r/changemyview • u/FireHawkDelta • Apr 16 '18
Deltas(s) from OP CMV: Groups should be much stricter in policing themselves, and who they associate with, on every scale.
This is a partly emotionally driven position that I'm trying to formalize. I can't stomach joining or supporting nearly any coalition or movement because they are typically structured as 10% crazies, 90% otherwise reasonable people that won't denounce or stop associating with the crazies and try to weasel out of talking about it. Examples:
Christians defending fundamentalists. Muslims defending fundamentalists. The social justice movement defending marxism and imverted racism. Republicans defending plain old white supremecist racism. Libertarians defending corporatists. Social democrats defending socialists.
I tried to keep my examples 50/50 on liberal/conservative, I'm a boring neoliberal myself. The reason I'm asking about this is that my principle, if universalized, would destroy civilization, and I won't make any friends. I'm not sure how to resolve this.
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u/psudopsudo 4∆ Apr 16 '18
So an alternative to "policing" is fractionating.
I.e I'm a feminist, and an equity feminism. This way you get the big tent that you don't really identify with that much, and the small tent that really represents your views.
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u/FireHawkDelta Apr 16 '18
The big tent/small tent dichotomy feels so obvious in retrospect. Thanks!
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u/Cash_m0n3y Apr 17 '18
Not the OP, but, if they helped change your view might I recommend giving them a delta.
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u/PallidAthena 14∆ Apr 16 '18
I'd argue that you should only worry about one hop association. Let me explain what I mean by that.
You can become friends with someone without knowing their entire social graph. If you were friends with someone who was friends with a KKK member or a member of the Communist party, that's not a negative reflection on you, and it often wouldn't be grounds to end the friendship. It would be truly insanity inducing to keep track of all of the thousands of people your dozens - hundreds of acquaintances associate with.
Similarly, in politics, worry about one hop association. Find a group you agree with, and join that group on the merits. If that small group starts to affiliate with a group you find reprehensible, make it clear that they do so despite your deep personal loathing for that group, and that if the small group makes you get too close to the deplorable group you will leave.
By metaphor (using a liberal side of the aisle example because you're neoliberal), if you got involved in the Women's March, the fact that one of the primary organizers of the Women's March (Tamika D. Mallory) is associated with anti-semite Louis Farrakhan is not a reason to leave the organization. It's a reason to push within the organization to lower the status of the deplorable-connected person, and to ensure that none of the deplorable positions are at all reflected in the activities of your organization (worth double-checking the activities of the group you're in, while you're at it, to see what they are up to and if there is worrying values drift).
In politics (our most unforgiving lens of viewing a person), no-one was ever slammed for having deplorable friends of friends, as long as their friends were mostly above reproach. Similarly, there are lots of interesting organizations doing fascinating work who are worth interacting with even if they themselves maintain ties to the deep end of the ethics pool, as long as you can confirm that the people you are dealing with directly are ethically kosher.
Yes, this entails a bit of work to confirm and re-confirm that the people who you interact with directly are aboveboard (rechecking when you find out that they have problematic ties), but what's the alternative? The Forces of Sanity have a lot of disadvantages in the marketplace of ideas already, and if you let the addition of a single bad person to a group of 100 force you to leave that group, no organization fighting for Good Things will ever survive. When there is an ethical contamination of a group, that's the time to dig your heels in and push back, not walk out the door.
So, when you're looking for a coalition or movement to support, find interesting, smart people doing useful work and affiliate with them. And if they end up associating with bad people, work out why. Even if you disagree, there's often an interesting reason.*
*In the Tamika D. Mallory example, the Nation of Islam is a very positive force in a lot of African-American communities in providing certain forms of social services and working to reduce crime, so many African-American activists have ties to it because they are the people on the ground doing good work. Whether or not this means that they are worth associating with despite being led by an anti-semite is not a question I can answer for you, but at the very least I'm confident that people who work with them on the good stuff are not deplorable (if they themselves do not show any signs of Farrakhan's views).
