My understanding of hte way virtue ethics work is that its a non-religious moral system that allows someone to say "The type of person i ought to be is *insert religious ideal*" and so work toward that, under the guise of non-religious development. — AmadeusD

Hey man!

I reject your framing.

I don't really know the history of people who advance this premise philosophically.

I just know that most people today seem to frame moral issues as either utilitarian (left) or deontological (right).

I celebrated McIntyre's argument because it aligned with my personal experiences - that expecting people to be able to do utilitarian math is stupid, since it is not possible.

and as an avowed atheist - not a default atheist - i reject deontology.

the only moral system that resonates with me is the aspirational moral system.

I don't care that values meant different things when Aristotle described them.

none of the alternatives require work.

for sure, it seems elitist, to argue that some people are better equipped to make moral decisions for others.

but then again, some people are better equipped to make moral decisions than others.

. I don't think you immediately get to conclude that trans women are more of a risk than women on that basis — fdrake

Hey fdrake,

You think of gender as a social construct, then?

Because if one concedes any biological component at all then yes, trans women are more of a problem in women's prisons then cis women. Due to the entirety of human history.

There's also a question about the degree of perceived risk vs the real risk. Trans people generally get treated as if they're a massive risk in an absolute sense when it doesn't make much sense, like people terrified of the prospect of unisex bathroom — fdrake

Trans people are not seen as a 'massive risk' and they are especially not seen that way in the bathroom. That's a bait and switch.

I guess you could fairly argue that some frame trans issues (not people) as a 'massive risk'. Because wokeness is a massive risk though.

I shouldn't have to say this, but anyone opposed to trans identities prima facie isn't aligned with my moral beliefs, nor the beliefs of the vast majority of people who identified with Trump's 'she is with they/them campaign'.

The majority of opposition to trans issues comes from environments of genuine harm - so far, this appears to be change rooms (which, I mean, obviously, different from bathrooms), the playing field of sports (again, obviously, minor consideration with kids, major consideration with adult bodies), and women's prisons.

When I talk about the issue in prisons, I am not talking theoretically. There are numerous examples of trans women raping prisoners, and if you'd like, I'll present you with some. Same as with injuries on the sporting field.

The 'tiny percentage of people' argument has been advanced by such luminaries as John Oliver, in his latest bit on trans people. Have you seen it? Your argument is the same?

I would say that any scenario of a person claiming trans identity and then raping women in prisons - or even, engaging in consensual sex with women in prison - is one too many. Simply because it is wrong to do so. Same in reverse. I think your premise of affirmation ENABLES this problem.

Some people suck, and will lie, in order to gain advantage.

Frame this as terrified of unisex bathrooms? Bait and switch.

I am no deontologist. I do think I can assert wrongness in this scenario.

It sounds as if you are utilitarian. As in, some harms are fine, if they enable an overall social good?

But of course, as an educator, you know that children are not representatives of their demographic groupings, but rather, they are individuals?

And you know, of course, that kids are not capable of understanding, say, complex utilitarian arguments that posit THEM as avatars of injustice?

I think default trans-affirmation, as a norm, is not just 'harming' conservatives. I think it harms the trans kids, the gay kids, the gender weirdos. This default belief system that you maybe? endorse is doing damage to the people it claims to empower. again, happy to provide evidence. From LGBTQ communities themselves. You must be aware of the second gen feminist rejection of trans issues? The gay/lesbian argument that this is simply convincing gay people to adopt a different identity?

I am afraid I am quite woke. — fdrake

So, man, why??

Let me hit you with my best anti-woke questions.

Why endorse wokeness when it harms the people it is supposed to help?

I can 'prove' this, or at least argue it with powerful evidence. Frankly, I'd rather present evidence than argument on this subject, as I don't know any wokist who can beat me in that realm.

What replaces the liberal enlightenment project that wokeness seeks to undue? Reparations? Who funds it? Who repairs the damage to the poor white guy living next to the poor black guy, who is no longer poor, thanks to government largesse?

What do you say to renounced wokists like myself? I got cancelled for playing a hip hop song in an English class. There are legions of detransitioners. The most intelligent commentary I see around race in America comes from anti-woke types like John McWhorter and Coleman Hughes. Both black men.

Again, I hate even having to type that as if it matters.

Your side gets Kamala Harris.

Even progressive fundamental texts are lacklustre. You mentioned bell hooks in a post with me, and I picked up a book of hers to reconnect. But bell hooks was relevant decades ago. and bell hooks is much less shitty than progressive 'academics' at the moment.

Prove me wrong on this point by naming one modern legit woke academic. One. I like Matt McManus. that's the only name I can come up with. What has wokeism accomplished?

heterodox and conservative academics? much stronger than the woke. again, I will prove this to you with examples, if you like. and of course, mainstream conservative arguments are garbage. I am a conscientious objector, neither left nor right.

to sum up how I view your position - what good is a theory that consistently fails to predict things accurately?

Hey man, I hope I said all that respectfully, and I hope you see the length of this response as respect. I felt welcomed here on TPF based on responses like yours to me. I'm listening to the ST Specials album, as I write back to you, to try and get into what I perceive as your vibe.

I was into ARA myself, which was less common here in Canada.

But what did the Specials do? They formed a multicultural band (contrary to wokeness), they employed Rico Rodriguez (contrary to wokeness, cultural appropriation), they wrote songs against racism (like, most of them).

'I'm being chased by the national front', but the national front right now is woke.

They're doing that because they feel the trans woman is a man and is thus more of a risk, which they can be incorrect about if they are in fact a woman or are not more of a risk. A potential discussion of perceived safety vs real risk would also be interesting! — fdrake

Hey fdrake, sorry for not replying to you before. the black dog gets me man.

but I need to disagree with you.

Whoever you describe as the 'greater risk' is irrelevant to my understanding of morality.

what matters is fact. we have a number of factual examples of trans 'women' raping or assaulting women in female prisons.

I can provide those references for you, if you don't feel like steel-manning me.

you seem to have a problem with the court system determining that women are women.

