I don't get "avoiding the ugliness" when someone dies. We need to acknowledge the ugliness and try to do better.
Acting like "oh, he was trolling", or "it was just a small amount of hating Black people and women" is exactly how you get Steven Miller in the fucking White House.
We need to make it shameful to be bigoted again, and that means calling out the bigotry even in death.
In the context of the above comment I read "avoiding the ugliness" as avoiding incorporating it and continuing it in your own life, not shying away from talking about and addressing it.
This comment actually makes a specific point of calling it out compared to some others here.
Care to elaborate on what flavors of bigotry have been lauded and socially rewarded/what valid viewpoints and statements have been mislabeled as bigotry? I feel like you're being intentionally vague to avoid taking a stance here.
If you don't recognize the patterns of incuriosity, groupthink and misguided confidence that have permeated western society in the last ten years, nothing I say here is going to enlighten you.
Ah, so you're socially conservative, support Trump but probably consider yourself a libertarian, secretly a big fan of the moves ICE has been making? I'm assuming you've used the term "liberal media" unironically in the last year. You didn't storm the capitol, but you consider the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020 to be worse than January 6. Antifa is more of a danger than far-right agitators. Charlie Kirk's death hit hard. No social identity group is more persecuted than white, heterosexual, cisgender Christian men.
Any of those resonate? You're welcome to correct me.
EDIT: in light of another reply to this same thread I recognize that much of this comment was written sneeringly. I apologize for the snark and am leaving it as is in the interest of transparency.
Out of respect for your effort to keep it civil, I'll answer some of that:
I'm a liberal as defined up until 2012 or so.
Never been socially conservative at all. I'm not a libertarian, as I do support some social safety nets. That being the case, I am strongly against open borders and unchecked fraud.
You're actually right about a lot of the rest (minus the snark.)
Hell yeah I love being right. Thank you for being civil in response.
Also I was not implying that you are a libertarian, I don’t think that there are many true libertarians. I have just met so many fiscal conservatives who consider themselves to be libertarians and use it as an identifier because they feel libertarians are more intellectually respected than conservatives (which is very funny imo)
First of all, OP declined to elaborate and resorted to seizing the apparent moral high ground instead of defending their claims. I felt that was an invitation for conjecture.
Secondly, I noted that my comment was made in less than good faith in the edit I left. I stand by the underlying concepts though. It is my impression that OP is a conservative who is afraid to come out as such in a public forum. This bias (I do not use the word pejoratively here) influences their opinion they shared.
Third, I invited OP to illustrate where I am wrong. When someone makes strong statements about the morality of a group and refuses to share their own beliefs on the subject, I believe it’s appropriate to assume they are biased in some way. If I say “all devs are brain dead keyboard monkeys” and I’m a dev, that context is important to understand my statement. Based on Capt’s comment, I made the above assumptions and shared them as I was feeling snarky and felt that they (if true) would be relevant to the larger discussion.
Finally, I'm sure I disagree with you on many things but we can disagree without being rude.
https://www.cgdev.org/blog/update-lives-lost-usaid-cuts
"lives lost based on the decline in outlays (current spending) may be in the range of 500,000 to 1,000,000 and potential lives lost based on the decline in obligations (commitments to future spending) are between 670,000 and 1,600,000."
What is your best estimate of deaths due to "woke" or whatever you consider the scourge of the "past decade" to be?
How many visas revoked due to the holder being not woke enough? How many people were deported from the US for being insufficiently woke? And so on. "Woke" may not be what you meant. Whatever you meant, present your measure and data.
Sure. People only lost their jobs and what not ( which in US means.. well, slow, and without health insurance, likely unpleasant demise ). Totally different. On this very forum, I had someone tell me in a very subtle way that it is a good idea that I stay quiet if I know what is good to me. But pendulum swings. It always does. Only difference is,we are forcing people to live up to the world they have ushered in. I hope you said thank you, because wokeness got you to this very spot.
On the one hand ~1,000,000 deaths and on the other hand some people lost their jobs and you got a mean comment online?
