...We now live — that is to say, one or two of the most advanced nations of the world now live — in a state in which the law of the strongest seems to be entirely abandoned as the regulating principle of the world’s affairs: nobody professes it, and, as regards most of the relations between human beings, nobody is permitted to practise it. When anyone succeeds in doing so, it is under cover of some pretext which gives him the semblance of having some general social interest on his side. This being the ostensible state of things, people flatter themselves that the rule of mere force is ended; that the law of the strongest cannot be the reason of existence of anything which has remained in full operation down to the present time. However any of our present institutions may have begun, it can only, they think, have been preserved to this period of advanced civilisation by a well-grounded feeling of its adaptation to human nature, and conduciveness to the general good. They do not understand the great vitality and durability of institutions which place right on the side of might; how intensely they are clung to; how the good as well as the bad propensities and sentiments of those who have power in their hands, become identified with retaining it; how slowly these bad institutions give way, one at a time, the weakest first, beginning with those which are least interwoven with the daily habits of life; and how very rarely those who have obtained legal power because they first had physical, have ever lost their hold of it until the physical power had passed over to the other side.
...The truth is, that people of the present and the last two or three generations have lost all practical sense of the primitive condition of humanity; and only the few who have studied history accurately, or have much frequented the parts of the world occupied by the living representatives of ages long past, are able to form any mental picture of what society then was. People are not aware how entirely, in former ages, the law of superior strength was the rule of life; how publicly and openly it was avowed, I do not say cynically or shamelessly — for these words imply a feeling that there was something in it to be ashamed of, and no such notion could find a place in the faculties of any person in those ages, except a philosopher or a saint. History gives a cruel experience of human nature, in showing how exactly the regard due to the life, possessions, and entire earthly happiness of any class of persons, was measured by what they had the power of enforcing; how all who made any resistance to authorities that had arms in their hands, however dreadful might be the provocation, had not only the law of force but all other laws, and all the notions of social obligation against them; and in the eyes of those whom they resisted, were not only guilty of crime, but of the worst of all crimes, deserving the most cruel chastisement which human beings could inflict.
Downvoted, unread. This is the place for quotes, not essays. (And if you object that there’s no rule about the size of the quotes, I’ll downvote you again)
I’m intrigued by this comment. Can you say more about what leads you to make it, given your usual expressed attitude towards appeals to egalitarian instincts?
I’m intrigued by this comment. Can you say more about what leads you to make it,
I made it because my instincts warned me that the more forthright declaration “That was unnecessarily dickish, silence fool!” would not be well received. The reason I had the desire to express sentiment at all was due to the use of an unnecessary threat.
By way of illustration, consider if I had said to you (publicly and in an aggressive tone) “If I ever catch you beating your husband I’m going to report you to the police!”. That would be a rather odd thing for me to say because I haven’t seen evidence of you beating your husband. Me making the threat insinuates that you are likely to beat your husband and also places me in a position of dominance over you such that I can determine your well-being conditional on you complying with my desires. If you in fact were to engage in domestic violence then it would be appropriate for me to use social force against you but since you haven’t (p > 0.95) and aren’t likely to it would be bizarre if I started throwing such threats around.
given your usual expressed attitude towards appeals to egalitarian instincts?
I’m not sure what you mean. Explain and/or give an example of such an expression? My model of me rather strongly feels the egalitarian instinct and is a vocal albeit conditional supporter of it. Perhaps the instances of appeals to egalitarian instinct that you have in mind are those that I consider to be misleading or disingenuous appeals to the egalitarian instinct to achieve personal social goals? I can imagine myself opposing such instances particularly vehemently.
Perhaps the instances of appeals to egalitarian instinct that you have in mind are those that I consider to be misleading or disingenuous appeals to the egalitarian instinct to achieve personal social goals?
Yeah, that seems plausible.
it would be bizarre if I started throwing such threats around.
