i try to be nice irl and like i dont eat meat and try to care for injured bugs because of thinking things like this. it's a reminder to try and be kind and good, to think communally and not of the individual, but it's easy to slip, especially in the modern day bipartisan "there is no society", "be gay, do crime" ideology of atomisation.

I'd invite oomfs to also think of the minor acts of kindness they can do for those around them, so that others will be glad of their presence.

@MossGrowsOnNormanRuins this is severe OCD

@cyb3rm0shp1t @MossGrowsOnNormanRuins trying to argue against this but I literally have severe OCD so I kind of can't. am I allowed to strategically do a 180 on labels here or am I just owned

@cyb3rm0shp1t @MossGrowsOnNormanRuins the point about thinking communally is still important anyway (although I think invoking "be gay do crime" reflects how the phrase's meaning and intent have been kind of bastardized)

@MossGrowsOnNormanRuins good god, thoughts like that are what drive me to avoid any interaction with anyone and anything isolating myself to death

@patchuun @cyb3rm0shp1t unfortunately be gay do crime feels like it's mostly just fueled an "eff you, I'm getting mine" attitude in a lot of the progressive left where theyve been psyopped into just acting exclusively for their own benefit, but realistically it was never going to be any other way.

Speaking politically, there's been an embrace, extend, extinguish style strategy over the last two or three decades by neoliberal political parties towards progressive social politics to the degree that most of the "thought leaders"

@MossGrowsOnNormanRuins @cyb3rm0shp1t and like, the things we do, the way we treat each other, these things do matter. we do have to care about other people, and the ways our actions affect them, not just ourselves

@patchuun @cyb3rm0shp1t unfortunately be gay do crime feels like it's mostly just fueled an "eff you, I'm getting mine" attitude in a lot of the progressive left where theyve been psyopped into just acting exclusively for their own benefit, but realistically it was never going to be any other way.

Speaking politically, there's been an embrace, extend, extinguish style strategy over the last two or three decades by neoliberal political parties towards progressive social politics to the degree that most of the "thought leaders" of "woke" were/are neoliberals that just never brought up their economic politics as their broader philosophical views of self sufficiency and individualism did entryism into the economic + social left.

@taq imo you should consider the second part of the post, that we're also the sum part of the positive experiences people have with us. When you go outside there's a lot more positive experiences people can have with you than negative, I'd recommend volunteering at a charity shop or a local public space like a park.

@taq @MossGrowsOnNormanRuins felt, but, isolating yourself is also an act that can have negative consequences for those who care about you. so I don't think that's actually a very effective way to quell the thoughts either

@patchuun @MossGrowsOnNormanRuins that's very true!

@patchuun @MossGrowsOnNormanRuins i know this. i still think that conceptualizing it in the way that OP does is absurd and unhealthy

@cyb3rm0shp1t @MossGrowsOnNormanRuins maybe. there's surely a balance to be struck between "obsess over every tiny thing and interaction every day as if the stakes are life or death, heaven or hell, as if there's a score being kept" and "nobody's keeping score so do whatever whenever regardless of who or what is hurt by it"

@cyb3rm0shp1t i disagree, imo it's more important to focus on being a positive part of people's lives and letting not being a negative one follow, dwelling on it the other way around can make you go a bit neurotic.

@taq @patchuun in this spirit, here's a somewhat relevant reply i made to May in this thread: https://defcon.social/@MossGrowsOnNormanRuins/116733257077094385

@MossGrowsOnNormanRuins something is insidious about this but i cant quite place what it is

my initial reaction was “ill experience all of their pleasure and pain, and love every minute of it, no matter what it is”, but i feel like that ignores something nasty about the framing

@MossGrowsOnNormanRuins really, itd be a reassurance, no? “no matter what i do, everyone will understand eventually”

@cyb3rm0shp1t @MossGrowsOnNormanRuins striving for absolute moral perfection is kind of a death spiral and realistically probably a hindrance to actually achieving moral goodness. but that doesn't mean moral goodness isn't something to be striven for

@MossGrowsOnNormanRuins i suppose it’d be a huge shock to someone who can’t handle the world being a tragedy, who feels like it has to all be “right”, aha

when you die, youll experience the life of the billionares, of whoever you view as the worst people in the world, and youll understand fully why theyre Like That

@cyb3rm0shp1t @MossGrowsOnNormanRuins it really is

@angelmoder @MossGrowsOnNormanRuins I would prefer for the world to be less tragic, yeah

@angelmoder @MossGrowsOnNormanRuins it would be nice if things got better and people didn't hurt others so much

@patchuun @MossGrowsOnNormanRuins i just wanna be able to live with it, and love being alive, even as its tragic

id take a world thats sad and beautiful over a world thats “correct” at a cost of never being able to live and enjoy it

@angelmoder @MossGrowsOnNormanRuins of course. but I think doing what one can to try to make it better is an important part of living with it, and of loving being alive. that's how I feel, at least

@patchuun @MossGrowsOnNormanRuins theres a reason subahibi is the first visual novel ive tried to read (not counting milk game but thats not anime)

@patchuun @MossGrowsOnNormanRuins if it happens, its a byproduct of living, not something that happens before it
…and, doesnt everyone say they want things to be better? they all just have different definitions of what “”better”” is.

