I didn't go into Stanford but ivy league university students are hardly representative of normal people. They want to please the people running the experiment. It's a form of trusting authority.
I appreciate Luc for his willingness to write about the spiritual journey. All of us raised in the West, it does not come easily, our techno-industrial, scientific materialist, postmodern training gets in the way.
Thanks for that, Tereza. Excellent post and thoughts.
Let me respond to the point about good/evil: The thought that there might be people who are close to being inherently and irredeemably evil is extremely hard to entertain for us, but with psychopathy, we have at least one example of that. And we need to grapple with the phenomenon if we want to avoid being taken in by it. The biggest success of the devil is to make people believe he doesn't exist and all that.
Disturbingly, psychopathy seems to exist even in children. Now, there is a spectrum of course, and the last thing we want to do is jump to conclusions; and how to handle such a case always depends on the individual situation. A few movies have been made about this, like "We Need to Talk about Kevin" and "The Bad Seed". This is something many people prefer to pretend does not exist because it's just too dark and too crazy.
As for the Milgram experiment, for me the conclusion is not so much that everything depends on the system (there has been an over-emphasis on systems during the last 100 years in academics to my mind) but rather that a) many, many people seem to be utterly incapable of resisting authority and will always just follow along and b) there *are* people out there that are the equivalent of the "scientist" in Milgram's experiment. Who is it, in the real world, who tells people to adminster shocks to their fellow humans? Even from a systems perspective: the command needs to come from someone, right?
Thanks again, you made so many good observations and I can't respond to them all, nor do I need to :)
“A neoliberal feminism has emerged that accepts market ‘rationalities’ and sees the ceiling, rather than the hearth, as the symbolic center of its architecture and the ladder rather than the roundtable as its furniture.”
At first, Silvia Federici’s quote seemed to capture something important. It was certainly a nice bit of writing. But then I read and reread it and ultimately the quote seemed merely a clever rephrasing of “a woman’s place is in the home”. Or am I missing something? (On the positive side, it did prompt me to wonder if Victoria Nuland’s feminine neoliberalism differed from Jake Sullivan’s masculine neoliberalism. I decided they have no discernible philosophical differences.)
I’m increasingly skeptical of most dichotomous framings, including toxic this and tonic that, especially when one potentially physical dichotomy (toxic/tonic) is paired with a non-physical (psychological?) dichotomy like masculine/feminine. In my own view, toxic/tonic may be a physical dichotomy that can sometimes be made to fit on a continuum, but usually only in some select ways—one drink, for example, can make a person affable, while ten drinks can make a person murderous. I suppose somewhere on this “drink continuum” there is a point that separates tonic from toxic for most people. Bartenders and party hosts have to be adept at recognizing this point. It is variable between individuals, but it is an objectively real point. So there are physical dichotomies that can be placed on a continuum (or at least on a line segment). But where is the point separating tonic from toxic on the “polonium continuum”?
My favorite example of a non-physical dichotomous failure (and also an example of the limitations of using a spectrum or continuum as a metaphor) is the left/right framing of political perspectives, which I consider a two-dimensional Overton Window, which has ruined a lot of political discourse. However, as a form of psychologizing, a dichotomous framing like toxic/tonic may have some use in practice. Still, I feel myself resisting the influence of allowing dichotomy into philosophical argument about, say, realism, existentialism, or neoliberalism. I throw in the latter because it seems to defy the tonic/toxic dichotomy and continuum metaphor, though, of course, the masculine/feminine dichotomy can apparently be superimposed onto any idea.
Also, since I’m critiquing quotes in your post, you quote Luc Koch who writes that a man must “protect and inspire”. On the face of it, I like this sentiment, since it conforms to the male fantasy of simultaneously being a Spartan warrior and an Athenian philosopher. But there are two problems with defining masculinity with those two traits (and with that male fantasy). First, these two traits are an incompatible combination among men. True protection in the physical world is based on an absolute willingness to be brutal without moral reservation. Outside of fiction and patriotic myth-making, there is nothing inspirational about real-world physical protection. The second problem is that there is nothing inherently masculine about these traits. In fact, even the seemingly more “masculine” trait of protector of offspring is born by the female in most mammalian species. I would argue that among humans, women carry the lioness’s share of the family protection duties. I might add that females are almost always better defenders of their hearth against other females, who are the most likely home intruders/disruptors in civilized societies and against whom most males are hopeless idiots.
I have more to say about dichotomizing with regard to gnosticism, but I will leave that for another day.
Yes, the misunderstanding of the positive feedback loop between masculine and feminine binds us all to many other misinterpretations - such as the toxic deal we make to swap dangerous freedom for peaceful slavery. There is a fatal weakness at the very heart of it which betrays us all.
“A neoliberal feminism has emerged that accepts market ‘rationalities’ and sees the ceiling, rather than the hearth, as the symbolic center of its architecture and the ladder rather than the roundtable as its furniture.”
The milgram and Stanford experiments were partially rigged by the ignorance of academia.
https://robc137.substack.com/p/the-milgram-experiment-and-how-we
I didn't go into Stanford but ivy league university students are hardly representative of normal people. They want to please the people running the experiment. It's a form of trusting authority.
