Is politicization of the personal inevitable? My model is that there are groups of people with common personal-life interests, such as raising the status of one sub-group or another. Those who can band together to exert coordinated social pressure, win. So unless there is some friction to group formation, politicization seems inevitable.
Note that the nature of the groups that are politically relevant may change (ie the relevant group may be an extended family, an occupation, a religious sect, a social class, etc.)
Those who can band together to exert coordinated social pressure, win. So unless there is some friction to group formation, politicization seems inevitable.
Much like mugging is inevitable unless people in general band together against it.
In the war of all against all, people might wish to declare a truce to end the war, but they better be prepared to retaliate against those who break the truce, or they should expect to see it broken more and more, until even those who would prefer a truce feel it’s not a realistic option and the truce ceases to exist.
My model is that there are groups of people with common personal-life interests, such as raising the status of one sub-group or another. Those who can band together to exert coordinated social pressure, win.
There is no reason to expect different stable coalitions of such groups require equally large footprints of politicized subjects. Let alone that all such subjects are equally important for the common good! I’m saying that ceteris paribus the less politicized the result of a such a collation is the better off society as a whole will be.
Perhaps stable coalitions requiring small footprints have other remarkably negative externalities that nearly always outweigh the gains in areas of life free from politicization. But considering just what a horrible cancer on action and the greater good politicking seems to be, I’m somewhat dubious this is commonly the case.
People adopting a general stance of opposing “the personal is the political” subsidize smaller footprint coalitions. Naturally such subsidizing has very small if not tiny effect, it still probably beats out the effect from voting also I would claim that under current circumstances it serves as a useful filter to finding interesting people.
Outside the Green coalition they may still try to maintain a politicized outlook on certain baker issues, though without the feeling one can gain power or status remarkably few will in practice do so so. However they certainly won’t feel the need to support the Green Coalition and neither will the Green Coalition help them.
Nah, this is an empirical claim. That is, not acknowledging that the personal is political will only leave ‘the personal’ trapped in the current discourse, accepted as the way of things.
Thus ceteris paribus it makes life in such a society suck more.
I am pretty sure it is correct.
Though I also plain prefer to live in a society where I have to deal with politics as little as possible. Naturally this unfortunately isn’t a politically neutral stance. “Right wing freedom” is often freedom from politics, while “left wing freedom” is often freedom to politics.
I believe that most benign change is not brought about by politics while much of the harmful one is. The human mind is systematically broken at thinking about politics, at least politics beyond the size of the stone age tribe, but it can solve such problems when they are framed in other ways.
I agree with you that a world where the personal and the political were distinct spheres that never met would probably be a better world. But in the world we live in, there are groups that are (1) identified by persona characteristics, and (2) oppressed in some sense by the mainstream. If those groups don’t conflate the personal and the political, they don’t have a workable roadmap to social change. In parallel, those who oppose the social changes are committed to reinforcing the distinction.
“Right wing freedom” is often freedom from politics, while “left wing freedom” is freedom to politics.
As you note, this formulation has a great deal of embedded status quo bias. In the US, a politician saying “I’m deeply religious.” is often perceived as making a non-political statement that he is a good person. Analytically, the perception is false—applause lights are a political act.
Keep in mind also that partisan electioneering (community organizer v. rich corporate executive) is not the same thing as politics. In the context of the quote under discussion, everything referenced by Hanson’s status-based analysis of human behavior should be understood as “political” analysis.
But in the world we live in, there are groups that are (1) identified by persona characteristics, and (2) oppressed in some sense by the mainstream. If those groups don’t conflate the personal and the political, they don’t have a workable roadmap to social change.
There is no reason to expect that politics somehow inherently favors the truly oppressed. In reality, groups that are strong have inherent advantages in politicking over groups that are weak. The real oppressed have low status, few allies, and no resources.
Rule of thumb: the group that everyone agrees is the most oppressed is not actually the most oppressed—at least, not any longer. The most oppressed group doesn’t have that kind of PR!
No one is claiming that “politics somehow favors the truly oppressed”, nor need they in order to argue that “the personal is political” [EDIT: in the sense that political activity can be necessary for personal-looking goals; the phrase can be understood in other ways]. What’s relevant is whether politics is necessary for the truly oppressed.
