That is not a question that can be relegated to any one individual, because that is not something that social agencies can determine.
Each according to his need and ability therefore is not , as yet, that can be deemed as applicable or determinate.
This is the catch 22 in today’s society, and the answer to that question will become more clear with the choice taken in November’s election.
This is why the amount of guilt suffered, mirrors the current conflation about what is yet to come.
No one seems to know.
Most don’t want to feel totally obligated to fulfill their responsibility , and some will connect it to kind of an atonement to other petty guilts they may compensate for.
We all do what we must to keep ourselves and the people we love safe and provided for… we didn’t engineer the world we were born into, we’re all just trying to survive and thrive in it.
The only question that morality attempts to answer is: Is there a way to do that such that it benefits everyone or at least without it being at each other’s expense?
Moral people try very hard to answer that question in their own lives… others could care less.
No… guilt in this context would imply I have a duty in which I am negligent.
That would be an absurd way for me to view my role in this world… as I have no desire to be anyone’s slave.
Gratitude and reciprocation is the price for my care and compassion… I seek solidarity, not servitude.
Why should I as an individual be judged based on my “white maleness” at all? When African-Americans started fighting against unfair discrimination in the USA, they started a movement to end the tendency of people to be categorized according to their group identity rather than who they were as individuals. Systemic racism instantiates that problem. But there’s another way of looking at the situation which is a problem in itself. According to this way of thinking a member of an identity group can be judged as a guilty of or responsible for something a member of that group has done simply on the basis of group membership.This is the problem of collective guilt which has a horrendous history including in Nazism and the Soviet Union.
I have a few responses. I think it is good to understand that as a white person and as a man (and as other categories) we will get treated is certain ways by certain people that differs from how a black man or woman will get treated. That’s knowledge, not guilt or being immoral because one is in a category. This is important knowledge because we often judge others based on what we experience often without realizing that their experience might be radically different. I can remember talking to a friend who was n attractive women who had been abused when she was a kid. Most people would not see her as vulnerable. She looked like any adult woman out there. Maybe a little bit shy, but not remotely cowered or frightened looking. But predators and many men seemed to pick up her past, probably often unconsciously.
In a fairly small city with a low crime rate men would regularly walk up to her and make very threatening sexual comments. Now women deal with this more than men, obviously and in general. But when I heard how much this happened to her, I realized that women in general, and some women in particular
are living in
a different world.
A world where regularly men walk up menacingly and say stuff that would likely start fights if they said them to men. That she was regularly approached by predatory energies, even in broad daylight. Some merely flirtatious, but sometimes things like ‘I’m going to fuck you in the ass.’
That’s not my world. I have had the equivalent experience once in my life. Someone called the motel pay phone where I was staying in a city that was new to me and said something like that to me with real malice in his voice. It actually shook me. perhaps he knows where the phone is. Perhaps he is watching me right now. But I went back to my room, I was a fairly big athletic guy and I also had a kind of ‘give it your best shot asshole’ attitude. But it was disturbing.
As a women this would have been a single, rather different experience. If it is regular it would shift how I viewed men. It simply would. She had a boyfriend she loved and male friends. She certainly didn’t decide all men were bad, but it affected her attitudes about men.
To me realizing priviledge is not about feeling like a kind of defacto asshole, it is realizing that my experience is likely different from people in other categories (and, fo course this can be true about other white men too, certainly poor ones, people less educated then me - just the way I talk will get me different treatment instantly from all sorts of professionals. I know I get more respect from doctors, lawyers, courts, bureaucrats, my kid’s teachers, whatever. Generally better.
So just knowing this should add a dash of humility when looking at other groups and thinking what amounts to Oh, I would handle that better, or Why are you so pissed off, a lot of smug judgments that amount to ‘I could live your life better than you are so you are fucked up’.
I notice how I react with rage to border guards and bureaucrats and police and professionals of all kinds when I feel mistreated, often minor things. And I can, using my knowledge, understand that while assholes will treat anyone poorly, I don’t get shit as a rule and if I did, I would
HATE.
Now, this does not mean I think any reactions is OK. But I instantly get the emotions.
