The stupidity of 'pride' movements

[humanist]

One should be proud of a thing only in proportion as she/he is responsible for it, i.e. in proportion as it is her/his achievement. A person's sexuality, or race, or ethnicity, or nationality is no achievement, nor something whereof a person is responsible. It cannot be changed by volitional activity, and hence it is nothing wherein to have pride. The whole idea if "gay pride" or "white pride" or "American pride" or "Jewish pride" therefore strikes me as absurd.

[Fade the Butcher]

One should be proud of a thing only in proportion as she/he is responsible for it, i.e. in proportion as it is her/his achievement. A person's sexuality, or race, or ethnicity, or nationality is no achievement, nor something whereof a person is responsible. It cannot be changed by volitional activity, and hence it is nothing wherein to have pride. The whole idea if "gay pride" or "white pride" or "American pride" or "Jewish pride" therefore strikes me as absurd.

I should start compiling The Essential FadeTheButcher because this isn't the first time I have had to address such arguments.

Pride (http://www.thephora.net/forum/showpost.php?p=27446&postcount=1)

"We should take pride in our own accomplishments and actions, right? This is ridiculous. The individual accomplishes practically nothing on his own. His own thoughts are rarely even his. Isolate a man in the wilderness of Siberia without any previous human contact and you reduce him to a savage. He cannot even reproduce himself. We could consider him lucky if he managed to survive.

We make progress by interacting with others and by participating in traditions and practices established by our ancestors; that we did not create as 'individuals'. We don't know the names of many of the architects who built the Gothic cathedrals of Western Europe. There is a reason for this. That was a sustained effort that took the work of many generations. To possess such a cathedral was a source of pride for each little community and the construction of them was a collective goal and accomplishment. Each individual helped contribute in his own way: working in the stone quarries, donating money, walking up off the street to assist in on site construction, cooking meals for the workers, making stained glass and so on.

Such awesome and beautiful structures exist today because medieval Europeans thought more about enriching their communities than wrapping themselves up in unwarranted individual arrogance and narcissism. The Gothic cathedrals were meant to be held in reverence by future generations. Your community wasn't something you chose. It was something you were born into. It was a project all generations (past, present, and future) participated in and contributed to.

Don't take pride in who you are. Take pride in what you 'choose' to do. This is the ethos of the Walmart shopper and the fast food menu; the ideology of the consumer. I would like to believe we are more than that."

Re: Why should people value their culture and ethnicity? (http://www.thephora.net/forum/showpost.php?p=25262&postcount=15)

"The glorification of the individual in our society strikes me as the grossly irrational byproduct of the bourgeoisie mind. The individual, in reality, achieves relatively nothing as the result of his own efforts. Even his own thoughts are rarely his own. He simply mindlessly repeats and reflects upon slogans, catch phrases, concepts, and paradigms he has drawn from other sources. The individual is immersed in a social and historical context that structures virtually every aspect of life, from his standard of living to his own thought processes.

The individualist denigrates community and tradition but draws from the resources of both. The countless generations that have come and gone before him (and those who will come after) are a mere afterthought. These are the people, however, who have erected the foundation on which he now stands to crow and exaggerate his own self-importance. The words that stream out of his mouth were taught to him by others who put them there in the first place. The concepts that color his imagination are liberally drawn from the writings of others. The food he eats for dinner was grown by faceless strangers. The state that protects him from violence is an irrelevancy; it's history an antiquarian curiosity. The family that nurtures him is a dispensable voluntary association. The medicine that cures his ills is something that just happens to be there for him to consume.

The words of Newton are meaningless to the individualist: "If I have seen farther than others, it is because I have stood on the shoulders of giants." Such humility is foreign to him, a despicable creature driven by arrogance and narcissism, whose parasitic existence and absurd ideology is detrimental to the survival and progress of higher civilization. The asocial individualist is a hypocrite who doesn't have the courage of his own convictions. He rebels against society yet partakes in its fruits. He advocates isolation, autonomy, and rights but immerses himself in the social state. He denies that community and tradition are goods while consuming their benefits.

Liberalism is individualism fashioned into an all encompassing ideology. As with all fantasy ideologies, liberalism begins by positing a 'state of nature' that never existed. In this hypothetical fantasy world, the individual is happy and free and isolated until he contracts with other individuals to establish a government in order to collect its benefits. The community is nothing more than a voluntary cooperative of individuals who freely associate to pursue their own private ends. That's a nice theory but reality is quite different. In truth, the individual is almost always born into communities and traditions that already exist and brought up in their customs. He is imparted language, concepts, and morals which he uses to make sense of his surroundings.

Why is culture, community, and tradition valuable to the individual? Why should such things be evaluated positively? Because these are external goods that are essential to the individual if he is rise above a brute substinence level of existence and realize his potential. Such forms of association are not in need of justification. They justify themselves through the realization of the enormous benefits bestowed upon us. The practice of medicine exists because health is preferable to sickness. The institution of government exists because order is preferable to chaos. Tradition facilitates the transmission of both from generation to generation. We value health and order because both are necessary if we are to flourish and achieve happiness. And happiness can only be realized in a collective state."

[Hannify]

If your father accomplished a task that you found to be respectable and worthwhile, would you be proud of him? What about your son?

[Eisenhans]

You know what strikes me as absurd? Being proud that you don't agree with pride. Figure that out.

[Helios Panoptes]

It strikes most people living in modern society as stupid because they mistakenly believe that they, and they alone, are causally responsible for their actions. In truth, their personalities, aptitudes, and very identity are the result of a convergence of conditions, which they had nothing to do with. As the sentence implies, they have no identities without these conditions. There are two possibilities for the fool, which he chooses is largely determined by his prosperity: 1) if he is a failure then he will point to what I've said above to relieve himself of responsibility for his ineptitude. This is a coping tactic, so it cannot be expect to withstand scrutiny, but if we look at it we see that it admits that the person using it is a failure. 2) the other possibility is to arrogantly proclaim that one is solely responsible for his actions, that one's agency is causa sui. This is untenable. The healthy outlook is to see that the past is not something dead and meaningless; the past bears the future and is present in it at all times.

