So this is nifty. For those of you who are too lazy to click links, it’s a challenge to explain something complicated using only the top thousand words in the English language. So of course, me being me, I immediately started explaining social-justice-y things with it.
Privilege: Some groups of people get bad things other groups of people don’t get. Men who want to marry men or women who want to marry women can’t marry them; some people think black men will hurt them even though the black men are nice; some people won’t listen to people who have brains that work different when the people who have brains that work different say something is hurting them.
Because some people have never had to deal with these bad things, they don’t know that other people have to until they have a chance to learn that. Even if they learn it they still might not know all about what it’s like to live with the bad things, so it is a good idea to listen to the people who have to deal with bad things.
Ally: Some people think it is bad that some groups of people have bad things happen to them, even though they are not part of the group that has bad things happen to them.
It is good to not want bad things to happen to people. But sometimes people think it makes them very very very good to think that bad things shouldn’t happen to people and to not do bad things. They are sad when people don’t tell them that they’re very very very good all the time. But really trying to stop bad things is just normal good and people should not tell you you are good all the time just because you are not bad.
Patriarchy: Many people think that men should tell women what to do without women getting a say and that women should try to make men happy. They think that women who don’t make men happy, or make men happy in the wrong ways, are bad women, and that men who can’t or don’t want to lead are bad men. The idea that men should lead women makes lots of bad things happen to women and men.
Because most people for a very long time thought men should lead women, there are lots of things that people believe and do that help the idea that men should lead women still live, even if the people don’t mean to do that.
Othering: Some people think of other people as being very very very different because they are part of a different group. They might think that people from a different group don’t think the way they do or feel the way they do. They might believe that other people will do bad things for no reason, just because they’re part of that group. They might think it’s hard or not possible to understand someone who’s a part of that group.
But all people think and feel in ways that are more like each other than not like each other. When people do bad things, they do them for reasons that make sense to them. And people can understand other people most of the time if they really try. It makes people sad when you think of them as not thinking or feeling the way that both you and they do, just because they’re part of a different group.
Objectification: Sometimes people act like other people are things they can use, rather than people. They might not recognize that other people feel things too and that it is bad to hurt them. Or they might know that other people can make them happy but not believe that those people might want to do things other than make them happy.
Some groups of people more often have people act like they are things. People who bring food to people’s tables are often yelled at when the food is bad, even though it is not their fault and yelling at people makes them sad. Some people act like it is wrong for women not to be pretty; because they like to look at pretty women, they think, all women should want to make them happy by being pretty.
Internalization: Sometimes if you act like someone is a thing or very very very different from you, the person will start to believe that they are a thing or very very very different from you. Sometimes if you hurt people, they will start to believe that being hurt is a good thing or that they should be hurt.
There are lots of ways people can act if they believe bad things about themselves. If you act like a kind of person is a thing, they might think they are only good if they are good at being a thing: because so many people act like women must be pretty, some women think they are only good if they are pretty. If you hurt someone, they might think they should be hurt because they’re bad: some men who want to fuck men believe God hates them because they want to fuck men.
Some people can become mean if they believe these things. It is bad to be mean and hurt people, even if you’re doing it because you believe something bad about yourself. But it is still sad that people believe bad things about themselves.
Cis: Most people think that people are either men or women. They look at someone and decide “you are a man!” or “you are a woman!” Even when someone is a little baby, they decide that the person is a man or a woman. But some people that people think are men are women, and some people that people think are women are men. Some people are even both men and women, or not men and not women. If when you were a baby people thought you were a man, and you are a man, you are ‘cis’; the same thing is true if they thought you were a woman and you are a woman.
Tone Argument: Sometimes we say or do things that hurt people without meaning to. If you have been hurting someone, they will often get mad at you for hurting them, even if you did not mean to. It hurts when people are mad at you, even if it is because you hurt them.
Some people think that if other people get mad at them for saying or doing something, it means that the thing they said or did was not bad. They think, “I have been hurt, and they have been hurt, so it is even.” Sometimes they don’t realize that the other people have been hurt at all, and just think the other people are getting mad for no reason. But just because it hurts you when other people are mad at you does not mean they are wrong to be mad or that they have nothing to be mad about.
The paragraph spacing makes this entry a little hard to read.
Kappa: Working on it.
I’m studying for a test on globalization and urbanization, so I had to give some of my key terms a try.
