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This actually intersects with an effortpost I am thinking of making here. Consider this a trailer. This summer[1], one man ...
My military[2] and math friend, have you considered that you also have a hole in your perception? You're a man of reason, a man of action, prone to quotes involving rough men in standing ready in the night[3], and that viewpoint comes with its own obscured terrain.
To quote a great American philosopher[4], we're halfway there.
You think there's a Leviathan-shaped hole in their reasoning. They say that Penny should have subjugated to the omnipresent Leviathan - but if so, you retort, shouldn't Neely also subject himself? That Neely acted the way he did proves there is no Leviathan, therefore Penny isn't obligated to subject himself to the non-existent.
To the Blue Tribe, there is a Leviathan: the socio-emotional consensus. It surrounds us and penetrates us, binding us. Another poster here said that for some people, the social-emotional consensus is more real than gravity. You're a tough-minded man of reason, and you don't think it matters, but to the Blue Tribe, we've got each other, and that's a lot[5].
You probably noticed after that unfortunate subway incident that left-wing reddit was quick to say "We failed Jordan Neely", and if you understand that statement, you understand the Blue Tribe. To the Blue Tribe, Jordan Neely acted the way he did because the group failed to include and empathize with him. Penny is a murderer not because he killed Neely, but because he acted without the consent and validation of the group. Tutto nello feelz, niente al di fuori dello feelz, nulla contro lo feelz
From the Blue Tribe point of view, yes, HlynkaCG, there is a Leviathan Claus, and if we all believe in him, then he is real.
[1] Hopefully not so late, but we'll see depending on the reception to this post
[2] How do you know HlynkaCG served in the military? He tells you.
[3] Not that there's anything wrong with that.
[4] Bon Jovi, J., 1986
[5] ibid
I understand that they think this way, but I think that it represents a hole in the Blue Tribe thinking. They, or rather this segment of them, believe with a religious fervor that they have the solution to all societal ills. They believe that their ideology covers all cases of everything, so nobody will ever feel compelled to do anything bad once everything they want is implemented.
I call it the Theory Of Nice. It's the belief that Niceness Fixes Everything. The root cause of all hostility and meanness is that somebody else at some other time was not sufficiently Nice to that person. If anyone is being mean, we can cure them by being exclusively nice to them for a sufficiently long time. We can construct a world where nobody is ever mean to anybody, therefore there's no source for meanness to start from, and everybody will just be nice to everybody else all the time. Any time somebody of the Ingroup is mean to other people in a manner severe enough to require some form of suppression, the real meaning is that we failed that person by not being sufficiently nice to them earlier, because if we had done so, obviously they would never have done that. They're our Ingroup after all, so it's not possible that they're just inherently bad.
Meanwhile, everyone in our Outgroup, i.e. Red Team, or people who don't just accept our assertions that our ideology will fix everything, is just incorrigibly evil. They're brainwashed monsters, all hatred against them is justified, any measure against them, no matter how harsh or mean, is acceptable. Obviously doing any of those things doesn't make us mean or corrupt us in any way. Don't you understand, they're the Outgroup? It's different for them! It's just different, that's all!
I think any ideology that purports to fix the world and be the one solution to everything must account for everything and everyone everywhere, and do so provably. You can't just hand-wave away that this person wouldn't act bad if we did things my way. You'd have to demonstrate in practice that it actually does handle every single case in the promised way, no exceptions. And you can't dismiss some other group that is clearly your Outgroup as unfixably evil. If you do those things, you don't actually have a glorious new ideology that fixes the world, you just have plain old Ingroup-bias, the exact same stuff that's been in our hindbrains for millennia and powered countless atrocities around the world.
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So riddle me this; why did they not fail Daniel penny just as hard?
Does everyone have an obligation to let schizos randomly attack them?
YES. That the sovereign is insane doesn't make him not the sovereign, and that is what he has decreed. Now, he's not entirely unreasonable... once the schizo has actually started the attack, you may defend yourself with "proportionate" force.
ETA: I'm going to go even further and note that the #1 effective rule of today's sovereigns is "no self help". If someone threatens or attacks or robs or even defrauds you, and you just let it go, you will almost always be in a better position than if you do anything else. Because it's the dispute that attracts the sovereign's attention. And the sovereign really doesn't want to be involved in settling the petty disputes of his inferiors. So to deter this, he makes sure that if his attention is attracted, BOTH parties will be significantly worse off than if it wasn't.
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Oh, I too believe in the social contract, but I think the 'emotional' part above is doing the majority of the work for the Blue Tribe version. I'm more in the vein of this way it works out, from "The Ball and the Cross":
You probably noticed after that unfortunate subway incident that left-wing reddit was quick to say "We failed Jordan Neely", and if you understand that statement, you understand the Blue Tribe.
Yes, society did fail him, by letting the "emotional" side of the "socio-emotional consensus" do all the work and so he could not be arrested, because that is police brutality, nor committed to a hospital, because One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, but he could be left to sink further into sickness and violence until the eventual end came as it did.
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Seems to me it is just racism. Compare Floyd and Timpa. If colors of Perry and/or Neely were different, this isn’t a story.
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Nitpick re. [2], I think the formula you're looking for is:
"How can you tell Joe served in the Army?"
"Don't worry, he'll tell you."
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from what I recall, to the blue tribe, Neely was murdered by a vigilante. It was not a matter of society having failed him. I don't think the debate, what little was actually debated beyond people shouting past each other, was framed as a collective failing of society.
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