My intuitions respond to “And if you object that there’s no rule about the size of the quotes, I’ll downvote you again” and “If I ever catch you beating your husband I’m going to report you to the police!” in radically different ways. Not entirely sure why.
For my part, my social intuitions respond differently to those cases for two major reasons, as far as I can tell. First, I seem to have a higher expectation that someone will respond to an explanation of a downvote with a legalistic objection than that they will beat their spouses, so responding to the possibility of the former seems more justified. In fact, the former seems entirely plausible, while the second seems unlikely. Second, being accused of the latter seems much more serious than being accused of the former, and require correspondingly stronger justification.
All of which seems reasonable to me on reflection.
All of that said, my personal preference is typically for fewer explicit surface signals of challenge in discussion. For example, if I were concerned that someone might respond to the above that actually, averaged over all of humanity, spouse-beating is far more common than legalistic objections, I’d be far more likely to say something like “(This is of course a function of the community I’m in; in different communities my expectations would differ.)” than something like “And if you reply that spouse-beating is actually more common than legalistic objections, I will downvote you.” Similarly, if I anticipated a challenge that nobody is accusing anyone of anything, I might add a qualifier like “(pre-emptively hypothetically)” to “accused,” rather than explicitly suggest the challenge and then counter it.
But I acknowledge that this is a personal preference, not a community norm, and I acknowledge that sometimes making potential challenges explicit and responding to them has better long-term consequences than covert subversion of those challenges.
I think that what’s happened is that my brain took “(And if you object that there’s no rule about the size of the quotes, I’ll downvote you again)” to be equivalent to “(Yes, I know that there’s no rule about the size of the quotes, but still)” with the mock threat added for stylistic/dry humour effect (possibly as a result of me having stuff like this in the past).
Also, someone considering the possibility that an objection will be made to their own comment is self-deprecating in a way that someone considering the possibility that a random person will abuse their spouse isn’t.
...Some will object, that a comparison cannot fairly be made between the government of the male sex and the forms of unjust power which I have adduced in illustration of it, since these are arbitrary, and the effect of mere usurpation, while it on the contrary is natural. But was there ever any domination which did not appear natural to those who possessed it? There was a time when the division of mankind into two classes, a small one of masters and a numerous one of slaves, appeared, even to the most cultivated minds, to be natural, and the only natural, condition of the human race. No less an intellect, and one which contributed no less to the progress of human thought, than Aristotle, held this opinion without doubt or misgiving; and rested it on the same premises on which the same assertion in regard to the dominion of men over women is usually based, namely that there are different natures among mankind, free natures, and slave natures; that the Greeks were of a free nature, the barbarian races of Thracians and Asiatics of a slave nature. But why need I go back to Aristotle? Did not the slave-owners of the Southern United States maintain the same doctrine, with all the fanaticism with which men cling to the theories that justify their passions and legitimate their personal interests? Did they not call heaven and earth to witness that the dominion of the white man over the black is natural, that the black race is by nature incapable of freedom, and marked out for slavery? some [1] even going so far as to say that the freedom of manual labourers is an unnatural order of things anywhere. Again, the theorists of absolute monarchy have always affirmed it to be the only natural form of government; issuing from the patriarchal, which was the primitive and spontaneous form of society, framed on the model of the paternal, which is anterior to society itself, and, as they contend, the most natural authority of all. Nay, for that matter, the law of force itself, to those who could not plead any other has always seemed the most natural of all grounds for the exercise of authority. Conquering races hold it to be Nature’s own dictate that the conquered should obey the conquerors, or as they euphoniously paraphrase it, that the feebler and more unwarlike races should submit to the braver and manlier. The smallest acquaintance with human life in the middle ages, shows how supremely natural the dominion of the feudal nobility overmen of low condition appeared to the nobility themselves, and how unnatural the conception seemed, of a person of the inferior class claiming equality with them, or exercising authority over them. It hardly seemed less so to the class held in subjection. The emancipated serfs and burgesses, even in their most vigorous struggles, never made any pretension to a share of authority; they only demanded more or less of limitation to the power of tyrannising over them. So true is it that unnatural generally means only uncustomary, and that everything which is usual appears natural. The subjection of women to men being a universal custom, any departure from it quite naturally appears unnatural. But how entirely, even in this case, the feeling is dependent on custom, appears by ample experience. Nothing so much astonishes the people of distant parts of the world, when they first learn anything about England, as to be told that it is under a queen; the thing seems to them so unnatural as to be almost incredible. To Englishmen this does not seem in the least degree unnatural, because they are used to it; but they do feel it unnatural that women should be soldiers or Members of Parliament. In the feudal ages, on the contrary, war and politics were not thought unnatural to women, because not unusual; it seemed natural that women of the privileged classes should be of manly character, inferior in nothing but bodily strength to their husbands and fathers.