> lost their jobs ... which in US means ... slow, and without health insurance, likely unpleasant demise
Those you would label "woke" are famously supporters of universal health care. Universal as in would cover everyone including every single Jan 6 participant. On the one hand people striving for health care for all. On the other hand https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/nov/20/hospitals-s...
> we are forcing people to live up to the world they have ushered in
No, wht you are doing is supporting an administration killing ~1,000,000 people and taking away health care from everyone, including people in the group you identify with.
<< Those you would label "woke" are famously supporters of universal health care.
Here is a problem of sorts. Some of us happen to live in the real world. Our lives do not exactly depend on some imaginary future state we advocate for. As such, a threat to alter my habitat now is of bigger import as opposed to some potential future benefit. Can you understand that perspective?
And that is before I remember that 'your' ( quotation very much intended, because we both know it is not yours; you may not even know why you aligned with it ) side would not exactly be above, say, denying said universal healthcare to republicans..
<< No, wht you are doing is supporting an administration killing ~1,000,000 people
<< On the one hand ~1,000,000 deaths and on the other hand some people lost their jobs and you got a mean comment online?
Eh.. hyperbole will not get you far here. May I refer to you site FAQ? I can't tell if I am wasting my time with you or not.
> denying said universal healthcare to republicans
How many do you claim hold that view? Can you cite some prominent examples? I want health care for all, including you.
> hyperbole
I posted https://www.cgdev.org/blog/update-lives-lost-usaid-cuts "lives lost based on the decline in outlays (current spending) may be in the range of 500,000 to 1,000,000 and potential lives lost based on the decline in obligations (commitments to future spending) are between 670,000 and 1,600,000."
and asked for data on the original "balancing out claim". You jumped in with mumblings of some unspecified number of lost jobs and vague claims about said job losers demise and then one mean online comment to you. That's where we're at, that's the tally based on the data you provided.
You posted a blog of some organization unhappy about the cuts. Not exactly a gold standard for unbiased opinions. YOu want to convince me? Do your own calculations. Show me your work. Show that you can think critically. Am I not seeing that now.
<< You jumped in with mumblings of some unspecified number of lost jobs and vague claims about said job losers demise and then one mean online comment to you.
So ... you can understand my perspective, but choose to minimize it. I guess its ok. At least you are honest about effectively saying 'anyone who complains about it is a loser'. I will admit that it does not sound like the best way to win hearts and minds, but what do I know.
I would like to say that you have achieved nothing by not convincing me, but you did manage to do something remarkable. You actually motivated me to vote for a republican this election cycle. I suppose I am no longer center.
Agree with this. I didn’t agree with it in the past, but I can see now that it has caused the issue you raise. I don’t know if this is a great insight, but one reason I think people have not connected the results (Stephen Millers in the White House) back to the action (not speaking ill of the dead) is because THEY are not the ones affected. When Stephen Miller is in the White House, it’s all the non white people - including legal immigrants and naturalized citizens and citizens born here - that are living in fear of where the administration will go. I doubt others are aware that there is this fear, or even that the DHS’s official account tweets out threats to deport a third of the country.
They didn't, though. Plenty of people who had one reputation at their death have had that reputation change over time, especially with more information and awareness of what they did. Sometimes their reputations improve, sometimes they decline.
Speaking only positively about people distorts the reality.
Reputation guides your behavior toward that person. But they're no longer around. There is no behavior toward them. They're gone. Their reputation is no longer relevant.
> Reputation guides your behavior toward that person. But they're no longer around. There is no behavior toward them. They're gone. Their reputation is no longer relevant.
It also culturally informs someone's perceived suitability as a role model. It doesn't matter to the dead person if they are held in high or low esteem, but it may matter to people in their formative stages deciding whose influence they follow and whose they shun.
Humanity and civilization are defined by going beyond any base instincts.
Even if you're correct (I don't agree), consider other things: if you look at someone and your body has an instinctive desire to have sex with them, you are obligated to realize that just doing so without regard for consent or other things is not OK. If you don't realize that and proceed based on instinct, that's rape.
You can feel whatever instincts you want. If you feel bad or harmful ones, you should acknowledge it. It doesn't really matter if you feel guilty or shame or whatever you want to call it, but you should absolutely internally recognize that these things are *wrong*.