And note again: none of this means I should walk around essentially feeling I am defacto bad or evil. In fact it is more like if I let this information sink in I am more likely to understand and feel compassion for others who like live in partly or radically different worlds than I do.
Since I grew up in a very diverse environment - not just diverse through race and religion and class, but also diverse in terms of mental health history, various kinds of PTSD survival and close to a lot of people who were really rather alternative in a variety of ways, I got a big education in how what one is or who one SEEMS to be or how being different can give you regular shit to eat, that generally I don’t have to eat. Though I have had PTSD and I am alternative or different in a few ways, these are less immediately obvious to others. So I can pass, in the sense that some light-skinned blacks can pass. And usually any short interaction with a professional or bureaucrat or police they notice nothing ‘different’.
Given that I have been close to a very diverse bunch of people, this different treatment is something that just sits in my bones. But I think even a more head based knowledge of this kind of thing is useful.
I don’t think guilt is useful. It just puts an unpleasant lid on things and adds more resentment no understanding and helps no one.
I mean if the guilt stops you from going up on a rooftop and shooting black people, well, ok, that’s a worthwhile temporary stopgap.
But otherwise it’s just going to add a mucky creepy vibe to interactions with people different from yourself. More noise and disease and somewhere in there a seething anger.
Generally I agree. I just think hitting the balance point there is not easy. I certainly could avoid products made by companies doing things I don’t like even more. How thorough should I be? When should I go without? How do I weigh the effects of my actions. In the first part above you mention survive and thrive. Survive carries a lot of weight. How about thrive. Should I make sure the clothes I get my kid that she wants with a great passion are not made in immoral ways? How much energy should I put in to find out. Perhaps they company pays it’s workers a good wage and in good conditions, but the company does other shit financially or politically. How many hours a week should I put in?
And, by the way, I don’t sit around wrringing my hands about this. But I don’t think there is a clear moral answer or even a set of somewhat clear heuristics to follow.
To the extent that “I” is confronted with conflicting goods out in a particular world, something in the way of an “existential contraption” seems to be involved. At least to me. Here and now. As opposed to the moral objectivists who, in regard to “white privilege”, see their own political agenda rooted in an essential truth.
Huh?
It’s tough because I believe [here and now] that, given a very different set of lived experiences, I might still be an objectivist. Or that my political prejudices might still reflect the conservative/ring wing frame of mind I once embodied instead.
But, either way, there does not appear to be a definitive philosophical/scientific assessment that can pin down once and for all how all rational men and women are morally obligated to construe “white privilege”. Given, among other things, the sheer volume of genetic/memetic variables that go into its construction re any particular individual out in any particular world.
There are clearly objective facts that we can compile about race relations in America. But is there also an objective moral and political reaction to those facts? Sure, there might be. I’m just ever and always arguing that “I” myself, have not of late come across it.
Or, sure, I’m still misunderstanding you. But that is often the case with discussions like this. And certainly not just the exchanges between you and I.
Okay, in any number of situations this might be an option. That, instead, only in how we do construe “noticing” things seems different. The way “I” construe noticing here is as an existential contraption rooted in dasein. And when I think that though “I” feel fractured and fragmented. And “I” don’t understand how others who construe a No God world sans objective morality, are not in turn drawn and quartered when confronted with conflicting goods.
Sure, I am able to convince myself from time to time that my own liberal/left wing political prejudices here are superior to the narratives of the conservative/right wing folks. But I have no way in which to demonstrate that. If only because of the gap I see between what I think I know is true “here and now” and all that would need to be known about the human condition going back to a complete understanding of existence itself.
Hell, I can’t even demonstrate to myself that I have autonomy in this exchange.
In other words, the parts that others here are able – as objectivists – to just simply shrug off.
Again: that’s not my point. My point is that even attempts to “think” things like this through are no less existential contraptions rooted in dasein. One can never seem to know when to stop thinking and, instead, take that “leap” to this or that belief. Or to go on thinking given that, sure, maybe there really is a way to pin something like this down.
But: you just haven’t encountered the right experience or relationship or access to new ideas that clinches it for you. But even then there’s the part where you demonstrate to others that they should think and feel and say and do the same things that you do.
