The shame machine has created a disequillibrium, and personally I won't miss it when societies correct. More gravely, I think there is a coming generation of young men who will also wake up one day and say, "I don't need your redemption, it has no value." And like that, they will no longer avoid or deny shame, or be governed by it because redemption is a hustle, the carrot to shame's stick.
When they see that they have been raised and kept in an extended nursery of deceptions produced by subtly fabricated narratives, designed to subjugate their identities and replace the cognitive tools they have for experiencing and understanding themselves with constructions of a simulation, they will also likely discover the power of force. Iterating down that timeline gets really grim, really fast.
We've accumulated a reality-debt, suspended by academia and tech, leaking into appendent institutions like media and government, and the most interesting problem now is how ot unwind it without triggering a chain reaction, imo.
> they will also likely discover the power of force
That is one possibility. Another is wu wei, passive denial of benefits, malicious compliance, lying flat.
The householder role stops working? Practice renunciation and take the monastic path instead. People will be upset that you have made yourself useless to them, but you're completely within your rights.
(This is not really spiritually good, since it comes from a place of contempt, of course. But it's where, "fine, fuckit" gets you.)
Multiplied across a whole society, however, this does of course lead to sagging GDP and reduced living standards.
It's a little like the West's approach to Russia or Iran. Force is off the table? Ok: "You will no longer receive any gains from trade. We'll see who can last longer."
This is roughly where heterosexuality was in 2020, I fear sometimes. But, with everyone finally emerging from their houses now, I think they may appreciate other people more now. We'll see if it lasts.
Thanks. To zeroeth order I understand it as "the power of inaction", but clearly the connotations are supposed to be much more positive than in my earlier usage.
Whether what I'm describing is nihilism I'm not sure, but it might be. ("No True Nihilist"?)
Certainly what it is is passive.
It seems easy for renunciation to go bad, to become a degenerate, contemptuous, and self-indulgent thing.
Maybe the idea from Hinduism (as I understand it, and translate coarsely) is better: Always put yourself out there, and do care about your execution, but don't be attached to the results. That might be a better way to avoid suffering without encouraging depressive (passive, inactive) behaviors?
The conservative would struggle with: How does one "go with the flow", if the flow goes over the falls? How does one go with the flow and with Nature, if, in the short term (where we have to live), the flow seems to be against Nature?
And how do you deal with all the nasty game-theoretics of it while keeping your decency? Do you really just keep turning the other cheek, or do you need some proportionate response strategy from Repeated Games?
I'm really not sure.
I think part of the answer has to be wanting less, materially. Maybe that's a thing that a couple can do, together, because they get something more valuable in return, e.g. a family.
But I'm just thinking aloud.
I think this is why I like Ecclesiastes so much. "You're not alone: This guy in the Bronze Age had the same struggle, and wrote it all down, honestly." (He didn't reach all the conclusions that the Buddhists did, of course.)
> I think there is a coming generation of young men who will also wake up one day and say, "I don't need your redemption, it has no value." And like that, they will no longer avoid or deny shame
This "coming generation" you refer towards is already present and is otherwise known as "the status quo of maleness for basically all of recorded human history".
Indeed. It's very easy to get young men to do stupid and dangerous things to avoid the threat of shame, especially if that shame is related to being "unmanly".
Shame is a powerful moderator of behaviour considered marginal or taboo in society, likely it forms an essential role in group cohesion.
However, it may well be maladaptive at the scale of global society, where the mechanisms of shame - the 'calling out' of transgressors, the dogpiling that ensues following a successful call out - are chaotic, following no process or moderation itself.
The inevitable result is self censorship, in order to mitigate risk, leading to the decline of the health of public discourse, and emergence of a 'self-police state' by stealth
A lot of shame relates to things outside of one's immediate control.
"Son of a whore" is a old shame accusation. Shame by familial association is a very "traditional" part of shame. People who have suffered attack, especially rape, often feel ashamed. Failure is shameful. STDs are shameful. Being illiterate or inumerate. Etc.
Shame in these cases isn't about altering behaviours directly. It is about creating social hierarchies, structures and such. It results more in hiding.
So sure, shame has always been a part of culture and has good, along with bad effects. I don't agree that the internet "broke shame." Shame was always pretty broken. The internet just delivered it to new places.
> However, it may well be maladaptive at the scale of global society
There is a pretty good argument that it is maladaptive in any community bigger than a few hundred people. The most successful political innovations - legislative bodies & courts - have both taken strong measures to make it difficult to shame people into cooperation or provide effective ways to fight back against a shaming.
Good political decisions come from getting representative of the relevant people in a room, enumerating the issues and engaging in just enough give and take that nobody is grinning when they walk out. That is the only way. Any other process doesn't reach the same standards of quality.
> The most successful political innovations - legislative bodies & courts - have both taken strong measures to make it difficult to shame people into cooperation
?!? Legislative bodies used to rely on shame (the opposite of honor) as a means of enforcing unwritten rules. It used to be possible to shame politicians into resigning when they'd crossed a line.
“Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last?” -- Joe Welch cancels Joe McCarthy
Remember that Nixon resigned. He wasn't impeached out of office for his crimes, he was shamed into resigning when they came to light.
> provide effective ways to fight back against a shaming
Please list some court sanctioned ways to fight back against shaming and how these are not an infringement of free speech.
Nixon met with Congress members and was told that he would be impeached with certainty, so he resigned the next day. He was decidedly not resigning over shame.