>Humanity and civilization are defined by going beyond any base instincts.
Civilization is nothing more than "lives in cities". That's it. That's what the science of anthropology has to say on the matter. It's not even that big of a deal, you'd much rather be involved with some hunter-gatherer living in a tent who had noble ideas and a sense of fairness than with most of the very "civilized" people who live in Oklahoma City. Why?
You don't share their values. Humanity, for all its potential, does not scale beyond Dunbar's number, and attempts to do so have resulted in horrors beyond comprehension on a regular, cyclical basis, for many thousands of years. You're quite certain that your values should win out and exterminate their values (and if they're not enlightened enough to just let their values be obliterated, they too can be exterminated with them... leftists are, right now, trying to work up the nerve to go on the attack, we've both seen the internet messages and not all of them are russian bots).
> If you feel bad or harmful ones, you should acknowledge it.
I do. I like to acknowledge it. I despise dishonesty, but most of all I despise self-deception. But sometimes I need to keep my mouth shut, because others would be quick to punish me for words. For spoken-aloud thoughts. And it causes distress.
>but you should absolutely internally recognize that these things are wrong.
Why? What makes those things wrong? Can you explain, objectively and empirically what makes it wrong? From the other set of values (see above), you're the one with wrong thoughts, wrong feelings, and wrong desires.
What you really mean, but don't have the words to say, is that you want me to be one with your group. To accept its set of group-beliefs, to espouse no dissent (or at least below some tiny, acceptable threshold), and to support your causes. But I've seen what sort of world you want to make, and I do not want to live in that world. I do not think your group survives, even should it win.
The world I want might well have room in it for other peoples. They could do as they want, peaceful (distant) coexistence. Your world doesn't have any room in it for me.
Your strategy of indoctrinating young children in public education was working. It was absolutely foolproof, I think, none could fight against it. But then someone managed to sneak in behind its armor, to drop the torpedo in that trench, and now your death star blew up. I'm not even sure anyone on the left has noticed how bad this is for your movement.
If Trump were a bank robber and no one reported the bank robberies to police, but years later decided to "come out" and tell of how he robbed banks no reasonable person would think he was a bank robber based on that unfounded, unreported, unconvicted accusation.
But rape is the special crime, more special than any other, and the accusation should be enough, right? For that matter, we might even say women who don't report rape to the authorities in a timely manner are denying the accused the right to fight the allegations properly in court, so that the unsubstantiated allegations stain their reputation forever.
The obvious difference is that bank robberies tend to have a lot more witnesses and recordings proving the robbery took place at all, let alone the persons involved.
The other obvious difference is that bank robberies don't have a long history of dismissal with excuses like “well the bank was asking to get robbed; look what it's wearing” or “the bank's husband doesn't need consent to take money out of it” or “it doesn't count as a stick-up if the bank is closed for the night”.
> leftists are, right now, trying to work up the nerve to go on the attack, we've both seen the internet messages and not all of them are russian bots
That's the funniest thing I've read in weeks. Leftists cannot get the nerve to band together politically on any kind of consistent basis. This is a persistent complaint within left-leaning political forums, "The Democrats are Spineless".
The idea that they are capable of banding together to commit some kind of political genocide is... hilarious.
You don't have to take my word for it. You can go hang out with some leftists yourself and see. If you think internet forums are a bit much and you think you'll get banned (first: behave, don't pick fights), you can try a Unitarian church service.
>That's the funniest thing I've read in weeks. Leftists cannot get the nerve to band together politically on any kind of consistent basis. T
That could be counter-productive. The left wants "lone wolves" doing this stuff. Banding together and coordinate action would go too far, it would implicate everyone. But if a lone wolf goes too far, they can plead ignorance and pretend that they didn't want that!
And it's unneeded. They just need to goad some of their true believers into "connecting the dots" and taking this burden on themselves. Leave little bread crumbs lying around so they have everything they need. "Look at them they wear masks!" is followed a week later by "here's the list of all their names, photos, and home addresses". Plausibly deniable. "We didn't want them murdered sleeping in their beds, just wanted to protest in front of their homes".
