There's nothing more irritating to a philosopher than someone who almost agrees with them.

I actually agree with this, — S

It was too good to last.

You're telling me that I should delete, even though you yourself said that I'm always wrong? — S

Sure. If you're a moderator, moderate. Get things wrong, apologise, resign, get banned, whatever. I started looking at the thread, and I think I'd ban the lot of you and delete the whole thing. But I'm a gummy old man, and you got off lightly.

Incidentally, can one still edit one's posts, (I mean moderate oneself) in a closed thread?

The essence of my problem with closed threads - is this really the last word on idealist logic?

No, deletion looks better - strong and competent; closure looks like 'I
don't like this but I don't know how to deal with it.

Not all of it was shit, but it had clearly run its course and was degenerating beyond repair. — Baden

So delete the shit.

Caveat. I haven't looked at the thread, so I'm theorising.

I don't much like the closing thing. Flamewars, ok, guidelines ok, otherwise, if people want to waste their time going in circles why not give them some room so they can stay out of my more illuminating productive and interesting threads. If it's shit, delete it, and if it is merely wrong or less than wrong, let the resident genii have at it.

Or should that be geniarses? But apart from that S is wrong about everything, that goes without saying.

I think in general our society is actually becoming more ideologically disposed against competition. Instead, we tell everyone that it's not about winning but having fun, everyone is special and great. — Judaka

Yes, I have heard that rhetoric too. I remember there was a version I heard at school - "It's not whether you win or lose, it's how you play the game. However, the way the school was organised was that everything from building model aeroplanes to drama to tying your tie was made into a competition and winning was made really really important, with cups, with prize-giving, with social status, little privileges, and losing was punished in little ways too. It's called doublespeak, and there's a lot of it about.

People have always and will always think about things in competitive terms and will enjoy competition and the public humiliation of not just losers but anyone really. — Judaka

You'd be amazed at how even tv has changed in just a few years. Cookery programmes in the 60's were ... educational! Like, one person, demonstrating a recipe. They were like cookery classes at school, which were also a thing, because there weren't any celebrity chefs, any more than there were celebrity bin-men. But people needed to eat, so they needed to cook. Hurrah for ordinary! Not a slogan you are probably familiar with.

I can't tell you how much that language bothers me. — Marchesk

'The absolute' is a special philosophical realm of 'you're not allowed to question'. See also 'absolute bullshit'.

I hold to my own absolute truth: no cunning arrangement of words can oblige things to be thus and not so.

Shall we we say that 'coming from' already presumes space and time?

So the question for you. If we exclude the ideal, "certainty" from being the absolute, deny that certainty is absolute, doesn't this open the door to doubt as the absolute? — Metaphysician Undercover

No. If I am certain, I have no doubt. If I am doubtful, I am uncertain. But since these are both frames of mind, I don't even know what it might mean for them to be absolute.

So where does it all come from?

What do those things have to do with humiliation — Judaka

Humiliation is the feeling of loss of status. In a zero sum game the winner gains status and the losers lose it in proportion.

and what makes you believe that we didn't always have a penchant for things like sensationalism and melodrama?

I don't think that. People have aways tended to like sugary foods, modern people tend to eat more of them, because bla bla.

If society is trending towards isolation, passivity and despair, why is the media partly to blame for this and why do you think society is trending towards those things?

Media need to excite because viewing is passive. Specifically, watching a food programme does not tickle the taste buds or satisfy hunger. So they need to make a bland experience exciting by turning it into a competition with winners and losers. So the topic of food is no longer ideologically about sharing, meeting each others needs, cooperating, but about competing to impress the experts and win the Masterchef crown, or apron or whatever it is. And there can only be one winner, so it mainly about people losing and leaving.
So it's exciting, and people watch, and while they watch, they learn that cooking food is very difficult and dangerous, and they'd better get in a takeaway.

It's like the facebook effect. The only thing facebook wants is to grow facebook, and make everyone look at facebook and facebook ads, and give facebook their information. They don't do this by making everyone happy, but by making everyone anxious, just as every advert humiliates you a little. "You're so dumb, you you can't even brush your own teeth. But with Dr Foul's patent tooth brushing device, even you can brush like a pro."

