And Western liberal democracies do not torture people? Assassinate them too actually. Create vulgar disturbing cultural trends? Impose arbitrary and harsh punishments out of reasonable proportion? Speaking of unreasonable punishment, Is canning a man really more inhuman than locking him up for several years and exposing him to a double digit chance of rape?
From a utilitarian POV there is nothing you can say about Singapore that outweighs the great strides in quality of life and wealth that the city acquired versus what it would have likely otherwise. How would Africans or Indians vote with their feet if given the chance? One should not speak ill of Singapore until spending time in a less successful “democratic” former British colony elsewhere in the world or a Malay fishing village.
Taking your criticism seriously from the non-utilitarian POV I think you are coming from means condemning democracy for much the same reasons. To give an example, let us take New York city clearly a “democratically” governed realm, yet tell me on the list of criticisms you listed is Montana nearer or Singapore? If you claim the right to be unhappy why don’t you shun New York as well as Singapore? The step between them is not that large.
I challenge the wandering reader who may not understand what I’m talking about here to take off their WEIRD glasses and try to view it as a normal human in a wider historical and global context. Which of the two societies is more human?
One should not speak ill of Singapore until spending time in a less successful “democratic” former British colony
At least at one mostly-democratic former British colony had been very “successful” on such metrics up until the 1990s. Then it ran into some trouble—either having been subverted by ingrateful meddlers, or having reapt what it had been sowing for decades. You can probably guess which one I mean :)
Speaking of unrasonable punishment, Is canning a man really more inhuman than locking him up for several years and exposing him to a double digit chance of rape?
AFAIK Singapore only canes prisoners in addition to a jail term and not as a replacement for one. Don’t know about their prison rape statistics, doubt that any truthful ones are available.
normal human
Y’know what else is normal and human? A lot of things that I shouldn’t even have to list to someone interested in ev-psych!
AFAIK Singapore only canes prisoners in addition to a jail term and not as a replacement for one.
Even if that is the case, kind of a nit pick no? Ceteris paribus it seems likely that if they didn’t use caning they’d extent the prison terms. Indeed women aren’t canned for example.
Y’know what else is normal and human? A lot of things that I shouldn’t even have to list to someone interested in ev-psych!
What if all choices are evil like you say, If I’m a monster maybe I should be the best goddamn monster I can be! Cry havoc, screw morality and be human! Can you not see the romance?
“Why not? I’m here on the ground with my nose in it since the whole thing began. I’ve nurtured every sensation man’s been inspired to have. I cared about what he wanted and I never judged him. Why? Because I never rejected him. In spite of all his imperfections, I’m a fan of man! I’m a humanist. Maybe the last humanist.”
Heh, I guessed Mephistopheles; was just off by a century or so.
Can you not see the romance?
It’s hard not to see; such a simple idea, really. The romance of Christianity suits my refined tastes better :) Like Oscar Wilde once concluded from experience that to sin with abandon might or might not bring bad karma but it’s simply the most banal, boring, mainstream thing ever.
Sure, sure, you know that I’ve hardly ever written anything in praise of Democracy :D;
The “real” Democracy (that of 19th century USA) looks just awful, and I only really want to stick with modern “democracy” (meaning rule by an expert/bureaucrat caste + corporate interests + academia as formal and ineffective priesthood + demagogue politicians that are supposed to be an emergency brake but are more of a self-destruct button) out of fear and conservatism.
In the end, the modern power structures seem to retain a very faint, lingering sense of guilt (see e.g. Christopher Hitchens’ reflections on his support for the Iraq War) as they wage another brutal “war on drugs/terrorism/etc” or conspire to fool voters or make other mischief. In practice, rules and barriers and Universalist traditions are smashed outright or bent out of shape—but they are at least supposed to be there. And—for a bit of dialectical bullshit—as long as there’s an image, there’s hope that it will acquire another stubstance. See Zizek, again.
Lee Kuan Yew’s government is ashamed of nothing, NOTHING. It doesn’t even have the capacity to. Unlike Nixon, LKY is not a crook and can’t be one within his system. That is already reason enough to be scared!
