But on social media this is interesting considering how I got started on these platforms, talking about and posting pictures of my transition. As a transgender woman who "passed" according to societal norms, the experiences and especially the pictures made lots of people really happy. Some, perhaps, a little happier than others, if you catch my drift.
But at the time I started, I had been rejected by pretty much everyone I had ever felt close to, and mostly everyone I had ever really known, because of my transition and my background growing up as one of Jehovah's Witnesses. I had a little more than half of a bachelors degree in engineering, but couldn't finish it and also wasn't getting hired anywhere, due to legal documentation changes and prejudice to my transgender status. So I did whatever else, where ever else I could find. At my financially neediest point I doubled as a stripper and an escort. I relied on people I didn't fully trust, because I didn't know where else to go, and I was in survival mode. When I started talking about my situation, I received lots of support. And that support probably saved my life. But there were also people out there that just shook their head in judgement. One of the comments I remember receiving during that time, I'll never forget, was, "How does someone so well spoken and educated find themselves in such a white trash situation?"
Unfortunately, the world didn't stop kicking me at that point, either. It never really does for any of us, am I right? Personally, I could go on with where the struggles lead me to next, but I just won't. However, at that time, I remember feeling so ashamed of myself that things had gotten to the point they had. Yet I also knew I had done the best that I could with what I had at the time, in spite of hate and discrimination.
Now people tend to have a level of respect for my opinion, because I survived, and because I did eventually work myself back up to the only thing many people seem to understand--my previous income level--money, and because I've proved that everything I've done was to put my children's needs first, and because I am a good mom, and because I am able to be self employed and write for work, and because I finally have had the non-survival-mode peace of mind to reexamine my science-based education and apply those principles to new areas of my life, and maybe bring some new ideas to the things I am involved with.
But all of that aside, the reality is that I haven't forgotten the struggles, and the way of life that kept me going back then. And I haven't forgotten the connection I share with everyone, whether or not the disgustingly wealthy people in high up places realize that with the right set of circumstances and hate, they are just as fully capable of finding themselves in a situation were their level of power correlates to how far apart they are willing to spread their legs.
And just as much, I've noticed I have a different view of ethics and where they come from than many of the philosophical platitudes that are hefted my way on a regular basis. I find it interesting that, by far, it tends to be the people that seem to be attracted to emotional openness that also decide it is worthless when confronted with their own discomfort. The ones that like to take advantage of it in the bedroom think it has absolutely no use in real life. Especially if they possess some of the things the left calls "privilege".
Instead of taking some real time to connect with the people they deem to reside at the uncomfortable levels of this society they tout to be the best in the world--this very idea shakily founded on virtual social realities like the dollar--they prefer to discuss the issues among themselves and extrapolate and construct rationales, for and instead of every action taken by those who live a far realer life than they could ever hope to with such inflated thinking.
What I am getting at, ultimately and again, is empathy. Why is it such a foreign concept lately?
No matter the plans and ideas and towers we construct to hold up our own thoughts, true rationality relies on the goal of agreement. I don't think anyone would argue so much with the technical there. Yet, there is a consistent concept gaining traction lately that people's feelings are absolutely nothing but a mere wrench in the holy golden cogs of rational thought.
Especially concerning the whole Antifa/White-Supremacy crisis and the horrible things that happened last week in Charlottesville, Virginia. This is the issue that has lead me to discuss this, at length. And eventually this quote, by the plainspoken philosopher of wishful greediocracy herself, Ayn Rand, has come up, by way of explanation for the idea that Antifa's Nazi-punching is somehow an uneducated thrust of unethical behavior along the same vein as being an actual Nazi:
"Thinking is not an automatic function. In any hour and issue of his life, man is free to think or to evade that effort. Thinking requires a state of full, focused awareness. The act of focusing one’s consciousness is volitional. Man can focus his mind to a full, active, purposefully directed awareness of reality—or he can unfocus it and let himself drift in a semiconscious daze, merely reacting to any chance stimulus of the immediate moment, at the mercy of his undirected sensory-perceptual mechanism and of any random, associational connections it might happen to make."
One thing I'd like to point out is that nobody waits around rationalizing if their kid is about to be hit by a car. They just react. And if they don't, people wonder why. We may even charge them with neglect and murder. It's natural to be suspicious of people who don't react. If they don't, they had better have had exactly that: Impeccable, rational reasons as to the situation.
Thinking on the cognitively rational level many of us often do--the way we are often required, to keep up with technology and industries and our progressive culture--may not be automatic. But I would say, despite the ideas of Miss Non-Scientific-Philosopher-and-Misinterpreter-of-Terms-Like-Objective-and-Subjective Rand here, thinking and reasoning IS an automatic characteristic of humans, though.
For example, you even see traces of it in other primates. Apes develop technology, which requires reasoning too. They also can learn parts of our communication and how to use it to get things they want. Although their technology and communication is nowhere near as sophisticated as ours--breaking sticks to use as tools to dig out sap or insects from a tree or hole in the ground--it still requires solving a problem culturally or extra-biologically, which requires thinking. They aren't yet at the level of thinking where they are consciously identifying a problem/solution ratio, as we have learned to do. They, instead, solve the problem out of sheer will: wholly to survive and by employing simple trial and error as a method--which they don't even know is a method, because its the only one they use--But when it comes to communication, they teach each other these technologies and warn each other of danger and react when other members of their community are in trouble. So they are thinking, and even have a level of self awareness... they just don't have "I have thoughts I can try to control"-awareness.
