Comment by bryanrasmussen
5 days ago
there are plenty of places in the world in which most people are assholes about some particular thing.
For example if you are a young black man or a gay person living in Utah you might encounter pretty much assholes all day, depending on what you are trying to do that day and depending on if you are unlucky. If you are a good Mormon person in Utah you will probably meet nothing but good people when you go out, even if you meet people who are not good Mormons.
If you are living in Denmark and taking care of a severely autistic child of about 6 years old with learning disabilities, if you meet nothing but unknown Danes during the day you are probably meeting nothing but assholes.
This really clever quote, like most really clever quotes, is somewhat insulting when it reaches its limitations.
Are frequent encounters with assholes the lucky case or the unlucky case in this instance?
>> "If you run into an asshole in the morning, you ran into an asshole. If you run into assholes all day, you're the asshole." -Raylan Givens, Justified
> This really clever quote, like most really clever quotes, is somewhat insulting when it reaches its limitations.
The point of quotes like that are just to get people to examine their own behavior, which they often conveniently leave unexamined. This type can have more impact because it ties into the persons own observations and experience.
It's not some kind of proposition to be absolutely true or absolutely false.
Please don't besmirch Utah. It's one of the few high-trust societies left in this country. It's a beautiful, safe, peaceful haven and I literally never had a bad interaction there in years. And I'm not white.
It may be lovely, and it does seem to be beautiful and tranquil, and I can imagine it works well.
However, my views on it of late are informed by seeing the local police being at the beck and call of a dodgy businessman and making up shit to try and scare off an investigative Youtuber: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cxZPfj8AlmY
The police were also so stupid, they accidentally released all their unredacted bodycam footage in their own press release, which revealed a pile of damning evidence against them: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ih2XwNN0aVY
It's only one incident, but it doesn't scream "high-trust society". It makes me think of other corrupt small-town police forces with a bias towards residents over outsiders.
(Oh, and I also remember another Utah resident, the guy in the Cybertruck: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O0Dl0TnnK0E - he has deep-seated issues and that is such a goofy vehicle. He should sell it and spend the money on therapy)
Basing your opinion about a state from two YouTube videos is a very Internet thing to do. I am quite sure I can find two YouTube videos of stupid police and people in every state and country on earth.
1 reply →
Well, maybe it has changed since I lived there. Nonetheless, about 11 years ago at my daughter's kindergarten I met a black guy he grew up in New York and I said I'd lived in Utah and he said he passed through there once and he remembered walking down the street, he had big dreadlocks and I guess looked alternative (the street must have been South Temple given his description) and he was freaked out about all the weird stares he got from people and how people were locking doors as he walked by, because, and I quote, he had "never experienced anything like that place" and perhaps my own feelings about Utah affected my opinion that yes, that was very like Utah.
I can imagine that happening. It's kind of required to keep a high trust society that everyone try to share culture. That doesn't mean mormonism but it does mean dressing generally within certain bounds. That guy was basically signalling, intentionally, "I do not adhere to your norms!!" which is not going to go over well or engender trust. Not because he was black. Minorities acting and dressing in a traditional manner are respected there.
It's probably axiomatic that a high trust society and a fully liberal one where everyone does whatever they feel like are incompatible. But we've got endless places for the latter and SLC is one of the few of the former.
however I will note, if you spend a long time in a place and situation that is not suited to you, and every time you go out you meet almost all assholes, in the end you will probably become an asshole too, because you are not going to want to approach any person you meet when you go out with any sort of social conviviality. Quite the opposite in fact, and with a probable short warning.
I saw this a lot growing up as we moved a fair amount, get out of toxic communities early if you don't want to be tainted.
Most communities we left we're for the external reasons of my Dad's job moving us around.
The only time staying is a net benefit is if your take on reality is aligned with the primary leadership.
If a situation is setup democratically and with term limits there is more leeway, so muster your arguments and vote on it early if you can, bounce if the Overton shifts further away from you after, don't have assets tied up with the group.
Decades on, every single person who stayed and fought has lost most of their ability to garden and grow beautiful things.
> For example if you are a young black man or a gay person living in Utah you might encounter pretty much assholes all day, depending on what you are trying to do that day and depending on if you are unlucky.
Are you speaking from experience? As a “brown guy with a beard,” Utah was like heaven compared to Maryland or New York. I’m so fucking sick of the mid-Atlantic “we’re not racist, we’re assholes to everybody” shtick.
someone else's experience as black.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50100397
I knew a good number of gay people, and I don't think they had it particularly easy.
As a punk rocker I was always having to fight because of how I looked, but I guess that is just for being an asshole who did not look enough like other people. Again, if you fit into Utah, it is probably a really nice place. This is probably the case about almost anywhere though.
on edit: obviously I might have had the same experiences and noticed the same experiences somewhere else. I was in Eugene Oregon from 13 to 15, Utah from 15 to mid twenties, San Francisco a couple of years, Utah, and then returned to Denmark. The only place I ever experienced assholes every time I went out was Utah, until Denmark and having a disabled child that didn't "look" disabled.
But maybe if I had lived on the East coast I would have the same observation, that you can go out all the time and meet assholes and it isn't your fault , and the implication that it is your fault is really implying that you need to change your skin color or gender preferences and you'll stop being "the asshole", which is a pretty fucked up opinion to be conveying in the nice pithy aphorism.
> Again, if you fit into Utah, it is probably a really nice place.
Yes, but I don't think skin color standing alone prevents you from "fitting into Utah." I think of people in Utah as being warmer and nicer than people in Astoria, Oregon, where my mother-in-law lives. My brother-in-law grew up in Astoria and he’s black presenting (more Samoan and asian but with the textured hair) and he fit in really well and was popular in school, despite having all white friends. When I go to Astoria, nobody is mean or racist, but my experience in Utah was definitely that people were warmer. (Note that Astoria is politically similar to Salt Lake County, that is blue leaning, but not liberal by any means.)
> he had big dreadlocks and I guess looked alternative
How does he know that it was because he was black and not because he "looked alternative?" I look like brown Ned Flanders and the only time I've ever gotten stares (in the US) is from other brown people in southern towns where I'm like the only other one. And I'm not oblivious to it--I'm certainly aware of the airport people in Japan following me around like a potential terrorist.
I trust your friend had the experience he had. But I also think it’s important to be precise about the standard you’re applying when you accuse places of being racist. If you assume people have an obligation to disregard differences not only in skin color, but how they express themselves or present their identity, then fine, but be explicit about that assumption. Because not everyone agrees that’s the standard.