The APA claims there is such a thing as "Masculinity Ideology" — Bitter Crank

They are circumspect, but I can afford to name names. https://jordanbpeterson.com/political-correctness/comment-on-the-apa-guidelines-for-the-treatment-of-boys-and-men/

When we define what it means to be a human being we refer to these aspects which are common to all of us. and not specific to any particular culture, or group of cultures. We are all in the group "human being" regardless of culture. — Metaphysician Undercover

I'm afraid this is not the settled unquestionable reality you think it is. On the contrary you have merely hidden the circularity from yourself. We decide who is human, and whoever we have decided is not human does not get to make the decision. And that used to include peasants, slaves, blacks, children, homosexuals, the disabled, and disfigured, and women, at various times and various places. there is still controversy on this board about when a clump of cells becomes a human.

If I understand you correctly, the reflexivity you refer to is that the moral code must reflect back upon the good of the individual people within the society. So we have "good" #1, which is the people behaving according to the code, and we have "good" #2 which is what the code is doing for the people. The issue is the grounding of good #2. This is why I insist that the identity of the individual, how we define "person", must be derived from outside of the culture, or else we'd just have a circle. — Metaphysician Undercover

I'd kind of like you to apply this to the case of John Chau. John judges himself according to an evangelical culture that he follows/accepts/believes/identifies with. The Sentinelese culture seems to identify him as a white devil invader. The Indian government identifies him as a criminal interfering white idiot. How do you see this individual? I've said I see him as a good man by his own lights.

You want to claim that every one of these cultures is a cave, and you and Plato are outside? Even the way you put it makes no sense to me. "... how we define "person", must be derived from outside of the culture, or else we'd just have a circle." We???? We define things in a shared language and these definitions are thereby cultural. But you want to start with a 'we' that is not a culture!

I haven't read the thread, but all don't know what you're talking about. Just stop whining for god's sake, and present a damn argument,

And define 'bad'.

This happens to me all the time. The gruesome gang not only corrupts me directly, it but also gives them something to blackmail me with. So I have learned from bitter experience that if one cannot bluff a way out of it, one might as well simply refuse, and get killed oneself. Unfortunately one cannot conduct a moral crusade without casualties.

And we want our fish back. :roll:

Maybe I'm a bit dim, but it seems to me that not having a border is like not having a fence round a field, it allows folks and stuff to pass in and out freely. And Brexiteers don't want that. So they want a border. So they want to end the Good Friday agreement.

Here's the thread theme tune, by the way.

It was all I could do to keep myself from taking revenge on your blood.

But if the outside's gone, the whole thing goes to pieces. — csalisbury

Well looking at practice for a moment, the Sentinelese are above all remote, and their barbarity is tolerable. I don't think the Channel Islanders could expect our ignorance to the same extent, being too near our trade routes and strategically important.

The post-colonial enjoys the benefits of Empire and agonises about the statue of Rhodes in the Quad. Namby-Pambies are guilt-ridden. Look through this thread for the posters that describe the immorality of their own morality, and acknowledge the hubris of their humility - because if it isn't universal, then it isn't a morality - and that is Namby-Pambyism.
____________________________________________________________________
Nobody meets the Sentinelese on equal moral terms. John Chau was neither an idiot nor a madman, but a dedicated liberator, whose morality matches any of those here who consider it 'moral' to allow these savages the right to our magnificent civilisation, and to have a couple of Starbucks at least.

"Give them all a good education, and then they can choose".

The problem here is that the person has an identity even prior to being "the campaigner against slavery". This identity is associated with the values that the person holds, and it is very important to identify the person as "campaigner for X values" rather than "campaigner against our culture". — Metaphysician Undercover

But the Sentinelese cannot campaign to have a Starbucks, or against it, individually or all together, until the have the benefit of an education (cultural indoctrination) to tell them about Starbucks. And once they have the education and can form the view, they are no longer Sentielese in anything but name.

Perhaps it's worth considering the reflexivity of morality. Jesus did not have a view on Global warming, and thus did not consider a commandment forbidding the extraction of fossil fuels. But we are not more moral because we do. A good person is one who does good deeds according to a moral code. But it is the reflexivity of what makes a good moral code that is in question in this thread, and that requires a ground.

