Once upon a time, it was common knowledge that giving people the benefit of the doubt had a positive impact on relationships, and that assuming positive intent and believing the best of everyone until proven otherwise was a key to happiness and mental health. The concept of microaggressions is the opposite of this. Assuming the worst, being suspicious of everyone and quick to take offense, and analyzing everything anyone does or says and interpreting it in the worst way possible so you can convince yourself that everyone is against you will lead to unhappiness and mental unwellness.
I would guess that one of the main reasons the pseudo-scholars from the Church of Perpetual Aggrievement wedged in Lilienfeld is because he's the only member of their rogue's gallery not born before or around WW2. Assuming any of their simplistic accusations are true, the ugliest ones all came from people born in the 19th century—all who are long since dead and whose ideas were chased out of the academy and polite society well before the start of our current century.
An irony here is that the postmodern "Nothing exists but Power and Oppression" academy is founded on the lives and words of these ancient wrong-thinkers as much as Christianity is founded on the words of St. Paul. Without their favorite tasks of bigotry archaeology and bigotry excavation, the sum total of these authors thoughts would be nil (assuming autoethnographies about Beyonce don't count) and their additions to human knowledge would be even less. Without being able to say "Some long-dead bigot once hated minorities, thus Justice demands you hand over the keys to the kingdom to current minorities, i.e. me and my friends" they would have nothing—no ideas, no books or papers, no careers.
And they say old dead white men never did anything for them! Quite the opposite.
Once upon a time, it was common knowledge that giving people the benefit of the doubt had a positive impact on relationships, and that assuming positive intent and believing the best of everyone until proven otherwise was a key to happiness and mental health. The concept of microaggressions is the opposite of this. Assuming the worst, being suspicious of everyone and quick to take offense, and analyzing everything anyone does or says and interpreting it in the worst way possible so you can convince yourself that everyone is against you will lead to unhappiness and mental unwellness.
I would guess that one of the main reasons the pseudo-scholars from the Church of Perpetual Aggrievement wedged in Lilienfeld is because he's the only member of their rogue's gallery not born before or around WW2. Assuming any of their simplistic accusations are true, the ugliest ones all came from people born in the 19th century—all who are long since dead and whose ideas were chased out of the academy and polite society well before the start of our current century.
An irony here is that the postmodern "Nothing exists but Power and Oppression" academy is founded on the lives and words of these ancient wrong-thinkers as much as Christianity is founded on the words of St. Paul. Without their favorite tasks of bigotry archaeology and bigotry excavation, the sum total of these authors thoughts would be nil (assuming autoethnographies about Beyonce don't count) and their additions to human knowledge would be even less. Without being able to say "Some long-dead bigot once hated minorities, thus Justice demands you hand over the keys to the kingdom to current minorities, i.e. me and my friends" they would have nothing—no ideas, no books or papers, no careers.
And they say old dead white men never did anything for them! Quite the opposite.
Microaggressions deserve microsympathy. At most.
Wins my comments sections, certainly for this post, probably for the year, and maybe all time.