We need to teach people the difference between being uncomfortable and being unsafe. Because the discomfort of the safest people is endangering the most vulnerable, all day every day.
We need to teach people the difference between being uncomfortable and being unsafe. Because the discomfort of the safest people is endangering the most vulnerable, all day every day.
Thanks for saying this. Crime is down, over the last 30 years. Whites in American defacto segregated towns are the safest people in human history, but they are arming and policing against honest, decent people.
📌
Van Jones is the most gullible person in politics
"I'm not going to pave the jungle for you; put on some boots and deal with adversity" is FANTASTIC I am going to use that all the time now.
preach
yes.
They absolutely conflate the two because safe people don't want to feel uncomfortable about their safety, which is kind of 😒
valid
Hmmmm
Good point. When a provincial rube such as Charlie Kirk (and I say that tongue in cheek because I've no doubt Charlie was never once even mildly concerned about walking in New York) claims he's "unsafe" he's really just saying, "I feel nervous around diversity that doesn't all focus on me."
🎯 Brilliant
This is so true in so many different contexts too.
I curse The Gift of Fear.
Lots of uncomfortable are fighting for the unsafe people. In addition, there are things you cannot tell by looking at a person
Yes. 💯
...in myriad ways and means.
See: Emmett Till
For years people said they felt unsafe, but might have just been uncomfortable. (Leading to today’s politics.) Important difference
Regressive politics is basically an alliance between the privileged resenting their "inferiors" talking back to them, and repressed normies being paranoid about/disgusted by anyone more interesting than them. And as a privileged repressed normie myself, I've seen their bullshit first hand.
This is probably not your intention, but this comes off as massively ableist. You might wanna reword this.
how dawg 😭😭 disabled people are the vulnerable ones, their discomfort goes hand in hand with feeling unsafe this post is lowk abt ableism like "don't victimize yourself for being in the presence of someone at more risk than you because you don't like them" i.e. disabled ppl, queer ppl, bipoc, etc
because I only ever hear people complain about others "comfort" when it's disabled people wanting to exist bro.
Heaven forbid a disabled person feel comfortable.
i really don't think that's what the post is talking about (i am also disabled as are many other people in my life) i know what you're referring to and that stuff is annoying but I think this post is meaning to also call out those same people, not disabled people
we did not reach the same conclusions from this post 😭 to me it reads as in defense of disabled ppl n other minorities cuz they're more vulnerable than the ppl who say that their presence/accommodations/mobility aids/medical devices/whatever makes the latter uncomfortable (vilifying the minorities)
I'm pretty sure that's what they were trying to say, but people VERY OFTEN will get very angry because of accommodations towards disabled people so they can be comfortable. I'm not accusing the person of being ableist I'm just saying "hey maybe reword this so it doesn't use ableist language"
Like I'm tired of being shamed for standing up for people. It's so fucking tiring.
This post does not use ableist language. It uses regular language, which is also sometimes weaponized inappropriately by ableists. The “why are you whining about being uncomfortable” thing when a disabled person asks for accommodation DOES suck but the ableist is the one using “uncomfortable” wrong.
Wearing a mask during a pandemic is a case in point.
Absolutely the first thing I thought of here.
People who think faster is always better stress me out. Give me more and better at whatever speed that works.
This seems to be the malaise of the current era where being uncomfortable (including being bored or under stimulated) is perceived as a threat to life limb and the universe.
Yeah what has been done to the English language, by click baiters and over dramatics, really screwed up the ability to communicate clearly. Also now like here in US, some things really do call for that level of alarm, but we're getting a boy who cried wolf response from many as a result.
Yep
And I have to think a lot of New Yorkers recognized him and happily made him feel uncomfortable…
Fear often masquerades as anger.
Not only that, discomfort is literally required for growth
Want him out? ☎️ 202 224 3121 Congressional Switchboard resist.bot/petitions/PO...
Nailed it. This is a parallel to the “you’re not being civil“. The privileged expect to live in pristine insulation.
And people who say that if they are being "civil" then they must be a good person and doing safe things.
And people who claim that if they use “polite language” to say something heinously offensive, then they’ve been “quite civil”. Actually, if you use “nice” words to insinuate someone is worth less than you, & possibly less than human, you’ve been worse than rude. The so-called civility is irrelevant.