Hypothetical world: two subpopulations, the lucky Haves and the oppressed Have-Nots. Everything is harder for the Have-Nots because of explicitly discriminatory laws, casual tribal hatreds, lack of resources after historical oppression, widespread assumption that they’re inferior, etc. If the Have-Nots’ position is to improve, they will certainly need the discriminatory laws repealed, and it may be to their benefit for there to be anti-discrimination regulations. To get that, there will need to be politics. They will be at a disadvantage in any politicking, for sure, but they’re equally at a disadvantage in every other way they might try to improve their situation. Trying to get richer through innovation or trade; getting better-liked through personal interactions; persuading individuals to treat them better; all these things and more will tend to go badly for the Have-Nots, just as politicking will. They need politics even though politics doesn’t favour them.
Depending on lots of details, they might do better to begin by concentrating on things other than politics. Or not. The same goes for oppressed groups in the real world. So “the personal is political” might well turn out to be empirically wrong. But it isn’t refuted merely by observing that politics doesn’t inherently favour the oppressed.
(I agree with your last paragraph, with the proviso that a group that most people agree is most oppressed might actually be the most oppressed—if the people who don’t agree or don’t care treat them badly enough. I don’t know whether, or how often, this actually happens.)
My point is simply that the original quote is a roadmap for moving up the status ladder. Moving a group up the status ladder is hard to do deliberately and the insightful idea from the quote goes to the methodology of deliberate social engineering.
Like most social engineering techniques, it does not inherently favor any particular group.
I think you have a good point, I did miss his point, I seem to have different underlying assumptions.
Outside of war, and even in war the intention to win this or that goal matters surprisingly little, I do not think the change from oppressed to non-opressed group and back again is primarily the result of intentional human action aimed at changing such arrangements.
They aren’t utterly irrelevant but I do believe far stronger forces and the unforeseen consequences of our own actions are the game changers.
I certainly agree that most value change is not deliberately engineered ahead of time. But it has happened—and there are more effective and less effective ways to deliberately cause changes in values over time.
I also plain prefer to live in a society where I have to deal with politics as little as possible.
Does “politics” in this sentence apply to things like negotiating your position among a hundred people in a corporation? Or are you restricting it to things like democratic elections, legislation, government taxes, and suchlike?
Technically true but bullshit nonetheless. Multiheaded make an “is” claim, you responded with an “ought not” claim. You happened to include “would have better consequences if not” as an intermediate step towards “ought not” but as a response to the grandparent the parent is rather misleading. It’s also exactly the kind of thing I usually expect in “personal/political” conversation.
I outright stated this is my preference and I wrote out an argument for why I hold that “ought” as we nearly always do here because of how endorsed consequentalism is. I kind of resent your implication that I’m not concerned with the truth of the matter simply because I tried to make my argument convincing.
Calling something bullshit, regardless of a definition is most certainly saying you dislike that “kind of thing”.
Yes, I most certainly do dislike the form of interaction you were using against multi and to a lesser extent have used in your other replies within this thread. That doesn’t make the “If you don’t like you don’t belong in the thread” message appropriate. It means that, to the extent that I happen to consider it worth my time, I may choose to oppose it. This retort is non-sequitur.
You said you expect “this kind of thing” from certain kinds of threads, then are upset when you find it in such threads. I hardly think it is a non-sequitur to point this out.
Edit: I’m not sure it is a non-sequitur but I did just realize feelings are probably running high, so I do now think it was inappropriate. Retracted.
That is, not acknowledging that the personal is political will only leave ‘the personal’ trapped in the current discourse, accepted as the way of things.
Social norms are never static and are shaped by strong forces outside the control any individual coalition making monkey brain part. By not acknowledging that the personal is the political I demonstrate it on a meta level. Of all the coalitions this subsidizes, the current is but one member. I am unsure if it is better or worse than what will replace it or its successor. I have much more confidence in which class of coalitions is better.
The “personal” being potentially “political”: Sexuality and gender, power issues within a family or a relationship, etc.
(See e.g. here for a simple explanation of the phrase’s context.)