John Chau gave his life to his moral duty; he was a good Christian man according to his own lights, and that is, in the Christian traditional least, the measure of individual virtue, what one will sacrifice for the good. "Greater love hath no man..." Not a Namby-Pamby by any means. So by what moral code does the Indian government, or the liberal elite, or anyone else, judge him to be an evil fanatic, an idiot, a madman, or whatever level of condemnation is attached to him? It seems to me that consistency requires that we treat him as generouslyl as we treat the Sentinelese - he is as innocent as they.

And if we have the right of it, if we are the guardians of morality and civilisation, is it not likewise our duty to gather these miserable sufferers under the yoke of religious indoctrination, and attempt to deprogram them, as the Chinese are doing?

The "will of the person" cannot be identified within "the will of the people" so "the person", in the context of morality, cannot be defined through reference to the culture. — Metaphysician Undercover

Suppose the mores of your society are that Christian colonial racism that finds it moral to keep slaves and has a moralistic talk that justifies that. but you see past the economic convenience of the thing and reject it because you are enamoured of the dignity of the person or universal human rights. So you campaign, perhaps you are part of the underground railroad, and you do what you can. Now you surely understand that when you say 'slavery is wrong', and your neighbour says 'slavery is fine' you are both taking a moral stand, and that you are opposed. Now if you are truly alone in your opposition, you will likely be ignored, reviled, locked up or killed - as mad sad or bad. You will be in this regard external to the culture, and if there are others to form a resistance, you will be part of a counter-culture.

You seem to be opposing this sort of talk, and I think you have an ideological reason, which is odd, because nothing about what I am saying there is ideological in intent. Let's go back to the beginning, where I said 'the individual is made of social relations'. All this means is that the campaigner against slavery - the very descriptive definitional term - describes the person's relations to his society. It defines the society he lives in and his relation to it (opposition).

It is exactly the same for the animal rights protester. We have described her in terms of her relation of opposition to the culture. If she is a doctor, we have described her as having been given a certain role in society; if we say she is tall, she is tall in relation to the other members of society - indeed she might be nicknamed Miss Giraffe in Hong Kong, and then move to the US and be called Shorty Pants. A revolutionary is just a conservative in the wrong society.

None of this privileges society as the moral priority, or removes the freedom of the individual, which I think is what you are objecting to, it simply points out that these relations of opposition and conformity, of resistance and cooperation are the substance of individuality. From my point of view it is as banal as saying that the human body is formed by the environment it inhabits. if we lived in the sea, we'd have flippers not legs. One cannot be a dodo hunter when there are no dodos to hunt.

Do you agree that the individual has freedom of choice to decide whether or not owning a slave, or opening a facebook account is a good thing to do, regardless of whether or not the person proceeds in such activities. In other words, a person could live within a culture which strictly forbids owning slaves, the state declaring it a bad thing and illegal to own slaves, yet the person still believes it's a good thing to own slaves, in the mind, disagreeing with the culture. — Metaphysician Undercover

Yes.

If you agree with the principle I sated above, that the person's belief could run counter to the person's culture, how can you characterize the will of the people as aspects of the culture? — Metaphysician Undercover

I'll put it as plainly as I can. The will of the person is one thing that pertains to the individual, whereas the will of the people is a plurality or aggregate of wills and therefore pertains to a culture.

But I believe I've started to grasp the knot you're pointing out, at least, so thanks for that. How to untie it? I don't know right now. — Moliere

Well that is the problem I seem to be having a lot, that I am describing a knot and folks will keep trying to untie it for me and explain why it is a knot in my thinking and not theirs, as though their primitive individualism is in any way consistent.

Right, maybe you're starting to understand. — Metaphysician Undercover

Fraid not.

Notice in your example of slavery, the individual who has the will to own slaves does not actually have the power to own slaves. — Metaphysician Undercover

What does this mean? An individual has no power at all without society, since the individual is born helpless. With the relevant society the individual has the power to own slaves, just as with the relevant society and not otherwise, the individual has the power to paint a cave, or open a facebook account.

If you want to characterize law and punishment as suppressing the will of the people, for the sake of "the culture", then we would need to negotiate moral principles to justify such suppression. — Metaphysician Undercover

I don't want to, I'm responding to your characterisation as best I can. I want to characterise law and punishment and the will of the people as aspects of the culture along with the moral principles and negotiations that 'we' need, according to you.