The direction of sensationalism, melodrama, zero-sum competition with winner takes all, along with isolation, passivity and despair.

When the absolute is excluded, then certainty can only be a function of probability. — Metaphysician Undercover

Well no. When the absolute is excluded, and when one acknowledges that this includes absolute doubt as well as absolute knowledge, something we seem to disagree about, then certainty becomes a matter of psychology, of the attitude one takes, the questions one does and does not ask, of the behaviour of the person in relation to things. One can always make room for doubt, but if one does always make room for doubt, then one ends up with no room for anything else. Therefore, demand reasons to believe and reasons to doubt equally, that thy days may be long in the land.

Some people don't like bread and like only cheese. Some people are lactose intolerant. — Harry Hindu

Well they can all just fuck off and die, can't they?

Are you saying humiliation is socially constructed? If so, are you saying it's a recent thing? I believe that's what you're saying but I need confirmation. — Judaka

No. I mean yes. I mean no. If you haven't experienced humiliation, then clearly you are too fuck-witted to follow this discussion, never mind participate in it.

D'you see what I did there? I attempted to invoke a sensation of momentary humiliation in you, in order to demonstrate that it is a feeling, a sensation, a psychological condition or relation to oneself. But it is also a social effect, because it involves me, in this case, presenting you with an image of yourself from my p.o.v. in conflict with the one you propose by posting. The social world is not a clean world; it is infected with the physical and with the psychological, and in turn infects them. There is the physical shrinking shamefaced hangdog behaviour that dogs exhibit as well as humans, there is the psychological experience that that behaviour expresses, and there is the social interaction that produces it.

And nothing is new about this, it is as old as Adam or older. All I am saying about modernity is that it moves in a certain direction ideologically because of the exigencies of modern media. Another amusing example is that the need of the porn industry to get a clear shot has produced the strange aesthetic of pubic shaving. It becomes the norm because that's what everyone sees... and try and ignore the itching, rashes, and infections that result, or buy some 'product'...

The possibility of a "not-normal" situation creates the possibility of a mistake in understanding. The goal is to avoid mistakes in understanding. This requires that we doubt the normalcy of every situation. If we are inclined to assume that the situation is normal, because there is a high probability that the situation will be normal, and therefore we do not doubt the normalcy of the situation in each instance, then when the improbable "not normal" situation occurs, it will slip past our attention and mistake will occur. — Metaphysician Undercover

Ok. How does that work out for you? Ever make a mistake?

'can be constructed either way'

One part of me - the sensitive, sad - really wants this to be true. Another part - the agonistic, eristic - doesn't. The reflective part of me isn't sure, but skews pessimistic. — csalisbury

I don't understand all your references, I'm sorry. But read that 'can be' in the light of the necessary limits exemplified by television. If I am heading towards a conclusion, I suppose it is an attempt to understand my own other.

Rich (or socially established) whites maintain their identity by denying it and decrying identity in general. So too maintaining and denying dignity-through-de-dignifying.

Is it escapable? In the vale of tears? — csalisbury

Well that is your judgement to make. I will defend and deny my identity by not arguing either way. Indeed, I am not arguing against competition and zero sum games. I'm just saying that when I was a kid, we used to go to the beach and build a sandcastle, and pick up some pretty wet stones and go for a swim. and nobody won, and nobody lost, and everyone got a prize of an ice cream. And that was an exciting wonderful day, even though when the stones dried out they looked rather dull. And once a year, there would be a ploughing competition, and someone would win and the others lose, but the rest of the time folks would just plough as needed, and it would be good enough. And I make bread every few days, because I like to, and sometimes it is just so, and sometimes it is a bit not quite, and sometimes I make something a bit fancy. But I don't plan to be on the Great British Bake Off, any more than I plan to be on the Great British Fuck Off. They actually turn a joy to a misery for the titillation of spectators.

