That was some seriously creepy stuff. Sounds nice and intellectual, but it's basically worthless (not the word I initially thought). Your solution seems to be to "groom" everyone into behaving in a certain approved way. Basically remove everyone's ability to hurt anyone - if some specific minority is involved - by micro-managing and questioning their behaviour in detail. WTF? How is that supposed to be an improvement on anything? Suppress everyone being the answer to the problem of some being suppressed for irrational reasons?

You need to get out in the fresh air, and actually talk to and observe people - that "utopian" (it'd be hell, not Utopia) , mind-controlling fantasy of yours will never work; people can't be controlled that way.

Sure, I perform, and take part in, discriminating actions - especially if such actions are defined by it affecting some minority negatively. Call me a racist because of it if you must, but then every single person alive or has ever lived is also a racist (including Jesus if I remember the bible correctly). What's the point of the word "racist" then? There isn't even a qualifier to go with "racist" - if someone say they're "just a little racist" people with the same mindset as you would be all over them like a ton of bricks just the same as on someone saying "yeah, I'm the biggest racist you ever met".

No, I'm not a racist. I do sometimes discriminate against people of a different colour, and I discriminate against people of the same colour as me. Every single time I make a choice, I discriminate against those I didn't choose. It's unavoidable. Racism isn't random acts of discrimation, it's when the acts of discriminatnions becomes a pattern. It's the pattern that's racist, not the individual acts.

Do I care if Achmed has to send out twice as many job applications as Olsen (common norwegian surname) to be called in for the same number of interviews? No, not really - I have no way of telling if that's because Achmed doesn't speak norwegian and the potential employers don't speak english, or if it's because of discriminating assumptions based on his name - he has options provided by the government if the latter is the case; I don't need to "save" him, nor does he need a "saviour". Do I care if Achmed's children are bullied at school? Yes, I do, and I don't need to know why they are bullied. And I care if Olsen's children are bullied at school, also regardless of reason. They do need help.

Enough ranting on my part - I'm not an idealist, and I know from experience that I never agree with idealists on anything bigger than what kind of pizza to order, and not always that. You see the world as you want it to be / interchangeable with your agenda, and I see the world more or less as it is, faults and shortcomings mostly accepted because, well, that's the way it is, but more importantly, we can shuffle around on the injustices of the world all we want, but the amount of injustice will stay the same. The world needs both kinds, but we'll never agree.

You mention idealism but right now you're the one spiralling into abstractions, generalities, and science-fiction rhetorics. You seem astonished by the thought that people's behaviours may be driven by prejudices, at various levels of consciousness. It always has. But our mutual knowledge has progressed, and the exotism of alterity has receeded. Our readings of each others have evolved, as we learnt -to some extent- to overcome these prejudices and "common sense" representations of others. Now, why is it so immensenly scandalous, for you, to mention that we're not quite done yet, and that prejudices still shape our representations and behaviours (in patterns, yes). And that, beyond the rough caricatural stances, there are a lot of more subtle attitudes that are driven by the same mental reflexes. And that there is still a lot of progress to be made, about self-awareness (on the mechanisms of our reactions) and knowledge (the differenciation between the reality of "other" people and our representations of their realities). Yes, it does require a more subtle work of introspection and deconstruction. It's still a mere matter of degree, and society is progressing towards this - with, for instance, whistleblowing on non-obvious manifestations of sexism ("strong female characters", differences of salary), or diverse subtle "human group" discriminations.

Your reaction to this could have been the same at every epoch. "What, you want a mind-controlled society of political correctnes, but blacks are not slaves anymore, they have been emancipated two years ago, you now want to force me to hire them in my shop ?" But every epoch has lowered its tolerance to more and more tame forms of segregation, or more and more tame forms of racist/sexist discourses. This is not a process of global dystopian mind-control intrusion. It is just social progress, new and more accurate images of others, replacing older stereotyped categorisations. The thing is, at every epoch, common sense is common sense : its content is obvious and invisible, and has to be challenged, scrutinizes, deconstructed, in order for collective representations to evolve, become more fair, and reduce the nocive consequences of the way our minds sort the world. It's merely a matter of becoming collectively more clever.