You identify with the culture rather than with the individual, — Metaphysician Undercover

You mean I, as an individual, identify with the culture rather than with the individual that identifies with the culture?

Take the example of the Welsh government "protecting" the Welsh language for example. I am not familiar with this practise, but how could it possibly be successful without some form of suppressing the will of the people to use other languages? — Metaphysician Undercover

Well it couldn't, any more than the protection of people from slavery could be successful without suppressing the will of the people to own slaves.

So where do you get this idea to "protect" an isolated culture? — Metaphysician Undercover

I get the idea from the Indian government, whose policy it is. I get the idea from the Welsh government that has a policy of protecting the Welsh language, I get the idea from the general post-colonial notion that indigenous cultures that have been invaded, oppressed and suppressed should be afforded protection.

So this idea of protecting a culture is part of the very same ideology of building walls. To maintain that culture would require denying its individuals the freedom of access to other cultures. — Metaphysician Undercover

Yes, you're getting it. This is the contradiction inherent in the position that I am pointing out in the op. I'm so glad we agree thus far.

Unfortunately, you seem to think that the solution is to abandon the principle.

You're the one expressing superiority with your exclusionary tactics. — Metaphysician Undercover

Yes I am. That's the paradox. Everyone thinks they are right, even the ones that realise they are probably not. I am defending that Namby-Pambies are superior to other cultures although they are not anything but another culture, just as humans are superior to other animals although they are just another animal. But you don't interpret Plato differently; it is impossible to interpret the idea of philosopher kings as other than cultural superiority and colonialism. I am even condescending to re-enter the cave to try and convince you to come out - that is the extent of my total hypocrisy. But the only disagreement we have is that you want to disagree.

What do 'namby pambys really want?'

[real question ] — csalisbury

Hah! They want the same kind of shit as anyone else, you know, stuff they haven't got, stuff that is impossible. They want everyone to be middle-class, conflicted and peaceful. It doesn't come over as a friendly inquiry. "What do Brexiteers really want?", I say - the answer 'Brexit' is no answer, and any real answer will be partial. In Hull they want the fishing, in Rotherham, something else entirely.

In terms of the theme of this thread, the Namby-Pamby wants above all to transcend his own culture, and to stand outside it in a judgement of perfect impartiality.

One answer:

As it always is with the british empire, and its epigones - they want the 'world' to remain a resource, accessible from home. — csalisbury

That is the Brexit nostalgia, and the Trump nostalgia, and the Namby-Pamby is a firm Remainer. He wants to put Britishness on equal footing with Frenchness and Germanity and Italiosity. He wants a negotiated settlement, and free movement.

Or perhaps I'm like an adopted son who still has memories of another family -- so I'm just trying to wrap my mind around the difficulty that perhaps I do not quite feel, but trying to remain sensitive to too. — Moliere

That'll do, it's not the culture of people who agree with unenlightened in every detail, or the culture of people who understand this thread.

I'm watching the news about the first conviction in the UK for female genital mutilation. It's not part of 'our' culture, but it is part of the culture of some parts of Africa. We don't put bones in our noses, but we do put silicone in our tits, and we do sanction male genital mutilation. We are a bit inconsistent, and in large part it is simple myopia, rathe than any lack of insight.

I think friends of mine who are of that persuasion will still probably fail to realise they are “rats in the oligarchs’ maze" — Evil

I fear one of the lessons of the 2 world wars is that populism has a momentum that can only be dissipated by a monumental level of horror, and not always then. Folks are as we speak crawling around the ruins clutching their dying babies in one hand and their weapons in the other and reciting 'God is great'.

He just picked the wrong crowd. — S

That's why it's odd. If you're smart enough to go trawling through the statistics to bend them to your propaganda, how come you're too stupid to put them to better use than trying to convince the obviously wrong crowd. It doesn't even make sense on the level of 'Heh, I get taken seriously by philosophers, so the peasants will believe me'.

Don't ignore Plato's Republic. Get yourself out of that dank world of darkness, the cave, and we'll welcome you to the world of philosophy. — Metaphysician Undercover

That's awfully big of you and Plato, but in my culture Plato is the original colonialist, secure in the knowledge of his own superiority and the primitive blindness all but 'philosophers'.