Now, if one reflects that back onto identity, then the wisdom of Harry:

I can talk highly of myself without bringing others down, — Harry Hindu

... while I might quibble with the hierarchical reference, is my own view exactly. My bread is good, and it really doesn't matter if someone else's bread is better or worse, as long as there is cheese.

one cannot avoid doubt by judging the normalcy of the circumstances, because the very premise which produces the need for that judgement, the possibility that the circumstances might be abnormal, itself justifies doubt. — Metaphysician Undercover

Indeed one cannot, and so one does not make such a judgement. In making that judgement one would have already raised the question that the judgement would give one reason to raise or not to raise. The whole point is that one does not need a reason not to doubt, but a reason to doubt. If I notice the ground around the post is disturbed, or the paint is still wet, then I might have a reason to doubt - I don't need a reason not to doubt that the sign post is doing its job. What you seem to be describing is close to OCD. And my experience of living with someone with OCD is that the endless unjustified self-doubt in the end makes decisions less reliable not more.

Cool, nothing is normal. That must make life difficult.

All you are saying is that my inability to understand what you mean by "normal circumstances" doesn't make sense to you. — Metaphysician Undercover

No I'm not. I'm saying it doesn't make sense at all, to me to you, or to Norman the Norm.

You cannot just tell the person, your doubt doesn't make sense to me, — Metaphysician Undercover

You can accuse me of this, but not Wittgenstein. He's "just" written a great fat book going into it in exhaustive detail from every possible angle with many many examples. Me, I'm about ready to make with the poker already.

If you happen to believe that under "normal circumstances", it does not make sense to ask for clarification of a statement, in order to avoid misunderstanding, then you need to explain how one would know whether the circumstances are normal or not, in order to avoid asking for clarification (in an effort to avoid misunderstanding), in times when it doesn't make sense to ask for clarification. — Metaphysician Undercover

No, that's exactly what I don't need to explain, because that is exactly what I have just explained it doesn't make sense to ask for further explanation of. One can, by definition, only tell normality by experience, Normally I have coffee for breakfast, if I don't, circumstances are not normal; perhaps the coffee has run out, perhaps I have died, perhaps some other abnormality. If you didn't know what I normally have for breakfast, there is no way of knowing whether my lying corpse-like on the kitchen floor is normal or not.

Who is more humiliated here?
— Baden

That's a wrong question. — unenlightened

There is a confusion; if as I have been suggesting, humiliation is loss of status - a public matter, if somewhat nebulous, of social standing, then we can answer the question. And the answer will have to do with how the incident feeds out into the wider world, who controls the story, how the other managers and other workers respond.

The confusion, though is that the question seems to want to measure personal feelings. As though the incident has no external consequences, but is a matter of states of mind. Suppose I say, 'I am very sensitive, so I suffer more humiliation than you would in the same situation.' And you might reply, 'Actually you are wrong, you think you are very sensitive but actually you are rather insensitive and don't even notice the sensitivity of others.' Perhaps I have been like Nelson all these years...

There is the status you have in the community, official and unofficial.
There is the status you perform in the community that you believe or not
There is the status of the heart, what you say to the mirror.

____________________________________________________________________________________

I'm always stuck in these conversations at the beginning. I assume you have a state of mind, I assume you live in a society. I'd like to be able to assume that you understand that nationality is a social construct, and that this means something.

It means you don't generally get to choose your nationality, you don't get to ignore it. It is something that affects your life, where you can live, what you can do. It also means it is made up by humans, and is something you can be stripped of at the stroke of a pen.

You might have a deeply held belief in the oneness of humanity, to the extent that you claim citizenship of the world. This is a personal construct. It only becomes a social construct when the border guards will let you pass.

" If dignity is a zero sum game... ", I said in my second post. And since then there has been a fruitless discussion of whether it is or it isn't.

As if there were a fact of the matter. :roll:

There is no fact of the matter because it is a social construct and can be constructed either way. And that was the point of mentioning its featuring on television, a major means of social construction.

It's time to get used to the fact that you live in a world where most of the facts are made up, but are still facts in the way they impinge on you, and the way you have no choice about them.

So here's how it goes down. You're a tv executive with time to fill, and you decide to make a programme about needlework. God, that's about as dull as ditchwater, how can we spice it up? I know, we'll introduce some 'experts' and have them set tasks for this other group of 'ordinary people' with a time limit , and then their work will be judged, and they'll gradually be thrown off until the last on is the winner... call it the Great British Prick off. So the excitement of jeopardy needs to be added to needlework in order to make it worth watching rather than doing. Winners and losers, zero sum. One does needlework to make a product, and that is not zero sum, but this is television, not needlework. The nature of the flickering screen dictates the game, and the game that we watch for half the day, is liable to become the game we play for the other half. And you see it here - conversation becomes battle, we are not looking together, but competing.

