Refried Beans With Tortillas

I made myself some refried beans with the beans I made yesterday and am enjoying them with some tortilla chips.  This looks like my last bag of tortilla chips that I just opened, so I hope I can get some more soon.

Social Justice

While I agree wholeheartedly with the purpose of social justice, I question a lot of the 'community norms' that have grown up around it which I think are often harmful to actually accomplishing the goals in question.  One reason I'm often reluctant to speak publicly about a lot of issues, in fact, is because I don't want to perpetuate a lot of those norms, but I think it's a bit much for someone who has such a limited experience with social situations as I do to come up with good replacements in that regard.  And yet that's exactly what I need to do, I feel, in a lot of cases. Also, a lot of times, my full response to something would be something along the lines of 'you have a point, but...' and I often don't think that the things after the comma are likely to be well-received. Both because pushback tends to be less well-received in general and because I don't really know...how to present them.

The Purpose of Understanding A Perspective is Not Only, Or Even Primarily, Agreement

I think it's difficult, if not impossible, to understand a point of view primarily by having people who are opposed to it explain that point of view.  Which is not to say that if someone read a point of view from the source they would necessarily find it sympathetic or even comprehensible.  But that will tell a person what that point of view actually *is* at the least, rather than subjecting it to a tortured game of telephone beforehand.  One of the questions I think any person should continually be asking themselves is 'Why do people disagree with me?  Why do people think X or Y or Z?'  My philosophy is that to reliably get that answer, you have to get it from the source--if it's a philosophy you disagree with, you have to read the actual philosopher who espouses (or espoused) it.  If it's an individual you're concerned with, well, then you can only really understand that person's point of view by reading or hearing what that *specific* individual has to say about it (even if they share some common philosophy, people may interpret things differently, after all).  This can, of course, be really hard.  But it doesn't change the necessity of it for understanding.  This is one of the things I think gets missed a lot when people refute some easily refutable arguments against their position and proceed to assume those arguments are all there is to any opposing position.

The All-Important Post Title

The reason I go out of my way to title my posts here on Dreamwidth, is it makes it easier for me to find posts later on, and because Dreamwidth lists posts by title in the page summary.  Also I always have this immense desire to categorize and organize anything I've written, lol.