Rationalism: a paper tiger?

Perhaps you'd like to say who you ARE talking about. Is it "rationalists" whoever they might be, post-modernists or everyone who doesn't assume an absolute morality ?

Well, I have noticed that conservative evangelical Christians have a tendency to lump different groups of people together simply on the basis of they're not being conservative evangelical Christians, so it's not always easy to tell whether I'm being included in any given description.

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Computers have cut-and-paste functions. So does right-wing historical memory. -- Rick Perlstein

Hi again, I agree that anecdotes don't mean anything. In respect to your growing up in a catholic community, I would point out that is worlds of difference from a protestant one, and even those all have different flavors.My point was really not to say you were wrong, or negate your experiences. I believe you have had such experiences. I was simply questioning that your statement of your experiences actually argued for the strong recommendation you gave NJ. I think one can find intolerance everywhere, the foci are just different (and the extreme nut cons tend to be more violent). If it was before 18, with an animal, or with a group of people, the libs might very well have. If it was by yourself you can also find those that would have (even if you didn't in your case). I just don't think its fair to paint libs as significantly different in this respect, when the main difference (other than source of ethical position) is what they don't like. Does that make sense?Frankly, you would admit there are some strains of feminists who would have had something negative to say, if it was with a man, right? And recently I learned there are now vegan-sexuals who argue people shouldn't have sex with meat-eaters... sheesh. You have every right to feel disgusted, but I personally don't and I understand what their position might be on that specific subject. I don't find marriage laws equal to direct disenfranchisement such as not being able to be in the military, or being able to have sex, period. That would seem less consistent, while having a child.Of course this is getting off topic and I don't want to drive it more so with a misunderstanding. Just to make sure everyone gets it, I am in favor of gay marriage (if marriage has to be something the gov't does) and I don't like efforts to stop it. I agree that is a very valid interpretation. I wish my experience has been what you describe above. What I have experienced is that most people are hypocrites about something, and when caught, want a second chance. There might be a bit more consistency in the general prog than a con, but the difference is while they ask forgiveness... they give no quarter. The opposite is true... from my experience... from most cons.This may be due as I speculated to urban/rural differences? Or maybe just independent/social type differences. Cons tend to be more social than libs, who tend to be more independent. Someone who lives deeply in a social world would more likely forgive, than someone who is used to independence and can switch social groups with ease.I agree we are both just speculating. Viv la difference!Edited by Silent H, : libs

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h
"Civilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know they can be impolite without having their skulls split, as a general thing." - Robert E. Howard

You can have one new person every week, or every day, or every hour for years and that still doesn't reach the mass numbers of conservatives there are in the US, or across the world.While your axiom seems right to me, the point I was addressing was whether you can paint all (or most) cons with that brush. I don't think it is fair to say most act that way, particularly toward people they know personally.By the way I'm still wondering why libs (which in this case I am considering my side) lampoon the sexual activity these guys get caught in. Okay the hypocrisy is fine to point on, but why mock the actual kind of sex is if THAT is somehow funny or as you put it... freaky shit. That poor guy with the buttplugs and jumpsuit, that's just his thing. Doesn't everyone have a kink? I just want to remind you of the context. What I said was addressing nator's "recommendation" of a group that a theoretical individual could turn to for understanding. I was addressing the personal level and not the large-scale.If we want to jump to the large-scale then some libs can and do marginalize minorities, just different ones. Every side has its target and feels justified in their bigotry, and more astounding to me, that it should be enforced by law.I suppose I should add that both libs and cons do match up in sexual repression in other areas. Current campaigns against sexual entertainment are pushed by both libs and cons, so are efforts against prostitutes (one of the graphically marginalized and abused minorities). These are examples but there are others.On your point regarding violence, I agree (and stated) that intolerant cons are more likely to use overt violence than libs. Then again I have to start channeling Bill Maher and ask if that is a difference in tolerance or degree of cowardice. They are perfectly willing to have people taken by violent force by OTHER people... when the cause is right.So no abortion clinic bombings do not effect my overall point, nor does that represent tolerance. We are in solid agreement, that violence against, or mandated legal sanction against others is intolerance. That seems too large a brush for me to accept. Conservatives are more than just religious people, and even among religious people there is an acceptance of female sexuality.Are you claiming that they view a woman who has sex within marriage as a slut? And that they view (talking about religious cons here) women who won't have sex before marriage as frigid?Does the woman I have to ask, have to have lived with a conservative? Can she be a conservative?I'm not trying to dispute your point regarding the existence of such types, just the extremely bold strokes. I don't think that's misogyny, per se. Proscription of behaviors does not inherently mean hatred of, nor reduction of, a person or class of people. It can certainly be a part of that, but it is not necessarily so.While I agree that Abrahamic religions are rather patriarchal, it may be valid to argue that their religious proscriptions are about something else altogether. Particularly if/when they allow for power to be held by women in other realms.It may even be based on societal tastes, which got along with the religion, and remain as some anachronistic requirement for who knows what reason. You don't have to hate a person to have some very strange expectations about their behavior. And its not (in this case) misogyny, except where they are reduced to merely sexual objects and that role reduced to nothing.I should clarify I'm expounding my take on that specific charge of misogyny. That a gf may not want you looking at a Playboy, does not mean she is a misandrist.Edited by Silent H, : lil fix