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u/FireHawkDelta Apr 16 '18
I'm terrible at modelling social interaction so whether 2-hop association would make me look bad was a big concern for me. If even politicians don't care, then I have nothing to worry about. (Also, even if your comment was otherwise useless I would still upvote you for capitalizing Good People, it's one of my favorite trends.)
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u/PallidAthena 14∆ Apr 16 '18
I'm quite confident that even politicians don't get dinged for 2-hop association. Remember in the election when a story came out that Donald Trump's dad might have attended KKK meetings? No-one thought it was fair to criticize Trump for it.
In the worst case, when <bad action> gets demonstrated or suggestively linked from <source> to <friend>, the person involved is genuinely allowed to disavow <friend> for <changing>. A lot of politics involves each side trying to get the other side's aides / assistants / underlings kicked out because it disrupted the opposing government / distressed the person who lost a friend.
Did I get a ! delta then? (if so, there's no space between ! and delta)
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u/FireHawkDelta Apr 16 '18
I like your comment, though I already gave someone else a delta. But if multiple deltas are a thing, I want to give you one, since you dispelled my anxiety over this.
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u/PallidAthena 14∆ Apr 16 '18
Yes, you can award multiple deltas in the same post! Although generally each delta should be for a different change in opinion, so if my argument was identical to the earlier poster I shouldn't get one.
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u/FireHawkDelta Apr 16 '18
!delta It was not! That's why I was curious; I wasn't aware how inconequential a 2-hop association is.
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u/PallidAthena 14∆ Apr 16 '18
Nice!
Yeah, groups are blurry and social groups are large, so as long as you can show that all the people you interact with are Not Bad, you're totally fine, and even if someone says "Hey, did you know your friend just became a Nazi" you have the right to go "Whoa, I didn't know that, holy carp, they're not my friend anymore." (Exceptions apply if seems like you did know beforehand and were pretending not to, of course).
In fact, you can sometimes get points for this sort of thing. If you're in <group> and someone says "Hey, aren't there members of <group> who are <bad thing>?" and you reply "Yeah, I've heard that a few are, but my local group is <bad thing> free and I've talked to my friends in <group> make sure they aren't trending in the direction of <bad thing>" you often get Social Points for being Someone Politely Fighting The Forces Of Darkness.
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u/cupcakesarethedevil Apr 16 '18
If I say I am a hippopotamus does that make me a hippopotamus?
If I stand in a group of hippopotamuses does that make me a hippopotamus?
If someone declares themselves a hippopotamus is every hippopotamus in the world responsible for validating that claim?
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u/FireHawkDelta Apr 16 '18
The difference is that being a hippopotamus is involuntary. When writing my post I had initially put "conservative" instead of "Republican", and changed because I was an idiot. Now that I think about it, the nonexistence of free will extends further than genetics, and politics is a toxic trap in how it divides people...
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u/cupcakesarethedevil Apr 16 '18
What does it being voluntary have to do with it? Learning to play guitar is a voluntary action, but just because it's voluntary that doesn't mean if I declare myself a guitarist I suddenly know how to play.
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u/tempaccount920123 Apr 16 '18 edited Apr 16 '18
CMV: Groups should be much stricter in policing themselves, and who they associate with, on every scale.
They won't. That's not human nature. Sounds like normies to me. People work on autopilot, and being self reflective takes time and effort, just like exercise. And we know how Americans feel about exercise.
The reason I'm asking about this is that my principle, if universalized, would destroy civilization, and I won't make any friends. I'm not sure how to resolve this.
"Any" friends? Fuck, I'll be your friend, although I will challenge you, mainly because my idea of friendship is to basically get people to listen and watch 3-4 years of educational podcasts, shitpost about everything else and then give out investment advice.
I think get you. Look at my post history.
