I just wanted to note that I was actually being quite serious.
Serious?! I hate cults! I have spent a lot of time and energy, and will spend more, to protect my philosophy from attracting cult devotees or empowering a cult mentality. It never even occurred to me that you would seriously suggest such a thing. Cults cause a lot of suffering and they are not legitimate.
~~~
Two questions to ask clarification on two points of your takeaway, J:
2. Most people simply aren't capable in their present state of receiving criticism outside the circle of friends in whom they have decided they will expose themselves. (So don't criticize unless they let you.)
How can this be balanced with the very real need to call out strangers when they make a sexist, racist, ableist, etc., remark?
Social mores, when available, make good tools for reinforcing behavior. Most people are usually sensitive to allegations of violating social mores. That holds less true on forums, but still sometimes works, especially at forums like the Compendium where a more civil atmosphere prevails.
In lieu of social mores, such as for dishonorable behaviors like fat-bashing where not only is there no more against it, but there is actually a more promoting it, your options addressing the offense are pretty much limited to various forms of direct confrontation. One passive-aggressive alternative is to slyly change the conversation and use it to make a point that indirectly but conspicuously shames the offenses committed, and, by extension, the offenders themselves. But I don’t like passive-aggressiveness, so you won’t usually see me take that route.
I took a breather and considered the validity of her point...
If only more people would do that, I wouldn’t have such a load on my shoulders.
The possibility of men crowding out women's viewpoints in feminist spaces thus became a very real consideration for me, and a reason why I've tempered my own feminism into something quieter, and hopefully much more useful in the long run.
On the other hand, your specific example is not one I can agree with. The feminist movement has people who think that certain others shouldn’t be allowed to participate. That’s how it goes with social movements. Thankfully there is plenty of room to ignore that kind of spoiled childishness and get on with the work of sexual equality. Don’t listen to what people tell you. There is always room for you in a social movement, no matter who you are, unless you don’t actually support the core convictions of said movement. One reason I speak often of “sexual equality” rather than “feminism” is that the former recognizes not only that sexism affects all people but also rejects the assertion that we should replace existing sexism with other forms of it.
Real simple test here. There isn’t much that a person’s genitals tells you about them. Don’t make any judgments about their character based on such irrelevant criteria. There are 23 chromosome pairs in the cells of the normal human body. The variances on 22 of them are quantitatively more important, by virtue of size. If you want to talk about genetic differences, males and females have a lot of differences, aye. So too do males and males, and females and females. Most of them are not sex-specific.
The man didn't have the perspective of being a woman whose voice had been crowded out before; the woman did.
This being the crux of your point. That is not a sex-specific genetic condition. That is a social condition. It is not an appropriate basis for sex-specific discrimination, even when the goal is antidiscriminatory. People whose voices are crowded out by the times and the customs often do identify with one or more persecuted classes, but others do not, or they do and you just don’t notice it.
There’s a ruckus going on at Daily Kos right now because the site owner is banning people as part of a campaign of active moderation and it turned out that he was disproportionately banning black people. You could cut the cognitive dissonance with a knife. Some people were screaming the usual “racist” this and “racist” that; others were saying “this is different!”; nobody at all seemed to understand how silly it always is to get caught up in those kinds of politics.
Though I suspect there could be meaning in your use of the word "let" that I'm not picking up on, too.
Ah, I wish I could say you’ve picked up on one of my patented multilayer meanings, but not in this case.
3. Most people, despite words to the contrary, care more about a harmonious social experience and receiving tribute from others than they do about the integrity of their views or even their own character. (So let them build their ideas through social exchange as well as through dedicated study and discourse.)
If I could make one guess about you that I'm confident is on the mark, J, it's that you'd be uncomfortable with "paying tribute" to others -- stroking their egos, in other words.
Oh, I hate it. I detest it, and yet our species wallows in it and there is no escape. I hate giving tribute and I hate receiving it. If you see me giving it, you can deduce I’ve made the decision that I didn’t have enough respect for that person not to do it.