I appreciate Luc for his willingness to write about the spiritual journey. All of us raised in the West, it does not come easily, our techno-industrial, scientific materialist, postmodern training gets in the way.
Thanks for that, Tereza. Excellent post and thoughts.
Let me respond to the point about good/evil: The thought that there might be people who are close to being inherently and irredeemably evil is extremely hard to entertain for us, but with psychopathy, we have at least one example of that. And we need to grapple with the phenomenon if we want to avoid being taken in by it. The biggest success of the devil is to make people believe he doesn't exist and all that.
Disturbingly, psychopathy seems to exist even in children. Now, there is a spectrum of course, and the last thing we want to do is jump to conclusions; and how to handle such a case always depends on the individual situation. A few movies have been made about this, like "We Need to Talk about Kevin" and "The Bad Seed". This is something many people prefer to pretend does not exist because it's just too dark and too crazy.
As for the Milgram experiment, for me the conclusion is not so much that everything depends on the system (there has been an over-emphasis on systems during the last 100 years in academics to my mind) but rather that a) many, many people seem to be utterly incapable of resisting authority and will always just follow along and b) there *are* people out there that are the equivalent of the "scientist" in Milgram's experiment. Who is it, in the real world, who tells people to adminster shocks to their fellow humans? Even from a systems perspective: the command needs to come from someone, right?
Thanks again, you made so many good observations and I can't respond to them all, nor do I need to :)
“A neoliberal feminism has emerged that accepts market ‘rationalities’ and sees the ceiling, rather than the hearth, as the symbolic center of its architecture and the ladder rather than the roundtable as its furniture.”
At first, Silvia Federici’s quote seemed to capture something important. It was certainly a nice bit of writing. But then I read and reread it and ultimately the quote seemed merely a clever rephrasing of “a woman’s place is in the home”. Or am I missing something? (On the positive side, it did prompt me to wonder if Victoria Nuland’s feminine neoliberalism differed from Jake Sullivan’s masculine neoliberalism. I decided they have no discernible philosophical differences.)
I’m increasingly skeptical of most dichotomous framings, including toxic this and tonic that, especially when one potentially physical dichotomy (toxic/tonic) is paired with a non-physical (psychological?) dichotomy like masculine/feminine. In my own view, toxic/tonic may be a physical dichotomy that can sometimes be made to fit on a continuum, but usually only in some select ways—one drink, for example, can make a person affable, while ten drinks can make a person murderous. I suppose somewhere on this “drink continuum” there is a point that separates tonic from toxic for most people. Bartenders and party hosts have to be adept at recognizing this point. It is variable between individuals, but it is an objectively real point. So there are physical dichotomies that can be placed on a continuum (or at least on a line segment). But where is the point separating tonic from toxic on the “polonium continuum”?
My favorite example of a non-physical dichotomous failure (and also an example of the limitations of using a spectrum or continuum as a metaphor) is the left/right framing of political perspectives, which I consider a two-dimensional Overton Window, which has ruined a lot of political discourse. However, as a form of psychologizing, a dichotomous framing like toxic/tonic may have some use in practice. Still, I feel myself resisting the influence of allowing dichotomy into philosophical argument about, say, realism, existentialism, or neoliberalism. I throw in the latter because it seems to defy the tonic/toxic dichotomy and continuum metaphor, though, of course, the masculine/feminine dichotomy can apparently be superimposed onto any idea.
Also, since I’m critiquing quotes in your post, you quote Luc Koch who writes that a man must “protect and inspire”. On the face of it, I like this sentiment, since it conforms to the male fantasy of simultaneously being a Spartan warrior and an Athenian philosopher. But there are two problems with defining masculinity with those two traits (and with that male fantasy). First, these two traits are an incompatible combination among men. True protection in the physical world is based on an absolute willingness to be brutal without moral reservation. Outside of fiction and patriotic myth-making, there is nothing inspirational about real-world physical protection. The second problem is that there is nothing inherently masculine about these traits. In fact, even the seemingly more “masculine” trait of protector of offspring is born by the female in most mammalian species. I would argue that among humans, women carry the lioness’s share of the family protection duties. I might add that females are almost always better defenders of their hearth against other females, who are the most likely home intruders/disruptors in civilized societies and against whom most males are hopeless idiots.
I have more to say about dichotomizing with regard to gnosticism, but I will leave that for another day.
🗨 What is above all needed is to let the meaning choose the word, and not the other way about.
Wrt Tonic Masculinity, Orwell would be proud 🙂
Yes, the misunderstanding of the positive feedback loop between masculine and feminine binds us all to many other misinterpretations - such as the toxic deal we make to swap dangerous freedom for peaceful slavery. There is a fatal weakness at the very heart of it which betrays us all.
“A neoliberal feminism has emerged that accepts market ‘rationalities’ and sees the ceiling, rather than the hearth, as the symbolic center of its architecture and the ladder rather than the roundtable as its furniture.”
Boom.