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h
"Civilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know they can be impolite without having their skulls split, as a general thing." - Robert E. Howard

Perhaps consigning it to postmodernists and rationalists was actually not broad enough, but I suppose relativists fit the bill so long as we're speaking in generalities.

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“This life’s dim windows of the soul, distorts the heavens from pole to pole, and goads you to believe a lie, when you see with and not through the eye.” -William Blake

In your condemnation of lumping, you have lumped. You know what they say about assumptions, don't you? In all seriousness, you were the last person on my mind when this topic came to surface. You are consistent, you employ rationalism... well... rationally, and you are a nice man, as far as I can tell. You sir, are safe.Its kind of weird to be thought of as a conservative evangelical Christian. Maybe its because its been turned in to a string of epithets now or days. Now the terms are synonymous with "bad." But I'd like to think I'm one of the cool, hip conservative evangelical Christians... You know, all five of them.

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“This life’s dim windows of the soul, distorts the heavens from pole to pole, and goads you to believe a lie, when you see with and not through the eye.” -William Blake

As sad as that is, its unfortunately very true. I don't know. I mean, is there really a difference between screaming, fanatical fascists from screaming, fanatical socialists? Both sides are convinced their ideology is the way. Both sides feel justified in using violence as a means to an end. Oh, the straight edge scene sometimes gets far worse than that. People have been murdered for smoking a cigarette, or drinking a beer, or eating a hamburger.

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“This life’s dim windows of the soul, distorts the heavens from pole to pole, and goads you to believe a lie, when you see with and not through the eye.” -William Blake

Fair enough. But you should read about Bob Altemeyer's work in The Authoritarians, where he discovered that being conservative (right-wing) wasn't just a political ideology, it was a personality type that inflected every aspect of the subject's thinking and radically re-defined their priorities and their relationship to authority. Right-wing authoritarian personality - WikipediaAltemeyer draws a difference between right-wing authoritarian followers, social dominators, and so-called "double-high" right-wing authoritarians (individuals with high scores on both the authoritarian and social dominator scale.) While he was able to find examples via his testing of hundreds of individuals who were RWA's, no one has ever been able to uncover evidence of left-wing authoritarian followers in the United States.The point is that your characterization of conservatives as people for whom the skeletons in their own closet lead them to acceptance of other people's isn't born out by the evidence, or by anybody else's experience. A lot of this stuff is culture-dependent, though.Do you maybe not live in the United States? Eh, I'm not any more accepting of other people's sexuality than anybody else. People do weird things in bed, things that I wouldn't enjoy or that seem risible to me.I'm just not interested in making laws about it. I'd have a lot more respect for the buttplug guy if he hadn't spent his whole short life making other people feel like second-class citizens, all the while that he had something unique in common with them.Am I abundantly tolerant of other people? No, and that's a flaw. But I'm not trying to marginalize anybody via the law, and that's why I'm more tolerant than conservatives. Nobody's perfect, though. I don't know what that's supposed to mean. Like they say, the personal is political. Who do you think is electing all these conservative asshats? The same conservatives that you're praising for their "tolerance."But how tolerant is it, truly, to vote for people who want to marginalize others? I'm saying that they view all women as "sluts", yes; as not-quite-human beings whose sexuality is, and should be, in the control of other people. In the control of society, in the control of a husband, in the control of her father - it's all the same, just as long as some man, somewhere is there to control her sexual behavior.It's the same in every culture. Honor killings. Widow burning. Arranged marriage. The traditional cultures are invariably the ones where women are kept as sexual chattel; first the property of the father and then of the husband. No. Any woman in our Western culture has invariably felt the simultaneous pressure to be "more engaging to men" - smile more, don't stay at home all by yourself, get out and meet a man - while at the same time "don't be a slut". Don't wear too much makeup. Don't wear "revealing clothes", which are anything but burlap sacks, apparently. Don't act too friendly or you gonna git raped!That ever-present threat of rape is the other side of that coin. You're damned if you act too standoffish - "frigid", "bitchy" - but, of course, the men most likely to rape you are the ones who know you the best. And if they do, it's because of something you did. You were drunk or dressed "provocatively." Enforcing the patriarchy? No, that's misogyny, by definition. But not in equal realms. It's not equal when you say "women get to be head of the household, but men get to be king of the kindgom." The power-sharing is no sharing at all when men still get the "good" powers. Who said anything about hate? It's not about hate, it's about the desire for control, the desire for others to submit to you.And, yes, you do have to want to control someone to have weird expectations about their behavior. Otherwise, why would you even give a damn?

