Raising the bar on what to accept as humans

[Koyaanisqatsi]

Please, by all means start that thread. I can't wait to psychoanalyze what's no doubt floating around in there.

Exactly what qualifications do you have with which to psychoanalyze anyone?

Why do you care? I didn't offer to psychoanalyze you.

Why should any of us give your opinion on this even an eyelash if credence?

A phrase all of us could use as our signatures.

Anything else or have you exhausted your feigned indignance for this evening?

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The effects (good and bad) of nurture become more apparent as I get older. It's a much bigger deal than I thought, even 10-15 years ago.
At <25 years of age, I discounted it almost entirely. I was wrong.

Without getting too Freudian about it all, I agree. I'm realizing more and more that we are actually born "backwards" and that childhood is actually when we are the wisest as it is only in infancy that we are fully and completely "in the now" as it were. Everything else is stored clutter. It's like we start out with this great big beautiful empty space and then spend the rest of our lives filling it with shit we either don't need or don't really want. Periodically we clean it and purge some of the junk, but for the most part, we're just pack rats.

But I digress

Koy, I think you might want to consider laying off the static’s for a bit, buddy.

The "static's"?

 

[Koyaanisqatsi]

So, the way you vote was genetically transferred?

Wait... where did voting come into this? For fucks sake, Koy, you are more than your vote.

You need to get off your phone and actually read the threads you're posting in.

Personally, I have never met a single person where that statement is true (and I include myself in that and I had--by almost every standard I've seen demonstrated in other people's stories--a comparatively Brady Bunch happy childhood).

Many people are typically not aware of anything traumatic, but that's a different matter.

Lil, wut? We’ve all been traumatized, we just don’t know it?

No, I sais "many people are typically not aware of anything traumatic, but that's a different matter."

What the hell kind of repressed memories bullshit is this?

Bullshit?

 

[PyramidHead]

About as strongly as I expected. I'm still curious as to why traffic signals, which are agreed-upon mechanisms that only work because everybody knows what they mean and expects everyone else to know what they mean, are somehow an example of individuals managing themselves rather than a perfect illustration of what groups of people can accomplish through mutual trust and participation in public life. Jimmy's assertion that people only obey traffic lights because they're afraid of the cops is just laughable. They're not afraid of the cops, they're afraid of getting smashed by an oncoming car, and the best way to avoid that is to follow the traffic signals. It's better for each individual to adhere to a set of rules that applies to them all collectively, and makes individual behavior more predictable as a result.

In general, the most important part of traffic signals is to maintain traffic. Little traffic, lights aren’t needed. More traffic, then you start needing lights... or rotary which is as libertarian traffic design can get. But even rotaries get overwhelmed, hence lights and turn offs.

In other words, the more people you have, the more regulating of their behavior is needed. Else things will become a mess.

No disagreement here. Not sure why that's not a sterling illustration of how groups manage to operate without devolving into chaos through mutually understood symbols.

 

[PyramidHead]

I'll address these more closely now that I have some time.

By what mechanism are [members of society who serve on councils] "drawn"? (Achilles heel #1)

It would depend on a lot of factors, most importantly perhaps being the stage of transition into a libertarian socialist society from a capitalist one. In a capitalist society, the social and educational institutions are inadequate to prepare the majority of people to think about the impact of their choices on the community at large, but this is a conscious choice that can be reversed; so, if education was less about preparing people to serve the needs of capital expansion and more about teaching them how to cooperate and consider the perspectives of others, council membership could be the kind of thing people volunteer to do, maybe with some mechanism to prevent the same people from showing up all the time, combined with either a lottery system or some level of incentive provision for those who step up. In the end, it would again be up to the community to decide what works for them, and there are historical precedents to draw from in any case.

They would make decisions on behalf of the community with whatever level of public input the community decides works for them

By what mechanism does "the community" decide? (Achilles heel #2)

So, an Achilles' heel is usually understood to be some fatal flaw inherent in a thing that dooms it to failure despite its possession of many admirable qualities. Here, though, you're using it to describe a problem whose answer is literally just voting. Have you heard of voting? There are many ways to count votes, and many ways to encourage participation. In a democratic society like the one I'm sketching, the councils or activity groups or boards or whatever you want to call them are entrusted with hashing out details of policies that will eventually be enacted by the entire society, not just the members of the councils. In an anarchist society there is no political class; everybody participates in governance, not an exclusive body separated from the whole that can cover its tracks. The extent to which the representative delegations can summarize the details without consulting the entire population on every little thing is obviously a matter of practicality, but there need not be a single perfect answer for all times and places. What radical democracy unlocks is the ability to just change things that don't work when they stop working.