Without the pardon from Ford, it’s possible he would be charged and indicted with a felony even. So yeah, there is a whole lot more to him resigning than shame
You've just listed 100% of the presidents who's resignations could plausibly be linked to shaming tactics. It is a very, very short list compared to the number of presidents who have had shame deployed against them as a political weapon.
The two main tools the parliaments use is regular, time based election cycles combined with very formal procedures making sure everyone gets a chance to speak. In the ones I'm more familiar with (Australian, British, probably American) they also have well developed traditions against name-calling and insistence on respectful language and behaviours like using proper titles (which can be a bit off-putting seeing how politicians act outside parliament). If a politician has a solid faction backing them they can get away with some pretty extreme stuff and just shrug off the criticism. Trump is a more interesting case study, but realistically anyone in modern politics has to wade through a tide of abuse to get anything done. It is all but impossible to stop a politician getting a message out and sticking by it if there are votes to be had.
The main tools the courts use are having professional and emotionally unattached advocates who are aligned with the people they represent (aka lawyers) and extremely developed rules of evidence that strip out opinion and personal standards in an explicit quest to work out the facts and make sure any punishment is consistent with the law.
Those are arguments about shaming _inside_ parliaments and courts, which are obviously controlled speech environments; that has limited effect _outside_ courts, with the exception of sub judice rules.
> well developed traditions against name-calling and insistence on respectful language and behaviours like using proper titles (which can be a bit off-putting seeing how politicians act outside parliament)
Indeed. You can call your opponent a terrorist criminal just fine as long as you step outside the building first.
For a given dispute the court is certainly more likely to find a just result .. if you can afford to litigate. Or, in the case of criminal law, if the prosecutors will prosecute. If they won't, you can only resort to "the court of public opinion", i.e. shaming.
I assume that argument excludes the legal/political/cultural institutions of the non-Western world? Because in particular in East Asia shame has a very long and central role, and a fairly successful one, in maintaining group cohesion.
We're talking about mechanisms here that have proven to stabilize societies for literally thousands of years, enumerating things doesn't quite have that history yet.
yeah I broadly agree. Shame is a good small group policing mechanism, in my imagination I see a homogenous kinship group in a hostile environment. Shame works there, but not necessarily for anything larger scale.
It's maladaptive for some, but also effective for some others. It can be wielded as a weapon to destroy one's competition and enemies. It works especially well against whichever group of population that has more tendency to self-reflect and have capacity to feel shame. Whereas if a population doesn't feel shame or less shame or construct the standard so that the shaming only applies to one group but not the other, it can thrive in this kind of environment.
yes quite right, it even seems to be the case that being entirely shameless is a political advantage in a representative democratic system. Trump, Johnson, Bolsonaro, Modi - distinct politicians but all share the common theme of being able to avoid the penalty of shame but being conspicuously shameless
This looks a lot like one occult classification of souls: there are 3 positive types (those driven by action/will, love/compassion and wisdom/knowledge) and 3 negative types (posturing, vanity and fear). Every cycle of civilization is started by the former types, and are gradually replaced by the latter types.
This wiki page describes the 3 negative types, and the 3 different cultures they create. The posturing types want appearance of being strong and wise, they are those pseudo-scientists and fake saints, so they create a guilt society. The vanity types want to feel morally superior to others, they enjoy creating contrived dogmas and making others navigate these dogmatic mazes, and they create a shame society. Finally, the fear types create a fear society: in the final stage of every cycle, when the strongest of the fear types are ruling the world, they create a death cult, with dark temples and other attributes.
The wiki page doesn't mention societies created by the 3 positive types, aka the "golden age" of every civilisation.
That's really interesting, thank you. I'd always considered guilt and shame to be correlated, as two sides of the same medal. And believe the person above also conflated the two, since their "shamelessness" is really an inability to experience guilt.
So maybe the problem is that guilt (felt by the person without specific external input) stopped working, and shaming is taking its place?
But this always happens. There is no culture which doesn't have a strong element of self-censorship for at least some of its members.
But equally some groups/individuals will get the benefit of the doubt, while others will be aggressively bullied and scapegoated. And some groups/individuals will aggressively claim victimhood and martyrdom while actually being comparatively privileged.
The question is more the extent to which social dynamics are influenced by dark triad morality. Cultures with very little are far less inclined to public bullying than cultures where it's foundational.
Missing the point. It does "always happen" but it doesn't always happen to the same degree or to the same proportion of the population.
The Overton Window can be enforced to varying degrees and contain different percentages of the population.
Contrast the atmosphere during the Cultural Revolution to the atmosphere of a 1990s liberal democracy where the large majority of the population was within the Window.
"There is no culture which doesn't have a strong element of self-censorship for at least some of its members."
while this may be true, it does not necessarily reflect that it is right. often times throughout history shame has been used to control minority groups and people who are less privileged.
which sadly means that popular consensus may not always have the best interest in mind. oftentimes the masses overreact and get it terribly wrong if there is awareness outside of pure groupthink
Traditional American culture is rife with shame. The concept of “manly men” is based on shame. The concept that women are responsible if they attract unwanted male attention is based on shame. The concept that anyone can succeed so if you don’t it’s because you didn’t try hard enough is based on shame.
Most of these aren't really "traditional", they're constructs of the post-WW2 era, where the government & mass media/advertising very consciously tried to institute strong "national unity" norms.
I suspect that the "traditional American" culture GP is talking about is frontier/immigrant culture from c. 1840-1929. There's a good case for that really being a "shameless" culture - you do your thing, I do mine, we'll grab up all the land and all the gold and all the prime industries and not feel bad at all for the natives we're genociding.