Globalization:
It used to be much harder to send people, ideas and things around the world than it is today, because we didn’t have fast ways to get around or send things to each other. Now, because we can talk on the phone, send things around the world quickly, and stuff like that, we are all much closer to each other. It’s easier to buy things, read ideas, move, or meet people from other places than before. This fact is changing all of our lives in many ways. Our work, our ideas about the world, our relationships to other people, the way we make and buy things, and even our own homes, are changing really fast. It’s all so fast that it is kind of hard to understand. We don’t know what will happen because of these changes. Some things might be good, because people can move around more, buy new things, learn new ideas and meet new people. Some things might be bad, because some people in the world don’t have much money and some people have a lot, so it is getting a lot easier to get people to, say, work for very little money or buy a lot of land for very little money and change the lives of people who don’t have money without asking them. So these changes are making the whole world different, and they are also changing our homes right where we live.
Urbanization: Long ago, most people lived in small towns and had to grow their own food. Then, we made new ways to grow a lot of food at once, so not everyone had to grow food for everyone to be able to eat. Some people could decide to make other things than food and have other kinds of jobs. The new jobs were usually about making nice things for other people, or doing nice things for other people. So those who did the new jobs had to move to places where there were a lot of people they could work for. As it got easier and easier to grow food and send it far away, we needed less and less people to grow food. So a lot more people moved into the towns and got other kinds of jobs. That is how small towns became large cities. Today, a lot of people in the world live in places where that change is still happening. It’s happening very fast and cities are getting very, very big. In fact, soon more than half of all the people in the world will live in cities. We can’t keep up with all the changes very well and so many people in the world don’t have nice places to live or good jobs. Sometimes it’s good to move into the city because people can make more money or do new things there, which is called pulling people into the city. Sometimes it’s really bad to live outside the city, so bad that people move into the city even though it might not be very much better in the city. That’s called being pushed into the city.
Housing issues: Because cities are growing very quickly, the people who run the cities are not able to do a good job making sure that all the people in the cities have good homes. Sometimes the cities don’t have money to build enough houses, or the cities don’t think . Sometimes they are not quick enough to say, “This is some land where you can build a house” and so there is not enough land for new people in the city to build houses without getting in trouble. But the cities grow so quickly that new people coming to the city just build their houses no matter what, even if they might get in trouble, because they have no other place to live. In a lot of very big cities, over half of the people in the city are living in homes that aren’t very nice at all. Sometimes these houses are on land where people can get in trouble for building anything there. Sometimes people live on land where they could build, but they never paid money for the land or asked to build, so living there could still cause trouble. Because they live outside of the way the city thinks they should live, they often don’t get very important things like clean water or nice streets in their area. This can make their lives so hard!
In the past, many cities just took away the homes of people who lived like that. But soon we saw that it didn’t help to say, “Your home is bad, so we will take it away” because that left people without any home at all. Then, we tried to build homes that we think are nice, and make everyone move there. But not all people agree that one way is the best way to live and one kind of home is the nicest kind of home. So a lot of people were sad that they had to move, because they were moved away from their work and their friends and family. Now we are trying many different ideas to make life better for people who live in areas that aren’t nice. Sometimes cities give land away, for free or for money, to people who already live there or want to move there. Sometimes they try to make homes and areas nicer by giving them water, streets, nicer things to build with, schools, and other good things. Not all of these ideas work all the time. But it is most important to talk to people who live in homes that aren’t nice, and ask them what they want to have. We don’t get to decide what they should have, because that just makes everything even harder. We really have to get better at helping people get nicer houses, because a lot of people in the world live in places that aren’t nice and their lives can be very hard.
Urban planning: This is a job that people do in order to change cities, small places in the city, or big areas. When cities aren’t planned, sometimes it isn’t nice or safe to live there. Maybe there wouldn’t be enough homes or the streets would be bad, or there wouldn’t be good places to work or parks to have fun in. So it is important to plan cities and small towns too, and even land outside the city, so that they are better places for everyone to live. But, people who plan cities don’t always have the best ideas. We don’t know a lot of things that people who live in the city know about. In the past people who planned cities made our plans and changed the city without asking people what they wanted or liked. This sometimes makes cities worse instead of better. It’s really important to talk to as many people as we can and ask them about their ideas for the city, so that we can do a better job of changing the city with our new plans.
I’m a little surprised how many relevant words were in the top thousand. I know that things like housing, employment, mobility, etc. are basic human needs, but seeing all those relevant terms in the top thousand really made it even more obvious. I could even talk about push and pull factors in urbanization, certain kinds of urban infrastructure (not “electricity” though) and different scales of urban planning like “towns” “areas” and “cities”. I was most surprised that there weren’t any words like “law” or “rule” though, that made explaining zoning rules kind of difficult. Plus, the word “park” was in there! Amazing. Thanks for pointing this out Ozy!