If the person in charge of organizing garbage collection is a greedy bastard, the idea is to be able to swap in somebody else who isn't with a simple vote. If it looks like too many details of policymaking are going on behind closed doors and not enough is being communicated to the people (which would, again, be obvious as the people themselves would be the ones administering every policy), then put forth a resolution to change that and vote against anybody who doesn't obey it. I'm not describing a utopia where everything is agreed upon all the time, but a blurry image of making a society work for people by literally asking them what they want and giving them the ability to participate in making it happen, to the extent that their wishes are consistent with others affected by them. Again, would that somehow be WORSE than not having any voice apart from a single vote every few years for somebody who is otherwise basically unaccountable?

and then everybody would go back to their jobs and enact the policy collectively

Even if it's an authoritarian edict? (Achilles heel #3)

I'm struggling to imagine how an authoritarian edict would arise from a situation where ordinary citizens get together and talk about how much money to spend next year on water purification or how much raw materials should go to making new artworks, with whatever proposal they create being voted upon by everyone else who lives there. Authoritarian edicts are the product of concentrated power trying to protect itself, and a system that limits power being concentrated naturally limits the ability to impose it on others against their will.

Who ensures that it is enacted uniformly? (Achilles heel #4)

The people who voted to do it because they believe it's important and are expected to help enact it! If you like, maybe a temporary oversight committee could be formed from volunteers or through some other means, who would once again focus on the particular problem and report back to the community at large. Would there be cases where the community was so divided on an issue that some members would refuse to participate in enacting a policy they disagree with? Of course, and that would be another problem to tackle with input from the affected parties, rather than settled by representatives who want to preserve their power by appeasing people who own a lot of wealth. I mean, is there really a comparison to be made here, after we acknowledge that no perfect system of social organization exists? All your questions are fine, but they have the characteristic of being more damning (more of an Achilles' heel) to any system less democratic than the one I am vaguely proposing, unless there is some unjustified assumption that humans are genetically averse to having more control over their circumstances.

 

[skepticalbip]

You need to get off your phone and actually read the threads you're posting in.

Personally, I have never met a single person where that statement is true (and I include myself in that and I had--by almost every standard I've seen demonstrated in other people's stories--a comparatively Brady Bunch happy childhood).

Many people are typically not aware of anything traumatic, but that's a different matter.

Lil, wut? We’ve all been traumatized, we just don’t know it?

No, I sais "many people are typically not aware of anything traumatic, but that's a different matter."

It depends on what you mean by traumatic. Most think of traumatic as something like mental, physical, or sexual abuse. If your idea of traumatic includes being required to brush your teeth or be in bed by a certain time then, yes, everyone experienced a trauma. If you include fearing that 'monster' under the bed or in the closet then, yes, most children have experienced a trauma.

 

[Elixir]

If your idea of traumatic includes being required to brush your teeth or be in bed by a certain time then, yes, everyone experienced a trauma. If you include fearing that 'monster' under the bed or in the closet then, yes, most children have experienced a trauma.

I'd include all that and much much more. Take any of your earliest memories - good, bad or indifferent. That event, no matter how trivial its consequences may seem, had a formative effect upon you. If it didn't, you wouldn't remember it.
The older I get, the more clearly I can see the threads that bind my current behavior and my behavior since adulthood, to early experiences. I think these things only become apparent as we age, and compile a mental and emotional database to which we can refer.

 

[Emily Lake]

Why do you care? I didn't offer to psychoanalyze you.

You’ve implied the ability to psychoanalyze anyone in this thread, but fine - I’ll rephrase. What qualifications do you have that would make anyone anywhere think that your opinion if anyone’s mental state should in any remote fashion be taken at all seriously instead of being laughed off as absurd?

The "static's"?

Autocorrect fail. Should have been “sativa”.



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[Emily Lake]

What the hell kind of repressed memories bullshit is this?

Bullshit?

Yes. Bullshit.

To be more explicit: your presumption that people who say they had no childhood trauma are in denial, and your soap box screed that all the ills in the world are because of child abuse even if people don’t think they were abused, and your arrogant claim that if people tell you about their childhood you can predict how they vote... is all bullshit.



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[skepticalbip]

If your idea of traumatic includes being required to brush your teeth or be in bed by a certain time then, yes, everyone experienced a trauma. If you include fearing that 'monster' under the bed or in the closet then, yes, most children have experienced a trauma.

I'd include all that and much much more. Take any of your earliest memories - good, bad or indifferent. That event, no matter how trivial its consequences may seem, had a formative effect upon you. If it didn't, you wouldn't remember it.
The older I get, the more clearly I can see the threads that bind my current behavior and my behavior since adulthood, to early experiences. I think these things only become apparent as we age, and compile a mental and emotional database to which we can refer.

Fair enough.

But then the point was the definition of, "TRAUMATIC". Personally, I would consider the experiences in my childhood as simply memories rather than traumas. Such as I remember some wonderful experiences with my parents that I wouldn't consider traumatic but then, apparently, some consider anything remembered as being caused by a trauma.

I certainly agree that childhood experiences effect future worldview but calling those experiences traumas is, to me, a wild misnomer. The word, 'Trauma', has a very negative connotation for me.

 

[Elixir]

If your idea of traumatic includes being required to brush your teeth or be in bed by a certain time then, yes, everyone experienced a trauma. If you include fearing that 'monster' under the bed or in the closet then, yes, most children have experienced a trauma.