I mean sorry but the Japanese have a pretty strong shaming culture according to most of the world, that the things you think they should be ashamed of are not those they are shamed by does not prove any different.
And it carries over to the glorious new age of technological empowerment, where systems that was supposed to mitigate human ills instead perpetuate them:
All forums, even vote-based ones like Reddit and HN, devolve into echo chambers where any dissenting opinion is buried before many even get to see it.
> supposed to mitigate human ills instead perpetuate them
May I differ. Technology was never meant to cure human ills. The
tragedy is that technology was supposed to enhance human capabilities
but instead stymied them. This is the difference between IA
(intelligence amplification) in which technology is a bicycle, and AI
(artificial intelligence) in which it is a crutch.
Why technology has its iatrogenic effect is a great question of our
time. Does it always? Or are we uniquely misusing it?
With regard to amplifying shame, it merely acts as it does to amplify
any human sentiments and ideas.
Technology giveth, and technology taketh away (Postman).
Although at least on platforms like Reddit (and I suppose the internet as a whole) it’s possible to create your own echo chamber where your opinion that was shunned elsewhere is allowed to exist and can gather a following.
The echo chamber effect of these platforms is often called out as a bad thing, but in my opinion it may also be useful as a way of nurturing ideas that would’ve otherwise been squashed early because they’re too contrarian. The problem is, you can only find out whether an idea is good or not by exposing it to an increasingly large audience. And then I guess there’s the risk of allowing “dangerous” ideas to gain such a large following that they’re hard to stop.
>Although at least on platforms like Reddit (and I suppose the internet as a whole) it’s possible to create your own echo chamber where your opinion that was shunned elsewhere is allowed to exist and can gather a following.
We are now at a stage where a twitter mob would see "men should not be allowed to compete in women's sports" as a bigoted statement. To the vast majority of people there are important differences between men and women, and will now have to awkwardly self-censors their speech. Or they will worry whether they are actually bigoted and attempt to signal that they are not really a bad person by relenting to the group.
We are also at a stage where a US Supreme Court nominee under questioning was unwilling to hazard a guess at a definition of Woman. The risks for them personally was just too high.
We're also at a stage where I (not American) get bombarded by this ideological pathology of the American Left when I end up on Twitter. How do I opt out?
You can't. People in San Francisco control big tech, and they've decided the entire internet should reflect their own microcosmic perspective on the world. See the other replies to your comment as an example - they really can't see anything beyond their immediate surroundings.
And yet, the commenter I replied to had not mentioned trans-people vs biological men, or anything. They just said men vs women and left it that. See my point?
So how you want the game to work is that you expect me to defend myself against being called bigoted or yield to your ideology. That's how you are propagating your perspective?
It’s not an ideology - acknowledging the nuances of the actual debate (trans vs women sports) is basic courtesy. Deliberately ignoring it multiple times is malicious.
Some would say giving a deliberately simple statement like the parent commentator's the interpretation most offensive to you is evidence of malicious intent.
>What are you even talking about?
We lack the shared language for me to explain it simply, but I might be able to get there if you're engaging in good faith. Unfortunately your response comes across as evidence that you're not. If you are engaging in good faith and actually want an answer, tell me whether you think men (by your preferred definition) should be allowed to compete in women's (by your preferred definition) sports.
Why are you beating this fake dead horse? Free speech is protected, offensive or not. There are no governmental consequences.
However, it also covers and allows for the replies, tweet storms, public shaming that occur when your free speech is racist, sexist, or bigoted and malicious.
That's what this debate is /actually/ about - you just want protection against backlash.
>In the case of Justine Sacco, here's a thought: if you don't want to be shamed "at the scale of global society"...
...don't fuckin' post an unfathomably bigoted comment on a public, global forum.
Who defines "unfathomably bigoted"? You? A small screeching mob of twitter warriors? A small but influential group of editors and writers for papers like the NY Times and others? You're prima facie assuming that a discourse labeled as bigoted is indeed horribly bigoted.. Given the number of VERY CLEAR examples many of us have seen of highly dubious and sometimes completely irrational definitions of supposed offensiveness (feel free to google search them, there are many), then no, things are not just a full-stop case of "you must be bigoted then if a group of people say you are". Aside from issues of free speech, definitions of bigotry, sexism, racism and so forth have in many circles gone completely off the rails of rational, reasoned thought.
>If you find yourself regularly worrying about whether something you say might be perceived as racist or sexist, maybe it's time to spend time recognizing that your bigoted attitudes towards others are wrong, and doing something about it.
I could repeat the point I already made above here. You make the same very shaky assertion that someone's attitudes are bigoted just because they question certain digital assertions about sex, gender or racism. Nope. Hijacking an argument by assuming a premise is simply dishonest.
Your stabbing argument is also absurd. By widespread practical and moral definition, people recognize that randomly stabbing others is wrong and socially damaging. The same definitely doesn't apply to someone wondering if a person who's biologically a man but had gender reassignment should then compete in women's sports. The latter is far less settled, not just philosophically but also biologically.
They desire that those having bad opinions should be shamed and are therefore being given what they desired, in a classic demonstration that one should be careful what one wishes for.
> Flanagan calls shame accompanied by progressive values “mature shame”
I would argue that shaming used to promote your political views is often the most damaging kind of shaming because on top of being the most divisive, it is likely counterproductive, an offputting move that damages your brand and often creates a powerful backlash against it.
