4 ms·

For some reason you don’t think of the sign as conversation. Why not? Our community has put up the sign and when I read that sign I engage in that conversation.

For some reason you don’t think of the sign as conversation. Why not? Our community has put up the sign and when I read that sign I engage in that conversation. Rules that are agreed on are not authoritarian unless we have no choice in changing them. Since we vote, we have a say on changing them. What you’re saying is, we should have no laws and do whatever we want. We should have no rules and do whatever we want. I’m an anarchist and I don’t even agree with that. I would feel the same about the dog off the lease whether the sign was there or not. Dogs can be dangerous animals and if I don’t know them, I should be afraid.

mjburgess 3y ago
We can have signs and rules, and the rest of it. But we're talking about you wanting to go to the police to enforce one of them. If a sign is seen as a 'strong suggestion', as 'advisable' or a 'please do this' then there's no issue -- that's what signs are. But you didnt see the sign that way; and that's what i'm responding to. Your impulse was to bring the disciplinary arm of the state to bare to enforce someone's opinion of how a park should be run. This is quite the opposite of being critically engaged with the nature of signs
- Podgajski 3y ago
  If the laws are not enforced, then people don’t obey the laws. That’s how you get both dog bites and white collar crime. Your assumption is that my “wanting to bring the disciplinary arm of the state“ is based on the rules, and not on my compassion. That’s where you’re wrong. I was using the rules of the state to enforce my compassion, not to enforce the rules. in this case, the rules aligned with my compassion. And in fact, I would not call police if I saw someone shoplifting. And that’s what people don’t understand about those of us with Asperger‘s. It is a sense of right and wrong not based on rules, but based on right and wrong.
  - mjburgess 3y ago
    My claim is that your compassion is being hijacked, not that you're blinding following an instruction. Compassion is one of the main emotional mechanisms of social discipline: it is the overbearing mother. Compassion is often the most vicious way of policing people, as its users takes themselves to be moral. The sign couldve been a poster of a dog off a leach running around with another dog, having a good time. That, I imagine, would likewise trigger a positive emotion in you. What i'm advocating for is more of a gap between the sign and the emotion. I dont think the sign would be as effective if it were a command read out by 'some average looking person' the sign here has a special quality in triggering an emotional response, because the usual moderating triggers are absent: those of the falibility of a person
    - Podgajski 3y ago
      Rules and regulations are not needed to constrain compassion, they needed to constrain sociopathy. A Sign does not trigger an emotional response in me. My emotions were triggered by the action of the person walking their dog without a leash design told me that other people were compassionate, just like I am.
      - mjburgess 3y ago
        Compassion is more dangerous than sociopathy. Sociopaths are transactional, and often follow the rules on a transactional basis. To conduct a genocide, one needs compassion. In the way people are here having fantasies of dangerous dogs biting children, likewise similar fantasies of danger abound -- compassion for imagined victims driving overwhelming oppression. I dont consider this morality, quite the opposite. Morality is deliberative, it takes into account the particular, it is a response to the concrete reality not the imagined.
        Podgajski 3y ago
        I would love to know how compassion was used to cause the holocaust. But I think I see. I think I see your mistaking compassion for the self as compassion for the other. It’s easy to cause a holocaust if you cause people to only have compassion for themselves or their own kind. It’s very hard to create a holocaust if you have a universal compassion for all humans. So your answer is “well let’s get rid of all compassion” instead of making our compassion even greater.

mjburgess 3y ago

We can have signs and rules, and the rest of it. But we're talking about you wanting to go to the police to enforce one of them. If a sign is seen as a 'strong suggestion', as 'advisable' or a 'please do this' then there's no issue -- that's what signs are. But you didnt see the sign that way; and that's what i'm responding to. Your impulse was to bring the disciplinary arm of the state to bare to enforce someone's opinion of how a park should be run. This is quite the opposite of being critically engaged with the nature of signs

Podgajski 3y ago
If the laws are not enforced, then people don’t obey the laws. That’s how you get both dog bites and white collar crime. Your assumption is that my “wanting to bring the disciplinary arm of the state“ is based on the rules, and not on my compassion. That’s where you’re wrong. I was using the rules of the state to enforce my compassion, not to enforce the rules. in this case, the rules aligned with my compassion. And in fact, I would not call police if I saw someone shoplifting. And that’s what people don’t understand about those of us with Asperger‘s. It is a sense of right and wrong not based on rules, but based on right and wrong.
- mjburgess 3y ago
  My claim is that your compassion is being hijacked, not that you're blinding following an instruction. Compassion is one of the main emotional mechanisms of social discipline: it is the overbearing mother. Compassion is often the most vicious way of policing people, as its users takes themselves to be moral. The sign couldve been a poster of a dog off a leach running around with another dog, having a good time. That, I imagine, would likewise trigger a positive emotion in you. What i'm advocating for is more of a gap between the sign and the emotion. I dont think the sign would be as effective if it were a command read out by 'some average looking person' the sign here has a special quality in triggering an emotional response, because the usual moderating triggers are absent: those of the falibility of a person
  - Podgajski 3y ago
    Rules and regulations are not needed to constrain compassion, they needed to constrain sociopathy. A Sign does not trigger an emotional response in me. My emotions were triggered by the action of the person walking their dog without a leash design told me that other people were compassionate, just like I am.
    - mjburgess 3y ago
      Compassion is more dangerous than sociopathy. Sociopaths are transactional, and often follow the rules on a transactional basis. To conduct a genocide, one needs compassion. In the way people are here having fantasies of dangerous dogs biting children, likewise similar fantasies of danger abound -- compassion for imagined victims driving overwhelming oppression. I dont consider this morality, quite the opposite. Morality is deliberative, it takes into account the particular, it is a response to the concrete reality not the imagined.
      - Podgajski 3y ago
        I would love to know how compassion was used to cause the holocaust. But I think I see. I think I see your mistaking compassion for the self as compassion for the other. It’s easy to cause a holocaust if you cause people to only have compassion for themselves or their own kind. It’s very hard to create a holocaust if you have a universal compassion for all humans. So your answer is “well let’s get rid of all compassion” instead of making our compassion even greater.