Choo choo - all aboard the Trump Train

[Ego]

IOW, it is not any characteristics associated or correlated with rural residence that is causative of the red/blue split. It is the differences caused by the fact of rural vs. urban residence that causes the split.

I disagree. There is one glaring characteristic that we see playing out right here in the Trump/Political Correctness/Supremacist threads that is also present in the rural/urban, red/blue split.

Xenophobia vs Xenophilia: Those who fear or distrust people different from themselves versus those who express affection for people who are different. Xenophobes exclude themselves from differences while xenophiliacs move toward them.

Ironically, I needed to step away from the forum for a while because I became fed up dealing with those whose primary reason for seeking financial independence is to get away - not just from those who are different - but from EVERYONE.

They say, "Hell is other people," and intend to retreat as far as possible from everyone else as the world crumbles. The more they remove their own skin from the game, the easier it becomes to vote for protest candidates and adopt poses of detached, theoretical, faux-open-mindedness.

With each passing day the Propper Paradox becomes more important.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance

[7Wannabe5]

Ironically, I needed to step away from the forum for a while because I became fed up dealing with those whose primary reason for seeking financial independence is to get away - not just from those who are different - but from EVERYONE.

Yeah, lately I am leaning towards the Libertarian half of my Libertarian/Sesame Street Socialist identity, because I do want to get away from EVERYONE, including all of the members of my Running-with-Scissors-cast-of-a-Wes-Anderson-film extended family. Also, I am a bit of a burnt-out case from my gig of substitute teaching in the gritty mix of the city.

I am quite familiar with the Popper Paradox. It sounds good. I have quoted it myself on occasion, but what does it really mean in application?

When my son was a toddler we lived in graduate student housing. One day in the communal sandbox, he picked up a stick and repeatedly hit a little Asian girl over the head saying "Ugly eyes. Ugly eyes." I was shocked, appalled, angered. I apologized to the girl's mother, picked up my own child, marched into our apartment without saying a word, plopped him on his bed, shut the door, and left him there until I had calmed down. Then I talked to him about never hitting ANY other people over the head with a stick. I did not have a discussion with him on the topic of xenophobic/tribal tendencies in the human species exhibited in the very young in the form of stranger anxiety/aggression, but I did have a talk with myself on that topic while I calmed myself down, and I could certainly have such a discussion with him now that he is 28 rather than 2 years old.

Last year, I was teaching a very low-income, very ethnically diverse group of 4th graders. In order to maintain anything resembling order in such a situation, I have to come out of the box when I first address the children with very clearly delineated expectations for their behavior. First offense-Warning. Second offense-Name on the Board. Third Offense-Office. Halfway through the day I was feeling bad (once again) because every child whose name was on the board or was sitting on the bench in the office was either an African-American boy or a boy recently immigrated from some village in Yemen which would be not unlike 1930s Appalachia in America. I was trying to be patient with another difficult child, an African-American girl who was constantly seeking attention. She got into a bit of a scuffle with one of the African-American boys whose name was already on the board, and then she showed me a note upon which was scrawled "Ugly Bich Nigga" and told me that the boy had given it to her. Unfortunately, I had good reason to believe that she had written the note herself in order to get the boy in trouble, and in order to gain my sympathy. There were 25 other children in the room needing my attention at the moment, and some slim possibility that maybe I could teach a few of them enough mathematics to pass a basic competency exam before the bell rang and I tried to stop them from running down the stairs to eat their free government lunch of chicken nuggets and shrunk-wrapped grapes.

My point being that "tolerance" is not just some magical property that can be invoked from the nether. Make me a map. Show me the diagram inclusive of stocks and flows that makes it possible to flow enough resources into our systems to make it a reality. And after you have performed that task, please make it more clear what you wish to see happen when intolerance is not tolerated. I am not strong enough to pick up most other humans and plop them on a bed, and shut the door, and then calm my own anger, and then talk to them about not hitting other humans over the head with a stick. If they are 10 years old, I have to send them to the office. If they are 20 years old, I have to call a police officer to take them to the jail. All of these processes, all of these actions, all of these verbs which are so easy to type, require resources to fulfill. We are running out of resources. We are running out of time. I am currently numb out of patience.

Both sides are saying some things that are true. The true thing that the Red side is saying is that you can't create a culture of liberal tolerance without some balance of conservative order.

[black_son_of_gray]

I can picture in my mind a world without war, a world without hate. And I can picture us attacking that world because they'd never expect it.