In regard to white privilege or to any other political conflagration that besets us. Isn’t it just always easier to be an objectivist here? My way or the highway? One of us or one of them?
From my own perspective, it’s not the point you raise here but manner in which you raise it. As though conflicts of this sort can in fact be resolved with a simple “yes” or “no”. As though others who don’t share your own frame of mind are necessarily wrong. Why? Because you seem clearly convinced that your own “no” here empathically settles it.
Or, rather, so it seems to me.
Instead, from my frame of mind, those who empathically say “no!” here, like those who empathically say “yes!”, aim more to convince themselves that their own point of view is inherently/necessarily superior. They have thought it all through and now know for certain what moral obligation one does have in regard to “white privilege” in America. Their own.
Here the distinction you make between solidarity and servitude and slavery.
That way the points I raise about dasein, conflicting goods and political economy are just swept aside. Thumped once and for all. If only in their head.
The whole point of my previous post was that you did this already, around the evaluation tough. I am not saying you are 100% sure. But you just said it. It just popped out. It wasn’t hard for you to make that evaluation. This happens, actually, quite regularly with you. You also spend a lot of time thinking about other beliefs. I get that.
My point was that you do do this. They are not final conclusions, but they are things beliefs you have held for a long, long time. Yes, you might change, but you just blurt them out without wrestling with yourself.
This doesn’t make you a hypocrite. But it does offer a model for allowing yourself to do this more in general.
the objectivists that one can see seem extremely upset, tense, probably have high levels of cortisol in their blood, keep checking news and youtube for things that piss them off and/or scare them. No, not really.
I don’t think objectivism is easier. Not in total. In some ways, absolutely. They know their positions. The know or really ‘know’ that other people are wrong. But then at the same time, this means they MUST avoid noticing their own doubts, information that might call their position into question, the humanity of other people, complexity…that’s a lot of intra- and inter-psychic work.
Obviously I get worked up also. But I find it easier to notice my own complexity, as far as I can tell, than most other people. I mean, right off the bat I think that we are not monolithic selves. It is not simply that beliefs can change over time, but even that I can have contradictory beliefs at the same time, consciously or otherwise. I think I might be more at ease with this than you, also. You seem to be aware of this possibility since you refer to yourself as fractured and fragmented. I wouldn’t use those words because that sounds way too unpleasant. Given the nature of our upbringing and the amount of pressure, as just one example, to hate one’s own emotions, we are going to end up complicated. Especially if one tries to put it into words. Most people want to just have one belief to the degree that they can’t notice their complexity. That is painful and requires all the denial and self-suppression that I started challenging the assumptions around decades ago.
I realize this is extremely complicated. Please, don’t call it psychobabble. If you have a confusion about it, let me know. Calling oneself fractured and fragmented could be called psychobabble. But it’s not. It can be a good description of what one experiences. Even if it is abstract. And it is abstract since you are not literally fractured, pieces of you on the floor. So allow me to try to convey something that requires this kind of language without knee jerk just categorizing it and dismissing it.
If you have only a words only look at yourself, then fractured/fragmented seems like a good description.
I will settle for accepting myself for who I am even if there exists some contradiction in my psychological / philosophical make up
So I think it is better to not over analyse it but to just let it be because that is the way to achieve contentment [ for me any way ]
I agree, though I also think it doesn’t have to be one or the other. IOW one can accept that there are contradictions - and if you don’t you suffer more, I think - but you can also actively explore these to see if they can reconcile or even evolve into a combined third position. IOW accepting what is inevitable now does not mean one need stay hands off. Most people deal with contradicitons in themselves by trying to eradicate the contradiction. And that is what we are trained to do. There are other ways to blend, develop, merge, start to overlap splits in the self. Some fall into therapies, like Gestalt therapy or Psychodrama. Most psychodynamic therapies are both aware of our complexity, at least some of it, and have ways to move forward with the different ‘parts’. And then there are methods outside of traditional psychotherapies.
Curiosity and a willingness to feel strong emotions are prerequisites, but heck, it’s and interesting process and the changes can feel great.
