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This reminds me a lot of how people talk about trying to de-convert people. They try showing them evidence of how a particular religion is false, but no matter how much they push the point home the person they're talking to doesn't listen.

(Here's a concrete example for that: Consider someone who believes in a literal interpretation of Noah's Flood [God creates the earth, doesn't like what people are doing, decides to drown them all in a global flood, chooses one man {Noah} and his family to build a boat and collect up 2 of each animal into said boat, they float around on water covering Mt. Everest for 375 days, all animals depart to repopulate the earth]. This story has a list of problems so long in boggles the mind, but ask how Noah and his family simultaneously kept the penguins cold and desert foxes hot without refrigeration, keep the carnivores from eating the herbivores, or whatever else and you get a whole raft of rationalizations if they don't just claim you hate god or are an agent of the devil sent to deceive them.)

What I've learned so far about this problem is that it requires a different approach than facts and evidence. It requires instilling a sense of doubt in what one knows, and how one knows it and modeling an intellectually honest framework for answering such questions.

In the religious example how one knows the truth of claim x is usually answered with faith. They have faith that god helped Noah in every way he needed to get that boat stocked and taken care of. And how do they know their faith is true? To put it one way: They know that they know that they know. It is felt with the same level of conviction that one has asking if they exist.

I hope this was helpful without rambling too much. I am mostly taking from A Manual for Creating Atheists Which I found to be a useful source of information about changing people's minds even outside of religious contexts.


Edit: Please know I'm not trying to hassle anyone about religion here. There are goals worth banding together for and finding ways to help get people out of toxic and counterproductive mindsets is one of them.

This might be a bit controversial, but check out /r/seduction. It has gotten a bad rap on reddit, and a lot of that stems from how historically it tended to embrace highly ritualized and structured pickup techniques (e.g. The Mystery Method) which tended to creep people out, but nowadays it tends to skew much more towards a self-help forum: most of the posts are guys who are trying to be more charming, more interesting, and more confident. If you're looking for one book in particular, I'd highly recommend Models which is both very insightful and very well-written.

Buy "Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism", read it, then compare it 1:1 with everything you see in Social Justice circles.

I shit you not, it's practically a fucking guidebook on how Social Justice circles work, including their protest tactics. And it was written in 1967 about Maoist revolutionary China.

It can be read and re-published today by changing certain words like "counter-revolutionary" with "oppressive" without loss of context. And even then, the allusions to "fascism", "reactionaries", "classism", and "priviliged class" are literally identical.

Social Justice is terrifyingly identical to revolutionary marxism/maoism.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0807842532/?coliid=I271JC8SNVZUZF&colid=2XG41YEC4IZNE&psc=0&ref_=lv_ov_lig_dp_it

OP, buy the following book, and get wise on the specifics of the arguments presented. We all have a good idea why SJW Fundamentalism is bad, but knowing how to present those arguments in a clear, cogent way should go a long way to persuading your peers.

http://www.amazon.com/Kindly-Inquisitors-Attacks-Free-Thought/dp/0226705765

Good luck, and godspeed.

Thanks for bringing this up. The suppression of ZIPRA and the genocide of the Ndebele is almost never talked about, especially not by the 'anti-imperialists' cheerleading the Mugabe regime. Hell, both ZIPRA and ZANU were not above killing civilians for the lulz. Mugabe basically rode the coattails of ZIPRA before purging them and claiming ZANU did all the work. Lolz.

Also I've seen local SJWs announce that referring to Rhodesia is a sure sign of racism...which is hilarious because although Rhodesia was far from perfect, it was NOT an apartheid society like South Africa was. If it wasn't for Ian Smith's UDF, things probably would not have turned out as bad as they did.

tdlr: Mugabe is a real piece of shit, and actually did less to 'liberate' Zimbabwe then Nkomo.