@patchuun @MossGrowsOnNormanRuins
…honestly, im not sure ive seen an impulse lead to more tragedy than that one.

@angelmoder fedi ate the first reply to this i typed out so none of my extended thoughts on this, but i think its good sometimes to feel the gravity of one's responsibility to others and linger on it. It's worth considering whether people are glad to see you and spend time with you, whether your coworkers get annoyed with you for being lazy or not and how animals regard you.

@angelmoder @patchuun this isn't really a call for a political mobilisation or anything, it's a call for treating individuals with more kindness and consideration when we have the power to do so and to try to avoid the small casual cruelties it feels so natural and cathartic to do.

@angelmoder @MossGrowsOnNormanRuins the way I see it, everything is a byproduct of living; there is no "before" or "after", at least not one relevant to this context. it's our responsibility to see to it that the byproducts of our living are at least mostly positive rather than negative. some people think things that are negative are actually positive, and vice versa, but the problem there isn't the idea of good and bad itself, it's that they're wrong

@MossGrowsOnNormanRuins do you ever notice how people talk about “one’s responsibility to others” but not “others responsibility to me”? or “ones responsibility to oneself”?

perhaps its helpful to you somehow, but something about it feels extremely suspicious to me

…i mean, its the will-to-power again, isnt it? “here, use this system that helped me, it will suuuurely benefit you, and i am the one deciding this! just as i am the one that decided for me to use it, and i am the one deciding for you to use it!”

@patchuun @MossGrowsOnNormanRuins if someone places another goal before their own desires, that is what i mean by before living

“surely everyone else that came before me was just wrong, ill simply Be Right, because im built different!”
…such a mindset does probably make it easier to live. (just as it made it easier for everyone that was ‘wrong’ to live)

all i can say is, they didn’t know that they were wrong. (if they did, they wouldn’t believe the thing that is “wrong”, because they want to be right.)

@MossGrowsOnNormanRuins @patchuun it doesn’t actually feel cathartic to me, but that might partially be because i already percieve myself through everyone’s eyes at once
(its to a degree thats compulsive and very bad for my well-being, i would in fact, if i believed in “ethics”, find it unethical to encourage others to become like this)

@MossGrowsOnNormanRuins @patchuun oh and, my thermonuclear take to finish it off, being cruel to others only feels significantly cathartic if you hate yourself or are crushed by shame, targeting the problem at the source is way easier than trying to moralize more and make it worse [which is, in part, why i so desire to free people from sacrificing theirself for others :) ]

@MossGrowsOnNormanRuins @patchuun because otherwise being cruel to someone you care about hurts, because you’re watching someone you care about get hurt, which hurts you (i mean, duh)

i bet the catharsis is only a catharsis of hurting yourself, if you believe you deserve to suffer and hurt someone, you feel better because you get hurt.

@angelmoder @MossGrowsOnNormanRuins

people talk about “one’s responsible to others” but not “others responsibility to me”?

In every call to be mindful of "one's responsibility to others", there's an implicit call to be mindful of "others' responsibility to me", isn't there? After all, to you and to Clair, I am "others"; I'm only "me" to me.

Others do have a responsibility to you, and to themselves as well. tbh, in the mainstream especially there actually is quite a lot of talk about responsibility to oneself ("protecting my peace", "self-care", plus more overtly toxic things like "in my petty era", "women's wrongs", miscellaneous girlbossery, valorization of "sigmas" etc.), probably much more so than about responsibility to others.

I don't think it's a bad thing to talk about these responsibilities either, of course; they're important too. Others do have a responsibility to you (again, this, to them, is their own "responsibility to others"; it goes both ways! "you have a responsibility to others" isn't directed solely at you specifically, it's directed at /everyone/, including those for whom you are "others", aka...literally everyone who isn't you), and to themselves. And you do also, of course, have a responsibility to yourself. They're not mutually exclusive, though they might sometimes seemingly be at odds with each other. Ideally there should be a healthy balance between them, but of course sometimes one has to make a choice to prioritize one responsibility over the other

@angelmoder @MossGrowsOnNormanRuins

surely everyone else that came before me was just wrong, ill simply Be Right, because im built different!

people that came before me were right about plenty of things and wrong about plenty of other things. I'm probably wrong about plenty of things too, and hopefully I'll someday realize it, or if not, hopefully those who come after me will do better. Slavery was clearly wrong for instance, we're in agreement about that, aren't we?