What also works for me is a sense of detachment because it is about learning to let go as well as simply accepting who I am
Understanding the big picture which is that this life is only temporary so nothing truly matters in the grand scheme of things
Being interested in the world but not being part of the world so being passive rather than active
Overcoming ones fear of death and finding peace with isolation from others as much as possible
Not being interested in your own opinions too much since they can change over time so just instead let them be
Reducing your external physical voice and your internal mental one too so that the babble is kept to a minimum
Not being shocked by anything human beings say or do whatever it may be but to just accept it as part of their nature
Accepting that the greatest victory will be against yourself and no one else because that is the way to true acceptance
So that is mine but yours may be different and so whatever works for you is what you therefore need to know
Or maybe not if you cannot or do not want to find that inner peace - it all depends on your own state of mind
Well, stuff matters to me. To detach, as you say, in general, is sort of like cutting off a piece of myself to stop suffering. My hand hurts, so I cut it off. I know this is hard for people to get, and there are so many traditions that encourage detachment, but it’s not for me. Of course I may find that I no longer care so much about X, but that’s different.
I guess I find active to be a part of who I am. Again, it would be like cutting off an piece of my. Judging my desires and goals and loves.
Or one could just get it over quickly with a hand gun.
But oddly not accepting your own nature, which is active, connecting and connected, has desires and loves and things matter to it.
I see it as quite the opposite: as not accepting yourself, many parts and facets and urges and loves.
Of course, peace is great. I don’t want peace all the time. IOW I also like challenges and excitement. Perhaps there is some sea creature that looks a bit like seaweed and it enjoys a peaceful passiveness only. But then, that’s not me. I am working on accepting me. Rather than accepting ‘the way things are’. If I can’t accept me, how could I possibly, honestly accept others, for example. Since they have desires and loves and goals and yearnings. I am this kind of social mammal, with a love of intimacy and also passion and also urges to accomplish and so on.
It sounds lovely, in a way: acceptance. But if one looks a tiny bit deeper, it is actually a lack of acceptance. Accept what is outside you, but do not accept what is inside you. That is what detachment is. Because we are not detached (as a rule). We are engaged, connected, intimate and/or seeking it, passionate, desiring, emotional creatures. And that is what is closest to me. If can’t accept that I am not detached, all further acceptance is tainted.
You’re not wrong, the answers are not readily available…
But you gotta keep in mind that outside the scope and scale of the interpersonal… we are, as individuals, virtually powerless.
Consequently the conversion rate of you sacrificing an interpersonal good, for a grand scale societal or even global good, is atrocious.
So unless your efforts are part of a grander alliance where the sum total pays off in the end, you’re just spitting on forest fire hoping to making it rain…
I’ve found those who dismiss answers to questions without first considering them, tend to be quite arrogant, categorically refusing to believe anyone else could solve or avoid a problem that they could not.
I don’t think identity politics is going to provide a solution to the problem of identity politics. It may help different identity groups to gain or lose power, however. And that can result in a redistribution of identity group satisfactions and resentments. Whether the net result reduces intergroup conflict is indeed questionable.
On a local level I observe that relations between the races though far from perfect have never been better. Which is not to say that police abuses don’t happen where I live.
Like many revolutions in the past the present one began with technological change. The black lives matter revolution wouldn’t be possible without the broad access to cell phones with cameras by ordinary people on the street.
I support the revolution not based on guilt about white privilege but based on human rights and belief in the concept of the equal justice under the law.
As per usual with me, I am never quite sure what it is exactly that you are trying to get across to me.
Only that in some way it involves me doing something wrong.
Look, for the longest of time, I was one or another psychologically grounded objectivist. Both God and No God. And it was tough to reconfigure my “self” into a nihilist that had thought himself into believing that his very own human existence was essentially meaningless.
But: along the way I had accumulated any number of things I came to love. Things, in other words, that existentially were meaningful and gratifying and fulfilling. And now the abyss looms larger than ever in taking all of that over the edge into oblivion.
So, sure, for a few hours a day I come into places like this in order to encounter folks who, like me, connect the dots between morality here and now and immortality there and then. Only very, very differently. After all, I have little to lose and a lot to gain if someone manages to tuck me in another direction.