I ran into a Rhodesian vet by pure accident and he recomended this book: http://www.amazon.ca/Mukiwa-A-White-Boy-Africa/dp/0802141927

50 Simple Things You Can Do to Save the Earth

SAVE THE EARTH

Want me to show you some of my fav ME/CA architecture?
*Shah-e Cheragh Mausoleum in Shiraz, Iran ♡꒰⁎ᵉ̷͈ ॣ꒵ ॢᵉ̷͈⁎꒱໊⑅⃝♡
[The Pink Putrajaya Masjid in Malaysia ͛꒰ू ऀ•̥́ꈊ͒ੁ•ૅू॰˳ऀ꒱ ͟͟͞ ̊ ̥ ̥]
(https://www.google.ca/search?q=Putrajaya&es_sm=91&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=uWbQU9H2LoGvyATyzYI4&ved=0CAkQ_AUoAg&biw=1264&bih=628#q=putrajaya%20mosque&revid=1945140219&tbm=isch&imgdii=_)

[The Bamiyan Buddha's ꒰ෆ❛ั ु▿❛ั ु꒱](http://watanafghanistan.tumblr.com/post/13848076735/facts-about-bamiyan-the-buddhas-the-buddha-was)

And that's all I got for now, but I always have had a soft spot for Islamic Art this is a really good book, filled with a lot of history and info ପ꒰⑅°͈꒳°͈꒱੭ु⁾⁾

A few years back, I read Norah Vincent's Self-Made Man, and found it an interesting read.

(I will admit it also simply felt good to read someone acknowledging the difficulties that men face in daily life.)

I was genuinely surprised later on to find out how anti-trans-anybody Vincent turns out to be. I would have thought her experiences would have opened her up to the understanding of how important identity is to people, but some of the things she has apparently said come across as downright scornful of the trans community.

I'm at a loss for understanding where this hateful impetus comes from, and was wondering if you had any comments of your own to add, recommended reading, or the like.

If you don't, that's ok. I've been enjoying your answers to the other questions in this thread. Thanks for taking the time to do so!

If we look into the far future:

All this SJW nonsense rests on the notion of Alterity (Othering) that has taken over the academy. One unintended consequence was victimology and the oppression olympics.

But things are moving on. The book by Badiou that renounces this ethical framework has really gained ground. There are some interesting days ahead.

And this study published last year in PNAS concluded that "human brains cannot be categorized into two distinct classes: male brain/female brain."

I'm not saying that the PNAS study (or any other study -- including the ones you cited) is 100% of reliable or methodologically perfect. I'm not a neuroscientist; I don't know enough about the subject to critically examine the methodology or results of any of these studies. But enough bad science has been done in this field that a psychologist wrote a whole book about it.

Nevertheless, thanks for the links. It's always interesting to read about the science behind trans issues.

For political correctness on college campuses, FIRE founder Greg Lukanioff wrote a book about it (Unlearning Liberty: Campus Censorship and the End of American Debate. Their website mentions University of Pennsylvania's 1993 "water buffalo" incident.

They also interview Donald Downs who says 1987 is noteworthy:

>1987 has been a talked about as sort of a turning point year. It was a year that speech codes started percolating. There was a whole network of administrators around the country and university presidents sort of got on the speech code bandwagon. The climate started changing. You could really feel it. A former student of mine that was in law school at the time said that it was almost like a new weather front coming through that you could feel. (More from him: http://www.mindingthecampus.org/2012/11/firesingesthecensors/#more-878 and here http://www.spiked-online.com/newsite/article/liberal-academics-let-censorship-happen/17549)

I think you would really enjoy this

It's on kindle and on audible. I originally listened to part of it as an audio book, which I had downloaded because I wanted to see if it was good before I bought the kindle version. I might actually still have the audio files, though distributing them would be less than legit.

I was going to ask a pretty similar question re: just how well these ideas apply to an African context. (Basically I think they're lacking in nuance).

On the Irish front, I suspect that /u/jazzarchist will bring up the idea that the Irish weren't always considered "white"

I've had to navigate similar situations in my own life -- if you care about these people, but they're making you miserable, you need to find a way to keep them in your life while ensuring your own happiness and wellbeing. I have a few recommendations that helped me. One note: I don't call them SJWs, I call them hostile extremists. There's a TLDR at the end.

