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Old 05-03-2008, 11:29 AM   #1
Talon87
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Pushing the Envelope

"Nothing in excess." This philosophy has been the centerpiece of my way of thinking for the past 6 years, and I feel it rings especially true when discussing the issue of social conservativism and social liberalism. Someone who allows for no change must needs believe we have already reached a Utopian state of being; otherwise, he is a criminal. Therein lies the obvious problem with fringe conservatism. But what of fringe liberalism? Amongst the American youth -- and especially the online youth -- there seems to be a prevailing notion of "everyone deserves the right to do everything up until a certain point that I decide for myself." Certainly a teenage ideal. Certainly a teenage way of thinking. So many kids are convinced that they know what's right for this country, for this world, and they display such a double-standard!
  • if there is something illegal in this country (say incest) and they find it disgusting, they do not fight for others' right to enjoy it. "It is something which ought to stay illegal."[/*2gm1ms0i]
  • but if there is something illegal in this country which they do enjoy (say smoking marijuana), then they're up in arms over the government's denial of civil liberties.[/*2gm1ms0i]

The problem, as I see it, isn't the double-standard; it's the slippery slope.

The double-standard, I feel, is something we all have inside each of us. Every single one of us has certain things he/she believes ought to be fought for and has other things which he/she believes ought to be fought against. None of us believes (nor can believe) in fighting for every cause, because by definition "every cause" includes opposed causes (such as the over-used ProLife vs. ProChoice example ... whoops).

What I have noticed recently in the hentai community is this danger of "the slippery slope," or (to put it into one succinct psychiatric term) the danger of desensitization. I have observed desensitization within myself (comparing my own personality and things that I find acceptable and unacceptable today with the me of 2004), and I cannot say that is always a good thing. Rather ... it is a psychologic phenomenon unto itself, and it is neither good nor bad, I think.

It has become my opinion that desensitization is inevitable in a culture which is permissive of the expression of all ideas. If people are exposed to an idea enough times, they will eventually come to think of it as normal. Even if that idea is initially repugnant, they will eventually come to think of it as normal. They may not like it themselves, but they will defend (if required to) the right of someone else to enjoy that material.

So the question becomes, do we permit the free expression of all ideas? I can already hear some people's feathers getting ruffled -- "OF COURSE WE DO! WHAT ARE YOU, A FASCIST?" No, far from it. I consider myself pretty liberal when it comes to freedom of expression, too. I'm just saying, I've recently been startled by the realization that permitting an unpopular idea will lead, inevitably, to its acceptance. I have witnessed it so many times over the past few years, and I guess the light bulb's finally gone off. The realization that I don't think it's possible to build the ideal society if we permit freedom of all expression, which I guess means I'm saying that I don't think we can build an idea society period (because I would rather permit the expression of ideas than to restrict them).

I feel as though, by definition, the only way to create a perfect society would be to permit the expression of "good" ideas and to banish the expression of "bad" ideas; but of course nobody will agree precisely on what ought to remain "good" and what ought to now be labeled as "bad", and we have ourselves a sorry totalitarian state. Similarly, so long as we permit the expression of "bad" ideas, evil will continue to exist in this world -- no amount of academic enlightenment will overcome because humans, the way they are hard-wired, seem to be creatures who accept as normal that which they are exposed to on a normal basis.
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Old 05-03-2008, 01:28 PM   #2
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Re: Pushing the Envelope

A friend of mine refers to the general public as being "sheep".

"We're all SHEEP!" he always says. "If the government tells us to do something, we fall in line. We can't win unless we unite and stand up against these fascist pigs. Fight for our rights!"

Can't say I disagree with him, but who can be bothered? It's not like they'll listen to any of us anyway, we're only the "little people" who line their fat wallets after all. This in itself is a typical response by one of those sheep. "Baaaaa!" Very sad ;-;
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Old 05-03-2008, 01:40 PM   #3
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Re: Pushing the Envelope

The reality is that human society, not to force the metaphor, is like a colony of honeybees or ants. When one person tries to rise up and fight injustice, it's very easy for those in control to silence him or wipe him out; but (as discussed in V for Vendetta, not to sound like a yuppie by referencing the film -.-) when an idea rises up to challenge the institution, then it becomes hard if not impossible for them to win in the long term. For ideas cannot be killed or silenced, nor does killing any one person thwart the uprising.

