Ruism Kritik Updates - Michigan 2024 HHIRS

Ruism Updates
Notes
Notes
I have heard all of your comments, “I just love the ruism K”, “I’ve run it every single Neg round”, “truly, the #1 file that Umich has put out!”, “I just wish they would put out more ruism cards more than anything!”. Well, I am here to deliver some updates for you guys!
For the sonics alt, if you read this you should probably play a guzheng or guqin song, like this https://youtu.be/vgFJesiRZkk?si=o9KIF2cWwX7Ui4Dr
Don’t ask about the date on the Crosweller card. Yes, that was what it said in the book and what it was listed as in the UMich library.
--Zachary Rubin ˚ ༘♡ ⋆｡˚
Neg
Framework
AT: Extinction Outweighs
Risk evaluation is not neutral but shaped by sociocultural, epistemic, and moral standards. Their impacts are not “real” but rather virtual representations of anxieties given the certain contexts and moral structures embodied in the aff which shape how we interpret reality.
Crosweller 25 [Mark Crosweller, served as head of Australia's National Resilience Taskforce, part of the Department of Home Affairs, having been appointed there following his service as the Director-General of Emergency Management Australia, previously served as the third Commissioner for the ACT Emergency Services Agency responsible for the ACT Fire Brigade, ACT Ambulance Service, Rural Fire Service and State Emergency Service, Fellow of the Australian Institute of Management, Routledge, ISBN: 978-1-003-49951-0, “Compassion in Disaster Management: The Essential Ethic of Relational Leadership”, 2025 (do not ask, I don’t know either), pg. 32-35, //zrubin]
The separation of time and space, disembedding, reflexive modernity, and manufactured uncertainty as distinguishing features of early and late modernity are associated with the emergence and embedding of risk throughout contemporary society and in this context, the work of Ulrich Beck and other sociologists is relevant. It explains how risk is an anticipatory process, global in reach, and shaped by knowledge, social definition, and construction that in turn shapes individual perception. It also explains how risk can be amplified or attenuated by relations of power and how, ultimately, it is we as individuals who must shoulder much of the responsibility for risk management. As a generalisation, all concepts of risk (pre-modernity and modernity) establish the distinction between reality and possibility. If the future is either predetermined (such as in the religious context of fate, predestination, karma, or the will of Allah), or independent of present human activities (such as a bushfire that has no impact on humans or their environment), the term “risk” makes no sense. Therefore, the term “risk” denotes the possibility that an undesirable state of reality (adverse effects) may occur as a result of natural events or human activities sometime in the future. This implies that, as humans, we can and will make causal connections between actions (or events) and their effects, and that undesirable effects can be avoided or mitigated if the causal events or actions are avoided or modified (Krimsky & Golding, 1992). Risk, then, does not mean disaster or catastrophe, but rather the anticipation of disaster or catastrophe, which exists in a permanent state of virtuality, only becoming “topical” to the extent that it is anticipated. Or put another way, risks are not “real,” they are “becoming real.” At the moment in which risks become real—for example, in the shape of a natural hazard event—they cease to be risks and become disasters or catastrophes. At this point, their consequences dictate that risk has already moved elsewhere—to the anticipation of further events such as inflation, supply chain interruptions, or the restriction of civil liberties. Risks are always events that are not yet real. Without techniques of visualisation, symbolic forms, or mass media, risks are nothing at all (Beck, 2009b; Beck et al., 2013). Whilst the term “risk” is generally pertinent to the modern age, its deeper meaning has evolved over time, seeping into European languages in the last 400 years, where there remains a distinct lack of consensus about the etymology of “risk.” Some historians believe that the term derives from the Arabic word “risq,” which refers to the acquisition of wealth and good fortune (Skeat, 1910). Others have claimed that “risk” finds its origins in the Latin word “risco” and was first used as a navigational term by sailors entering uncharted waters (Strydom, 2003).Still others have claimed that these two derivations of risk were soldered together in the 17th century initially through the principle of maritime insur-ance and then extended into banking, finance and health between the 18th and 20th centuries (Hubbard, 2020). In this context, risk came to relate to the bal-ance between acquisitive opportunities and potential dangers (Wilkinson, 2002). In other words, early modernity was dominated by “external