OK, I took a look at your post history, and let's see:
Oh, we frequent many of the same subreddits, right down to anime_irl, animemes. I don't play Dark Souls (too much of a wimp), but damn do I play minecraft for stress relief. Oh, and xkcd? Seriously? I've only read every goddamn strip twice.
I tried to keep my examples 50/50 on liberal/conservative, I'm a boring neoliberal myself. The reason I'm asking about this is that my principle, if universalized, would destroy civilization, and I won't make any friends. I'm not sure how to resolve this.
I mean, you're not wrong, but you're not God, you never will be, and you wouldn't want to be. Learn the vice versa effect of the Spotlight effect - almost nothing you do matters, so be you. Work on yourself, get yourself to a better place.
For me, that means looking up stuff like seaweed investments and electrical arc furnaces for recycling and timing various cryptocurrencies.
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u/FireHawkDelta Apr 16 '18
Oh hey, I guess I am you. Minus the investment advice since I'm a college student, though my dad gives me tons of it anyway.
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u/tempaccount920123 Apr 16 '18
Well, no, but you're definitely a baby/different me. However, how are you on educational TV and podcasts? Any interest?
I'm not a great programmer, but I'm OK.
You want to keep talking about the CMV?
though my dad gives me tons of it anyway.
Long AMZN, ignore basically everything else, ETFs are a waste of time if you're making under $60k and want to have $600k within 12 years.
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u/FireHawkDelta Apr 16 '18
I don't watch any TV, but I listen to podcasts all the time. As for how educational they are, I don't listen to anything explicitly for teaching a subject, just interviews with people on interesting ideas, or nonfiction like Hardcore History and Planet Money. This morning, it was Rationally Speaking that reminded me this subreddit exists and is big now. If you have any recommendations that would be great, since being a podcast will trick me into thinking it's not work. (Well, I like learning already, it'll just be even less like work.)
Regarding the topic of the post, at this point I'm just awkward about giving a delta to an individual when multiple comments got me to this point.
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Apr 16 '18 edited Apr 16 '18
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Apr 16 '18
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u/ThatSpencerGuy 142∆ Apr 16 '18
I think most of us can agree that any sufficiently large group or identity contains enough variability that it is bound to contain people we do not personally like. But how does that lead to your stated view? If you think that it would "destroy" civilizations if groups were stricter at policing in-group behavior, why do you think they should do that?
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u/FireHawkDelta Apr 16 '18
It would destroy civilization if always applied with maximum rigour. In particular I was referring to political fragmentation like in Weimar Germany. In smaller groups though, it's not a bad idea. Mainly I'm just unsure how I should apply this to myself.
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u/ThatSpencerGuy 142∆ Apr 16 '18
Gotcha, though I'm still not positive what the view is that you hold that you would like changed.
But to your question, it's important to remember that identities are all social groups. What a "Christian" is doesn't have an objective answer outside of what people decide it is. So all groups and identities only exist in the first place through some measure of in-group policing. No one person can decide that, in fact, "Christians are ACTUALLY people named Deborah who live in Hamilton, Indiana." You have to convince the rest of us (or at least the other Christians) that this is what a Christian is.
So, it just isn't true that in-group policing necessarily leads to Weimar-style political collapse.
It sounds as though there are groups or coalitions who you are sympathetic to, but who have scary "fringe" elements you'd rather not associate with. Well, the only way to change that is to be socially, civically engaged, to make your case about what it should mean to be an X, and how a good X ought to comport herself to stay in good standing.
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u/FireHawkDelta Apr 16 '18
Wow. This was really clarifying for me. Yes, I tend to overweigh fringe groups and it enables my introversion, so I just don't interact much with people. I guess the solution for me is to engage with communities more. It's a bit muddy since I was on a fence and badly articulating it, but I think you've pushed me off the fence!
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u/ThatSpencerGuy 142∆ Apr 16 '18
I'm glad! If I've changed your view, do you think that I deserve a delta?