Now there's some subtlety here. It depends who you target in your shaming. The article does mention that shaming is considered more acceptable when punching up than punching down, which I would agree with, but you have to be very careful how you define that. Some people tell themselves they are punching up, when they are clearly punching down. One group this is clearly not privileged are the uneducated people who have always struggled at learning and understanding the world, who's grasp of morality is limited and requires weekly reminders by moral leaders, who fall for internet conspiracy theories, who have no chance of having the academic understanding of race and gender that seems to be increasingly asked of people. These people who struggle in educational settings, are comparatively handicapped, often don't have access to good stable jobs, are the first to become unemployed during recessions so are some of the most vulnerable people out there even when they are white.
Advanced morality about things like race and gender is complex and not within everyone's reach. Advanced empathy involves multilevel recursive counterfactual meta-cognitive logic ( https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/K4eDzqS2rbcBDsCLZ/unrolling-... ) and sometimes, academic understanding of past history. Asking some of these people to understand these things is asking people in wheelchairs to run and run away they will. If you shame them for their handicap they will fight back.
It's fine to shame the villainous leaders who manipulated these people for their evil ends, but if you shame the people for falling into the traps, you actually push them further towards those evils.
First, that a lot of people are too uneducated, stupid or uninformed to be responsible for the moral viewpoints. Hence why all blame should be foisted onto the "villainous leaders who manipulated."
Second, that your (our) moral viewpoint is the advanced... and the contrary presumably degenerate or primitive.
That kind of empathy isn't well received. It's condescension. At its worst, it's dehumanising... no moral agency.
Also, take note that they think the same things about you. The reason why you hold your foolish moral viewpoints is because you have been mislead, lied to and manipulated by media, university and Hollywood elites.
Idk if shame is useful, or legitimate as a way of mediating all this. But... I'm quite confident that condescension isn't a helpful posture. Better to start by recognising the actual opposition of viewpoints. Argue in earnest. Etc.
Ie: I'm not mad at you. You're not smart enough to know right from wrong. I'm mad at the people who spoon-fed you your stupid opinions.
This sentiment is often voiced on HN and I don't understand it. Somehow the statement "other people have a different opinion from yours" is used as an argument for why some person's opinion can't be right (or more right, or something).
That's not only demonstrably false in lots of cases, it also doesn't advance discourse because now we're talking about potentially fictitious people with potentially fictitious beliefs that we just try to infer, instead of constructively arguing concrete points of view.
I claim that it's perfectly legitimate to think that certain other people are ill-equipped to make certain decisions. I believe in democracy because it is the least bad alternative, not because I somehow believe in the miraculously truthful insights of the general public.
More concretely, there's opinions that I disagree with but I respect that they are valid positions to be held, and there are opinions that I believe to be held out of ignorance. I don't know why I shouldn't be able to think that, and if other people want to believe that I'm ignorant, well they're free to do so and that doesn't affect my judgement generally (unless it comes from someone whose opinion I respect, of course).
That's of course different from the question of whether you should let people know that you think they're ill-informed. I agree that stating that overtly will probably not win you any sympathy.
> This sentiment is often voiced on HN and I don't understand it
Note that the sentiment is "condescension is not empathy", and empathy is what you need to approach this problem.
> I claim that it's perfectly legitimate to think that certain other people are ill-equipped to make certain decisions.
You then condescend. You are superior, the "general public" is too dumb ("ill-equipped") to "make certain decisions".
> That's of course different from the question of whether you should let people know that you think they're ill-informed
How would you know? You simply feel they are ill-informed, but it doesn't mean that they are. By assuming (implicitly) that you must be correct, you deny them the agency of figuring things out for themselves: Clearly they cannot have done so, they are simply too wrong.
> Note that the sentiment is "condescension is not empathy", and empathy is what you need to approach this problem.
I consider that an unproven assertion. A certain amount of empathy is certainly necessary to have a functioning society. But it doesn't seem to be the case that everyone has to be empathetic with everyone, and I don't think humanity has ever been at that or ever will be at that stage.
But even beyond that, "empathy" doesn't mean that you think everyone's opinion is equally right. Sometimes, empathy involves giving people hard truths that they may find hard to accept, but will be better for them long term.
> You then condescend. You are superior, the "general public" is too dumb ("ill-equipped") to "make certain decisions".
It's only condescending if you consider people's inherent worth to be tied to their intelligence or judgement. But that's something I disagree with: people who are right more often than others aren't morally superior, or inherently more worthy, or anything. They're simply right more often and it's therefore rational to listen to them more often.
Also note that I didn't say "dumb", that's your interpretation. Smart people have biases too, and being well- or ill-informed about a topic is not necessarily correlated to intelligence.
The general public is ill-equipped to decide whether P=NP or the Riemann hypothesis are true. That seems hardly controversial (and yet math departments continue to receive "proofs" of these statements from complete amateurs that usually don't even understand the problem correctly).
> How would you know? You simply feel they are ill-informed, but it doesn't mean that they are.
You never know anything, except for the fact that you exist. But that's not a reasonable state of being. At some point you have to start trusting your own judgement, especially when you know that you've done the research. That there are other people who disagree with your judgement doesn't fundamentally change that.
> By assuming (implicitly) that you must be correct, you deny them the agency of figuring things out for themselves: Clearly they cannot have done so, they are simply too wrong.
No, you're misunderstanding me. I don't claim that I'm a priori correct and that anyone who disagrees with me is wrong (if anything, I would consider my opinions to be more or less strong priors). That would indeed be ludicrous. But I do examine the arguments of other people, and in some cases have to come to the conclusion that they're a) factually wrong, or b) their argument doesn't make logical sense.