@angelmoder @patchuun there's a million ways to be cruel to people just for convenience regardless of enjoying cruelty itself: just not inviting them to social events because they're a bit of a drag and you'd rather spend your time with your other friends without them, knowing people are upset and just ignoring them instead of giving them a small word in private, seeing someone hurt and lost in the street and walking past to avoid being late instead of spending 5-10 minutes helping them.

@angelmoder i can't force others to be generally good willed and socially responsible if they don't want to be, it's not up for me to decide, just them, that's why i posted it. If you feel like others aren't engaging in their rseponsibility of care towards you, consider how they also feel like there's no responsibility towards them from others and so are just out for themselves, and then think about the people in your life in a worse position whose lives you could help in some way. Regarding the "it's unethical to be ethical" thing, everyone has the power to be kind to others and to treat them better, nobody is cursed with evilness.

Also the point isn't that it's helpful to me or to you, ig i would probably be better off individually if I started eating meat again freely, if i disregarded the happiness of those around me and never gave to homeless people, but it would make the overall structure of society weaker, and that's something bigger than me or any one person around me.

@MossGrowsOnNormanRuins

If you feel like others aren’t engaging in their rseponsibility of care towards you, consider how they also feel like there’s no responsibility towards them from others and so are just out for themselves

i am going to drop a truke on you, get ready for this:
every person that has been the worst to me has been a moralist.
every single one has felt like theres responsibility from them to others.
every single one has hurt me because of their believed responsibility to others, or believing i have a responsibility towards them.
i cant be sure because ive not lived in their head but i am 99% sure every single one of them has been strangled by shame and self-loathing.

i mean, it helps them survive, so when i think about it i cant fully resent them for it, i just so badly wish they had been able to love themselves, wish they had been free enough that they dont hurt me at “society”‘s whims.

also, belief in something bigger than yourself seems to be a benefit to you :^)
[it wouldn’t benefit me, because i try to create my own meaning, and that is what protects me from the despair of nothingness]

@MossGrowsOnNormanRuins i have taken comfort in the fact that there are others that, if they hurt me, would not hate themselves for it, would not punish themselves for it, would still love themselves, all without needing to hate me
it has been the biggest thing that gets me out of some horrific spirals.

ive been hurt very badly by someone and wished nothing more than for them to not hate themselves for it, so i wouldn’t have to hurt by seeing them self-flagellate, so i wouldn’t have to pretend i was fine to keep someone i care about (them, of course) from getting hurt.

i would unironically rather people loved themselves, and every single experience of mine backs that up.

@MossGrowsOnNormanRuins @patchuun ah, but you said “natural and cathartic”, not “convenient”

@angelmoder I don't get why you're talking about "truth nuclear bombs" and "dropping trukes on me" throughout this thread like we're having an all out argument and it's going to blow my mind, we kind of just disagree a bit. Yes i agree that a lot of people abstractly indentify with moral duties to others yet act cruelly anyway because they can get away with it, imo these people should learn to reflect more deeply on their actions to actually embody these beliefs rather than just treating them as 'bumper sticker bio beliefs' (in my experience though, moralism acts as a salve to their conscience, not something that torments them).

Regarding public self flagellation specifically though, it isnt a selfless act, it's a ritual to make others give one their time and emotional support to "absolve" them emotionally of what they've done, it can also be a way to drag back the one they've wronged and firce them to go through more to ritualistically forgive them, imo if somebody wronga someone so much that they feel the need to self flagellate, its better to just come to terms with the reality that whats done is done and all they can do is not repeat it (as long as whatever it was isn't continuing to hurt them).

Ig you're right that believing in society and a common binding of people with one another is good for an individuals sense of place in the world and mental health.