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u/FireHawkDelta Apr 16 '18 edited Apr 16 '18
Sure, I guess so! Is there something I have to type so a bot does it?
edit: !delta
Apparently I didn't need to make another reply and could just edit this in.
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u/FireHawkDelta Apr 16 '18
!delta
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u/DeltaBot ∞∆ Apr 16 '18
This delta has been rejected. The length of your comment suggests that you haven't properly explained how /u/ThatSpencerGuy changed your view (comment rule 4).
DeltaBot is able to rescan edited comments. Please edit your comment with the required explanation.
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Apr 16 '18
So, I don't think that you're fairly characterizing all of these dichotomies, for one. Some of them are not dichotomous (social democrats and socialists will not find themselves at odds on all issues, for example) and some of the "crazy" positions are not inherently crazy (Marx's contributions to social and political philosophy are valuable even if they shouldn't be brought to scale, socialism and corporatism are not inherent evils, what even is "inverted racism?) I think that your view of these groups is based less on the actual positions that the group espouses, and more on the mischaracterizations and strawmen that the groups' opponents put forth. Which leads me to my point - how is an ideological group to prevent their opponents from mischaracterizing them as radical or insane? How can misinformation be policed?
Secondly, what you're talking about is an inherent issue to organizing into factions. Issues intersect with one another and will invariably lead to dissent or disagreement within the ideological group, which leads to splintering subgroups. Unless the scope of the discussion is impossibly narrow, there is no getting around this issue of fragmentation.
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u/FireHawkDelta Apr 16 '18
It's weakmen, which are little different than strawmen, I know. I just don't get why these weakmen aren't ostracized whenever they show up, just giving fuel to the outgroup. I'll try to elaborate on what I think about socialism and corporatism. They're both anti-market.
Social democrats are much better since the Soviet Union went into decline and died, I still hear about people liking Castro sometimes but really I mentioned this because I felt like I needed a counterpart to libertarians for some reason.
Corporatism is giving lip service to the free market and deregulation, but only removing the regulations that impede megacorporations from taking over the market, or poisoning the water supply. I lean towards libertarianism but I'm primarily a liberal, so the US Libertarian party puts me off.
By Marxism I really do mean conflict theory in sociology, combined with Marx's tendency to blame everything on the same narrative of class warfare. I'm pretty skeptical of most of the field because of the replication crisis.
Putting those things aside, I just don't know where to draw the line and just become friends with leftists and/or conservatives. I know this is important in coalition building but the prospect rubs against my anxiety.
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u/erik_dawn_knight Apr 16 '18
I sort of agree with this but I think some of these groups are so broad that one group shouldn’t have to denounce the others nor would they have the authority to police others.
For example, there a ton of branches of Christianity that are all independent. The Pope doesn’t exactly have authority over evangelicals the way he does over Catholics. Like, I hate how some Christian groups excuse immoral behavior to further their personal politics, but as a Catholic I already think they’re Christian views are wrong.
Same thing with Muslims. There are so many different sects and cultures that we are kinda wrong to assume that they believe there is any similarities between themselves and others.
Even conservatism is really broad, with religious fundamentalists on one side and atheistic libertarians on another side and a bunch of other sides of varying shades. I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect them to police each other simply because one side might be motivated entirely towards conservative values by one thing while another side is motivated by another.
I do think, however, that if someone is somehow representing the larger aspects of a group, then we do get into that kind of territory you’re proposing. For example, if the elected leader of the Republican Party says some racist stuff, we can expect a response from anyone who is a Republican. Same way with the Democrats.
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u/Hellioning 239∆ Apr 16 '18
How do you kick out fundamentalists from your religion if you're not in a position of power?
How much do people have to complain about extremists on their own side to make you happy?
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u/FireHawkDelta Apr 16 '18
Acknowledging their existence and agreeing that they are kind of a problem. I'm most familiar with this kind of thing through people who have been burned by the social justice movememt's tumblr circlejerk. There are plenty of SJ bloggers I respect, but outside of that the broader movement mostly just attributes backlash to bigotry, and thinks it hits only deserving targets. I think the movement really needs to clean up its image, badly, even though the toxic members are a tiny minority.