>You don't have to take my word for it.
No need to worry about that. It's not your statements of facts that bother me, but your conclusions and interpretations.
>you can try a Unitarian church service.
It might shock you to learn that I was in one, recently. It was enlightening. If by enlightening I can mean disgusting.
> That could be counter-productive. The left wants "lone wolves" doing this stuff. Banding together and coordinate action would go too far, it would implicate everyone. But if a lone wolf goes too far, they can plead ignorance and pretend that they didn't want that!
You're describing what they call "stochastic terrorism". To the extent that the left wing practices it (and sure, some do), they learned from the best - the right wing.
This is why overwhelmingly domestic terrorism is a right wing phenomena. It's juuust starting to change this past year with a few attacks which plausibly at least were on the left-wing spectrum. The small town I live in has a group which practices this - any place which hosts any kind of pro-LGBT even gets protested, and then vandalized or receives bomb threats. The last year has been better, but it was A Thing People Were Talking About all over the state for a few years.
But to address the point. There may be base instincts to which we are all subject. But that doesn't mean we should embrace them or proudly wear them as a badge. Violence is entirely natural. And yet most will agree it should not be embraced. Someone proudly declaring themselves as violent will (and should!) be judged harshly. I say the same holds true for racism, whether it is "natural" or not.
Much (all?) of civilisational progress is characterised by moving away from the natural state to a higher strata. The civil part of civilization is entirely unnatural
What's silly about it? I am neither unnatural nor supernatural, and my nature is who I am.
>But that doesn't mean we should embrace them or proudly wear them as a badge.
Maybe. But it also means that I shouldn't be ashamed of them or try to suppress myself into neuroticism. And since the left has made a point of that for decades now, has tried to bully people into doing just that, the pendulum was primed to swing the other way. So yeh, I think I will be proud. It feels good.
>Violence is entirely natural.
It is, but also something to be avoided unless there is no other reasonable option. I would recommend not trying to drive an SUV over the top of me. That's caused some strife recently. I can remain nonviolent indefinitely.
Apologies I shouldn't have said "silly", that's too charged. More I don't think it's a good argument or justification. I think the rest of my comment outlines, along with counterexamples, why I think that.
Making this some left-right polemic has made me not want to continue this conversation further
> If that were true, how could it be anything but ok? Should I feel guilty because I evolved from monkeys and carry around the leftist equivalent of original sin?
I think that there's a gap between "how can it be anything but OK" and "should I feel guilty." There are plenty of things that aren't OK, but about which you don't need to feel guilty. Should you feel guilty that your body intrinsically craves foods that aren't good for you? I'd say that no purpose is served by feeling that way, but that doesn't mean that it's healthy to indulge those cravings.
I'm missing the well-reasoned argument with subtlety. It sounds like parent is saying that "X is a natural product of evolution and hardwired" so "X must be ok".
I don't see subtlety here. As others pointed, the story of human civilization is one long arc of going against our base animal instincts in order to build a society that benefits everyone.
>As others pointed, the story of human civilization is one long arc of going against our base animal instincts in order to build a society that benefits everyone.
I'd add that it's cooperation and the ability to moderate impulsive behavior that, over the long term, differentiates us from our closest primate relatives, the chimpanzee.
If we were just our base instincts and nothing more, we wouldn't be having this conversation as we'd likely have died out, because our ability to accept and work together with each other allowed us to flourish despite the threats of predation, climate change, natural disasters and other challenges.
As such, making the argument that we're "hardwired" to hate and fear our fellow humans doesn't make sense, whether that argument is an intellectual one or an evolutionary one.
I feel sorry for folks who feel so isolated that they can't understand just how closely related we all are. It must be quite lonely.
>The best we can do for the dead is remember them as they were, good and bad, not demonize them nor write hagiographies for them
I agree with your conclusion, but not with your premise.
We can't "do" anything for the dead. They're dead. What's more, since they're dead they don't care what we do or say because they're, you know, dead.
Anything we might do or say in reference to dead folks is for the benefit of the living and has nothing to do with the dead.
That said, you're absolutely right. We should remember folks for who they were -- warts and all -- to give the living perspective both on the dead and the dead past.