So, you can draw the line there, for yourself (as you probably would at any epoch), considering that until now it was progress, and from now on it's intrusive nitpicking. But society won't. And mustn't. There is no idealism but your idea that (conveniently enough) now is "the most perfect of possible worlds", that your set of representations is "as accurate as can be demanded of a human", and that you're "as objective as can be expected". And that anything beyond that belongs to the realm of Big Brother mental dictatorship.

But things have consequences. And injustice isn't "shuffled around" when the discriminatory policies are denounced as such, behind their generalist varnish. There's no oppressed majority having to endure being told that making separate laws for muslims or homosexuals is stupid and only enforces imbecile oppositions. And being informed that, both on the sides of causes and consequences, there is an essentialised vision of a given group as distinct from fully entitled citizens. If pointing this out, and expecting people to make the effort to keep aware of this, is your nightmare of a totalitarian world, maybe you should try the alternative a bit, but in the shoes of the minorities who get their special restrictions supported by all these well-meaning people who have "nothing against them in particular but".

I just want to drop one or two lines. I think you can describe what many/most people would regard as right by a few principles: freedom, tolerance, love, peace, solidarity. equality, justice, fairness and respect. And with them you can pretty good explain everything that's right and that's wrong and the difference. Some of these things are written in constitutions, some are found in religions, but in real life what diverts from them is always selfishness. I am better than you, my group is better than your group.

I remember watching a serious documentation on TV about justice and they brought up some annoyingly hard situations where as most people rely on what justice is becomes quite obscure.

That goes for freedom and peace as well. Either of those can't be accomplished without extreme measures by which you kill the system anyway.

I'm not at all astound by that - just about any conceivable action performed by a human is driven part by prejudice, part by "spur of the moment" (depending on how impulsive one is). It's how our brain gets us through the day without "overloading", by drawing on generalizations, assumptions etc - even if we wanted to, we don't have the mental capacity to draw much any conclusion without a large amount of prejudice. No, what really astounds me is that you seems to think that the way to go is to alter people at that level.

"Science fiction rethorics"? I didn't mean to use any form of rethorics (there, anyway), and I should probably have at least read through what I wrote before posting, but I really did find it creepy. When I talk about "mind control" it's not some science fiction mind control device, it's not even about actually controlling minds; it's your expressed wish to control minds, at that level.

Your attitude seems to be that people have been exposed to racism and racist ways of thinking that it's become so much a part of our experiencebase etc that it's next to impossible for us not to act in a racist way. So far, so good - it makes sense; we're a product of all our previous experiences and all that. What's not good at all, is the claim that only some people (like you) are able to somehow see what's at the core of it, what is racism deep down, and what isn't (although it sounds to me that to you everything is racism if someone of a different race is involved). That's exactly what priests have been doing for thousands of years to control the masses, claiming infallability. It's a dangerous path; it always backfires. It's not scandalous to me - immensely or otherwise - that we're not done yet. If it were I wouldn't think I'd be here discussing how to best deal with the problem racism is, would I? But we do disagree on the done part, though - I want to stop long before we're "done" with prejudices. What I find more than a little discomforting is that you want to go way past what can be assumed with a reasonable degree of confidence, thus demonising just about everyone.

Yes, we can all do with some demonising every now and then, to shake up our beliefs etc so that they can be re-evaluated, but it should never be systemised. Not even in the way you describe. If you start leading people, you need to keep leading them; they lose the will to lead themselves (to some degree). Further, the only thing you can be certain of is that they'll get it "wrong" (e.g. something else than you intended), and that's even more problematic when they believe themselves to be led - they stop taking responsibility for their actions. It's happened too many times throughout history to count, and is still happening. I'm all for increased self-awareness - it's the antidote of what I (possibly - hopefully - in error) accuse you of wanting to do above. Every single man, woman and child needs to take personal responsibility for his/her actions for racism - not to disappear, but to fall down to a level hardly distinguishable from "the background noice" that is life simply being unfair. And personal knowledge, about oneself and about others, is necessary to make informed choices in everyday life.

..to be continued..