Also:
From a utilitarian POV there is nothing you can say about Singapore that outweights the great strides in quality of life and wealth that the city acquired
There are human utility functions that aren’t centered on material wealth and QALYs, you know! It’s just that they’re difficult to specify and detail. Which reminds me: “Humanity is OK, but 99% of people are boring idiots”
P.S.: again, this is much like what people, including myself, have observed about such heated binary-choice clashes—the emotions might run so hot simply because both sides are absolutely correct in calling the opponent’s position insane/evil/indefensible. It might be a choice between two evils of such magnitude that weighing them against one another has little point.
Surely you see that conservatism as it exists in the world will morph to such an extent that in a few decades you will be the “cultural conservative”. Indeed I bet on many issues you already are. Can I expect you to change your stance then?
And—for a bit of dialectical bullshit—as long as there’s an image, there’s hope that it will acquire another substance.
Actually memetically this make sense so perhaps not so bullshit-y. But are you sure you are using this image for hope rather than anaesthetic? Not only personally, but what if our society is using this image as an anaesthetic. Remove the anaesthetic and maybe someone will wake up and scream.
But do you realize this feeling you seek, this “shame” is the very heart of farmer social morality?
Off topic: I so missed such exchanges, if you feel like restarting any of our earlier email correspondences please do! :)
Surely you see that conservatism as it exists in the world will morph to such an extent that in a few decades you will be the “a cultural conservative”. Indeed I bet on many issues you already are. Can I expect you to change your stance then?
Been thinking about that. It might be embarrassing to admit, but, although I’d like to declare my conservatism, to fly my pride in the Left tradition and suspicion towards “the future” as an ideological banner… there’s all them goddamn right-wingers in the way! :P
It’d take a whole lot to explain to people that I’m not a “moderate” conservative, that I want nothing to do with the “conservative Right” (present company excluded), that I’m pretty Right-phobic in general and that it largely follows from my socialist convictions. I’m afraid there’s not much of a future for socialism (human socialism, anyway) - so I often look to the past, the mythic and half-forgotten Age of Modernity, whose ruins and artifacts can sometimes be found in the least fashionable parts of our cities; if history does turn the way I fear, I’ll at least be glad for having stood athwart it!
But do you realize this feeling you seek, this “shame” is the very heart of farmer socially morality
Shit, thanks for mentioning it! Of course I meant shame in the colloquial sense, but Guilt within the “Guilt-based culture”/”Shame-based culture” dichotomy. Which can be roughly correlated with “Western culture” vs “Traditional culture” in pop anthropology or “Universalism” vs “Localist-reactionary social hierarchy” in my take on moldbuggery.
To oversimplify, Guilt has a large positive utility to me (Christian mindset, etc), Shame has a large negative utility (“patriarchy” in the feminist sense, etc). And yes, I understand that they might be strongly related and hard to separate—but, well, it’s like passion vs rape.
EDIT:
But are you sure you are using this image for hope rather than anaesthetic? Not only personally, but what if our society is using this image as an anaesthetic. Remove the anaesthetic and maybe someone will wake up and scream.
True; the modern socialists I’ve been reading talk about it a good deal. It’s another of them dialectic things; an “authentic” utopia can be an organizing, driving and useful image, like a direction on the compass, but the modern consumer culture can all too easily grab it, pull it into near-mode, cut it up into anaesthetic images and sell it.
Actually, that’s literally what Marx said in his famous quote (and how Orwell explained it). Let me post that bit from Orwell once again:
Marx’s famous saying that ‘religion is the opium of the people’ is habitually wrenched out of its context and given a meaning subtly but appreciably different from the one he gave it. Marx did not say, at any rate in that place, that religion is merely a dope handed out from above; he said that it is something the people create for themselves to supply a need that he recognized to be a real one. ‘Religion is the sigh of the soul in a soulless world. Religion is the opium of the people.’ What is he saying except that man does not live by bread alone, that hatred is not enough, that a world worth living in cannot be founded on ‘realism’ and machine-guns? If he had foreseen how great his intellectual influence would be, perhaps he would have said it more often and more loudly.
In other words, the Universalist utopia itself might be pretty cool, but we have to tear ourselves from its image before we can walk in its actual direction. It’s good and sane to desire actually “immanentizing the Eschaton”, but it’s a trap if you don’t actually carry out any change and just fantasize about doing so.
