NZ Shooter used the term overton window in manifesto

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Freedom_2018
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NZ Shooter used the term overton window in manifesto

Post by Freedom_2018 »

*I gave it a bit of thought before posting on this topic here. I am curious to know and discuss this topic..and I have some with my partner but have run into solid walls with friends etc who don't even want to hear about it. Period. So posting here in the hope that an online medium might be more conducive to discussing the truth. Basically hoping that the overton window on-line here is broader than what I can find in real life right now. Also I shouldn't have to do this, but for the thought police of the future that will be combing Internet Servers and past postings for building a case file on everyone, I unequivocally state that I am not a white supremacist (heck I am not even white...just a legal immigrant to a white majority country) and in no way condone the horrific act that happened in New Zealand. It is absolutely terrible and no human has the right to take liberty and life from another. Also if this thread should not be on this forum, I am OK with that. In that case I will just keep it to myself.*

*Also I have not seen the video, nor want to for the reason that I know the effect viewing violence has on my psyche. Same reason I do not watch horror movies. Also it feels like desecrating the dead/survivors of this incident. In another way of thinking, I haven't earned the 'right' to watch it - maybe if I was there helping in deed or kind, I could 'justify' watching it but it still would come with its toll on the psyche, a cost I can't afford.*

Phew!

With the above disclaimer, I would like to know if anyone else has any thoughts on this event. The things that struck out at me are:

- Use of 'rational' sounding arguments to justify violence against non-white immigrants

- The rationale used seems to be like what an AI type logic would do if it considered immigration a problem (skynet ttechhinking)

- Training in human values, moral science (we used to have this in school), conflict resolution techniques - with others for sure but more importantly within ourselves when we are torn between conflicting internal values is of paramount importance in today's world. Maybe we've been focusing too much on technical education and too little on moral values.

- Absence of moral education and deriding morality in society in general allows extreme elements to position their cause as a 'moral' one. It seems the human psyche has a huge need for a moral core.

- So things like extensive exposure to porn and violent video games are not without damage to society. Now not to say that everyone who indulges in those things is going to become a whacko but nor does everyone who smoke a cigarette turn into a lung cancer patient. But we do restrict smoking - the correlation was there before the causality. Should we wait for more correlation or causality before such things will be moderated. And who moderates them? Are we waiting for an external agency to do that or apply our own moderation to ourselves? How do you personally decide?

Things of that nature.

M

tonyedgecombe
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Re: NZ Shooter used the term overton window in manifesto

Post by tonyedgecombe »

In other words you want to impose your "moral" views on the rest of civilisation and plan to use these rare incidents to get your way.

No amount of moral education, banning of games or porn is going to cure a psychopath. These people existed before video games were created or they could download porn from the internet.

Freedom_2018
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Re: NZ Shooter used the term overton window in manifesto

Post by Freedom_2018 »

@tony : Not sure what you are implying in your first sentence. I'm sure we all have some values (many of them developed subconsciously and inadvertently and one of the processes of becoming an adult is to examine and question them and if needed add/replace them to be a more complete individual in society). But at the same time, it is important to pick the 'right' values...otherwise like in the case of the shooter one can have wrong values and then do drastic acts to 'defend' them. Some other person with the 'right' values might instead have chosen to write letters to the editor or be a social organizer or run for office. Not all values or morals seem equal to me. Some are definitely more salubrious than others. I hope you can see that.

I agree that there will always be some people beyond hope/redemption or ability to fit in regular society and they will sometimes do horrific things but then their acts come at a cost to us...loss of freedom and liberty for everyone due to the actions of a few crazies. Is that the society we wan't to live in?

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Seppia
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Re: NZ Shooter used the term overton window in manifesto

Post by Seppia »

tonyedgecombe wrote:
Tue Mar 19, 2019 10:46 am
No amount of moral education, banning of games or porn is going to cure a psychopath. These people existed before video games were created or they could download porn from the internet.
I'm not sure this is a strong argument. People die of lung cancer without smoking cigarettes, but we know smoking increases the odds.

External circumstances and agents clearly have an impact on how individuals behave, the question should be how much, but certainly not if.
Then the next analysis should be "is the tradeoff of limiting one's freedom worth the lower odds of something tragic happening?"

It is a subjective debate (think gun control, where europeans and the USA draw very different conclusions) obviously

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Jean
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Re: NZ Shooter used the term overton window in manifesto

Post by Jean »

One way to avoid those attacks would be to clearly demonstrate that Muslims aren't globaly waging or supporting a War against non muslims, and to propose a peacefull option to don't live in a Muslim country in the future.