Right, so how would you know whether the circumstances are normal or not, to know whether you ought to doubt your reading or not? What even constitutes "normal circumstances"? — Metaphysician Undercover

Yes. The fact that I have just answered the questions you are asking, indicates that circumstances are not normal. Let me put it simply. Normality is what is assumed to be the case until something abnormal impinges. In this case, what is abnormal is your question about knowing what is normal. I don't need a reason to think that sign posts stand at junctions and indicate what lies down the road. That's normal. The answer to, 'how would you know ...?' is 'why would you ask ...? And you might have a good reason for asking, for thinking things might not be normal. But you have to bring that forward before your question makes sense, otherwise it becomes one of those endlessly repeating games. How would you know you are asking a sensible question?

This passage at 85: "So I can say, the sign-post does after all leave no room for doubt." is inconsistent with this passage at 87: "The sign-post is in order—if, under normal circumstances, it fulfils its purpose." The latter "if, under normal circumstances, it fulfils its purpose", is inconsistent with "no room for doubt". — Metaphysician Undercover

Who is Norman the Normal? Expecting the German invasion, we Brits turned the signposts around, and took down the railway station signs. Some people collect old signs. These are not normal circumstances. Sign posts belong at crossroads, at the parting of ways. I don't know how i know, but I do know,under normal circumstances, how to read a signpost. I think if there is something important being said here, it is where and when to theorise a conspiracy, and where and when it is fatuous and counterproductive. The line is somewhere short of "absolute certainty".

That's a wrong question.
— unenlightened

Sorry 'bout that, boss. ;) — Baden

Ah, perhaps that was too telegraphic. I've decided to be ill for a bit, so I'll maybe explain later if anyone is bothered.

Who is more humiliated here? — Baden

That's a wrong question.

humiliation can and does interpose at both ends of the power dynamic. — Baden

Agreed. and I think this is where authenticity can be invoked. In your example, the supervisor is not doing the job, the job is doing him, and so the bubble of imagined power makes him vulnerable. It's the same as my chess-player, who is vulnerable to a five-year-old if he's not as good as he thinks he is.

I think one has to be a bit careful though; the judge that sentences an innocent man, I suppose in some god's eye view one could say that the innocent can maintain his dignity, but in merely human terms, his authentic innocence does nothing for him. You get sold into slavery, you can be as virtuous and authentic as anything, you still get whipped and worked, and chained, and it would be invidious to make a comparison with any possible humiliation of the slave-owner.

There's kind of an exchange of power then, system power for personal identity power, which makes being on the bottom in some sense the best place re retaining authenticity. — Baden

I'm not sure where you and @csalisbury are going with this. My first suspicion is that it is a purely mechanical effect - "the system" empowers and alienates, because the power is not authentically owned in the first place. 'Moderator' is not a property of a poster but a software category. I cannot imagine what an 'authentic moderator' would be like. One gains the power of the machine by becoming a cog (or a sub-routine).

Also, I'm not at all sure that 'personal identity power' ( do you mean something like charisma?) is necessarily authentic in the first place.

On whom does the benefit of this brave insistence devolve? — Bitter Crank

On the brave contributors to this thread, especially the ones I have humiliated.
All those other chaps you have mentioned can go about their business in contented contradiction. Except these:

The group identity of people in Peru is a matter for Peruvians. — Bitter Crank

This is obviously bollocks. If I am a Peruvian, then it is a matter for me, and I decide to be a Peruvian. Therefore I am a Peruvian. Try that at the next border crossing and see how it goes.

And his is why I am identified as troll as hostile, as sexist. Because I always insist that there is an other to every identity, and every identification is an othering. Because I never allow the discussion to be only about them and not about us.