[Fade the Butcher]

One should be proud of a thing only in proportion as she/he is responsible for it, i.e. in proportion as it is her/his achievement.

I shouldn't take pride in my race (because this wasn't freely chosen), but I should be proud to be human, right?

A person's sexuality, or race, or ethnicity, or nationality is no achievement, nor something whereof a person is responsible.

My response to this line of argument is always the same: the individual isn't self-sufficient. The individual is a part of a whole. The collective context in which the individual is immersed in enables him make achievements.

It cannot be changed by volitional activity, and hence it is nothing wherein to have pride.

I chose to purchase a television set. I can have pride in my television set, but not my family. Our actions are structured by the historical and social context we are immersed in; that which is beyond our control.

The whole idea if "gay pride" or "white pride" or "American pride" or "Jewish pride" therefore strikes me as absurd.

The idea that choice is the arbiter of forms of association we can legitimately take pride in strikes me as absurd.

[Fade the Butcher]

It strikes most people living in modern society as stupid because they mistakenly believe that they, and they alone, are causally responsible for their actions. In truth, their personalities, aptitudes, and very identity are the result of a convergence of conditions, which they had nothing to do with.Absolutely. It is the mentality of the consumer.

[Ahknaton]

One should be proud of a thing only in proportion as she/he is responsible for it, i.e. in proportion as it is her/his achievement. A person's sexuality, or race, or ethnicity, or nationality is no achievement, nor something whereof a person is responsible. It cannot be changed by volitional activity, and hence it is nothing wherein to have pride. The whole idea if "gay pride" or "white pride" or "American pride" or "Jewish pride" therefore strikes me as absurd.
Your fundamental error is that you are conflating individual pride with collective pride, and insisting that only the former has any meaning.

[humanist]

This quotation, and the horrible malaise of intellectually derelict nonsense that FadeTheButcher extrapolates therefrom, is a microcosm of his entire way of thinking on this head:
The words of Newton are meaningless to the individualist: "If I have seen farther than others, it is because I have stood on the shoulders of giants." Such humility is foreign to him, a despicable creature driven by arrogance and narcissism, whose parasitic existence and absurd ideology is detrimental to the survival and progress of higher civilization. The asocial individualist is a hypocrite who doesn't have the courage of his own convictions. He rebels against society yet partakes in its fruits. He advocates isolation, autonomy, and rights but immerses himself in the social state. He denies that community and tradition are goods while consuming their benefits.
If each genius is nothing, owing his achievements not to the productive power of his own intellect and the vision of his independent mind, but rather to dead individuals who in turn 'owe' their achievements to dead individuals who in turn, upon whosse shoulders did the first giants stand upon?

Newton had access to the works of the same 'giants' that his peers did: why was he so monstrously successful in comparison to them if it was not Newton himself, as a keenly reasoning individual, that made all the difference? And Einstein? And Mandelbrot?

Was Mozart 'standing on the shoulders' of previous composers when he took the existing tools of music and set himself apart from the world with them in hand, and what exactly would a proponent of your reprehensible babble imagine the difference to be between a Mozart and a Newton? Or even an Edison?

Newton's humility here was as masochistic as it was absurd; but to be expected from a man of his times. With few exceptions, all major accomplishments in human history begin in the mind of a single or several individuals. Individuals like Galileo, who are then doubted, condemned, and oftentimes even attacked by proponents of the established traditions; traditions that are, with no small degree of irony, being clumsily asserted as the fuel of innovation amidst the sloppy frenzy of your social pseudoscience. In the face of the narrow-minded, fear-driven resistance of an uncreative, unoriginal, uncritical, and intellectually inferior heard majority who have been socialized to listen and not think, these individuals are the giants who power the continuation our age. It is precisely the woman and man who is resolutely interested in and pursues her or his own vision (self-interest), against the overwhelming tide of collective whim (self-confidence, self-motivation) who produces the knowledge that changes the world.

Knowledge, culture, tradition - these things are analogous to the paintbrush or a violin. It is the artist, the mind who holds, controls and guides those tools in accordance with its own individual vision that is the origin and immutable base of all human production, from the most mediocre and exclusive achievement to the most significant and broad.

[Petr]

I can say that I appreciate both Fade's and humanist's contributions on this thread.

My own preferred strategy is to play both hyper-communitarianism and hyper-individualism off against each other and let the theocracy to inherit the earth. See more here:

http://thephora.net/forum/showthread.php?t=2642&highlight=fielding

"Libertarianism loses the unity of society in the multiplicity of the individual. Conservatism loses the multiplicity of individuals in the march of the development of the unity of civil society through history.23 Neither really has a principle of transcendence.24 "


We can see what kind of cultural stagnation Plato's anti-individualist ideal state might have produced if it had been realized:

http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/laws.2.ii.html


Ath. Then in a city which has good laws, or in future ages is to have them, bearing in mind the instruction and amusement which are given by music, can we suppose that the poets are to be allowed to teach in the dance anything which they themselves like, in the way of rhythm, or melody, or words, to the young children of any well-conditioned parents? Is the poet to train his choruses as he pleases, without reference to virtue or vice?

Cle. That is surely quite unreasonable, and is not to be thought of.

Ath. And yet he may do this in almost any state with the exception of Egypt.

Cle. And what are the laws about music and dancing in Egypt?