Well... and remember this is based on my personal experience, in today's society, in general, violence is less an aspect of libs than it is of cons. This is not to say there is NO violence from lib nuts, or that the ratio in either population might change... or hey maybe my experience departs from what we'd find in a careful study.There is a rise in violence coming from animal activists to be sure. Is that true? Murdered? I'd be interested in hearing more about that. I never knew what straight edge was till someone said that's what I am (or was anyway). Then the more I met others called straight edge, I was like what a bunch of prying assholes. To be fair not all are totally anti-meat, or smoking, or drinking. But they usually have one of the three and they can be total pricks about it. Same for sex, where I've seen and heard just as ridiculous garbage coming out of their mouths, as any conservative, despite their stated superiority to cons. I'm glad you brought them up. I was sort of heading that way, by starting with vegans and feminists.

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h
"Civilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know they can be impolite without having their skulls split, as a general thing." - Robert E. Howard

This sounds intriguing so I'll definitely give it a read. Just to clarify, I said they are less immediately prying (though that could be shame at discussing certain subjects) and more forgiving of others that had done something. If its a request to do something they don't like beforehand, or a steady doing something they don't like, the cons can be equally dismissive. Okay, this is an aspect of something I was heading for... what does butt plugs have to do with being gay or accepting homosexuality? You can get anal pleasure without a guy being around, and whatever you use does not inherently become a stand in for a phallus. Likewise, if you are gay you can actually hate anal sex. I've known gays that can't stand it and think its disgusting.Actually its sort of funny, the documentary on Bob Flanagan, super-masochist, has him going to meet his brother. The brother admits to having felt demoted as family weirdo when bob came out as a masochist (which appears to be what that dead guy was), and he was just a homosexual, which as he put it "doesn't even like anal sex"... while Bob was having large metal balls shoved up there.I think its a stereotyped connection common among libs. I already agreed that marginalizing people via laws is intolerance. However, so is complete personal ostracizing. Cons tend to help those they know who run afoul of the laws they ironically have set up, while libs cut off and let suffer those they don't like even if it is for something they would not want a law against... and they will legislate against some groups too.Again I want to make clear, not all libs. There are certainly some very tolerant very supportive libs, I'm just saying in general from what I've experienced. I weep for cultural diversity, and moral relativism. First of all this claim is not true, and I assume you meant it as an exaggeration. Second it appears to me to show a lack of understanding, or an attempt thereof, to actually understand the workings of other cultures and the feelings of those in other cultures.This unfortunately is a very accurate depiction of the kind of intolerance I see within libs. It used to be that liberalism involved understanding cultures in an anthrological way, and accepting the different concepts for social arrangement as legitimate, even if odious to our own sensibilities. An act or belief that might signify something viewed from our culture might have no reality in theirs.Now, under a progressive paradigm, especially pressed by feminism, liberals have turned into the same conservative missionaries that raped and murdered past cultures. We deconstruct cultures according to our interpretations of activities, not seeing them as they actually are.I'm not saying there aren't patriarchal societies, even rabidly dominant ones in the style you described. But to paint all of them that way is patently absurd. And it does not actually ask, or believe, what people tell us from those cultures. Look, I have a hard time buying these absolute statements. And I might add that to this feminist concept there is a flipside.Many (I won't claim all) men are pushed to be rugged and successful, and definitely making the first