Besides, as a polemicist, I have always enjoyed jousting with words. And, now, in waiting for godot, that becomes just one more distraction.
But, come on, it’s here, at ILP. It’s not like anything we exchange is going to have an impact much beyond our own infinitesimally tiny internet community.
Still, I respect the intelligence of many who do participate here and it’s not out of the question that someone will “break through” and actually spark in me some semblance of…hope?
Sure, there’s always that.
But all I can do here is to think back on the days when I really did believe that I was in sync with the “real me”. In sync further, moral and politically, with “the right thing to do”. And while it was often brutal in witnessing first hand the “Sixties” reconfiguring into the “Eighties” – and look at us now! – that was nothing compared to losing my grip on all that sustained me by way of feeling comforted and consoled in the self-righteous conviction that only objectivism can provide. Or, rather, did in fact provide me.
But, again, that’s just by own personal narrative. No less an existential contraption. Only now it is construed all that much more precariously given the profoundly problematic sense of reality that “I” sustain now.
From my frame of mind, being more or less “at ease” is derived largely from the existential juncture that is one’s “philosophy of life” and one’s “set of circumstances”. Ever and always: Here and now. And that is certainly the case in regard to racism in America. One is either more or less politically idealistic. One is either more or less optimistic. One is either more or less impacted by actual racism in their lives.
Each of us is embedded in our own “situation”. Out in a particular world derived from actual lived experiences that we may or may not be able to communicate to others. I’ve just become considerably more cynical in regard to resolutions.
And my own focus [here in a philosophy venue] is less on whether that makes me feel “too unpleasant” and more on the extent to which, given my own take on the human condition encompassed in my signature threads, it still seem to be a reasonable way in which to construe the world around me.
The nice thing about your posts, is that no one need bother to refute them. You refute yourself. Then you suggest that others might want to think like you. I haven’t seen you offer a compelling reason why anyone should. Finally you often include the caveat “or so it seems to me.” And so, I suppose, it does. ; )
Well, given our history, I can sympathize with that interpretation. Actually here I was saying you were doing something with greater ease than one might think if one read your core position. And that that ease with which you used the term ‘tough’ might be something that you could allow in more of your beliefs. It wasn’t an attack, though obviously I have attacked many a time. I’m not really in the mood to attack. Life is hell for me right now.
Who knows? I remain unconvinced by Western causality. And then even in Western causality there is ‘the butterfly effect’, of course that could cut any number of ways. We might cause what we don’t want, even with a good argument. Western science has a default that things are disconnected unless proven otherwise. That’s just a default, a bias. Might be a good one, might not be.
Maybe I’m just selfish. And then also, while I certainly connected better with one political team, I found it very hard to be on that team. Always. I mean, I don’t like protests. Regardless of how much I agree. Maybe I never could quite identify, even if my values matched or came close. I think I also had the feeling it was all to facile. I don’t really associate the ‘real me’ with my political beliefs. That seems, hm…anyway, not my idea of the real me. Not that my politics have nothing to do with me, it’s just not my focus. The real me has to do more with interpersonal dynamics, emotions, my interests. And I see moving towards what feels more like me is more an elimination rather than gathering. Certainly not a gatheringof beliefs,right or otherwise. It’s not about finding the right poliitics, not much anyway. It certainly not about finding the right arguments. But about moving away from guilt and self-hate (I shudder to think of how you will take that). I certainly hope if I stop hating myself and stop confusing guilt with love, I will not be a monster. But I don’t start from the position ‘ok find the moal rules that make one less likely to be a monster.’ Thatdemands fragmentation as far as I can tell,once you believe something.
I suppose I am focused not on solving problems by finding the right position on things, or the right beliefs, but rather, feeling better or more myself, which includes care for others because I am connected to them,a nd even nature. Perhaps compared to you I never experienced the ‘luxury’ of a seemingly unified self aligned with one of the labels out there. I do feel more unified than I used to. But I did not have a golden age which I lost.