Ath. You will wonder when I tell you: Long ago they appear to have recognized the very principle of which we are now speaking-that their young citizens must be habituated to forms and strains of virtue. These they fixed, and exhibited the patterns of them in their temples; and no painter or artist is allowed to innovate upon them, or to leave the traditional forms and invent new ones. To this day, no alteration is allowed either in these arts, or in music at all. And you will find that their works of art are painted or moulded in the same forms which they had ten thousand years ago; - this is literally true and no exaggeration - their ancient paintings and sculptures are not a whit better or worse than the work of to-day, but are made with just the same skill.

Cle. How extraordinary!

Ath. I should rather say, How statesmanlike, how worthy of a legislator! I know that other things in Egypt are not so well. But what I am telling you about music is true and deserving of consideration, because showing that a lawgiver may institute melodies which have a natural truth and correctness without any fear of failure. To do this, however, must be the work of God, or of a divine person; in Egypt they have a tradition that their ancient chants which have been preserved for so many ages are the composition of the Goddess Isis. And therefore, as I was saying, if a person can only find in any way the natural melodies, he may confidently embody them in a fixed and legal form. For the love of novelty which arises out of pleasure in the new and weariness of the old, has not strength enough to corrupt the consecrated song and dance, under the plea that they have become antiquated. At any rate, they are far from being corrupted in Egypt.



Petr

[Petr]

The asocial individualist is a hypocrite who doesn't have the courage of his own convictions. He rebels against society yet partakes in its fruits. He advocates isolation, autonomy, and rights but immerses himself in the social state. He denies that community and tradition are goods while consuming their benefits.
A consistent individualist would simply reply to this, following Stalin:

"Gratitude is a sickness suffered by dogs."

(And one could say that in a worldly sense, Stalin was one truly successful individual. Whether he was a personally happy man is another story.)


Petr

[Petr]

Btw humanist, do you happen to be Raina?


Petr

[humanist]

Btw humanist, do you happen to be Raina?
No, don't even know who that is.

[Helios Panoptes]

Btw humanist, do you happen to be Raina?


Petr

I would be really surprised if it wasn't at this point.

[Ixtab]

His writing style doesn't resemble Raina's to me.

[Fade the Butcher]

This quotation, and the horrible malaise of intellectually derelict nonsense that FadeTheButcher extrapolates therefrom, is a microcosm of his entire way of thinking on this head.

My argument is as follows:

1.) The individual is not self-sufficient. He is like a part in relation to a whole.
2.) Humans are social beings; group-based bipedal mammals.
3.) Humans make scientific progress by working within the boundries of practices and traditions.
4.) Such practices and traditions are nurtured and made possible by the collective context in which the individual is immersed in.
5.) Individual accomplishment is an oxymoron.
6.) To say we should take pride in our individual accomplishments is stupidity because there are none.

If each genius is nothing, owing his achievements not to the productive power of his own intellect and the vision of his independent mind, but rather to dead individuals who in turn 'owe' their achievements to dead individuals who in turn, upon whosse shoulders did the first giants stand upon?

You are setting up a strawman. I am saying that individuals can make contributions to various fields, but only as participants in historically and socially situated practices and traditions. These practices and traditions aren't reducible to any mythical "first giants" or "individual genuises." They grow organically out of other practices and traditions like chemistry did from alchemy. The various sciences that exist today are the daughter sciences of natural philosophy.

Newton had access to the works of the same 'giants' that his peers did: why was he so monstrously successful in comparison to them if it was not Newton himself, as a keenly reasoning individual, that made all the difference?

You are already making my point.

1.) Newton was a participant in a socially and historically situated practice. In this case, physics.
2.) The practice of physics was made by possible by the division of labor internal to a collective.
3.) Newton drew heavily upon the resources of his predecessors and contemporaries.

Newton was not some isolated individual super genius who dreamed up the aim of physics on a whim, its essential problems, and proposed a solution in his laws of motion. He was a member of a group working towards a historically situated group telos, as he himself freely acknowledged.

And Einstein? And Mandelbrot?

Ditto.

Was Mozart 'standing on the shoulders' of previous composers when he took the existing tools of music and set himself apart from the world with them in hand, and what exactly would a proponent of your reprehensible babble imagine the difference to be between a Mozart and a Newton?Or even an Edison?

Absolutely.

1.) Mozart was a participant in a socially and historically situated practice. In this case, classical music.
2.) The practice of classical music was made by possible by the division of labor internal to a collective.
3.) Mozart drew heavily upon the resources of his predecessors and contemporaries.

Mozart was one classical composer amongst many; classical music having evolved out of other forms. His music would have been utterly inconceivable outside of the social and historical context he was immersed in; innovations in European music that go back centuries.

Newton's humility here was as masochistic as it was absurd; but to be expected from a man of his times.

There is nothing masochistic about Newton's comment. It was an eminently reasonable observation from an enlightened man. He wasn't so arrogant or naive to buy into the ridiculous modern notion that everyone is a man unto himself whose thoughts are entirely his own. Thought is a collective process.

With few exceptions, all major accomplishments in human history begin in the mind of a single or several individuals.

This is ridiculous. Thought itself is not even individual. Humans think and reason through socially and historically situated concepts and express themselves in a social medium: language. They accumulate knowledge and progress through interacting with other humans in the pursuit of group goals. Humans are social beings. They are utterly incapable of higher cognitive development when isolated from a collective context.

Individuals like Galileo, who are then doubted, condemned, and oftentimes even attacked by proponents of the established traditions

Galileo was himself a participant in multiple traditions and practices: physics, mathematics, optics, and astronomy.

traditions that are, with no small degree of irony, being clumsily asserted as the fuel of innovation amidst the sloppy frenzy of your social pseudoscience.

Traditions are the life blood of innovation. We accumulate knowledge like we built the Gothic Cathedrals: it's a collective effort that progresses one brick at a time.

In the face of the narrow-minded, fear-driven resistance of an uncreative, unoriginal, uncritical, and intellectually inferior heard majority who have been socialized to listen and not think, these individuals are the giants who power the continuation our age.