Discomfort, depending on the circumstance obviously, is also a huge learning opportunity. It’s how we become familiar with the unfamiliar, or figure out the gaps in our knowledge.
So true and well put.
True in so many different ways!
Swedish work culture enables the fragility of the privileged, so even the concept of psychological safety in the workplace here is weaponized. Anyone different has to feel unsafe so the privileged never experience discomfort. The first time I experienced psych safety for real, it was a *shock*
I know nothing about "psychological safety" as a concept in swedish work culture and it sounds fascinating. Any reading you could recommend?
Facts. (Start with wuss/JuCo dropout Charlie Kirk.)
Sadly, to the comfortable, feeling uncomfortable feels like being unsafe.
Discomfort gets people killed because it's inside the person. They're projecting their fears on people just minding their own business. Black men in the South could be as respectful and "safe" since their life depended on it and still end up lynched cause some white person was uncomfortable.
The trouble is, the safest people see government of, by, and for the people as a threat to their wealth and status, and that's unlikely to change.
So perfectly summed up 👏👏👏
Spot on
I find that a good, if imperfect, heuristic is that comfort is internal and safety is external. Being unsafe can make one uncomfortable but being uncomfortable doesn't make one unsafe.
Very well put, Erika
I used to offer a classroom guidelines document that distinguished "safety from" vs. "safety to." E.g. not promising "safety from feeling uncomfortable" vs. promising "safety to explore uncomfortable feelings." I got complaints that I told students that "her classroom would be unsafe."
Sounds like you were successfully screening out the kind of people you don't want in a class room, so cheers to small victories.
Sadly my boss did not see it that way at the time.
I'm sorry. Admin frequently punishes teachers for teaching. It's not fair.
Did I mention this was in a training program for future therapists. Gatekeeping was totally broken by capitalism and Badministration.
smdh
Wise words!!!!
for people who grew up in traumatizing family situations, those two things are usually the same🤔if you felt uncomfortable then it was guaranteed you're also unsafe and opposite
True! Still necessary to work through that trauma, though. Friends make sure friends see a doctor about the mental health version of a broken bone.
yes, I just wanted to point to a possibility that some people don't distinguish between the two and need to learn it. EVEN COMPREHENDING SUCH DISTINCTIONCAN BE HARD WORK. with a traumatized mind, it takes a lot of work (I know from my own experience)🤔
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Educational theory talks about "cognitive disequilibrium" - the feeling that you don't know the answers, that you've run out of your comfort zone This is not only good for education, it is absolutely required. It's not scary. It's an opportunity for growth Some people don't want to grow
I should add: other people have been hurt by the world expecting certain things of them and this feeling becomes particularly painful for that reason, not just because they don't want to grow. This is a problem that I've had to work to overcome, to help students love learning Because it's joyous!
OP pls elaborate on which group of people you mean 🫠
Very well put.
The Paranoid Style In American Daily Life
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Can you give an example? Would be helpful to understand your argument.
Many prejudiced people claim to 'feel unsafe' around various minorities. Even when their 'concerns' are unsubstantiated. They actually feel *uncomfortable*, but are so used to safety and comfort that they misrepresent - or even sincerely perceive - discomfort as equivalent to threat.
Censorship measures to "Protect women and children" ended up making said protection harder (AS Fosta/Cesta did in the US),
pushing sex work into illegality to protect women from trafficking only pushing sex work into shadier darker territory where is easier to traffic instead of making it legal and highly regulated to reduce risk and damage.
Moral crusades against online porn ereasing sexual education to help youths understand when they are being abused as well as actively being used to censor queer expression.
Like Jewish Americans who support Israel feeling discomfort that Israel is finally being seen as the genocidal state it is & saying it makes them feel unsafe that everyone is not blindly supporting the atrocities. The ADL automatically marks anti-Israel protests as anti-semitism.
📌
"uncomfortable" has become this sort of vague weaponised concept that assumes the "uncomfortable" party is victimised. A racist might feel uncomfortable around minorities. A rich person might claim the presence of a homeless person makes them "uncomfortable". The "discomfort" is their own prejudice
Like the distinction between ‘thirsty’ and ‘dehydrated’.
