The Ethics of Rhetoric vs Rhetoric Supposition of Ethics

Alright, I’ve seen a lot of bizarre superstitions put up by moderators in the past to current time that results in a lot of good people quitting this site out of frustration.

It is important that we keep the window open on discussing ethics as wide open as possible, when we don’t, our restricting behavior in limiting debate behaves a formulaic statements by themselves, we artificially interject needless invisible arguments nobody grasps or fully understands, and in time the entire body politic gets sucked into that fucking void, like a black hole sucking up a star system.

Why is this the case? Censorship is a social antagonism, when you protect, you attack the dialectic. There is a reason why there exists a mental symmetry between the left and right lobes of the brain… you negate a aspect in one hemisphere, the other will start acting oddly. One way or another, society will assert what your blocking in it’s abstracted opposite processes, and will become resentful when it sees other societies, without these obscene restrictions, solve the ethical questions your suppressing in a short sighted effort to protect a lesser good. It is why I’m opposed to the idea of logical fallacies, they are a random rule we only understand as far as their objections, if even that, but not holistically each in relation to one another, or the larger realm of thought. We haven’t the slightest clue what we are doing when we object to the larger domino of syllogisms down the line. There might be a right answer for a query on a cultural level, but rarely on the societal level of continued stress and permutations, day by day, generation by generation, as society engadges with such issues.

Ethics, when debated (Ethics has a wider scope that debate/language Faust, so isn’t reducible to language) can be summed up as statements and propositions that ultimately results as “Should” questions. It can be done, isn’t always evident… but it is the binding principle that gives the rhetoric of ethics it’s determining beauty, if carried far enough by a philosopher. It is what your looking for, what are the “should” questions in the underlining debate. This implies your separating what can be changed from what can’t be changed.

For our purposes, in discussions on this forum, what can’t be changed?

1. Race
2. Sex (Trixie is trying hard as hell to disprove this, still quite a ways to go)
3. Ethnicity

You can try to add more, like Height, but tall people can gruesomely choose to become short, and having seen Gattica, and real life medical procedures, Short people can often make the choice of becoming taller. You may have a genetic predisposition to being fat or lazy, or vice versa, but even in these cases, choice remains a possibility… 99.999% of people can choose to change. How realistic these changes can be are a different matter.

I refer to Zeno of Citrium of course, his reforms of the Cynic School into the Stoic School was based on a wide range of behaviors some Cynics in his era were becoming notorious for, such as claiming a live of poverty then begging for money, claiming to a life of virtue yet acting impulsively. Zeno cracked down harshly on a sharp dualism… He advocated the Cynic Sage as a paragon of (unintended) virtue, while coming down sharply on behaviors attributed to ADD. I’m very serious, looking over Arius Didymus, the Genesis of modern society’s conception of vice and virtues, what is and is not acceptable, comes down to him identifying and rejecting a wide range of “impolite” behaviors associated with this disorder. You can diagnose off his points if rejections, Stoicism is a Ad Hom attack upon it. It is why we can look at the later impulsive tragic response of Seneca failing to tame Nero. Nero didn’t have ADD, but he had some related psychotic issues. It has roots in our civilization, we repeat this segregating pattern everytime someone applies for a job. Is this person worthy or worthless? Should I hire him? Should I marry her? Should we elect him?

Now, how well can we blame someone with ADD for their impulsive reactions? If it is impulsive, not much… but it is neither a quantity or quality question, but of real world specifics between them. In other words, it is between Zeno and that damn annoying Cynic who obviously annoyed him, and their community. The Rhetoric of Ethics can produce formulaic and linguistic responses. Ot is valid for any debate, and society big or small to embrace this. It is, however, invalid to try a Bolshevik turnabout in then saying The Ethics of Rhetoric determines all Rhetoric of Ethics henceforth.