This is what makes it difficult to discuss this. It's hard to do without rudely insulting people. How do you find words that are not too condescending. There is a long history of using "the people" to mean non intellectuals including it being enshrined in the US constitution. But that often does not make it clear enough for everyone to understand that we're talking about a vulnerability. Populism gets turned into a dirty word. How often have I stood into a room full of university graduates deriding populism equating it to demagogy. This is a form of punching down.
But when done with a perspective of helping with the "handicap", people are more receptive than you would expect. I've made this argument on twitter once and maybe it was because of the criticism of the "elitist" down punchers but found myself for the first time gaining maga followers, the very people who's intelligence I insulted.
These people know they have a handicap when it comes to academic intellect and are looking for others who will respect the struggle that comes with that.
People don't vote for Trump because they think he is smart, but because he respects the lack of academic smarts, because he is for them a refreshing example of success and respect without smarts in a world where it's increasingly difficult to achieve and people will cancel you if you are unable to reason at that academic level of morality.
Idk, honestly. Maybe there's no way to answer all of these concurrently.
I definitely here your point on non-intellectual populism. There's no requirement for everyone to be an intellectual and a worldview that does require this is also elitist.
Otoh, I don't see many people reacting well to the moral handicap frame either.
Personally, the route I usually go down is to (1) acknowledge that we disagree and (2) show that I can articulate their view respectfully. This is also a basis to move from. I don't think it's the structure or or content of the argument that matters... it's softer aspects like signaling respect, friendship and such.
I don't think this is about making a perfect argument though. I think it takes a complex, multi-year "conversation."
Imo, there's a lot to be learned from feminism. Pissing people off, being the object of hatred and derision was always going to be on a feminist menu. There was never going to be a way forward for feminism that didn't deeply offend and insult a lot of people.
It doesn't end there though. The conversation goes on. Sometimes the femenists walked away from some of their arguments. Often, society conceded feminist viewpoints after years of deriding them.
They didn't expect it to be respectful and pleasant at all times. Maybe you have to go through phases of tension to eventually come back together later.
You are still being incredibly condescending. The people you mock don’t view themselves as “academically handicapped” and they voted for Trump because they thought he was smart, not because he was rich.
At some point the “academic smarts” have to demonstrate success, otherwise people will rightfully discard them. Decades of constant failure from supposedly elite people in every possible field have lead to a reaction where people just don’t trust them no matter what they claim. Name your issue, and I guarantee someone with very good credentials who was very confident in their advocacy is responsible for its current state.
The problem isn’t that the “proles” are stupid, but rather that the educated aren’t nearly as smart as they think they are. Nearly every person I know who has poor critical thinking skills and accepts the first thing they hear without question is college educated, and there are many conspiracy theories commonly believed by educated people.
> Decades of constant failure from supposedly elite people in every possible field have lead to a reaction where people just don’t trust them no matter what they claim.
That’s a big claim to make without offering any examples.
Everyone fails constantly, so it makes sense that "elite people" (whatever those are) do too. Why would you have to give examples for something that is a fact of life? It is like breathing. Everyone does it, you do not need examples for it.
Shame is a blunt tool. It's inconsistent. It has no moral value in and of itself. The funny thing about shame is the mental gymnastics that are gone through to justify who should or shouldn't be subject to it and on what criteria.
The "villain" is whoever happens to be unpopular or undesired. Vulnerability is spun as a vice or saving grace in the interests of the shamer and his agenda. To paraphrase Cardinal Richelieu, it only takes a few words for one to find a reason to hang a man.
The relevant distinction is not "punching up vs. punching down", which is meaningless, but "punching at actual misuse of power or not". It's very rare that shaming is a useful tool, but it can work indirectly as a form of raising awareness where the "shame" is really just a ploy for virality. Harvey Weinstein, mentioned in the article, is a perfect example: he was engaging in behavior that was not only grossly unethical, but raised very real questions about actual legality. That's where "shame" can work for good.
Besides, the unqualified versions of The Golden Rule are subject to exploits around not observing the Veil of Ignorance.
After all, I believe that everyone whose name is “Rene” must by right have the money of all others. I do unto you as I would have you do unto me: I.e. we both behave according to the precept “if I am a Rene and you are not then I will take your money; and if you are Rene and I am not then I would give you my money”.
A universal law for the ages. I shall treat you as I would have you treat me. Now, if you don’t mind, stand and deliver.
What if I am very secure about given topic (e.g., balding), so I feel very comfortable joking about it, even "at my cost". Should I disregard the fact other people might be insecure about it, because I don't mind people "doing unto me" such jokes?
That depends on how much value you place on the liberty to make such jokes. Whether you personally disregard the potential feelings of other people is a choice left to you and only you. How other people do feel or are perceived to feel about a subject is not a basis for assigning a moral value.
It's context-dependent isn't it? The same joke can be harmless fun in one context, and a cruel jab in another, eh?
"Do unto others..." isn't a compressed file that expands into generic rules for every situation. (If life was simple enough to be covered by a set of generic rules we wouldn't have evolved these huge calorie-guzzling brains on the ends of our spines, eh?)
'Do unto others' is a principle that can be applied into every situation.
You might think the situation is too broad or complex etc, but your calorie-guzzling brain can work the many and various context-dependent scenarios out. For every wrong there is a right answer. We live in a moral world.
Luckily, its not your job to sort the world out. You can only work on yourself and ensure your actions are aligned with morality.