Cogent
more people need to remember that all substances oxidize eventually some of them much quicker than others, and all of those seem to be the ones we make housing and businesses out of
🔥🔥🔥
This is part of what i mean about the grey buildings. Solve your problem and mine gets solved, vice versa. Our enviroments affect how we feel and what we feel safe to do.
Therapy and yoga tell us we can breathe through a certain amounts of discomfort and it helps us to actually feel ok in the moment, deal with our fears, and help ourselves and others... i am sure those people think that's demonic though.
Great point
It's fascism 101 - the enemy is simultaneously too weak and too strong
This is exactly it. Exactly!
Bet he was only in the most crowded locations with other people who are not from NYC in July.
While we're at it, let's also actively practice having uncomfortable conversations. At some point, this country stopped allowing nuance and curiosity into conversations, because those things can be uncomfortable. We need to grapple with new concepts, though. It's how we grow.
Absolutely. It cuts both ways, though. Making students uncomfortable by teaching unpleasant truths is the job of universities. It doesn’t threaten the students; it helps them grow and understand the world.
Agreed, though with limitations. I had to go to my personal tutor about one seminar which was about a play which had really distressed me & triggered self-harming behaviour, so I didn’t want to go & talk about it in a group. It must be okay for students to be able to take mental health precautions.
It was literally one seminar in the entirety of my university career, and it was in the 90s where content warnings etc were not a thing. I’m sure I was thought very odd for being in tears in my tutor’s office explaining I couldn’t attend. But it wasn’t safe for me.
Also rich it’s the “fuck your feelings” crowd that feels so uncomfortable. It is also more likely that based on their own policies they won’t have to make a distinction between uncomfortable and unsafe.
They said "f**& your feelings", not theirs - they don't mind pandering to feelings, as long as they're their feelings, while contempt is for others' feelings. It's a dominance play. This is rich for me, but the operative phrase is probably "Afflict the comfortable, and comfort the afflicted."
And yesterday, some girl said I made her uncomfortable when I was just being a nice person in a Starbucks. They were never unsafe and I didn’t do anything weird.
A teller at my bank tried to get me to fear the Vet who hangs out on the bus bench out front, sometimes attending to hygiene. Doesn't poop out there, not nude, just tidies himself. I told her I am not afraid. She replied some people are uncomfortable. All I could say was ask him where he served.
Definitely, but being comfortable and self-assessing emotions in general.
You mean like how everyone keeps their houses too cold at night in the summer? Because the rich could buy Bedjets or whatever the brand for the rich is instead of cooling an entire mansion when you’re under the covers. There are little things like that but unless it’s sold as luxury they don’t sell
And the conservatives are so ridiculous that you’ll lose them if you even mention the environmental advantage. And if it’s expensive enough don’t bother saying it saves money over time. And on the opposite end we have fast fashion. Wear your clothes longer.
Makes me think of Rose Anvil. The overall message of his reviews is in favor of boots that will last a long time. Sustainability in terms of oldschool craftsmanship, made in america even(sometimes) is appealing to conservatives too. Of course he´s also a salesman. www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMYp...
It is putting youth at risk, because they struggle to correctly assess when they *are* actually in danger. It makes them vulnerable to people who take advantage while being nice.
we need to mass-shame rich people instead of pandering to them &or worshipping them i'm being so fr
Net worth over 5 million?
That's a terrible idea psyche.co/ideas/person...
"Radical Centrist"
😂😂😂
You too should be shamed tbh.
you're right, we shouldn't shame rich people. we should just expropriate their property and prevent them from ever being in a position of power over others.
Boy, did you walk into the wrong neighborhood, bud XD What's your recommendation, then? Honestly asking. Because while I'm more than open to rehabilitation, that doesn't happen without the individual being open to it.
My recommendation is organizing progressives in order to build big tent coalitions, creating positive alternatives. I think shame as a political tool has proven largely counter productive, usually benefiting the right. Focus should be on political reforms (which should include wealth redistribution)
You've said a lot of big words there, without actually saying much of anything. As Sinflower pointed out, the problem with your tactics are speed. In less than 1 year they have outright destroyed or desperately weakened institutions that took decades to build. We don't have time for slow response.
