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Outrage inflation is a thing but there's a limit to how far outrage could take society anyhow. Shaming and outrage are continuous with bullying. They only work
by truculation 9y ago
Outrage inflation is a thing but there's a limit to how far outrage could take society anyhow. Shaming and outrage are continuous with bullying. They only work on weak people. But it's still open to us to better society by improving ourselves as individuals.
- skummetmaelk 9y agoWeak people and people with a conscience.
- yjftsjthsd-h 9y agoPeople with a conscience should be convinced by calm discussion, not outage.
- andrepd 9y agoWhat about people that are not convinced by calm discussion? Sometimes violent struggle is needed to achieve a goal.
- paulryanrogers 9y agoViolence should be a last resort with clear boundaries. Sometimes it's better to suffer when there are no better alternatives.
- andrepd 9y agoYes, it should be a last resort. But the rest failing, violence is sometimes needed. Few social progress was ever made without violent struggle. Turning the other cheek isn't an option.
- TangoTrotFox 9y agoYou must consider that there is an equal but opposite version of you thinking this very thing. Just as implicitly convinced that if you fail to abide their way of thought in calm discussion, then there must be something wrong with you.
- andrepd 9y agoAnd then what, what about it? Say I believe in the abolition of slavery. An "equal but opposite version of me" believes that slavery should continue. No amount of talking is able to convince the other side. What do you make of it?
- TangoTrotFox 9y agoYou're fighting a strawman, just in the same way the opposite of you would do. Just like you, your opposite will build up a straw man of you, throw together some sophistic logic to claim your very existence is a threat to society, and the next thing we know we have people shitting all over each other in a self righteous frenzy each equally and thoroughly convinced they're protecting society from its imminent destruction at the hands of the quixotic windmill turned man they're fighting.
- andrepd 9y agoAm I to conclude you would be against a war against slavery then? Or that there is no good or evil; me and then are the same because, well, we're both fighting each other?
- AnimalMuppet 9y agoI think Tango's point is not that one is right and one is wrong. I think the point is that neither side is actually listening and engaging with the other's position. Instead, it's "if you really understood my position, you would of course agree with me" - on both sides. Note that this has nothing to do with one side being right, or with one side being morally superior. It has to do with being so certain that you don't listen. And it's self-destructive. If you're on the anti-slavery side, you're morally right. But if you actually listen to the other side, you might be able to have a conversation where you persuade some of them. If you merely broadcast your own rightness (and the other side's wrongness, moral bankruptcy, and stupidity), you aren't going to persuade anyone. (Unfortunately, in the case of slavery, there may not be any route where you eliminate slavery without a civil war.)
- truculation 9y agoPeople who disobey their conscience are weak!
- rickycook 9y ago... or strong. not advocating for that of course, but that’s a little simplistic
- truculation 9y agoI'd agree that the terms 'weak' and 'strong' are used too loosely about people especially in moral matters. However in the case of disobeying one's conscience it seems clear: part of the mind wants A and another part wants B. Disunity is weakness.
- nugi 9y agoCitation needed. Weak people are weak.
- HumanDrivenDev 9y agoI challenge the implication that conscientious people should find themselves compelled to be manipulated by the moral outrage crowd. That's exactly the kind of thing they play on.