on being good.
Dec. 17th, 2015 12:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
queenluaHere are some links that are relevant to some thoughts I've been turning over in my head lately wrt the very broad areas of morality and tribalism:
Reflections of a sellout; how diversity would strengthen social science. There have been a few grumpy analyses of academia by conservatives that I've read before, and I've found most of them unconvincing—they tend to obsess over things like "x% of professors voted for Obama!" without demonstrating how that actually affects their teaching/research. This one, however, is better-argued and far more damning, and was a little shocking to me in some respects. The author points out how a lot of social science research comes with pretty strong left-leaning biases because of the way their studies are set up and measured—i.e., a study that qualifies a trait like "openness to experience" in such a way that it really means "openness to upper-class liberal hobbies," and a study that identifies thoughts like "hard work tends to pay off" as a "rationalization of inequality" (???), shit like that.
This is pretty sad news for social science, coming on the heels of a pretty significant crisis in psych research—turns out you can't fucking reproduce most the results of the most important studies, oops. (Apologies that I can't find a better link than The Guardian atm; I was getting drinks with a CS/communication professor a couple weeks ago, and he talked in some detail about the specific systematic statistical / experimental design errors psych has been making & why they're so egregious, but he has not typed up a blog entry on the subject and I cannot find one at the moment!)
Anyway. The moral is, instead of the usual depressing-yet-normal pipeline of "good science is performed, but the results are tentative/incomplete, science journalism publishes a distortion of the original thing and people start believing a distortion," we have an even more depressing pipeline of "junk science is performed, said junk science gets even more distorted by journalism, and self-satisfied liberal-types will snarkily post BS studies like "religious people are less empathetic LOL THOSE BIBLE-THUMPERS."
Which sort of hackishly transitions into my next train of thought, which I was thinking about today because, well, some Very Smart Young Liberal Type cited that study during a casual conversation today, and it reminded me of Darcey's observations on moral values that are not based on SJ causes (plus a small addendum). (Darcey's blog is one of my favorite things on Tumblr right now and I recommend plumbing through the archives if you're into thoughts on death, mysticism, tradition, ritual, etc.) tl;dr, she points out there's a lot of virtues people can value, like taking care of your responsibilities, or being dutiful to your family, and so on, and it seems a little weird that left-wing radicals, particularly in the echo chamber that is Tumblr, focus almost exclusively on the SJ-based virtues.
Which resonates some with my experience. Basically, a lot of the culture of secular morality that I'm surrounded by these days is based on having "correct" beliefs. For instance: don't be religious; religion is silly fairy-stories that Educated People don't bother with. If you are religious, definitely don't mention it, or if you do mention it, emphasize that you're not one of those religious people, really, you don't actually believe the Bible, you just think it's a cool book. Stuff like that. It was an underlying attitude at my liberal undergrad college, and it's the underlying attitude at my liberal Seattle-based workplace.
And—to be absolutely clear—I don't mean this as a screed against Dem Coastal Left-Wing Elites, really. I check off pretty much all the boxes on the Coastal Left-Wing Elite list these days; they are one of the tribes I belong to now, for better and for worse. Plus, I just don't think there's a good solution to the general problem of ingroup/outgroup behavior—because that's totally what this is. When I lived in Kentucky, I was annoyed because being atheist/queer/etc marked you as an outsider weirdo, and I thought that was unfair; now that I'm in Seattle, being pro-gun-rights/religious/etc will mark you as an outsider weirdo. I don't really know how to change basic human nature in general, and have no desire to do so. But I guess I do have a desire to figure out... I don't know, a different standard to hold myself to? A higher standard? A personal morality based on something other than being successful & a relatively non-disruptive citizen & not being actively repugnant to be around?
Because I support a lot of social justice causes; I vote in elections; I donate to charities that matter to me; I try to be nice and such. But I think there's a difference between merely being nice and being good, and when I think good, I think of things like—well, honestly, I remember a lot of my old church leaders. The youth minister at my Baptist church kept me hanging around Christianity far longer than I would have otherwise, because he was just so energetic and giving and kind and conscientious that he made you want to treat others better, care more, give more, and I wanted to be like him. (I didn't leave the church until he did.) I think of, say, my grandpa, who volunteered so much time & energy to his small community in rural Missouri, serving on the school board, funding scholarships to the community college, volunteering to teach workshops and stuff like that. How, when he started his medical practice, most people didn't have any money to spare, so they'd offer him stuff from their farms—eggs or chickens or whatever they could manage to give—and he always said that's just fine. He spoke of medicine as a service, didn't seem to understand why you'd do it unless you really wanted to help other people—which was such a refreshing thing to hear compared to listening to the premeds I was surrounded by in college.
The grandpa thing is kind of a sappy tangent, sorry. But I guess it's kind of fitting, right, I guess, if I'm mulling over stuff like this.
