1. are you against people accumulating wealth at all? do you want everyone to live paycheck-to-paycheck? If not, at what rate are people allowed to accumulate wealth? or is there a maximum amount of money someone is allowed to have saved up? If so then what is the maximum amount and what is your moral proof for that amount? like, for all of this you have to have a proof that what you're doing is morally correct, don't you think? I suppose I'm assuming from the beginning that it's morally correct to respect a person's body and allow them to have control over it.
2. I think that maybe it's really bad for me to be friends with someone who hates the free market? because I believe in consent, I believe in bodily integrity, I believe in self ownership, those are all the same thing, they're just different words for the same thing. and I can't change what I believe about that, like it's possible that I could change my mind and decide not to believe in the concept of consent anymore, but I'm 32 years old and my belief in consent has only gotten more and more consistent as I've gotten older, so I find it very unlikely that it's going to change. this is like an integral part of who I am. and no one would think that it was appropriate for me to be friends with someone who thought that in the Utopia that comes after the revolution, no trans people will exist. no one would expect me to be friends with someone who dreams of eliminating bisexual people. so why should I be friends with someone who wants to eliminate me because I believe in the free market? it makes me feel gross to think that I'm friends with someone who wants to kill me and is only holding back on doing so because they don't want to face the consequences from the government, cops, whatever. or maybe they're hoping that they can persuade me to stop believing in consent before the revolution comes. but I don't feel okay with that anymore than I feel okay with someone hoping that I'll stop being the gender I am or having the sexuality that I have. and I don't know really that you want me to change this fundamental part of myself or that you want to kill me, but you say a lot of the same things as a lot of people on Facebook who have explicitly said that they want to kill me, so that makes me worried and that's why I get mad and say fuck you and hang up on you.
Note about the Delay: The reason I've been putting this off is that it sounded hard and I had a lot of thought, and I wasn't really sure how to organize them, and I was just overwhelmed by it. However, I heard some good advice about anxiety recently: do it badly. So I've been trying to do that to more things in my life, because being paralyzed to start ANYTHING was not working too well.
ReplyDeleteNote about the writing style: This is mostly stream of consciousness. I didn't take great care to organize my thoughts before hand, so it might be a bit rambley.
Preface: You say I'm bad at arguing. Well, so be it. I AM bad at arguing. I am easily swayed by arguments I've never heard (or never heard counters to) and I'm bad at refuting arguments unless I've heard a refutation. However, I will try my best here to present the arguments that changed my mind. And maybe they will change yours or maybe you can provide a better counter that makes me change mine. On a different note, I am not very logical. I used to think this was a bad thing -- afterall, the skeptic and atheist community fawn over the idea of logic and reason. But I think the purging of all emotion or feeling from arguments, leaving behind only cold hard facts and reason and logic, is a bad way to argue. It misses the soul of the argument. The spirit of the debate. The whole... raison d'être for the argument in the first place. It depersonalizes it and thereby makes the argument less useful or applicable to the real world and to humans, who DO feel emotion. I operate, in my day to day thinking, almost wholly on this emotion, on this feeling, on this passion. Reason to me can easily work side by side feeling (or in some instances, take a backseat to it). Further, when I experience things, when I hear arguments, when I learn things, I don't remember them precisely. I don't remember the pure, logical facts. I remember the gist of them and I remember even more how they make me FEEL. What kinds of thoughts they stirred in me. So, when I change my mind about something, it happens really really slowly. And it's not guided by reason, but rather by a feeling. It takes a lot of instances of contradictory information for my mind to be changed -- like a self being loaded with many things and eventually breaking from the weight. And then, I change my mind very suddenly. And I can't really tell you what exact arguments changed my mind, because I don't remember them. So when I present arguments to you, they will mainly be passion ones, not backed up by statics or evidence, but mainly general or vague observations about reality and how I think things should change or be done differently and a bit of why. Now, on to answering the questions.