Jason

Re: NZ Shooter used the term overton window in manifesto

Post by Jason »

Freedom_2018 wrote:
Tue Mar 19, 2019 10:00 am

- Use of 'rational' sounding arguments to justify violence against non-white immigrants


- Absence of moral education and deriding morality in society in general allows extreme elements to position their cause as a 'moral' one. It seems the human psyche has a huge need for a moral core.
With regard to the issue of rational arguments, I would suggest reading this book:

https://www.amazon.com/Modernity-Holoca ... 0801487196


If you use the Holocaust as both a template and inspiration for subsequent events, this provides the intellectual history and its dependence on rationality, specifically, man's ability and right to lord over and arrange the natural world as he deems suitable. The Holocaust was preceded by German forestry which changed the concept of the natural world and man's role in it by basically renaming nature "natural resources." You start ordering the forest by removing trees and then move on to ordering society by removing people.

I can only speak for US, but the founding fathers were not, as some evangelicals like to say, Christian. They were a very diverse group. However, they all encouraged church attendance in order that the citizenry could be exposed to moral teaching. The decline of the church leads to a vacuum that will be filled with, well, whatever else is out there. I do too believe than man is a moral being.

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Jean
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Re: NZ Shooter used the term overton window in manifesto

Post by Jean »

Also, trying to base one's understanding of humans on fiction isn't going to work.

Freedom_2018
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Re: NZ Shooter used the term overton window in manifesto

Post by Freedom_2018 »

@Jean - Regarding demonstrating the benign intentions of Muslims (or any other immigrant group). How does one go about doing that? Is it incumbent on the immigrants to demonstrate adaptation and appreciation of the new country or do we expect the existing citizenry to understand and accommodate the new immigrants? In the real world perhaps a bit of both but I certainly would put the ball in the immigrants court on this one, seems reasonable that they should take the initiative. But the increasing urbanization and the fact that most immigrants go to urban areas creates naturally an 'immigrant city' where the new arrivals have little exposure to the native culture. An Indian could move to Sunnyvale in California and essentially never have left India.

So for example while I am a naturalized US Citizen I would not assume that the cowboy in some little town bar in Wyoming sitting next to me would view me as the same kind of 'citizen' that he whose 3 generations of ancestors have been raining cattle on the land is. Yes, legally I have the same rights that he does (other than running for President) but I would not think that culturally I would be considered 'citizen' by him. I mean you see these variation from state to state across the country with people thinking their state is the shit and other states are shit (friendly jousting).

Regarding basing understanding of humans on fiction, I think you are mistaken. Fiction (whether religious type or Shakespeare or poetry) has a great ability to inform and assist in the human condition. Most humans are creatures of meaning and fiction, stories and narrative are what shape us, especially in our formative years. I think these days it is fashionable to shit on religion and throw the baby out with the bath water - and by that I mean is aversion to religiosity (which religion has somewhat brought upon itself by being led by people who fan the flames of dogma while say buggering little boys) has caused people to reject anything good that religion had to offer also. I think this started in the 1960s and now we have a couple of generations that have been raised with sort of an visceral aversion to any words that start with 'reli'. Into this gap has (alluded above to by Jason) has stepped in "New Age - Deepak Chopra and more', Buddhism and Hinduism type teachings as well as the peddlers of scientism (distin or caguishing it from science in the same way I distinguish Televangelists with big smiles and fleets of Luxury cars from the underlying tenets of various religions) for whom something is only real if it is on an FMRI or can be written in an equation (hello Black Scholes and LTCM) or can be demostrated in a lab.

So what I am saying is we need both...science and fiction. They both have something valuable to teach us and we ignore and denigrate one or the other at our own peril.

Freedom_2018
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Re: NZ Shooter used the term overton window in manifesto

Post by Freedom_2018 »

@Jason - thanks I will try to get a copy of that book, though I suspect I am in agreement with what the author has to say. If you have a suggestion for a perspective that runs counter to that, I would be interested in that too.

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Jean
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Re: NZ Shooter used the term overton window in manifesto

Post by Jean »

The problème with religion is that they claim to be non fiction. I agréé that they Can help if you take them as fiction.

Major Muslim countries (including their diaspora living among us)ellect people who claim they want to invade us (erdogan). Muslim all over thé World cheer After successfull terror attacks. Muslim don't call the police when terrorists are hiding un their neighbouring. I think those are strong signs that prove my point, and that those advocating that Muslims want to live peacefully among us are the one who need to bring some arguments.

Jason

Re: NZ Shooter used the term overton window in manifesto

Post by Jason »

This book deals with the internal issues that created modern day Islam.

https://www.amazon.com/Closing-Muslim-M ... 1610170024

IlliniDave
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Re: NZ Shooter used the term overton window in manifesto

Post by IlliniDave »

I haven't read the manifesto (nor seen the video), refuse to do either, but from what I've caught on the news there were some odd things about the POS shooter's thought processes.