Namby-Pambism is more of an ideology than a culture. — Metaphysician Undercover

Ask yourself, what is "a culture", what differentiates one culture from another. Unless you're an archeologist who only has physical artifacts to go by, you'll most likely refer to some ideologies. — Metaphysician Undercover

I don't need your contradictions, I have my own. :razz:

It's odd to me, so much effort, so much intelligence - for nothing.

Humans are animals. But what makes us different from animals is that only we humans know that we are animals.

Namby-Pambies are a human culture. But what makes our culture different is that only our culture is aware that it is a culture.

Is the paradox that yours is a culture which allows nativism in other cultures in the name of diversity, but disallows nativism with respect to itself?

I'm just trying to restate what you're getting at succinctly and clearly. — Moliere

No. I'm trying to describe rather than formulate or justify. I think the paradox has to be lived.I'll try and lay it out. Let's try it as a moral dilemma first. I think the diversity principle comes from cultural relativism.

So if you look above at @ep3265, or @Harry Hindu, they clearly do not really appreciate that their contributions are simply expressions of a different culture. they are the people I tried to warn off in the op thus: "If you're not of that ilk, you probably won't appreciate the difficulty I'm trying to get to, and will be inclined to say helpful things like,"well duh, stop being so wrong!" - in which case please just butt out and let us namby-pambies agonise in peace a minute." They are not aware that their judgements of culture are culturally conditioned, or to the extent that they are, they are fanatics convinced that they have the one true culture - colonialists.

We Namby-Pambies reject such nonsense, but we also reject radical relativism and moral nihilism.That is the paradox - to embrace and reject relativism. The awareness that our judgements are as culturally conditioned as any other makes our judgements more sound. Psychologically this is called 'insight'.

Thank you for describing your primitive culture.

In what sense can a culture be aware of anything? — frank

First, if you can hold to the notion "...that an individual is made of social relations", then it will sound less strange to talk about what a culture is aware of, rather than what an individual is aware of. (The cult of the individual is a culture)

In an isolated culture, as I just said to TheMadFool above, there is no 'other', and therefore there is no awareness of culture in the culture. Compare that to the culture of the Roman or British Empire, where there is full awareness of a range of cultures, but still an awareness as Roman & Barbarian. The nearest one gets to a critical self-awareness is a nostalgia for the golden age. Now I'm painting with a very broad brush, but some combination of events and circumstances, perhaps the Holocaust, the end of Empire the development of nuclear weapons, the development of the human sciences, mass migrations, the maturing of capitalism, has called into question the goodness and greatness of the Great and the Good. "Perhaps - our wonderful Christian traditions are not What the Sentielese need or want for 'the best'... " "Perhaps, English is not the language everyone needs to speak..."

Let me put it this way, supposing my culture is dominant, and powerful, supposing my culture involves knowing this, then its expression would not be defensive, as if we are liable to be overwhelmed unless we build a wall. It would not need to suppress or eliminate other cultures. And so it is, that the more xenophobic cultures are those in decline, those that are weak or dying.

I meant that to have cultural identity one must differ from other cultures. Only through comparative difference can an identity be established. That's what I think anyway. — TheMadFool

Right, I see. Yes, if by established you mean known, recognised. That is, Some undiscovered tribe can and will have a particular culture on its own, but will not recognise it as a culture, but regard it more or less as human nature. 'Everyone puts a bone through their nose because that's what people do.' And then they meet the white devil monkeys who cannot speak properly...

As for your views on a dominant culture, I'd prefer universal appeal. — TheMadFool

Well I'd prefer it too, except I don't think it's right. Firstly, it seriously lacks universal appeal because it is hard work and bruising to the ego. Secondly, to anyone who has a satisfying culture of their own is going to find it runs counter to their own values.

So I call it dominant because it is the culture that recognises other cultures and itself as cultures, and is thus more able to understand inter-cultural relations. So compare it with the Randian culture mentioned above, or the dying culture of the industrial working class, and I think it is readily apparent that it has a flexibility that will give it the upper hand in the long run, Trump and Brexit notwithstanding. They are stupid and shortsighted, and therefore they will lose.

Go figure. — Harry Hindu

What the flying fuck do you think I'm doing? Go figure yourself.

Locker 1. Label, 'Love'; content, a mustard seed.
Lockers 2 - 12. Labels 'Unimportant stuff, not wanted on voyage'; content, everything else.