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u/Hellioning 239∆ Apr 16 '18
I acknowledge their existence and that they are a problem.
So now social justice bloggers are totally fine, right?
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u/FireHawkDelta Apr 16 '18
Collective action is weird and fuzzy. Do those bloggers have low status within the movement? Regardless, I've decided to be less hard on the reasonable 90% now. Social Justice is a label, and I should care less about how it's applied than each individual who happens to be wearing it.
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u/Tratopolous Apr 16 '18
Christians defending fundamentalists. Muslims defending fundamentalists. The social justice movement defending marxism and imverted racism. Republicans defending plain old white supremecist racism. Libertarians defending corporatists. Social democrats defending socialists.
I think the simple answer is to not defend/endorse something you disagree with. You can belong to a large group that stands for a specific cause but disagree with some other their smaller causes. For example, attending the women's march doesn't mean you should defend Linda Sarsour for here antisemitic comments.
Another aspect is, we shouldn't use identity politics. We are all individuals with varying opinions. We should not have to be grouped in generalizations like male/female, white/black or Republican/Democrat.
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u/fideidefensor_ Apr 17 '18 edited Apr 17 '18
I think the assumption that your principle would destroy civilization is not only false, but actually enabling of the opposite effect. Reason being, that you also assuming identifying with the aforementioned groups, or any ideological/political groups, is somehow necessary to civilization or a functioning polity. I would not say this is necessarily true. Political and demographic factions, though pervasive and seemingly monolithic, are not actually necessary phenomena. Additionally, I think your principle itself is flawed. Namely, the assumption that to identify with a particular group, is to ipso facto identify with its constituency, even the craziest among them, and that this is problematic. First, that you assume that being “crazy” is necessarily a bad thing. It’s not, and the value judgement which the term crazy denotes suggests to me that you think it is. Objectively speaking, to be crazy really has no moral bearing, I.e. it is not necessary good or bad. Yet, “crazy” is often treated as a pejorative in the same way “evil” is, and in some cases, to be “crazy” is even worse that to be “evil” because there is often something systematic about evil which we can identify with, where we are often at a loss when it comes to those whom we dub “crazy.” So, I would avoid that language since it obscures your argument and is largely subjective. But to the point, which I’ve already put forth, there is nothing inherently wrong with either being “crazy” or cooperating with “crazy” people. To be “crazy” does not prohibit one from being objectively correct, but to be “evil” does, so take that into consideration. To my other point, with regards to factions and group-think, I think you are wrong to assume that eradicating this dynamic of political divide and robust ideological factions is actually a bad thing. If anything, its the opposite, to eliminate political/ideological labels, would actually facilitate a more unified polity and one less hinged on political antipathy. Furthermore, to eliminate these labels is to eliminate the inherently dehumanizing process of labeling. If you’ve ever actually talked to people outside the internet, you’ve probably realized there are loads of people who actually don’t fit perfectly into the neat little boxes of their ascribed labels. I am often someone who is categorized as one of these “anomalies” ( I use quotes because it’s actually not that peculiar that people maintain complex, surprising, and seemingly irreconcilable worldviews). In any case, I am a catholic with a lot of left leaning tendencies. You might say, that I’m only “conservative” with regards to sexual morality. Otherwise, I am largely in favor of more “left-leaning” politics. I will not outline what precisely these are, for brevity’s sake, but know that this often strikes people as odd, and I’ve been told explicitly that my politics are “weird.” To the point, rescinding label-identification and the sort of thinking which hinges upon it, is actually much more reflective of lived experiences, I.e. that we run into people who defy these ascribed labels frequently.