I'll agree, some humans don't even really seem to fully have this "thought-control" awareness. But even for those that do, they don't always want to go that far inward. Many times because it simply feels like they are less alive. To me, that is an important distinction.
There is an extensive history of human leaders trying to force their constructs onto people, whether through religion, simple economic persuasion, or on the grounds of supposedly virtuous forms of intellect. But some people don't want spend their lives consistently framing out their thoughts, and others really just don't seem to be bale to. And if they can't, it's not usually because they can't biologically, but rather it's because they psychologically cant. This type of thinking is often cultural, or trained from childhood. Either way, I would think that the idea that humans do not 'automatically function' this way and the understanding we have to learn to control our thoughts in this manner should say just as much about being obsessive in this regard as it does of people who avoid it. I would think it would say far more about balance in reason than anything else.
And this is why those that have achieved this rational plane need to sometimes stop and empathetically recognize the things they've been trained to ignore.
Because I submit that if we don't think this way automatically, then we need to view it as a tool that we've constructed on top of our innate form of reasoning, as it is obviously not the only way there is to reason on things. If rational thinking is something we're trained to do, rather than being born thinking this way, we must realize that people who seem obsess with it may need extra help coming down, and understanding the reality, and understanding they may be overthinking things, and understanding there really are times where we need to come back down to the empathetic plane...
... Or else our child will be hit by that car, while we are lost in thought trying to save both ourself and them. Sometimes, you just need to jump in front of the speeding car and push them out of the way to save their life.
This is why I keep on saying, in different ways, that we rationalize to empathize. If you rationalize only for the purpose of rationality, you are going in circles. But this is what our academic culture tends to glorify... Which is why, I think, so many people are disillusioned with it, but can't quite seem to put their finger on exactly why...
The most rational field there is, Math, is a language. And there is a reason we describe it like this. And a reason why we developed numbers and arithmetic in the first place: to communicate. Jill has 3 apples. Why does it matter how many apples Jill has left after Jack eats 2? Probably because Jill's pretty hungry too. Unlike in the textbooks, there is always an ultimate empathizing "why?" for even our most rational questions.
So the main goal I see in any interaction always starts with empathy. Or what I would call empathetic reasoning. If that can't be maintained, it devolves into what amounts to competitive survival. But rationality is a great tool to suspend this reality in argument, and hopefully eventually achieve mutual understanding and/or empathy.
But when rationale starts legitimizing itself, instead building bridges, there is danger in that, especially in highly present, highly volatile situations. Rational reasoning is only a tool to achieve empathetic reasoning. Sometimes empathetic reasoning, and who you are choosing to empathize with against others, is the only real answer. And people who have been trained to value rational thinking too greatly are often afraid to see that.
And again, I point this out because I am very tired of being told that feelings don't matter.
They do.
They are the basis for everything everyone ends up deciding to do. The question isn't whether or not your feelings hold up to rationality. It's whether both your feelings and rationale are universally empathized. As this is where I believe our ethical sense even comes from.
To me--in Charlottesville and overall--you have two groups of extremists and one neutral party. One group actively promotes death based on biology and/or ethnicity, the other actively promotes violence against the first group. The neutral party, the one who actually has the right to violence, is the government. If there is one party that cannot afford to be neutral in this particular instance, it is the government, as the second party wouldn't be gaining popularity if the government just acted on simple, empathetic, ethical terms in the first place, instead of rationalizing that there is some intrinsic right for another group to rationalize the death of millions. There isn't. Not in my book.
You cannot rationalize rationalizing hate. You're going in rational circles to avoid the empathetic reality of the situation.
Antifa has largely grown since the complete rejection of empathy that took place last November. They've been gaining traction ever since. Back then I said the violent riots and vandalism were too much, but punching a person who is proclaiming the intent to harm droves of others isn't wrong, not in any sense but the political one. I find it crazy that the same people so obsessed with the idea that "political correctness" is ruining our society decry the wrongness of the punching a Nazi. Those people want to be non-political? Fine. They got exactly what they asked for.
People need to start remembering that other people do matter, and start demanding it of their government, or else things probably aren't going to get better. They are going to continue to devolve in the same manner they have been since November. You cannot rationalize away the identities or words of people being hated and suffering or dying. This is missing the point of reason, and refusing to empathize puts people in survival mode--like it did me, throughout my transition--regardless of all the rational circles you all and I and everyone else are drawing at the moment.
But if we must have a rational reason to punch Nazis, I will say this: Going back to that speeding car analogy and my training as an engineer, albeit a circumstantial third-year drop out, I know that acceleration cannot exist without speed over time. I know that you cannot separate space and time. The timing does matter. When it comes to advocating death, White Nationalists unequivocally put the lead foot to their gas first, and the government chose to ignore it first, even despite our current administration's history with the group's adoration. So here comes Antifa in with the executive response that should have been. And that does matter. It was the right thing. It's what I hope I would have done if I was there seeing people beaten and mowed down by a speeding car. And that does matter far more than the rest of their vague, political ideology that most people already agree is controversial.