So a large part of what I am doing here is describing a particular culture, which I also claim to be part of, which has a particular characteristic of alienation from itself. It is a product, in the first place of globalism, made possible by rapid transport and instant communications, and in the second place by an education system that values scepticism, reflexivity, criticism and self-criticism. Cultural self-awareness is a primary characteristic.

Cultural identity comes through comparison and relations with other cultures. This exchange between culture is part of a culture's identity but... — TheMadFool

I disagree, if I understand you right, but 'cultural identity' is a troubling term here. Most isolated cultures think of themselves as 'the people', and the occasional incomer as 'other' (very often mad, sad or bad). But it is internal relations that form the culture rather than external ones. For example, there is in the UK a culture - properly a 'sub-culture', amongst schoolchildren, of playground games, rhymes, rituals and mores, that persists through the generations without or despite adult intervention which is in a sense formed in reaction and opposition to the adult culture, but primarily is self-concerned, with relations between children without the adult as other. Indeed, the exclusion of adults is the prime directive - "Don't tell!" It is a secret society, an underground resistance, but even so, not formed by relations with adults. So it is alienated from the adult culture, but not from itself.

My culture, which might already be yours, or which this thread might be an induction into, or might be oppositional to yours, is alienated from itself. To be inducted into it is to be alienated from it in a reflexive, paradoxical awakening. It is to see oneself from the outside as embedded in a culture. It is the condition of post-modernism. It is oppositional primarily to the nihilism of cultural relativism, because it sees that cultural relativism is itself absolutely a culture of false humility. Thus the abnegation of the tyranny of colonialism is just another tyranny, and the only best hope is of a dominant culture that is aware of its dominance, and justifies its dominance by its self-awareness.

Not at all. It's just that if the sheriff does not shoot every baddie, that doesn't mean he can't shoot you if you're a baddie. Sometimes there just ain't enough bullets for perfect justice.

May is playing chicken with the Irish border. From a game theroy point of view I think the EU should blink first and gain reputation. — Kippo

If she is, she is misreading the situation. The EU cannot afford a border hole in the Customs Union. It's an agreement to no border, or no agreement and a border.

The child is a baby of the commune, and is identified as a member of that group, not so and so's daughter or son. — Metaphysician Undercover

So you could have identified yourself as a member of some commune or tribe, and you might not have known who your parents were or your date of birth. But as it happens, you did identify yourself as the child of particular parents and thus as a member of a family, and not a member of a tribe or commune.

The modern rendition of one's identity, where the family name signifies son or daughter of so and so is only one of a number of possible forms of identity. — Metaphysician Undercover

Whoever said it was the only way? But I really don't want to labour this point, which is just preventing the discussion I want to have, by calling into question what should be obvious. So I am going to presume you are wrong without engaging further, and if you want to start a thread on the nature of identity I may contribute there.

Whereas the reality is that an individual is made of social relations.
— unenlightened

:100: Which point should be a bedrock principle for any sensible conversation on identity. — Baden

Yes, I had hoped that the bedrock could be built on a little here, rather than just pointing out to folks, again, what that is under their feet.

Randians - the group of individuals who believe themselves leaders of a non-existent society. AKA Thatcherites.

How low can they stoop! The Guardian is reduced to cribbing my forum posts for its headlines.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jan/30/brexit-political-class-politicians?CMP=fb_gu&fbclid=IwAR31xBjTa-_n30718XDfwE0lYczvwEeen9z_-cGSM01MN586OvImz2acuos

I'm not using your identity to classify you at all, I am saying your identity is your classification. You were born not hatched,- that makes you mammal not bird or reptile. As soon as you establish a relation, to parent, for example, you have established a social connection. You don't have to say it's a social connection, or even believe it's a social connection, but it is a social connection. Likewise, you do not have to tell me you are a member of the English-speaking community, you have already shown me, and it is not my posts that make it so, but yours.

Identifying myself as MU, born at such a place, at such time, of such mother, and father, does not place me into a group. — Metaphysician Undercover

Huh? A family is not a group?

So it turns out there is a small majority in parliament in favour of a fantasy, whereby Britain gets exactly what it wants and does not have to pay for it, and Ireland floats away and becomes someone else's problem.

Great! Meanwhile, the currency falls, the deadline draws closer, the WTO paradise is exposed for a myth, and sensible Brexiteers are moving their money, their headquarters and their residences out of the country. This is called "taking back control".