What do we mean by 'Radical'?

[ver$hy ver$h]

I think it's very hard to be radical now because there's a safe little pocket for every sub group. It's very hard to make an ideological decision that is going to leave outside of a thriving community that can insulate you and fulfill all of your social needs

Do you think the critics genuinely believe whatever TV show they're writing about is 'radical' or is something else going on?

 

[Mr. Tea]

Luigi mangione doing a radical thing while being definitively not radical in a passive sense feels like something

Well this is just it. It can mean "strongly left-wing", or just "drastic, violent" with no particular ideological slant.

 

[IdleRich]

Never even seen this one, your breaking new ground on ways to be butt hurt

Yeah I've never heard that either, in fact that phrase is kinda breaking a new path for me

 

[mixed_biscuits]

I hate the term. It often sounds like blagging. The kind of word you see deployed on the back of a dull book. I moaned on here a few years ago about some American publications persistently referring to bits of pop culture as "quietly radical". Does it carry any weight at all at this point? Seems more or less meaningless when it's stamped on basically anything; Dua Lipa called her last album Radical Optimism and offered an explanation which didn't seem any different from regular optimism.

Radical comes from radix, which is Latin for root. A square root is sometimes called a radical in mathematics. If people stick to radical = fundamental then I think it's of value. "Radical left" would be left-wing politics based on principles that fundamentally differentiate them from other politics, for instance. A radical movement is one that tries to recapture the logical root of whatever it may be in order to shake off things that aren't properly related to the foundation.

 

[mixed_biscuits]

Radical illiteracy

That would be blindness

 

[mixed_biscuits]

To eradicate means to take the root out.

 

[mixed_biscuits]

Radish comes from radix as well. Maybe it's time for the radish left and the rooty right.

 

[ver$hy ver$h]

My dad had a book called Radix.

 

[Clinamenic]

Don't tax my gig so hardcore, cruster.