7 ms·
Very insightful on how this corruption develops: "How can a group hold a worldview so at odds with the wider culture and not appear to be greatly conflicted by
by gniv 7mo ago
Very insightful on how this corruption develops:
"How can a group hold a worldview so at odds with the wider culture and
not appear to be greatly conflicted by it? The answer may lie in the distinction
between particularism and universalism. An individual develops social identities
specific to the social domains, groups and roles – and accompanying subcultures
– that he or she occupies (e.g. manager, mother, parishioner, sports fan).
[...]
In the case of corruption, this myopia means that an otherwise ethically-minded
individual may forsake universalistic or dominant norms about ethical behavior
in favor of particularistic behaviors that favor his or her group at the expense of outsiders.
[...]
This tendency to always put the ingroup above all others clearly paves
the way for collective corruption."
- dundercoder 7mo agoIt’s like they worked at my last workplace
- simonh 7mo agoThe brain actually has specific neurological system that compartmentalise reasoning contexts in different social contexts, so we operate according to different sets of assumptions and rules of behaviour and reasoning in different kinds of situations.
- rramadass 7mo agoCan you share some resources on the above?
- simonh 7mo agoThe the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) and the temporoparietal junction (TPJ) both play roles in this. Not a neuroscientist, just going on my own reading.
- justonceokay 7mo agoUnless you’re autistic
- simonh 7mo agoTrue. I really don't know enough about it, but it may well be these functions are still there, after all I expect the relevant neurological systems are still there, but the impact on social cognition from autism render their effects basically irrelevant.
- dooglius 7mo agoCan you elaborate on your hypothesis? Would them being "still there" imply the possibility of treatment to enable their effectiveness?
- Paracompact 7mo agoThe author cites Arendt a fair bit, whose claim to fame was that entirely ordinary people could become voluntary instruments of atrocity. I think the belief of ordinary people most likely to dispose them to atrocity is that of prioritizing the ingroup. Once we believe that the members of one's own family, or company, or country, carry more moral value than others, we're doomed to a descent limited only by our ability to make these world-worsening trades. When I was a child, my dad would sometimes engage in small acts of corruption to please me or my brother. Taking somebody else's spot, telling white lies to get more than his share of a rationed good, that sort of thing. It never sat right with me. "Family first" has a very ominous ring to me.
- reacweb 7mo agoYes, the slogan "America first" is a forerunner of the worst kind of imperialism.
- Quarrelsome 7mo agoalso "Make America Great Again" states that America is not currently great, which given its geo-political and economic position is just dishonest. Combined with "America First" you get an entirely clean canvas to be incredibly radical while cosplaying conservative.
- eptcyka 7mo agoI would argue MAGA will be rather fitting campaign slogan for the democrat side come next election.
- Quarrelsome 7mo agoor maybe simply MAAA: Make America America again.
- rramadass 7mo agoTo me this is the best example of how language can be used to bypass rational thinking in the listener to manipulate and propagandize. See also: Politics and the English Language by George Orwell- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics_and_the_English_Language https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics_and_the_English_Langu... Newspeak by George Orwell - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newspeak https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newspeak Verbal Behaviour by B.F.Skinner - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verbal_Behavior https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verbal_Behavior
- LudwigNagasena 7mo agoThe situation in which people exchange favors within their mutually beneficial personal networks seems to be the basic and typical way things function. It’s actually remarkable that we are able to resist this tendency and normalize fair and impartial institutions.
- praptak 7mo agoCS Lewis has a speech about the ingroups and corruption. His thesis is that the mere desire to be "in" is the greatest driver of immoral behavior: "To nine out of ten of you the choice which could lead to scoundrelism will come, when it does come, in no very dramatic colours. Obviously bad men, obviously threatening or bribing, will almost certainly not appear. Over a drink, or a cup of coffee, disguised as triviality and sandwiched between two jokes, from the lips of a man, or woman, whom you have recently been getting to know rather better and whom you hope to know better still—just at the moment when you are most anxious not to appear crude, or naïf or a prig—the hint will come. It will be the hint of something which the public, the ignorant, romantic public, would never understand: something which even the outsiders in your own profession are apt to make a fuss about: but something, says your new friend, which “we”—and at the word “we” you try not to blush for mere pleasure—something “we always do.”" https://www.lewissociety.org/innerring/ https://www.lewissociety.org/innerring/
- rramadass 7mo agoAlso Lord Acton - “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority; still more when you superadd the tendency of the certainty of corruption by authority.”