I can't wrap my head around this. You are the first person here on TPF who I 'related' to, and I think highly of you.

But your arguments seem entirely of the woke variety, despite the fact that woke arguments continue to be proven wrong?

Like, I can provide evidence that the trans-affirmative model is failing? Failing trans people? Or evidence that woke thought entails mental illness?

There are myriad examples of trans female sex abusers abusing in female prisons.

So, the question to me is, how many sexual assaults are 'the cost' of empowering trans people in jails?

Zero? A number determined by statisticians?

There are trans criminals. pretending that this number is so small as to be irrelevant is duplicity.

I worry you are arguing from a utilitarian perspective that you can't prove valid?

If virtue ethics weren't so caught up in allowing religious zeal, i'd be well on board.

please explain that to me? I see religion as deontological? what are the virtues pursued by religious zeal?

also, I think you are the first person I've encountered who has used the word zeal. which is awesome.

Alasdair MacIntyre's After Virtue — Count Timothy von Icarus

Hi Count Timothy,

Great recommendation. "After Virtue" was on my list, so when you suggested it and I found it on-sale, I bought the book. I get that this is only a moderately difficult work of philosophy, with 'moderately difficult' being my default description of primary sources in philosophy.

And I struggled at times. There would be long paragraphs of one or two sentences, abundant double negatives, multiple languages deployed in quotations. As a separate question, as a non-philosopher asking, does philosophy need to be so obscure?

But back to "After Virtue" ...

This may be the most impactful thing I've read this year.

I reject utilitarianism and deontology both outright. One can never know the true utilitarian outcome, and one can never know the universal truth of morality.

Virtue ethics remains aspirational. A working towards, rather than an understanding of.

I found myself repeatedly in agreement, but what I found most valuable was the central argument that, in the moral sphere, we are not talking about the same things or using the same language, and yet we think we are.

I gather you are well versed in classical philosophy, and I am not, so I might be missing something.

But I did resonate with the idea of historically formative ethical principles, and see more value, today, in the aspirational 'working on' of virtue ethics as opposed to the binary 'right and wrong' of deontology or utilitarianism.

Do you think there's a way to go about disrupting specifically Pakistani grooming gangs? — fdrake

I've got a few links if you are interested, certain journalists have been following these scandals for years, but getting no interest from the mainstream media till recently. Different parties involved in policing, child services, different areas of the country have explicitly said that we didn't want to pursue these cases for fear of seeming Islamophobic. The principal journalist behind this, name escapes me currently, was coming at this from a second-wave feminist angle.

He got famous for resisting a trans rights bill — fdrake

He got famous for resisting compelled speech, a completely different thing. And he was right too, a few years after, Trudeau tried to pass a law making 'future thought crimes' illegal.

Did you see the earliest videos, of Peterson trying to engage with protestors and getting shouted down? He was sincerely trying to engage, and they just shout him dwon.

Maps of meaning is not for me, I don't buy his Jungian stance, don't like his lectures, but '12 Rules For Life' really helped a lot of boys and young men. I even got valuable stuff out of it, although he can be a jerk even in self-help.

Then he got famous and started doing FOX, got really sick, battled addictions, and got sentenced to professional 're-education'. I support the guy on free speech principles, even though I don't much like him, and he is, at least, grifter-adjacent at this point. Tate though, that guy seems vile.

It's honestly baffling to me that this would be a contentious point — fdrake

A willful rejection of evolutionary theory and human history?

I'm going to revisit bell hooks, thanks.

I read this by Robert Jensen today, thought of your post.

Until the age of thirty, I had no way to make sense of that experience and assumed I was just an oddball. When I began reading feminism, especially the radical feminist writers whom I found most compelling, I realized that parts of my experience were common in patriarchy. I had suffered in the way many boys in a patriarchal society suffer, and as a man I had sought to escape that suffering by conforming to patriarchal norms of masculinity. Feminism offered a way out of that trap.

Should be common allies!

Even when they lose as unlosable election. — AmadeusD

Crazy right?

These types of people believe, truly, that there is no use for the concept of objectivity, and that there is no such thing as logical constraint on claims.
These people will become philosophers of nonsense. — AmadeusD

That continues to amaze me. Do any people push back against insanity in these environments, or is that beyond the pale?

brow-beaten constantly for existing — AmadeusD

Oh man, that's rough. How does that manifest?

I read a really interesting essay on "Moral Cruelty and the Left" by Blake Smith - he was new to me, but it was a great essay, looking at Judith Shklar, also new to me, who warned that "liberalism can degenerate into a cult of victimhood that permits our sadistic desires to be passed off as unimpeachable virtue"....

The other key insight Shklar found in Nietzsche is that fear of “physical cruelty” can be transformed into “moral cruelty” by “deliberate and persistent humiliation, so that the victim can eventually trust neither himself nor anyone else.” Those who see themselves as fighting against physical cruelty, from Christian priests railing against the iniquities of the Roman Coliseum to their distant descendants, the social justice warriors of today, can inflict all kinds of psychological torment on their opponents—and themselves.

I do see a lot of 'moral cruelty' from the woke these days.

mostly men who look vaguely middle eastern that receive the worst excesses of this moral panic. — fdrake

This sucks, and speaks to a left-wing failure, which will be couched by institutions as attempting to combat this exact form of prejudice. The 'grooming-gang' scandal seems beyond dispute a failure of this sort, and if the police had had the guts to address this issue, seemingly of Pakistani men with shared family ties, then 'vaguely middle eastern' looking men wouldn't have as much suspicion around them.

Nor would the vast majority of Pakistani men who are not doing anything wrong.

I often think of this sort of framing when talking about classrooms and the needs of 'BIPOC' students.

I hate that BIPOC has been imported whole into Canada, (since we clearly should be using IBPOC, if you want to talk actual historical legacies), but over and over again I saw bad behaviour from students excused or tolerated in the spirit of equity (we have to be understanding of angry kids) coming at the expense of the average 'POC' who wanted to work in a disruption-free environment, not to mention, say, the poor white kid in the same boat.