A kind of the “current discourse” that I mean, then, would be a community and a way of life that would insistently and pervasively tell you how there’s nothing political about coming out as queer, or feeling trapped in your marriage, or being mocked for your psychological issue—it’s an entirely personal problem of you being a “freak”, and you’d better change yourself because you aren’t even allowed the language of changing the system. (One of the first steps in such language being the categorization of the entire sphere as pertaining to the “political”, and needing complete ideological reevaluation.)
This is where the New Left is usually insightful in its criticism of “structural oppression” and other such paranoid-sounding things, IMO.
(Sorry for dropping such a brief and cryptic phrase, really. That would’ve sounded almost trite and obvious in feminist circles—e.g. TimS instantly understood what I meant by it, see below—but I can see how it might look obscure to a general audience.)
I’m still not seeing a point. Obviously the political situation influences personal situations of people, and sufficiently widespread systematic changes in people’s behavior influence aspects of the political situation. (What is the particular relevance for this point of the examples you chose?) The micropolitics you allude to is more about game theory than the global politics that’s usually meant by the word. With this understood, what is the thesis worth making, or the “empirical claim” you’ve referred to?
There are questions of choice of policy, and subjects whose better understanding aids policy decisions. What does it usefully mean (i.e. aside from historically-formed taxonomy, a sense where “should” questions become relevant) for a subject itself to “be political”?
What does it usefully mean (i.e. aside from historically-formed taxonomy) for a subject itself to “be political”?
I guess that, as used in this thread, a subject “is” political means that a good way to solve problems within the subject is to acquire greater power via political methods (public demonstrations, party building, lobbying, etc), while a subject “should not be” political expresses a preference (perhaps based on altruistic considerations) that fewer people think that about the subject.
ETA: It seems that historically “personal is political” has more to do with the causes of the problems than the solutions, but with that interpretation it’s harder to make sense of “should not be political”.
In feminist terms, the ‘personal is political’ refers to the theory that personal problems are political problems, which basically means that many of the personal problems women experience in their lives are not their fault, but are the result of systematic oppression. [...]
The theory that women are not to blame for their bad situations is crucial here because women have always been told that they are unhappy or faring badly in life because they are stupid, weak, mad, hysterical, having a period, pregnant, frigid, over-sexed, asking for it etc. The personal is political proposes that women are in bad situations because they experience gendered oppression and massive structural inequalities.
In feminist terms, the ‘personal is political’ refers to the theory that personal problems are political problems, which basically means that many of the personal problems women experience in their lives are not their fault, but are the result of systematic oppression. [...]
Women have a higher need than men to belong to small groups (in mean and distribution, but the difference is so great that there is not a lot of overlap) I am unaware of any statistics or studies on this topic, but everyone knows it, just as enthusiasts for diversity are reluctant to visit certain highly diverse parts of town, such as for example, all those diversity lovers at the Democratic Party Convention who found themselves assigned to residences in the wrong part of town and then immediately put John Derbyshire’s recommendations into effect. An infertile woman without a family is sarcastically called a cat lady. We have no similar jokes about men Women tend to hang out in small groups markedly more than men do.
At the same time, women have a higher propensity than males to break their groups up. The general cause of divorce (usually observed by relatives of the wife, but blissfully unseen by the husband) is that the wife is screwing a high status male, divorces her husband, perhaps in hopes that the high status male will spend more time with her, but instead, upon hearing the of the divorce, the high status male takes off like a startled jack rabbit, never to be seen again. A husband, on the other hand, will attempt to keep both the wife and the mistress, and if he cannot have both, will retain the mother of his children. The viciousness of women to other women is legendary. Most women who has had a female boss will tell you that she does not want to work with female bosses, something men cannot say for reasons of PC.
Thus female personal problems are indeed political in that they are frequently evidence for the seventeenth century view that females innately need male supervision over their lives: for example workplace problems and fatherless children.
And now here comes the part that will result in this post being massively voted down, and accused of making claims without evidence:
asking for it
2005 US Crime victimization survey, file cv0513.csv
Rape/sexual assault rate for wife of male head of household 0.1 per 1000 (which is one in ten thousand, which zero within the margin of error)
Rape/sexual assault rate for children over 18 of male head of household 2.3 per thousand
Rape/sexual assault rate for female heads of households 1.6 per thousand.