1. I'm not *morally* against people accumulating wealth. People can do that. It's usually fine. The problem comes when people *hoard* wealth. Who needs a billion dollars? You know how much a billion is? More than anyone could spend in a lifetime, even if they live in opulence! Where is the line between "accumulating" and "hording"? I don't know and I don't care. That's not the problem in my eyes. The problem is that there ARE people hording wealth, to the detriment and harm of many others.
I haven't even read the second question yet. I'm tired and I will do it later. But I feel like this was a good and productive start to sharing my view with you about it. I look forward to your response.
being emotional does not make you not logical. do you need to revise anything you said after that based on that misunderstanding? your emotional reaction to something is part of reality, and logic is done on premises and true premises are derived from reality. being logical does not mean lacking all emotion. however, analyzing something rationally could mean that your emotional response changes after you've finished the analysis.
ReplyDeleteGood point. We were using two different definitions of "logical" I guess (I was thinking "logical" in the Spock sense). I guess I would revise my statement to: I don't have numbers or polls or statistics to back up my arguments, I have general observations and feelings.
Deletethe spock sense is a noncept.
ReplyDeleteI don't really know what you mean. Are you saying that I am misinterpreting Spock's character, or are you saying that the writes wrote a character that wouldn't ever exist in reality like that? Or something else?
Deletethe whole vulcan thing is nonsense. they don't become purely logical by purging or suppressing all emotion.
Deleteit's fine to throw out ideas, but you shouldn't believe things about reality without evidence.
ReplyDeleteSo like, that's true. But with memes and stuff, sometimes they make a statement or claim about reality that I have already heard before and might somewhat think is true, but the meme does not provide any actual evidence for it. However it nonetheless bolsters my belief in the thing.
Deletethat's terrible.
Deleteyour claims about logic vs emotion are all kinds of stupid, but perhaps i'll come back to that later.
ReplyDeleteKay. Maybe I'm just buying into the right-wing notion of "logic". The kind all those Nazi atheists on youtube are into, like Armored Skeptic.
DeleteLike, the right wingers coopted and changed the definition of that word to guide the conversation and I'm a sucker for repeating it. Something like that.
Deletedo you really think armoured skeptic is a nazi? he's a stupid anti-feminist but i haven't seen him say nazi stuff.
DeleteNazi is a strong word I guess. I group him in that party because he has said some really yikesie shit in the past (refer to his criticisms of Bill Nye's nexflix show). Like, I don't think he identifies as a nazi or that he himself would support nazis, but I think his rhetoric bolsters and supports nazi ideology. Because of this, I consider him a nazi by proxy. Not a hard N nazi, but a kind-of nazi. However, I haven't actually seeked out a lot of his content because from what I have heard of him in the past, his talking points are gross and I just don't want trash in my life. So since I have limited knowledge of him, take my opinions of him with a grain of salt.
Deleteso I feel like you're also thinking that I'm a nazi. because I'm saying things you disagree with.
DeleteI think the stuff you're saying is harmful. I don't think it necessarily correlates with being specifically a Nazi, but it does deny consent. and that's my problem with Nazis? and anyone else I have a problem with? that they violate consent, that they deny that people have a right to control their own bodies. so I'm not saying that Communists are Nazis, but I am saying that the reason I hate Nazis is the same reason I hate Communists, and it's the thing you are saying, that you want to violate other people's consent. and the way you throw around the word Nazi, it's like you use it to refer to anyone who is contributing to society going in a direction that you don't like, so using the word Nazi in the same way I would also say that you are Nazi adjacent or whatever, because you are promoting the idea of violating consent.
but I don't think it's actually helpful to call someone a Nazi, because it doesn't change minds, it's basically just a hollow insult the way you're using it.
it sounds insane to say you object to hoarding wealth but not to accumulating wealth. but you go on to mention a billion $, so i guess you mean that you draw a line somewhere.
ReplyDeletebut why? if you keep accumulating wealth, it will add up. if you pass it down to descendants, it will eventually add up to a billion.