@MossGrowsOnNormanRuins

I don’t get why you’re talking about “truth nuclear bombs” and “dropping trukes on me”

aha, fair, i guess i get kinda into it (but to be fair, being a little theatrical is fun)

but also… no, see, what makes my experiences significant here is that what you described doesnt explain them. it’s not “”bumper sticker beliefs””, their beliefs were directly fueling it, the shame and social pressure directly fueled it.
like uhh [thinks] an example
…the people that have fucked me up the most on fedi, they believe theyre doing whats morally right, they believe the people theyre hurting are Bad. a lot of times i think its fueled by self-loathing.
their morality is directly fueling the pain, without morality, they would have no reason to do it.

i think morality [“this person was Bad/deserved to suffer/what i did to them was Right”] can be a salve to someone’s conscience, but morality [“this person didnt deserve to suffer”] can and will torment them

public self flagellation

see.. three things

• the time this happened to me, it wasnt public
• it did pull me in closer, but it surely wasnt pleasant for them
• its a lot easier to come to terms with having done it if they dont see themselves as bad for having done it (or if they have a story they can tell themselves to say “oh, i wouldve been bad, but im absolved now” […this frequently makes the situation just as bad though lol])

[and, i find the idea of “self-destruction is self-interest” quite destructive to the notion of morality as a whole
everything is egoistic, even morality, even “self-destruction”, that desperation for absolution…
why pretend its anything else?]

importantly, believing in society is only good for some people’s mental state. not everyone :>

@MossGrowsOnNormanRuins boosted for the commentary but unboosted after reading the screenshot

@ophis its weird, it feels like everyone but me has had a negative takeaway from the screenshot, i found it an encouragement to message a friend i hadnt talked to in a while who was a bit isolated and ask if he wanted to come over for food and drinks on the weekend or the next if people were busy

@MossGrowsOnNormanRuins it's hard to read that screenshot without thinking of two things:

1. the Jack Chick "This Was Your Life" tract
2. the Shogun "I Don't Have Time For This Christian Nonsense" meme

like *your* message of seeking unity in the other has power, and (with effort) i can see how it's reflected in that screenshot, as a metaphysical return (or at least a metaphorical one if you're that sort of materialist)

but the screenshot's actual rhetoric feels like a moralistic shouting-at, like some second-rate preacher trying to scare their congregation straight with threats of hellfire but trying to be compassionate about it, while still not being a good enough preacher to escape the gravity well of "the priests make up these rewards and punishments after death to keep us in control who know will never see justice one way or the other"

@patchuun @MossGrowsOnNormanRuins @cyb3rm0shp1t
> (although I think invoking "be gay do crime" reflects how the phrase's meaning and intent have been kind of bastardized)

afaict its primary meaning is still that of unity in rebellion against what fundamentally can only be understood as illegitimate authority

I think morality has more to do with physics than with with mathematics in that there is a few really concrete forms of reference like 'the speed something falls in relation to the gravity of the earth' being similar to 'if you dont start wont get shit. There are forms of interrelations and neglect patterns and depravities that will 'taughten' a system of human relations to the point it could snap. Physics mostly tries to create reasonable bounding points for how systems might happen and then tries to work out followup series in relation to that. Mathematics is too abstract to be helpful but on the other hand the idea of the violinist argument resolving something we intuitavely understand about concious agents being valued at a different metric than non concious agents is worth appreciating.

Like, the issue of slavery. We can say 'ok well, the Confederate enslavement of people was horrible but its subjective morally because they wanted to do it', however I find this disingenuous on its face. The function of that slavery was imperialistic (and therefore an argument that all moral reason is imperialistic is as an impasse with this) that slavery is also *distinct* from older models like the Roman model because that slavery is a relationship to exploitation rather than as a war deterrence. Roman slavery was not intergenerational and was also there to warn the people out of starting a war, in a way it was a 'prisoner of war' style of reasoning where if you lost this fight you would be destitute for the rest of your life. I think there is at least some degree of human intuition that can describe Chattel slavery as literally an 'unfairness' in comparison to the other situation. An unconcious agent has no ability to assess risks as a concious agent can. I think the idea that people of other cultures can't concede to this idea is sort of doing the opposite of protecting them: Imperialism is a matter less of raiding homes and burning crops but deciding to do things against these people at world meetings that they arent invited to or setting them up for bad financial deals through the IMF because you think they would be too stupid to learn finances anyway. I find the back and forth of subjectivity to be a dead end and ultimately unhelpful. We have to live in the world and have to try and make it better so it goes to reason we should try and build a text of righteousness that goes beyond the mere civic contexts we are chained within.

Rare moment where the christian and the communist are on the same page ig

@Erato_Heti i generally agree with this . the thing kind of is that physics is (at least on an astronomical scale) relativistic , lol

All the more reason I think we need to have some constants that can be referenced. Eventually we need to be ready for the idea of interspecies sentience. At that point having some intelligible ruleset is going to be nessecary for cross species communication and harmony.