I'd include all that and much much more. Take any of your earliest memories - good, bad or indifferent. That event, no matter how trivial its consequences may seem, had a formative effect upon you. If it didn't, you wouldn't remember it.
The older I get, the more clearly I can see the threads that bind my current behavior and my behavior since adulthood, to early experiences. I think these things only become apparent as we age, and compile a mental and emotional database to which we can refer.

Fair enough.

But then the point was the definition of, "TRAUMATIC". Personally, I would consider the experiences in my childhood as simply memories rather than traumas. Such as I remember some wonderful experiences with my parents that I wouldn't consider traumatic but then, apparently, some consider anything remembered as being caused by a trauma.

I certainly agree that childhood experiences effect future worldview but calling those experiences traumas is, to me, a wild misnomer. The word, 'Trauma', has a very negative connotation for me.

I agree - the fixation on trauma is unjustifiable. A truly traumatic early-life event will likely be either remembered or suppressed in memory. Either way, it will be formative. But it is just one of myriad early experiences that form and inform our later thoughts and actions. Speaking for myself, most of the early events that I have been able to identify as still influential in my own life were not traumatic at all.

 

[Koyaanisqatsi]

Why do you care? I didn't offer to psychoanalyze you.

You’ve implied the ability to psychoanalyze anyone in this thread

Anyone in the world, actually, not just this thread. Do you know what psychoanalysis is or entails?

What qualifications do you have

I hold multiple doctorates from Boston University, NYU and Columbia in the following fields of psyschology: Developmental; Clinical; Abnormal; Cognitive & Perceptual; Neuropsychology; and Social/Personality psychology.

 

[Koyaanisqatsi]

What the hell kind of repressed memories bullshit is this?

Bullshit?

Yes. Bullshit.

Oh, you mean like tossing fallacies around as if they were counter arguments? Like this one:

To be more explicit: your presumption that people who say they had no childhood trauma are in denial

Or this one:

and your soap box screed that all the ills in the world are because of child abuse even if people don’t think they were abused

Or this one:

and your arrogant claim that if people tell you about their childhood you can predict how they vote

If you’re referring to something I wrote like this then you can drop the idiotic strawmen and plainly see how I qualified everything I claimed (emphasis mine for the hard of reading):

I obviously disagree. Tell me what kind of abuse you suffered in your childhood and I can pretty much plot your entire life's narrative from there. Not 100% of course--as that's absurd--but likely more than enough to be able to profile you for how you'd vote on various policies and the like. Political analysts do this all the time in fact. As do advertisers and marketers etc. Hell, psychologists and psychiatrists as well, of course.

It's not too difficult, so long as you have knowledge of certain variables.

So, to seriously answer your argument from authority ad hominem, I actually studied Developmental and Abnormal psychology at Boston University, but it was my minor. I majored in Film, which is likewise a study in human behavior, just in a more artistic sense. At one point, I was thinking of going the psychologist route (instead of the artist route), but realized pretty quickly that the students around me were all studying psych because they were in desperate need of analysis.

Coincidentally, while that was going on I was also having a long distance tryst with my sister-in-law’s sister (we met at my brother’s wedding) and was starring in a play called ’Dentity Crisis by Christopher Durang. I mention that because the character I was playing suffered from multiple personality disorder (“MPD” now known as dissociative identity disorder) and although a comedy, the director—an Egyptian exchange student, who was likewise a little abnormal—was doing the play because his brother had suffered from MPD and killed himself.

As research for the part, he insisted I read one of the first investigative books on MPD called The Minds of Billy Milligan. It was incredible and I highly recommend it.

I mention all of that because, even more coincidentally my sister-in-law’s sister/lover was ALSO diagnosed with MPD several years after we drifted apart, just after college. I know that, because she called me—out of the blue—one day to inform me of her diagnosis and that, although the personality calling me did not know me, several of her “alters” did and her therapist suggested she reach out to me because I was evidently one of the only positive “good” people her alters ever met.

We had MANY conversations over the years and met at least a dozen of her alters (some would pretend to be others I had already met in fact). I found out that I had been “dating,” among others, a 5 year old girl, a 17 year old boy and a 32 year old woman (all in the body of a 17 year old when we met). Which, ironically, suddenly made many of the things she used to say and do whenever we’d get together on various weekends make a lot more sense.

It got to the point where I was going to shoot a documentary about her, but in order to do that it was agreed that I would need unanimous consent from her alters—which was conducted with me and her and her therapist during a long therapy session—and in the end there were too many alters who feared what would happen to her if she went public for reasons I won’t go into (but that lead to her MPD to begin with).

These experiences led to decades of studying—albeit on my own—anything and everything to do with the psychology of identity (including a deep dive into the Sybil “controversy” that actually wasn’t), which in turn has informed my primary “day job” career—which has been in marketing and advertising, with some professional experience as a media consultant (aka, “spin doctor”) in New York Senate politics, as well as always informing my artistic career as a filmmaker/writer.

And, finally, like you actually give a shit, I have a Master’s Degree in Marketing and Brand Management, also from BU, which is, once again, likewise a study of human identity and predictive behavior.

So those are my actual qualifications, but of course, how the fuck would you know whether or not I’m telling the truth?

Oh. Right. It’s not about that.