risks”—risks that could somehow be perceived as independent of the actions of the individuals, could be reasonably well calculated, and could be subjected to actuarial tables. Calculating the risks associated with unemployment and sickness on institu-tional profitability is but one example (Giddens, 1999b). However, as also argued by Anthony Giddens (1990) and Giddens and Pierson (1998), for the first time in the course of human history late modernity has created the environment to evolve risk to the global level. This includes radio-activity, which completely evades human perceptive abilities, and toxins and pollutants in the air, the water and foodstuffs, together with the accompany-ing short and long-term effects on plants, animals and people (Beck, 1992). Climate change and its deleterious effects on humanity, such as mass migration and monumental shifts in food production and water supply, have also become a truly “global risk” (Baldwin, 2017). Not only are these risks dangerous, but they are also generally not easily per-ceived or understood. They are complex risks which include patterned processes of increased danger, such as background radiation, ozone depletion, global warming and global dimming. They are permanent rather than temporary, global rather than local, and manufactured by us in practical and ideological ways. Also, while some people are more affected than others, for the distribution and growth of the more traditional risks—such as poverty (due to inequalities such as class, race, gender and social strata positions)—risks of late modernity sooner or later also strike those who produce or profit from them. The ecological disaster that these risks create as future consequences (such as climate change and nuclear radiation) ignore the borders of nations and the rich/poor differentials, threat-ening not only the health of humans and the environment but also property and profit. Simultaneously, they undermine the order of national jurisdictions, producing new international inequalities, not only between the Third World and the industrial states but also among the industrial states themselves (Beck, 1992). Hence, these risks are abstract processes in the sense that we cannot necessarily directly see or feel them, but they are material in the sense that they involve the changing form of nature itself or of our societies and their patterns of production and reproduction (Handmer & James, 2007). They are future-oriented and based on causal interpretations, and therefore initially only exist in terms of the (scientific or anti-scientific) knowledge about them rather than through experience. Also, while this knowledge shapes us, paradoxically, so does our denial and/or ignorance of it. Therefore, risks can be changed, magnified, dramatised, or minimised within knowledge, and to that extent, they are particularly open to social definition and construction. As a result, institutions such as governments, the mass media, and the scientific and legal professions in charge of defining risks become key influencers in determining what is or is not “at risk” or “risky” (Beck, 1992, 2009b). The social definition and construction of risks can be viewed as a simultaneous process of the experience of potential risks intersecting with the way institutions and individuals perceive them. These perceptions are informed by social systems and value structures which influence the extent in which risks are either amplified or attenuated (Kasperson & Kasperson, 1996). Social amplification and attenuation of risk occurs through information processes, institutional structures, social group behaviour and individual responses. These intensify or weaken signals that individuals and social groups receive. They also filter the multitude of signals regarding the attributes of the risk and their importance (Kasperson & Kasperson, 1996; Kasperson et al., 1988).This information and filtering are shaped and influenced by scientists, risk management institutions, media, social activists and opinion leaders, personal networks, and public agencies, as well as by us as individuals. It is done through filtering (only processing a fraction of the information coming through), de-coding and processing (interpreting). It is also done by attaching values, in-teracting with social and cultural peers, formulating behavioural intentions, and finally, engaging in individual or group actions to either accept, ignore, tolerate or change the risk (Kasperson et al., 1988).Often, through the process of amplification and attenuation, our “reality” can be dramatised or minimised, transformed, or simply denied, according to the norms which decide what is known and what is not. Our realities can become the products of struggles and conflicts over definitions of risk within the context of specific relations of definitional power (Beck, 2009a). Put simply, in most cases, it is those who are in power who ultimately decide what is “risky” and what is not.
