5 ms·

One step is to teach people to see groups of others as individuals - looking into a rioting crowd, and seeing a sea of individuals who each have wants and dream

One step is to teach people to see groups of others as individuals - looking into a rioting crowd, and seeing a sea of individuals who each have wants and dreams that are being trampled by something. Too many people get stuck into "grouping" people because it's cognitively easier. This makes it easier to strawman and hate a group.

Kalium 11y ago
Or maybe they're angry and deluded enough to think destruction will make people want to help them. I see that a lot.
- jcromartie 11y ago
  Why do you think they are deluded in this way?
  - Kalium 11y ago
    http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2015/05/new-study-shows-riots-make-america-conservative.html http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2015/05/new-study-shows... http://www.omarwasow.com/Protests_on_Voting.pdf http://www.omarwasow.com/Protests_on_Voting.pdf Long story short, violence does not make other people want to help you or give you what you ask for. It makes those other people do the opposite. When people believe something the opposite of both basic sense and history for romantic reasons, I call them deluded. This is the case with those who argue that riots bring support to their viewpoints.
    - jcromartie 11y ago
      It's one thing to say that people are deluded when they act against their own interests. But how do you think someone would arrive at the conclusion that rioting would be helpful? Where do you think they got these "romantic reasons" that are actually bad for them?
      - Kalium 11y ago
        In short? Wishful thinking. Those I know who hold to that notion do so because they find riots emotionally satisfying. To them, a thing that is emotionally satisfying must also be objectively productive, because it's incomprehensible that such strong emotions could not move witnesses to share, support, and solidarity. That, and a bunch of radical pablum about how getting people talking about your cause is the same as actually effecting change and similar. Something about symbolic violence and making a statement usually crops up around this point. Occasionally someone argues that destruction of property is non-violence. The human capacity for finding a way to ideologically justify whatever it is you want to do is truly remarkable. In retrospect, I was a lot more tolerant of this flavor of toxic radical thought when I didn't live in an area they regard as a great place to go smashing things.
        jcromartie 11y ago
        I get the sense that you think that rioters are "just bad people" or something like that? Is that correct? They are genetically predisposed or something?
        Kalium 11y ago
        I don't think they are "just bad people". I think they're people behaving badly because they have deluded themselves into thinking that they can violence their way to justice. Some of them have their hearts in the right place, more or less, except for the whole "Yeah! Senseless violence!" thing. Others just like smashing things. I've also seen people get very upset when confronted with the links I showed you. It's a treasured article of faith in some circles that riots produce desirable social change.
        mentat 11y ago
        The language of delusion is not really productive here. Almost everyone is delusional in one area or another. Wanting justice, needing (or "needing") to take action, and those actions being productive are all separate. People doing irrational non-productive things pretty much all the time. Expecting that to be different or change, especially with the current state of education is, I would say, delusional.
    - ZeroGravitas 11y ago
      You shortened your story a little too much. The study only looks at rioting African Americans in the 60s in the USA. I'm also not sure that the correlation doesn't run the other way, and that the more right-wing an area was the more likely that people were being mistreated enough to riot. I dont particularly support rioting, but its clear that in many cases, and the USA in the 60s this definitely applies, that the "fault" for the rioting can be clearly applied to those who are mistreating the rioters. So, they're "in the right" yet trapped by an entire establishment that both intentionally and unintentionally mistreats them, up to and including well documented COINTELPRO false flag operations against the civil rights movement, and you think the salient thing to draw from this episode is that the people involved were stupid?
- stephengillie 11y ago
  Oh, this misconception. I'm sure you've never been so angry at society that you just didn't care anymore and wanted to break things. Maybe you haven't, because society isn't built to put you down and keep you there, the way it is for some people. Check your privilege. Either way, riots do raise awareness. You might hate the destructive people, but you do pay attention to them, and then you pay attention to the non-violent people who are with them.
  - Kalium 11y ago
    Privilege checked! I have, in fact, been that angry. I just haven't made the mistake of assuming that that anger, expressed in the form of violence, will get me what I want. Especially since a recent study on the subject shows that the radical interpretation of riots you have just espoused is not consonant with history. Have you considered not making wild assumptions about me in an effort to invalidate my viewpoint?
    - mentat 11y ago
      I'm still not seeing a lack of privilege in your discoverable profiles. As someone who has had privilege, I'm pretty sure I've never been that angry, and I've been very angry. Perhaps it's worth considering that you have not being either.
      - Kalium 11y ago
        "You haven't advertised a lack of privilege, therefore you must be overprivileged and wrong" is not the soundest of possible lines of reasoning. I will not debate the subject further. Nevermind the slight catch that privilege is not a binary thing. I understand rage. I understand feeling helpless. I know those feelings. I have felt those feelings. I could go on and on and on, making all the declarations of sympathy and empathy and understanding you could possibly wish for here. Yet, at no point did I come to believe that random destruction of property would get me what I wanted to relieve that all-consuming rage. Doubly so when evidence on the subject shows clearly that riots don't work. Whether or not I have felt a particular flavor of rage is immaterial to the question of whether or not riots are an efficacious means of producing social change. The former is a question of unknowable perceptions, while the latter is a question verifiable against reality to the extent that reality is objective. Might I ask you to consider the basic question of "Do riots work?" Or the related basic question of if desperately wanting something to be true makes it so?