Do you draw a distinction between "paying tribute" and "showing respect"? Not respect for the other person's position of course -- just respect for the person.
Yes I do, of course. My concept of “respect” is multifaceted and too elaborate to lay out here, but yes.
Of all the threads I've interacted with you in, this golden oldie has always stuck out in my mind as an instance where I felt I came away with some goodies for having argued with you. When that exchange had ended I came away with the impression that I was respected in the end, and that made a big difference in achieving some personal evolution, rather than getting turned off from the discussion altogether. Honestly, I can't quite put a finger on what it was that gave me that feeling, but it's worth looking back on as one of your successes, if you would choose to call it that.
Ah, I remember writing that. I suspect your perception of respect from me came from the fact that you weren’t putting yourself in the way. You were asking an honest question, and I happened to have an answer.
I get tired, you know? I get tired of growing up but the world not growing up with me. People older than me, richer, more experienced, more cultured, more knowledgeable...do the stupidest, pettiest, most childish shit. I’ve worn through a lot of patience and have learned to have short tolerance for such nonsense. That primes my readiness to criticize people. It’s so much easier than starting from scratch, yet again, and cultivating new relationships. I’ve been there. I’ve done that. I only have so much patience for that built into my lifetime reservoir.
You know what gets me? It shouldn’t seem like it to third parties, especially here, but I care more about people than they usually care about themselves, let alone me. Building relationships...people are so thoughtless going into that. Being antagonistic...people never stop to consider that it might be anything other than malice. It’s like the Earth is a spoiled kindergarten.
I wish we could have more threads like that one. You’re one of the best people at the Compendium. You’re intelligent like I am but diplomatic like I am not. You add a necessary ingredient to the atmosphere of adult community, just like I do. By human nature, your style gets more popularity points, yet even for you I imagine it must be tiring to continually muster all that patience and restraint. You are to be commended, and that’s not “tribute.”
~~~
@ tush: Don't waste your time on that "proper" reply. What, really, would it accomplish?
The way you put it sounds like there's nothing valuable I have to share...
I said it because you’re repeating yourself and I already understand your position. You can do more productive things with your time. None of this is to say that you don’t have anything valuable to share.
I got (rightly) chided for taking the topic off-course to reply to you in detail, so I’m not going to do that again in this thread. However, the main topic is now over, so I can indulge in a few specific responses.
Provocation will always get the most responses, and you have demonstrated this various times. But will provocation help people consider your point of view? That is the question you need to ask.
Sometimes it won’t and sometimes it will. I don’t claim to be a master of knowing which case fits which category, but I am probably better than anyone else here as well as most people in general. Humanitarians have a good record of not provoking when they shouldn’t provoke, and businesspeople have a good record of provoking when they should provoke, but the reverse is not true.
If only you could appreciate the road not taken!
~~~
How frustrated I am that I can't simply force the truth on the world. It's so obvious once you get it.
Ain’t that the truth! More the second sentence than the first, though. I wonder whether part of the essence of “the truth” entails that it cannot be forced...whether the understanding and acceptance process is one of those things that can’t be shortcut without missing the point...like taking a bike ride even when you could get there in a car in a fraction of the time. If the point is the bike ride itself...
Coupled with my grand impatience, I just fucking suck at engaging. I dream of having a sterile, scientific manner of argument that relies on proven facts and science, but the emotions always override. I want to crush evil and illuminate the world. Life is too fucking short to live in a shitty place like this.
I know. People never fail to be utterly unmoved by good sense. That creates a lot of waste and ruin.
~~~
Lord J you remind me of my favorite Chrono Trigger character, it seems my time here may not be wasted.
And what would you like of me, other than this amusement?
~~~
My point has only been that you need not antagonize people to get a point across. Antagonism does not equal criticism. Please do not suggest that antagonism and criticism are the same things. Antagonism is when the argument has devolved into tearing someone apart for the sake of tearing them apart—for hostility’s sake… when it is no longer about making your point.
We are not using compatible definitions of “antagonism,” perhaps.
