuse as the unguided spontaneous choices of rational actors.
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