@tripu Knowing nothing about the culture, making stereotypical caricatures and imposing romantic (or otherwise) expectations onto it is where I draw the line between cultural appreciation and cultural appropriation.

@dusnm

I think that criterion is impossible to match in practice.

My challenge to you: if I knew you just a little bit, I bet I could make a long list of “cultural items” that have their origin in groups/cultures/countries/languages that are foreign to you, and that you “use” without “knowing [anything] about [them]”, “making stereotypical caricatures”, or “imposing […] expectations”.

We all do, all the time. It’s OK.

@tripu We all do to a certain extent, I agree. This is a very fine line, incredibly undefined and hard to do so. I however reject the premise that just because something is messy and difficult to traverse we shouldn't even try.

@dusnm

It’s not messy or difficult. It’s impossible and damaging. You would have to strip your mother tongue of many loanwords. Your culinary palette would be impoverished. The items of fashion, art, music, etc you consume will shrink. Memes, nuance, humour, etc would suffer immensely.

@tripu I agree that cultural exchange is a good thing. We love it around here, we take pride in people wanting to know more about our culture.

I disagree, however, that the Washington Redskins changing their name had such a dramatic effect as you described here.

This is a prime example of the thing you just denounced as impossible.

@dusnm

Of course that one sports team changing their name is irrelevant in the grand scheme of things.

What I say is impossible is to broadly apply those stringent criteria to always avoid “cultural appropriation” and offence towards groups or individuals. To never use cultural items when we “[know] nothing about the culture, [make] stereotypical caricatures” or impose “expectations onto it”.

@dusnm

“Emotions are a funny thing, they’re not rational.”

Precisely. That’s the crux of this. I think that everyone should strive to be rational in moral and political matters like these. Our instincts, biases and tastes lead us to unnecessary conflict.

“It feels wrong because it does.”

Apparently it does not feel wrong to some people. How would you persuade them, if not appealing to reason and rational arguments?

@tripu I wouldn't persuade them. I have no reason to.

I take issue with the stance that we should strive to be more rational in policy and ethics. I think that these things cannot be divorced from emotion. The very basis of morality is emotional, we don't want people doing immoral things because they scratch our emotional itch in a negative way.

Reason is grossly overrated in such matters. It was perfectly rational what Josef Mengele did. It was however, horrifically immoral.

@dusnm

I think we couldn’t disagree more 😆

“I wouldn’t persuade them. I have no reason to.”

Then why communicate at all? Why raise this particular issue? Just to vent a personal feeling that we know is not going to sway anyone or affect the world in any way? Why did you share your take on this?

“The very basis of morality is emotional, we don’t want people doing immoral things because they scratch our emotional itch in a negative way.”

I’d say we don’t want people to do immoral things because we have reasons to think those things are bad. Sometimes our emotional itch is triggered by the wrong stimuli (and vice versa: it overlooks reprehensible acts).

“It was perfectly rational what Josef Mengele did. It was however, horrifically immoral.”

You do realise that emotion works at least as badly here, right? As in: “to many people, it felt perfectly good what [pick your monster here] did. It was however, horrifically immoral.”

We use reason to tame and bend our instincts in a purposeful manner. That leads to more progress overall than trying to do the opposite.

@tripu All I'm trying to do is make an argument that emotions and reason are two sides of the same coin.

Our policy is at least as emotional as it is rational. Our justice system works on the bases of emotion, just look at the words thrown around there like "closure", "deserved", "guilty", "despicable", "shameful".

We have devised rational systems to contain and direct those emotions to a useful purpose, lest people take judgement into their own hands.

@tripu Another way of looking at this idea is accepting the fact that people aren't perfectly rational in a way a computer is and that this is, indeed, a good thing. Emotions are a necessary part of the human experience just as much as reason is. Prioritizing one over another leads to unwanted side effects.

I get the sentiment, we like to think that everything has a clean, simple and intuitive answer, but the reality is that some things just don't. Human culture is one of those things.