I started a project a long time ago, where I was reading a bunch of random contemporary philosophical tracts, because effective altruism / radical utilitarianism distressed me, and seemed to be a dominant mode of morality among techie types, and I was trying to argue for post-Aristotlean virtue ethics as a more appealing alternative. It was an interesting project, interesting reading, but I guess now I'm interested more in virtue ethics (or any appealing system of ethics, really) in their own right, rather than as a reaction to utilitarianism, and also I want to do less intellectualizing about goodness and more doing it. Whatever it is that means.
ETA (Dec 27): This link came up on my Facebook and seemed to relevant not to drop here.
Reflections of a sellout; how diversity would strengthen social science. There have been a few grumpy analyses of academia by conservatives that I've read before, and I've found most of them unconvincing—they tend to obsess over things like "x% of professors voted for Obama!" without demonstrating how that actually affects their teaching/research. This one, however, is better-argued and far more damning, and was a little shocking to me in some respects. The author points out how a lot of social science research comes with pretty strong left-leaning biases because of the way their studies are set up and measured—i.e., a study that qualifies a trait like "openness to experience" in such a way that it really means "openness to upper-class liberal hobbies," and a study that identifies thoughts like "hard work tends to pay off" as a "rationalization of inequality" (???), shit like that.
This is pretty sad news for social science, coming on the heels of a pretty significant crisis in psych research—turns out you can't fucking reproduce most the results of the most important studies, oops. (Apologies that I can't find a better link than The Guardian atm; I was getting drinks with a CS/communication professor a couple weeks ago, and he talked in some detail about the specific systematic statistical / experimental design errors psych has been making & why they're so egregious, but he has not typed up a blog entry on the subject and I cannot find one at the moment!)
Anyway. The moral is, instead of the usual depressing-yet-normal pipeline of "good science is performed, but the results are tentative/incomplete, science journalism publishes a distortion of the original thing and people start believing a distortion," we have an even more depressing pipeline of "junk science is performed, said junk science gets even more distorted by journalism, and self-satisfied liberal-types will snarkily post BS studies like "religious people are less empathetic LOL THOSE BIBLE-THUMPERS."
Which sort of hackishly transitions into my next train of thought, which I was thinking about today because, well, some Very Smart Young Liberal Type cited that study during a casual conversation today, and it reminded me of Darcey's observations on moral values that are not based on SJ causes (plus a small addendum). (Darcey's blog is one of my favorite things on Tumblr right now and I recommend plumbing through the archives if you're into thoughts on death, mysticism, tradition, ritual, etc.) tl;dr, she points out there's a lot of virtues people can value, like taking care of your responsibilities, or being dutiful to your family, and so on, and it seems a little weird that left-wing radicals, particularly in the echo chamber that is Tumblr, focus almost exclusively on the SJ-based virtues.
Which resonates some with my experience. Basically, a lot of the culture of secular morality that I'm surrounded by these days is based on having "correct" beliefs. For instance: don't be religious; religion is silly fairy-stories that Educated People don't bother with. If you are religious, definitely don't mention it, or if you do mention it, emphasize that you're not one of those religious people, really, you don't actually believe the Bible, you just think it's a cool book. Stuff like that. It was an underlying attitude at my liberal undergrad college, and it's the underlying attitude at my liberal Seattle-based workplace.
And—to be absolutely clear—I don't mean this as a screed against Dem Coastal Left-Wing Elites, really. I check off pretty much all the boxes on the Coastal Left-Wing Elite list these days; they are one of the tribes I belong to now, for better and for worse. Plus, I just don't think there's a good solution to the general problem of ingroup/outgroup behavior—because that's totally what this is. When I lived in Kentucky, I was annoyed because being atheist/queer/etc marked you as an outsider weirdo, and I thought that was unfair; now that I'm in Seattle, being pro-gun-rights/religious/etc will mark you as an outsider weirdo. I don't really know how to change basic human nature in general, and have no desire to do so. But I guess I do have a desire to figure out... I don't know, a different standard to hold myself to? A higher standard? A personal morality based on something other than being successful & a relatively non-disruptive citizen & not being actively repugnant to be around?
Because I support a lot of social justice causes; I vote in elections; I donate to charities that matter to me; I try to be nice and such. But I think there's a difference between merely being nice and being good, and when I think good, I think of things like—well, honestly, I remember a lot of my old church leaders. The youth minister at my Baptist church kept me hanging around Christianity far longer than I would have otherwise, because he was just so energetic and giving and kind and conscientious that he made you want to treat others better, care more, give more, and I wanted to be like him. (I didn't leave the church until he did.) I think of, say, my grandpa, who volunteered so much time & energy to his small community in rural Missouri, serving on the school board, funding scholarships to the community college, volunteering to teach workshops and stuff like that. How, when he started his medical practice, most people didn't have any money to spare, so they'd offer him stuff from their farms—eggs or chickens or whatever they could manage to give—and he always said that's just fine. He spoke of medicine as a service, didn't seem to understand why you'd do it unless you really wanted to help other people—which was such a refreshing thing to hear compared to listening to the premeds I was surrounded by in college.
The grandpa thing is kind of a sappy tangent, sorry. But I guess it's kind of fitting, right, I guess, if I'm mulling over stuff like this.