-White supremacist
-Identifies strongest philosophically/politically with PR of China
-Chose to use guns to destabilize the US politically

Those things don't tend to come in a set, so my initial thought was that the manifesto might be deliberately misleading, like he is just trying to mess with people along with his outrageous acts. I don't really have the stomach to delve into this guy's mind much further.

Freedom_2018
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Re: NZ Shooter used the term overton window in manifesto

Post by Freedom_2018 »

@Jean - I think we probably can't expect the leaders of organized religion to upend their own legitimacy by calling their religion 'fictional but useful' or something like that. I think we still live in a world of mostly literal people and many of these leaders might be literal people too... and even if they are not, they know how to play to the gallery...after all they have to maintain their leadership.

The issue of muslim solidarity vs national identity I think has been raised as an issue many times. Not sure what drives it..as in I don't know enough about it. I mean the shias hate the sunnis and vice versa (the almost forever Iran Iraq war) and similarly schisms between various other sects but yes, there is a sense of unifying under the banner of Islam especially in the face of an external threat. I think 'good Muslims' even if they wanted to rat out their suspect neighbor perhaps feel somehow they will be judged as traitors by their community and face some sort of repercussions.

In thinking about other such communities I wonder if say for examples do Jews feel this way? Somehow from what I have seen, it doesn't feel that it is so cohesive..after all there is a Jews for Jesus or Jews who are against Israel's attitude towards Palestinians. The Indian Sikh community is pretty cohesive I think in that they will help each other out and a sikh from the UK sees a Indian sikh as sikh first then Indian. But fortunately sikhs haven't been fomenting trouble and usually are helpful members of their community. They have been unfortunately mistaken for muslims and shot sometimes (by some looney tunes who can't tell the difference between an Osama turban and beard and a sikh turban and beard....people please teach your children geography).

It always cracks me up when I think of the Spanish and their love for jamon (ham), chorizo (type of sausage) and all things pork. 700 years of rule by the Moors with pork being haram (forbidden). And then the Reconquista happened.

Pig1 (during the reconquista) : Did you hear the Christians won?

Pig 2 : I guess they'll be bringing home the bacon now.

@Jason - thanks again for another book. I have wondered previously about islam (after all I grew up in a country with the second highest muslim population in the world...so school..classmates etc.) in that how did it go from inventing algebra and some advanced math and astronomy, not to mention literature and come to think of it, many of the stars in the night sky have arabic names, to being perceived as one of the more barbaric and less progressive religions out there. Seems like progressive adherents of the religion might have been routed by the fanatics. Look forward to learning more.

Freedom_2018
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Re: NZ Shooter used the term overton window in manifesto

Post by Freedom_2018 »

@illinidave - Yes the points you mention are in there. The thing is that if someone had shown me the document without me knowing what it was, I would have said, yes it makes some logical points but if you follow the 'logic' to its conclusion you will have a world of mayhem and there are much better ways to go about making life choices in the face of a seemingly unfair world.

This is what worries me about AI/skynet thinking and also about marxism and extreme socialist policies (not to say that I am aligned with right wing thinking - why do I feel like I have to keep providing disclaimers!). Stuff that appears good on paper and in theory and in principle if not accounting for the innate nature of humanity (greed, lust, envy, love, heroism, generosity, sacrifice etc) can really work out bad in practice. That is why capitalism (not corporatism) is still a viable though far from perfect way of being in today's world. I mean there are issues with capitalism for sure but then again do we need to throw out the baby with the bathwater as so many seem to want these days? Revolution always seems more glamorous but it is the small incremental, thankless and back breaking work that moves the wheels of society.

Also I am curious is there is a 'white guilt' around things like this. I mean do white people feel guilty in some way when bad acts like this happen? As though they were some uniform monolithic group responsible for some asshole just because he was white? If so, in some way is this analogous to the muslim solidarity I mentioned in a previous post (albeit not as strong)?

Freedom_2018
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Re: NZ Shooter used the term overton window in manifesto

Post by Freedom_2018 »

An example of the result of AI/skynet thinking I refer to:

"Answer" by Fredric Brown

Dwan Ev ceremoniously soldered the final connection with gold. The eyes of a dozen television cameras watched him and the subether bore throughout the universe a dozen pictures of what he was doing.
He straightened and nodded to Dwar Reyn, then moved to a position beside the switch that would complete the contact when he threw it. The switch that would connect, all at once, all of the monster computing machines of all the populated planets in the universe -- ninety-six billion planets -- into the supercircuit that would connect them all into one supercalculator, one cybernetics machine that would combine all the knowledge of all the galaxies.
Dwar Reyn spoke briefly to the watching and listening trillions. Then after a moment's silence he said, "Now, Dwar Ev."
Dwar Ev threw the switch. There was a mighty hum, the surge of power from ninety-six billion planets. Lights flashed and quieted along the miles-long panel.
Dwar Ev stepped back and drew a deep breath. "The honor of asking the first question is yours, Dwar Reyn."
"Thank you," said Dwar Reyn. "It shall be a question which no single cybernetics machine has been able to answer."
He turned to face the machine. "Is there a God?"
The mighty voice answered without hesitation, without the clicking of a single relay.
"Yes, now there is a God."
Sudden fear flashed on the face of Dwar Ev. He leaped to grab the switch.
A bolt of lightning from the cloudless sky struck him down and fused the switch shut.