move, be macho and a bad boy, oh wait but not too much, and especially if you're ugly, in which case you better have a lot of money... but don't suggest that you're buying a girl's interest, and heaven forbid you actually do pay for sex, because then you are using the girl, even if she was the one that made the offer to you and you spent a boat load. Of course you better make the first move and keep on going, or you won't have sex... she doesn't want a wimp who's all talk. She likes to see she's driving the guy wild. But hold your horses, don't go too far or its rape, even if she actually said yes and changed her mind right in the middle and didn;t happen to tell you. Once in a relationship, you should be free to show your emotions, but not really because then you're weak and that's a turn off. Of course the girl will want you to change some things, and isn't compromise the right way to run a relationship in an egalitarian context? Oops don't do it easily or in any equal way or you are weak and have lost the bad boy edge she wanted.Madonna/Whore: woman's dilemma,
Nice Guy (or Father Figure)/Asshole(or rapist): man's dilemmaIts all the same. I'm not sure I can agree that patriarchy is misogyny by definition. It can be, but it isn't inherent. The idea that social arrangements (division of tasks/power) should be egalitarian (found equally divided/accessible) based on any specific characteristic, is ethnocentrism. Misogyny is by definition about hate. I don't even have to caveat that claim. And on top of that, cultures that are patriarchal do not have to involve lusts to control and dominate women.You earlier discussed traditional cultures, many of these start as tribal relations. And this from hunter-gatherer origins. There is a definite advantage to dividing labor in these environments. Given the size and lack of necessity for men to be waylaid for periods of time due to pregnancy and child rearing, it makes some sense for them to end up in the more dangerous tasks, which often involved going to meet other groups of hunter gatherers. In the same way it makes some practical sense for women to stay in charge of the camp itself, tending to issues closer to home, and not be the focus of danger. Out of this arrangement it would also logically follow that those who face more danger (and overcome it) as well as dealing with the outside world more (having more experiences) would end up being given the leadership positions.I might tentatively advance the claim that in many cases, the women might not just run the home, but the advanced (elderly women) end up taking on some of the same powers as the men, or at the very least not have to listen to everything they are told.With generations this comes to be social expectation/tradition which is not the same as each young generation of men coveting control over women's lives.I want to stay away from firm statements, which really should be qualified, but I stick with one assessment I have stated in the past. Some forms of feminism are repulsive, and worse still, untrue, and apparently blind acceptance of their tenets by our culture have altered liberalism into a hate machine of ethnocentrism, where it used to be a bastion of cultural understanding and diversity. Other cultures should NOT be deconstructed using our cultural expectations.Sorry for the general rant. I really like cultural diversity. Expectations come from repeated exposure to a situation such that it becomes the norm. A child does not have some weird desire to control their parents (or in this example the mother), if that child is disturbed at suddenly finding mom driving them to school instead of dad who has ALWAYS driven them to school. Nor is it if they eventually come to view that as a Dad task, and carry that with them into their own role as parent.That is how they learned a division of tasks. That's all.I think you'd agree that outside of anarchy, someone invariably must take the leader role of the community, right? Its simply a role that has to be filled for directed community action? There can be expectations that arise regarding characteristics of those filling that position without any will to power from anyone. In fact some people can find themselves thrust into power against their will based on those same expectations. Some lonely guy saying I WISH I were a girl so I didn't have to be here. Why do I have to be king? Yet he is as roped in as they are by the expectations.

