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The only thing that changes behavior is consequences. Thus fines and a functioning justice system are born. Somehow shame doesn't work anymore.

by titzer 1y ago

ziml77 1y ago
I think shame fails to work when people can broadcast online a version of events that makes them look like the victim and get tons of people backing them up.
kibwen 1y ago
> Somehow shame doesn't work anymore. We don't need to wonder. Shame as a mechanism only works in social contexts that feature a high degree of social dependency. In olden days, if all your neighbors hated you to the point of dissociating with you, that could be tantamount to a death sentence (who's going to share food with you when your harvest fails or take care of you when your household falls ill?); that's a society with high social dependency. For better or worse, modern society is built on abstracting away this dependency. (It's the same thing that explains declining church attendance: a church is a social organization, but nowadays if you need to find a spouse you ask a dating app instead of your congregation, and then when you need marriage counseling you ask a professional marriage counselor instead of your priest, etc. Economic transactions have replaced social dependency.)
- Suppafly 1y ago
  >Economic transactions have replaced social dependency. The flipside of this is that a lot of situations have improved. You can divorce your abusive spouse now instead of your priest telling you to just accept the abuse because god wills it. Everyone whining about the downfall of society seems to forget that it didn't actually work for everyone before.
  - kibwen 1y ago
    > Everyone whining about the downfall of society seems to forget that it didn't actually work for everyone before. I'm not presenting this as either a good thing or a bad thing, only pointing out that the mechanisms by which people ensure social adherence have changed. And yes, that's "changed", and not "gone away". For all the things the cryptobros got wrong, they did accurately identify that, in a transactional society, the only thing required to exclude someone from society is to take away their ability to perform financial transactions.

The only thing that changes behavior is consequences. Thus fines and a functioning justice system are born. Somehow shame doesn't work anymore.

by titzer 1y ago

The only thing that changes behavior is consequences. Thus fines and a functioning justice system are born. Somehow shame doesn't work anymore.

ziml77 1y ago

I think shame fails to work when people can broadcast online a version of events that makes them look like the victim and get tons of people backing them up.

kibwen 1y ago

> Somehow shame doesn't work anymore. We don't need to wonder. Shame as a mechanism only works in social contexts that feature a high degree of social dependency. In olden days, if all your neighbors hated you to the point of dissociating with you, that could be tantamount to a death sentence (who's going to share food with you when your harvest fails or take care of you when your household falls ill?); that's a society with high social dependency. For better or worse, modern society is built on abstracting away this dependency. (It's the same thing that explains declining church attendance: a church is a social organization, but nowadays if you need to find a spouse you ask a dating app instead of your congregation, and then when you need marriage counseling you ask a professional marriage counselor instead of your priest, etc. Economic transactions have replaced social dependency.)

Suppafly 1y ago
>Economic transactions have replaced social dependency. The flipside of this is that a lot of situations have improved. You can divorce your abusive spouse now instead of your priest telling you to just accept the abuse because god wills it. Everyone whining about the downfall of society seems to forget that it didn't actually work for everyone before.
- kibwen 1y ago
  > Everyone whining about the downfall of society seems to forget that it didn't actually work for everyone before. I'm not presenting this as either a good thing or a bad thing, only pointing out that the mechanisms by which people ensure social adherence have changed. And yes, that's "changed", and not "gone away". For all the things the cryptobros got wrong, they did accurately identify that, in a transactional society, the only thing required to exclude someone from society is to take away their ability to perform financial transactions.