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> Because contemporary moral codes delineate women as vulnerable or marginalised, we stop seeing them as individuals with unique talents and idiosyncrasies, but
by seanhandley 9y ago
> Because contemporary moral codes delineate women as vulnerable or marginalised, we stop seeing them as individuals with unique talents and idiosyncrasies, but as representatives of a victimised class. The reverse is true of men. Because women are now a victimised class, men are increasingly seen as victimisers, irrespective of their individual attributes or actions.
I cannot agree with this more. Very, very well observed and phrased.
- nukeop 9y agoI think these kinds of antagonisms are central to American society. Other parts of the world often find them alien and incomprehensible.
- swombat 9y agoNot true - the Karpman drama triangle (victim-aggressor-rescuer) is a fundamentally human way of seeing the world (however dysfunctional and unhelpful) and so it is present all around the world, not just in the US. I would agree that based on what I read about it, the US seems to be particularly in the grip of this perspective though. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karpman_drama_triangle https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karpman_drama_triangle
- pgeorgi 9y agoThe question is if other societies also adopt the triangle for classes of people in the way the American society does. Not all countries have "affirmative action" laws, which essentially codify victimhood large scale - and also beg the question in which other bucket everybody else belongs. Add an intuitive and statist interpretation of the drama triangle (instead of acknowledging that the same persons can be in different roles at any given time) and you have a society of people rushing to demonstrate that they're not the aggressor, either by ending up protected ("victim") or protecting ("rescuer").
- tajen 9y agoI have extensively studied the statistics about neoteny (=compassion gap) in USA vs Europe and they are very close to each other. If you’re talking about the position of women in the Taliban culture, this is a very interesting talk, despite the title: https://youtu.be/5eqYEVYZgdo https://youtu.be/5eqYEVYZgdo
- pgeorgi 9y agoI wasn't talking about compassion (which may differ in shape but not volume) or Taliban culture (that I know little about, nor am particularly interested in).
- tajen 9y agoSounds like a way of conveniently ignoring my point. I’m aware it’s a caveat to the narrative you explain. That’s why it’s not reasonable to dodge the caveat on the grounds that you see a difference between “compassion” and “empathy” that is so massive that it would invalidate my comment, and that no culture from Europe to Taliban were cultures you were talking about. So... what countries were you thinking of, when saying “Not all countries have affirmative action laws”, given my comment has covered cultures from Western to Taliban?
- dang 9y agoWould you please stop using HN for ideological battle? This is not what this site is for. In fact it destroys what it is for. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- tacomonstrous 9y ago>Not all countries have "affirmative action" laws, which essentially codify victimhood large scale - and also beg the question in which other bucket everybody else belongs. The US doesn't have any 'affirmative action' laws. It has non-discrimination statutes.
- aceoflolo 9y agoSome ethnic group has also successfully used the victim role for 70 years now.
- bobthechef 9y agoI think what seanhandley meant was that the current obsessions and the particular form they take in the US is highly particular to the US and it is a mistake (often made by Americans and those in the Anglo-American sphere) to universalize and project this American phenomenon outward instead of understanding it as something bizarrely and uniquely American.
- digi_owl 9y agoMore worryingly, it seems that the "anglo" media is expert at exporting their world view to the rest of the world given time.
- CM30 9y agoThis is definitely an interesting point. There are quite a few people on social media sites acting like US specific outrages are somehow common to the whole world, despite their area not actually being affected by those issues (like police violence in the UK where it's mostly nonexistent). Seems the internet and popular media has given people the impression they're all Americans and that American issues and cultural norms are true everywhere on the planet. http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/EaglelandOsmosis http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/EaglelandOsmosis Or how in other cases, there are quite a critical comments on media from other countries because they don't go by cultural norms in the US, or what not.
- kazinator 9y agoNot fundamentally human! Animals can recognize aggression and intervene in favor of the perceived victim.
- danieltillett 9y agoWe really have to stop seeing people as members of a group first and an individual second. It is lazy thinking.
- kazinator 9y agoSurvival on planet Earth has critically depended on lazy thinking: generalizing from incomplete scraps of information, and acting in real-time.
- danieltillett 9y agoMaybe I am just being an old-timer grouch, but it seems to be getting worse. As people attention is diverted from one topic to another with increasing speed, avoiding lazy thinking gets harder and harder. We do still need to fight against it :)
- kazinator 9y agoWhat is there to fight? You will never have all the data to make a perfect decision, and even if you have all the data you can possibly have, you don't know which evaluation functions are the right ones to use that will work in your favor. These are fundamentals of the Universe, as such.
- sockgrant 9y agoTotally agree. But in some parts of society this is now a detriment that we’ve outgrown. But it’s really hard to fight our nature.
- kazinator 9y agoNot only that, we're busy teaching computers to replicate it and calling it names like "deep learning".
- TeMPOraL 9y agoWhile true, our current environment of organized society of billions of humans, all within the same info-sphere[0] is significantly different than the environment our species developed in. A lot of our natural tendencies end up being maladaptive in this new world. -- [0] - communication transcends distance now, and if something of importance happens anywhere in the world, almost everyone else on the planet knows about it in real-time.