Irene: Why not?

You seem to think that my whole problem with your behavior, was that you asserted things without logical proof.


But my issue is not just that you questioned what Robert had to say, but you seemed to be going for blood while you did so. Don't you have to agree, that one's entitled to one's own opinions?


T : No, I do not. In part, because it's self contradictory on it's very face. If I DON'T feel that someone is entitled to his opinion, then that IS an opinion, so if what I am asked to believe is true, then I can't be obliged to believe it. If it is false, then why should I be expected to believe in the truth of a falsehood?

But there's a more basic problem. In part, that noone will tell me EXACTLY what they mean by that cliche. Does the person mean,

"Bob has the legal right to hold and express his opinion"?

Without a doubt, this is true.

How about,

"You do not have any right to think any the less of the man for expressing, or holding, a given opinion".

Utter nonsense. Those opinions determine what his attitude is. My opinion of him, is, by definition, rooted in an evaluation of what I expect from him, and those opinions, to the extent that they reflect his thinking, affect those expectations. To the extent that they influence others, and their actions, as a result, they impact on the lives of other people, and their expression is not only a reflection of what Robert MIGHT do, they are part of what he HAS done.

Is he "entitled to his opinion", under this particular interpretation of the cliche? I would say that he isn't.


Irene: So you're going to just chuck civility out the window, for philosophical reasons?


T : You say that like it's a bad thing. Irene, you can lose the smile, I'm not telling a joke. If rules are to be adopted, and taken seriously, we should be aware of the reasons for them. If those reasons cease to be valid, then the rules cease to make sense, and should be discarded for that reason. Etiquette exists to make our lives more pleasant, not for it's own sake.

Yes, confrontations are unpleasant experiences. But, when I speak of pleasantness, I refer to everything that will follow from pursuing our chosen course of action, not just to that which immediately occurs. Let's not confuse the happiness of those around us with the instant gratification of their momentary desires. Every moment we live, is one that is well down the road from another. Living purely for the moment each experiences is an excellent way to make life an enduring horror for all.


Irene: In what sense is etiquette "outdated"? The pleasantness that civility brings to life would seem to be a matter of present reality, as I see it.


T : The pleasantness of the moment, for those not corrected, or for those who fear confrontation, is not to be denied. But there is a grave price to be payed for such pleasure - the enactment of irresponsible policy, that is never subjected to serious scrutiny, merely because its support has become momentarily fashionable. It is the rigidity of those rules that makes this the norm.

I would say that those who are clinging to standard etiquette, in the course of a discussion, are living in a long departed past. Namely, that of Feudal and immediately post-Feudal Europe.

Let us remember that when the common notions of civility (which most of us now accept without question) were created, the societies of the West weren't even remotely close to being working democracies - our present rules of "etiquette" being an elaboration on the norms of behavior once respected by the then generally ignored peasantry. Under the circumstances, those rules of etiquette that called on people to spare each other's feelings, by keeping quiet when someone else was saying something foolish, made sense.

At the time when those rules were constructed, the decisions that were left in the hands of most people, didn't require a lot of thought. Public policy came down from the nobility, ruthlessly enforced. The talk of the people, was nothing more than the prattling of ill cared-for children, who were never to be allowed to attain adulthood, in the eyes of the state. People whose words would never be heard by those making the rules, or even by anyone far from their home, even indirectly, through the grapevine. One can't have a chain of people, passing a comment from one person to the next, when there is no freedom of movement, or legal freedom of speech.

When they said something foolish, it would have no impact on life, or even public opinion. The latter was largely under the control of the upper classes, in those days before freedom of press and speech became reality, and even afterward, for some time, until people got used to the notion of questioning their social "betters". What would have been the point of upsetting or embarassing someone over something that he had said?


Irene: So, what would be the point, now? I hardly think that the desire to not be humiliated was a passing fad.


T : But the infantilisation of the people was. How greatly the world has changed, without our ideas of how to live in it, keeping pace.

Now, bad ideas can travel by electronic media to all corners of the globe, and do damage on a scale, that those who crafted those rules of "etiquette", couldn't have imagined. The world they lived in is gone, justly unmourned. We can no longer afford to be those overgrown children of ages past, because now our words ARE being heard, if only by each other. In a free society, what we say, influences what other people think, and how they act, and, as painful history has taught us, an argument can be without merit, and still be persuasive.


Irene: And so, being heard by more people, we should be ever the more aware of, and concerned with their feelings, right?


T : Yes, Irene, but with ALL of their feelings, including the ones we might be able to elude the blame for hurting, because people won't let themselves make the connection between our actions and their pain. Conscience should not be reduced to being nothing more than a form of cowardice.

We must consider all of the consequences of our actions, not just those that are fashionable to think about.