That is absurd and anti-philosophical, destined to undermine any political system that asserts it… of moral synthesis isn’t able to dictate the concurrent or future debate on what should be debated in The Ethics of Rhetoric.

Why? Because we still have the same human brains. Similar architecture, similar number of brain cells, from that previous generation and ours. Same issues in breaking up the mental symmetry that guides of cognitive dialectic, our ability to carry through and comprehend the Heraclitian Flux of out universe. Every city is a projection of the mind, all cities are abstractable and solidified in them, congruences and contradictions noted. Same for society, same for civilization.

It is a task larger than any one philosopher or school to tackle, and therefore is open to all.

More to follow, long posts have a habit of not posting.

My post here of course was inspired by Magsj falsely accusing me of Sluring Fixed Cross, I made no such slur. I want to stress, despite some crazy moderators claiming otherwise:

1. Examination of biographies are legitimate in determining the validity of abstracted ideals being advocated. Only stupid fools think otherwise, that we can subtract Heideggar and the existentialists of his era (on any side) from the two world wars. Too much emphasis in my opinion has been placed on Heideggar being a Nazi… this is a minor symptom, very few people object to the much scarier situation of that era, one of avante gaurde phenomenology and existentialism merging seemlessly into the esoteric philosophies the elites of that era were embracing, and how very, very little resistence it mustered morally to denounce the wars. Compared another wartime philosophy (yes, Existentialism is certainly a wartime philosophy, from Nietzsche in the 1870 war to WW2 through the cold war to today) the Mohists of ancient China took a much different approach, actively trying to breakup and disrupt fascism. Remarkable, two very different philosophies, two very different modes of thinking, the actual leading members of both schools, and their biographies, are part and parcel to the debate. It us how we think, and we can isolate and examine their actions on Should Questions.

If your unable to do this as a philosopher, can’t see it, even in something supposedly timeless and in material and universal like Pure Mathematics, you are simply being blind. It is still very much open to others to look and interject even if you can’t, or won’t. This is why Aristotle stood by Ad Hom attacks. They are good and essential to the conduct of philosophy. The ethical isn’t the sum of philosophy, but nothing can escape it. Not even madness, the unique… It still has a basis in a larger construct. Even if you evolved a whole new lobe of your brain, most of your cognitive architecture will be similar to everyone else, and your still part of the ethical debate. Same goes for malfunctions in the mind.

2. Slurs can only be about things you can’t change about yourself. It isn’t a slur just because something upsets you, or some foreign society X bans or prohibits (such as Magsj’s rotten British outlook)… emotions don’t make the slur. What determine the slur is what can’t be changed. Some of this can be modified with technology, in earlier civilizations, someone cursing out my big nose or large hands wouldn’t be something I could reasonably change, today… I really can’t change my hands, but I can change my nose. The most popular surgery in Iran is nosejobs.

Is that a necessary change? I don’t think so, if anything I would mock it, but even in earlier societies, it still had, despite being a slur, and potentially hurtful slur, ethical implications.

1. Don’t fuck bignose people, or big handed people.
2. Don’t associate with them, or include them as friend, do business with them, etc.

It is a advocacy to society on the whole, to prefer this over that. What should our society be? Now you may say in a liberal knee jerk manner “No, this is abhorrent” abd I’m inclined to agree with you, but we do it constantly. Both Magsj and Only Humean does it, just like Zeno of Citrium did. Hence my point in number 1), Biography and Ad Homs are legitimate,under no better authority than Aristotle, any trait isolated in man is biological in origin. Any idea is. It came out of our cognition, and that is biologically generated from anatomical formations. Your nose and hands suggests genetic predepositions, hormonal markers. We dobt always comprehend what we are reacting to or against, but scientists have increasingky come to conjectures as to just what it might be in some cases.