@Erato_Heti i think that most of this is generally true to me . and i dont think that "all moral reason is imperialistic", necessarily , i just think that the idea of a Mathematically Objectively True Morality interfaces with systems of imperialism in a way that is probably bad . like the whole thing of [doing things to people at meetings they arent invited to and ..... because they're too stupid to anyway] is exacerbated by the idea that there is an objective moral truth if someone doesn't align perfectly with that morality (because obviously they must be too stupid to have figured it out) . i agree that we have to live in the world and should make it better but i think that the back and forth of subjectivity is necessary to find a grounds on which to build it , i think we're probably just not gonna see eye to eye on that one .

@Erato_Heti agreed , but i think that some back and forth of subjectivity is necessary in order to determine those practical constants and that just assuming that "these universal constants are good" leads to more problems than not

@angelmoder i think if we’re taking the thing literally one of the things wrong with the frame is a space for like. ‘you will experience the satisfaction of the person dominating you when you comply.’ as much as its good to be prosocial sometimes other people fucking suck and making them happy is bad for you

I dont think we have to see eye to eye. Eye contact creates more conflicts and power imbalances than it solves and creates weird human elements of shame. You looked away first so I have dominated the discussion. Negating this idiom in real life and also using its reference point to show the power of text and phone calls as a neutralizing act of power that exposes less subtle attempts to dominate (yelling over the phone etc.) is useful.

As you can see, for me, the subject/object relationship means less than what a set of words and arguments are doing. We can say 'I wasnt being literal, its an analogy' but the analogy promotes literal misunderstands and reinforces literal control vectors as sublime and worth returning to. I reject the eyes. Where you might see pedantry I see necessity.

We can imagine a version of this discussion where I didnt try to create a 'hesitation' in the idea of ethical subjectivity. The result of that would be by design reflecting a sort of 'its not my place so I shouldnt worry about it' mentality which *would leave* the dominance of not even being invited in the first place unresolved. The issue with ethical realism as stated by the defendent in this case is a matter of failure to recognize the creative abstractions of math due to mis-education on the topic. I was willed into force to try and redirect this *because* I've been seeing the ways in which the moral relativity argument is keeping the working class under liberal control.

If I hadn't intervened, it would be the conscious suppression of one imperialism without a realization of the other imperialism. There is no object and no subject when it comes to this because *the structure of words themselves are the objects*. When I say something like 'we need to give up on the left/right reference point in relation to non-coalition-electorate politics because its causing more infighting within a marxist framework than its resolving' im making a statement of concern about what the object signifiers are actually doing when the humans using them repeat them over and over without any interruption. Almost every crises begins as a linguistic crises.

Every argument made for me is a crises about the runaway impact of wordforms. Literally every posit I ever make is a transcendental one. Right now, I'm speaking to you but also I'm making a wider statement of concerns about humanity. The transcendentialist nature of my communism relies on me being superfluous about speech because speech is a warzone of control by capital itself.

These constants are helpful for consolidating a speech relationship. There is no good or bad its just a matter of if the 'relative constant' has utility in the moment or if its being misused.

A lot of people misuse the trolley problem as a basic body problem and 'action vs. inaction' equivalence test. When its much more a 'culpability of actions' test (something that the original problem creators even *recognize* because they made the pushing of a man on the track version in the essay). The current usecase of the trolley problem is really dire and needs to be intervened on constantly. The fact it exists as a shorthand is 'good' because it means you dont have to unpack a dillema from scratch. Speech requires its own investigation. I hope this followup is actually helpful and not just a pointdexterism.

@morrigan i guess

i think for me the main problem is living in eternal fear of being punished, of being judged
(..it doesnt help that the title of the screenshot is “your end of life review will punish you”)
…i feel like theres an assumption that if you hurt someone, theyll judge you, and thats what the pain would be

… actually, now imagining a situation of… hurting someone, watching their life, seeing them judge me, and knowing how mistaken they are and how tragic the path they get pushed down is
(..wah… q-q)

@angelmoder nah. in the end i think ur just accountable to yourself and ur judgement of ur own consequences. 'punishment' is itself a hostile takeover by the state of the concept i think about when i think about morality, one of those mistakes that is made to happen.

@morrigan @angelmoder

'punishment' is itself a hostile takeover by the state of the concept i think about when i think about morality, one of those mistakes that is made to happen.

qft

@Erato_Heti i agree with this fully . i think i just got a little lost in the sauce and started arguing against an idea that didn't exist in this context lol .

I understand. I take on the burden of the ongoing discussion and am happy to have so easily freed myself from it. Goes to show that I'm a powerful speaker of precision.

@Erato_Heti this is interesting . i'll have to reread this to fully understand it later when i have a clearer mind , but on first pass i really like pretty much all of this

Youre welcome of course.