You're going to count as having a political ideology based on how you speak about this. And it's going to appear "right wing" in some circles. Don't you know this already? — fdrake

You made me laugh out loud at myself with that question man. For sure, I know I'm 'coded' right. I guess I should have just asked if I came across that way to you, since we've been having this interesting conversation. But I am a lapsed progressive.

More progressive than the progressives? I certainly agree with Susan Neiman's thesis "Left is not woke". I am reading "No politics but class politics:" by Adolph Reed and Walter Ben Michaels, and I agree with their premise that wokeness, 'when it comes to economic inequality, is just the good conscience of the right'. It is a fundamentally neoliberal solution to inequality.

In the UK there are perpetual moral panics about people of colour sexual predators, the left liberal media sees this as a sign of rape culture {it is} but emphasises that it's all men's responsibility to change ourselves on an individual basis to address these crimes. The right media explicitly racialises the issue. Rather than talking about, say, including a lot of material on establishing consent in sex ed. — fdrake

Well said. That 'sense of threat' is, to my mind, a potentially worse outcome than naively putting yourself at risk, which is obviously also bad. And it's far too easy for people who are generally not at risk due to class privilege to 'claim' that risk of threat as equal for them as for the economically AND sexually vulnerable. The irony being what intersectionality is supposed to be good at identifying in the first place.

You can find a lot of feminist literature that laments this pervasive essentialism outside and within feminism itself. — fdrake

I am always looking for new things to read!

And I agree, it's like the right have given up on pretenses towards kindness and morality, which used to be defining traits for conservatives. But the wokists 'looking' kind is part of the problem, if I am correct that identity politics actually harms the groups it intends to help. Let's just assume that majority of wokists want to do good. But bad actors hide in the crowd.

Back in my protest days, it was an antifa tactic. hide in the crowd of peaceful protestors, sneak attack and then retreat back in.

What I do wish was more commonplace was men describing their negative experiences of patriarchy — fdrake

Default wokist thought argues that focusing on the patriarchy helps men who have had these negative experiences, but overlooks the fact that those patriarchal norms are also enforced by women

Richard Reeves talks about how woke feminists often frame debates around gender as 'zero sum' - so talking about men comes at the expense of women.

This binary, I think, is the danger of wokeness, in general. It divides the working and middle classes from one another on secondary issues like race and gender while the technocratic neoliberal class elites get away with their exploitation as long as they hold the 'correct' views.

I find it incredibly ironic that these absurd masculinity grifters like Andrew Tate and Jordan Peterson actually agree with the reductive left liberal construal of masculinity on what makes a man a man. They just disagree on whether it's a good thing. — fdrake

Great point, although Peterson should be in a different category entirely than Tate. I went to the University of Toronto. I followed his whole 'scandal' up close. I read '12 rules for life' since a few of my senior male students were asking questions related to it. He's a conservative academic that fit a niche the chattering classes wanted filled. Tate is vile. Peterson and Tate belong in the same category only if there are but two categories.

I appreciate all your thoughtful comments man! Sorry for being so verbose, I feel I likely have more time on my hands than you might ...

You'll never see a screaming blue-haired, chain-wearing trans woman(purposefully inflammatory, to paint a picture, to be sure) having a serious ethical discussion with heads of state, or anything of the kind. People will real interests in unity and getting along don't behave those ways, and we don't allow them to. We allow concessions, the way we do with children. Yes, i'm being sanguine, but i don't think too far from reality. — AmadeusD

Hello Amadeus, and sorry for the slow reply here. I often enjoy your comments and posts, but I missed this.

I think one of the reasons I object to people saying things like 'the worst of woke is over' is that, sure, it is in retreat, or never got to the table for 'ethical discussions with heads of state' - but I've encountered a number of people close to your exaggerated, blue-haired picture, in middle-management positions for the past 10+ years of teaching high school.

And I think they are causing (unintentional) harm. "The Anxious Generation" and "Bad Therapy" are two recent reads that have me convinced of this.

It's the damage caused, the waste of resources, that makes it hard for me to 'ignore'. And that's why I'm drawn to these ethical threads. Wokeness feels like an 'own-goal' for progressives? It also feels unchallengeable, deontological, an act of faith perceived as rational morality?

Did you ever experience a baseline of suspicion otherwise?

I come at this from a very left wing angle. I get frustrated with the above because of how patriarchal it is, and people don't notice. Seeing men as latent predators is precisely part of the patriarchal norms feminist critique is supposed to attack, it reinforces the idea that only women should work with and care for children, as well as alienates kids from male role models and authority figures — fdrake

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I hate it too, for the reasons you give.

Most colleagues are / have been cool. I think it likely the few people I've worked with with a 'baseline of suspicion' of men were angry with men for personal reasons. But I also think they are often given a pass by those around them.

I always wonder if I come across as having a political ideology? I describe myself as a conscientious objector, but I was strongly left my entire adult life until getting turned off by the dogma.

I smoke, and so I overhear conversations all the time on my porch. The other night, I heard this young girl and mom duo stopping at the neighbour's 'treasure cupboard' - think those local book libraries where you can grab or leave something, but for kids toys and such.

Nighttime, so I don't recognize them, but this girl was obviously young enough to want to stop and look at the toys. The daughter asked her mother 'remember when you told me life was harder for girls'?

Not to judge - I do not know these people - but anecdotally, I find this illustrative. Why teach young children to be so suspicious of their peers?

Speculating over which teachers - almost always male - are paedos is a favourite pass time — fdrake

That's terrible. I knew a guy, an older gay man, a retired principal, whose career was cut short due to a false accusation. I've known others who were saved only due to ironclad alibis. Obviously, there are bad apples, and I knew one of them too (that I know of).