...When we consider how vast is the number of men, in any great country, who are little higher than brutes, and that this never prevents them from being able, through the law of marriage, to obtain a victim, the breadth and depth of human misery caused in this shape alone by the abuse of the institution swells to something appalling. Yet these are only the extreme cases. They are the lowest abysses, but there is a sad succession of depth after depth before reaching them. In domestic as in political tyranny, the case of absolute monsters chiefly illustrates the institution by showing that there is scarcely any horror which may not occur under it if the despot pleases, and thus setting in a strong light what must be the terrible frequency of things only a little less atrocious. Absolute fiends are as rare as angels, perhaps rarer: ferocious savages, with occasional touches of humanity, are however very frequent: and in the wide interval which separates these from any worthy representatives of the human species, how many are the forms and gradations of animalism and selfishness, often under an outward varnish of civilisation and even cultivation, living at peace with the law, maintaining a creditable appearance to all who are not under their power, yet sufficient often to make the lives of all who are so, a torment and a burthen to them! It would be tiresome to repeat the commonplaces about the unfitness of men in general for power, which, after the political discussions of centuries, everyone knows by heart, were it not that hardly anyone thinks of applying these maxims to the case in which above all others they are applicable, that of power, not placed in the hands of a man here and there, but offered to every adult male, down to the basest and most ferocious. It is not because a man is not known to have broken any of the Ten Commandments, or because he maintains a respectable character in his dealings with those whom he cannot compel to have intercourse with him, or because he does not fly out into violent bursts of ill-temper against those who are not obliged to bear with him, that it is possible to surmise of what sort his conduct will be in the unrestraint of home. Even the commonest men reserve the violent, the sulky, the undisguisedly selfish side of their character for those who have no power to withstand it. The relation of superiors to dependents is the nursery of these vices of character, which, wherever else they exist, are an overflowing from that source. A man who is morose or violent to his equals, is sure to be one who has lived among inferiors, whom he could frighten or worry into submission. If the family in its best forms is, as it is often said to be, a school of sympathy, tenderness, and loving forgetfulness of self, it is still oftener, as respects its chief, a school of wilfulness, overbearingness, unbounded selfish indulgence, and a double-dyed and idealised selfishness, of which sacrifice itself is only a particular form: the care for the wife and children being only care for them as parts of the man’s own interests and belongings, and their individual happiness being immolated in every shape to his smallest preferences. What better is to be looked for under the existing form of the institution? We know that the bad propensities of human nature are only kept within bounds when they are allowed no scope for their indulgence. We know that from impulse and habit, when not from deliberate purpose, almost everyone to whom others yield, goes on encroaching upon them, until a point is reached at which they are compelled to resist. Such being the common tendency of human nature; the almost unlimited power which present social institutions give to the man over at least one human being — the one with whom he resides, and whom he has always present — this power seeks out and evokes the latent germs of selfishness in the remotest corners of his nature — fans its faintest sparks and smouldering embers — offers to him a licence for the indulgence of those points of his original character which in all other relations he would have found it necessary to repress and conceal, and the repression of which would in time have become a second nature.