Links
Links---Queerness Affs
Social formation is prior to both action and being—only a social ethics predicated on role ethics can overcome systems of antiqueerness. Ontological frames lock in those systems of hatred while Confucian theorizing creates new pathways for social growth that can overcome them.
Sullivan 21 [Dr. Ian M. Sullivan, assistant professor of Philosophy, Department of Historical and Political Studies, Arcadia University, April 22, 2021, Dao, “The Need for More than Role Relations: Queer Lives, Social Group Identities, and Confucian Self-cultivation”, //zrubin]
Alternatively, one might think of groups as associations. Associations, such as clubs, churches, political parties, or teams, are formally organized institutions (Young 1990: 44). But these rely on a voluntary, contractual model of relations, where individuals exist as complete persons prior to group membership. If car owners were to organize as a group in need of political representation or social accommodation, they might form such an association. As with the aggregate model, this model for group identity is unable to adequately account for those group memberships I am identifying here as sociopolitically constitutive of the self. If an oppressed identity is a voluntary association (as many antiqueer spokespeople in fact assert with the use of terms like “lifestyle”), then one’s oppression is one’s own fault; one’s identity is supposedly a choice. Neither aggregates nor associations adequately capture the experience of group oppression, nor do they capture the constitutive nature of social groups (Young 1990: 43). A social group is defined instead by a sense of identity—a self-identification with a social status and its common history—that is not exclusively the product of one’s volition (Young 1990: 44). Young writes that group identification is a matter of encountering another collectivity whose cultural forms, practices, and way of life differ from one’s own and where one’s own are shared with some others. One will share a sense of identity with those who share one’s way of life because of similar experiences, such as coming out, homophobia, racism, xenophobia, erasure, misogyny, and so on (Young 1990: 43). Social groups, therefore, are neither arbitrary nor voluntary. Moreover, insofar as a social group’s relationships to other groups and the individual experiences constituting the shared sense of identity of its members constitute that social group’s identity, any given social group is defined contextually and provisionally. The description Young offers mirrors the notion of role-relational constitution from earlier. First, there is no preexisting core self who then adopts these social group identities. Instead, one’s process of individuation is partially shaped by these social groups. Second and third, just as one is born into a matrix of unchosen familial relations, one is born into a constellation of unchosen group identities (e.g., ablebodied, Chinese, cisgender, bisexual, and so on). Thus one’s individuated person is a unique focal integration of these various different group identities. Fourth, these social groups are relationally defined. Just as what it means to be a parent depends on what it means to be a child, a grandparent, and so on, what it means to be cisgender depends on what it means to be transgender, gender nonconforming, and so on. Finally, these social group identities are underdetermined. What it means to be Chinese today continues to evolve, just as what it means to be lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, pansexual, and so on continues to evolve with each generation. In these ways, Young’s ontology of social groups is analogous to the role-relational ontology in Confucian role ethics in that both see identities as unique, multifaceted, in-process, and contextually forged. Moreover, both see the ideal society as one that appreciates the differences among these various identities. This conception of social groups explains the phenomenon of chosen families detailed above. If elements of one’s identity are cocreated with others insofar as one needs others to affirm that identity and also to educate one in the history, cultural forms, practices, and ways of life of that identity, then finding and developing kin relations to do just that is a matter not just of flourishing but of survival itself. This is particularly interesting for Confucian ethics because the Confucian focus on family relations as the root of personhood (as necessary for survival and flourishing) is in a sense affirmed by the queer construction of chosen families. These are not simply circles of friends, predominantly queer neighborhoods, or online forums. Queer persons are often forming kin relations to establish themselves and to flourish as members of their social group, a social phenomenon that is consistent with the role-relational ontology of Confucianism but thus far not discussed by Confucian scholars. Moreover, the particular example of contemporary queer life in the United States requires both models of social constitution for a complete explanation.
Links---Util
Evaluating only consequences justifies atrocities in the name of “the greater good”. Only an ethics founded on a complete theorization of moral substance can give us ethical guidelines to live by.
