naraburns nihil supernum
6mo ago
(text post)
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Israel-Gaza Megathread #3
This is a refreshed megathread for any posts on the conflict between (so far, and so far as I know) Hamas and the Israeli government, as well as related geopolitics. Culture War thread rules apply.
Someone here (or maybe on /r/themotte) opened my eyes to this idea. I'm sorry I can't find the post and credit you, various searches aren't helping me find it.
There exists an apparent mini-moral philosophy of always siding with the underdog. On the surface this has good feels: always side with the weak against the strong. In every conflict, between individuals or between nations, find out who the strong one is, and find out who the weak one is. The weak one is the one you should side with.
This is not as ironclad a moral imperative as it appears on the tin. The most extreme and simple form of the imperative's flaw is such:
Suppose Mr Rogers and some random homeless guy get into a fight.
These are the facts and they are not disputed: the homeless guy demanded Mr Rogers’ wallet and he said no. So, the homeless guy attacked him. Shocking everyone, Mr Rogers fights back ferociously, sending the homeless guy to the hospital. Mr Rogers escapes without a scratch.
Digging into the homeless guy's background reveals that he has been in and out of prison a lot. For theft and minor violent offenses, except he was most recently imprisoned for pushing random bystanders off of train platforms onto train tracks. He had been arrested before anyone died. The homeless guy was released from prison a few days before he got into a fight with Mr Rogers.
Mr Rogers is a saintly widely beloved media personality with a legendary benevolence towards all.
So. Should someone here be penalized?
An underdog fetishist might say yes, Mr Rogers should be penalized because he’s actually a member of an elite class whereas the deranged homeless guy is a member of an underclass. This is a perfect example of class struggle.
In my experience, most people consider the Palestinians the underdog here, but not everyone. Some consider Israel the underdog being propped up by the US.
Anyway, while I consider it morally confused, I contend people who would condemn Mr Rogers exist, and that if you're going to spend time debating an extremely nuanced complex situation like the Israeli/Palestine conflict with others, it's valuable to at least first figure out if your debate partner would always (e.g.) side with the homeless guy against Mr Rogers.
I mean, isn't this a.k.a "Intersectionalism?" This is the foundation of contemporary progressive thought: the weakest party in a power imbalance is the one who must be favored in that conflict. Being "Woke" is seeing the world as that series of power imbalances, and "Identity Politics" is being aware of one's own membership in one or more disempowered groups.
It's also the cornerstone of dramatic fiction, which is why IMO mass media is so confluent with progressive ideas and has become their most powerful delivery system.
Being "Woke" is seeing the world as that series of power imbalances, and "Identity Politics" is being aware of one's own membership in one or more disempowered groups.
It's also why "Woke" are terrified of what they call the alt-right: because the alt-right work exactly the same way, but have an alternative (and possibly more correct) view of who is more disempowered. Which, ironically, makes the Woke a conservative [privilege-safeguarding] movement and the alt-right a progressive [privilege-shuffling] one.
I think that in many fictional narratives, the correlation between being the good guy and being the underdog is high. "David kills Goliath" is a story, "David becomes the 35th person to be killed by Goliath" is not. Hence Frodo vs Sauron, Harry vs Voldemort, Asterix vs the Romans.
Of course, in reality, the correlation between good guy and underdog is, to the first approximation, zero.
Underdog analysis can also be complicated by questions of scope--are we talking about Israel vs. Hamas, Israel vs. Hamas + the wider Islamic world that funds them, or Israel + its supporters in the US vs. Hamas + the wider Islamic world? The homeless guy vs. Mr. Rogers scenario doesn't quite capture the dynamic of group vs. group when each side has debateable membership.
That said, I don't favor underdog analysis as a particularly useful lens, though clearly others disagree.
Underdog analysis can also be complicated by questions of scope--are we talking about Israel vs. Hamas, Israel vs. Hamas + the wider Islamic world that funds them, or Israel + its supporters in the US vs. Hamas + the wider Islamic world?
That's one of the interesting things about power... local power can be a massively different beast than total power, or even future local power.
"My garden may be smaller than your Rome, but my pilum is harder than your sternum", and all that.
Underdog analysis can also be complicated by questions of scope
To me, this is one of the key issues of the whole thing which makes it just a non-starter. The degrees of freedom there are in determining who is the underdog and who isn't is effectively infinite, because human capability of self-deception is effectively infinite. So if one takes on the framework of the "righteousness of the underdog," then step 1.00001 that follows immediately after this is to deem [whoever I like] as the underdog, while twisting logic in any way required to reach that conclusion. By the time we reach step 2, step 1.00001 is long forgotten, and any scrutiny about that step is shut down as picking on the underdog who has been Firmly and Uncontroversially Determined to be the Underdog in this situation. It's just naked bias and favoritism with a particularly flattering narrative that makes it easier for people to believe even when they like to think of themselves as disliking naked bias and favoritism.