I (mostly) see it the same way - believe it or not - I'm just of the opnion that you go too far, too fast. We didn't get where we are today by doing what you describe, but by allowing society to change itself. And that takes time. There's no fast-track to an improved society, only to the opposite. It's in our nature to be a lot less civil than we're expected to be (in reasonably wealthy countries anyway), hence we're quick to "degrade" into survival of the fittest, where going after already weak individuals, or even groups, makes sense.

I don't know why you think I think the world is anywhere near "perfect" - wouldn't my reasoning and arguments be quite different if that were the case? Wouldn't I deny (more or less) the very existence of racism rather than pointing out that we can't know if any given action is based on racism or not? Let's flip it around and ask what I'd have to do to convince you this is not the case - pretend we (heh.. good luck defining who "we" are) are infallible when it comes to who's actually being racist or not?

What is so intrusive about the approach you describe is that you basically except everyone to scrutinse their every action for possible "discriminatory transgressions", not limited to those (the current) "common sense" would tell you might have a negative outcome on an individual or group "the society" (only parts of it in reality) thinks is getting more than their share of unjust difficulties in life. While this might not feel intrusive to you, who apparently have enough time on your hands to ponder these issues, others spend most of their time struggling just to get by, take care of their family, mow the lawn etc. Being, not asked but demanded of, to question themselves and their motivations at every turn simply won't happen. That's the reality of it for the vast majority of people. If they're polite, they'll just tell you to sod off.

Given that it's only a very small minority that has the resources, both material and intellectual, to actually give your "regime" a try, the only practical way to implement this is by applying a lot of pressure, to the point where people just shut up and keep to themselves as much as they can, hoping no one will blow the whistle on them for something they maybe didn't even do, but are unable to argue they didn't. Sounds familiar? If it doesn't, pick up a history book; any history book.

Yes, I maintain my view of you as an idealist, more interested in a better, yet non-existent, world where this could actually work. By profession I'm a code-monkey, a system architect and everything in between. I know first-hand how alluring certain systems may look, but also how they turn out when you go about actually implementing them - then you no longer have the luxury to ignore the gritty details. They say the devil's in the details, but it's actually the real world that's in the details - and that beast is far worse than any devil imagined. I'm sorry, but it's naïve to think there will be less injustice if "discriminatory policies are denounced as such" etc. People exhibit discriminatory behavior for two reasons: 1) They don't really intend to, it's just the way the cards fall, and 2) they want to, usually to feel superior. As I said earlier, every choice is discriminating, and injustice isn't meassured by the size of the group the individual belongs to (minority/majority). Thus no real change in the amount of injustice.

As for the second part, there's no reason to belive that smaller statistical differences between minorities and the majority will change anything about those who need to pick on others to feel better themselves. Visit any school - if it's not your skin it's your clothes or your glasses or the way you talk or how much money your parents got or whatever else they can think of to use. Because that's all it really is - something to use. They don't really give a shit about skin colour or whatever - all they care about is that there's someone less fortunate than them.

Yes, I know I'm simplifying "injustice" here - it's about a lot more than discrimination - but that's the only factor you brought up, and I'm fine with confining it to that (in this discussion).

No, that's right, there's no need to oppress the majority when you restrict it to pointing out how such laws will have a negative impact on certain group. Just like there's no need to oppress anyone when pointing out that this or that tax reform will hurt families with small children a lot more than every other group. If it isn't clear to you, this is a level/pace of change I'm quite comfortable with. It has the distinct advantage of actually working. It's also quite different in scope from what you've been talking about this far.

"Try the alternative"? Really? Ok, I guess I could try the alternative - where do I sign up for a membership in the majority? I'm not part of just one minority but several, and you know shit about what I (and my family) have been through because of that. Not that I use it as an excuse to feel sorry for myself - life dishes out shit to everyone - and saying that it's because of this or that and outside my control doesn't help you one iota. I know people who're basically just part of the "big happy majority" that have it a lot worse than me. Ok, so they don't get shit "because of", but they still get shit by the truckload. It's life, and life isn't fair.

To make it short : I don't get your opposition between "natural flow" of social evolution, and "horrible mind-controlling dictatorial dystopia project". How do you think collective norms evolve, "on their own" ? "Their" ? Without tensions between indidivual, revendication, educaction (modern school teaching genetics and debunking "races", valuating open-mindedness, teaching thesis-antithesis-synthesis structures and formal logic with evaluations of syllogisms, and starting now to teach the difference between sex and gender), mass medias and even, ambiguously, positive discrimination ? Without a spectrum of progressist-to-reactionary population in interaction and disagreement at some point ?