This is nonsense. In fact, these individuals are not really individuals at all. They are participants immersed in practices and traditions that are quite often ancient in origin: astronomy, physics, medicine, law, chemistry, etc. They are educated by the collective and instructed in the canons of excellence internal to the practice.

It is precisely the woman and man who is resolutely interested in and pursues her or his own vision (self-interest), against the overwhelming tide of collective whim (self-confidence, self-motivation) who produces the knowledge that changes the world.

This is false. It is precisely the man who is deeply immersed in the practices and traditions of the collective who comes to possess the knowledge that enables him to make contributions to that body of knowledge. The vision of the natural scientist (i.e., understanding of the natural world through reason, experiment, and reduction to mathematics) is not his own individual vision, but a preexisting intellectual template passed down through tradition that he has molded himself into.

Knowledge, culture, tradition - these things are analogous to the paintbrush or a violin.

Knowledge, culture, tradition -- these are the things that make progress possible. The individual accomplishes absolutely nothing in isolation. He is a part in relation to a whole, as I have argued.

It is the artist, the mind who holds, controls and guides those tools in accordance with its own individual vision

This vision is actually instilled in the artist and/or scientist through education in preexisting canons of excellence that guide the artist/scientist towards his preexisting telos.

. . . that is the origin and immutable base of all human production, from the most mediocre and exclusive achievement to the most significant and broad.

Isolate a Newton, Galileo, or Michelangelo in the wilderness of Siberia and you render him a savage or a dead man.

[Fade the Butcher]

Btw humanist, do you happen to be Raina?


PetrNo, humanist is from MSF if I recall.

[Fade the Butcher]

We can see what kind of cultural stagnation Plato's anti-individualist ideal state might have produced if it had been realized.

Yeah. I mean Plato only inspired the Renaissance.

[riddlemethis]

Yeah. I mean Plato only inspired the Renaissance.
Yeah. I mean, I totally remember that you used to rant about how Renaissance humanists were only "projecting their own values" onto Plato &Co.

[Fade the Butcher]

Yeah. I mean, I totally remember that you used to rant about how Renaissance humanists were only "projecting their own values" onto Plato &Co.

Welcome back. I take it we have met before.

[Helios Panoptes]

Thinker's argument is completely untenable. If knowledge grows not gradually, but from the spontaneous revelations of anachronistic geniuses, there's really no reason why there why the advances of Newton weren't made in 500 BC besides chance. You need to realize that it's not a discrete individual called Newton who invented the laws of motion. It was a person of certain aptitudes, raised in a particular environment, and drawing upon an established scientific community. None of these "things" were caused by Newton and he wouldn't be Newton without their convergence.

edit: This is like a summary post. I'm slow on the draw, I guess. :)

[Jonathan]

http://www.thephora.net/forum/showthread.php?t=2267

[Petr]

Yeah. I mean, I totally remember that you used to rant about how Renaissance humanists were only "projecting their own values" onto Plato &Co.
Tell me more about this! I don't think I have known Fade long enough to have seen that one. :p

(Most Renaissance figures considered themselves about as much Christian as average medieval people had done. Btw, the piety of medieval Europeans has been exaggerated.)


Petr

[Petyr Baelish]

Btw humanist, do you happen to be Raina?


Petr


Raina, as loathsome as he/she/it is, is far more intelligent than this troll.

[Péter]

One should be proud of a thing only in proportion as she/he is responsible for it, i.e. in proportion as it is her/his achievement. A person's sexuality, or race, or ethnicity, or nationality is no achievement, nor something whereof a person is responsible. It cannot be changed by volitional activity, and hence it is nothing wherein to have pride. The whole idea if "gay pride" or "white pride" or "American pride" or "Jewish pride" therefore strikes me as absurd.

"Gay Pride" is ridiculous. Who would take pride in their sexual orientation?

"White Pride" is similarly insane. Who takes pride in their skin color? Cultureless, ethnically amalgamated Racial Marxists who in their own lack of identity seek to incorporate themselves into a broader categorical group as compensation--that's who!

"Jewish Pride" makes sense, in the same way German or Turkish "pride" makes sense. Pride need not necessarily be hate-filled chauvanism, but a joy borne of the delights of one's culture, a heritage that is the transmission of thousands of years of tradition. "Pride" is but a shallow term, and ill-applied by those on both "sides"--for they're merely two forms of the same process which seeks to find an external scapegoat rather than realizing the decay within one's own society.

Here is a personal example:

The way in which I view the world can be none other than Hungarian, for the only way in which I can formulate my thoughts is Hungarian--i.e., the manner of expression of my thoughts will always have a Magyar character to it, even if written in English. I bear Hungarian pain in my soul, and rejoice at Magyar glory. The history of my fatherland culminates in my very being, and I see my self as an extension of this spiritual lineage.

[Blaphbee]

Another take on this very issue:

http://www.nihil.org/nihilist/issue1/pride/

When one prowls the Internet, one encounters not only the raw "opinion" of the masses, but one gets it distilled into its simplest emotions, as they tap out a few lines on a forum or in chat. Thus one gets the prevalent excuses of modern society distilled into their function as support structure for a fragile ego. Under these circumstances, it's good all we see of each other is words on a screen, or anytime humans met through the Internet, mass murder would occur. Recently I was fortunate enough to see a prevailing criticism of taking pride in one's ancestors.

The ingenue in question saunted to a place where he knew his opinions would run contrary to the norm, and in the guise of a question, posed an attack: "How can you take pride in your tribe if you aren't responsible for any of their accomplishments? Me, I can only take pride in things I've personally done." There were a variety of replies, most confused, because this was an open-access system which means that people come there to learn as well as attack, and one way one learns is by trying out ideas on other people. But my reply to him is: "How can you take pride in something you haven't done?"