--Selections from John Stuart Mill’s The Subjection of Women (1869). It’s probably best read in its entirety; an amazing work ahead of its time, but written in a wall-of-text style that’s difficult to abridge for quotes.
(Optional exercise: apply Mill’s points on the sociopolitical situation of women in the 19th century to the situation of children today.)
Ehh.. Todays children are often subject to much more limited familial authority than were 19th century women. It is for example illegal to use physical force on them in a great many places.
My guess is extended pattern-matching on Eugine Nier’s typical post content, along with a huge helping of annoyance with the excluded middle.
“This is a reductio ad absurdum of Mill’s argument”
“you honestly favor treating 5-year olds as legal adults”.
Are these honestly the only two possible readings of the original post? If not, is it more likely—based on past history of all parties—to assume that Eugine Nier honestly could not conceive of a third option, or merely that a rhetorical tactic was being employed to make their opponent look bad?
Based on what is most likely occurring (evaluated, of course, differently by each person reading), is this post a flower or a weed?
Are these honestly the only two possible readings of the original post? If not, is it more likely—based on past history of all parties—to assume that Eugine Nier honestly could not conceive of a third option, or merely that a rhetorical tactic was being employed to make their opponent look bad?
Well, based to Multiheaded’s previous posts I wouldn’t be too surprised if he favored treating 5-year olds as legal adults. It’s possible he wants us to notice the difference between women and children and see why Mill’s argument doesn’t apply in the later case, but I find this unlikely given Multiheaded’s commenting history. In any case, this is the logical conclusion of his argument as stated, I was merely pointing this out. Of course, If you regard pointing out the implications of someone else’s argument as a dishonest rhetorical tactic, I see why you’d object.
Oh, hello! I wondered why my karma was starting to go down again. Welcome back!
I am downvoting this and all future complaining about Eugine that is not provoked by immediate context. Too many (ie. about a third) of your comments (and even posts) are attempts to shame people who chose to downvote you. In addition, instances like this one that are snide and sarcastic are particularly distasteful.
I incidentally suggest that giving Eugine just cause (as well as additional emotional incentive) to downvote you is unlikely to be the optimal strategy for reducing the number of downvotes you receive.
On a more empathetic note I know that the task of maintaining the moral high ground and mobilizing the tribe to take action to change the behaviour of a rival is a delicate and difficult one and often a cause for frustration and even disillusionment. A possibility you may consider is that you could accept the minor status hit for excessive complaining but take great care to make sure that each individual complaint is as graceful and inoffensive to third parties (such as myself) as possible. If you resist the urge to insert those oh so tempting additional barbs then you will likely find that you have far more leeway in terms of how much complaining people will accept from you and are more likely to receive the support of said third parties’ egalitarian instincts.
Note: The preceding paragraph is purely instrumental advice and should not be interpreted as normative endorsement (or dis-endorsement) of that particular “Grey-Arts” strategy. (But I would at least give unqualified normative endorsement of replacing “complaining + bitchiness” with “complaining + tact” in most cases.)
nod unfortunately, I am terrible at these sorts of plays. Thank you for your criticism, and I’ll attempt to behave more gracefully in the future.
EDIT: I’m going to go ahead and trigger your downvotes, now, because reviewing the situation, I feel like I need to speak in my own defense.
I consistently lose fourty to fifty karma over the course of a few minutes, once every few days. Posts which have no possible reason why someone would downvote them get downvoted. And I do not, as you put it, “shame people who chose to downvote me”. I mostly ask for an explanation why I got downvoted, so that I can improve. The ONLY time I have explicitly tried to shame someone who downvoted me was Eugine, and only after spending a very long time examining the situation and coming to the conclusion (p > 0.95) that Eugine was downvoting EVERYTHING I say, just because.