Notice how quickly political correctness marches on. Today, using the survey category “wife of male head of household” is apt to cause outrage and indignation. Today, households supposedly have no heads. Indeed, for a household to have a head, and that head be male, is arguably criminal, something that is supposedly only practiced by rare extreme right wing fundamentalist extremists.
I very much think the personal should not be the political. Because such a mentality when adopted by a society results in:
Tribalization of more and more of the human experience. Making it harder and harder to think about more and more things.
Apolitical identities or outlooks are harder if not impossible to maintain.
Opening up areas to new kinds of remarkably damaging rent seeking.
Thus ceteris paribus it makes life in such a society suck more.
Is politicization of the personal inevitable? My model is that there are groups of people with common personal-life interests, such as raising the status of one sub-group or another. Those who can band together to exert coordinated social pressure, win. So unless there is some friction to group formation, politicization seems inevitable.
Note that the nature of the groups that are politically relevant may change (ie the relevant group may be an extended family, an occupation, a religious sect, a social class, etc.)
Much like mugging is inevitable unless people in general band together against it.
In the war of all against all, people might wish to declare a truce to end the war, but they better be prepared to retaliate against those who break the truce, or they should expect to see it broken more and more, until even those who would prefer a truce feel it’s not a realistic option and the truce ceases to exist.
There is no reason to expect different stable coalitions of such groups require equally large footprints of politicized subjects. Let alone that all such subjects are equally important for the common good! I’m saying that ceteris paribus the less politicized the result of a such a collation is the better off society as a whole will be.
Perhaps stable coalitions requiring small footprints have other remarkably negative externalities that nearly always outweigh the gains in areas of life free from politicization. But considering just what a horrible cancer on action and the greater good politicking seems to be, I’m somewhat dubious this is commonly the case.
People adopting a general stance of opposing “the personal is the political” subsidize smaller footprint coalitions. Naturally such subsidizing has very small if not tiny effect, it still probably beats out the effect from voting also I would claim that under current circumstances it serves as a useful filter to finding interesting people.
So you’re saying “Let the bakers’ union be the bakers’ union, but keep them out of the Green Coalition?”
Outside the Green coalition they may still try to maintain a politicized outlook on certain baker issues, though without the feeling one can gain power or status remarkably few will in practice do so so. However they certainly won’t feel the need to support the Green Coalition and neither will the Green Coalition help them.
Nah, this is an empirical claim. That is, not acknowledging that the personal is political will only leave ‘the personal’ trapped in the current discourse, accepted as the way of things.
I am making an empirical claim.
I am pretty sure it is correct.
Though I also plain prefer to live in a society where I have to deal with politics as little as possible. Naturally this unfortunately isn’t a politically neutral stance. “Right wing freedom” is often freedom from politics, while “left wing freedom” is often freedom to politics.
I believe that most benign change is not brought about by politics while much of the harmful one is. The human mind is systematically broken at thinking about politics, at least politics beyond the size of the stone age tribe, but it can solve such problems when they are framed in other ways.
I think you are misunderstanding Multi’s point.
I agree with you that a world where the personal and the political were distinct spheres that never met would probably be a better world. But in the world we live in, there are groups that are (1) identified by persona characteristics, and (2) oppressed in some sense by the mainstream. If those groups don’t conflate the personal and the political, they don’t have a workable roadmap to social change. In parallel, those who oppose the social changes are committed to reinforcing the distinction.
As you note, this formulation has a great deal of embedded status quo bias. In the US, a politician saying “I’m deeply religious.” is often perceived as making a non-political statement that he is a good person. Analytically, the perception is false—applause lights are a political act.
Keep in mind also that partisan electioneering (community organizer v. rich corporate executive) is not the same thing as politics. In the context of the quote under discussion, everything referenced by Hanson’s status-based analysis of human behavior should be understood as “political” analysis.
There is no reason to expect that politics somehow inherently favors the truly oppressed. In reality, groups that are strong have inherent advantages in politicking over groups that are weak. The real oppressed have low status, few allies, and no resources.
Rule of thumb: the group that everyone agrees is the most oppressed is not actually the most oppressed—at least, not any longer. The most oppressed group doesn’t have that kind of PR!