Sure, I think there should be more space for noticing problems with real humility about not knowing solutions. I think Marx had some excellent criticisms of capitalism. His solutions seem pretty damn naive in retrospect. ‘You can’t complain if you don’t have a solution’. I don’t agree. (you haven’t said this, but it’s common, explicitly or implicitly)
At the
risk of seeming to say you are wrong, here I think we are different. Of course I’d like to have a reasonable way to construe the world around me. But it’s not quite how I come at things. If I focused on coming up with a reasonable way to construe things, I think it would be mostly in the thinky wordy brainpan. IOW if I made it my project to come up with a reasonable way to construe things, my main project, I would get new words in my head to live up to. Like a ticker tape of correctness. With the rest of me, the bulk of me, in a mess despite the perfect little thoughts. So, I try to focus on the mess and coming together and being less of a mess, as I experience it. This might very well increase my construing reasonably. But that’d be a side effect. AGain, makes me think I am more selfish thought nto necessarily in a pejorative sense. I seem to be able to move towards greater unity over time in my life and if not unity than collaboration between my parts. Compared to younger versions of me. That is my experience over time. Finding right answers and convincing arguments has produced very little as far as I can tell, for me.
I can imagine you asking how do you know you are less a mess or how can I demonstrate to all rational people this is a realer more unified me. Well, good question. But that’s not my goal. To demonstrate it to others. I’d like to experience it. I think the best I can manage is to follow what seems to lead me there and it isn’t perfect arguments, or the right political party, or first construing reality correctly then aligning the rest of myself with that. That all I experience as rather shallow. In me at least. I could have the best beliefs about women but treat them like shit, in sublte ways or not so subtle ways. Beliefs, shmeifs.
You’re an old guy like me. Gestalt therapy was one early approach, where fragmentation is presumed, at least on the surface. One has parts and they don’t get along or form allegiances and have tiffs. Let them have at it. The process is not trying to figure out if the part of you that hates your mother is wrong and the part that feels sympthy is right. The point is getting them to BOTH freely express and over time there can be a merging. You have to experience this. It cannot be proved to you and all rational people and I am sure many rational people would not find enough to like fast enough to want to continue. For me it felt right. And in a weird way, I enjoyed it. I liked making internal fights explicit. Everybody in me got to have their say with great passion. Rather than my frontal lobes trying to figure out which one was right and them demanding the others, who never even got to express themselves, do the right thing.
And please don’t take this as me thinking you should do gestalt therapy. I am just contrasting us. I seem not to have wanted to step outside myself, figure out what my self should be then try to enforce that. That’s fragmentation and every objectivist is entrenched in fragmentation. Most have no process to integrate their own diversity. None. Split, in secret, against themselves. Then they treat others like they treat their own ids.
I know this may be hard to understand. Please ask specific questions about parts you did not follow. If you’re interested. Not so that i can convince you to do gestalt therapy, which I don’t really do anymore. But rather so I can perhaps make it clear where we differ and how. I don’t think you’re interested in what I do, as far as you taking it up. Fair enough. But perhaps there might be something useful in understanding the difference.
In the context of the thread, I would certainly prefer to not be racist. But there are parts in me, or ‘parts’, that are. I could suppress them, hate myself for them, or I can let them express, in private, and see what lies underneath. In a sense accept the parts, but see what is driving them. And the antiracist in me can also have things driving it. and these can be problematic, even if the belief or intention is good. The right virtue signals in its own way, which they don’t seem to notice, but I think that term is actually a spot on one for many patterns on the left. It doesn’t make their beliefs wrong, but they can be really rather fucked up at the same time. Even racist underneath while espousing their antiracism much of the time.
The goal can be to be good or to be yourself. yes, there are grarly epistemological issues around both of those goals. But the second one is experiential, not didactic.
I have a very straight forward sentence for you about your experientialism psychology/inclination.
Anti-reasoning is not a part of my being. There’s nothing in me there to “express itself in quiet”. That this is true for you, means that you’re drawn to iambiguous because this is a “part of you” that needs to express itself in the innocuous context of a message board. Part of you, like iambiguous, is always arguing that your arguments never mean anything (anti-reason), but you still post them anyways, just like iambiguous —— and that causes self hatred.
I understand why people try to rationalize anti-rationality —— life has denied them in cruel ways, and everyone deserves the best. You’re making an alliance with your captor (Stockholm syndrome)