- brazzy 7mo agoActon was, by the way, an ardent supporter of the Confederacy. In his opinion, the federal government curtailing the independence of states was a more significant act of oppression than slavery.
- delaminator 7mo agoI think there's a war about that wasn't there?
- brazzy 7mo agoYeah, and he didn't like the outcome. Salient quote (from a letter to Robert E. Lee): "I saw in State Rights the only availing check upon the absolutism of the sovereign will, and secession filled me with hope, not as the destruction but as the redemption of Democracy. The institutions of your Republic have not exercised on the old world the salutary and liberating influence which ought to have belonged to them, by reason of those defects and abuses of principle which the Confederate Constitution was expressly and wisely calculated to remedy. I believed that the example of that great Reform would have blessed all the races of mankind by establishing true freedom purged of the native dangers and disorders of Republics. Therefore I deemed that you were fighting the battles of our liberty, our progress, and our civilization; and I mourn for the stake which was lost at Richmond more deeply than I rejoice over that which was saved at Waterloo. "
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- rayiner 7mo agoThis is a good explanation of the Irish Machine in Chicago, corrupt white governments in the south, and Somalian welfare scams in Minnesota. It also explains the endemic corruption in tribal or clan-oriented societies like Afghanistan. Conversely, radical universalist regimes—even bad ones like the Taliban—can cut down on corruption. https://www.americanprogress.org/article/tackling-corruption-in-afghanistan-its-now-or-never https://www.americanprogress.org/article/tackling-corruption.... It’s possible that the low levels of corruption in New England, compared to the rest of the country, is the legacy of the radically universalist Puritans.
- getnormality 7mo agoI grew up with a very strong sentimental sense of moral universalism. I loved Beethoven's Ode to Joy and the romantic idea of universal brotherhood. But as I bank years in the adult world, as a worker and a neighbor, I've been progressively disillusioned. I don't find universalism to be a common viewpoint. I've found it to be very rare that anyone wants to be my "brother" or "sister". And sometimes those that seem to, end up being exploitative, callous, or strictly fair-weather. I'm not resentful or anything. I have a happy family and a few close-ish friends, and life feels full. But I can understand how the loneliness and coldness of the world makes people more particularist. People may think: "if the world acts like it owes me nothing, then what do I owe the world?"
- js8 7mo agoBut isn't it just a failure to communicate it? What if almost all other people are similarly disillusioned? Also, according to psychologists, one negative experience outweighs roughly five positive experiences of the same magnitude. So, as we get older, we might have tendency to accumulate negative experiences, and as a result become more cynical and less idealistic. And so it kind of perpetuates.
- lazide 7mo agoThat…. Just provides more evidence their world view is likely more objectively true?
- WarmWash 7mo agoI realized as I got older that the ambient air of socialist/collectivist virtues that filled the all young people spaces wasn't because of some kind of special enlightenment achieved by the contemporary youth (as I deeply believed as a millennial riding high on the rise of the internet), but instead was just an easy ideology for a group of people with little to lose and a lot to gain. Underneath, people are overwhelmingly just in it for themselves, and judge others by how closely they align with their personal set of "whats best for me" ideals.
- 7mo ago
- derbOac 7mo agoI enjoyed this paper, and there's innumerable things that could be said about ingroup-outgroup dynamics and corruption. In my personal experiences with corruption with organizations, ingroup membership often becomes increasingly narrowly defined, and defined in such a way as to benefit a certain group of individuals at the expense of others. The underlying rationale is a narcissistic entitlement or rationalization for why one person or small group of people is deserving of disproportiate benefits or flexibility at the expense of others. It starts with some kind of distorted egocentric schema about others in a more distal way, and then becomes increasingly strict and more proximal. Narcissistic egocentrism is at the core; it only manifests more weakly at first, and then becomes stronger. The ingroup boundaries never stop shrinking, because there always has to be some justification for why that particular group — which was never really defined by the initial ingroup boundaries, the ingroup was only a proxy for themselves — is more deserving than others.