Fraser 16 [Chris Fraser, goated, Chair Professor in the School of Chinese at the University of Hong Kong, formerly Richard Charles and Esther Yewpick Lee Chair in Chinese Thought and Culture, University of Toronto, 2016, Columbia University Press, “The Philosophy of the Mòzǐ: The First Consequentialists”, ISBN 9780231520591 //zrubin]
The difficulty for the Mohists and other consequentialists lies in establishing that consequences are the only such relevant factor. Consider an example the Mohists themselves touch on: slavery. 42 They argue that, along with other aspects of military conquest, enslaving the people of a defeated state is immoral. Their official explanation is that this and other consequences of war benefit neither Heaven, the ghosts, nor people.43 But is slavery wrong merely because it harms its victims? Suppose the enslaved prisoners were from an impoverished, crime-ridden state, and after their capture they lived comfortably as servants in a wealthy, orderly state. By the Mohists’ criteria, one might argue that enslavement had benefited them. Still, most of us—probably including the Mohists—would deny that this benefit justifies their enslavement. The challenge for the Mohists is to explain why not. NonMohists can suggest that slavery is wrong not just because it is usually harmful but because it contravenes other crucial values, such as people’s autonomy, dignity, or exercise of their characteristic capabilities. A Mohist might rejoin that trampling on such values amounts to harming people, and so Mohist ethics can indeed explain why benevolent slavery is wrong. However, subsuming such values under the concepts of benefit and harm seems redundant and gratuitous, a Procrustean attempt to assimilate into consequentialism reasons that are fundamentally not consequentialist.44 Indeed, this redundancy sometimes emerges even in the Mohists’ own explanations of immoral conduct. One passage explains that theft is wrong because the stolen items are the product of others’ labor and thus not the thief’s property (Mz 28/57). According to their ethical theory, the Mohists’ official explanation of why theft is wrong must be that the practice of appropriating what is not one’s own is harmful to all. To a critic of consequentialism, however, this explanation will seem redundant. Other things being equal, that thieves take what is not theirs is already a sufficient explanation of the wrong. Indeed, it is not obvious that theft actually is harmful to all, nor that, were it beneficial, it would thereby be right. Without purporting to offer a knockdown critique of Mohist-style consequentialism, then, I suggest that a more persuasive ethical theory would acknowledge different types of moral value rather than subsuming all moral value under the single label of benefits to be promoted. A third respect in which the Mohist conception of value seems too narrow is that the Mohists tend to assume that moral value is the only kind there is, or at least the only kind that matters. As I have remarked, they disregard aesthetic value and devote little attention to personal happiness or fulfillment or to a conception of well-rounded human excellence. For them, the best sort of life—for a committed Mohist—is that of the benevolent person or the sage, a life of total devotion to morality and to promoting the benefit of all, construed as material welfare, sufficient population, and social order. Their texts hint at recognition of other values, as when they point out that ancestral sacrifices offer an occasion for an enjoyable gathering (Mz 31/102) or enthusiastically describe dialectics as a path to knowledge of the myriad things (45/1). However, their texts, especially the “Dialogues,” give the impression that morality is all that really counts. The problem with this stance is that morality may not be all that matters, and a life of total devotion to it may not be the best sort of life. Many goods that enrich our lives are morally neutral; examples might include beauty, knowledge, humor, and excellence in various activities. A flourishing, wellrounded life may be one that makes a significant place for the pursuit or appreciation of such nonmoral goods.45 Mohist ethics thus contrasts with the dominant orientation of classical Greek ethics and that of classical Chinese texts as diverse as the Ruist Xúnzǐ and the Daoist Zhuāngzǐ. Much ancient ethical thought, in both Greece and China, is concerned with the good or flourishing life of the individual. A widely shared assumption is that leading a morally good life is in the individual’s own interest, since such a life is the most excellent or happiest for us as individuals. The morally good and prudentially good

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