This is why when I hear "punching up" and "punching down" in the context of comedy or satire or the like, I always translate "up" to "direction I want punches to be thrown" and "down" to "direction I don't want punches to be thrown;" in practice, that's what they mean and only what they mean.
That said, I don't favor underdog analysis as a particularly useful lens, though clearly others disagree.
Maybe you debate people more aligned with you than I do; there are legit people who condemn Mr Rogers in this, what I consider, pathologically slanted absurd example and I often wish I had known that way ahead of time.
To me that reveals a kind of moral confusion that makes the finer scope points a more first world issue.
Yeah, that's a fair point. If someone's seriously taking the side of the homeless guy in your example, I don't know what I'd do with that information other than backing away slowly.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
dr_analog 6mo ago
This seems like a similar observation to Arnold Kling's three languages of politics framework. He states this as progressives thinking in terms of oppressor-oppressed dynamics, conservatives thinking about civilization-barbarism, and libertarians thinking about freedom-authoritarianism. There are obviously times where these overlap, but other times it results in people talking right past each other. I think you can see this starkly, at least for conservatives and progressives, when it comes to the Israel-Palestine conflict. Without regard to finalized policy prescriptions, the basic sympathies of progressives seem to always lie with Palestinans, who they see as oppressed, while conservatives side with Israel because it's the civilized side. Often, the language used by liberals and conservatives even puts it explicitly in those terms.
"Civilization-barbarism" is a terrible lens for international conflict, you can easily whip up people into a frenzy with atrocity propaganda - bayoneted nuns or babies taken from incubators.
Freddie deBoer confuses me on this point, because he was once writing about the Israel-Palestine conflict and stated “Between a high, solid wall and an egg that breaks against it, I will always stand on the side of the egg. Yes, no matter how right the wall may be and how wrong the egg.”
But he has also argued repeatedly that "punching up" and "punching down" is a meaningless framework through which to look at humour, interpersonal relationships or anything else.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
Folamh3 6mo ago·Edited 6mo ago
“Between a high, solid wall and an egg that breaks against it, I will always stand on the side of the egg. Yes, no matter how right the wall may be and how wrong the egg.”
When I read this, I think to myself, "yeah, this is why I hate Marxists". Openly admitting that it doesn't even matter who is right, they'll just always side with whoever they think is weaker is a recipe for the dissolution of civilization.
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Notes -
Is your debate partner an underdog fetishist?
Someone here (or maybe on /r/themotte) opened my eyes to this idea. I'm sorry I can't find the post and credit you, various searches aren't helping me find it.
There exists an apparent mini-moral philosophy of always siding with the underdog. On the surface this has good feels: always side with the weak against the strong. In every conflict, between individuals or between nations, find out who the strong one is, and find out who the weak one is. The weak one is the one you should side with.
This is not as ironclad a moral imperative as it appears on the tin. The most extreme and simple form of the imperative's flaw is such:
Suppose Mr Rogers and some random homeless guy get into a fight.
These are the facts and they are not disputed: the homeless guy demanded Mr Rogers’ wallet and he said no. So, the homeless guy attacked him. Shocking everyone, Mr Rogers fights back ferociously, sending the homeless guy to the hospital. Mr Rogers escapes without a scratch.
Digging into the homeless guy's background reveals that he has been in and out of prison a lot. For theft and minor violent offenses, except he was most recently imprisoned for pushing random bystanders off of train platforms onto train tracks. He had been arrested before anyone died. The homeless guy was released from prison a few days before he got into a fight with Mr Rogers.
Mr Rogers is a saintly widely beloved media personality with a legendary benevolence towards all.
So. Should someone here be penalized?
An underdog fetishist might say yes, Mr Rogers should be penalized because he’s actually a member of an elite class whereas the deranged homeless guy is a member of an underclass. This is a perfect example of class struggle.
In my experience, most people consider the Palestinians the underdog here, but not everyone. Some consider Israel the underdog being propped up by the US.
Anyway, while I consider it morally confused, I contend people who would condemn Mr Rogers exist, and that if you're going to spend time debating an extremely nuanced complex situation like the Israeli/Palestine conflict with others, it's valuable to at least first figure out if your debate partner would always (e.g.) side with the homeless guy against Mr Rogers.