I think the point you raised is slightly off-topic of what I was talking about, but I'm happy to discuss your point too (duh; see above for proof). I think that your friend is a bit of a typical teenager (even if he/she's actually our age or older), though, because I don't think that governments are fundamentally bad. Anybody who does think that must not have much in the line of respect for history's Liu Bei`s and Benjamin Franklin`s.
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Old 05-04-2008, 12:26 AM   #4
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Re: Pushing the Envelope

Quote:
Originally Posted by Xuande
The double-standard, I feel, is something we all have inside each of us. Every single one of us has certain things he/she believes ought to be fought for and has other things which he/she believes ought to be fought against. None of us believes (nor can believe) in fighting for every cause, because by definition "every cause" includes opposed causes (such as the over-used ProLife vs. ProChoice example ... whoops).
I think the double standard exists not because of an intrinsic desire spirit to fight for justice, but apathy. Some people just don't care about stuff that doesn't involve their lives at all (murder in Darfur - so what?), they're entirely too lazy to take up a position on something that almost no one else will care about.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Xuande
What I have noticed recently in the hentai community is this danger of "the slippery slope," or (to put it into one succinct psychiatric term) the danger of desensitization. I have observed desensitization within myself (comparing my own personality and things that I find acceptable and unacceptable today with the me of 2004), and I cannot say that is always a good thing. Rather ... it is a psychologic phenomenon unto itself, and it is neither good nor bad, I think.

It has become my opinion that desensitization is inevitable in a culture which is permissive of the expression of all ideas. If people are exposed to an idea enough times, they will eventually come to think of it as normal. Even if that idea is initially repugnant, they will eventually come to think of it as normal. They may not like it themselves, but they will defend (if required to) the right of someone else to enjoy that material.
Desensitization applies more broadly from just the shocking stuff, but normal emotions as well. I'm bored with a lot of anime right now, I really think I've hit my "steady state" or "carrying capacity" and can't watch anything new unless there's something unique/original to it, generic stuff just doesn't satisfy me anymore. I've become a Washizu Iwao of anime - I haven't seen the minimum 400 shows to qualify as an anime_expert only because at 160 I've become insanely selective of what I want to see, because everything else is just so boring and doesn't entertain in the slightest.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Xuande
So the question becomes, do we permit the free expression of all ideas? I can already hear some people's feathers getting ruffled -- "OF COURSE WE DO! WHAT ARE YOU, A FASCIST?" No, far from it. I consider myself pretty liberal when it comes to freedom of expression, too. I'm just saying, I've recently been startled by the realization that permitting an unpopular idea will lead, inevitably, to its acceptance. I have witnessed it so many times over the past few years, and I guess the light bulb's finally gone off. The realization that I don't think it's possible to build the ideal society if we permit freedom of all expression, which I guess means I'm saying that I don't think we can build an idea society period (because I would rather permit the expression of ideas than to restrict them).
This is the underlying philosophy behind "M@lintex_T3rek" going in and playing Devil's Advocate for almost every anime topic out there, I think the hive-mind problem combined with passive internalization is going to cause problems in the future - the internet could shape up to be a network of professionals and intellectuals or some kind of idiot supercity. It's almost like a crusade against dominant ideas, customs and norms. Just look at my Wikipedia User:Page -

Quote:
Originally Posted by Wikipedia
Mission Statement:
There's a lot of prejudice, bigotry, and penor stroking here on Wikipedia. Prejudice against Anonymous users, prejudice against orange screenames, and a lot of misinformation, ignorance and stupidity. My objective is to reduce if not elliminate outright this regime of bad taste, hopefully to foster a better, more productive community for tomorrow. I'll inevitably get banned (again) for my radicalism, but so long as the community improves it would be a sacrifice worth making. Terek 09:04, 25 June 2007 (UTC)
Haven't been banned yet. But, have I made much progress? Not really.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Xuande
I feel as though, by definition, the only way to create a perfect society would be to permit the expression of "good" ideas and to banish the expression of "bad" ideas; but of course nobody will agree precisely on what ought to remain "good" and what ought to now be labeled as "bad", and we have ourselves a sorry totalitarian state. Similarly, so long as we permit the expression of "bad" ideas, evil will continue to exist in this world -- no amount of academic enlightenment will overcome because humans, the way they are hard-wired, seem to be creatures who accept as normal that which they are exposed to on a normal basis.
Best society in my view is one that discuses everything to death intelligently - we can arrive at the best possible outcome if everyone pools their thinking with maximum effort. However, this demands the highest levels of education and maturity, but the internet and society as a whole is far too heterogeneous to make it a functional reality.
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Old 05-04-2008, 06:55 AM   #5
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Re: Pushing the Envelope

Your view is too optimistic, for it denies a reality I've been reminded of time and time again in Neuro this semester -- that the human brain truly defines what we believe. Let me link you to a very interesting Wiki article -- it will be far more beneficial for you to read that than for me to make up a bunch of examples myself. Anton Syndrome (or Anton-Babinski syndrome as it is fully labeled) is a syndrome in which brain-damaged patients swear up and down that they can still see even though they have clearly become blind and MRI/CT scans reveal that their occipital lobes are toast.