But teaching suspicion, given what we know of social psychology, the availability heuristic, feels likely to poison the well. I hope Weinstein spends the rest of his life in jail, but the kids who are going to run afoul of this aren't generally 'powerful' - it's going to be the awkward, the weird, the marginalized boys, for whom whatever 'male privilege' they have is outweighed by the reality of their lives, that run afoul of this?

here was never a satisfying answer to "why" the murder was done though. I'm quite glad of the latter, it would've been very easy to blame social media outright and it didn't. — fdrake

I had no sense of the show being 'biased', and that's rare for me with anything mainstream. But public discussions of the show are definitely around bias - the left think this should be a documentary, played in classes, expose the dangers of Andrew Tate, and the right, saying there's more to it than the social media 'bad apple' aspect.

As far as I'm concerned, smart phones and social media, those years, 2012-2014 or whatever, are epochal changes, and they have changed these conversations more profoundly than most people realize.

The only adjacent thing I've heard is surprise that a bloke wants to work with kids. It was also relatively good surprise, as they were cognisant of the impact having few male authority figures/role models has on the kids. — fdrake

teachers? ed assistants?

it's a class thing to my mind. ed assistants - awesome, much more impactful on my students than some of my teaching colleagues - tend to have a realistic view of parenting, raising children, teaching kids.

so when the ed assistants of the world say things like 'boys need dads / uncles / etc', they mean in terms of behaviour.

And when the woke teaching class thinks about it, they think, they need to have their gender issues deconstructed.

The most sexist thing I ever witnessed between teachers in my 20 years was when a mediocre colleague told me she suspects 'every one' of the male teachers in high school of being creeps.

It's taking something that was more associated with feminine social styles and trying to open it up to boys as well. — fdrake

There is this little dude who lives a few doors up from me. He's smart, socially intuitive, ahead of a lot of other four year old boys. He zips up and down the street sometimes on his scooter, sometimes in a dress.

I always think of how to explain moral issues to kids. That's sort of what drew me to TPF. And some years will go by with nothing, but once in a while, one summer vacation finished, I notice that hey - kids are different this year.

When we legalized gay marriage here in Canada, I saw that coming, because one September, kids just showed up saying 'who cares', or even better to my mind, 'heck yeah'.

There is no huge wave of transphobia, as an example, in the WEIRD world, and I know that because kids, in general, care less about it than adults.

It's when the narcissistic kids get to dominate because they don't stop talking that we best see the failure of WEIRD parenting.

In the past, parents would have told obnoxious kids to shut up.

Now we tell obnoxious kids that they should go on, and on, and on.

I am generalizing, and it's Saturday night. But still ...

our generation of moral relativists is failing to raise children with the skill set to navigate our insane new world?

f there are people who seem to have been born with the skills to get ahead in society, most of us have to learn it. If we don't learn it, we're kind of screwed. — BC

Hello BC.

I don't think these skills are essential to success in society, necessarily. They are essential to success in society as it is currently conceptualized, perhaps.

Education has been feminized, not because this enables a superior skill set, but rather for pragmatic reasons.

The boy who may have learned leadership from, say, building his physical skill set and thus earning the respect of his male peers no longer gets as many chances to do that in the context of a school system where rambunctious play is discouraged due to the threat of litigation. Recess is diminished, eliminated. Tech programs are cut. Unavailable. Schools with 'elite athlete' programs eliminate competition as a qualifier. Etc.

We discourage male behaviour in schools because our society is technocratic, neoliberal, and morally relativistic. The technocrats of education are female, the money comes from the neoliberals who empower the technocrats, thus saving the litigation costs, and we, the dumb-ass morally relativistic masses, are just supposed to assume that the elites know better.

I agree with you about the need to be 'literate' in the skills defined by society as important. I did my master's thesis on 'multiliteracies'.

Some marxists propose that the red brick school house education is no longer very important. Mass media are in a better position to teach people how to live, what to want, and what to buy. Beyond "BUY IT!" the messages we receive are somewhat chaotic; they beckon in several directions all at once. A big problem wit this theory is that in order to buy, one has to have money, which usually requires work. Mass media doesn't tell us a lot about successful work. — BC

Bill Gates, recently talking about how AI will replace teachers within a decade?

We have discussed Ligotti here a few times before — Count Timothy von Icarus

Any thread to point to?

When existentialism becomes a sort of religion, it becomes important to safeguard the absurdity of the world, since we cannot be triumphant overcomers of absurdity if the world is not absurd — Count Timothy von Icarus

So, I read a lot of existential-adjacect stuff - "At the Existentialist Cafe" is a fave - but I doubt my ability / desire to read a lot of primary sources like say, "Being and Nothingness". I may be missing something ... but the existentialists do seem to enjoy absurdity, and the pessimists do not?

How is existentialism a religion? I see elements of religion in 'wokeness', and elements of the postmodern in both existentialism and wokeness, but existentialism and religion? I guess Sartre wasn't deconstructing master narratives, he was pretty into communism, for example. But then, willing to renounce it, eventually?

Students today get essentially no direct education in ethics, and then are asked to jump right into political questions — Count Timothy von Icarus

I've witnessed this. Almost no ethical instruction at all. Ethical positions are simply delivered to the students as fact. I am at the point where I think that teaching kids to question ethical axioms will get them in trouble.

Question - is modern day 'ethical' instruction simply just a neoliberal /technocratic default setting for moral relativists?

Yet, if we approach the world in this way, it does not seem that we will be able to learn much of anything. For instance, if we doubt every word in our physics textbook, if we cannot get past a suspicion that the entire field is an elaborate hoax, etc. we shall never learn physics. Likewise, we cannot hope to learn to speak Spanish if we doubt the accuracy of every Spanish speaker as they attempt to instruct us. It is only after we have understood a topic that we can have an informed opinion about it. For example, even if it were really true that some key element in modern physics is mistaken, we can hardly expect to be able to identify this problem, or to find a solution to it, while remaining ignorant of the subject because we have refused to learn about it due to our concerns over accepting error. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Isn't this a false binary? I doubt any word, written or spoken anywhere and by anyone, on principle. I don't think that disqualifies me from trusting a particular source to be mostly correct, and therefore using it to improve on my own ethical / aesthetic 'doing'?

