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I appreciate the sentient, but your words leave me wondering where accountability, personal responsibility, and progress fall in all of this. “Stop being so sensitive. All I did was refer to her as sugar-tits. She’s got a great bosom… it’s a compliment!” ”Stop being so sensitive. All I did was call him a commie. It’s a joke… live a little.” ”Stop being so sensitive. All I did was call him a kraut. He is from Germany, after all.” ”Stop being so sensitive. All I did was call that blackie a nigger. It’s just a word… sticks and stones and whatnot.” What is deemed acceptable to a civilized society rightly evolves with time. We must each ask ourselves if our own ambiguous connection to words from history is somehow more worthy or important than the very real connection others have with cultural acceptance and belonging. After all… Perhaps the world would be a better place for all of us if more people were just a little bit more sensitive. Food for thought.

You can label it Political Correctness, or whatever you wish. The fact is that our Western societies are now almost at a point where the individual right nt to be offended, trumps society's right to free speech. And where your own personal, subjective reality can be forced, under threat of law, on the rest of society. If it was someone in authority doing this to society, you would all label him a despot, or dictator, or fascist. When it is anyone with a gripe against the rest of society, or a pretentious, virtue signalling university student, who has no clue what being underpriviliged really is, you guys all stand and cheer, while disparaging those who stand up against the nonsense, claiming they are out of their area of expertise, or just in it for popularity and money. You guys need to give your collective heads a shake !

I'm a pantheist, which means I believe in stealing trousers! (pant + heist = pantheist)

I've seen his analogies to chimpanzee troupes and lion prides to explain dominance behavior. What these simplistic, "alpha" "beta" scenarios get wrong is that humans are not pack animals. Social hierarchy is dependent vastly more on social cooperation than the threat of force. If you've ever been unfortunate enough to be at a social gathering with an adherent to the "alpha male" philosophy, where they come in and start "negging" and "dominating" everyone, is that they just come across as massive jerks. I had a guy in in my grad school expanded circle who would routinely come to gatherings. The aggressive handshakes, forced eye contact, domineering posturing just made him look like an asshole. We ended up manipulating his own behavior - when someone was grilling, or mixing drinks, etc he would insist they were doing it wrong and take over. We'd let him, then go somewhere else, leaving him cooking our food while we socialized. Once the food/whatever was done he'd come in all puffed out having "alpha'ed" by providing all the resources to us "betas", showing all the womenfolk he was the leader of the pack. In reality, we'd kept him occupied like a toddler so we didn't have to put up with his behavior. Human communities don't have pack leaders who maintain dominance of a harem through threat of force, generally speaking. Our leaders tend to be the best negotiators and diplomats - people who can generate cooperation and influence/convince people. Emotional intelligence, active listening and generating likeability are going to place you at the center of a social dynamic, rather than dominance, in most cases. The analogies are simply too simplistic as to be wrong.

Nice condescending style. I always forget to avoid issues of racism and feminism here. It always ends the same. Sorry guys, I'll stay out.

In certain (rare) circumstances they can. It is an in-vs outgroup situation. Among folks who know you and can contextualize your action certain otherwise egregious behaviour can be accepted and even endearing. E.g. you might use insults among your friends, but that can turn ugly if you use the same with random folks you don't know. The use of words like "nigger" have been specifically used by white folks in order to denigrate and subjugate black folks. Theoretically a group of black folks might be comfortable with having a specific white friend use the term around them, but it is so loaded that even the white person might feel uncomfortable using it (as it invokes a power differential). I am also not sure whether random black folks calling each other that term is acceptable under all circumstances. There is certainly more nuance to it (i.e. slightly more acceptable but still can be used in an insulting way). I think the worst thing about it is that it is tiring. There is always some mental overhead used for navigating these situations where you somehow need to demonstrate you belong (e.g. you need to show competence without appearing uppity) but ignore rather obvious slights (especially if they are done unconsciously). Highlighting issues usually makes things worse, so one needs to keep it bottled up. Of course it is only related to visible characteristics (there are also more subtle social cues in certain areas) but it is often one of the hardest to hide. The thing is that it has become less socially acceptable, which gives rise to the PC nonsense. But again, it is the same thing as it has always been, just the topic and mechanism has changed.

And with a snap of the fingers you have managed to summarily dismiss the feelings and pain of millions by telling them they have yet another weakness that isn't even worthy of your consideration. Everyone's feelings are genuine to them whether you care to address them or not. Please try to see things from their perspective.

No, it is still possible to use rotation to create artificial gravity. The point is that an object floating free in the depths of space is still within the effects of the gravity originating from the sum of all the massive bodies in the universe. This gravity determines our perception of distance and time. There is no place in the universe that is free of gravity.

Perhaps it takes on a different air when you consider that these are likely not one-off events. People are being denigrated on a daily basis, perhaps multiple times a day. I'd imagine I'd get sick of it, too, and here I only have to put up with being called e.g. swansnot on occasion. I typically let it slide. When it keeps happening I have to wonder if it's deliberate, and I say something. If that was my continual existence, though? I imagine it would have a greater impact and wear me down. I can't truly fathom what it would like to be belittled for whatever characteristics of what I look like or how I am. The reality is likely far, far worse than what I can imagine. So maybe characterizing this as petty political correctness is underselling the problem, and perhaps we can recognize that there are issues within this class of problem that are very real and need solving (bullying and harming people because they're different, keeping them from exercising their rights, etc.) so that (as with iNow's examples above) brushing this off is doing a disservice to the effect it has on people.

! Moderator Note It is a yes or no question, which is a problem because of factors that you have highlighted (and others), i.e. it should not be asked in a binary way. The OP might return and clarify this, but until they do, I'm erring on the side of caution, because this isn't my first theological rodeo.

! Moderator Note Without a model we can't do much in showing where this idea is wrong.

+1 What the difference between crude oil and refined oil ? Crude oil gushes out of the ground screaming "knicker. knickers, knickers" Refined oil gushes out of the refinery screaming "panties, panties , panties"

During my school years all the teachers just used our surnames when addressing us. Maybe it was a show of authority, I doubt there was any other particular underlining reason other than to gain respect for that authority. No big deal, and I'm sure it had no effect on anyone's wellbeing or state of mind then and now. People are far too sensitive these days and over react to such petty political correctness. Maybe if people focused more on real problems that require solving, which will have an actual positive impact on society rather than wasting time and effort over interpretation of the use of language, the world would be a better place for all of us.

It is not so much that people won't recycle plastics, but that most plastics are not recycled whether we put it in the recycle bin or not. Laying the responsibility on consumers simply lets the manufacturers crank out all the plastic they want. https://www.livescience.com/how-much-plastic-recycling.html https://www.npr.org/2020/09/11/897692090/how-big-oil-misled-the-public-into-believing-plastic-would-be-recycled

@swansont Um, what else would someone call you, that's your name. Are you really that brittle?