I started a project a long time ago, where I was reading a bunch of random contemporary philosophical tracts, because effective altruism / radical utilitarianism distressed me, and seemed to be a dominant mode of morality among techie types, and I was trying to argue for post-Aristotlean virtue ethics as a more appealing alternative. It was an interesting project, interesting reading, but I guess now I'm interested more in virtue ethics (or any appealing system of ethics, really) in their own right, rather than as a reaction to utilitarianism, and also I want to do less intellectualizing about goodness and more doing it. Whatever it is that means.
ETA (Dec 27): This link came up on my Facebook and seemed to relevant not to drop here.
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Date: 2015-12-17 11:08 pm (UTC)I work with primarily old-fashioned conservative family men (regardless of age-- the Millennials are panning out the same way as the Boomers and GenXers here). They love Trump, hate that Kenyan Muslim dude in the White House and his socialist policies, and politically are mostly pretty spiteful. But they're... nice people? Who mostly love their wives and kids and support their families and go to the churches where they reinforce all the patriarchal bullshit and do anti-gay missionary work in Uganda (so not kidding) and volunteer at the county fair and drive their teenage daughters 1000 miles for both cheer squad competitions and anti-abortion rallies. Some of them are my friends. When my dad was sick, dozens offered their prayers. I think prayers are useless and their god's not real but I thanked them sincerely because that was their mode of compassion.
It's a mess. My husband says it's bad for me to be immersed in that for 40 hours a week. On the other hand, I know what it's like outside the bubble?
If you are religious, definitely don't mention it, or if you do mention it, emphasize that you're not one of those religious people,
Tho I had a co-worker I have known for twelve years tell me last Thursday that he'd lost all respect for me because he'd noticed I skip "under God" during the Pledge of Allegiance. Just throwing that out there. The reinforcement of "correct" belief in the south and the heartland is every bit as smothering.
it seems a little weird that left-wing radicals, particularly in the echo chamber that is Tumblr, focus almost exclusively on the SJ-based virtues.
It's really alien territory. You get into that zone where, as the blog you linked to points out, the idea that people should get more time off work to spend with their families is not considered a public good because UGH families, or that civic holidays are terrible because of colonialism. The basic nuts-and-bolts aspects of a traditional civil society are either valued less than SJ values or outright condemned, and I don't see SJ offering anything up in the place of what's being rejected other than some kind of weird segregated tribalism.
Then again, the very vocal and angry people on tumblr may have an issue with the concept of family because their own nuclear and extended families were shit to them, the same way that Ireland is falling away from the Catholic Church because hey, it was a cover for all kinds of systematic abuse. What do you do when the central pillars of a value system fail so terribly?
Family failed. The State failed. Churches failed. Justice failed. Education failed. Unions failed. Hard work and discipline didn't pay off for three decades. So... now what?
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Date: 2015-12-18 04:13 am (UTC)I agree with a lot of what Mark's saying tho, esp in the end of her comment. I get that people are angry in general because like...everything has failed them. I mean I think it's really childish how everyone's always pointing fingers at everyone else. Oh the Baby Boomers are gross, oh the Millenials are gross. What the fuck ever. What good does that even do? But tons of people spend a lot of time talking about What People Have Done instead of just acknowledging that there is a problem and working to come up with ways to make things better.
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Date: 2015-12-18 05:51 pm (UTC)I feel like I'm one of those people others can't figure out, because I'm not only a church-going, Bible-reading Christian but also queer. When I first started this job, my [very openly gay] co-worker asked if I was okay working with him, and I was taken aback. Not only because he was good enough to ask, but because there are people who aren't okay with it. (My response was, "Well, uh, I've... had a girlfriend, so.")
Maybe I only went out with her so I can use that response? As a kind of proof that "I'm not like those other Christians?" But yeah, we get defensive, because there's this [wholly incorrect] stereotype of what Christians are like, just like there's that "I'm not like other girls" nonsense. (None of us are like other girls. There are no girls.)
This was such a small fragment of your post, but I was very obviously going to latch onto it.
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Date: 2015-12-19 04:11 am (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2015-12-23 04:38 am (UTC)it's complicated
why do people keep trying to reduce it to simplicity? there really aren't good simple answers. Even something like "be kind" is like - but does that mean self-harm in the name of kindness to others? how can I value myself as an individual if that's the case, which is another tenet of that system? this isn't easy, and in general I hate that people really want it to be starkly delineated when it's not (and I would even argue there isn't ANY "right" answer, just answers that are better or worse for different factions in any given situation. I broadly believe that certain things are wrong, but everything's got shadows, and I'm sure there are situations where a blanket prohibition is wrong. Do I know what they are? no. Is it a convenient shortcut to say that X is always wrong? Yeah. Do most people not understand that it's a convenient shortcut rather than an absolute? in my experience oh holy fuck yes.)
...I have no idea if this comment makes sense, oh god, I'm so exhausted right now. I'm sorry if I've said something terrible.
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Date: 2025-02-13 01:39 am (UTC)(your gramps sounds cool. have an eerily similar story about mine wrt medicine and him also happy to barter or straight up do it for free for impoverished folks. rare men, both of them.)
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