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Jean
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Re: NZ Shooter used the term overton window in manifesto

Post by Jean »

This is because sunni islam includes World domination, while sikhism doesn't.
Concernant AI, i believe an AI will recognize beauty and save the day.

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Re: NZ Shooter used the term overton window in manifesto

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

I remember reading a list of characteristics and life events of the uni-bomber and realizing that I had a heck of a lot in common with him, with the one very big exception being that I am not at all a violent person. I guess maybe religion is a good thing if it helps keep people who are inclined towards violence in check even a little bit, but the plain fact remains that the people who are most inclined towards violence aren't the general population members of any particular "ism." The humans who are most inclined towards violence are resentful, disrespected young men and/or people suffering from temporary (drunk) or organic mental illness.

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Re: NZ Shooter used the term overton window in manifesto

Post by IlliniDave »

Freedom_2018 wrote:
Tue Mar 19, 2019 3:04 pm
@illinidave -
...
Also I am curious is there is a 'white guilt' around things like this. I mean do white people feel guilty in some way when bad acts like this happen? As though they were some uniform monolithic group responsible for some asshole just because he was white? If so, in some way is this analogous to the muslim solidarity I mentioned in a previous post (albeit not as strong)?
I can only speak for myself. I feel only sadness and anger. No guilt. I grew up in a time/culture substantially influenced by MLK. Insofar as I will judge a person, it is to the best of my ability by the content of their character, not by the color of their skin (or analogous immutable characteristic). I apply that to myself as well as others. That's a very serious tenet to me. It's also why identity politics gets to be a burr under my saddle. Apologies if that makes anyone feel insulted or unwelcome.

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Re: NZ Shooter used the term overton window in manifesto

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

No, it just makes me sick, because I have known and cared for many Muslims, mostly children, and I was a lightly practicing convert myself for a couple years.

Campitor
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Re: NZ Shooter used the term overton window in manifesto

Post by Campitor »

@OP

I don't think people need video games or porn to stir murderous ambitions. Mass murderers, serial killers, and genocidal warfare have all been with us long before electronic porn, mein kampf, manifestos, and violent video entertainment. Metrics show that we're getting less violent rather than more violent in the US and worldwide - hard to see a smoking gun (pun intended since cigarette analogies were made earlier) pointing to modern day porn, games, or <insert external reason for triggering murderous intent here>.

Ever hear of the Bath School Disaster of 1927?

The Bath School disaster, sometimes known as the Bath School massacre, was a series of violent attacks perpetrated by Andrew Kehoe on May 18, 1927, in Bath Township, Michigan, which killed 38 elementary schoolchildren and six adults and injured at least 58 other people. Kehoe killed his wife and firebombed his farm, then detonated an explosion in the Bath Consolidated School before committing suicide by detonating a final device in his truck.

Andrew Kehoe was the 55-year-old school board treasurer and was angered by increased taxes and his defeat in the Spring 1926 election for township clerk. He was thought to have planned his "murderous revenge" after that public defeat. He had a reputation for difficulty on the school board and in personal dealings. In addition, he was notified that his mortgage was going to be foreclosed upon in June 1926. For much of the next year, a neighbor noticed that he had stopped working on his farm and thought that he might be planning suicide. During that period, Kehoe purchased explosives and discreetly planted them on his property and under the school.


The Bath School Massacre story sounds like it could have happened today. I think the pathology of murder, especially mass murder, is complex and reducing its cause to video games, porn, or anything else is too reductionist. I think you have to look deeper into their past to see if there were any childhood traumas or aberrations in the prefrontal cortex caused by fetal alcohol syndrome, poor nutrition during fetal development, etc. Or maybe the genetic roll of the dice popped out a psychopath.

I'm not refuting that porn or violent video games have negative effects; the time lost to either can significantly impact growth in more productive areas. But I highly doubt that porn and/or violent video games are the catalysts to psychopathic killings. The New Zealand murderer "manifesto" has to be filled with broken logic. I'm sure it's filled with a bunch of twisted thinking similar to any other set of codified ideas that butcher the truth to justify killing. I haven't read his manifesto since it's been taken offline nor am I eager to read it beyond seeing what stupidity was written so I can make a mental model of a psychopath - helps to spot them should I encounter one.

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