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PaperclipPerfector  10mo ago (text post)   26432 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 15, 2024

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This actually intersects with an effortpost I am thinking of making here. Consider this a trailer. This summer[1], one man ...

My military[2] and math friend, have you considered that you also have a hole in your perception? You're a man of reason, a man of action, prone to quotes involving rough men in standing ready in the night[3], and that viewpoint comes with its own obscured terrain.

One of those fundamental Hobbesian bits of insight that liberals see to lack is the understanding that violent schizophrenics attacking people on the subways is not some aberation, it's the default, and if you aren't going to do anything about it someone else just might.

To quote a great American philosopher[4], we're halfway there.

You think there's a Leviathan-shaped hole in their reasoning. They say that Penny should have subjugated to the omnipresent Leviathan - but if so, you retort, shouldn't Neely also subject himself? That Neely acted the way he did proves there is no Leviathan, therefore Penny isn't obligated to subject himself to the non-existent.

To the Blue Tribe, there is a Leviathan: the socio-emotional consensus. It surrounds us and penetrates us, binding us. Another poster here said that for some people, the social-emotional consensus is more real than gravity. You're a tough-minded man of reason, and you don't think it matters, but to the Blue Tribe, we've got each other, and that's a lot[5].

You probably noticed after that unfortunate subway incident that left-wing reddit was quick to say "We failed Jordan Neely", and if you understand that statement, you understand the Blue Tribe. To the Blue Tribe, Jordan Neely acted the way he did because the group failed to include and empathize with him. Penny is a murderer not because he killed Neely, but because he acted without the consent and validation of the group. Tutto nello feelz, niente al di fuori dello feelz, nulla contro lo feelz

From the Blue Tribe point of view, yes, HlynkaCG, there is a Leviathan Claus, and if we all believe in him, then he is real.

[1] Hopefully not so late, but we'll see depending on the reception to this post

[2] How do you know HlynkaCG served in the military? He tells you.

[3] Not that there's anything wrong with that.

[4] Bon Jovi, J., 1986

[5] ibid

You probably noticed after that unfortunate subway incident that left-wing reddit was quick to say "We failed Jordan Neely", and if you understand that statement, you understand the Blue Tribe. To the Blue Tribe, Jordan Neely acted the way he did because the group failed to include and empathize with him. Penny is a murderer not because he killed Neely, but because he acted without the consent and validation of the group. Tutto nello feelz, niente al di fuori dello feelz, nulla contro lo feelz

I understand that they think this way, but I think that it represents a hole in the Blue Tribe thinking. They, or rather this segment of them, believe with a religious fervor that they have the solution to all societal ills. They believe that their ideology covers all cases of everything, so nobody will ever feel compelled to do anything bad once everything they want is implemented.

I call it the Theory Of Nice. It's the belief that Niceness Fixes Everything. The root cause of all hostility and meanness is that somebody else at some other time was not sufficiently Nice to that person. If anyone is being mean, we can cure them by being exclusively nice to them for a sufficiently long time. We can construct a world where nobody is ever mean to anybody, therefore there's no source for meanness to start from, and everybody will just be nice to everybody else all the time. Any time somebody of the Ingroup is mean to other people in a manner severe enough to require some form of suppression, the real meaning is that we failed that person by not being sufficiently nice to them earlier, because if we had done so, obviously they would never have done that. They're our Ingroup after all, so it's not possible that they're just inherently bad.

Meanwhile, everyone in our Outgroup, i.e. Red Team, or people who don't just accept our assertions that our ideology will fix everything, is just incorrigibly evil. They're brainwashed monsters, all hatred against them is justified, any measure against them, no matter how harsh or mean, is acceptable. Obviously doing any of those things doesn't make us mean or corrupt us in any way. Don't you understand, they're the Outgroup? It's different for them! It's just different, that's all!

I think any ideology that purports to fix the world and be the one solution to everything must account for everything and everyone everywhere, and do so provably. You can't just hand-wave away that this person wouldn't act bad if we did things my way. You'd have to demonstrate in practice that it actually does handle every single case in the promised way, no exceptions. And you can't dismiss some other group that is clearly your Outgroup as unfixably evil. If you do those things, you don't actually have a glorious new ideology that fixes the world, you just have plain old Ingroup-bias, the exact same stuff that's been in our hindbrains for millennia and powered countless atrocities around the world.

So riddle me this; why did they not fail Daniel penny just as hard?

Does everyone have an obligation to let schizos randomly attack them?

Does everyone have an obligation to let schizos randomly attack them?