Respect is earned by your actions and deeds, not by your death.
When someone I know dies, I speak frankly about them, good or bad, because to do otherwise is a lie, and the most disrespectful thing to do is to misrepresent a person who no longer can represent themselves.
Scott Adams did what he did, that's surely not in question. Honor his life by speaking frankly about how he affected oneself and others, good or bad. Let the chips fall where they may.
We have made our society shameless. Pornographers, gamblers, and truly creepy people are told that it's fine to be what they are. I dunno, maybe that really is the case. But having abandoned shame as a method of social cohesion, you don't get to resurrect it for those things you dislike. The two-edged sword cuts both ways.
I did not follow the Scott Adams brouhaha when it happened, and vaguely I somehow get the impression it's like the Orson Scott Card thing. I'm afraid to check for fear that when I do I will find there was nothing he should've been ashamed for. People use the word "bigot" to mean things I can't seem to categories as bigotry.
Are you saying that Scott Adams was right and, say, white people _should_ avoid black people? Or are you saying that we shouldn't remember how awful people were once they die?
What exactly was the bad stuff? He was insensitive about empirical reality or he was literally wrong about something in the sense of being very confident about something despite having little data? Or something else? I only remember the cartons really but was aware some people seemed to be irked about him recently.
Some random internet poll said many people of race A agreed it was "not OK" to be a person of race B. Adams said if that were true, then people of race B should probably not hang out with people of race A that thought it was not OK to be race B. The internet did its thing and quoted him out of context, and tried to cancel him. He dug in his heels and doubled down. He also liked a certain president that many dislike. And here we are.
> The internet did its thing and quoted him out of context
Let's not act like this is some case of out of context quotes. Here's the actual quote for people to decide for themselves:
"I'm going to back off from being helpful to Black America because it doesn't seem like it pays off. I get called a racist. That's the only outcome. It makes no sense to help Black Americans if you're white. It's over. Don't even think it's worth trying. I'm not saying start a war or do anything bad. Nothing like that. I'm just saying get away. Just get away."
Also, no one even tries to argue that he's wrong. Does one "race" trying to "help" another ever really "pay off"? Debating that question would actually be pretty interesting.
I was directly responding and replying to jchallis, but a mod detached my comment from its parent and now it makes less sense without the proper context. Great job.
The moderation on this site is really such garbage. Filled with all kinds of weird and subtle manipulation, almost never openly acknowledged and they are more than happy to gaslight you when you confront them about it.
Is "calling out the bigotry" useful? I feel like the Internet has been used for this purpose pretty consistently for the last 15 years. Is it effective? Is there less bigotry now than before?
I would argue it has not in fact been useful, that making it shameful hasn't reduced it, and that calling it out in death is not useful in reducing it. I think we do it because it's easier than doing something useful and it makes us feel good.
I hate bigotry as well. I encourage to do something IRL about it.
Think about all the things people have done in the real world the last 50 years to combat bigotry. During the civil rights movement of the 60s, black people sat at segregated lunch counters and marched peacefully in the street, and were consequently spat on and attacked by white mobs, beaten by police, sprayed with fire hoses, attacked by dogs, etc.
In the last 10 years, the modern black lives matter movement has triggered similar violent backlashes, with every public gathering drawing a militarized police response and hateful counter-protesters. On a policy level, even the most milquetoast corporate initiatives to consider applications and promotions from diverse candidates of equal merit are now being slandered and attacked. In education, acknowledgment of historical racial and gender inequality is under heavy censorship pressure.
It really does seem like the more effective we are at acting IRL, the greater the backlash is going to be.
I agree with the sentiment. I think timing is pretty important, though, and a cooling-off period might be a kind gesture for his loved ones.
I posit that self-reflection might be a better avenue to understanding this world where Steven Miller is in the White House, at least in the immediate. Personally, I stopped reading Dilbert quite a while before he cancelled himself, just because it wasn't available in a medium that worked for me. I do have a couple books on the shelf of old Dilbert comics and I considered getting rid of them when the racism came out. I cracked one open and laughed out loud at a handful of the comics and so the books are still in my house. I abhor racism, but he already got my money. At least for me, and maybe I'm damaged, I still laugh at some of the comics, even after I knew he was a jerk. I think if one of my black friends told me he was offended that I had those books, I'd get rid of them.