If you feel that that deserves further retributive downvoting, you are free to perform it to your heart’s content; I am powerless to stop you.
(cont. below)
Downvoted, unread. This is the place for quotes, not essays. (And if you object that there’s no rule about the size of the quotes, I’ll downvote you again)
This pre-emptive chastisement seems unnecessary. My egalitarian instinct objects to the social move it represents.
I’m intrigued by this comment. Can you say more about what leads you to make it, given your usual expressed attitude towards appeals to egalitarian instincts?
I made it because my instincts warned me that the more forthright declaration “That was unnecessarily dickish, silence fool!” would not be well received. The reason I had the desire to express sentiment at all was due to the use of an unnecessary threat.
By way of illustration, consider if I had said to you (publicly and in an aggressive tone) “If I ever catch you beating your husband I’m going to report you to the police!”. That would be a rather odd thing for me to say because I haven’t seen evidence of you beating your husband. Me making the threat insinuates that you are likely to beat your husband and also places me in a position of dominance over you such that I can determine your well-being conditional on you complying with my desires. If you in fact were to engage in domestic violence then it would be appropriate for me to use social force against you but since you haven’t (p > 0.95) and aren’t likely to it would be bizarre if I started throwing such threats around.
I’m not sure what you mean. Explain and/or give an example of such an expression? My model of me rather strongly feels the egalitarian instinct and is a vocal albeit conditional supporter of it. Perhaps the instances of appeals to egalitarian instinct that you have in mind are those that I consider to be misleading or disingenuous appeals to the egalitarian instinct to achieve personal social goals? I can imagine myself opposing such instances particularly vehemently.
Yeah, that seems plausible.
True.
My intuitions respond to “And if you object that there’s no rule about the size of the quotes, I’ll downvote you again” and “If I ever catch you beating your husband I’m going to report you to the police!” in radically different ways. Not entirely sure why.
For my part, my social intuitions respond differently to those cases for two major reasons, as far as I can tell. First, I seem to have a higher expectation that someone will respond to an explanation of a downvote with a legalistic objection than that they will beat their spouses, so responding to the possibility of the former seems more justified. In fact, the former seems entirely plausible, while the second seems unlikely. Second, being accused of the latter seems much more serious than being accused of the former, and require correspondingly stronger justification.
All of which seems reasonable to me on reflection.
All of that said, my personal preference is typically for fewer explicit surface signals of challenge in discussion. For example, if I were concerned that someone might respond to the above that actually, averaged over all of humanity, spouse-beating is far more common than legalistic objections, I’d be far more likely to say something like “(This is of course a function of the community I’m in; in different communities my expectations would differ.)” than something like “And if you reply that spouse-beating is actually more common than legalistic objections, I will downvote you.” Similarly, if I anticipated a challenge that nobody is accusing anyone of anything, I might add a qualifier like “(pre-emptively hypothetically)” to “accused,” rather than explicitly suggest the challenge and then counter it.
But I acknowledge that this is a personal preference, not a community norm, and I acknowledge that sometimes making potential challenges explicit and responding to them has better long-term consequences than covert subversion of those challenges.
I think that what’s happened is that my brain took “(And if you object that there’s no rule about the size of the quotes, I’ll downvote you again)” to be equivalent to “(Yes, I know that there’s no rule about the size of the quotes, but still)” with the mock threat added for stylistic/dry humour effect (possibly as a result of me having stuff like this in the past).
Also, someone considering the possibility that an objection will be made to their own comment is self-deprecating in a way that someone considering the possibility that a random person will abuse their spouse isn’t.
Downed for being unnecessarily violent and confrontational to someone who wasn’t doing anything worthy of such a response....
Upvoted because you ACTUALLY GAVE A REASON why you downvoted, providing the OP with useful feedback.
You may have missed the idea of a quote here.
--Selections from John Stuart Mill’s The Subjection of Women (1869). It’s probably best read in its entirety; an amazing work ahead of its time, but written in a wall-of-text style that’s difficult to abridge for quotes.
