When I encounter people like this online... — Terrapin Station

You are encountering them in a setting where there is no interpersonal nuance. Were we all to meet in a bar for a few beers, we'd all get along just fine.

In my bombastic blowharding opinion, this topic appears to be a classic case of philosophical overthinking. — Jake

No, not overthinking. You are underthinking this. Anyway, it's not philosophy, it's traffic engineering. Here, look:



Interstate 80 near Berkeley. Above. very little individual choice; dictatorship, tofu, vegans, commies
Interstate 80 in Iowa. Below. Lots of individual choice, freedom, corn and pork, crypto-fascists



Jake, I'm not arguing in favor of people disregarding the law, or Iowa vs. Berkeley; and I'm not lauding heavy traffic as a good thing. It's just when you have 1000 drivers in a limited space all going the same direction, they can't exercise individual choice any more, even if they want to. They have formed a fluid. Where there are few drivers, individual choice is much more important. There is no mass controlling movement on the road.

Too many bicycles on greenways, crowding pedestrians in shopping malls, 1000 rats exiting the sewer, ball bearings in narrow race tracks -- all behave the same way.

You are encountering them in a setting where there is no interpersonal nuance. Were we all to meet in a bar for a few beers, we'd all get along just fine. — Bitter Crank

Well, let's try it and see.

It's just when you have 1000 drivers in a limited space all going the same direction, they can't exercise individual choice any more, even if they want to. — Bitter Crank

Right. So they should stop exercising individual choice. They should submit themselves to the law, which has presumably been thought through by traffic safety engineers who know a lot more about it than they do.

Please note, I'm not talking about going 20mph in a 50mph zone. I'm talking about going the maximum speed allowed by the law, and no more.

But rather that by using some powers they possess to go in a certain direction rather than being helplessly sucked along. But I think it is almost subconscious and they are in denial of what is happening. I suppose by power here I mean influence or withholding influence. — Andrew4Handel

It sounds to me like what you are talking about is "executive agency" -- the capacity of an individual to decide to do something and then carry out the plan.

Executive agency does require some power. For instance, some jobs leave employees with zero power, except for the power to walk out the door and not come back. Other jobs entail a lot of executive agency and people tend to like those jobs better, not because they have so much power, but because they have enough power to do what they think best (or goof off for the afternoon...)

I don't find "power" all that helpful a feature to analyze; most of us have a modicum of personal power to run our lives, go to work, raise a family, etc., but very little power beyond that. We can get more power by uniting with other people to accomplish something. "One man's hands can't tear a prison down. But if two and two then fifty then a million, we'll see the walls come down..." labor organizing song

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has. Margaret Mead (anthropologist)

Right. So they should stop exercising individual choice. — Jake

It isn't what we should do or even what we want to do when we are individual drivers in the middle of a dense traffic flow (or individual pedestrians in a dense crowd): The flow of traffic determines what we will do. If you are in a 65 mph zone and dense traffic has slowed to 45 mph, you must slow down with it. If it speeds up to 80 mph, you have to speed up with it. If you ignore traffic conditions, you are likely to be in accident. The life you save may be your own. Go with the flow.

Now, when you are in a low density traffic flow, like in Iowa (see above) you CAN choose to follow the speed limit, exceed it, or travel below it.

For pedestrians, the worst thing you can do when you are caught in the mass movement of a crowd is resist it, stop, demand to exercise your rights. People who do that get trampled. People who travel with the mass survive.

Right. So they should stop exercising individual choice. — Jake

Our lives present more opportunities to exercise individual choice than we have time to use. Most of the time we can exercise individual choice without adverse consequences. But, sometimes not. If the sign says, "Crumbling rock on edge of canyon. Do not approach rim." you are well advised to forgo the great picture you would get by standing right on the edge of the crumbling rock. But go ahead. Get right out there, it's your choice. You have a right! Be sure to upload the picture to Facebook while you and the camera plunge to the rocks far below.

Since you are an avid hiker, I am sure you observed such signs--as all reasonable, intelligent, charming persons did. The ones who didn't are no longer with us.