Of course, this will baffle most people. "But -- you -- said..." No - what is important here is that without what your ancestors did, you wouldn't have the abilities you do today. If they had not undertaken the task of creating fire, and hunting larger game animals, and moving north, and doing all the things that made them - and you - what they are, your intelligence, strength and appearance today would be remarkably different. Thus it's foolish to claim pride only in what you have done, as you are a product of your ancestors; further, pride in ancestors is a separate kind of pride, much as one has pride in family and friends, and it's a loving, positive pride.

Only someone lacking such a thing would criticize it in others.

[Fade the Butcher]

Yeah. I mean, I totally remember that you used to rant about how Renaissance humanists were only "projecting their own values" onto Plato &Co.

There is truth in both statements. Platonic idealism and emphasis upon mathematics did inspire a lot of great Renaissance art. Then again, Plato was hardly a humanist or a supporter of individualism.

[humanist]

My argument is as follows:

1.) The individual is not self-sufficient. He is like a part in relation to a whole.The whole is not self-sufficient. The whole is merely the sum of its individual parts.

2.) Humans are social beings; Humans are also individualistic beings.

4.) Such practices and traditions are nurtured and made possible by the collective context in which the individual is immersed.
The individual also nurtures and makes possible the collective tradition in which he is immersed.

5.) Individual accomplishment is an oxymoron.
Collective human accomplishment is then an oxymoron for the same reason, for humans are themselves merely participants in a greater evolutionary, and a greater astro-evolutionary, "tradition", if you will. It would then only make sense, if this be taken to its logical extreminity, to have a universal cosmic pride.

I am saying that individuals can make contributions to various fields, but only as participants in historically and socially situated practices and traditions. These practices and traditions aren't reducible to any mythical "first giants" or "individual genuises." They grow organically out of other practices and traditions like chemistry did from alchemy. The various sciences that exist today are the daughter sciences of natural philosophy.
What you fail to realise is the simply truth: The operative factor is always the action of the individual; where one starts only determines that with which one has to work at the start. Intelligence can not be taught, purchased, or stolen.

I think the contrary argument and its philosophical ilk is a dangerous and naive line of reason. The most grizzly bloodbaths in human history have predominantly either been enabled by or executed in the name of collectivism of some stripe or another. Sometimes the collectivist intentions were sinister from the start, and sometimes the intentions were quite benevolent. Do you know what one of the most effective ways to convince a person to accept abuse and keep her in her "place" is? Destroy her self-esteem by convincing her that she is nothing without some arbitrary social group; convince her that she only continues to live because others are sufficiently kind to let her. Promulgate that she 'owes' every monkey to ever make a noise her life and the product of her mind. Goad her into drawing her esteem entirely from the group and encourage her to accept the idea that abject self-sacrifice to that group is the height of virtue.

Our moral obligation in this regard is to reserve force for self-defence and subsequently let people use every tool that they possess, receive, and can create to the fullest extent that they are able for their own good, by their own judgement. Our task is to expel and or destroy those savage individuals and groups in our midst who purport to enslave us, either for sadistic reasons or to leech our production. Not, by the way, that freedom is 'safe'. And the 'safe' alternative is even less safe.

1.) Newton was a participant in a socially and historically situated practice. In this case, physics.

...

3.) Newton drew heavily upon the resources of his predecessors and contemporaries.

The difference between a pile of physics books, a pencil, a piece of paper, and Newton's Principia Mathematica is the product of Newton's mind.

1.) Mozart was a participant in a socially and historically situated practice. In this case, classical music.

...

Mozart was one classical composer amongst many; classical music having evolved out of other forms.
Mozart might use the products of others as tools or raw material with which to compose his music, but those compositions are fully the product of his intellect and no-one else's. The environment, culture, education, language, resources - these are tools and raw material to man's reasoning mind. Tools and raw material themselves do not in themselves produce anything.

[Petr]

Yeah. I mean Plato only inspired the Renaissance.
Actually Italian Renaissance got started on almost purely Latin basis, especially Ciceronianism. Platonism (and in specifically neo-Platonic form) and Greek language didn't begin to have serious influence until in the late 15th century with the school of Ficino in Florence.


Petr

[infoterror]

One should be proud of a thing only in proportion as she/he is responsible for it, i.e. in proportion as it is her/his achievement.

We don't wholly create ourselves. Thus your argument comes full circle... and FAILS.

[Blaphbee]

Mozart might use the products of others as tools or raw material with which to compose his music, but those compositions are fully the product of his intellect and no-one else's. The environment, culture, education, language, resources - these are tools and raw material to man's reasoning mind. Tools and raw material themselves do not in themselves produce anything.
Um, he learned a the lion's share of what he knew from Haydn. It wasn't just Mozart autonomously creating new things free from influence or past teachings. If he hadn't have learned those methods from someone, he would have had a far different outcome in terms of his creative output.

[humanist]

Um, he learned a the lion's share of what he knew from Haydn.
And I would classify this as the raw material with which Mozart's own artistic mind worked.

[Blaphbee]

No, you're wrong - the techniques he was taught were nothing but tools. His brain was the raw material, and upon having learned these techniques, he was then able to compose along the same scales as those he studied under.

Otherwise, his own compositional talents would have amounted to far littler overall, had he been forced to self-teach, or to have sought out a different teacher. We only have Mozart because of the influences which went into producing Mozart as an individual working within a genre, be they environmental or genetically predetermined, conscious or non.

If Mozart had taken all this "raw clay" you speak of and forged an entirely new genre of music and set a completely unheard-of precedent all on his own (which he didn't), then I might be able to entertain your laughable claims that people are free of outside influence, and do not "stand on the shoulders of those who came before". As it is, you're not convincing anyone but yourself of your own fictions.