So I can see how the concept of acquiring and passing down wealth is fine in a vacuum, but the problem of it in our specific society is this: if you look at the big picture, like on the scale of the entire global economy, wealth is a finite resource, just like literally everything else. It's a zero-sum game. So by some people gathering as much of it as they can it thus robs others of it (robs in the fact that the wealth is no longer available to be acquired, because it's "all gone" (not literally all gone of course, it's just that there is less of it out there to get)).
DeleteOn the specific topic of inheriting wealth, I think it should be taxed at a crazy high percentage (provided you have a society that is taxing anyone in the first place, we can talk about weather you should or should not tax people either later or right now if you want).
fuck the govt. taxation is theft.
DeleteAnd what about my other point? About wealth being a finite resource? So taking a larger slice of the pie than you deserve is the same as stealing pie from everyone else?
DeleteI don't understand how money works. suppose instead it were land? I don't no really how it would be possible for someone to own more and more land in a consensual society. it doesn't seem plausible. it only seems plausible with money because I don't understand money.so maybe in a consensual society it just wouldn't be possible to become a billionaire. and if that's the case I'm fine with that.
DeleteMeme Corner
ReplyDeletehttps://i.redd.it/rkblnvxtd1t31.jpg
Deletecapitalism is free market among people who own themselves.
DeleteAre we in a capitalist system now in America? I don't feel like I own myself. I feel like a slave.
Deletenope, because govt. people are violating your rights. not only govt but that's part of what perpetuates it.
DeleteOk then. Maybe that's where the crux of our disagreement lies. When I say "tear down capitalism" what I really want is a change of our current situation, because I think it sucks. I have just labled the current evils as "capitalism". That's probablly because of the whole communism vs capitatlism debate in the cold war.
Deleteyou need to actually define what it is you're objecting to.
DeleteBut you reduce your notions/wants about society to catchy oneliners: "Fuck the Government"
DeleteDo you think that clearly defines what you are objecting to? Because it's not clear to me. What does "fuck" mean? What do you intend to do? How does one "fuck the government"? Ya know? And to me, it's the same as me saying "Destroy Capitalism". It has just as much definition in it.
i'm objecting to violations of consent.
DeleteCommenting on your second point now:
ReplyDelete2. I absolutely do not want to kill you. I hardly want to kill ANYONE!
[long aside about murder coming up]
I know it sounds bad to want to kill someone, but like I'm turning to murder as the solution to my problems because I don't see another achievable or actionable solution. I agree that the MOST moral thing to do to people who are harming others is to prevent them from harming other people in the most humane way possible (like locking them in a cage). However, the people I see doing the most harm to society. The people I see that need locking up the most are in places of so much power that they can avoid any kind of action I try to use against them to stop them from hurting others. Here, I am mainly thinking about politicians and billionaires who are rigging the system in their favor, btw. I'm thinking about people who perpetuate harm against others by stealing from them and denying them their rights and intentionally manipulate the government or laws to both A) Keep on harming people and B) make sure there are zero repercussions for them harming people. So, it is THESE people that I want to kill. Because our justice system in this country cannot adequately correct the situation. So basically what I am describing here is a massive imbalance of power between me and the people I want to kill. But thankfully, guns were invented. Guns take way less skill and training to kill someone than other forms of weapons prior (like swords and junk). Guns "level the playing field" to some extent and give people like me an equal footing to challenge people who are "above the law". And finally, I think that death is the ultimate power-leveler. Everyone dies and that death is irrevocable. So while you may say that wanting to murder people is a bad way to solve my problems, to me, it is the only recourse that I see to stop the evil being done against everyone. I've been kind of vague about this evil, but I can get more specific if you want me to.
[End of aside about killing people].
The consent thing is a bit more tricky. I haven't made up my mind fully about it yet. But maybe we can have a long discussion about it. I used to think that consent was like the highest, most important of the moral pillars that sentient individuals needed to uphold in order to interact with each other morally, without doing harm. But now, I'm kind of second guessing that because of certain moral obligations that I think existing in and benefiting from a society impose on the individual. Kinda thinking about this in a more collectivist sense. But again, I'm still tossing that around in my head and haven't made up my mind.
i didn't read the thing about murder because at the beginning it looked like a justification for killing me and i don't want to read anything like that.