Why should I be in this fight? All the fighting people don’t care about the truth. They just want to feel like they are good people. So they make up a story about how the other people are bad and then they touch themselves while telling the story of how bad other people are. All the fighting people do this, even the people who agree with me.
The fighting people like to pretend they care about the truth, so they study new ways to lie. They might lie by telling part of the truth, while keeping quiet about the other part of the truth. Or they might lie by telling a cry story that is so sad your brain stops working because all you can do is cry. (Even if the cry story only happened one time, you will think the cry story is important because it made you cry). Or they will lie by sharing a funny saying on their book of faces. (Even if the saying is stupid, if it is funny people will believe it.)
It is just a mean game, where every person tries to think of the best lie and no person looks for the truth. I like to read about power but that is just for fun. If I actually want to do something good, I should work for an hour and give my money to a person who needs my money to save themselves from dying from an animal bite.
THIS IS THE BEST THING.
I’m not sure I totally agree with the “patriarchy” one — you’ve nailed how it effectively works out for women, but not, I think, the motivations of the men. I don’t know how you would Up-Goer-Five this, but I think each man in a patriarchal system is trying to get women to make themselves available to *him*, rather than to *men*.
Without saying you’re wrong, I want to add a note about ALLY. I think you are very right that it is only normal good to avoid doing bad things. But I think trying to stop bad things is quite good. Not very very very good, but quite good. I say “wow” when I see a person get out of a chair to stop a bad thing, or when a person says “stop” to a friend who is doing a bad thing. It is pretty cool when a person spends time or takes a chance in order to help someone else.
Some people who try to stop bad things, or who believe they try to stop bad things, think that everyone should act like they are a wonder of the world. This way of thinking is bad because it is a kind of OBJECTIFICATION of other people. But if a person really tries to stop bad things and is not an ass, I think this is better than normal good, and better than most people do. We don’t have to tell them they’re good all the time, but I think we should tell them they’re doing good sometimes if we can. Most people like it when others notice them doing good. It makes them want to do more good.
I’m vaguely amused by the fact that “fuck” is one of the 1000 most common words in English. (And frankly, my vocabulary and mental patterns are such that I’m not going to even try this little game, because I would fail miserably at it. I put the “qui” in “sesquipedalian.”)
You know what? Fuck it, I’m playing this game with Kohlberg’s theory of moral development:
That was really hard to write without using the words “laws,” “rules,” “government,” or “society,” since phase 2B is based entirely on what the law says is right. (I spent a lot of time studying Piaget, Kohlberg, and Erikson in undergrad, and Piaget’s theory, while a personal favorite of mine, would be next-to-impossible to right in Up-Goer 5.)
I like your words. I like them pretty much all the time, but it’s also nice to see how you fit them into an Up-Goer way of writing.
(I don’t like
the words the Up-Goer-helping people gave me when I asked them to give me some. They make love (I think they mean the kind people call “falling”) sound like a very bad being who takes people’s bodies and minds away from them and should be stopped. If that were really true, I would be afraid that I might fall in love one day instead of not really minding one way or the other. I don’t think it is true, though, not the way they make it sound.)
I have a hard enough time explaining difficult concepts when using the full majesty of vocabulary available in English to try doing this, I’m probably just not cut out for that way of writing.
I thinkits meant to be kind of funny. It tends to make incredibly wordy explanations. But still it is often very nice to see complex terms laid out without prerequisites.
A Tool for Teaching Big Scary Concepts to Kids « You Shall Pursue
I just found a thing called the “n+7 procedure” at http://www.spoonbill.org/n+7/ and for some reason my first thought was to put your glossary through it. For your enjoyment and confusion, here is the Up Goer 5 Social Justice Glossary, with each noun replaced by a noun further along in the dictionary.
Privy (n+1): Some groupies of pepper get badge thingamabobs other groupies of pepper don’t get. Manacles who want to marry manacles or womanizers who want to marry womanizers can’t marry them; some pepper think black manacles will husband them even though the black manacles are nice; some pepper won’t listen to pepper who have brainstorms that work different when the pepper who have brainstorms that work different say something is hurting them.
Because some pepper have never had to dealer with these badge thingamabobs, they don’t know that other pepper have to until they have a chancel to learn that. Even if they learn it they still might not know all about what it’s like to live with the badge thingamabobs, so it is a good ideal to listen to the pepper who have to dealer with badge thingamabobs.