PS I would reply sooner, but as I have received so many downvotes I get a message to slow down, that I am posting too fast.
It depends on the kind of humor. Humor is a very powerful tool that may even dispell insecurities if done right, but it could also be very rub it in one’s face offensive.
And how do you know if they are sensitive? Are you going to ask them, or not? If not, why not? If yes, would it still be the golden rule? Or perhaps platinum rule - do unto others as -they- wish, not as -you-.
What I am trying to say is that the golden rule and its applicability is far from obvious. You can consider interpreting it correctly the most basic "advanced morality" you asked about.
> Should I disregard the fact other people might be insecure about it, because I don't mind people "doing unto me" such jokes?
You seemed to show awareness that people might be insecure - so you have the information you need to exercise your judgement in this case. And every case will be resolvable if you want, via the application of reason. But this is a free will universe - you can ignore the information that you have, but then, you also know what that means.
If you want to say whatever-it-is isn't obvious, that's fine. You don't have to follow what I say. In truth, what I (or the golden rule say) isn't important - words are pliable if you want them to be and work at it. You already know what is right and wrong, what intent your actions have behind them - the words are merely decorative; an attempt to communicate.
My view is that we judge ourselves. If you think you can kid yourself and via word games so you can have you cake and eat it, go ahead - but you have been told. There is a difference between nascence and ignorance - ignorance is a choice. All the best.
I upvoted this, because the brilliance of this is its simplicity. A society that has convinced itself that the Golden Rule is bad is a society that has lost something of immense value.
The so-called Platinum Rule is presented as a better alternative to the Golden Rule, but it should be viewed as (and relegated to) something more like "fine print". There's an important reason for this:
The Golden Rule actually promotes empathy. It gives you a simple tool for understanding situations: Put yourself in the other person's shoes and ask what you'd want. This is something that you, and others, are likely to be somewhat capable of.
The Platinum Rule, by contrast, discourages empathy (under the guise of the reverse), by telling you to emphasize difference between yourself and the other person, and making them more unknowable, more Other. It also, in practice, tends to promote suspicion, fear-of-offense, and, as a result, inaction: "I would like it if someone did this for me. But maybe they wouldn't? Maybe they'll be mad for some reason? I hear those people have strange beliefs and fiery tempers. Ok, I'll just mind my own business."
Fine, yes, in extreme border cases, it's worth pausing and considering "platinum rule"-like considerations. But even there I contend that you're better off using the Golden Rule's mantra, and putting yourself in the other's shoes; then all the second-order effects can be included in those "shoes".
In short, from an emotional perspective, the Golden Rule simply works better.
Instead the situation can be a bit like --
You're trying to build a bridge. And you have this good way to do it, using Newtonian mechanics.
And then somebody comes along and goes, "but achktually, 'General Relativity', you idiot; who let you near bridges?" Not that they themselves could possibly calculate the loads using a full General-Relativistic treatment. And then, everybody gives up: The bridge stays unbuilt, and warring camps form on opposite sides of the river.
This gets at another problem with the "Platinum Rule": It is, fairly explicitly, a way for a person to say, "your consensus about how to be good is wrong; I am better". In this way it's an elitist idea: "I'm so smart; my ethics are superior to the rubes'". The Golden Rule, by contrast, is leveling.
Life comes at you fast. You need good simple mental tools -- mantras -- that help you to cultivate the correct emotional states. When you catch fire, you don't have time to calculate stoichiometry; you "Stop, Drop, and Roll".
The Golden Rule is like that for ethics. It's one of the very few things that actually works.
I think "shame" is the wrong anchor point. I don't like the "industrial-complex" framing much either.
The design of twitter, FB or whatnot have something to do with this phenomenon. But, I don't think this is the main point.
I'll (heavily) paraphrase the prophetic Douglas Adams. Social media gave us back our "normal" mode of human communication: unmediated many-to-many. With it, we got back all sorts of negative social behaviours, like mob behaviours.
Dynamics where violence, hatred and such overcome moderation are... human. They have negative consequences, so we develop social machinery to deal with them. That machinery doesn't exist in brand new spheres.
Most people that came across the aids tweet didn't dunk on Justine Socco.. just all people that weighed in. That's a ratchet.
When a mob forms to beat an apple thief or promiscuous woman in the street... most people dont join the mob. Most people walk on by.
Very few are going to try and moderate the mob. Same kind of a ratchet. Spontaneous anger is a much stronger phenomenon than spontaneous moderation and restraint.
Something external needs to prevent mob violence. Maybe you need police, with an explicit mandate to break up mobs. Maybe you need a court system, so the mob might deliver the apple thief to justice instead of DIYing it. Maybe you need an explicit anti-mob belief system, so that an anti-mob mob can form to balance out the anti-thief mob.
That kind of cultural machinery is reactionary. It appears as an eventual solution to a problem. Our modern cultural frameworks (like twitter) evolve so fast that we never reach maturity though.
Internet shaming is selectively applied and therefore more a tool of oppression and compliance than valid social signalling. "Politeness" and "political correctness" are entirely distinct, and the internet has no concept of that. Or to use their own language, internet shaming is Californian imperialism, attempting to impose it's values on other cultures.
Exactly. Advocates for diversity love all its superficial forms (skin color, gender, sexual orientation etc) and absolutely loathe the only form that matters...diversity of thought.
No one is stopped from having diverse thoughts - you can always think whatever you want.
But why do you think you have the right to publicly & globally tweet it without anyone responding to it? Are you looking solely for supportive replies? And zero debate or criticism?