YES. That the sovereign is insane doesn't make him not the sovereign, and that is what he has decreed. Now, he's not entirely unreasonable... once the schizo has actually started the attack, you may defend yourself with "proportionate" force.

ETA: I'm going to go even further and note that the #1 effective rule of today's sovereigns is "no self help". If someone threatens or attacks or robs or even defrauds you, and you just let it go, you will almost always be in a better position than if you do anything else. Because it's the dispute that attracts the sovereign's attention. And the sovereign really doesn't want to be involved in settling the petty disputes of his inferiors. So to deter this, he makes sure that if his attention is attracted, BOTH parties will be significantly worse off than if it wasn't.

YES. That the sovereign is insane doesn't make him not the sovereign

Hobbes, and much of the political right would disagree. That right there is arguably the center of the Liberal blind-spot/disconnect.

To the Blue Tribe, there is a Leviathan: the socio-emotional consensus.

Oh, I too believe in the social contract, but I think the 'emotional' part above is doing the majority of the work for the Blue Tribe version. I'm more in the vein of this way it works out, from "The Ball and the Cross":

He was speaking exactly as a French bourgeois speaks to the manager of a restaurant. That is, he spoke with rattling and breathless rapidity, but with no incoherence, and therefore with no emotion. It was a steady, monotonous vivacity, which came not seemingly from passion, but merely from the reason having been sent off at a gallop. He was saying something like this:

“You refuse me my half-bottle of Medoc, the drink the most wholesome and the most customary. You refuse me the company and obedience of my daughter, which Nature herself indicates. You refuse me the beef and mutton, without pretence that it is a fast of the Church. You now forbid me the promenade, a thing necessary to a person of my age. It is useless to tell me that you do all this by law. Law rests upon the social contract. If the citizen finds himself despoiled of such pleasures and powers as he would have had even in the savage state, the social contract is annulled.”

“It's no good chattering away, Monsieur,” said Hutton, for the Master was silent. “The place is covered with machine-guns. We've got to obey our orders, and so have you.”

“The machinery is of the most perfect,” assented Durand, somewhat irrelevantly; “worked by petroleum, I believe. I only ask you to admit that if such things fall below the comfort of barbarism, the social contract is annulled. It is a pretty little point of theory.”

“Oh! I dare say,” said Hutton.

Durand bowed quite civilly and withdrew.

…“The place is on fire!” cried Quayle with a scream of indecent terror. “Oh, who can have done it? How can it have happened?”

A light had come into Turnbull's eyes. “How did the French Revolution happen?” he asked.

“Oh, how should I know!” wailed the other.

“Then I will tell you,” said Turnbull; “it happened because some people fancied that a French grocer was as respectable as he looked.”

Even as he spoke, as if by confirmation, old Mr. Durand re-entered the smoky room quite placidly, wiping the petroleum from his hands with a handkerchief. He had set fire to the building in accordance with the strict principles of the social contract.

You probably noticed after that unfortunate subway incident that left-wing reddit was quick to say "We failed Jordan Neely", and if you understand that statement, you understand the Blue Tribe.

Yes, society did fail him, by letting the "emotional" side of the "socio-emotional consensus" do all the work and so he could not be arrested, because that is police brutality, nor committed to a hospital, because One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, but he could be left to sink further into sickness and violence until the eventual end came as it did.

Seems to me it is just racism. Compare Floyd and Timpa. If colors of Perry and/or Neely were different, this isn’t a story.

Nitpick re. [2], I think the formula you're looking for is:

"How can you tell Joe served in the Army?"

"Don't worry, he'll tell you."

You probably noticed after that unfortunate subway incident that left-wing reddit was quick to say "We failed Jordan Neely", and if you understand that statement, you understand the Blue Tribe. To the Blue Tribe, Jordan Neely acted the way he did because the group failed to include and empathize with him. Penny is a murderer not because he killed Neely, but because he acted without the consent and validation of the group. Tutto nello feelz, niente al di fuori dello feelz, nulla contro lo feelz

from what I recall, to the blue tribe, Neely was murdered by a vigilante. It was not a matter of society having failed him. I don't think the debate, what little was actually debated beyond people shouting past each other, was framed as a collective failing of society.

That Neely acted the way he did proves there is no Leviathan, therefore Penny isn't obligated to subject himself to the non-existent.

Not that it doesn't exist so much as it was not present, but the end result is much the same. If the police had been present Penny would been obligated to defer to their judgment but they weren't so he wasn't

If "We failed Jordan Neely" then you're effectively admitting that Penny acted properly and that his prosecution is largely an attempt to deflect blame from the real culprits. IE every social worker, city official, and other passenger on that train who failed to step up and do something before Penny did.

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