Do you think that your own outlook on life comes from yourself, or from a collective unconscious with an autonomous homogeneous life ? I think that any standard "obvious" thing you valuate now, you owe it to (philosophical, scientifical, ideological) currents that you would have called intrusive, idealist and creepy at a time where they were not mainstream.

It's not the currents/thoughts or such themselves that are (necessarily) intrusive, it's 1) the relative distance to the current currents/thoughts, 2) in what way these changes are effectuated, and 3) the size of the target audience.

1) Today your license plates are photographed and stored every time you drive trough an automatic toll booth (which is most of them, at least where I live), making it possible to track your movements to a certain degree (we have lots of those booths). Only a very few have a problem with this today, and then mostly because that information is sometimes handed out when it shouldn't have been. If a similar surveilance system was put in place 20-30 years ago, it'd been a public outcry for loss of privacy. Today, it's just another source of information gathering, thus the relative distance is quite small.

2) During the (alcohol) prohibition lots of people reacted quite badly to it; previously law-abiding people started going to illegal outlets (speak-easies etc) and illegally bought alcohol that funded criminal organisations like the mafia. Too much, too fast, and people started do things they'd previously wouldn't even consider. Today the sale of alcohol is regulated (more so in Norway than most other European countries) and every year a lot of money is spent on reducing intake. Some people still buy smuggled alchol (although because of heavy taxation mostly), some make it themselves, but the majority of people are content with going to Vinmonopolet (literally "wine monopoly") to buy anything stroger than regular beer, not being able to buy beer in the stores Saturdays after 18:00 (varies a little from municipal to municipal, but it's around there) and not being allowed anything stronger than 60% (which is a shame as I'd like to have some 80% Stroh Rum). There isn't that much of a difference in the total alcohol consumption, yet the outcome of "political meddling" is vastly different.

3) Most people are like sheep - they follow. A few people lead better than they follow. Unless I've misunderstood you, your system is based on everyone taking part in a collective and individual "soul search" to root out any remains of discriminatory behaviour. While I'd love it if everyone took part in such a "soul search", it's not practically feasible. Most people would "get it wrong", which means you'd have to follow it up somehow - otherwise you'd be saying that we all did a good job and the world is a much better place now - meaning you'd have to evaluate not only everyones' effort but also how "pure" (for lack of a better word) they were so as to evaluate how much more "soul searching" would have to be done on that individual. I'm fairly confident I can make the assumption that you agree on this being intrusive.

I believe my outlook on life is the result of my "digestion" of inputs from my surroundings. Said inputs would obviously be coloured by what my surroundings believe in and value, and my "digestion process" obviously coloured by previous (tainted) inputs. I'll never arrive at the Truth, but I can make an effort to at least weed out irrational and non-sensical "thought baggage" during my lifetime. Another thing I can do is try to get in contact with a wider variety of inputs, making it easier for myself to realise what's "localized common sense" (based on culture etc) and the more universal "small truths".

Perhaps you could give me an example of something obvious that I'd call idealist/creepy/intrusive back when they weren't mainstream, that wouldn't or couldn't have come around unless being introduced in an idealistic/creepy/intrusive* way?

Edit:
By intrusive* I mean (subjectively) unreasonably intrusive. Ban on smoking in public places is obviously intrusive, yet not unreasonably so, for instance. Not that I don't find that particular ban intrusive still (old habits die hard), but I imagine generations after me will view it as the kind of "obvious" you're referring to, e.g. that's just the way it is and should be.

Edit2:
Making smoking in your own home illegal (without outlawing tobacco) is a kind of intrusive action I would only imagine possible in a police state, and thought intrusive no matter what - people need a home, a base, a "safe haven" - a place of privacy - that's never going to change. The same desired result - e.g. keep cigarette fumes away from children and others unable to make the choice - can be accomplished in other ways, though.

Race: As far as I'm concerned there are no races, much less a hierarchy. The only thing that seems to hold any water is that there is a lot more crab bucket among western black people than virtually anyone else I can think of. But that's a social issue, not genetic.