The irony is that all the people fighting “cancel culture” with their “diverse” thoughts really seem to mainly just have hot-takes that are racist and sexist. Nothing really diverse…
Criticism and responses would be fine. Bloodthirsty attempts at ruining the persons life/career aren't, yet they're extremely common. As others have said, it adds way too much risk to non-anonymous public discourse, where if it happens that something you said, no matter how innocuous, snowballs for whatever reason, you're screwed. So the only reasonable thing to do is just not express opinions online.
I don't even think it's a matter of people really trying to punish intolerant people, it's that mobs are fun to be in, so randoms do just hop in for fun and a rush of moral superiority. You could "cancel" literally anyone over anything if you got enough traction to start going "viral."
> And yet, here you and I are expressing our opinions and having a discussion.
You and I haven't said anything controversial.
> Care to link to any real cases[...]
Nolan Bushnell got cancelled because Atari was allegedly sexist in the 70s, and got an award revoked for it. [1]
There's of course the infamous dongle joke fiasco at PyCon. [2]
James Damore got cancelled for the Google memo, and got fired for it. [3]
These are just a couple examples, and you could argue about whether or not these people are actually in the wrong (for the crime of having the wrong opinion), but they clearly don't deserve mob justice attempting to ruin their careers.
You’re the one who said anything could be controversial:
> where if it happens that something you said, no matter how innocuous, snowballs for whatever reason, you're screwed
I like how you “ [...] “ out the words racist/sexist and proceeded to list exactly those kind of cases.
> [1] … Bushnell holding company meetings in a hot tub and attempting to coax a female employee to join him
All he lost was an award. He’s still a successful millionaire.
> [2] “I really did not mean to offend anyone and I really do regret the comment and how it made Adria feel. She had every right to report me to staff, and I defend her position”
[3] There’s way too much wrong with Damore’s actions, notwithstanding his actual memo. Do you really think it’s acceptable for someone to circulate such a misinformed screed in a company setting?
Plus, all of these people got jobs after the criticism died down. Like literally everyone else who’s ever been “cancelled”.
> You’re the one who said anything could be controversial
Okay, some things carry more risk than others, but the point I was trying to make is that crazy people can go for your neck (and exhort others to do the same) over any random thing, it's not limited to sexism/racism/whatever.
> I like how you “ [...] “ out the words [...]
I did it to save space, come on now.
You're missing the point of the cases I listed. It's not that they were able to recover from the attack, or were rich enough that it didn't materially matter, it's that it shouldn't even be happening in the first place. It seems like you've moved the goalposts from "cancel culture only happens against racists and sexists, and is a natural backlash to that" to "okay, mobs tried to ruin these peoples' livelihoods, but they ultimately got jobs again so it's ok." You're also implying that losing one's job is some sort of no big deal, when in actuality it can change your life. All three cases I listed, IMO, were minor things that spiraled into ridiculous proportions because of mob furor.
Addressing each case individually:
1. Okay, Nolan is successful and rich, therefore the attack can't hurt him that much, but what if he wasn't? It doesn't make this sort of behavior okay because he can weather it.
2. The guy apologizing to Adria in public is just him being gracious and trying to move on without poking the beehive again. Nolan did the same about the award. They certainly "learned their lesson" from this debacle I'm sure!
3. Misguided and clumsy maybe, but Damore's motivations weren't sexist and neither was his memo. The fact that he became a public spectacle over it and had his character assassinated is ridiculous, and even if he got a new job, he's always going to be remembered as the sexist behind the Google memo.
The point here is that it's not always just cases of people being explicitly racist and getting backlash over it-- it's disproportionate punishment for small slights which causes everyone to be afraid to say anything.
> the point I was trying to make is that crazy people can go for your neck over any random thing
Slippery slope is a really weak argument.
> It seems like you've moved the goalposts
I didn’t? I showed how all 3 were incidents focused on sexism, with Damore also being racist.
> It doesn't make this sort of behavior okay
He never lost his job, just an award - in response to actual sexual harassment. How are you seriously asking if backlash is acceptable to his obviously /unacceptable/ behavior?
> They certainly "learned their lesson" from this debacle I'm sure!
We can argue forever if they really meant it, but how will you know?
> Damore's motivations weren't sexist and neither was his memo
Alright, that’s your opinion. Clearly others don’t agree with you. That’s the point.
You’re missing the point. Folks aren’t reacting to being called out for “racist and sexist” statements, but California imposing its view of what constitutes those things on a global platform.
> Rather than actually dismantling white supremacy or meaningfully empowering people of color, efforts often seem to be oriented towards consolidating social and cultural capital in the hands of the ‘good’ whites.
Likewise for “sexism.” My mother’s feminist credentials are unassailable: she got a college and graduate school education and had an independent career as a writer in a deeply Muslim country in the 1970s. But by Twitter standards, many of her views would be deemed “sexist” from her sex-negativity to her view of motherhood and its burdens as a defining characteristic of being a woman.
> “Who gets to define racism” is a critical question
Absolutely, I agree that problematic views are global and not just American. However, could you link some examples of people getting "cancelled" for nuanced takes on niche potentially charged topics? Almost always, they're mainstream, textbook malicious rhetoric, no nuance whatsoever.
> But by Twitter standards, many of her views would be deemed “sexist”
You're missing the point - topics like racism & feminism evolve over time. That doesn't mean your mom needs to be "cancelled" despite her "unassailable credentials" - it just means that like everyone else, you need to learn more as the world changes.