How about Harry Potter? I'm certain that there are some folks here who have been hurt by Rowling's statements and I'm also certain that there are some folks here that would sacrifice a limb to live in the Harry Potter universe. Do you separate the artist from the art or what's the rational thing? I have the Harry Potter books on my shelf, I've actually read them out loud to my children. They also are aware of LGTBQ issues, they know and are around LGTBQ people and we have had conversations about those issues. Is that enough? Should one of my kids pick up the Dilbert books, I have a conversation locked and loaded and I already know that I've raised them to be anti-racism. I don't know that I'm super eager to put more money in to J. K.'s pocket, I probably won't go to Disney Harry Potter Land or whatever they come up with but I've bought and read the books and I haven't burned them.
And make no mistake, had I known he was a biggot in 1995, I don't think I would have continued reading Dilbert or ever bought books. The problem is it made me laugh, then years later I found out he was a jerk and I still laugh at the comics, I remember laughing the first time I read some of them, and I think of that more when I re-read them than I think about Scott Adams. Fact is, he still made me laugh all those years ago, I can't put that back in the bottle, it happened.
I think this is a question of who you're talking to, and is something you have to evaluate on a case-by-case basis.
If the person/people you're speaking with, already followed this public figure, or was forced by society to be aware of the life of this public figure at all times — and so were surely also aware of the bad turn that person's career/life took — then to your audience, the ugliness would have already been long acknowledged. To your audience, the ugliness may be the only thing anyone has spoken about in reference to the public figure for a long time.
And, for an audience who became aware of the public figure a bit later on in their lives, the bad stuff might be all they know about them! (Honestly, there are more than a few celebrities that I personally know only as a subject of ongoing public resentment, with no understanding of what made them a celebrity in the first place.)
In both of these cases, if this is your audience, then there's no point to carrying on the "this is a bad person" reminders during the (usually very short!) mourning period that a public figure gets. They already know.
On the other hand, if you presume someone who has no idea who a certain person is, and who is only hearing about them in the context of their death — then yes, sure, remind away.
I think, given the audience of "people in a comment thread on Hacker News about the death of Scott Adams", people here are likely extremely aware of who Scott Adams is.
---
That said, on another note, I have a personal philosophy around "celebrations of life", that I formed after deciding how to respond to the death of my own father, himself a very complicated man.
People generally take the period immediately after someone's death as a chance to put any kind of ongoing negative feelings toward someone on pause for just a moment, to celebrate whatever positive contributions a person made, and extract whatever positive lessons can be learned from those contributions.
Note that the dead have no way of benefitting from this. They're dead!
If you pay close attention, most of a community does after the death of one of its members, or a society does after the death of a public figure... isn't really a veneration; there is no respect or face given. Rather, what we're doing with our words, is something very much like what the deceased's family are doing with their hands: digging through the estate of the deceased to find things of value to keep, while discarding the rest. Finding the pearls amongst the mud, washing them off, and taking them home.
Certainly, sometimes the only pearl that can be found is a lesson about the kind of person you should strive not to be. But often, there's at least something useful you can take from someone's life — something society doesn't deserve to lose grasp of, just because it was made by or associated with someone we had become soured on.
I think it's important to note that if we don't manage to agree to a specific moment to all mutually be okay with doing this "examination of the positive products of this person's life" — which especially implies "staying temporarily silent about the person's shortcomings so as to make space for that examination"... then that moment can never happen. And that's what leads to a great cultural loss of those things that, due to their association with the person, were gradually becoming forgotten.
Nobody (save for perhaps a few devoutly religious people) argues that you should never speak ill of the dead. People really just want that one moment — perhaps a week or two long? — to calmly dredge up and leaf through the deceased's legacy like it's a discount bin at a record store, without having to defend themselves at each step of that process from constant accusations that they're "celebrating a bad person."
And it is our current societal policy that "right after you die" is when people should be allowed that one moment.
Feel free to call out Adams' bigotry a week from now! The story will still be fresh on people's minds even then.