Feminism: Unless you're living in Saudi Arabia or somewhere else trapped in the Middle Ages, yes. I think that for the most part, in the west at least, it's now all about showing some patience as society adjusts and only applying pressure where needed.

I'll also add that women's struggle for legal equality seems to have resulted in them pushing far harder than men, leaving us behind in education.

Environment: Given that there are plenty of those still adhering to Abrahamic monotheistic religions, there is no real basis to assume that people are going to agree on this. While people still think that the world is some big sandpit that God created for his most beloved creation to play in... well, they're going to play and play destructively.

Smoking. Well yeah, I suppose. But it's such a new thing that universal agreement is quite unlikely.

Homosexuals: While my views on sexuality might differ to the norm, (I don't think that you can so easily pigeon hole people) I agree with what you say... for the most part. I still think that homosexuals are generally regarded as somehow inferior though.

Cults: not sure what you're expecting us to agree on. Also, what qualifies as a cult? What separates the Church of Satan from say Catholicism aside from the number of followers?

War: It's a bad thing. But going to war may stop a far greater evil. Not a lot of good recent examples of that though.

Poverty: tricky. On one hand I'm very strongly against discouraging entrepreneurs in the creation of much needed jobs. On the other hand I think that there needs to be a social safety net to pick people up and help them get back on their feet (those that want to get back on their feet. Fuck the ones that don't (unless they don't have feet to get back on)).

The way I see it it's a ying yang thing. You need a strong capitalist foundation to support social infrastructure and you need social infrastructure to support capitalism (otherwise you wind up with a pig ignorant, unhealthy good for nothing workforce).

Any variation of the frontier between socially acceptable and unacceptable stances or lines of reasonning. Nowadays, saying "brownies are mentally inferior because they haven't invented cars" or "indians are closer to animals because they run around naked and have sex everywhere" or "women don't have the intellectual and emotional abilities to deal with serious problems" is shameful. There was a time where it was common sense. The shift of representation was a struggle, at many levels. A political struggle (for legal rights, recognition and protections), an scientific struggle (to assess objective realities beyond these representations, and also to understand where these representations come from and how and why they perpetuate themselves), and an education struggle (to make more accurate representations pass into common sense, through medias, schools, etc). All of these could have been seen as intrusive in the same sense that you consider intrusive the demand for more awareness of anthropological realities and of the inner mecanisms that sheld us from them. Because it was exactly the same things, at stake. The target audience is "all of us" (society as a whole, both from the angle of information and the angle of laws and institutions), the speed is the speed at which society evolves (and it did a lot, the last few decades, more than is visible given everything we take as granted now), and... okay I'm not sure I really understood the distance thing, but if I did, the distance is not that huge : there's less work in showing why a given statement or policy has a racist subtext than in explaining why racism is a bad thing to someone who thinks it is not.

And this discussion is essentially at the level of representations, and how they are reinforced or fragilized by collective mainstream discourses. You can study people' beliefs about people, but you can also study the proccesses that form, maintain, strengthen these beliefs (for instance : the myth of primitive savagery has been maintained by exotic colonial fictions depicting "savages" very differently from what actual anthropologists would find on their field, or ideas of normality and "normal -archetypal- identity" are maintained by the over-representation of a certain category of people in the medias, hence positive discrimination). It's less about monitoring individuals than raising awareness about patterns and raising critical abilities, even on fields that we're not used to scrutinize (our own ethnic biases, for instance), in a way that would become -as it's already is starting to- some common sense, with the effect of normative mutual criticism when people express too obsolete views. This is exactly, nothing more, than the "normal evolutions" at "natural paces" that you were mentionning, and that brought us where we are today (in what is positive about our current situation). There is no specific policy about it. Only the content is, inevitably, more refined and more advanced today than 40 years ago. This doesn't make a huge "structural" difference. And it's not unreasonnable to expect people to assimilate it, given all we have assimilated so far, since the middle-ages or the antiquity.

It is not an utopia, because not only it's been happening for ages, but also it's visibly still happening nowadays - as we can see concepts that were "avant-garde" and "academical" 10 or 20 years ago, now find their place in public debates and everyday discussions.