The existence of a number of interlocking public forums for discussion, creating that grapevine that both good and bad ideas may propogate through, has transformed the nature of our situation, as we discuss the issues that arise. Now we have the opportunity to lead our peers into harm's way, and an even greater opportunity to create an environment that conditions those coming of age after us, into leading themselves into harm's way.

It is our responsibility, as participants in the creation of the consenses that mold the lives, and awarenesses of so many others, to do so in a way that brings benefit, and not harm to others. If I choose a course of action, that I may reasonably be expected to see will lead to senseless harm, then I have engaged in an evil act, and should rightly be condemned for it. It doesn't matter whether the harm is "direct" or "indirect" - these are meaningless categories that reflect arbitrary linguistic distinctions, not informative moral ones.


Irene: Why? Because you say so?


T : No, because their definitions are arbitrary.

If I pull a gun on someone, and pull the trigger, is his murder a direct action?


Irene: Yes, of course. Have anyone in mind?


T : No, though it can be a tempting thought, sometimes.

But how can you defend this position? I wouldn't have killed anyone. I simply squeezed in with my finger. He would have died, merely because he got in the way of the bullet.


Irene: Don't be absurd. You would know that his death would follow, if you did so.


T : So it is the knowledge of the consequences of my actions, that makes my action direct? What if I put a single bullet into one of the chambers, spin, and it just happens that the guy gets shot? After all, I didn't absolutely know that the chamber with the bullet was going to be the one that came up.


Irene: Are you having a psychotic episode? I'm getting a little worried that Jack may have been right.


T : Humor me, if you would.


Irene: OK, to answer your perfectly silly question, you knew that you were increasing the likelihood of his coming to harm, so yes, it would still be a direct act.


T : OK, suppose that instead of aiming at a specific person, I aimed into the crowd, and then spun the chambers. If the gun fires, is it still a direct act if I hurt someone, given that I wouldn't know who would be shot, in advance?


Irene: Yes, my newly psychotic friend, it would be. You still knew that you were increasing the probability that someone would get hurt. It wouldn't help your case that your victim was chosen at random. If anything, it would strengthen the case that this would be a coldblooded act.


T : Indeed, we reaffirm this observation every time we condemn a terrorist bombing, do we not?


Irene: I guess so. What's your point?


T : That the harmful actions that we are conditioned to think of as "indirect", under the criteria that you've just accepted, almost invariably would qualify as direct, and the only justification offered for drawing the distinction is that it is customary. I.e. because "we" (society) said so. Custom that hasn't seemed to do much for the quality of life where it has been accepted, or really ever seriously thought about, or scrutinised.

In molding the popular consensus, in an irresponsible way, we enhance the likelihood that someone will be hurt. Under your own criteria, this is a direct act.


Irene: No, it isn't. Unlike spinning gun chambers, people are free willed. It is not the speaker's actions, but the responses of free-willed people, that come into play.


T : But, Irene, it has been known for centuries that free will can be subverted. Have you never heard of brainwashing? Given the totalitarian, and frequently brutal nature of the child rearing styles of so many parents, is it such a reach to argue that many childhood experiences would qualify as such? And if that supressed child enters a society where individualism in thought has no real history of being encouraged, then how likely is it that those tendencies that were so thoroughly beaten down in the child, will have a chance to arise in the young adult that the child becomes? Is free will always a practical reality?

For that matter, as any statistician will tell you, that which is unpredictable in the individual case, often becomes deterministically predictable in the aggregate. One may be able to predict quite accurately what the mass of people will do, without knowing what any given individual will do. Insurance companies have made quite a fortune doing just that.


Irene: But society is not quite so mechanistic as that. You're talking about applying the same techniques, that are used to predict the deterministic behavior of large physical systems, from statistical descriptions of the random behavior of individual atoms observed, or the behavior of swarms of bees from that of individual bees. But we are more than atoms or bees.


T : Only if we allow ourselves to be. But usually, we do not, for reasons we have already gone through. If each forms his opinions to echo the unchallenged consensus around him, then the behavior seen will be even more predictable than that of those individual atoms you mentioned. Yes, free will is there to be had. But only if the attitudes we adopt are ones that promote its development in us. If not, then the gullible many will continue to be lead around by the manipulative few, like the cattle they will have allowed themselves to become.

Your style of etiquette, in making conformity an easy route to an unchallenging existence, leaves those conditioned to submit to the group will trapped in their conditioning. They will never get that harsh nudge they need to awaken and claim their true freedom. The lives of the people will remain mechanical ones, governed by the common will around them, made palatable by the comfortable illusion of freedom that nothing will shatter. But should others have the bad taste to then challenge the consensus and the means by which it maintains itself, like one who has overslept in a dreamless state, each of those so disturbed will express his momentary discomfort in a hostile response. One that we should ignore, not out of contempt for the one angered, but out of respect for the person he will have the chance to become, should he awaken.