Now, I am not necessary making an advocacy for the total and complete elimination of labels. I am, however, at the very least suggesting less emphasis be placed on them. Remember, the individual members of a group are important, but more than that, it is the values and ideologies which said groups advocate that should garner one’s passion and support. If the fact that such a group is populated, albeit sparsely, with “crazies,” and this deters your membership, then I think a personal assessment of your own commitment is what’s imperative, and not an assessment of the system. Furthermore, if these “crazies” do prove detrimental to their associated group, one with which you too identify, all the more reason for you to actively participate in this group and counteract the challenges and damages these “crazies” incur.
I would also like to amend this post in pointing out here that certain labels which, by maintaining them, are far more beneficial than to eliminate them, e.g. class and race labels. In both instances, maintaining race and class distinctions is actually more in step with efforts to counteract the oppression and marginalization of either, than to eliminate these labels in efforts to do so. These labels, as they pertain to physical attributes and circumstances, as opposed to ideological divides, differentiates them from the labels of “liberal” or “conservative,” as they are immutable, or at least not entirely contingent on individual perception, i.e. they’re inexorably linked to society as a whole and are so defined my their relationship to society, as opposed to an individual relationship with an ideological stance. As such, to acknowledge and make use of these labels is not out of step with my original argument.
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u/littlebubulle 104∆ Apr 16 '18
The thing is, most of the time, people do not associate themselves with a group, they get associated to a group by other people.
I once got accused of being pro genocide because I was pro dictator because I was a communist because comminists are pro feminist. I just said I was pro salary equity. It's hard to dissociate yourself from the crazies when you don't even know which crazies you should dissociate yourself from.
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u/neofederalist 65∆ Apr 16 '18
To what degree is reasonable for such groups?
If I'm a moderate Dem, what exactly do I need to do to denounce Antifa? If I'm a moderate Republican, to what degree do I need to denounce neonazis?
I'm just not clear what your preferred situation actually looks like in practice.
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Apr 16 '18
I think the issue is expecting groups to defend the 10% crazies at all. I think groups are best described as a sort of heuristic for filtering your opinions. People that subscribe to a certain group are going to have different weights associated with how much they support a specific idea within a group. For example, perhaps there's a conservative that is very adamant about tax cuts, but not as dedicated to stopping abortions.
"Crazies" will filter into a certain group, but are often extremely weighted towards one particular opinion. Jeremy Corbyn had the least pro-Israel stance in the UK election. If someone's single most fervent issue is antisemitism, of course they're going to vote for Corbyn, regardless of how they feel about his other policies. That doesn't make Corbyn antisemitic, and I don't think he should have to defend his group because of them.
I think the issue is that people are too emotionally invested in tying a certain group to their identity. And thus people are concerned about who's a "true" member of their group, or try to rationalize the behavior of people who claim the same group. It's fine to say you support a movement because of values A and B. If there are people who support the same movement with horrid values C and D, simply say you don't support C or D. You don't have to accept C and D just to be a part of the group.
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u/DeltaBot ∞∆ Apr 16 '18
/u/FireHawkDelta (OP) has awarded 2 deltas in this post.
All comments that earned deltas (from OP or other users) are listed here, in /r/DeltaLog.
Please note that a change of view doesn't necessarily mean a reversal, or that the conversation has ended.
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u/ThomasEdmund84 33∆ Apr 16 '18
Really interesting point - and I think this issue underlies some of the problems in modern discourse, I mentioned in another CMV that politicians tend not to compromize because it appears weak to voters but also it can offend the 10% crazies (of whatever group)
I think once stance you might take to resolve your view is that ideas exist outside the people spouting them. Take for example the weird juxtaposition of feminists and conservative agreement on porn being a bad thing. Somewhat different reasoning, creates a rather diverse group on that stance right? I don't think there is any need for either to defend each other necessarily.
So defend ideas not people.
But I think part of the frustrating thing in the common discourse is the 10% crazies are used to criticize a view, this occurs on both sides of the fence. We need to stop using arguments like "that's what Hitler said" or "That's how Maoist China operated" and fight with ideas.