There is something screwy and knotted up about the way you process the topic of race. I just don't see how "white" is not a racial identity, how identifying as white is a hateful humiliation, how having a racial identity and talking about whiteness as an identity creates a vulnerability and so on. — Bitter Crank

Yes, it is screwy and knotted, how could it be otherwise? You surely don't expect race to have any legitimate significance, beyond the arbitrary social meanings imposed upon it? Indeed "white" is a social identity, very much so, and it has all the importance that has been projected on it. Here in the UK, it is almost considered racist to mention race, and people prefer to talk about 'ethnic minorities', and even on occasion 'ethnics'. And in another breath, there will be talk of 'British' or 'English' ethnicity and nationality become codes for race.

But when someone says, for example, "I don't really get the idea of using one's race, sex, or orientation as a major part of one's identity...", one has to wonder in all screwy knottiness, what it is they do not get, and why. And I don't have any difficulty understanding it, personally. I don't think of myself as "able-bodied", I take it for granted.

This taking for granted is the normality of identity.'We the people'. The position of maximum comfort is never to think of one's own identity; to be able to say without irony, "identity politics is divisive". As though only others have an identity.

Y'all might like to consider humiliation in relation to status.

To humiliate is to undermine social power, normally in a way that causes emotional pain. — Baden

Consider two humiliating scenarios. The first is being overtaken by an inferior, for example, the 5-year-old that thrashes you at chess, when you think you're a reasonably strong player. The second is rejection by a superior, for example, the moderator deletes your pearls of wisdom.

Note that a change of world view can enable one to avoid the humiliation. 'Chess is a silly game anyway, I never took much interest in it, and it would be an embarrassment to be any good at it, like admitting to liking Star Wars.' or 'It's a pathetic site anyway, the moderators are all biased, stupid, already my inferiors, and it was a mistake on my part ever to have posted.'

Perhaps one can see a connection here with the operation of jealousy - the status value of a trophy wife is greatly reduced if she is unfaithful. To lose status is humiliation...

What this shows is that sex (NOT their identity) is really, really important to you, and that you are a sexist, as if somehow you could glean someone's sex from posts on the internet - as if all women post the same. How sexist. — Harry Hindu

Very quick with the insults there. Have I offended you?

what do you say identity is? — tim wood

I write a lot about identity. Most of my threads are about various aspects. And this is, I think one of the best ways of discovering it. This is why I included that little moment from the banning thread in the op. If you have ever been enraged your own behalf, if you have ever felt the pain of humiliation, then you have begun to notice your identity. It is always personal, always a sensitivity, and always a status, always social.

I'm not looking for personal anecdotes here, butI think it s safe to assume that everyone has them, and probably as humiliator as well as humiliated. So I think this thread especially of mine will have a visceral clarity for everyone.

A secure identity is a component of a healthy personality.

Maybe a dozen components, give or take a few, make up one's identity. — Bitter Crank

Allow me to probe a little with this scalpel; it won't humiliate a bit.You are someone who has been much humiliated, and has built up many layers of armour, which you call a 'healthy personality'. Bluff, genial, self-deprecating, man-of the world, BC is the sock puppet who can afford to be honest because he is unreal and therefore invulnerable. He is a suit of armour of many components marvelously articulated and probably worn even in bed. He is a mechanical man made of components and cannot be hurt. Of the real vulnerable person beneath the armour, not much can be said beyond hurting, frightened, lonely.

I don't personally think it's necessarily racist to be proud of one's race. — Baden

No one is proud of having five fingers; no one is humiliated by having five fingers; no one identifies as five-fingered. But one's skin, one's size, one's hair, one's nose, lips, specs, t-shirt, can become targets of pride and humiliation, and matters of identity. This is what white privilege is - not to have a racial identity, and this is why it is a hateful humiliation to have it pointed out that white is a racial identity, and this is what talk about whiteness does; it call into question and creates a vulnerability.

I don't really get the idea of using one's race, sex, or orientation as a major part of one's identity, or being proud of these things. — Harry Hindu

It is odd that you mention son, brother, father, husband, the latter two as sources of pride, yet don't get sex or orientation as part of identity. Perhaps you can understand this sort of thing in terms of the defaults on an identity profile. White, male, heterosexual, five-fingered, they go without saying, and only 'deviations' need to be mentioned. I always thought of you as a woman.

"There can only be one winner."