I guess I just don't see the need for something to be 'true' in order for it to be a meaningful target, in the present moment.

Hey man, (assuming 'man' given the nickname) I am on the lookout for reading recommendations, so I appreciate any you toss my way. Charles Taylor is someone I've meant to read as a Canadian. I struggle with technical primary sources, and am not as well read on the classics as a result.

I'm on the lookout in particular for 'essential' primary sources that don't seem so intentionally obscure. I get that the task of processing these works is sort of the point, but time is finite. And also essential 'adjacent' texts, I loved that Sarah Bakewell book.

I kind of approach every subject with a 'how would I explain this to kids' mentality, not in the dumbing down sense of things, but in the scaffolding sense.

Perhaps approaching all ethical questions from the perspective of how to explain / explore / compel / impart / etc. these concepts with children is worthwhile?

In a practical sense, in today’s climate of distrust, and just stubborn ignorance, no one wants to even listen to each other, let alone devise together a law that will equally tell all parties what to do and what not to do — Fire Ologist

Right, well said. I appreciate people using philosophy to analyze our current moment. It seems the best equipped discipline to make sense of things, right now. So many disciplines have been completely captured, ideologically. The rigour of the thinking required by philosophy contrasts with the rest of the humanities, the arts, whatever you want to call this collective, who are guilty of all sorts of academic failings right now.

This is the air we breathe, and I assume a lot of people here on TPF are aware of, adjacent to or even profoundly affected by this woke capture of many institutions. This goes far beyond education. Morality via algorithim, delivered via screen.

So applying the tools of philosophy to the culture wars is fascinating to me as a lay social scientist appalled by the state of the field. Not to sound partisan. I am a conscientious objector. It's just that my entire adult life in Canada has been lived in progressive environments, my employer is arguably the wokest institution on the planet - this is the gestalt I can best analyze.

"Good to be moral" is not how I would put it. Good to be good?

"Seems to me, even if we are certain about metaphysical absolute objective truth, and certain we have found it in the moral code we consent to with our whole hearts, we are still able to render this moral system futile".

I always think about William James and the 'Will to Believe" on subjects such as this.

What if we changed your postulation to "not-at-all certain"? Certainty doesn't matter. The lack of objectivity is not a central problem for me here.

I resonate with your language, the phrase "the spectre of futility creeps" is dynamite metaphor, nicely done. Brings to mind pessimism, which I discovered by accident ordering "The Conspiracy Against the Human Race" thinking I was ordering a horror story, and instead getting the only work of philosophy by this dark, underground horror writer I wanted to check out.

It's a perfect marriage for me, the language of horror expressing the emptiness of existence in a world in which there is no meaning. I do some creative writing as a hobby and I find pessimistic philosophy a great source of dark inspiration - I would love to have shared, say, parts of True Detective season one with a high school philosophy class.

Again, I'm self taught, so there are gaps in my basic philosophical knowledge no doubt, but the 'pessimist' philosophers Ligotti describes sound to me like the logical end game for a world that ceases to aspire to morality, or shared humanity, or goodness, or whatever and however we can best define that, right now.

A perpetual creation of the world we wish to see? Does that make me an existentialist?

The pessimists Ligotti describes, along with Ligotti himself (a lay philosopher), present a bleak vision, and the potential that the pessimists, or anti-natalists might be 'right'? That risk, however small, is enough for me to 'make the choice' to believe. I know that is not the language James uses to describe it, but that's the concept I endorse, I suppose?

And then I guess, to try and engage with people and yourself, perpetually, in an act of creation. Sounds exhausting...

The pace of the conversation for me is fast at TPF, being largely disconnected from the online world, and somewhat out of practice with certain thinkers and terms, but It's posts like yours that are challenging me to think hard before replying!

Yeah. I primarily work with 5-12 year olds in education. I'm the only bloke in my work cohort. You work with kids yourself right? Do you also think that the boys are picking up relatively traditional norms - in the playground - at the same time as being demanded to follow other ones -in the classroom-? I think it's a great thing that all the kids I'm aware of are getting eg courses on self expression and emotion language, but the boys still can't use it without stigma. There also still seems to be that element of casual violence among the working class boys, which is still socially rewarded. — fdrake

Hi fdrake,

Sorry it took me a couple of days to reply.

I do (did) work with high school kids. There are more male adults in HS generally, mostly teachers - your PE teachers, tech, sometimes math and science. I teach English and Social Sciences, and those departments are heavily female. I did some coaching too, likely the environment in which I saw the most 'unguarded' or natural kid-behaviour, but to be honest, I saw more 'teen' behaviour than specifically gendered behaviour.

I guess where I saw gendered behaviour most was in the classroom, in what they were interested in / engaged by. High school kids have more options to pursue their own interests, but everybody has to take English every year, for example, and some of the boys have a less-favourable view of reading.

But reading - what we call literature - is as gendered as anything. Boys, for the entirety of my career, and per the literature I've seen, have been more likely to enjoy 'informational' or 'task-oriented' reading, which we often describe as 'not literature', whereas 'literature' - fiction - requires empathizing, provides no clear, tangible benefits (now I know how to ...) - things that girls are better at than boys

This isn't socialized behaviour I'm talking about, this is more evolutionary biology, and I know that discipline offends some people who feel that it delegitimizes their sense of agency, but that to me is misunderstanding the social sciences. On the aggregate, yes, there are behaviours that are more typical of boys - running around, taking risks, needing to move, requiring concrete reasons, and of girls - empathy, social intelligence, and so on.

I mean, just look at a class of grade 9s. Many of the girls appear to be young women, and most of the boys remain boys. Do you notice this at any point with your cohort?

So what we call 'gendered' behaviour is often not - it's natural behaviour, in an environment better suited to female success than male.

Even the 'emotion language' topic is 'feminized' or 'gendered' female, even though that's not a thing this subject addresses - we are only concerned with gendered 'male' behaviour, since 'maleness' is the problem, per the consensus. The entire project seems to be making the boys more like girls.