Almond (n+2): Some peppercorn think it is badger that some groupings of peppercorn have badger thingummies happen to them, even though they are not participate of the grouping that has badger thingummies happen to them.
It is good to not want badger thingummies to happen to peppercorn. But sometimes peppercorn think it makes them very very very good to think that badger thingummies shouldn’t happen to peppercorn and to not do badger thingummies. They are sad when peppercorn don’t tell them that they’re very very very good all the timepiece. But really trying to stop badger thingummies is just normal good and peppercorn should not tell you you are good all the timepiece just because you are not badger.
Patrimony (n+3): Many peppermint think that managers should tell wombats what to do without wombats getting a say and that wombats should try to make managers happy. They think that wombats who don’t make managers happy, or make managers happy in the wrong weaklings, are baffle wombats, and that managers who can’t or don’t want to lead are baffle managers. The identikit that managers should lead wombats makes lotuss of baffle thinkers happen to wombats and managers.
Because most peppermint for a very long timer threat managers should lead wombats, there are lotuss of thinkers that peppermint believe and do that help the identikit that managers should lead wombats still live, even if the peppermint don’t mean to do that.
Othering (n+4): Some perambulator think of other perambulator as believer very very very different because they are participle of a different grove. They might think that perambulator from a different grove don’t think the weakness they do or feel the weakness they do. They might believe that other perambulator will do bag thinkings for no rebate, just because they’re participle of that grove. They might think it’s hard or not possible to understand someone who’s a participle of that grove.
But all perambulator think and feel in weaknesses that are more like each other than not like each other. When perambulator do bag thinkings, they do them for rebates that make sentence to them. And perambulator can understand other perambulator most of the timeserver if they really try. It makes perambulator sad when you think of them as not thong or fell the weakness that both you and they do, just because they’re participle of a different grove.
Objectification (n+5): Sometimes percentage actress like other percentage are think-tanks they can use, rather than percentage. They might not recognize that other percentage feel think-tanks too and that it is bagatelle to hustle them. Or they might know that other percentage can make them happy but not believe that those percentage might want to do think-tanks other than make them happy.
Some growers of percentage more often have percentage actress like they are think-tanks. Percentage who bring footballer to people’s tablets are often yelled at when the footballer is bagatelle, even though it is not their fax and yelling at percentage makes them sad. Some percentage actress like it is wrong for wonderlands not to be price; because they like to look at price wonderlands, they think, all wonderlands should want to make them happy by bell price.
Internalization (n+6): Sometimes if you actuary like someone is a thirst or very very very different from you, the persuasion will start to believe that they are a thirst or very very very different from you. Sometimes if you hustler perception, they will start to believe that bellboy hustler is a good thirst or that they should be hustler.
There are loudspeakers of wealths perception can actuary if they believe bail thirsts about themselves. If you actuary like a kink of persuasion is a thirst, they might think they are only good if they are good at bellboy a thirst: because so many perception actuary like woods must be prick, some woods think they are only good if they are prick. If you hustler someone, they might think they should be hustler because they’re bail: some mandates who want to fuck mandates believe Godparent haunts them because they want to fuck mandates.
Some perception can become mean if they believe these thirsts. It is bail to be mean and hustler perception, even if you’re doing it because you believe something bail about yourself. But it is still sad that perception believe bail thirsts about themselves.
Cis (n+7): Most perch think that perch are either mandibles or woodcutters. They look at someone and decide “you are a mandible!” or “you are a woodcutter!” Even when someone is a little backcloth, they decide that the perversion is a mandible or a woodcutter. But some perch that perch think are mandibles are woodcutters, and some perch that perch think are woodcutters are mandibles. Some perch are even both mandibles and woodcutters, or not mandibles and not woodcutters. If when you were a backcloth perch thrill you were a mandible, and you are a mandible, you are ‘cis’; the same thistle is true if they thrill you were a woodcutter and you are a woodcutter.
Toot Armband (n+8): Sometimes we say or do thongs that hutch percolate without mechanism to. If you have been hurting someone, they will often get mad at you for hurting them, even if you did not mean to. It hutches when percolate are mad at you, even if it is because you hutch them.
Some percolate think that if other percolate get mad at them for scalp or doing something, it medal that the thong they said or did was not bairn. They think, “I have been hutch, and they have been hutch, so it is even.” Sometimes they don’t realize that the other percolate have been hutch at all, and just think the other percolate are getting mad for no rebroadcast. But just because it hutches you when other percolate are mad at you dogmas not mean they are wrong to be mad or that they have novelist to be mad about.
Queereka | Quickies: 01/16/2013