But by giving them a moment first, people will be able to find the space to finally feel it's safe to reminisce about how e.g. they have a fond memory of being gifted a page-a-day Dilbert calendar by their uncle — fundamentally a story about how that helped them to understand and bond with their uncle, not a story about Adams — which wouldn't normally be able to be aired, because it would nevertheless summon someone to remind everyone that the author is a bigot.
This is a post about a public figure who was extremely public about their absolutely horrible views. Not addressing that would be weird.
And I was responding to a comment that suggested avoiding that by saying that we shouldn't. Hardly random.
As for US politics - it's quite obvious that ignoring or tolerating racism and xenophobia has lead to more bigots and assholes feeling comfortable expressing their views publicly. I think we should shame them out of the public sphere again. That includes talking about someone's abject vileness when they die, like with Scott Adams.
You, on the other hand, bring up a random unrelated website. Which is random?
Personally, I despise an outspoken bigot like Scott Adams more when they die, not less, because now their window for growth and repentance has closed. The grotesqueness they harbored becomes permanently tied to their legacy.
I think there's a big difference between the following:
- enjoying the work of an unrepentant bigot who died hundreds of years ago, whose work is in the public domain, who does not materially benefit from your spectatorship (what with them being dead and all)
- enjoying the work of an unrepentant bigot who is alive today, whose work they have ownership of, who materially benefits from your spectatorship
- enjoying the work of an unrepentant bigot who died mere minutes ago, whose work is owned by their estate, whose heirs materially benefit from your spectatorship
I think the first category is fine, the second category is unambiguously not fine, and the third category is ambiguous, but I would err on the side of "don't consume".
I personally would go with no, because you're still propagating their cultural product. One rarely consumes media with the intention of keeping it a secret; half the point of watching a movie or tv show is to talk about it. The entire sociological function of celebrities is that we talk about them. "I am doing research on Scott Adams and I want to consume some Dilbert as a research device", um, sure, I guess, I dunno, why are you doing research on a recently dead bigot, what is the purpose of that. etc.
I'm not -your- conscience, I can only explain my own. To me? No, that's not fine.
First of all, I think we can definitely say that certain words are bad. if somebody is saying that they want to have sex with a child, we can tell them this is something bad and that we don't agree with this.
And pretty much all countries in the world limit what we can say. You're not allowed in the US to, for example, threaten the US president with murder, even if it's just words.
Laws consist of words, but making a law is something different than just saying something. It is an act, and indeed American laws are often (or always?) called Acts.
In any period of history, there are people who know things are wrong and are vocal about it. There are artists prior to the Civil Rights Era that were not bigots. The problem you have is the artists that were celebrated AT THAT TIME which we know about were also those accepted by the status quo which allowed them to be known.
People knew slavery was wrong when slavery was happening. People knew child labor was wrong when child labor was happening. People knew segregation was wrong when segregation was happening. Those people were not rewarded by society.
Enjoy Bach's music all you want, but when I read his biography those difficult details better be in there, and if that ruins his music for you that's on you.
What's wrong with this tho? Maybe we should stop uplifting people when we find out they are nasty individuals. Acting like there aren't also artists that are good people is odd, these are the ones deserving our attention.
FWIW, I use to be a big fan of Crystal Castles (like listening to 4+ hours a day for close to a decade). It was a core part of my culture diet. Once it was known that Ethan Kath was a sexual predator that groomed teenage girls, I simply stopped listening or talking about them ever.
Why is this hard? IDK, it really feels like people put too much of their identity into cultural objects when they lack real communities and people in their lives.
Also throwing it out there, I don't really know much about Scott Adams (or his work for that matter). Dilbert comics weren't widespread memes on the phpBB forums I'd post on throughout the 00s and 10s.
The thing that is wrong about it is that the purity spiral may get out of control and result in wholesale purging of art, Iconoclast-style (or perhaps Cultural Revolution-style).
I don't trust people with an instinct to purge history. They rarely know when to stop.
Plus, standards change a lot. Picasso had a teenage mistress. It wasn't as scandalous back then. Should we really be so arrogant as to push our current standards on the entire humanity that once was? If yes, we will be obliterated by the next generation that applies the same logic to us, only with a different set of taboos.