Not to mention the whole 'Bad Therapy' argument, Abigail Shrier's book, condemning the therapy culture that permeates our children's lives and which may be actually causing the spikes in youth mental health.

In other words, talking about your emotions all the time leads to hypersensitivity, rumination, etc.

All of this is generalization - there are definitely kids who benefit from emotional literacy, girls who can't sit still and boys who love Jane Austen.

I imagine it might be actually harder for boys your student's age to express emotions? By the time I was getting them, it seemed to have been relatively normalized.

Even in terms of student violence, I don't see a major distinction in terms of gender, which is alarming. Yes, social class is an indicator, but there was a distinct, female style of violent conflict. As for raw numbers, I don't know anything recently, and its definitely still more 'male' behaviour, but it feels like the girls are closing the gap.

How do these thoughts relate to your experiences with the younger students, and in a different country?

My assumption is that the WEIRD countries all have some sort of ideological capture of educational institutions. Here in Toronto, I work(ed) for what I jokingly started describing as the wokest institution in the world, the Toronto District School Board. I might be right in that joke.

Do you, as a guy, feel any differently from your colleagues on any of these subjects? Do you feel empowered to offer opinions or to disagree with orthodoxy? And did you catch that series, "Adolescence"? It seems of the gestalt that we are discussing here, and I thought it pretty good, certainly better than a lot of the hot takes it's generated in the 'press'.

Sorry for the long post, I was so engaged reading 'Bad Therapy' I had a lot of thoughts!

I think the worst instance of the above I heard, again just this year, is in the context of body dysmorphia. Body dysmorphia among young boys is at parity with young girls these days. The response I heard was, paraphrase, "well men will just have to get used to doing what women have all this time".

There is a lot of needless combativeness. — fdrake

I agree with you completely. I've heard and read that paraphrase, in various incarnations, more times than I can remember. Rhetorically, two wrongs do not make a right. Pragmatically, 'suck it up buttercup' alienates, rather than influences.

I just finished reading Toure Reed's "Toward Freedom", about the dangers of 'race reductionism', as a barrier to the sort of project that actually does/did provide material improvements for minority groups, with his focus on black Americans.

He sees identitarianism as a tool, wielded by neoliberals, to divide people - poor and working-class blacks, whites, others - from the fight against class inequality, which of course would threaten the status and privilege of said neoliberals. (Not to suggest some sort of Machiavellian mastermind behind the curtain - Reed argues that much of this thinking is well-intentioned).

I think this concept of 'reductionism' can be extended to consider a 'gender reductionism' trend, or really, a 'marginalized reductionism'. This might just be a fancy way of saying 'wokeness' but I think the flaws in wokeness are central to this discussion, and more predictive of a male rightward shift than misogyny.

11 points, 22 points... and 101 points. Which should be our primary concern? — Banno

The utilitarian concern should be the primary objective. But Banno, I disagree with your implication that this means it is a distraction to improve upon problems of a smaller scale.

Not that males failing in schools is small in scale. Sure, you can quote outliers such as boys in math, but to imply that there are 'mixed results' is flat out wrong. Boys graduate less, perform worse, earn fewer degrees, are punished more often and more severely than they used to be - not simply a moving target problem comparing boys to girls, but to compare boys to previous generations of boys. They dislike school more, read less. They encounter far fewer male role models - one of the only domains in which having someone who 'looks like me' teaching seems to make a difference.

My critique of Reeves is the common one that he is blaming schools for general societal problems. It's a strategy adopted by folk - politicians - so they can ignore the actual issue by blaming the teaching profession. — Banno

Have you read the book? I don't think this is a fair characterization at all. I am a high school teacher, and I'm far more likely to blame schools than Reeves.

Reeves is milquetoast ... he is as non threatening / accusatory as possible, in the book and in his public appearances, and in contrast to some of those who disagree with him, the "I bathe in male tears" types. Reeves talks about this at length in fact, his feminism, his support for the way things are changing, the political risk he was talking in even raising the subject at all. He bends over backwards NOT to point fingers.

Check out his appearance on the Daily Show a few weeks back. Check out "Are Men OK" in the Nation, March 11.

To try and tie my ramblings together, debates such as this one are driven by angry extremists, those with the 'subterranean norms', coming from both ends of the political spectrum. Reeves himself said he was writing his book for average moms with boys. Focusing on the awfulness of Andrew Tate and Donald Trump while ignoring, say, the bugbear in Hoff Sommers book, Carol Gilligan, and her ilk is clearly flawed thinking, but I would go further and say that focusing on the extremists, in any direction, as if they are informative of average people, is needless division.

Banno, when you wave at class inequality, that is where I find common ground with you. "No Politics but Class Politics"?

Hey Banno, I am glad girls are doing well in STEM. One thing that’s missing from this conversation is the recognition that there do seem to be strong sex-based preferences in terms of areas of study and careers. Women and girls placing more value on personal and family time. Subject matters of higher interest. I can’t think of any Specific benefits for having both male and female engineers, but what we know about education with children does show real value for students to have both. So the fact that we get programs for girls in STEM but not boys in HEAL reveals that this is not about the advantages of diversity in all fields, but rather the advancement of a political belief based on oppression and victimhood, a political belief that is based in some objective truth, but blind to its own limitations.

Richard Reeves goes through this issue at length in his book. He argues that considerations of sex and gender do not need to be viewed as zero-sum, but due to political trends, conversations about the struggles of young men and boys are often framed as threatening to the progress of girls and women.

Remember, we are talking about boys and girls here. In our public schools, boys have been falling behind for decades, and yet people seem to be oblivious to this fact, or worse, seem to think it’s warranted retribution. Again, we are talking about children.

Are you aware of how far behind boys and men are in the past decades? Deaths of despair? Educational outcomes? Perhaps you are. I imagine that if you polled your people, the average response would be that girls are more disadvantaged in school still.

You can’t address a problem that you don’t recognize exists, and I sincerely worry that the majority of my teaching colleagues do not realize this, despite the decades of data.

Hello philosophy forum!

