A Commonplace Book

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There are people who seem to go through life with relatively little of the rubricizing tendancy. They are suspicious of all labels, of categories, of sweeping statements.... [R]ubrics are essential to mental life; their operation results enevitably in prejudgments.... The most important categories a man has are his own personal set of values. He lives by and for his values. Seldom does he think about them or weigh them; rather he feels, affirms, and defends them.... Fences are built primarily for the protection of what we cherish.... When a person is defending a categorical value of his own, he may do so at the expense of other people's interests or safety.
-- Gordon W. Allport. The Nature of Prejudice
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Political Correctness. ok, two words, but... This is a little complex, and would take a book (working on it.) What the word really means is "inflexibly ideological". But rather than applying equally to all idealogues of all political persuasions, it is only applied "left wing" ideas such as decency, open mindedness, and acceptance of diversity (in gender, race, culture, class, sexuality, and so on), thereby making pretty fundamental human values appear bad, which is of course the point of the term. Why it has been pirated. Well, it hasn't so much been pirated as invented as a pejorative label, applying only to one political persuasion, and ironically, to those who least deserve the term. Like "liberal" (in the US) a label was required to smear the character of those who believe in essentially otherwise widely accepted human values such as tolerance and decency. "Liberal" had already been hijacked, and had lost currency. So this term was coined. What we should do about it? 1. Don't refer to progressive, decent, accepting ideas as "politcally correct" or "PC" 2. Do refer to right wing war, mongering, divisive idealogues as politically correct. Pirate it right back! Two can play that game.
-- definition submitted at WordPirates
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Labels are a means of communicating without getting close to the subject. Labels are untouched by human through; that is their purpose. Once we have labeled an idea we have caught it, put it in irons, disarmed it of all ambiguity and consequently never have to give it honest consideration. Labels are a blow to literacy, truth and manhood. They are death of the soul and the curse of nations. Without labels we would not have murder. Without labels we would not know war.
-- Jules Feiffer, Ackroyd (novel) 1977, p69-70.
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The slogan "Leave it to the market" has become a cliche of those who have a naive belief that one thereby avoids the need for political decisions. On the contrary, a market is not something that happens by itself. It is something crafted by laws; without them it cannot exist.
-- Ithiel de Sola Pool, 1983 Forecasting the Telephone. Ablex
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If organised forms of political resistance could be efficiently thwarted by ... subtle assimilation rather than outright suppression, the last barricade against it was the individual's own refusal to think and respond in the prescribed ways. The hardest task facing any emancipatory politics today is to encourage people to think for themselves, in a way that transcends simple sloganising and the dictates of instrumental reason. True critical thinking requires not just a refusal to identify with the present structures of society and commercial culture, but a deep awareness of the historical tendencies that have brought about the current impasse, and of which all present experience is composed.
-- Stuart Walton. Theory from the ruins, Aeon (31 May, 2017).
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[Surrealists] have always rejected what they consider to be the militaristic label "avant-garde," which critics like to apply to every cultural novelty.
-- Penelope Rosemont. "All My Names Know Your Leap: Surrealist Women and Their Challenge." Surrealist Women: An International Anthology, Austin: University of Texas Press (1998).
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Define a thing and you can dispense with it, right?
-- Richard Fariña. Been Down So Long it Looks Like Up to Me (1966).
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Hopper Gibson [Johnny Simmons]: [in speaking of a baseball player who committed suicide] Is there a name for what he had?
Dr. Mobley [Paul Giamatti]: Yeah, plenty of names, but, uh, I don't subscribe to any of those.
Hopper: Why not?
Mobley: Don't want to legitimatize it. This' a passing thing for you; and, you give it a name, it might wanna stick around.
-- Noah Buschel. The Phenom (movie, 2016).
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"We're so quick to form opinions of others, aren't we? And what do we form them out of? We base our opinions of present people on previous judgments of past people. So we're always arriving at final judgments one person too late. Differences blur and we are stereotyped."
-- Jules Feiffer. Ackroyd (novel, 1977) p.68.
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