[Blaphbee]

Do you know what one of the most effective ways to convince a person to accept abuse and keep her in her "place" is? Destroy her self-esteem by convincing her that she is nothing without some arbitrary social group; convince her that she only continues to live because others are sufficiently kind to let her. Promulgate that she 'owes' every monkey to ever make a noise her life and the product of her mind. Goad her into drawing her esteem entirely from the group and encourage her to accept the idea that abject self-sacrifice to that group is the height of virtue.
Whoa, when did this become about females being abused? That isn't even relevant to this discussion.

I smell something bitter, and it ain't the tip of Sulla's cock.

[Petr]

Yeah, sound the "irrational female" alert. :p


Petr

[Blaphbee]

In any event humanist - it seems as though you really desperately want to do away with death, violence and misery in the world, through some ridiculous program designed to glom everyone together into one big happy indoctrinated family; your fear of human nature is puzzling to say the least, and I can't figure out why you want to surpress it so much. If you were to get your way, and eliminate all these icky things you don't like, how do you propose to stop the rest of the natural kingdom from acting in this cruel inhumane manner? Predation exists whether you like it or not, as does death, and as will violence, decay and destruction. It'll happen to you, me, to everyone and everything that lives.

Why are you so opposed to that order of the cosmos? Is it simply because you believe us all as species to be collectively on Utopia's doorstep, if it weren't for all is pesky "man's inhumanity to man" and all that yucky death and stuff? That the modern approach we are currently employing is somehow not diseased and rotten to its very core?

Do tell.

[Fade the Butcher]

The whole is not self-sufficient.

This is false. A collective is capable of reproducing and sustaining itself in the long term. An isolated individual is not; he ceases to exist (like a detached organ).

The whole is merely the sum of its individual parts.

No. The thoughts and deeds of the deceased structure our lives long after they have ceased to exist. We are embedded in a social and historical context. The collective is prior to the individual. The individual is born into the collective and brought up in its customs and traditions. There never was any so-called "state of nature" or "social contract." This is a fiction concocted by liberalism that has been used to deny our social existence for centuries. The whole has sovereignty over the part as the latter isn't self-sufficient.

Humans are also individualistic beings.

This is false. Humans are group-based bipedal mammals that think and communicate in social terms. Humans, like other species, live in groups (and have evolved higher brain functions and speech to accomplish social goals). Humans that are isolated from the collective simply die. Individualism is an evolutionary dead end.

The individual also nurtures and makes possible the collective tradition in which he is immersed.

The individual contributes to the collective, not in his own right, but as a member of a practice or tradition. He doesn't make possible physics, astronomy, chemistry etc. These are ancient inquiries into the nature of reality.

Collective human accomplishment is then an oxymoron for the same reason, for humans are themselves merely participants in a greater evolutionary, and a greater astro-evolutionary, "tradition", if you will.

You seem confused here. Humans establish practices and traditions. Rocks do not.

It would then only make sense, if this be taken to its logical extreminity, to have a universal cosmic pride.

This is a non sequitur.

What you fail to realise is the simply truth: The operative factor is always the action of the individual; where one starts only determines that with which one has to work at the start.

This isn't a simple truth. Newton did not enunciate his laws of motion as an individual. He did so as a member of a tradition. He was not isolated or detached from the context he was immersed in. If we isolated Newton as an individual in the Canadian Artic, then he never would have accomplished anything.

Intelligence can not be taught, purchased, or stolen.

Intelligence is in large part heritable. Knowledge is not. The individual is born into the collective and knowledge is passed on to him through instruction by others.

I think the contrary argument and its philosophical ilk is a dangerous and naive line of reason.

We can easily test this line of reasoning. Take one of your super genuises and isolate him from others at birth. Give him no training or instruction. Do not impart language or knowledge to him. What do you have? Not a super genius or great man, but a savage that either dies or lives at the substinence level. Tradition has no value. :p

The most grizzly bloodbaths in human history have predominantly either been enabled by or executed in the name of collectivism of some stripe or another.

Correct me if I am wrong here, but do you not advocate the unification of all humanity? All social, scientific, and artistic progress in human history can be attributed to collectivism.

Sometimes the collectivist intentions were sinister from the start, and sometimes the intentions were quite benevolent.

By what standard are sinister convictions distinguished from benevolent ones?

Do you know what one of the most effective ways to convince a person to accept abuse and keep her in her "place" is?

Justice is knowing and acting in accordance with one's place. The criminal, for instance, is unjust because he usurps the authority of the state by taking the law into his own hands.

Destroy her self-esteem by convincing her that she is nothing without some arbitrary social group; convince her that she only continues to live because others are sufficiently kind to let her.

The individual is nothing without the group. It is the group that provides the context that enables the individual to realize his/her potential. I could hardly be as knowledgeable as I am today had not countless others that have come before me existed.

Promulgate that she 'owes' every monkey to ever make a noise her life and the product of her mind.

Yes. In her individual genius, she invents her own alphabet, creates her own language, defines all her own concepts, discovers reason, independently arrives at the scientific method off the cuff, and proceeds to apply it to problems she has spun entirely out of her own mind. . . . . . or is she simply taught these things by others who learned them from others who sustained such knowledge in the form of traditions?

Goad her into drawing her esteem entirely from the group and encourage her to accept the idea that abject self-sacrifice to that group is the height of virtue.

The individual always perishes. The collective does not. It simply begets more individuals.

Our moral obligation in this regard is to reserve force for self-defence and subsequently let people use every tool that they possess, receive, and can create to the fullest extent that they are able for their own good, by their own judgement.

You have yet to explain to us the origins of moral obligation. The isolated individual has no need for morality. The function of morality is to regulate interaction within and between collectives. The basis of morality is the perpetuation of the collective's existence.

Our task is to expel and or destroy those savage individuals and groups in our midst who purport to enslave us, either for sadistic reasons or to leech our production.