I think the usual definitions for guilt and shame are that guilt is falling short of your own standards, while shame is falling short of other people’s standards. I’m not sure that they’re so wildly different in effect—I think a lot of what people feel guilt about is standards which were trained in early. And the definitions don’t tell you much, if anything, about the quality of the standards.
I’m not sure that they’re so wildly different in effect—I think a lot of what people feel guilt about is standards which were trained in early.
Shame (seems to) have more of a sedative effect than guilt. This is unsurprising given that avoiding attention temporarily is typically a good strategy when people are already successful at shaming you. “Digging yourself out of a hole” is ridiculously hard no matter how virtuous you act.
And Western liberal democracies do not torture people? Assassinate them too actually. Create vulgar disturbing cultural trends? Impose arbitrary and harsh punishments out of reasonable proportion? Speaking of unreasonable punishment, Is canning a man really more inhuman than locking him up for several years and exposing him to a double digit chance of rape?
From a utilitarian POV there is nothing you can say about Singapore that outweighs the great strides in quality of life and wealth that the city acquired versus what it would have likely otherwise. How would Africans or Indians vote with their feet if given the chance? One should not speak ill of Singapore until spending time in a less successful “democratic” former British colony elsewhere in the world or a Malay fishing village.
Taking your criticism seriously from the non-utilitarian POV I think you are coming from means condemning democracy for much the same reasons. To give an example, let us take New York city clearly a “democratically” governed realm, yet tell me on the list of criticisms you listed is Montana nearer or Singapore? If you claim the right to be unhappy why don’t you shun New York as well as Singapore? The step between them is not that large.
I challenge the wandering reader who may not understand what I’m talking about here to take off their WEIRD glasses and try to view it as a normal human in a wider historical and global context. Which of the two societies is more human?
At least at one mostly-democratic former British colony had been very “successful” on such metrics up until the 1990s. Then it ran into some trouble—either having been subverted by ingrateful meddlers, or having reapt what it had been sowing for decades. You can probably guess which one I mean :)
Oh now you’re just trolling the utilitarians. :D
AFAIK Singapore only canes prisoners in addition to a jail term and not as a replacement for one. Don’t know about their prison rape statistics, doubt that any truthful ones are available.
Y’know what else is normal and human? A lot of things that I shouldn’t even have to list to someone interested in ev-psych!
Even if that is the case, kind of a nit pick no? Ceteris paribus it seems likely that if they didn’t use caning they’d extent the prison terms. Indeed women aren’t canned for example.
What if all choices are evil like you say, If I’m a monster maybe I should be the best goddamn monster I can be! Cry havoc, screw morality and be human! Can you not see the romance?
“Why not? I’m here on the ground with my nose in it since the whole thing began. I’ve nurtured every sensation man’s been inspired to have. I cared about what he wanted and I never judged him. Why? Because I never rejected him. In spite of all his imperfections, I’m a fan of man! I’m a humanist. Maybe the last humanist.”
Guess who says that? Shiver my timbers!
Heh, I guessed Mephistopheles; was just off by a century or so.
It’s hard not to see; such a simple idea, really. The romance of Christianity suits my refined tastes better :) Like Oscar Wilde once concluded from experience that to sin with abandon might or might not bring bad karma but it’s simply the most banal, boring, mainstream thing ever.
ARrrrghh lad sure you don’t want to join me crew? We’ll sail for Somalia tomorrow! There be place for Christians on me crew just not very good ones.
But how shall we divvy up the gold? By backward induction, I infer you will give Multiheaded one coin and the rest of us will slaughter each other!
(I guess this is why our kind can’t cooperate.)
Aye the benefit o’ having a rational crew!
The benefit for you maybe—me, I like a ship with a lower Gini coefficient.
My faith is strong, you dissolute heathen! You can’t tempt or bribe me… unless you offer pretty boys, that is. I guess I’m a Catholic at heart :)
Sure, sure, you know that I’ve hardly ever written anything in praise of Democracy :D;
The “real” Democracy (that of 19th century USA) looks just awful, and I only really want to stick with modern “democracy” (meaning rule by an expert/bureaucrat caste + corporate interests + academia as formal and ineffective priesthood + demagogue politicians that are supposed to be an emergency brake but are more of a self-destruct button) out of fear and conservatism.