All those struggles have been the struggles of a few, not whole populations. When women finally were allowed to vote, the majority just shrugged their shoulders and went on with their daily tasks, both men and women, e.g. the leaders lead, the sheep follow. If that's the level of "effort" and "awareness" you expect from the masses, I retract what I've said about it being intrusive (though not the creepy part) - it's (IMO) a reasonable expectation. I'm having a hard time understanding your words that way, though. Yes, people will assimilate it, but most of them won't understand it. Which means we're essentially back at square one. The current "common sense" may be refined according to a given academical standard, yet the masses aren't anymore refined than they were 40 years ago. They're just changing behaviour according to what they think is expected of them, thus you've only changed the expectations, not people.

Now, this is where it starts to get creepy; some "academical elite" is being given the power to essentially brainwash people to act in a given way. They are given several ways to punish those who don't fall in line, like public ridicule for instance. The most problematic part is their claim of infallibility - if you question that, you'll be labeled a racist/sexist/whatever more or less automatically.

[Imagine, if you can, scientists one day figure out that there's indeed significant differences between large groups of people, akin to races. What then? Will this knowledge be surpressed, or will the same kind of people who've been working at eradicating the notion of races start working on making it "common sense" that it makes sense to divide people into different "races"? This is meant as a purely hypothetical question, and I don't want you to get stuck on the "race" thing - I just picked something that was very unlikely so it'd be easier to exlude - but rather focus on the "what then?" part.]

Another problematic part is what groups are deemed "worthy" of the protection granted. Stupid people for instance are not "worthy" it seems. Unless they're part of one of the "important" groups as well. Like in Norway where female students are accepted into certain educations with lower scores than some of the male students that aren't accepted (because of limited seats). Maybe this way of rigging the game will be seen as "common sense" one day. I hope not.

Yes, some things are better now than they were before, while others not so much. Take pirating for instance. Most people today don't see any problem with pirating a game, song or a movie. It's "common sense" that since it's not a physical object, it's not theft. If it's not theft - which "common sense" says is wrong - it's a victimless crime, and if there's no victim, there isn't really a crime either. This, right there, shows exactly how little we've changed. If we had changed to the better, we'd simply honour (to the same degree as with physical things) that said game, song or movie was someone's property and that we couldn't do with as we please. That's why we shouldn't steal physical stuff, but that's not why we don't do it - we don't do it because we know it's expected of us not to.

Of all the things that've changed the last 200 years, the human being is probably one of those who've changed the least. Sure, we've been through a lot of "politics", and morals and ethics have changed all over the place, but I don't believe the average modern day man is any better (or worse) than the average medieval man, just like I don't believe caucasians are any better (or worse) than africans for instance. There's nothing to support that.

What has changed, at least in some parts of the world, is the amount of surplus time available to ponder such issues like these. Those able to ponder can to some degree build upon what others before them, refining the available "thought material". Every person interested - and able - to delve into this amassed knowledge has to start from scratch, though - it's not something passed on through our genes. "Teaching" the masses according to the "best" knowledge available may create the illusion of "intellectual progress", but it entails no real change. Just like owning a TV doesn't mean you're able to build one.

So, no, I really don't see any utopia sneaking up on us.

What we can't seem to agree on is that, without expanded space exploration, our species' survival is hinged on a suspended rock, in the company of many other listless rocks, floating around a giant ball of fire (that doubles as a vital energy source).

Talk about hanging on by a thread.

The political threads here are for a laugh, as they are on the rest of the internet. Simply due to the aggregation of population.

This is a gaming forum.
Therefore I am more concerned about the fact that gaming discussion on this forum has taken a similar route:

Steam/Blizzard/Ea/X/Y/Z EAT SHIT
vs
GOG/Gamersgate/A/B/C THA BAST

It used to be a lot more interesting.

A hell of a lot of extremism bubbled to the surface during that period. I wouldn't like to form a conclusive opinion on that until the dust has settled. Hopefully it will prove to be as positive as the light the media cast the events in. I certainly saw it as a good thing initially. But while ridding a country of an oppressive regime may have been a good thing it still leaves some concerns about what will ultimately fill the power vacuum.