But that day of awakening is far off for many, if it will even come at all, so we must take responsibility for what we elect to lead others into, being aware of that which they are not, at the moment. That awakening can only come through the process of questioning and reasoned discussion, along with the honest awareness of one's inner experiences. One must have both, and few have either, now. One should not, however, confuse rationality in a discussion with politeness, especially when politeness has been defined in such an irrational manner.


Irene: Many would disagree with you, and say that they are quite conscious of their inner experiences. Doesn't Occam's razor compel you to accept the simplest explanation of what you see, and presume their reactions to be honest ones?


T : Try not to approach a used car salesman with that thought in mind.

Am I obligated to believe something, merely because someone says it? If someone pre-judges a thought or an experience, has he truly been open to it? When someone goes through the rhetorical contortions that I've witnessed in order to defend a belief, open mindedness is not what he is displaying. When I see someone reacting to an experience BEFORE having it, and displaying no reaction to its onset, then the simplest explanation for the facts, is that the reaction was decided in advance. As Einstein said once, in explaining his philosophy of science, one should make one's explanation of the facts as simple as possible, but no simpler.

Yes, someone may, by saying the same thing to himself over and over again, convince himself, on a shallow conscious level, of the truth of what he is saying, but that isn't an honest openness. That is denial, something that even New Agers acknowledge to be bad.

No, what we're seeing in others is not true inner freedom, and we must keep that in mind as we seek to influence others.

We remake the world, ever so slightly, with every discussion, and they had best be reasoned discussions, if we wish to endure the sight of what it is that they will lead to. The politically free and voting citizen of a republic, can't think like a medieval serf, if he is to do his duty.

With political freedom, comes the responsibility to use that freedom in a well considered fashion. There is an obligation to make one's best effort, to think things out, and to argue the right side of an issue. It is not OK to take an outrageous position just to be controversial, because an outrage may result in the process. Even were people not conditioned to let their strings be pulled, there would still be the issue of preying on those whose intellect or judgement was impaired, either by lack of native ability, or knowledge, or through unwholesome conditioning. If one doesn't know the significance of what one is agreeing to, what does it mean to say that one has agreed to it? Further, there would remain the issue of the harm done to innocent third parties by those one reached, whose moral judgement was impaired.

Even were most of us free, we would still have to deal with the reality of those who weren't. Again, those outcomes that I may be expected to anticipate the enhanced likelihood of, I may rightly be expected to accept responsibility for.


Irene: Now wait a second, that's not what I said ...


T : If I give the hypothetical revolver from the earlier example to someone I expect to act in the fashion that you said I should refrain from, earlier, am I blameless in any killings that may follow? Does the intervention of free will exonerate me, if that free will is well enough determined, at this point, that I can anticipate many of its choices?


Irene: ... but maybe I should have. Sneaky little b**tard, aren't you? You know I couldn't argue that. Don't pretend that I did.


T : I wouldn't dream of it. So, you would acknowledge that we must accept the responsibility for the outrages we may expect that our arguments would help to make more likely?


Irene: Are we being overdramatic, now? What sort of outrage?


T : Well, for one thing, sometimes our actions depend, to an uncomfortable extent, on the actions of others.

One case that I talked about, not so long ago, was that of a camp director in Indiana who, when being asked by a young woman camping there, if a certain river was safe to raft on, lied, and said that it was. In fact, it was a maze of whirlpools, and the victim was sucked down to her death.

The camp director thought that this was just too funny for words, and didn't see what the big deal was. A failure that was shared by those running Camp Northstar, as they took a number of their 'discipline cases' (like one who defiantly had bowel trouble, after being ordered to get better), and took them on a 40 mile per day forced march through the desert, during which a number of them died of dehydration, having been deprived of food and water. Or ...

Such was life for the young or defenseless, in the Reagan and Bush years, in the 1980s and early 1990s. A life that went unexamined.

The list of atrocities goes on and on - and few of them ever were meaningfully punished, leaving the commission of the ones that followed almost completely undeterred. The failure to see the need for rage in the general population guaranteed that those responsible for such crimes could elude responsibility merely by influencing the right people, often in clear view of all. All they had to do was delay punishment long enough, that those who continued to press for justice and some semblance of law were told that they 'just needed to get over it', as if laziness was the heart and soul of wisdom, or submission to tyranny was peace.

But it was far harder to go through the local news and miss such stories, than it was to find them. The corn silo operator who, rather than spending $10,000 on a machine to knock the corn loose when a certain door jammed, decided to instruct the kids working for him to knock it loose manually - knowing that he would eventually get one of them killed - and deciding to 'play the odds' by declining to spend the money to do things more safely, until the mounting costs of the resulting fines and wrongful death suits made it more profitable to do otherwise.