Or, in the case of the example I linked of Mr. Bekkler, when you make a nasty, one-off comment that’s not even remotely related to criticism, but instead serves only to foster ill-will (and for no constructive reason or debate at all!).
With regard to that, you either did not understand Mr. Bekkler’s preceding comment or did not understand my reply to it. Who belittled whom? My reply to him was to express my displeasure as much as to make a point, and I am in my rights to be irritated with people when they do stupid things.
So what you would have me do as your friend? Shall I keep my mouth shut and not criticize you, for both our comfort’s sake? Or should I try to speak to issue that I’ve observed when you ask the question? Worse, now I’m flustered because I’m not sure you’ve even truly heard me.
I welcomed comments in this thread and I appreciated yours. That does not oblige me to agree with them in full (or even in part!). If you think I would refuse to consider what you took the time to write, then you do not know me as well as I would like to think you do. Whether I ultimately agree with your viewpoint is irrelevant. Your sharing that viewpoint, is what I am glad for.
In your “takeaways” section, you seem to have the idea that I’m suggesting you not criticize people at all, when my whole point has been that antagonization, not criticism, is the bad thing. Debate is good. Hostility is not!
Again, we seem not to be using compatible definitions. With regard to your usage, I think both debate and hostility are good. Yes, they are not the same thing. They often serve different purposes, even when they go together, or they serve different parts of a common purpose. Hostility, like debate, is not an inherently appropriate choice, but in some contexts it makes sense.
My takeaways were the distillation of what you and others have written in this thread, and represented my attempt to create actionable directives from them, directives with which I would be able to personally comply at least some of the time.
If there is anything you think I am continuing not to understand, then please explain it more clearly.
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You don't just criticize people, J. Nor do you just antagonize people. You do both at the same time. It may sound simplistic, but the crux of your problem seems to be an inability to separate the two.
Incorrect. You would benefit from paying closer attention, perhaps. I can and do distinguish between the two, and demarcate them, and proceed with one and not the other, depending on the circumstances.
Feel free to set the record straight, but I think this difficulty might stem from fear of losing a perfectly reasonable argument to an unreasonable person who presents their less-well-thought-out argument in a more aggressive fashion.
This is exactly the sort of thing that exasperates me. I have nothing against you, Lennis. Nothing whatsoever. But if only you would think a little bit harder about that, or if you would have read more of my posts more closely, you would see that that can’t possibly be why I do things the way I do them. I have directly addressed this, on more than one occasion in more than one topic.
That sort of inconsiderateness is more poisonous to intelligent discourse than any prickly style.
It’s a fair theory you’ve come up with, in that it is plausible. But the actual truth is in plain view. So much energy we waste trying to point things out which are in plain view! That destroys my fallible patience.
However! I at least have enough to acknowledge that your comments are sincere and well-meant, and I appreciate that if not their actual substance.
I would suggest a more neutral approach to presenting arguments. For the purposes of defeating an opposing argument, attack only the message. (That's what true philosophers do.) Do not attack the message AND the messenger. (That's what politicians do.)
That metaphor is overly simplistic. Sometimes—nay, more often than not—the “messenger” and the “message” are not distinguishable. That is a very difficult and very close-to-the-core secret of human nature.
I think what it comes down to is what your real goal is for philosophical discourse. Do you want to win the argument? Or do you want to defeat your opponent? They are not necessarily the same thing. The true philosopher wins the argument and allows his opponent to defeat himself.
Oh, I wish. I wish. You would not imagine how many times I’ve made an argument that is decisive, only to realize damn well that I am the only person who is going to know that.
I’ve generally given up on the court of popular opinion. My goal is not to “win” but to improve my skills, hone them, and also leave a mark on the record for those tiny handful of people who may appreciate my work.
~~~
Are you presently hiring for an arch-nemesis?
No. I already have an arch-nemesis.
Ignorance.
Anthropomorphic villainy is a farce better suited for prime time television. You should instead apply to my Committee for People Wishing to Raise an Objection.