Deleteanother person doesn't exist to serve you or anyone else. they don't have a moral obligation to help anyone.
Deletea good society is consensual. we don't consent to coming into existence, but everything after that should be as consensual as possible. you benefit from society, if we can try to imagine a society that exists without violations of consent in the first place, because other people choose to do things that benefit you. they might be doing those things because they also get a benefit from it or maybe because they just want to do something for you. either way they should be choosing to do it, which means it doesn't put any obligation on you.
DeleteI think that if you know that some benefit is coming to you only because someone else's consent was violated, then you should reject that benefit. like if someone gives you a slave as a present, you should free that slave. You shouldn't accept stolen merchandise. you shouldn't accept government handouts because they came from taxation which is theft.
Delete"I think that if you know that some benefit is coming to you only because someone else's consent was violated, then you should reject that benefit."
DeleteI agree that would be the most moral thing to do, ideally, but practically you can't do that all the time. This idea is easily captured in the phrase "no ethical consumption under capitalism". Like, your smart phone, the clothes on your back, even a lot of the food that you eat all have some amounts of literal slave labor that go into delivering them to you. What are you gonna do? Give up your phone? Grow your own food? Make your own clothes? Those would all be very moral things to do, but you couldn't function in society -- you couldn't work very well towards stopping all those evils if you are busy just trying to survive.
And it is capitalism that I see enslaving people, and that's one of the big reasons I oppose it. Capitalism directly and all the time violates people's consent. If the economic system were geared toward maximizing something other than profit alone, maybe there wouldn't be slaves.
And maybe you and I disagree on what the current economic system is. Maybe you don't think this is capitalism. If that's true, what do you think it is?
i don't know that they used slave labor. if i find out i won't buy from them anymore.
Deletei don't care to defend the vague idea of "capitalism". i'm in favor of only consensual interactions.
DeleteYou said something the other day about being able to talk yourself out of feeling bad by reasoning through things. However, here is a counterpoint to that that I heard from Athena (in an unrelated conversation).
ReplyDeleteWhen you feel bad, your brain cooks up all these feel-bad chemicals. And even if you reason it out, the chemicals are still there, and they have to be used. So you can both realize that feeling a certain is stupid while also feeling that same way from the chemicals that got made. To give an example of this, it's like if you heard the sound of a buzzing mosquito in a youtube video and started feeling itchy. You can reason with yourself, and tell yourself that the mosquito isn't actually around you, but your brain cooked up a batch of itchiness chemicals and says to you "no goddammit! I slaved away baking these itchy chemicals and you are gonna use them, whether you like it or not!"
This was an interesting though that I had never heard of before and wanted to share with you.
if you think that someone was saying something mean to you, but then you realize they weren't, then
Deletewell then i wouldn't be mad anymore, if i had been in the first place.
why would you stay angry?
Because you got angry chemicals buzzing away in your brain that don't just go away by you realizing something new.
DeleteHave you ever had a dream where you were arguing with someone, and they were saying something stupid? And when you wake up, you're angry at that person! And even when you tell yourself it was just a dream, the bad emotions don't just go away instantly -- you're in a bad mood for a while.
do you, in reality, stay angry at someone just because you thought they were saying something mean even if you find out 5 seconds later that they weren't saying that?
DeleteYes, I think I have done that before.
Deleteok, that's irrational. you should analyze that behavior and try to stop doing it.
DeleteBut that's what I am claiming: it doesn't matter if you know it's irrational - the chemistry is already in motion. You can't think yourself out of that.
Deleteyou sure can't if you refuse to try.
Deleteexplain why i'm able to do it IF it's unavoidable brain chemistry?
IDK. Maybe we need to do some tests. Or look for like published results or something. Maybe different brains create like stronger chemicals or whatever for different people? Again, IDK.
Deletelike, the angry feeling doesn't vanish *instantly*, but it subsides while i'm thinking about the issue.
Delete