(Optional exercise: apply Mill’s points on the sociopolitical situation of women in the 19th century to the situation of children today.)
[1] And by “some” Mill likely means Carlyle.
Are you trying to provide a reductio ad absurdum of Mill’s argument, or do you honestly favor treating 5-year olds as legal adults?
Ehh.. Todays children are often subject to much more limited familial authority than were 19th century women. It is for example illegal to use physical force on them in a great many places.
How comes six people downvoted this? While I can think of a few relevant differences between women then and children today, it’s not so obvious to me that they’d be so obvious to everybody as to justify unexplained downvotes.
My guess is extended pattern-matching on Eugine Nier’s typical post content, along with a huge helping of annoyance with the excluded middle.
“This is a reductio ad absurdum of Mill’s argument”
“you honestly favor treating 5-year olds as legal adults”.
Are these honestly the only two possible readings of the original post? If not, is it more likely—based on past history of all parties—to assume that Eugine Nier honestly could not conceive of a third option, or merely that a rhetorical tactic was being employed to make their opponent look bad?
Based on what is most likely occurring (evaluated, of course, differently by each person reading), is this post a flower or a weed?
Then you tend the garden.
Well, based to Multiheaded’s previous posts I wouldn’t be too surprised if he favored treating 5-year olds as legal adults. It’s possible he wants us to notice the difference between women and children and see why Mill’s argument doesn’t apply in the later case, but I find this unlikely given Multiheaded’s commenting history. In any case, this is the logical conclusion of his argument as stated, I was merely pointing this out. Of course, If you regard pointing out the implications of someone else’s argument as a dishonest rhetorical tactic, I see why you’d object.
Oh, hello! I wondered why my karma was starting to go down again. Welcome back!
I am downvoting this and all future complaining about Eugine that is not provoked by immediate context. Too many (ie. about a third) of your comments (and even posts) are attempts to shame people who chose to downvote you. In addition, instances like this one that are snide and sarcastic are particularly distasteful.
I incidentally suggest that giving Eugine just cause (as well as additional emotional incentive) to downvote you is unlikely to be the optimal strategy for reducing the number of downvotes you receive.
On a more empathetic note I know that the task of maintaining the moral high ground and mobilizing the tribe to take action to change the behaviour of a rival is a delicate and difficult one and often a cause for frustration and even disillusionment. A possibility you may consider is that you could accept the minor status hit for excessive complaining but take great care to make sure that each individual complaint is as graceful and inoffensive to third parties (such as myself) as possible. If you resist the urge to insert those oh so tempting additional barbs then you will likely find that you have far more leeway in terms of how much complaining people will accept from you and are more likely to receive the support of said third parties’ egalitarian instincts.
Note: The preceding paragraph is purely instrumental advice and should not be interpreted as normative endorsement (or dis-endorsement) of that particular “Grey-Arts” strategy. (But I would at least give unqualified normative endorsement of replacing “complaining + bitchiness” with “complaining + tact” in most cases.)
nod unfortunately, I am terrible at these sorts of plays. Thank you for your criticism, and I’ll attempt to behave more gracefully in the future.
EDIT: I’m going to go ahead and trigger your downvotes, now, because reviewing the situation, I feel like I need to speak in my own defense.
I consistently lose fourty to fifty karma over the course of a few minutes, once every few days. Posts which have no possible reason why someone would downvote them get downvoted. And I do not, as you put it, “shame people who chose to downvote me”. I mostly ask for an explanation why I got downvoted, so that I can improve. The ONLY time I have explicitly tried to shame someone who downvoted me was Eugine, and only after spending a very long time examining the situation and coming to the conclusion (p > 0.95) that Eugine was downvoting EVERYTHING I say, just because.
If you feel that that deserves further retributive downvoting, you are free to perform it to your heart’s content; I am powerless to stop you.
That sounds overconfident.