Your production?

Not, by the way, that freedom is 'safe'. And the 'safe' alternative is even less safe.

The security provided by the collective is what makes the liberty of the individual possible in the first place. The maintence of the collective is essential to liberty, not antithetical to it.

The difference between a pile of physics books, a pencil, a piece of paper, and Newton's Principia Mathematica is the product of Newton's mind.

Newton's mind was molded by the context he was immersed in; by the education he received and the opportunities he had to draw upon the resources of others. Newton would have accomplished absolutely nothing if it had not been for this.

Mozart might use the products of others as tools or raw material with which to compose his music, but those compositions are fully the product of his intellect and no-one else's.

Mozart would not have made any music if he had not been similiarly molded by the context he found himself in. The notion that his compositions sprung purely from individual genius is absurd. Classical music evolved out of other forms that have their own history.

The environment, culture, education, language, resources - these are tools and raw material to man's reasoning mind.

The mind of the great individual is a social product, as I have explained, not an individual triumph.

Tools and raw material themselves do not in themselves produce anything.

Individuals in themselves don't accomplish anything.

[humanist]

Why are you so opposed to that order of the cosmos? Is it simply because you believe us all as species to be collectively on Utopia's doorstep, if it weren't for all is pesky "man's inhumanity to man" and all that yucky death and stuff? That the modern approach we are currently employing is somehow not diseased and rotten to its very core?
The present system is, in my opinion, a juvenile socio-economic construct. Granted it has served humankind adequately in the past, but now it begins to lose its benefit, and leaves us with only its disadvantageous aspects. Our technological powers are gradually changing the viable scope of social organisation. Not only capitalism, but all tribalistic socio-politics should begin to drop away much as an obsolete organ devolves and goes out of use. Every forward-thinking individual should try to facilitate this process, in my opinion.

[Blaphbee]

The environment, culture, education, language, resources - these are tools and raw material to man's reasoning mind.
Okay, here's where this woman's argument falls completely apart - culture, social environment, education, language, and certain types of resources are all products of individual achievement, individuals who had worked in the past to provide these things for and within the collective framework. The individuals who come along after these accomplishments have been made by other individuals in the past (working for collective ends) are in no way free of the influence of these same past individuals' accomplishments. Humanist is trying to obviate the prior individuals so that contemporary individuals are not chained to any sense of previous unalterable history that they didn't "choose" to have.

She claims that individuals are autonomous and that their creations are free of outside influence, yet individual accomplishment in this worldview amounts to little more than products and "raw material". that either i) bears no relevance to anything which will occur in the future, or ii) is only good to serve as non-influential "material" for those to come after the ones who created it in the first place.

You can't have it both ways dear. One guy doesn't spontaneously come up with a language for a nation - it's worked out between all who are part of that culture; similarly, culture is not the product of one individual's mind - it is a collective process. You want to give us all serial numbers and endless fields of strip malls pumping out "product", and since your own "task is to expel and or destroy those savage individuals and groups in our midst who purport to enslave us, either for sadistic reasons or to leech our production", I hope you'll forgive me for laughing in your face, you consumerist pig. Utopias are doomed to fail, especially paranoiac versions such as yours, which are trying to eliminate a problem which doesn't even exist, all so that the economy can remain stable and no violence or death (ewww) can occur.

Give me a break.

[Blaphbee]

The present system is, in my opinion, a juvenile socio-economic construct. Granted it has served humankind adequately in the past, but now it begins to lose its benefit, and leaves us with only its disadvantageous aspects. Our technological powers are gradually changing the viable scope of social organisation. Not only capitalism, but all tribalistic socio-politics should begin to drop away much as an obsolete organ devolves and goes out of use. Every forward-thinking individual should try to facilitate this process, in my opinion.
just because we can, does not mean we should.

That isn't my opinion, that's common sense.

Besides, what the hell are you talking about with your "disadvantageous aspects"? You sound like a proponent of eugenics or something, which kind of makes me warm up to you.

However, I get to thinking about your method of acheiving your eugenic goals, and my stomach turns in utter bewilderment that you would place faith in imperfect, decades-old technology where nature has served us credibly for billions of years.

[Blaphbee]

The present system is, in my opinion, a juvenile socio-economic construct. Granted it has served humankind adequately in the past, but now it begins to lose its benefit, and leaves us with only its disadvantageous aspects. Our technological powers are gradually changing the viable scope of social organisation. Not only capitalism, but all tribalistic socio-politics should begin to drop away much as an obsolete organ devolves and goes out of use. Every forward-thinking individual should try to facilitate this process, in my opinion.
I'm not specifically talking about the socioeconomic plane of things, I'm talking about the entire living natural order, encompassing all living things, an order of which we are a part. You're arguing to build off of the existing social order, which is woefully incapable of dealing with the environment outside of human existence, by way of genetic manipulation of "disagreeable factors", which is frightening, given the lack of knowledge in this field.

I've heard many similar things about this same issue that deal with a fellow named Christ, and I don't put any faith in them either. A messiah isn't going to solve our problems for us, whether that messiah is a reincarnated Jew or a clueless team of genetic engineers with "good intentions". That responsibility is up to us all as a collective.

This may be tough for you to see though, given your own obstructed view of "objectivity" by way of your freakish bias for individualism uber alles.

[humanist]

I'm not specifically talking about the socioeconomic plane of things, I'm talking about the entire living natural order, encompassing all living things, an order of which we are a part. You're arguing to build off of the existing social order, which is woefully incapable of dealing with the environment outside of human existence, by way of genetic manipulation of "disagreeable factors", which is frightening, given the lack of knowledge in this field.Not exactly. I am personally in favour of applying technocratic ideas to an emerging pan-humanism. Technocracy is the culmination of the scientific review of technology as it is applicable to the problems of supply, demand, and social order; with the purpose of elevating the universal quality of human life, in addition to drastically slashing requisite regulation and its bureaucratic extensions. This is a completely integral phase in human social evolution, and moreover a necessary step towards increasing productivity and streamlining the operations of the State.