Kalium 11y ago

Or maybe they're angry and deluded enough to think destruction will make people want to help them. I see that a lot.

jcromartie 11y ago
Why do you think they are deluded in this way?
- Kalium 11y ago
  http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2015/05/new-study-shows-riots-make-america-conservative.html http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2015/05/new-study-shows... http://www.omarwasow.com/Protests_on_Voting.pdf http://www.omarwasow.com/Protests_on_Voting.pdf Long story short, violence does not make other people want to help you or give you what you ask for. It makes those other people do the opposite. When people believe something the opposite of both basic sense and history for romantic reasons, I call them deluded. This is the case with those who argue that riots bring support to their viewpoints.
  - jcromartie 11y ago
    It's one thing to say that people are deluded when they act against their own interests. But how do you think someone would arrive at the conclusion that rioting would be helpful? Where do you think they got these "romantic reasons" that are actually bad for them?
    - Kalium 11y ago
      In short? Wishful thinking. Those I know who hold to that notion do so because they find riots emotionally satisfying. To them, a thing that is emotionally satisfying must also be objectively productive, because it's incomprehensible that such strong emotions could not move witnesses to share, support, and solidarity. That, and a bunch of radical pablum about how getting people talking about your cause is the same as actually effecting change and similar. Something about symbolic violence and making a statement usually crops up around this point. Occasionally someone argues that destruction of property is non-violence. The human capacity for finding a way to ideologically justify whatever it is you want to do is truly remarkable. In retrospect, I was a lot more tolerant of this flavor of toxic radical thought when I didn't live in an area they regard as a great place to go smashing things.
      - jcromartie 11y ago
        I get the sense that you think that rioters are "just bad people" or something like that? Is that correct? They are genetically predisposed or something?
        Kalium 11y ago
        I don't think they are "just bad people". I think they're people behaving badly because they have deluded themselves into thinking that they can violence their way to justice. Some of them have their hearts in the right place, more or less, except for the whole "Yeah! Senseless violence!" thing. Others just like smashing things. I've also seen people get very upset when confronted with the links I showed you. It's a treasured article of faith in some circles that riots produce desirable social change.
        mentat 11y ago
        The language of delusion is not really productive here. Almost everyone is delusional in one area or another. Wanting justice, needing (or "needing") to take action, and those actions being productive are all separate. People doing irrational non-productive things pretty much all the time. Expecting that to be different or change, especially with the current state of education is, I would say, delusional.
  - ZeroGravitas 11y ago
    You shortened your story a little too much. The study only looks at rioting African Americans in the 60s in the USA. I'm also not sure that the correlation doesn't run the other way, and that the more right-wing an area was the more likely that people were being mistreated enough to riot. I dont particularly support rioting, but its clear that in many cases, and the USA in the 60s this definitely applies, that the "fault" for the rioting can be clearly applied to those who are mistreating the rioters. So, they're "in the right" yet trapped by an entire establishment that both intentionally and unintentionally mistreats them, up to and including well documented COINTELPRO false flag operations against the civil rights movement, and you think the salient thing to draw from this episode is that the people involved were stupid?
stephengillie 11y ago
Oh, this misconception. I'm sure you've never been so angry at society that you just didn't care anymore and wanted to break things. Maybe you haven't, because society isn't built to put you down and keep you there, the way it is for some people. Check your privilege. Either way, riots do raise awareness. You might hate the destructive people, but you do pay attention to them, and then you pay attention to the non-violent people who are with them.
- Kalium 11y ago
  Privilege checked! I have, in fact, been that angry. I just haven't made the mistake of assuming that that anger, expressed in the form of violence, will get me what I want. Especially since a recent study on the subject shows that the radical interpretation of riots you have just espoused is not consonant with history. Have you considered not making wild assumptions about me in an effort to invalidate my viewpoint?
  - mentat 11y ago
    I'm still not seeing a lack of privilege in your discoverable profiles. As someone who has had privilege, I'm pretty sure I've never been that angry, and I've been very angry. Perhaps it's worth considering that you have not being either.
    - Kalium 11y ago
      "You haven't advertised a lack of privilege, therefore you must be overprivileged and wrong" is not the soundest of possible lines of reasoning. I will not debate the subject further. Nevermind the slight catch that privilege is not a binary thing. I understand rage. I understand feeling helpless. I know those feelings. I have felt those feelings. I could go on and on and on, making all the declarations of sympathy and empathy and understanding you could possibly wish for here. Yet, at no point did I come to believe that random destruction of property would get me what I wanted to relieve that all-consuming rage. Doubly so when evidence on the subject shows clearly that riots don't work. Whether or not I have felt a particular flavor of rage is immaterial to the question of whether or not riots are an efficacious means of producing social change. The former is a question of unknowable perceptions, while the latter is a question verifiable against reality to the extent that reality is objective. Might I ask you to consider the basic question of "Do riots work?" Or the related basic question of if desperately wanting something to be true makes it so?