1. Read Kristin Neff's book on self-compassion.
   It might sound like a silly new age concept, but there's a ton of scientific research that shows that there are tangible health benefits to practicing self-compassion. It's different from self-esteem -- it's not about believing that you're awesome, but about recognizing that you're human and that it's okay to be imperfect. Hostile extremists have trouble with compassion. If you intend on keeping them in your life, you will want to cultivate self-compassion so that their emotional abuse bounces right off of you. We're human. We want to be accepted by the people in our lives (and by society at large). Extremists use that against us by employing humiliation, shame, and harassment in order to control our behaviour. They want power over us. Self-compassion helps inoculate us against emotional coercion. When you accept yourself 100%, you don't respond as strongly to shame and humiliation.
   
   
2. Practice metta meditation, also known as loving-kindness meditation. If you intend on keeping these people in your life, you will need to learn how to enjoy their company despite the fact that they can sometimes be raging jackasses. There are people in my life that I love in spite of how awful they often are. Metta helps. It's like lifting weights at the gym -- except instead of building muscles, you're strengthening neural patterns in your brain that turn off your body's fight-or-flight response in the face of threatening situations. After three months of metta meditation, instead of feeling depressed when someone craps all over you, you'll be much more likely to brush it off and get on with the business of living. You'll see the person behind the hate, and it'll soften your response to their hostility and contempt. There's a lot of research that's been done on the benefits of metta meditation. Studies show that metta meditation improves vagal tone, which is, among other things, the bodies "grace under fire" mechanism. Once again, this might seem silly and you'll probably feel like a dork when you first start doing it, but it works. It takes time, though -- you're rewiring your brain's response to stress. It won't happen overnight, but it will happen.
   
   
3. You need to fix your flatmate situation. Either move out, or fix your relationship so that she's no longer creating a hostile environment.
   
   You deserve to live in a healthy environment surrounded by people who respect you, NO MATTER WHAT. If you care about these people, it's fine to want to keep them in your life, but do NOT live with someone who disrespects you. The only reason you should live with people who yell at you/belittle you/look down on you is because you're training to be a buddhist monk/stoic who has perfect emotional control. Not willing to move out? Read John Gottman's book "The Science of Trust". Gottman has spent the last thirty years studying human relationships. He's an expert on why marriages fail (and why they succeed). What's true for marriage is (mostly) true for other kinds of relationships. His book is about marriage, but you can apply some of his advice to your flatmates. If you can't establish a healthy relationship with them based on mutual respect, get out. Don't give hostile people control over your wellbeing -- when you're living with them, it's impossible not to. You should consider living somewhere that will prioritize your emotional wellbeing.
   
   
4. Establish firm boundaries and enforce them ruthlessly.
   
   Find out what you're willing to put up with -- and then shut down anything you're not willing to deal with.
   
   
   TLDR:
   
   1 - Cultivate self-compassion
   
   2 - By practicing metta meditation
   
   3 - Read John Gottman's The Science of Trust, apply his advice to your relationship with your flatmate. If you can't establish a relationship based on mutual respect, move out or kick them out. Do not live in a toxic environment.
   
   4 - Establish boundaries and enforce them ruthlessly.
   

I'm obviously not as into the literature on the psychology of cult-like groups as you, but I am way into the academia side of their arguments (ie, the communicative strategies of the authors they often parrot and whose concepts they systematically rend of nuance).

Anywho, this book is awesome on the creation of what Anderson calls "unlocatable norms" of communication among like-minded groups who emphasize their identity as constituting their belonging. She combines this with an analysis of how appeals to identity and group belonging create the potential for abandonment of a culture of justification; emphasizing the truth of lived experiences over intersubjective concensus and testing others' truth claims, etc.

10/10 book, will recommend wherever it's relevant to the discussion. It's also incredibly lucid, well-written, and features a number of "oh no she didn't" moments where a WWE-quality smackdown is laid in full academic candor.

I agree with everything you've just said.

You might be interested in Fashionable Nonsense.

Edit. Apart from one thing.

> Not just scientists...

I made no comment on the groups of people who were not scientists. When talking about scientists using exact language you may have felt I was commenting on groups that where not scientists but I was not. ;)