People that have been interned in this or one of the other camps, or their descendants. It’s one generation ago, people born and raised in camps are still alive. George Takeo for example was born in one of the segregation camps.
It’s a low stakes change.
Nobody assumes harmful intentions from the author - I would not have recognized the picture either. But now that it’s been pointed out that it’s from a site where people were held illegally against their will, the reaction is a tell-tale. Knowing this, and insisting on keeping the images is now willfully associating with harmful behavior.
Apart from that, I cannot associate with the picture either - as an on-call engineer for some widely used infrastructure, I am not a guard on duty keeping people in a camp. I am an emergency responder. I fix things when they go haywire or an accident happens. A firefighter, paramedics, civil emergency responder would IMO be a much better metaphor for what I do.
>Nobody assumes harmful intentions from the author
Then what's the issue or purpose? Other than satisfying or inflating some own moral selfimage?
That kind of social dynamic appears to be what this kind of things is about most of the time as opposed to preventing mental harm or stopping such issues from (re)occurring.
>Knowing this, and insisting on keeping the images is now willfully associating with harmful behavior.
Do you not associate with harmfull behavior in far far more direct ways? Perhaps something that's considered ridiculous for most people to avoid like paying taxes that get spent on bombs or the like?
If i want to make an article showing a prison and i pick one from google does it matter if that prison happened to be used in the past to house civil rights activists?
Is the implication that that somehow normalises, advocates for or otherwise inches towards oppressing civil rights movements in any meaningfull way?
To not use a thing that symbolizes the indiscriminate incarceration of innocent people as some clipart for an article about oncall. It's in bad taste, and also the wrong metaphor, and it sends the wrong message, even if not done on purpose.
> Other than satisfying or inflating some own moral selfimage?
Morality has a subjective component and often works by seeing through other people's eyes: How would I feel if this happened to me? How will other people see me if I did this? There's no universal consensus for this, of course, thankfully.
So when people disagree about morality, I've found that it can be hard for the side that doesn't see a problem to understand what the other side is making such a fuss about. I also think there can be a performative aspect to moralizing. But I don't think it's fair or warranted to jump to the conclusion that just because one doesn't see the issue, that the other person must be posturing - because that's how you can make sense of their behavior from within your own point of view.
People see things that rub them wrong, they speak up, as did you. How would you know you're not just inflating your self-image by putting down their comment like this? If you aren't, maybe they aren't, either.
So you're essentially saying: "I don't believe people should try to be nice to each other even in places where it essentially comes for free." I get it, it's impossible to do the right thing all of the time. It's a chore. But very often, it comes for essentially free. Help carry the baby prom down the stairs if the elevator is broken. Tell people their shoelace is open. Change a picture that symbolizes hurt to people in places where the point is not talking about these places. Call people by their chosen name. It comes for almost free. It makes other peoples life better. What's the argument against it?
I think people should be nice to eachother even in places where it doesn't essentially come for free. Offer a helping hand. Take part in a cleanup event. Give to the needy. And if possible I'd say do it without broadcasting your moral status or don't do it just to broadcast.
If you truly wanted to do some microscopic good you could've just used this picture to quickly bring awareness to what happened and could happen again rather than try to relegate the story to the view of those interested in history for the benefit of....
(1) is the important point, (2) is irrelevant. On the important point, you seem to have assumed several things:
a) that it is harmful
b) that anyone to whom the assumed harm would occur would see it
c) that they would know what the camp looked like
(a) I see no evidence for this, in fact, research suggests the opposite[1]
> The strange paradox about triggers and PTSD – and this is true for all anxiety-related disorders – is that avoiding triggers makes the disorder worse, not better (Jones et al., 2020). Being exposed to small instances of one’s triggers, in a safe environment such as therapy where one can be helped to process the situation, is a way to gradually become less reactive to those triggers (APA, 2013). Many people have learned to reduce their reactivity to psychological triggers through this process, called exposure therapy.
and (b) really is a stretch, are we to believe there are people in the tech industry who are on-call and were interned in WW2 and will read this article and will have some kind of meltdown because of it? Why would their descendants react badly to it? Unless they have a pre-existing condition, that's untenable, and if they have a pre-existing condition then they should seek help for it.
And to (c), how would they even know what the camp looked like if they're so triggered by the thought of it? They have an aversion to it.
No, none of that makes sense, and cloaking it in "compassion" or trying to handwave scrutiny away because it would be a "low stakes" behavioural change won't hide it.
> Apart from that, I cannot associate with the picture either
We are intelligent people, the link is really simple to make. There being "better" choices does not make the picture a non-sequitur.
I'm sure I'm not alone in wishing this West coast American style of pop psychology being misapplied to real life would die a death.
By the way, George Takei (I believe that's who you meant) is 87, and he's not really in tech.
More important than that to me is the use of rational, sound, valid reasoning, and the avoidance of petty and facile straw man arguments.
But okay, I really want there to be a picture of a concentration camp guard tower, because the best way to deal with childishness and unreasonableness is, unsurprisingly, childishness and unreasonableness.
It’s a low stakes change.
Nobody assumes harmful intentions from the author - I would not have recognized the picture either. But now that it’s been pointed out that it’s from a site where people were held illegally against their will, the reaction is a tell-tale. Knowing this, and insisting on keeping the images is now willfully associating with harmful behavior.
Apart from that, I cannot associate with the picture either - as an on-call engineer for some widely used infrastructure, I am not a guard on duty keeping people in a camp. I am an emergency responder. I fix things when they go haywire or an accident happens. A firefighter, paramedics, civil emergency responder would IMO be a much better metaphor for what I do.