Jack Handey

[Ego]

I am quite familiar with the Popper Paradox. It sounds good. I have quoted it myself on occasion, but what does it really mean in application?

And after you have performed that task, please make it more clear what you wish to see happen when intolerance is not tolerated.

Yeah, it is hard when it is not black and white, or when people use the shadows as cover. That's when role models can be useful.

Fortunately, we don't have to look far for one. Dragline is offering a master class over there in the Separatist thread.

[7Wannabe5]

Human beings are systems which live within larger ecosystems and social systems. Maslow's Hierarchy provides a weak diagram for possible motivations for observable human behaviors. "Justice" is an emergent quality of human social systems. "Tolerance" is not quite in the same category. Lady Justice is blindfolded and holds scales and a sword. What would the statue of Lady Tolerance look like? What I was trying to convey is that in my weak intuitive opinion there are some aspects of "tolerance" and "intolerance" that are emergent or observable from ecosystem perspective, but not in alignment with the suggestion BRUTE made based on the Maslow model OR the Prospecting Theory that Dragline suggested. I think it has to do with the different ways human males express dominance.

I am probably not explaining very well, but it has to do with why my uber-liberal-left-affluent lover told me that his wife called my African-American lover who is interested in permaculture "the gardener." To put the matter in simplest terms, I now believe that ALL human males are sometimes thugs and bullies, so I am not very interested in politics. We don't have to survive.

[Riggerjack]

I now believe that ALL human males are sometimes thugs and bullies,

This would match my experience, though I wouldn't limit it to males. And it's why I can't take utopian society theories seriously. If your system can't deal with bad actors, it is just talk.

[BRUTE]

I now believe that ALL human males are sometimes thugs and bullies

why not human females? they bully just as much when in power. their saving grace is that traditionally, they've been in power less.

[7Wannabe5]

@BRUTE@Riggerjack: Obviously, there are plenty, likely just as many, human females who are bad and other b-word actors. But "bully" and "thug" have particular connotations which tend towards correlating with stocks and flows relevant to an ecosystem perspective. I don't know about you guys, but if I was hiking by myself in the woods in Red country, or walking down an alley by myself in Blue country, the biochemicals that would likely spontaneously start being churned within the system boundary of my skin would vary depending upon whether the human approaching me resembled the left or right side of this diagram. My natural reaction (although I could certainly tell myself to behave otherwise) would be to exhibit classic nervous submissive mannerisms (not unlike "salaryman" inhabitant of human-crowded island) if human on left and confident friendly mannerisms if human on right. Also, I would be willing to bet some amount of the pennies in my piggybank on which human would be more likely to urinate or spray paint upon some sort of boundary marker.



http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/ ... 6/20151351

[BRUTE]

the latter sounds more like vandalism. maybe thugdom is a male domain, but brute is quite convinced that females are 100% as prone to being bullies as males. (as usual, zero data to back this up besides it being obvious).

[Chad]

Xenophobia vs Xenophilia: Those who fear or distrust people different from themselves versus those who express affection for people who are different. Xenophobes exclude themselves from differences while xenophiliacs move toward them.

I agree. Though, this seems to be a subsection to the larger reason of those who accept/adapt/like change vs. those that don't accept/adapt/like change. Different people are just another form of change.

[7Wannabe5]

brute is quite convinced that females are 100% as prone to being bullies as males

Maybe that is due to the fact that in the course of the years that defines the generational divide between us, bullying has become more widely defined to include verbal taunting and overt social exclusionary behaviors, whereas it used to be more like somebody strong-arming you for your lunch money or holding you upside down by the ankles and dunking your head in a toilet. IOW, what in my day would have been called "mean girl" behavior is now considered to be a form of "bully" behavior. OTOH, I did suffer from having snowballs whipped at me on a regular basis by a skinny little girl jock when I was in the 7th grade and already looked about 19, but that was more like an annoying bug that I had grown too dignified to squash. The cool tough Catholic School girls (like Madonna) would sometimes steal my sexy, physically-intelligent, burn-out BFs from me, but I didn't care that much and would just quickly move on to attempting to seduce my 10th grade English teacher (looked kind of like Barry Gibb) instead. My burn-out high school speed-skater BFs grew up, maybe joined the marines to get clean, and chose to vote for Trump last election. That's why I get it intuitively. Not crying babies. Coyote-style dominant is the best I can describe it.

