@feonixrift It's alright if not every word is well-chosen or meaningful, but it is inappopriate to accept poorly-chosen and meaningless words, as each time one does so, it increases the "fuzziness" of the communication occurring.
Stock phrases come from somewhere: if someone called me a "redskin" there would be no hesitation to stop the conversation and go "hey there are ideas you're representing there you might not be aware of."
People don't say "hey there might be ideas in that word, if you're aware of them"
The ideas are there, the speaker's ignorance doesn't remove it. Let us, please, view <implying a taxable cash income is a legitimate means of survival> with the same disdain as <implying another human being is an animal>. @woozle @starkatt
@feonixrift (Because, here's the thing: the only reason those are different is because, similar to the "natural" medicine, the work hasn't been done to reason out the synthesis of generally-agreed-upon-among-"leftists" facts.
And interestingly: people usually just object to me halting the conversation to stop and address these unspoken assumptions. I break the game of rhetoric, to make sure actual communication is happening, and immediately, every mechanism kicks in: it's impolite, it slows things down, it's arrogant, there are a thousand excuses to be given for why we can't stop talking long enough to agree "no, exploiting other people to survive isn't /really/ surviving."
But... sorry. In order to have any sort of meaningful conversation with folk, I gotta make sure we're in agreement about the basics like that. REALLY in agreement: the sort of agreement that wouldn't get corroded away by having to look past "stock phrases".
@feonixrift I know this seems pedantic or petulant or whatever else; I know. I think that is the "cop in your head" trying to make sure you don't take what I'm saying seriously. Stripped of context, the idea should seem self-evidently sound:
"If two people expect to cooperate, they must communicate. For two people to communicate, they must understand each other. For two people to understand each other, they must agree upon the basic premises of the world around them, and the things they'll be interacting with. (i.e. I'll have a hard time teaching you the word/concept "air" if you don't believe anything exists in the space between solids., i.e. I'll have a hard time signing a lease with you if you don't believe in the power of signatures.)"
Right?
So: If we're going to communicate about the world, we've gotta agree on some basics.
I would say "It isn't chill to coerce other people into performing for you" is pretty basic, it's not like "gravity" basic but it's honestly a lot more relevant to my day-to-day conversations.
That means, in order to preserve my ability to communicate with others, I have to make sure that we agree on that. When I suspect we don't, I have to clarify.
That's literally all I'm doing. That it causes so much tension is only because /so much/ of life is built upon exactly that coercion of performance.
But the existence of complication and its resultant tension isn't a cause to abandon communicating with other people; I'm not a hermit and I have no desire to be one!
Yet that's just what folk choose, time after time, because it's... polite... non-judgemental... professional...
I'm making a different choice. Think what you want of it, but that thinking is probably more influenced by your own allegiance to the kyriarchy than you'd please: I know mine is.