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h
"Civilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know they can be impolite without having their skulls split, as a general thing." - Robert E. Howard

I'm not speaking in generalities. I'm trying to find out what you men. I still don't know who you refer to as rationalists, why you bother to mention post-modernists or why you think that "relativists" engage in the sort of contradictions you refer to.The message I'm getting here is the silly threat "believe in absolute morality or Nemesis Juggernaut will lie about you !".Well lets start with the facts. As you've admitted if there is an absolute morality we don't know it . We have no demonstrably reliable way of even approximating it. So, for all practical purposes there IS no absolute morality. Surely honesty demands that we take a "relativist" position given these facts.

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I'm sure you are aware that this dichotomy exists for many women, which is the product of a fractured society which doesn't know which moral it wants to ascribe to.

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Maybe that's becasue morals are ultimately decided by the individual, not the society.

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I mean, is there really a difference between screaming, fanatical fascists from screaming, fanatical socialists?

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Juggs, "socialists" and "progressives" are not the same group.Neither are "conservatives" and "fascists".The conservatives of old, like Goldwater, had no authoritarian, fascist qualities. The "conservative Christian" of today is really very liberal in that they believe that the government should force everyone, by power of law, to adhere to their moral code. They also have no problem with the government spying on us, invading our privacy, or the reduction of our civil liberties. (Of course, that's only if it only happens to other people, not them or anyone they know)Progressives, on the other hand, are much more like the conservatives of old, in that they want government out of people's personal lives, but know that government has an important role in the protection of the people, be they workers, consumers, the poor or the disadvantaged. Kind of like Nixon. Edited by nator, : No reason given.

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Okay, this is an aspect of something I was heading for... what does butt plugs have to do with being gay or accepting homosexuality? You can get anal pleasure without a guy being around, and whatever you use does not inherently become a stand in for a phallus. Likewise, if you are gay you can actually hate anal sex. I've known gays that can't stand it and think its disgusting.

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It doesn't have anything to do with homosexuality and I don't think anybody ever claimed it did; it is just included in the list because it isn't plain vanilla sex between a husband and a wife. Neither were the two wetsuits and rubber underwear he was wearing. Or the ropes he hogtied and accidentally strangled himself with.He was in Alabama, incidentally, where sex toys like buttplugs, are illegal.

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I'm not sure I can agree that patriarchy is misogyny by definition. It can be, but it isn't inherent.

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How isn't it inherently misogynistic to automatically give the male gender power over the female gender for no other reason than that they have penises?Edited by nator, : No reason given.Edited by nator, : No reason given.

Who specified "gays and homosexuals"? Anybody who deviates from the conservative's idea of sexual "norms" is targeted by these people. Cite your source? I'm all for diversity, but not at the expense of human rights; and moral relativism doesn't mean what you think it means. Nonsense. The "feeling" is that the men like it that way, the women don't, but they don't have the power in society to change it.See? Easy to understand. Why should we do that? In your view, is it even possible for a culture to objectively embrace an injustice against some of its peoples?If we can consider a situation - like slavery - within our own culture to be a great injustice, a moral outrage; why cannot we condemn the same practice in another culture? What prevents me from being opposed to ruthless, senseless barbarity simply because its being perpetrated by people in another country with another language?I'm all for diversity, but not at the expense of human rights. I'm all for keeping an open mind but not so open that my brain falls out. That there may be deep cultural traditions surrounding, say, female genital mutilation in the areas in which it is practiced does not change the fact that it's a brutal practice designed to suborn female sexual agency to male desire. When a 9-year-old girl is being held down and is screaming as she is getting her clitoris amputated with a rusty straight razor and no anesthetic, what "interpretation" do you think is necessary to come to the objective conclusion that this is a barbaric practice? I don't recall making any, but feel free to assume whatever qualifiers are necessary to indicate that I'm talking about the vast majority if not the totality of cases. Right, the flipside of "what about the MENZ!!" where entitled men whine about the diminishing of male privilege and how it's considered bad form to rape women to get what they want. Whatever happened to the good old days when all women were assumed to be prostitutes?Spare us. No, it's not. Genuine concern about the plight of women in our society is nothing at all like the steaming load of Nice Guy entitlement you just dropped in your post. I'm thinking you're referring to "the ones that keep you from getting laid." I get the sense that I'm talking to someone who bought a wife from China on the internet.