3. You can assert a claim that combines both something that can be changed (should) as well as not changed.

Example… I knew a very tall, self rightous person who blinked alot. She couldn’t help the blinking… wasnt aware of it for the longest time. I ended up telling her friends while talking one night after being lectured “Watch out people about following what she says, for when she gets up, she is kittle more than someone who is tall, and who blinks” in referrence to her lack of situational awareness of kind. On one hand, that is a slur… She wasnt aware of the neurosis yet. Yet, it lead to observation on her own part, and some emotionak hurt… but she was able to confirm she had issues. She got a few cognitive tests done, including being strapped to a tilting table that measured the vascular response in her head, and discovered she did indeed have a syndrom (nane ekudes me, not too serious of one, but it did effect a range of behaviors).

Some things, we’ve determined are largely irrelevant differences in people. Skin color for example, I personally could care less, so long as your not blue or green. I will be worried about any blue or green people I encounter. I would not ekect them as president out of health concerns, for example. I could care less about the shades of races we have however. Doesn’t appear as a restriction to society ethically remaining healthy.

My ass being 6 foot tall, 250 pounds… these are racial and sexual characteristics that should negatively prohibit me from being a sailor working in a submarine, or a Vietnam era Tunnel Rat. However, it would rightfully qualify me working on a presidential honor guard… big guys intimidate. It isn’t height per say, but the intimidation we are seeking to assert.

Ethics as a whole can be very, very small… the world of a caveman, or very, very large and sophisticated, the world of a supreme court justice. It is valid in both cases, and one may unexpectantly work better than the other at times. Why? The validity of the philosopher, how well the society can intellectually adapt.

Slurs are not invalid, but are oftentimes pointless to debate. Someone declaring “I hate Jerkey cause he is Chinese”, when everything is exhausted, and no “should” can be applied to Jerkey or the rest of us is found, we just ignore it, or counter denounce it as meaningless drivel, white noise in the body politic.

Why does this occurrence exist if it is meaningless? Well, while you can say all that is sexual or warlike is ethical in it’s nature (with Ethics, I’m not saying it is "allowable or wise in a legal or moral or strategic sense), and that Rhetoric doesn’t have full scope over it (rhetoric is the linguistic aspect of dialectic change, you gotta have words and the capacity to express it first, or at least point and grunt at it), beyond this “choice” in deciding the genome, is the the Cratylus “White Noise” barrier every society pushes against, what forms and pushes back upon language. For definition to exist, we must have a concept, and while concepts can be derived from two or more other abstractions not immediately found in your environment, original ideas eventually need to be expressed. This involves assertion of a synthetic reality, through ansloghy like Hui Shi or Mnemonics like Cicero, Categories like Aristotle or Thales that exploit Operator-Operand suppositions… or old nasty Cratylus pointing. Anything sensory can be liked or disliked. When we are new infants, we go off the character of the faces around us, and like those faces. As a adult, most of us mature in large societies and can accept a wider range of faces. Very few of us would date The Elephant Man, but we have a generally large palate.

If you can point at something, you can develop a linguistic basis to it. You can accept or reject it, however frivolous the rejection is, like a racist does. Why? Cause infants can. It keeps them safe from strangers to freak out when they see someone unrelated to them picking them up. The vast majority of people on earth wouldn’t restrict our society to the inbred supremicist philosophy of “The closer the kin, the deeper it goes in” and we accept the benefits of larger populations and interbreeding to lower the risk of nasty mutations. Many can’t, and while it is their right within philosophy to look sourface, I largely reject this mentality. What is a good way of thinking for someone teething isn’t a good way of thinking for a general.

So every society necessarily has White Noise issues, a lot of absurd data flowing in we accept or reject. Some of it, such as young women changing fashion yearly, is something we’ve learned to exploit. As a 30 something man, I am naturally predisposed to liking women in their late teens, but I do not like their style or makeup or music at all. It is a turnoff, and I suspect that is ultimately why they do it, to attract men in a said age range.

