Honestly identity politics is the growing pains of becoming a minority majority nation.
“Identity politics” makes sense when there is a very clear division between minority groups and majority groups. The more mixed up everyone becomes, the less sure the former majority is going to be that they don’t have an “identity”. And when they start to assert that identity, minority groups are going to freak out because the concept of “identity” is supposed to be in contrast with a majority.
In other words, i’m fine with “identity politics” and think raising issues of systemic injustice are important. Almost inevitably however the knock-on consequence of this is going to be white identity as an actual political movement.
The new Spider-Man video game came out for PlayStation 4 last week, and I was eager to spend a chunk of my weekend playing it. Some things I immensely enjoyed during my few hours of play time: web swinging, jumping off buildings, web swinging, whispering “whoa, that looks just like the real Empire State Building,” and web swinging. One thing I definitely did not enjoy is how the game turns Spider-Man into a friggin’ cop!
Granted, I am only a few hours into the game, but so far the primary objective boils down to Help The Cops. Not just any cops, either, but the NYPD specifically, because the game takes place in a true-to-life rendering of New York City. It’s dumb to expect video games to be responsible reflections of real life, but it is also impossible, for me at least, to not feel some ickiness about the game forcing me into cahoots with even a fictionalized version of the NYPD, an organization that routinely oppresses some of the most vulnerable residents of the city I live in.
When he says he’s only a few hours into the game, I wonder if he actually means minutes? Because Spider-Man has a running gag where he’s talking to his contact on the police force where he does an exaggerated deep voice and refers to himself as “Spider-Cop” (it’s silly, and entertaining), which sure seems like it would’ve been mentioned in this piece.
Anyway, my first impulse is to roll my eyes pretty hard at this piece. I’m maybe 10 hours into the game, so I should probably hold off defending or judging the game too harshly, but this guy seriously sounds like he hasn’t played for more than a minute.
I’m not grasping for as many straws as it may appear. Spider-Man doesn’t just help the cops by catching armed robbers and putting deranged super villains in jail, he helps them maintain a high-tech, citywide surveillance network. One of the ongoing missions in the game is to have Spider-Man repair NYPD operated (and Oscorp-constructed) surveillance towers that stand atop various buildings throughout the city…
I’m not far enough into the game to know how involved Oscorp gets (from what little I saw of the game before starting to play myself, I don’t know if Osborne goes full villain in this game, or if they’re saving that for a sequel), but If scott’s got any more metaphorical hats, I’ll eat one if the game ends without revealing Oscorp surveillance is A Bad Idea. This guy sounds like he couldn’t wait to rush back to his keyboard and get a bad hot take published.
So far in the game they mostly tolerate him, with one of my recent missions introducing at least one cop who’s willing to actively work with Spider-Man.
True, my wife plays the heck out of free iphone puzzle games. But, that said, guess which one of us spends well over a grand a year on his gaming hobby (woops spoiler). Knowing the context of the data point is where the profit lies.
I think it’s the end-state of a majority-minority nation, and as far as I can tell, has been throughout history. At that point, it becomes a zero-sum game of competing identity groups. It’s the opposite of assimilation, with the opposite effect on national cohesion.
It’s not that identity politics is a problem, it’s that doing it for the wrong reasons or the wrong objectives is self-defeating - it has been easily turned into the issue for those who lost (or fear losing) their place in the collective society for completely different reasons. I know the name has historical importance, but like the term populist, what people get from the words is a new, different interpretation. It has been a complete distraction for the radical left.
That fight is long lost. Just look at airport security theater, economic predictions based on market sentiments, the re-ascension of the radical right… People aren’t nearly as rational as models assume they are. On a basic level, if they don’t feel their children will be safe and better off, you can’t rationalize with them.
It’s orthogonal, in my view. You can have assimilated defined identities like the UK, Germany, Italy or the US, or segregated defined identities like Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire or the USSR. It is, or should be, the right to have a true identity that helps you have a place in a community, not that it matters more than any other or gives you special powers.
I’m not much into comics, but isn’t that par for the course? I agree, pretty big conclusion to take from an introduction.
Heh yup! My games bill is higher for sure! Although in my opinion, mobile developers (and I was a pretty successful one till two months ago) are squandering this opportunity.
By pushing more and more , aggressive monetization methods I think we are in danger of turning the mobile market into what facebook games have become. IE: regarded as scammy crap to be avoided, driving away these new customers.
Sorry, but I think this is just wrong. Jim Crow laws were identity politics. Segregation was identity politics. The Chinese exclusion law was identity politics. Japanese internment was identity politics. Denying FHA loans in minority neighborhoods was identity politics. The majority always practices identity politics, even if they are not a minority majority.
That’s why i loved / hated the aesthetic of Infamous, Second Son, like Flobots, the video game. Burn your furniture to stay warm, bring your pots and pans to the street brothers and sisters, we need to melt them down to make tools! In a street filled with graffiti and oil drums with fires, and hoodie wearing 20somethings milling about with nothing to do.
You can replace children with themselves if you want, but I’m pretty confident that it can’t be “many”, we’re wired to care about them (alcoholism aside), even if it often involves “mistaken” forms.
Don’t ask me, ask the progressive intellectuals resisting identity politics – quietly, of course, so the lynch mob doesn’t scream throughout their next lecture. Maybe they thought society could move to a set of progressive ideals and principles rather than an obsession with identity. I’m only speculating.
I would argue that rationality is something we aren’t and isn’t something we should seek. It’s costly and time consuming to be rationale, where as emotions provide us with plenty of short cuts.
To argue that humans and society should be rationale would be like arguing that house cats should be vegetarian. Sure, Vegans would love that to possible, but all science seems to argue against that as a possibility.
As for identity politics, I look at the Christian Right as the classic example of how it’s done and how effective it can be, even if the ideas are horrible. Once again, I know Christ, our Lord and Savior will forgive them, and I know according to my faith, I should as well, but damn it it’s hard.
If we were purely rational, we’d stop at every unknown datapoint and go gather some conclusions from somewhere else, recurring and never returning from the never-ending quest. Instead, we’re great at identifying patterns and being happy with that. In a sense, it’s rational, as you’re abstracting and adapting, but it also isn’t, it’s instinct masquerading as knowledge.
There’s also some studies that promote the idea that feelings were an evolutionary advantage that made humans create ever evolving inter-dependent societies that ensured diversity and protected collapse from the action of bad agents.