No one is claiming that “politics somehow favors the truly oppressed”, nor need they in order to argue that “the personal is political” [EDIT: in the sense that political activity can be necessary for personal-looking goals; the phrase can be understood in other ways]. What’s relevant is whether politics is necessary for the truly oppressed.
Hypothetical world: two subpopulations, the lucky Haves and the oppressed Have-Nots. Everything is harder for the Have-Nots because of explicitly discriminatory laws, casual tribal hatreds, lack of resources after historical oppression, widespread assumption that they’re inferior, etc. If the Have-Nots’ position is to improve, they will certainly need the discriminatory laws repealed, and it may be to their benefit for there to be anti-discrimination regulations. To get that, there will need to be politics. They will be at a disadvantage in any politicking, for sure, but they’re equally at a disadvantage in every other way they might try to improve their situation. Trying to get richer through innovation or trade; getting better-liked through personal interactions; persuading individuals to treat them better; all these things and more will tend to go badly for the Have-Nots, just as politicking will. They need politics even though politics doesn’t favour them.
Depending on lots of details, they might do better to begin by concentrating on things other than politics. Or not. The same goes for oppressed groups in the real world. So “the personal is political” might well turn out to be empirically wrong. But it isn’t refuted merely by observing that politics doesn’t inherently favour the oppressed.
(I agree with your last paragraph, with the proviso that a group that most people agree is most oppressed might actually be the most oppressed—if the people who don’t agree or don’t care treat them badly enough. I don’t know whether, or how often, this actually happens.)
My point is simply that the original quote is a roadmap for moving up the status ladder. Moving a group up the status ladder is hard to do deliberately and the insightful idea from the quote goes to the methodology of deliberate social engineering.
Like most social engineering techniques, it does not inherently favor any particular group.
I think you have a good point, I did miss his point, I seem to have different underlying assumptions.
Outside of war, and even in war the intention to win this or that goal matters surprisingly little, I do not think the change from oppressed to non-opressed group and back again is primarily the result of intentional human action aimed at changing such arrangements.
They aren’t utterly irrelevant but I do believe far stronger forces and the unforeseen consequences of our own actions are the game changers.
I certainly agree that most value change is not deliberately engineered ahead of time. But it has happened—and there are more effective and less effective ways to deliberately cause changes in values over time.
Does “politics” in this sentence apply to things like negotiating your position among a hundred people in a corporation? Or are you restricting it to things like democratic elections, legislation, government taxes, and suchlike?
Technically true but bullshit nonetheless. Multiheaded make an “is” claim, you responded with an “ought not” claim. You happened to include “would have better consequences if not” as an intermediate step towards “ought not” but as a response to the grandparent the parent is rather misleading. It’s also exactly the kind of thing I usually expect in “personal/political” conversation.
I outright stated this is my preference and I wrote out an argument for why I hold that “ought” as we nearly always do here because of how endorsed consequentalism is. I kind of resent your implication that I’m not concerned with the truth of the matter simply because I tried to make my argument convincing.
Whatevs man.
If you dislike it why are you reading this thread? Note that elsewhere I do say I think such threads are a bad idea.
Doesn’t seem to be what I am saying.
Calling something bullshit, regardless of a definition is most certainly saying you dislike that “kind of thing”.
Yes, I most certainly do dislike the form of interaction you were using against multi and to a lesser extent have used in your other replies within this thread. That doesn’t make the “If you don’t like you don’t belong in the thread” message appropriate. It means that, to the extent that I happen to consider it worth my time, I may choose to oppose it. This retort is non-sequitur.
You said you expect “this kind of thing” from certain kinds of threads, then are upset when you find it in such threads. I hardly think it is a non-sequitur to point this out.
Edit: I’m not sure it is a non-sequitur but I did just realize feelings are probably running high, so I do now think it was inappropriate. Retracted.
Wu wei dude.
Social norms are never static and are shaped by strong forces outside the control any individual coalition making monkey brain part. By not acknowledging that the personal is the political I demonstrate it on a meta level. Of all the coalitions this subsidizes, the current is but one member. I am unsure if it is better or worse than what will replace it or its successor. I have much more confidence in which class of coalitions is better.
I think I’ve discovered a Newsome lurking in my post.