Regardless, she has nothing to worry about - unless you're suggesting she is a prominent person in a position of influence, who regularly tweets hot-takes promoting her view on racism/feminism, while going on rampages bashing other's opinions or viewpoints. Because, let's be real - those are the kind of social media users that this debate is about. Eg, Elon Musk, JK Rowling. And again, none of these people are really "cancelled".
That's thinly veiled name-calling - the laziest rhetorical trick when you're out of arguments. Saying "everyone who wears a blue shirt is a liar" isn't much different than saying "nice blue shirt! btw, you're a liar."
Hmmm...I'd argue that most of the people that are virtual-signaling also have nothing to signal (at least on a personal level anyway). It's sort of a lazy, cost-free way to scale the social ladder, just express an opinion that's fashionable. It's hard to think of anything that requires less effort and is at less personal cost.
It's entirely reasonable to find these kind of people irritating and obnoxious.
Well, they I assume they aren't. I assume my assumption is more likely than your assumption. You should not just assume things and build your worldview from them.
People are still feeling the effects of an entire group, all Black people in the US, being prohibited by law from acquiring property, wealth or education during the nation’s most formative years.
The opportunities afforded to the various groups you mentioned are still super unequal. It’s built into society and didn’t just go away when the Civil Rights Act was signed (Title VII doesn’t even apply to companies of less than 15 employees) and that was less than 50 years ago.
Some states protect classes like religion, political party membership, marriage status, illness & orientation by statute. Most states don’t.
> shaming is a national pastime, and yet shameless conduct persists.
Wouldn't that be "shameful conduct"?
> In 2013, when people still nursed high hopes for the salvific effects of the Internet and cancellation was a fate reserved for poorly rated TV shows
People were already being harassed, arrested and prosecuted for saying things governments didn't like on Social media, in 2013 or thereabouts. Prominent example for 2015:
Only Americans would draw a parallel between the military-industrial complex, which dictated foreign policy for the last fifty years and caused countless suffering overseas, with online drama within America.
If we follow the money, the major "social media" businesses are mostly American. The economic interest to promote these businesses as the only medium for discourse.
The "shaming machine" monetises strife. It is a new, lucrative medium.
That's why you shouldn't use your real name in the net. To me it still feels.strange when Facebook started and suddenly all the the pseudonyms vanished.
- I thought we'd recall some unsavoury history and reshame that person, but clouding our own superiority complex with philosophical sounding objectivity.
The New Yorker is itself part of this Complex the author talks about yet attempts to speak objectively about this Industrial Shaming Complex. It belies a complete lack of recognition that outlets like The New Yorker may be part of the phenomenom being discussed. The New Yorker isn't some neighborhood zine, it's a prime mover in American highbrow discourse.
I have the same problem with any articles about 'The Media' written in a popular medium. At least recognize the difficulty of objectivity and your role in the subject being discussed.
>Both Harper’s and The New Yorker have often been viewed as prime examples of the middlebrow: both magazines are devoted to the high but also to making it accessible to many
I'd call it a more poetic name: the shaming demon. This is an unconcscious virtual creature that lives in our brains, like a botnet lives on PCs, and it watches restlessly for non-conforming behavior. The key feature of this demon is that it can be activated by a special whistle, and its wrath can be easily directed at your enemies. The weakness of this demon is inability to focus on many things at a time: if your enemies are many or they change frequently, the demon's wrath won't do much.
Shame is internal, so when people shame others they are recognizing and alarming others about something the shamed also knows and agrees with, the result is the shamed stops the bad action and societal harmony is reestablished. But with journalism for clicks, shaming is used to "try" to shame people who obviously don't share their values, so it has the opposite effect. When a group of people who think wrong is right is attacking you, you don't feel shame, you just feel right in what you are doing and the two groups are more divided as a result.
Guilt is internal, based on moral thinking. Shame is external, based on society. Cultures tend towards shame (mostly in Asia), guilt (mostly in the Christianity) or fear (authoritarian regimes).
It's also interesting to contrast recent Pixar portrayals of shame in Encanto and Turning Red, where shame deeply pathologizes a family and leads to a lot of dysfunction among younger members who can't let their true selves out.
It is a good article, but this is an important topic. I prefer the more in depth book “The Shame Machine” by Cathy O’Neil that I bought last week (book was just published).
Human nature will be human nature, but I feel we need to recognize corporate owned automated profit systems and not fail to understand the threats they pose.
> I prefer the more in depth book “The Shame Machine” by Cathy O’Neil that I bought last week (book was just published).
About half of the article is dedicated to "The Shame Machine" and O'Neil so I don't think it's an either-or. The article is contrasting her thoughts with those of others.
It means sarcasm is dead. In most public shaming events I have heard of, the shamed expression was meant to mock people who actually believed in the idea expressed. It would not be surprising if the majority of those performing enforcement were exactly the ones being mocked.
Anything by Cathy ONeill is worth a read to me. OK admittedly i am downloading the audiobook but at least I get to listen to her for a few hours as well - intelligent and still caring - a great social commentator
When they see that they have been raised and kept in an extended nursery of deceptions produced by subtly fabricated narratives, designed to subjugate their identities and replace the cognitive tools they have for experiencing and understanding themselves with constructions of a simulation, they will also likely discover the power of force. Iterating down that timeline gets really grim, really fast.
We've accumulated a reality-debt, suspended by academia and tech, leaking into appendent institutions like media and government, and the most interesting problem now is how ot unwind it without triggering a chain reaction, imo.