"Acknowledge the ugliness and try to do better" and purging art and history are different things. The comment you replied to above did not call for a purging of Adams' work or life from history.
It seems to me that, even here in this discussion, people call for avoiding work of such authors. Would that entail, say, pressure on galleries not to show such art? If so, that is more than half way to a purge.
People often like to conflate criticism and personal choice with censorship, but they're not the same.
We're allowed to avoid consuming the work of artists we think are horrible humans. We're allowed to encourage others to do that too even. None of that is purging or censorship.
That's not purging at all, words have meaning. If you grep my comment you might be encountering a massive bug if you found the word purge.
You can still stream all of Crystal Castles songs on every platform, you can still buy their music, their albums still have hundreds of seeders on trackers. Just as I'm sure you can buy your Dilbert books.
Telling people to maybe look up to better humans, which it needs to be stated have always existed and aren't a modern invention, should be encouraged.
One of the other threads in here an OP states that we should use this moment to reflect and do better in our own lives, what is wrong with this viewpoint?
We've seen countless examples of people getting sucked into social media holes and I've yet to encounter a single case where this has ever led to healthy outcomes.
The purity spiral on the other side is already batshit. "If you support that we're going to say you're bad and not buy your work" is quite a way from widespread physical and media violence.
Adams was a mediocre bureaucrat who discovered he could make a living as a competent comedian. His success at that persuaded him that he was an Important Moral Authority.
He started as a banker and ended as a self-harming prosperity preacher - not exactly a rare archetype in the US.
The funny parts were funny. The rest, not so much.
"His success at that persuaded him that he was an Important Moral Authority."
Isn't this rather common in artists? Bono of U2 comes to mind as a very pronounced example.
The problem with being a well-known artist is that you have way too many sycophants. Imagine getting dozens of ChatGPT-like fawning messages every day, but from real people, and not just over e-mail, but whenever you stray out of your house and someone recognizes you.
That will mess with self-image of almost everyone except the most stoic personalities.
My TL;DR Choosing not to financially support a creator for ethical seasons makes sense as an ethical stance. But that doesn't mean the media we like needs to always reflect our values.
I see where you’re coming from. But I’d argue that there’s broad consensus that his bigotry at the end was bad. So in this one moment, when we’ve just learned that he’s died, we can recall the good as well as the bad.
It is shameful to have those views. But perhaps we can bring it up tomorrow rather than right this minute.
'Don't speak ill of the dead' comes from an era where everyone genuinely believed that the dead could haunt you from the grave.
It continues to have prominance in our society due to inertia and the fact that some people want a positive legacy to endure long after they pass regardless of whether or not they did anything in life to deserve that kind of legacy.
As the person you're replying to wrote it better than I ever could I'll write what they just shared becauase I think it's worth repeating, "taking inventory is harder than eulogizing or denouncing. But it’s more honest."
We should strive for honesty in these kinds of discussions over sensitivity.
In the modern era it's usually said because the dead person cannot defend himself.
Now, Adams had plenty of opportunities to defend/explain his comments on certain issues, and he did not satisfy many people with those or perhaps dug himself in deeper (I myself really only know him from Dilbert in the 1990s, and am only superficially aware of anything controversial he did/said outside of that).
But I don't see anyone saying anything about him now that was not being said when he was alive.
When I was a young man my mother did use that but explained ill more in the sense of unfair/unkind. I guess as an adult you realize everyone ends up living a somewhat complicated existence, and it's easier (maybe even sometimes safer) to say this person was bad than it is to say this person did unacceptable things.
No. Disbelief has always been around. That there is no Church of Disbelief is a feature not a bug. Not speaking ill of the dead has a range of connotations, probably most prominent being avoiding easy targets that can't defend themselves. Want to show righteousness and strength of conviction? Then try a live target. There are many.
Acting like "oh, he was trolling", or "it was just a small amount of hating Black people and women" is exactly how you get Steven Miller in the fucking White House.
We need to make it shameful to be bigoted again, and that means calling out the bigotry even in death.