In the end, the modern power structures seem to retain a very faint, lingering sense of guilt (see e.g. Christopher Hitchens’ reflections on his support for the Iraq War) as they wage another brutal “war on drugs/terrorism/etc” or conspire to fool voters or make other mischief. In practice, rules and barriers and Universalist traditions are smashed outright or bent out of shape—but they are at least supposed to be there. And—for a bit of dialectical bullshit—as long as there’s an image, there’s hope that it will acquire another stubstance. See Zizek, again.
Lee Kuan Yew’s government is ashamed of nothing, NOTHING. It doesn’t even have the capacity to. Unlike Nixon, LKY is not a crook and can’t be one within his system. That is already reason enough to be scared!
Also:
There are human utility functions that aren’t centered on material wealth and QALYs, you know! It’s just that they’re difficult to specify and detail. Which reminds me: “Humanity is OK, but 99% of people are boring idiots”
P.S.: again, this is much like what people, including myself, have observed about such heated binary-choice clashes—the emotions might run so hot simply because both sides are absolutely correct in calling the opponent’s position insane/evil/indefensible. It might be a choice between two evils of such magnitude that weighing them against one another has little point.
Up voted for consistency.
Surely you see that conservatism as it exists in the world will morph to such an extent that in a few decades you will be the “cultural conservative”. Indeed I bet on many issues you already are. Can I expect you to change your stance then?
Actually memetically this make sense so perhaps not so bullshit-y. But are you sure you are using this image for hope rather than anaesthetic? Not only personally, but what if our society is using this image as an anaesthetic. Remove the anaesthetic and maybe someone will wake up and scream.
But do you realize this feeling you seek, this “shame” is the very heart of farmer social morality?
Off topic: I so missed such exchanges, if you feel like restarting any of our earlier email correspondences please do! :)
Been thinking about that. It might be embarrassing to admit, but, although I’d like to declare my conservatism, to fly my pride in the Left tradition and suspicion towards “the future” as an ideological banner… there’s all them goddamn right-wingers in the way! :P
It’d take a whole lot to explain to people that I’m not a “moderate” conservative, that I want nothing to do with the “conservative Right” (present company excluded), that I’m pretty Right-phobic in general and that it largely follows from my socialist convictions. I’m afraid there’s not much of a future for socialism (human socialism, anyway) - so I often look to the past, the mythic and half-forgotten Age of Modernity, whose ruins and artifacts can sometimes be found in the least fashionable parts of our cities; if history does turn the way I fear, I’ll at least be glad for having stood athwart it!
Shit, thanks for mentioning it! Of course I meant shame in the colloquial sense, but Guilt within the “Guilt-based culture”/”Shame-based culture” dichotomy. Which can be roughly correlated with “Western culture” vs “Traditional culture” in pop anthropology or “Universalism” vs “Localist-reactionary social hierarchy” in my take on moldbuggery.
To oversimplify, Guilt has a large positive utility to me (Christian mindset, etc), Shame has a large negative utility (“patriarchy” in the feminist sense, etc). And yes, I understand that they might be strongly related and hard to separate—but, well, it’s like passion vs rape.
EDIT:
True; the modern socialists I’ve been reading talk about it a good deal. It’s another of them dialectic things; an “authentic” utopia can be an organizing, driving and useful image, like a direction on the compass, but the modern consumer culture can all too easily grab it, pull it into near-mode, cut it up into anaesthetic images and sell it.
Actually, that’s literally what Marx said in his famous quote (and how Orwell explained it). Let me post that bit from Orwell once again:
In other words, the Universalist utopia itself might be pretty cool, but we have to tear ourselves from its image before we can walk in its actual direction. It’s good and sane to desire actually “immanentizing the Eschaton”, but it’s a trap if you don’t actually carry out any change and just fantasize about doing so.
I think the usual definitions for guilt and shame are that guilt is falling short of your own standards, while shame is falling short of other people’s standards. I’m not sure that they’re so wildly different in effect—I think a lot of what people feel guilt about is standards which were trained in early. And the definitions don’t tell you much, if anything, about the quality of the standards.
Shame (seems to) have more of a sedative effect than guilt. This is unsurprising given that avoiding attention temporarily is typically a good strategy when people are already successful at shaming you. “Digging yourself out of a hole” is ridiculously hard no matter how virtuous you act.