6 ms·

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.
        Kalium 11y ago
        What would be a preferred nomenclature? "Self-induced inconsistency with observed reality", perhaps. The delusion is not the goal. The delusion is the notion that violence will achieve the goal because said violence is emotionally satisfying.
    - stephengillie 11y ago
      Protests without riots have been shown to be an ineffective agent of social change. If you don't bring rioters, nobody cares.
- 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?

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.
        Kalium 11y ago
        What would be a preferred nomenclature? "Self-induced inconsistency with observed reality", perhaps. The delusion is not the goal. The delusion is the notion that violence will achieve the goal because said violence is emotionally satisfying.
  - stephengillie 11y ago
    Protests without riots have been shown to be an ineffective agent of social change. If you don't bring rioters, nobody cares.
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?