All_Lives_DoNot_Matter.md 5.3 KB
All Lives Don't Matter
The strange and interesting matter of all lives matter and black lives matter.
It seems that, every once in a while, we see Social Media allow a hashtag to trend which goes against what's deemed acceptable by popular culture. The AllLivesMatter hashtag, for example, trends at a tim when there has already been incessant conflict over compeling people to participate in the proclaiming of BlackLivesMatter, particualrly at a time when there is a BlackLivesMatter organization whose fundamental tenets are mostly unknown by many of its participants and supporters.
When such a thing happens, particularly when it's something so blatantly sensitive, then one must wonder why the platform allows it to trend. It's similar to when Canada has hashtags which attack or demean the current sitting Prime Minister of Woke: at first you thinking: "Oh, we're allowing this for a plurality of views".
But when you look at the posts, the majority of them are attacking those who would want to make the claims of the hashtag.
It's almost as though the hashtag is trending to silence the view that might otherwise be organically propagated through that hashtag, effectively silencing out those from disseminating their particular ideas. A cursory glance of the most recent activity might have a greater % likelihood of falling on the oppositional viewpoint. Its intended use having been hijacked such as to have the opposing effect, dismissing participation in disseminating the original idea.
This sort of phenomenon is, of course, impossible to predict, and there any number of reasonable explanations as to why it might be observed by happenstance, having nothing to do with reactive software and machine learning, or even homegrown automation projects by curious software programmers. It's certainly not only activists who organically attempt to take control of a hashtag (though there are many, and this does occur and might even cause the same observed effect).
There is good reason to expect that the more control you have over a system, the broader aspects of its use that begin to be considered. A technologist might refer to it as high-level behaviour, but it is, in any case, a desired outcome with complex requirements. That these requirements can be met is only possible because of a highly developed and mature arrangement of simpler capabilities that are well integrated.
With the understanding that this standard can be met, and knowing that software companies have been tasked with curating their content in order to negotiate and discriminate misinformation, we should expect that such mechanisms are operating as per a range of possible compositely human-enhanced automated behaviours that are completely opaque to the user, and that it can affect every piece of content they view.
We should also understand that any mechanism for curating the flow of information for a broad range of persons is not likely to be have been formulated out of a belief in individualism, liberty or human freedom. If investment into such a mechanism is to have occurred, and its indicated interests can be discovered, it's far more likely that they interests are collectivist in nature. And for any collectivist interest, there can only be two types of humans, those that are part of same group and those who are not.
This is not an affirmation to disregard the truth that humans do identify groups and have a sensory experience which would cause them to feel a sense of whether they belong in a group with other humans, but a comment on the fact that collectivism necessarily requires the identification of group ascription in the consideration of any person. Collectivism demands this and cannot function with it, thus agreement to pursue use of collectivism is the explicit declaration that one favours group distinction in their worldview.
It is interesting that a collectivist uprising would be prone to kill those who might value life in general, when their goal is to ensure that particular lives are being valued more. You can't suppress the proclaiming that all lives matter because of a desire to only allow statements of support for one particular group/race of human lives without also expressing a desire to devalue some other lives, even if you assume that there is a particular challenge which is unfairly applied to one group.
The post modernist will say that a choice of attention or focus is always being made, and that it also causes expresses a valence for the lives of particular groups, and that suppression can be a natural consequence, but such a consequence is implicit in constrast with a firm and explicit declaration which calls into question the degree to which cerain lives are to be valued in the present framing.
To force everyone to agree with you is intolerance and a sure-sign of fascistic tendencies. That people embrace this so openly, especially under the guise of being anti-fascist, is difficult to contend with because the deduction that supports this mode of behaviour is to evalue some lives, particularly through race and colour.
One might say that this would assume this would lead to a more peaceful and just society, but one should acknowledge that the conception of a peaceful and just society which includes such a focus of concern must also be an agreement to maintain the distinction which makes the concern possible. Which is, in this case, group differences.