Let me refine this to fit better within the current LW discourse: the Personal is Ideological. Also, see TimS below.
I’m unable to get any inkling of what you mean. What do you mean by “personal” and “political” in this context? What’s “current discourse”?
The “personal” being potentially “political”: Sexuality and gender, power issues within a family or a relationship, etc.
(See e.g. here for a simple explanation of the phrase’s context.)
A kind of the “current discourse” that I mean, then, would be a community and a way of life that would insistently and pervasively tell you how there’s nothing political about coming out as queer, or feeling trapped in your marriage, or being mocked for your psychological issue—it’s an entirely personal problem of you being a “freak”, and you’d better change yourself because you aren’t even allowed the language of changing the system. (One of the first steps in such language being the categorization of the entire sphere as pertaining to the “political”, and needing complete ideological reevaluation.)
This is where the New Left is usually insightful in its criticism of “structural oppression” and other such paranoid-sounding things, IMO.
(Sorry for dropping such a brief and cryptic phrase, really. That would’ve sounded almost trite and obvious in feminist circles—e.g. TimS instantly understood what I meant by it, see below—but I can see how it might look obscure to a general audience.)
I’m still not seeing a point. Obviously the political situation influences personal situations of people, and sufficiently widespread systematic changes in people’s behavior influence aspects of the political situation. (What is the particular relevance for this point of the examples you chose?) The micropolitics you allude to is more about game theory than the global politics that’s usually meant by the word. With this understood, what is the thesis worth making, or the “empirical claim” you’ve referred to?
Are there any subjects that should be political?
There are questions of choice of policy, and subjects whose better understanding aids policy decisions. What does it usefully mean (i.e. aside from historically-formed taxonomy, a sense where “should” questions become relevant) for a subject itself to “be political”?
I guess that, as used in this thread, a subject “is” political means that a good way to solve problems within the subject is to acquire greater power via political methods (public demonstrations, party building, lobbying, etc), while a subject “should not be” political expresses a preference (perhaps based on altruistic considerations) that fewer people think that about the subject.
ETA: It seems that historically “personal is political” has more to do with the causes of the problems than the solutions, but with that interpretation it’s harder to make sense of “should not be political”.
Women have a higher need than men to belong to small groups (in mean and distribution, but the difference is so great that there is not a lot of overlap) I am unaware of any statistics or studies on this topic, but everyone knows it, just as enthusiasts for diversity are reluctant to visit certain highly diverse parts of town, such as for example, all those diversity lovers at the Democratic Party Convention who found themselves assigned to residences in the wrong part of town and then immediately put John Derbyshire’s recommendations into effect. An infertile woman without a family is sarcastically called a cat lady. We have no similar jokes about men Women tend to hang out in small groups markedly more than men do.
At the same time, women have a higher propensity than males to break their groups up. The general cause of divorce (usually observed by relatives of the wife, but blissfully unseen by the husband) is that the wife is screwing a high status male, divorces her husband, perhaps in hopes that the high status male will spend more time with her, but instead, upon hearing the of the divorce, the high status male takes off like a startled jack rabbit, never to be seen again. A husband, on the other hand, will attempt to keep both the wife and the mistress, and if he cannot have both, will retain the mother of his children. The viciousness of women to other women is legendary. Most women who has had a female boss will tell you that she does not want to work with female bosses, something men cannot say for reasons of PC.
Thus female personal problems are indeed political in that they are frequently evidence for the seventeenth century view that females innately need male supervision over their lives: for example workplace problems and fatherless children.
And now here comes the part that will result in this post being massively voted down, and accused of making claims without evidence:
2005 US Crime victimization survey, file cv0513.csv Rape/sexual assault rate for wife of male head of household 0.1 per 1000 (which is one in ten thousand, which zero within the margin of error)
Rape/sexual assault rate for children over 18 of male head of household 2.3 per thousand
Rape/sexual assault rate for female heads of households 1.6 per thousand.
Notice how quickly political correctness marches on. Today, using the survey category “wife of male head of household” is apt to cause outrage and indignation. Today, households supposedly have no heads. Indeed, for a household to have a head, and that head be male, is arguably criminal, something that is supposedly only practiced by rare extreme right wing fundamentalist extremists.
Politics?