The operator of the silver refinery who decided that he could save money, by not ventilating his factory, or changing shifts as often - or warning his largely illiterate workforce of the dangers of heavy metal poisining, or ... ad infinitim. Those who killed through recklessness did so without fear, for the public was so laid back, that it never demanded action, and so action never followed. There were no consequences.

Go through the archives, and you could make a career out of chronicling the rest, in this unacknowledged dark point in American history. When tears vanished, compassion departed soon after.

This is the sort of thing that occurs when life is held cheaply, as Robert has tried to argue that it ought to be, by all, as people feel the need to paint a smiley face over every horror story they see an account of. If nobody is willing to see anything but that which is pleasant, soon there will be nothing pleasant left to see. This is the lesson of the 1980s, learned at great human cost. One that Robert would have us forget, because he thinks it cute.

A society must never forget the lessons of its history, lest it repeat them. Yet this lesson was a repeat of that already learned in the 1890s, and many times before. Yet here we have this man, who you would have me see decency in, as you have indicated in conversations past, who would have us forget it again, not even ten years after it was completed. Have our memories become so short?

Not that I'd care to argue that talking someone else into harm's way by persuading him to hold his own life cheaply, is OK, either. Preying on those with judgement that has been impaired, either from a lack of native intelligence, or by an unhealthy upbringing, is akin to preying on a child, just a really old one. So, the act of sending the psychologically defenseless into danger, is, itself, an outrage of the sort alluded to.


Irene: Now, you know full well that I am opposed to that sort of thing.


T : ... and yet, you support Robert's efforts, which make that sort of thing more socially acceptable, and hence, more common.

But perhaps I chose a harsh interpretation of the cliche, for consideration? Perhaps, you meant

"It is never wrong, to express an opinion".

Really? And, to take an extreme example, what if that opinion, was that a particular individual should be lynched? Would you feel comfortable with the stated absolute, then?

But, as I said, I never see the cliche given a definite meaning, and I'm not about to endorse a statement whose meaning is in doubt. I don't believe in giving rhetorical blank checks, especially to those who ask for them. The evasion indulged in, undermines my trust in the person making the request, or at least in the person who influenced the person who made the request.


Irene: So, what exactly did Robert do, that justified such hostility?


T : What Robert was doing has been given a name, before, and I think that you've heard it. It's called "brave talk", or sometimes, "cocktail party chatter". Comments about serious matters are made in a careless and ill considered manner. Like the people who used to think that it was cute to argue in favor of human rights abuses, in other countries. "Maybe rape and electroshock torture are a part of their culture, and who's to say who's right and who's wrong?" Which became a little less funny, for some of these people, when the Chicago Police Department started doing the latter, here. After that, it was amazing how little appeal moral relativism had for some. Like Nietzscheism, it seems to be a stance that is appealing only to those who don't feel that they have to worry about being the victim of someone else's "alternative morality".


Irene: Why can't you just accept that he has his opinion, and you have yours, and let it go at that? If what he is saying is so absurd, people will see how absurd it is, and at most they'll be humoring him. It's not like he's some celebrity who millions of people are listening to, so what's the harm?


T : Translation : Just because he is trying to argue on behalf of his point of view and win support for it, does that mean that you should feel free to do the exact same thing?

If you consider what concrete course of behavior is demanded out of me, as this rhetorical question is being asked, namely that I stop speaking, while the same is not being expected out of the person that I am rebutting, it becomes clear see that this is what is really meant. Although, there is sometimes the added complaint, already answered here, that the one offering the rebuttal seems to hold negative feelings toward the other person.

What's the harm in letting obscure individuals argue even the most ludicrous points, without rebuttal? If it was only one person, I might grant that point. But, if we accept the notion of letting it slide "just this once", aren't we promoting the notion that this is the right thing to do, and how do we decide which "just this once" to accept?

But consider the perversity of this. I would accept the notion that I should be the one to be silent, refraining from acting in support of my own position, BECAUSE I am the one making sense, while Robert's ideas are to be the only ones heard, because they don't. Robert may be a "little person", as you seem to be suggesting, but many small people make for one very large and powerful crowd, and if everyone thinks like you seem to be suggesting that I should, the bad ideas will start defining the norm. When this happens, history if not common sense tells us that people will get hurt so badly, that their lives will never again be the same. It's a high price for them to pay, for the sake of a rigid "etiquette".

What you don't seem to appreciate is that the outrageous remark that is left unchallenged today becomes part of the consensus tomorrow, and part of the shaky foundation of the ill considered popular philosophy of the day after that. Bad ideas become fundamental parts of how people think they should live, as people twist their conceptual frameworks to rationalise the assumptions that they declined to examine earlier.

This is the problem with letting bad ideas slip by, in order to be "nice" to someone. You begin a process in which bad conclusion is drawn from bad premise, ad infinitim, in a chain that evolves unpredictably, and out of control, because it is now divorced from reality. It's a Pandora's box, best left unopened.


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