This is an interesting conversation, and an important one, but I don't see much awareness of the fact that women raise our children, boys and girls, more than men do, and that some of the 'crisis' of masculinity can be perceived as a preference for 'female' values, by females, in feminized spaces.

The 'caregiver burden' is argued as evidence for the patriarchy, so surely this implies agreement that moms parent more than dads, in general. And we can count the number of teachers. I'd be happy to provide stats in anyone wants, but two thirds to three quarters of your kids teachers being female, throughout their lives, is a fair estimation most places. Certain boys are not well-served by a lack of male role models. Surely, this is not contentious?

I know I can get in trouble here if not careful to provide evidence, but it is beyond dispute that boys have been falling behind girls in schools, the first major socializing institution in the lives of most people in the WEIRD world, for decades. Christina Hoff Sommers outlines this with "The War Against Boys" in 2000, and Richard Reeves re-confirmed the same trends in 2022 with his "Of Boys and Men". But those are just two of many worthy titles.

I certainly saw this from the outset of my high school teaching career in 1997. Anecdotal, but anecdote has value when it illustrates statistics.

One thing I appreciate about Reeves is his insistence that if moderates can't offer compelling alternatives, radicals will fill the void. So if it's between 'boys are inherently toxic' and 'Andrew Tate'? It's not like we are offering boys much of a choice in the first place.

I would suggest that the majority of people generally worried about 'problems of masculinity' are worried about it from the perspective of women, but in so doing they are failing to recognize how harmful constructions of masculinity and femininity both are for men and boys as well as women and girls, and to what degree women are also responsible for these constructions.

It should go without saying that gendered violence IS dramatically more of a male-caused problem, that there are many legit, negative examples of 'the patriarchy', especially in powerful 'elite' males. This shouldn't prevent us from discussing the less visible problem. I find it strange to call boys underperforming girls in schools 'less visible' given how striking the data is, but this topic was almost never addressed in my decades teaching.

Sociological arguments that men are 'afraid' of seeing their power base diminished strike me as particularly inane. Certain elites perhaps, but the majority of people on the planet, male and female and however else people choose to define themselves, simply do not think this way.

The average incel, for example, is not operating from a position of 'power'. This is where intersectionality fails - only certain intersections count. Class is downplayed, unless as evidence of the greater (identity-based) evils of racism, sexism, homophobia, etc. Certain elements are left out of these conversations entirely. For example, 'beauty privilege' is likely more 'objective' - measurable - than 'racial privilege'.

It takes tremendous educational privilege to understand intersectionality, another example.

I see much of this debate as technocratic. Technocrats' educational privilege is why they get to determine who gets hired, what gets taught in schools, what laws are passed, which professions need affirmative action, and for whom, etc. Intersectionality can offer value, but to argue, as many technocrats do, that our public education is still primarily patriarchal, for example, is nuts.

We need programs, still, for girls in STEM, despite decades of females dominating education in general, but programs for boys in HEAL is misogyny? If you doubt me, simply Google Reeves' book and read some reviews.

From the first review I found after typing that, in The Guardian, the opening sentence:

"Something is rotten in the state of manhood. Guilty of the crime of patriarchy, it is also tainted by toxic masculinity, the belief that most social ills – everything from murder and rape to online abuse – stem from men being men".

And this is one of the fair reviews! Reeves himself is a centrist, kind to a fault towards those that disagree with him, and yet if you head to Reddit, say, it's pretty common for he and his arguments to be outright derided. Hoff Sommers is in the same boat.

Frankly, what other identity discipline is dominated by people outside of that identity? The majority of modern books about men are written by women, which is literally unimaginable for any other demographic group outside of 'white people'.

Is evolutionary biology so tainted, 'coded right', that we can't acknowledge that as a species with two primary sexes, (leaving intersex and trans out as the statistical minority they are, for the sake of simplicity) one sex live lives as smaller and physically weaker on average than the other? And that sex is the one who carries and births the next generation? Who are then best equipped to form the original primary bond with the child? And that there are evolutionary differences in the sexes as a result of this, that exist in conversation with the 'social construction' of gender?

Not to excuse bias, ignore abuse, or suggest that past norms should dictate the present. But these roles, male and female, are essential, historical aspects of human existence. Those don't change quickly.

If one acknowledges some role for biology, it's no wonder our schools prefer 'feminized' behaviour. Given that girls are more empathetic, at younger ages, than boys, they are better behaved. They are more mature, thus able to integrate with others earlier. They are less prone to physical explosions of energy, so as we reduce recess time and non-academic course options in our schools, they adapt more quickly than boys.

When doing sociology, we are not predicting what one individual will do, nor why they will do it. We are charting what happens when groups of people engage in certain similar types of behaviour. It is by definition a 'soft' science. Too often, I fear, we forget that, and ascribe problematic morals to members of
groups based solely on their membership in said group.

Long story short, I think that, to the extent that we have problems with masculinity, it is because we are failing to raise boys AND girls both. The hideous Tates of the world are symptoms, not causes.

My fourth comment here on the PF. I hope I'm managing to do this respectfully!

Hello Mr. Murray,
(16 years of Catholic school and that’s the only way I can address high school teachers — Fire Ologist

Hi Fire Ologist, thanks for the welcome, and that's funny - I still have students who call me Mr. Murray, despite my promising them they can call me what they want when they graduate. Families, careers, and they still call me Mr. ...

I appreciate the respect shown teachers though, and I am happy you had that inspiring experience in English class. Not everybody has those.

what would be the point of the whole discussion if we could not distill how to act and how not to act towards each other in some form that we can all share and look to — Fire Ologist

Well said. I think my attraction back to philosophy has come from precisely this .... it seems to me that so much of what passes as morality is simply an 'act of faith', which is fine if we acknowledge it to be incomplete, a work in progress, and that all we aspire towards is synthetic, in a sense. 'Many paths, one truth'.

This synthesizing project is relational, based on reason, responsibility and a striving towards objectivity - in keeping with your model. I always saw my role as a high school teacher, welcoming students from seemingly everywhere, as working towards this synthesis.

