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I am having thinky thoughts lately about subcultures, and how they define their aspirations vs. their self-adulation. Specifically, about the way the latter can actually stomp down on the former, by claiming that some trait has already been achieved.

I see it a lot in geeky subcultures of various types. Instead of "We should be smart!" you get "We ARE smart," and then any evidence of non-smart action within the group gets stomped on and hushed up and redefined, because it's part of the identity that Smart is already a given. Or...tolerant. Imaginative. Open-minded. Progressive.

I like the idea of "We should be more tolerant than the norm!" But so often it seems to manifest instead as "We ARE more tolerant than the norm." And if someone points out a lack of tolerance, well, that...that...that doesn't count! It's not actually intolerant. It's an okay variation of intolerance. The person who's being intolerant isn't really part of the community anyway. It's ironic lack of intolerance, okay?

And you can substitute in so many words for "intolerant" there. Sexist. Racist. Classist. Bullying. If the community's already defined itself as being free of those problems--as opposed to aspiring to be free of them--than any identification of that problem within the group comes across as an attack on the whole group. And so the identification, or accusation, is treated as the bad thing, not the actual problem.

I've seen this play out in a lot of conversations. I don't really have a solution for it. It's warm and fuzzy and comforting to feel that one's chosen (or mandatory) groups are better than others. I just wish it could be handled...more gracefully.

"I would like to not be sexist or racist" is not the same as "I am not sexist or racist," and I think that's a really easy distinction to get muddled in large groups. Especially ones that already feel separated from the majority. Which...y'know, most groups eventually are. As soon as you divide down a group far enough to feel a strong sense of identity about it, you're probably not in the majority on that group.

And, alas, every damn group is going to have Bad People in it, after you reach a certain population threshold. It's also going to have a lot of Good People who do bad things, because there isn't a one of us who's perfect, here. (Except for you, over there in the corner. You know who you are.) So any...I don't know, group, subculture, community, needs to have a way to addressing problems when they come up, and not just in the No True Scotsman way.

I'm not really making an argument for how to solve this, because I am really not a sociologist, psychologist, or anything of the sort. But it does seem to me that putting some group definitions in the category of aspirations rather static definitions might help. "You haven't reached the goal you've set, this time" might come across as less threatening than "You're not actually what you say you are."