[brigadier Biggles]

why is it always an american or canadian who create these "what you are is nothing to be proud of" threads ?, just because everything to do with your country is all superficial and imported doesnt mean this is the norm for everywhere else, humanist you sound totally lost looking for some REAL cultured identity which america/canada cant provide.

no offence to other americans/canadians btw, hopefully you agree..

[Péter]

What good is "social evolution" (a teleologically loaded construct, therefore outside the realm of the evolutionary sciences) when our species is devolving? Perhaps one has read too much Wittgenstein.

[Blaphbee]

What good is "social evolution" (a teleologically loaded construct, therefore outside the realm of the evolutionary sciences) when our species is devolving? Perhaps one has read too much Wittgenstein.
Quoted because I would like to see this answered by the person who made the assertion that social evolution is "important".

[infoterror]

What good is "social evolution" (a teleologically loaded construct, therefore outside the realm of the evolutionary sciences) when our species is devolving? Perhaps one has read too much Wittgenstein.

"Social evolution" is sleight-of-hand reference to "progressive" dogma and is equally false. Evolution is true. Social Darwinism and social evolution are leftist illusions.

[Jim West]

Perhaps the lexicon being used here skews this entire discussion of "pride", "individualism", "collectivism", and so forth. For instance, when an ordinary white teenager, with no identifiable accomplishments to his name, states that he has "white pride", I believe it can be rightly said that, in this context, one of two things can be inferred:

1: First, that the white teenager feels an over-inflated self-satifaction within himself simply because other whites, such as Charlemagne,Galileo, Edison, and so forth, having had the same white skin as himself, somehow establishes a "connection" between the ordinary teen and those whites of great deeds, superficial though that connection may be. In one sense, then, the unaccomplished teen is a parasite of others earned fame, and, as Humanist stated, such "pride" is unwarranted. In this context, I would have to agree with him.

2: And yet...the very use of the term "pride" may be a misnomer here, at least when speaking of "white pride" as I think it really is intended. Granted, there are many idiots in today's "white pride" movement, a movement that I myself call myself a part of, that believe they're "something special", simply because some famous white man in the dim past had the same skin color as them. That's the kind of "pride" that I believe Humanist - rightfully - denigrates. On the other hand, replace the phrase "white pride" with "white allegiance", and a whole new meaning emerges. Allegiance is not pride, but a signifier of loyalty, in this case, a loyalty to your own kind, i.e., your own Race. In short, one is not pretending to be "important" because of his white skin being the same as the white skin of his famous white ancestors, but, instead, he is asserting an open allegiance to a Race that was capable of producing such giants of intellectual and artistic genius. And, in asserting that allegiance, he is making it clear that he wants that which produced such geniuses - the White Race - to continue, knowing that many geniuses, such as William Shakespeare, spring indeed from humble white backgrounds. Thus, "white pride" and "white allegiance" are not the same things.

As for "individualism", perhaps that word too is so over-used that it clouds the very meaning it originally intended. Nowadays, some neo-hippie with flaming orange-lime hair who thumbs his nose at society is often labeled an "individualist". No, he's just an asshole. An individualist in his proper context is one who does not conform to society's means and standards simply because he is pressured to do so, but, because he is an intellectually/artistically capable individual, one who lacks the standard, pre-programmed mind that accepts, without question, the seemingly "frozen" historical context and social norms into which he was born, and told, with grim insistence, that he "cannot change". Outwardly, though, he appears as part of the human herd, and yet, he is far from it.

That's because he sees "flaws" in the way his society functions, such as, for instance, Thomas Edison, one of America's greatest individualists. Edison didn't accept gas-lighting as the be-all and end-all of lighting systems in the society in which he lived, as everyone else did. He would not bend to the collective will that gas-lighting should be the unquestioned, unchallenged "norm". Yet, had society known of his true intents, they would certainly have laughed and jeered at him.

Instead, Edison saw a better way - electric lighting. Human cattle don't make such discoveries; they are simply bred to work and to die in the service of the individualists, who, in exchange, provide them with the very bounty of their minds. Finally, being an individualist does not mean one does not interreact with others, that one acts instead as a secluded loner, locked away inside some dusty, remote laboratory. No, individualists are naturally drawn to others of their kind, as Edison was drawn to Henry Ford, and vice versa. And though individualists of this caliber may draw upon the stored knowledge of the great minds of the past, it does not lump them into some sort of "collectivist" vat. Indeed, it is because they are individualists, rather than collectivists, that they dare gaze into the greatness of the past, seeking out their own kind, long gone though they may be....

[infoterror]

One should be proud of a thing only in proportion as she/he is responsible for it, i.e. in proportion as it is her/his achievement.

Moralism, thus aesthetics and to my taste, not good ones.

One should be proud of all that composes oneself: nature, heritage and experience.

If one is not, of course, one would argue as you have ;)

[Victates]

You know I have always wonder how an 'Individualist', terms themselves as such unless they see themselves as entirely unique cases within the species as a whole (which of course is inherently flawed).

Since surely they are applying a collective label (thus generalising their views by the application of such a label) over many self-identified persons whom identify with the concept of 'Individualism'.

I have always found Nihilism (although skepticism (non-serial) and being a tad cynical is pretty healthy I feel, especially in this 'Post Modern' world) somewhat futile, in so far as when one is a nihilist one might as well stop breathing, since to breath one must have pride in one's life-force surely?

One also wonders if Individualists being using that adjective are actually taking Pride in their egotistical (due to self-identification being required for the concept to even vaguely work) sense of Individuality.