But to aspire towards this, one has to remain 'whole-hearted and half-sure'.

To be specific, I have major problems with 'wokeness', which is often presented as a completed project, one that has come to absolutely dominate our educational institutions in a remarkably short time. The 'woke' have set out to 'dismantle' objectivity as white supremacist, which, per your 'required playing pieces', undermines the entire project. The woke prioritize 'lived experience' - anecdote - above all else, but only the lived experience of the 'marginalized'.

I find this dangerous, the moving target of 'marginalization', the refusal to play with the pieces we've played with, as human beings, since we first started thinking about morality. It seems to me that the response to this is synthetic - to identify shared values in religion, philosophy, cultural tradition, science, storytelling, etc and to bring the best of the various means of thinking into conversations with each other.

And I worry about a belief system that appears to be more religious than scholarly, but has managed to claim a scholarly standing that derives from it's own 'inherent' virtuousness.

This is true of all sorts of belief systems, it's just this new one, 'wokeness', that has me wondering what our shared language for moral discussion is / should be.

I spent some time thinking about your post and how to reply, and still find myself on shaky ground. The only conclusion I can come up with is that it is the act of pursuing an 'objective' morality, in free dialogue with others, seems essentially, necessarily 'human', even though the end goal is almost certainly unattainable.

That's my best practice, currently.

What would you recommend for dialogue with people who seem to be playing checkers with a chess set?

a bunch of inborn genetic, biological, neurological, mental, and psychological processes, structures, capacities, drives, and instincts which are modified during development and by experience and socialization. — T Clark

Hey T Clark, thanks for the welcome. I did read your posts, and found myself in agreement with your components of 'human nature', although I was wondering how you would define 'mental'?

I think of this sort of knowledge as an 'act of faith', ultimately. To say that we can define human nature seems impossible to me, given that our understanding of what that means is inevitably evolving.

But just because you have to 'choose' to believe, the act of faith itself being a choice, does not mean you are wrong. Your concept of this might be perfect, somehow, or it could be the best possible given what we know, in this moment, etc. There are many ways this could be the best way to think without it being objectively true.

Hence my use of 'aspirational'. A professor once told me that to be ethical in the face of modern uncertainty was to be 'whole-hearted and half-sure', and that stay stays with me today. I don't know much about the ancient Greeks, but the premise of 'virtue ethics' is, to my understanding, a project of maximizing your potential for good.

To me, we can't 'know' what human nature is, what the right thing to do is, but we can conclude that we are made better by having these 'ideals' to aspire towards, and then acting.

Your Chuang Tzu quote expresses a very similar premise, I believe. It's feels a 'process' philosophy. I find Buddhism similar, and personally appealing, having lived in Japan for a few years and traveled the region in the summers. Visiting all those temples and shrines in Tokyo, and in Thailand, Vietnam, etc, heck, even the churches of England when I was still calling myself a backpacker - all of those experiences helped me to ground my understanding of those religions in physical terms, and it was always the Buddhist temples I was most attracted to.

I struggle with deontological or utilitarian ethics simply due to the impossibility of objectivity, and my being an atheist. There is no 'leap of faith' for me to take. Only philosophically-informed choices to make. (or so I hope!)

But I am all for people, such as yourself, making a thoughtful decision to be relativistic, for a variety of possible reasons. It's only the default relativists I worry about, because it can lead to some collective problems with narcissism and rudderlessness. It's easy to be a lousy relativist. It's hard to be a good one?

"Your open minded and sympathetic attitude about religion is not a popular one here on the forum, which has a record of knee-jerk religious bigotry".

Thanks. Being educated in philosophy outside of the academy, I just looked at the history of philosophy (that I was supposed to be able to deliver to 17 year-olds in one semester), and saw so much done in historical contexts that necessitated an exchange between philosophy and religion that it was impossible for me to imagine disentangling them? I had super diverse classes here in downtown Toronto, including many Muslim students, Orthodox Greeks, etc., given my neighbourhood, and found this a great way to engage them.

I enjoyed thinking about your post.

Hi everyone, I just joined up, and it's conversations like this one that caught my interest in the first place. I came to philosophy through circumstance - I had a chance to take over a retiring teacher's grade 12 philosophy course, and since that would mean I could teach it my way until I retired, if I so desired, I decided to teach myself some philosophy.

Fifteen years later, I've come back to philosophy following some personal losses and trauma, that led to personal dissatisfaction with 'spiritual' answers to moral questions. Reading secular philosophy really helped me get through some dark stuff.

So apologies in advance if I miss something obvious to those with sharper minds than mine, formal academic training, etc. I predict I will make some mistakes... and I hope people point them out to me!

As for the topic, it seems to me like the concept of 'human nature' is in the same category as 'objective morality', in that both are aspirational and unknowable, but worthwhile pursuits nonetheless. It is in pursuing these ideals that we can honor our human nature / act 'morally'.

I also endorse the Sam Harris book, he makes a strong case, and I feel my personal stance is very close to his, except that I do believe religion, (human traditions of morality, as they were developed and situated in time, ever-evolving) and even spiritual traditions such as meditation, that can be practiced in secular fashion, all bring value to the pursuit of an 'objective' morality.

I'm an atheist, but am not hostile to religion itself. Like any ideology or belief system, flawed and imperfect, to my mind, but I respect the 'goodness' of some of the religious people I've known far too much to discount that this is a moral practice with tangible positive outcomes.

Much of my interest in moral philosophy came from my first encounters with moral relativism in 'the wild', at university in the 90s. It seemed that, in the rare circumstances (imagine that today) a professor addressed morality directly in my social sciences and English courses, they were expressing morally relativistic beliefs.

Since then, I've been somewhat repelled by the premise, not as a considered stance by those who have done the work to decide on relativism, but rather as a default premise amongst people who might not think much about anything philosophical. A 'lazy relativism' if you will.

I still think like the high school teacher I was, so I try to think of the 'simplest' way to summarize the subject being discussed - in that spirit, is this not simply a question of whether or not moral relativism is inevitable?