[Riggerjack]

Oh, I wasn't going for the "girls are just as mean as boys" angle. I was going for humans are thuggish, angle.

But I am old enough to associate bullying with the same overt physical acts 7w5 describes. I am personally far from innocent,here. I grew up bullied, I turned into a bully when I had the chance, and then met the guys I bullied in school afterward, and had to apologize. That was a good start to introspection.

It's been my experience that most men who haven't been bullies, either never had the chance,or were so socially adept that they worked "mean girl" levels of bullying, often, they were the guys next to the bully, egging him on.

So I wasn't taking it from a moralistic stand point of "girls can be mean too". But from a perspective that most people are absolute shit at some point in their lives, and some of us try to better ourselves, but that hardly erases our culpability for the shit we did when we were less civil.

Plus, yeah, every once in a while I do run into a thuggish woman. Certainly not often enough to raise the example in this context, though.

[7Wannabe5]

Xenophobia vs Xenophilia: Those who fear or distrust people different from themselves versus those who express affection for people who are different. Xenophobes exclude themselves from differences while xenophiliacs move toward them.

I agree. Though, this seems to be a subsection to larger reason of those who accept/adapt/like change vs. those that don't accept/adapt/like change. Different people are just another form of change.

I would note that the reason why many members of the aspirational class were shocked by the results of this election is because this is behavior that they also exhibit. Not much stranger-danger risk when you hop from Ann Arbor to Austin to Berkeley to Amherst. Otherwise, they would have had some sort of clue that there was no way white working class Midwestern men were going to vote for Hillary. Ted Nugent says "pussy" right out loud, and so does Trump, and so do those guys ALL THE TIME...unless by some tragic misfortune one of them found himself with somebody like Hillary as his boss for a week or two before getting himself fired on purpose.

They're not sexist like the alt-right kids (or even like a pompous-ass frat-boy like Trump), because they like females because they did get laid in high school. They're sexist in the sense that they value females like they value baggies full of Acapulco Gold. It's a very weak alliance, and was only made possible because of idiot level blinders and aspirational class/working class boundaries which are constructed by school district property tax rates.

NOTE: It is likely that I somehow morphed Ted Nugent with Kurt Vonnegut at an important stage of my sexual development, so that is why I am generally in favor of people saying or typing "pussy" freely, even if it makes me barf in my mouth more than a little bit when Trump does it.

[Chad]

I would note that the reason why many members of the aspirational class were shocked by the results of this election is because this is behavior that they also exhibit. Not much stranger-danger risk when you hop from Ann Arbor to Austin to Berkeley to Amherst. Otherwise, they would have had some sort of clue that there was no way white working class Midwestern men were going to vote for Hillary. Ted Nugent says "pussy" right out loud, and so does Trump, and so do those guys ALL THE TIME...unless by some tragic misfortune one of them found himself with somebody like Hillary as his boss for a week or two before getting himself fired on purpose.

They're not sexist like the alt-right kids (or even like a pompous-ass frat-boy like Trump), because they like females because they did get laid in high school. They're sexist in the sense that they value females like they value baggies full of Acapulco Gold. It's a very weak alliance, and was only made possible because of idiot level blinders and aspirational class/working class boundaries which are constructed by school district property tax rates.

It is true there is a divide, but it's not one way. The working class doesn't want to hangout with the aspirational class either. I have friend I grew up with who works in the racing industry (cars). I have been to his house for a fair amount of parties and I'm the only aspirational class person there out of 20-30 people. It's a struggle to find a subject to talk about. I definitely couldn't talk about politics, economics, and foreign policy, as both just resulted in anger and talking points from them they didn't actually know anything about.

Part of it was the same problem mentioned in previous threads. In order to talk to them about these subjects, I would have to educate them in basic theories before we even started the hard part of the discussion.

Were they sexist or racist? Definitely not blatantly, but they would also be the first people to complain about a black athlete for doing something white athletes do. So, while they wouldn't tell a woman or minority they couldn't do something because of what/who they are, they also hold them to a higher standard. A prime example is flying a Confederate flag vs. someone kneeling for the national anthem.

[7Wannabe5]

@Chad:

True. That's what I am trying to explain. They don't want what the nerds with money have, because a nerd with money is still a nerd. Unless the nerd also happens to be an attractive female. They will vote for somebody like Bill Clinton because he started working class and clearly talked dirty in semi-private all the time.

