Not All "X" Are Like That

Before I was taught better, I was prone to NAXALT- ing.

Whether or not you recognized it as such at the time, we've all seen someone do it. "Not All X Are Like That."  I'm not sure if it's a logical fallacy, or if it is, whether it has a name... but whether or not it is, and whether or not it does, if you've been on the Internet longer than 5 minutes you've seen someone do it. 

They do it - we do it- because we've been taught to.  It's no coincidence that NAXALT comes up in conversations/ arguments/ autistic internet screeching about controversial topics - especially controversial topics like crime statistics. 

And before we proceed any further, let me assure any of you who toe the normie line- I know Not All X Are Like That.  (And for the rest of you, don't bother yelling at me about who I choose to befriend.  It won't do any good; don't waste the time.)  I've befriended people of every race; I've befriended atheists and heathens and heretics; I've befriended gays and lesbians and bisexuals.  I agree with Jefferson when he wrote, "I never considered a difference of opinion in politics, in religion, in philosophy, as cause for withdrawing from a friend."  

Like the rest of you, I love my friends.  I wouldn't call them "friend" if I didn't: coworker, acquaintance, buddy, someone I know.  There are enough other terms for various relationships that I don't use the word "friend" if I don't mean it.  

If you perceive a friend being attacked, it is natural to want to defend them.  

But what I came to realize after some (mostly) amiable mocking on Gab (back when it was more of a free speech platform than a blatant grift) was that NAXALT-ing is not actually a defense of a friend.  It is the derailment of important conversations/ arguments/ autistic internet screeching about politically inconvenient subjects and their possible root causes.  It is distraction.  It's a lowering of the bar, changing the subject to the personal.  

What it is, is something well intentioned people have been taught to do by our rulers to prevent important, good- faith discussion of various societal ills so that they may be better addressed.  Our rulers do not want these issues effectively addressed, those aforementioned societal ills being highly profitable for them. 

Discussion about a group to which your friend belongs is not a discussion of your friend in particular.  It cannot be, since the entire point is that Not All X Are Like That. It's personal to you because you know and are fond of the exception. But your friend the exception is not the one being discussed, and there's no need to drag them into it! 

Another thing I came to realize is that in order to earn my friendship, I must respect the individual. Anyone worthy of my respect is not someone I need to defend to internet "anons."  Someone I deem worthy of my friendship is well capable of defending themselves, and has the right to do so at their own discretion. Leaping to their defense in such a way can, in many contexts, infantilize them. When that NAXALT response is triggered, have you noticed that the bar is lower? Have you noticed that your threshold of "defending" your friend is lower when the amount of melanin in their skin is higher, or depending on whether or not their family lineage contains certain tiny hats?  If they are worthy of being your friend, if you respect and value them enough to call them friend, why would you not accord them the same respect and expectations you do any other friend? 

Many years ago I was walking and talking with a black friend of mine who wasn't particularly well educated.  I realized abruptly in the course of conversation that I was altering my own vocabulary; I was dumbing down my speech for her.  

Just because she's not well educated doesn't mean she's stupid. In that moment I also realized that if I were speaking to a white person with the same level of education, I wouldn't be dumbing down my speech for them.  I was disrespecting her. 

So I immediately stopped. I corrected my behavior, and in subsequent conversation, made a Napoleon joke I otherwise wouldn't have.  I wasn't really expecting her to get it, but she laughed and responded in context.  It turned out that she'd first heard the name "Napoleon" from the movie Napoleon Dynamite... but she learned more later.  

Ignorance isn't a sin, and these days, "well educated" is a term all but devoid of meaning. Are they actually well educated, or were they just able to successfully parrot back enough propaganda to placate the petty tyrants in the education system?  Love of learning and earnest intellectual curiosity have become anathema to Western education systems.  

The difference in my speech before and after my little epiphany during my conversation with my friend was not so noticeable that she picked up on it, or if she did, felt the need to comment. But the quality of our conversation, and our friendship, improved afterward.  "The soft bigotry of low expectations" is an actual thing, no matter how cringe the political philosophy of which that phrase was born.  
I mentioned in a previous piece that modern society has been disincentivized to acknowledge duty.  Time honored, traditional duty in relationships has been denigrated for decades now.  That instinct has been perverted to become the original sin of whiteness by our rulers; we are continually told that it is the duty of every white person to apologize, in every way at all times, for being white.  We are told, further, that whiteness does not just encompass skin color or other physical characteristics.  

The best lies always contain a grain of truth, and this is no exception.  It is true that the concept of "white" does not stop at skin color; whiteness can also encompass hair texture, for example, and race also is a component in matching things like bone marrow. These physical differences also influence culture- for example, hair culture between white girls and black girls is necessarily different.  Colorblindness in anything except the legal system, in equality of opportunity, was never viable.  

NAXALT is not the exercise of the duty to defend your friend.  It is programming functioning as intended. Your real duty to your friend is to be a good friend to them.  Your real duty is to not befriend people who are walking stereotypes, and to refrain from being one yourself.  

Your friends, no less than yourself, have a duty to exercise the reason given every able-minded adult by God, and to take responsibility for themselves and their own actions.  This duty is incumbent upon every able-minded adult regardless of their sex, age, race, or any other inherent characteristic.  

I had a not-quite-argument with another friend of mine recently.  She uses the word "illness" to describe addiction. She points out, quite rightly, that addiction rewires the brain itself. Being a former heroin addict (moreover, one who got addicted in her teens, before the brain is fully developed), she knows the subject intimately and feels strongly about it.  

I, too, feel strongly about it, but for different reasons.  One set of my great- grandparents died by murder-suicide - a murder-suicide preceded by years of violence.  That violence was almost certainly influenced by the fact that my great- grandfather was an alcoholic.  

An alcoholic, mind you, not a drunk.  This was a man smart enough to keep a store running during the Great Depression. In every picture I've ever seen of my grandmother when she was young, she is very well dressed. Her struggles were never ones of material deprivation.

My problem with using the word "illness" to describe addiction is that the connotations of that word undermine the personal responsibility of the addict.  My great-grandfather was inarguably addicted.  He also probably came from a long cycle of violence himself. 

But it is my conviction - not just an opinion or a belief, but an unshakeable conviction - that his alcoholism in no way excuses his actions.  Did it influence his actions?  That's pretty much a given.  But do they excuse them?  Do they lessen his culpability in the harm he caused, the ripple effects of which I can still see generations later?  No.  By no means.  

My friend saw and agreed with my points, and I with hers.  We agree that the English language does not have a word adequate to encompass the nuance of this issue.  It was an excellent conversation, the best one I've had in years.  

Had either of us resorted to NAXALT, instead of being a thought-provoking bonding experience, that conversation would have devolved into an argument mirroring the way this almost always goes on the internet.  Talking points, devolving into emotionally charged personal insults, resulting in at least one rage-quit.  

I am under no illusion that writing this will solve the problem.  I know that I'm probably not going to change anyone's mind with this.

But I do hope that maybe at least one person will read this, catch themselves about to NAXALT, and then refrain. I hope that what I have written here is a good enough introduction to the concept, and the problems with it, for someone who hates NAXALT to send this to a person they care about who NAXALTs on a regular basis; and I hope that my words can help facilitate more effective communication between those people.  I hope that I can provoke thought where it would not have been without my words.  If I succeed in that alone, even once, I will be well satisfied.