A lot of activity occurs in that noise, and however silly or incoherent it is, in philosophy we can’t abide by the Principle of Tacenda, what we cannot talk about must be passed over in silence. This is, of course false… we constantly engulf ourselves in this sea of unknowing. It is difficult, it is obscene, but the syllogisms of the future, in words unknowst to us, shall be constructed from it in eras when we will better know ourselves.

While I find it a pity many newcomers to philosophy (not just this site, philosophy as a whole) find keeping their heads above water is too difficult and recoil, and a level of protection is to be provided for the very new… I by no means suggest seasoned philosophers kick down the doors of philosophy 101 and grill the new kids day one to their utmost, some consideration is called for in regards to skill level for the new (but not for the experienced in terms of time who choose to be lazy and accept a low skill level), questions of Ethics still involve them, too. Period. No way around that. All expression is rhetorical, they need to learn to respond. There isn’t a hidden layer of rhetoric or ethics free of psychological pressure or response. If you are a lurker, just getting to know philosophy, I applaud your silent study. But if you’ve learned enough to form your own opinion, get involved. You will get whopped a good number of times, but stick with it, grow a thicker skin, learn to be more discerning in your assertions, learn when to hold your ground, when to advance. The ideas in your head can only go as far as you if you never learn to express them, if need be, defend them. No great idea has gone without attack, much justifiable, much not. Your fighting both against other genius, against nominal societal assertions, and the unconscious white noise we have floating all about. You gotta learn to survive it all, and present a clear picture of what your position is all about. If emotional pain is too much for you, then shut your mouth and keep quiet. Your pain is a response… reply… you have a wide, wide range. On a forum like this, no discussion is confined to Thesis Anti-Thesis, they are arguments within arguments, alluding to larger ideas, stretching back years. It embraces the entirety of the spirit.

These are the many reasons moderators need to be very, very careful in making ignorant assertions that someone is asserting a logical fallacy, or they are sluring (and I certainly wasn’t, I’ve also had much worst said to me on this site) or whatever fucking batty crazy excuse your using to threaten another poster into submission to your limited and ugly worldview. As moderators, hate to break it to you, nobody really gives a flying fuck about your views on these matters, and modifying our positions neither changes our outlook, nor make it better. If someone just wants to curse, or be disruptive, let it happen… it is the white noise phenomena that begins to synchronize with our emotions and discontent. It will eventually run it’s course or solidify into something meaningfully. Take the Black Lives Matter movement… largely that White Noise. They are using language borrowed form the civil rights movement that is no longer applicable in what they are asserting, they are using the forms of protest meant for a very different era of ethics, largely failing. Eventually very real ideas will grow out of this frustration, and they will be better able to express frustrations and seek better solutions for the larger body politic. A dialectic is forming, but it is largely unconscious, and indiscernable with the current language we inherited from the Marxist or Adam Smith’s School. We certainly aren’t at a point of expressing the truth of the issue, or fully knowing it… just a lot of frustration and rage. This will go on for a while, and creating a government version of Magsj or Only Humalean to waltz in and crush it wouldn’t resolve it. If anything, would suck the rest of society in time into it, as we never learned how to deal with it, and prefer to suppress it. We would have to suppress it everywhere as time passed, as we never learned precisely what it was, and would have a range of guesses regarding it’s attributes.

A hands off approach, short of avoiding lethal, destructive violence is best. On the societal level, getting people to live together peacefully is best. On a forum, we don’t have to worry about that, cause it is a non-physical, digital presence. Even when they say “I’m going to go fucking kill you” they aren’t going to go kill anyone, more likely to go Jack off to angry music than anything. If someone is suicidal, prone to deep shock, best to protect them by banning them. If anything can be said a few thousand miles away, that can result in suicide, best that at risk suicidal person stays offline. Nobody needs such a basket case around in a competitive world of ideas. They need fluffy bunnies, or a padded room with no sharp objects.

Ethics And Morality: How To Baffle The Population With Bullshit By Jack Handy.