Take Syria for instance. While Asaad may be full of shit when he says that he's exclusively targeting terrorists, there are no shortage of claims that Al Qaeda has a growing presence there now. Which probably explains why Syria has received no direct intervention of any kind from NATO.

Would you want to replace one horrible regime with another, when the latter was murderously opposed to your continued existence?

There is hope there. But as far as I'm concerned it's still case of 'we'll see'.

This is not really true. Changes are deeper than purely behavioural. It's not the fear of some state-enforced law that makes people critical of racism and sexism, it's the current beliefs they hold, their very perceptions of the world. It's what evolves. You talk as if every non-racist person around you (or in this forum) is merely showing antiracist attitudes out of fear of some outside authority, or following a specific lead. We only express the evolutive common sense values of today, that we have incorporated as deeply as we incorporate prejudices. What we assimilate makes us. People who consider that the falsehood of racism is "obvious" also know why, it's deeper than mere obedience. If "common sense" includes some data that disqualifies racist discourses, and the awareness of some wrong rethoric tricks that would support it, it's a refinement in how people see and deal with things nowadays. "Common sense" and "the masses" are not independent. One is the other. Education and vulgarisation is about understanding. Public ridicule works with consensus, and with collective legtimation. When an elite imposes an arbitrary judgement that the masses refuse, its authority is rejected. That is what happens both with some too progressist, avant-guardist, readings of society, and with some actual out-of-touch political dogmas. In France, the political elite had tried to impose on the population a european constitution and the idea that it would benefit everybody. Most media, many voices of authority, were insisting on that. The population didn't buy it, and rejected it on vote. Of course, the government then just ignored the vote results, and adpoted that constitution, but that's another issue. An opposite exemple is how intellectuas, in Switzerland, try to fight the populist ideas of the main, extreme-right and extremely well financed, political party. Quite often, the intelligentsia pushes people to vote one way, but the majority still votes in accordance with xenophobic demagogues. In both exemples, the elitist attempts at (resp. illegitimately and legitimately) ridiculing mainstream beliefs failed. What shames people into global behaviours (a very relative notion) is a more global, popular, sense of ridicule. This comes from widely incorporated beliefs, not from the caprices of some (political, scientifical, or even economical) elite.

But then, you raise another issue. Of course, in our wiki-age of self-appointed experts on everything, there is that widespread notion that "beh, scirntists, what do they know ? anyway some day they say the earth is flat, and the other day they say space-time is bent, so, what next ? why even listen to them ?". But this is a whole other discussion, where commonplace anti-intellectualism cancels any serious or rigourous attempt at assessing any question, through the glorification of common sense. "Heck, do you mean I need specialized knowledge ? Me ? Who are you to think that someone who's dedicated 40 years on clarifying a subject within the critical network of peer-review communities knows better than I, who have produced my own brilliant conclusion 50 seconds after having read three headlines ! What about democracy, huh ?". Unfortunately, this mix of ordinary megalomaniac pride ("I need no info, no investigation, i'm too clever") and misconception of scientific processes ("Hah, they just think they know everything, plus, they always disagree with each others and admit that they know nothing, plus, they just think they know everything") is not just one obstacle to the diffusion of scientific development into the voting population, but also a big obstacle preventing political elites themselves to take in consideration actual scientific data before it reached them through its integration to common sense. This is one of the most discouraging aspects of reearch. But, ah well. I think it's merely slowing things. All in all, things still evolve... It's not a matter of being worthy of protection. It's much more broadly, the fact that every human category is worthy of being comprehended through informations more valid than dated myths and prejudices, and through thought processes more refined than generalisations, lumping, projections, etc. The former is a matter of information (relevant on a subject-by-subject basis), the latter is a matter of critical sense (which also has to be taught, when it comes to some under-evaluated misleading cognitive processes). It is merely a question of how people teach themelves mutually to grasp the world.

THEN, you can discuss of deriving pragmatic decisions, policies, solutions, good or bad, from a more precise and more demanding reading of the world. But at least, discussions and disagreement will be founded on more acurately established representations of the situation, that's all. Which will still be far enough, always, from some utopian collective omniscience. But which is also progressively getting more and more far from the most lazy, naive, self-serving and arbitrary representations of other human groups. My point is merely that standards slowly evolve the right way, and will continue to, even if we don't always percieve this evolution.