I mean, isn't this a.k.a "Intersectionalism?" This is the foundation of contemporary progressive thought: the weakest party in a power imbalance is the one who must be favored in that conflict. Being "Woke" is seeing the world as that series of power imbalances, and "Identity Politics" is being aware of one's own membership in one or more disempowered groups.
It's also the cornerstone of dramatic fiction, which is why IMO mass media is so confluent with progressive ideas and has become their most powerful delivery system.
It's also why "Woke" are terrified of what they call the alt-right: because the alt-right work exactly the same way, but have an alternative (and possibly more correct) view of who is more disempowered. Which, ironically, makes the Woke a conservative [privilege-safeguarding] movement and the alt-right a progressive [privilege-shuffling] one.
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I think that in many fictional narratives, the correlation between being the good guy and being the underdog is high. "David kills Goliath" is a story, "David becomes the 35th person to be killed by Goliath" is not. Hence Frodo vs Sauron, Harry vs Voldemort, Asterix vs the Romans. Of course, in reality, the correlation between good guy and underdog is, to the first approximation, zero.
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Underdog analysis can also be complicated by questions of scope--are we talking about Israel vs. Hamas, Israel vs. Hamas + the wider Islamic world that funds them, or Israel + its supporters in the US vs. Hamas + the wider Islamic world? The homeless guy vs. Mr. Rogers scenario doesn't quite capture the dynamic of group vs. group when each side has debateable membership.
That said, I don't favor underdog analysis as a particularly useful lens, though clearly others disagree.
That's one of the interesting things about power... local power can be a massively different beast than total power, or even future local power.
"My garden may be smaller than your Rome, but my pilum is harder than your sternum", and all that.
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To me, this is one of the key issues of the whole thing which makes it just a non-starter. The degrees of freedom there are in determining who is the underdog and who isn't is effectively infinite, because human capability of self-deception is effectively infinite. So if one takes on the framework of the "righteousness of the underdog," then step 1.00001 that follows immediately after this is to deem [whoever I like] as the underdog, while twisting logic in any way required to reach that conclusion. By the time we reach step 2, step 1.00001 is long forgotten, and any scrutiny about that step is shut down as picking on the underdog who has been Firmly and Uncontroversially Determined to be the Underdog in this situation. It's just naked bias and favoritism with a particularly flattering narrative that makes it easier for people to believe even when they like to think of themselves as disliking naked bias and favoritism.
This is why when I hear "punching up" and "punching down" in the context of comedy or satire or the like, I always translate "up" to "direction I want punches to be thrown" and "down" to "direction I don't want punches to be thrown;" in practice, that's what they mean and only what they mean.
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Maybe you debate people more aligned with you than I do; there are legit people who condemn Mr Rogers in this, what I consider, pathologically slanted absurd example and I often wish I had known that way ahead of time.
To me that reveals a kind of moral confusion that makes the finer scope points a more first world issue.
Yeah, that's a fair point. If someone's seriously taking the side of the homeless guy in your example, I don't know what I'd do with that information other than backing away slowly.
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This seems like a similar observation to Arnold Kling's three languages of politics framework. He states this as progressives thinking in terms of oppressor-oppressed dynamics, conservatives thinking about civilization-barbarism, and libertarians thinking about freedom-authoritarianism. There are obviously times where these overlap, but other times it results in people talking right past each other. I think you can see this starkly, at least for conservatives and progressives, when it comes to the Israel-Palestine conflict. Without regard to finalized policy prescriptions, the basic sympathies of progressives seem to always lie with Palestinans, who they see as oppressed, while conservatives side with Israel because it's the civilized side. Often, the language used by liberals and conservatives even puts it explicitly in those terms.
"Civilization-barbarism" is a terrible lens for international conflict, you can easily whip up people into a frenzy with atrocity propaganda - bayoneted nuns or babies taken from incubators.
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Freddie deBoer confuses me on this point, because he was once writing about the Israel-Palestine conflict and stated “Between a high, solid wall and an egg that breaks against it, I will always stand on the side of the egg. Yes, no matter how right the wall may be and how wrong the egg.”
But he has also argued repeatedly that "punching up" and "punching down" is a meaningless framework through which to look at humour, interpersonal relationships or anything else.
When I read this, I think to myself, "yeah, this is why I hate Marxists". Openly admitting that it doesn't even matter who is right, they'll just always side with whoever they think is weaker is a recipe for the dissolution of civilization.
Agreed.
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