This was done for decades and undone in months, history should be your proof that tolerance towards discriminatory behavior and peaceful protesting never worked, things always escalated until the general population or other parties refused to continue
'Radical centrist'
"Ex-MP for the Swedish Green Party" "Radical centrist" Yeah buddy I'm not sure your opinions are relevant here
bro you aren’t even just sitting on the fence anymore you are straight up bouncing and moaning and doing tricks on it
None of you actually read the article, did you?
You mean the fluffy faux think piece that is devoid of social science evidence and instead is entirely one man's anecdotal and heavily biased viewpoint that isn't supported by most of the social science writing about the conflict in Sierra Leon? How ever could I not agree with that?
oh but you forgot all the wonderfully opaque "citations" that link to other "philosophers" books! what a fucking circlejerk lmao
no, i read it, i just think it’s a steaming load of preachy, “if you weren’t so mean to your oppressors maybe they wouldn’t oppress you so much” slop that tries to force victimized and marginalized groups into a position of submissive politeness and acceptance of being treated like shit
The aid worker "exhibiting conspicuous ‘respect’" to the armed forces butchering everyone held up as an example of the advantages of not shaming those w/whom you disagree was particularly stunning.
anyone who supports this article has never been systemically stripped of their personhood or received slurs and death threats and it shows so blatantly
If you're serious about helping vulnerable communities, you'd do well to take arguments that your strategy is counterproductive seriously.
Only if those arguments come from the vulnerable communities you’re trying to help.
Shut the fuck up you centrist parasite.
Has passivity and just asking nicely every worked when fighting oppression? Cuz even Ghandi had more pressure than just his pacifism. Black people didn't get their rights by saying "Oh please mister white master, could you please free us slaves"
Nor did gay people got marriage equality by being nice to bigots. Can some actions be counter productive, yeah, but like seriously their effect is so minor compared to how useless it would be to just do nothing and asking nicely to the oppressor.
“You’re not helping your cause”, Says the guy that hates you and your cause.
Nah
As a member of several vulnerable communities, you seriously are not helping. Take this call for respectability politics and accountability avoidance and bin it. We are done with pretending there is anything strategic about coddling privileged people who behave in harmful ways. Please do better.
That's a lot of words to say "know your place"
The article might be more convincing if it didn't use the photo of Simone Touseau. She was a committed Nazi collaborator who very probably helped send four neighbors to concentration camps; two died. Her head being shaved in an act of public shaming is not analogous to anything the author describes
Correct 👍
Take your bullshit article and stick it up your ass
You’re right we should shoot them instead 👍
ok, but can we at least not pander to them?
Yes
> shame doesn't work Counterpoint: Catholicism is huge
Radical Centrist
You call yourself a radical centrist. No one cares what you think.
I'm not being nice to people who want me dead, buddy.
I respect the authors argument here but it kinda assumes the goal of shame is to bring the enemy to your side (I'd say it plays a role in showcasing the social consequences of holding a belief to the undecided) and supposes that shame is a pro-shamers only tactic.
Also the only alternative strategy suggested in the article (I understand it's goal was not to propose an alternative) was deferrence for survival. A system that comes with its own load of consequences like enabling your own oppression.
baffling that you seem to think the general populace is responsible for any behaviour/retaliation from oppressors. it's coercive, controlling and a classic abuse tactic to believe that survivors on any scale of turmoil should never fight back. i hate civility politics omg lol be serious. go away
...what a very strange response. Here's how that conversation looks from outside: "We should do X." "But evidence indicates X doesn't work." "I can't believe you'd blame all decent people like that, how abusive." See how that last line comes out of nowhere and makes no sense?
I’d figure skipping the stuff that doesn’t work would be more punishing to those doing harm. Go right for the jugular.
i say we use the second amendment how the supreme court says the founding fathers intended
Ahh the good ol’ paradox of tolerance.
Interesting point. Uncomfortable+ active imagination An anxiety recipe.
This is what I think about every time a non-straphanger scaremongers about riding the NYC subway www.cbsnews.com/newyork/news...
🎯🎯🎯🎯🎯🎯🎯
I wrote this a while ago, but it's relevant: jasperbrown.substack.com/p/glitch-on-...