Anyways, when I am defending the likes of Ted Nugent who I listened to when I was 14, I am really defending the likes of Kurt Vonnegut Jr. who I read when I was 14, because he typed "pussy" right out loud too. Kindness is a virtue, whereas freedom of speech is a shared right.

Also, Herman Koch in "The Dinner" pegged what I mean about the aspirational class being as likely to revert to the dark side of loyalty/tribalism and thuggery as any other class.

“These were the ways and moves of … of a predator. The thought popped into my mind without my being able to stop it. ‘Of an athlete’ was what I had meant to say – to think. A sportsman.”
― Herman Koch, The Dinner

[BRUTE]

Xenophobia vs Xenophilia: Those who fear or distrust people different from themselves versus those who express affection for people who are different. Xenophobes exclude themselves from differences while xenophiliacs move toward them.

I agree. Though, this seems to be a subsection to the larger reason of those who accept/adapt/like change vs. those that don't accept/adapt/like change. Different people are just another form of change.

could Chad (or Ego for that matter) expand on this?

[Ego]

Xenophobia vs Xenophilia: Those who fear or distrust people different from themselves versus those who express affection for people who are different. Xenophobes exclude themselves from differences while xenophiliacs move toward them.

I agree. Though, this seems to be a subsection to the larger reason of those who accept/adapt/like change vs. those that don't accept/adapt/like change. Different people are just another form of change.

could Chad (or Ego for that matter) expand on this?

Sure. Xenophobia is largely a learned response. Those with a diverse peer group when they are young become adults who do not subconsciously react negatively to those who are different. Those who grew up in a monoculture end up with the implicit bias that all the SJW types are screaming about.

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/arch ... al/263785/

You and I are hard determinists, right? So, how does a hard determinist deal this?

The answer, or course, is that we need to eliminate them. Eliminate white people. Black people too. Brown people. Yellow people. Get rid of 'em all.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GfxL_wuYtSg

[7Wannabe5]

...the behavior of a living organism is determined. However, rather than being determined by outside forces, it is determined by the organism's own structure- as structure formed by a succession of autonomous structural changes. Hence, the behavior of a living organism is both determined and free.

...

From these generalizations emerges the important insight that social networks exhibit the same general principles as biological networks. There is an organized ensemble with internal rules that generates both the network itself and its boundary (a physical boundary in biological networks, and a cultural boundary in social networks.) Each social system- a political party, a business organization, a city, or a school - is characterized by the need to sustain itself in a stable but dynamic mode, permitting new members, materials, or ideas to enter the structure and become part of the system. These newly entered elements will generally be transformed by the internal organization (i.e., the rules) of the system.

The observation that the "bio-logic," or pattern of organization, of a simple cell is the same as that of an entire social structure is highly nontrivial. It suggests a fundamental unity of life, and hence also the need to study and understand all living structures from such a unifying perspective.

"The Systems View of Life: A Unifying Vision", Capra and Luisi

[7Wannabe5]

Ego said: Sure. Xenophobia is largely a learned response. Those with a diverse peer group when they are young become adults who do not subconsciously react negatively to those who are different. Those who grew up in a monoculture end up with the implicit bias that all the SJW types are screaming about.

I grew up in an extreme monoculture and purposefully sought out a more diverse environment at puberty. I think human beings are more or less programmed to seek diversity at puberty because we are an out-breeding species. A few generations of mating with your first cousin in the village and some not likely to promote survival of individual characteristics will emerge. However, this is in direct conflict with a desire to preserve those who do most resemble you genetically. This is also the essential conflict between the erotic and the affectionate aspects of love.

[Ego]

Nonetheless, people who want to argue that racism is natural have tried to buttress their position with evidence that racism is in some sense biological. For example: studies have found that when whites see black faces there is increased activity in the amygdala, a brain structure associated with emotion and, specifically, with the detection of threats.

Well, whatever power that kind of argument ever had--which wasn't much, since the fact that a psychological reaction has a biological correlate doesn't tell you whether the reaction is innate--it has even less power now. In a paper that will be published in the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, Eva Telzer of UCLA and three other researchers report that they've performed these amygdala studies--which had previously been done on adults--on children. And they found something interesting: the racial sensitivity of the amygdala doesn't kick in until around age 14.

What's more: once it kicks in, it doesn't kick in equally for everybody. The more racially diverse your peer group, the less strong the amygdala effect. At really high levels of diversity, the effect disappeared entirely.

Fourteen. Early bloomer?