Now, if you want more examples, here are some of the ones we've studied during the school year:
  • the dorsomedial nucleus of the hypothalamus is what generates sham rage in animals; inducing a lesion there generates calm, placid animals[/*25j2i8gj]
  • the ventromedial nucleus of the hypothalamus is the part of your brain responsible for telling you "I feel full; do not eat anymore". Lesions there induce obesity and probable death by overeating in lab animals.[/*25j2i8gj]
  • the lateral nucleus of the hypothalamus is the part of the brain that tells you "I feel hungry; eat!" Lesions there produce animals whose appetite is shot to hell and who will waste away and die of malnourishment even when heaps of food are right in front of them.[/*25j2i8gj]
  • the non-dominant parietal lobe is most frequently associated with the ability to recognize faces as "a whole face" and not as their individual components; lesions to this area produce prosopagnosia, a brain disorder in which patients cannot recognize faces anymore and can only correctly guess at a face's possible identity based on key distinguishing features (e.g. Einstein's hair).[/*25j2i8gj]
  • the dominant temporal lobe has a high role in language processing and lesions there will frequently generate various forms of agnosias; however, patients can still recognize tones just fine and so can tell if someone is lying to them or not based on their tones and body language clues. On the non-dominant temporal lobe is where the tone portion resides, so lesions there will spare the ability for a person to recognize spoken and written language but will take away their ability to detect what emotions are vested in the language, i.e. "Shut up you stupid fuck" won't give them any clue that the speaker is angry rather than happy or scared.[/*25j2i8gj]

On and on it goes. So my point is, so long as human beings have different brains (which we all do, because we all have different genes, were exposed to different womb environments, and were exposed to different environments which stimulated our brains in different ways as we grew up), then human beings will never all be capable of reaching a concensus. Because fundamentally people will not believe that which they are incapable of believing -- just as the person with Anton's syndrome cannot be made to believe that he is blind despite the damning evidence, so too do I think there will always be people who cannot be convinced "A is wrong" or "A is right" such that you will always have at least one human who believes in A's goodness and another who believes in A's badness. Always.
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Old 05-06-2008, 05:15 PM   #6
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Re: Pushing the Envelope

What makes your arguments so ridiculous, dami, is that you have a nasty habit of pigeon-holing. "Who gets to decide -- King George?" Nooooo, dami, not King George nor George Bush nor Mahatma Gandhi nor Jesus. Not any one man. But theoretically, why should a society -- a group of like-minded individuals -- deny themselves the privilege to banish or otherwise "make impermissible" certain behaviors? Why must everything be accepted lest people be labeled a Nazi by you? It's fucking ridiculous. No, I take that back: it's anarchist. What need do you even have for a social contract of any kind if what you fundamentally believe in is 0% restriction? if you fundamentally believe that the truest path is that which defends a man's right to act in any manner he sees fit? Where do you draw the line, dami?

I know where you draw the line: between action and talk. You've made that clear time and time again: actions are free to be prohibited (no rape, no murder, check) but words are sacrosanct. Why? Talking is just another action. It has the power to be invasive. Persuasive. Perversive. People's livelihoods and goals can be transformed by 30 minutes of conversation; ill motives can be engendered by a few choice speeches. It is a crime in this country to incite others to violence, showing that the courts of the land you hold in such high esteem do recognize the importance of holding "mere talk" accountable before the law. So why draw the line there, at incitations to violence? Why not include incitations to bigotry? to cultism? to any "ill behavior"?

I don't appreciate being told that in my open-minded discussion of both the pros and the cons of tugging on the leash that's tethered around Liberalism's neck that I am some Orwellian villain. And even if you were referring to one of the other members in this discussion, that was still uncalled for.
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Old 05-06-2008, 05:42 PM   #7
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Re: Pushing the Envelope

I always wondered when I was going to get the post this.

In any event, if you're looking for a magical formula that will solve all of society's ills and create perfect harmony, you're dreaming. The best you can do is play it by ear. Of course that answer's not going to sate the raging ideologues on either side, but until we can quantify human behavior into a multi variable equation that's the only real option.
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Old 05-06-2008, 05:51 PM   #8
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Re: Pushing the Envelope

Quote:
Originally Posted by Blastoise
The best you can do is play it by ear.
I have only recently come to sit down at this table, and I do so with heavy heart. I have long wondered, nay, believed that humanity could some day pull it off. It's only as I've learned more about humanity both from social courses, science courses, and living my own life that I've come to hold the opinion that we are INTRINSICALLY (as a species) incapable of all agreeing with one another, fundamentally (in the most inescapable form) because of how our brains develop and because of how the organization of the working brain defines our very existence.

But I am at the table, and I am sitting down. Because I agree with you.
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