Said with faux regret fifty times a week on a gameshow near you. If dignity is a zero sum game, then humiliation is how the dignity one is self-evidently born with is taken from one. Distinguished quite clearly from the self-deprecating humility adopted voluntarily by 'we' philosophers, white-men, winners; adopted proudly - I am so fucking cool, I don't mind making a fool of myself. Another humiliation for the peasants.

What you do not need if you have it, you will die and kill for when it is taken away. This is identity as the absolute meaning of life, the sine qua non of existence itself. Identity is tribe. We are the champions.

I find it hard to choose between a dog's answer, that Humans are really smart, and a cat's answer, that humans are uber-dumb. But you cannot count on your own answer or another human's answer, unless the answer is that humans are not stupid, and even then you can't count on it, except to say that such considerations suggest that a human that says humans are stupid is necessarily a stupid human, because either they are right, or they are wrong..

In times of great grief you are completely emotionless? — praxis

I think it is not wise to question such confessions. In times of great pain, such as stitching up a cut, my doctor applies a local anaesthetic. I see no reason to assume that the mind cannot function in a similar way, and indeed it is a fairly well known effect called 'shock'.

The contradiction I see in @Thesailor123's op is not so much that, but between "My personal belief is that we can control" and "renders me [... ] completely emotionless and blank."

One has to alienate oneself from what one wants to control, and this creates a division: one who believes and controls, v one who feels and is rendered. Both sides speak in the same sentence, and so the contradiction.

How does following one's own private rules differ from mere accident? — Banno

I can be diligent or occasionally lapse in my adherence to not stepping on the cracks, or wearing my underpants back to front, or that other thing I don't want to tell you; they are not accidents. I would think a better question would be, what makes them moral?

I tried to ask the hermit at the bottom of the garden, as he is the most moral person I know, but unfortunately, he has taken a vow of silence - either that or he just doesn't like me any more.

Yeah. Gallows humour. This is what happens when supposed leaders and opinion makers are guided by focus groups and opinion polls - endless chasing fantasies on the road to disaster. People are actually saying things like 'we survived the war...'

Comment of the day. Some government spokesman burbles on in a brexit 'statement'. Reporter comments, "Well if you understood that, you probably weren't listening carefully enough."

Let's be clear. Let's be clear. Let's be clear. Let's be clear. Let's be clear. Let's be clear. Let's be clear. Let's be clear. Let's be clear. Let's be clear. Let's be clear. Let's be clear. Let's be clear. Let's be clear. Let's be clear. Let's be clear. Let's be clear. Let's be clear. Let's be clear. Let's be clear. Let's be clear. Let's be clear. Let's be clear. Let's be clear. Let's be clear. Let's be clear. Let's be clear. Let's be clear. Let's be clear. Let's be clear. Let's be clear. Let's be clear. Let's be clear. Let's be clear. Let's be clear.

I have felt unhappy about not being happy. — Wallows

I have given up on all my dreams and desire to become "happy" — Wallows

Nothing bothers me anymore, I feel content, — Wallows

So, what am I getting wrong here? — Wallows

Great accomplishment seems imperfect,
Yet it does not outlive its usefulness.
Great fullness seems empty,
Yet it cannot be exhausted.

Great straightness seems twisted.
Great intelligence seems stupid.
Great elequence seems awkward.

Movement overcomes cold.
Stillness overcomes heat.
Stillness and tranquility set things in order in the universe. — Lao Tzu

You are eloquent. Nothing is wrong.

Are you familiar with the work of Mitchell Feigenbaum? — Ying

Of course! I almost said it there already without realising, Fractal geometry - Symmetry between different scales.

it seems to claim that all individual situations we experience can be equated to one of the 64 base situations outlined in the text. — Ying

.

Well it is so beautiful - the world conceived as a breaking wave, life as riding the wave, a wave itself, the way the foaming chaos is repeated bifurcation of the same wave symmetry. And in nature one finds that fractals are the structure of the world - life-forms, coastlines ...

I need to stop and think; I'll just try this:

Sea Atmosphere
pure mixed (water, foam, spray, air)
Joining separating ? (The trigrams are beyond me just now.)

The sage looks at the curl of a leaf and sees the state of the nation.