I don't find "power" all that helpful a feature to analyze; most of us have a modicum of personal power to run our lives, go to work, raise a family, etc., but very little power beyond that. We can get more power by uniting with other people to accomplish something. — Bitter Crank

I think this is a false fatalism and apathy.

I am not referring to power as a spectrum from small to great and I am not advocating people do anything revolutionary. I am referring to every power interaction involved in living. I think apathy is one of the most demoralizing things and also a power tactic. Apathy can amount to discouraging action or encouraging inaction.

I might have to go into a long analysis to highlight what I mean. Firstly though I don't think having children or raising a family is inevitable. Having children has a wide impact and the child parent power relation is of massive importance. Society is created by creating children and I see this as a political act in itself. In some situations and societies people have children with specifically political or religious aims.

So by not having children even if you cannot escape your own oppression you can prevent it happening to someone else so I think this is a false apathy. People can and do walk out of jobs and their are trade unions and other bodies protesting on behalf of workers. One thing that creates work related oppression is peoples insatiable consumerism, apathy about the exploitation of resources and people elsewhere. As with the Jordan Peterson example. Society reflect the culmination of the desires large numbers of people.

There are lots of different ways to take away peoples power. I think that if the government takes away power from you it does not excuse you taking away someone else's power.

I had no power as a child and my parents were able to have total authority an control over me and even use physical threat and violence (hitting).

Someone can gain power in many different forms including simply mental freedom. Freedom from anxiety. Every day freedom from coercion, stress and threat. And little bits of freedom can lead to more personal empowerment and self direction.

Society is said to control people but society is people. If it is controlling people then it is one group of society controlling another. Like most people I could go probably out on a killing spree tomorrow but I restrain myself from antisocial acts. We cooperate to some extent with society but there has to be an incentive. The presence of some good and campaigning in society is one incentive not to become completely antisocial

(I am in the UK btw)

If it speeds up to 80 mph, you have to speed up with it. If you ignore traffic conditions, you are likely to be in accident. — Bitter Crank

Meaning no disrespect to you personally, I utterly reject such blame shifting operations. These kind of rationalization systems are exactly why so many accidents happen, not people obeying the law.

I think this is a false fatalism and apathy. — Andrew4Handel

I don't know why you think I was being apathetic or fatalistic.

I think apathy is one of the most demoralizing things and also a power tactic. Apathy can amount to discouraging action or encouraging inaction. — Andrew4Handel

I quite agree. Apathetic people (individually or in mass) are much easier to control or conversely, they tend to leave one alone. Apathy is extremely disempowering.

I get what you are saying about children -- having or not having. I'm neither a heavy-duty pro-natalist nor a heavy duty antinatalist. I never had any intention of having children, though.

I utterly reject such blame shifting operations. — Jake

The solution to these speeding scofflaws is not to quintuple the number of patrol officers or put more cameras in place. The solution is to get rid of the auto. Granted, autos are very convenient. But autos are part and parcel of other processes like suburbanization by which a tremendous amount of money was made selling land and houses. Work has remained centralized (or at least not located near to most workers) so a tremendous amount of travel is required by millions of people at the same time. Bad planning.

There are options for urban travel that a lot of suburban Americans find unappealing -- buses and trains. And well they should dislike shoddy service, which is what they have often been offered by public transit. But when its well done, people will leave their cars at home and read or chat on the train.

Inter-urban travel used to be accomplished by long-distance trains and long distance buses. When those services were first rate, people liked them. The same way that people used to consider getting on a plane and flying somewhere a special event. I think it's safe to say that few people find flying much better than taking a dirty Greyhound bus.

(Inter-urban train travel was not particularly good at the beginning of the 20th century. Trains went just about everywhere, but travel required a lot of tolerance for inconvenience. Further, a lot of the trains were not pleasant. The heyday of train travel was post WWII. It didn't last, because the American model is "make a profit for us or go to hell". By 1970 private passenger train travel was over; enter Amtrak (which actually is pretty decent, to the extent that Congress doesn't starve it and the companies that control the railroads let them get to the stations on time.