| View previous topic :: View next topic |
Boreades
In: finity and beyond
|
|
 |
|
|
If you mention the correlation between the increase and the Covid vaccines (and the potential causes), the talking heads will explode.
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
|
|
|
|
What is the purpose of ideology?
You're probably thinking in terms of coherent underlying principles for thrashing out a set of beliefs blah blah. Whatever the dictionary says. But that is not the way ideology is used in the everyday world. Consider this exchange:
AE-ist: Western music is vastly better than anyone else's.
Civilian: You mean the west is vastly more powerful than anyone else is. |
Now that is vastly better than this exchange
AE-ist: Western music is vastly better than anyone else's.
Civilian: You're only saying that because you were brought up listening to it. |
As it happens it is relatively easy demonstrating that western music is objectively better than anyone else's but that is not the point. It might not even be true, it makes no difference. Because what do the two replies have in common?
Somebody has been presented with a complex proposition they have never encountered before, yet were able (apparently) to compute all the relevant factors and refute it without any qualification within a millisecond. Whether either, neither or both answers are correct, this is simply not possible.
This is just the way human beings are (even AE-ists if they're not careful). Whenever they hear anything that is both novel and potentially destabilising, their brains carry out one or other of the avoidance techniques I have detailed elsewhere. But here, it is by the use of ideology, as I will show anon.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
|
|
|
|
In order to avoid the dangers of thinking about novel and complex ideas--and thinking about them is nearly as dangerous as accepting them--the brain has to do two things
1. It has to dispose of the idea rapidly, preferably instantaneously
2. It must do this in such a way that its owner does not know it has happened. |
Would you want to go round believing your brain is eliminating new ideas without consulting you? 'Heaven forfend,' you would say, 'I pride myself in being open to new ideas.'
| So you use an ideology to protect your brain from constant re-wiring. |
What stands out to you about the statement 'Western music is vastly better than anyone else's'? It contains the words 'Western' and 'better'. You live in a subculture in which Western is something of a dirty word and cultural comparisons are considered, if not odious, at least deeply suspect. Hence the statement 'Western music is vastly better than anyone else's' immediately triggers hostility to the idea itself, irrespective of whether it is true or not.
It is only then for the respondent to choose the form of rejection. Not before a consideration of whether it is true or not, but in place of considering whether it is true or not.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
|
|
|
|
It is easy to see this is an ideology because if you made the statement fifty, a hundred, two hundred years ago, it would be met with "Why are you telling me this?" There was an assumption--possibly an ideology--that Western music is manifestly better than anyone else's. It may even have been the case that
'You mean the west is vastly more powerful than anyone else is.'
'You're only saying that because you were brought up listening to it.' |
might have had some validity. So the Number One Rule in AE, alongside all the other Number One rules, is
| If you find yourself instantly rejecting any kind of complex idea, don't. | |
|
| |
|
|
|
Boreades
In: finity and beyond
|
|
|
|
| Mick Harper wrote: | | There was an assumption--possibly an ideology--that Western music is manifestly better than anyone else's. |
How many decades or centuries should we go back?
Perhaps a little more prosaic or provincial, for about 50 years, British pop music was up among the best of Western music.
Then something happened. It either just "got rubbish", or the audience had shifted. Or both.
I can't be sure, but when British tunes started getting "Nul Point" in the Eurovision Song Contest, even my dogs could tell that there was something wrong with our tunes.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Brian Ambrose
|
|
|
|
|
Since when was The Euthanasia Song Contest ever a standard measure of music?
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
|
|
|
|
|
There's no other region of the world that could have a song contest is more to the point. The dominance of modern western pop is just as pronounced as the dominance of western 'serious' music.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Wile E. Coyote
In: Arizona
|
|
|
|
| What stands out to you about the statement 'Western music is vastly better than anyone else's'? It contains the words 'Western' and 'better'. You live in a subculture in which Western is something of a dirty word and cultural comparisons are considered, if not odious, at least deeply suspect. Hence the statement 'Western music is vastly better than anyone else's' immediately triggers hostility to the idea itself, irrespective of whether it is true or not. |
Don't think so.
It's really a case of having it banged into you that manners maketh the man, and "De gustibus non est disputandum."
After a youthful teenage rebellion, punk is the better music ever etc, you reluctantly conclude that these type of conversations never go anywhere, so you settle for the easier life of not upsetting or disagreeing in public...
Maybe that's just me.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
|
|
|
|
| Don't think so. It's really a case of having it banged into you that manners maketh the man, and "De gustibus non est disputandum." |
I don't see the two go together.
| After a youthful teenage rebellion, punk is the better music ever etc, you reluctantly conclude that these type of conversations never go anywhere, so you settle for the easier life of not upsetting or disagreeing in public... |
No, that would be a case of 'de gustibus non est disputandum'. It's not what I'm arguing at all.
Many people--maybe most people, maybe all people--prefer their own music. But only Western music serves as a default i.e. everybody has access to, maybe a choice between, their own music and Western music. Nobody would say
| "Latin American/Japanese/subSaharan African music is vastly better than anyone else's." |
other than in quotes. But of course that was not what I was saying either. It was the fact that people can dismiss the statement instantaneously I was commenting on. And you have certainly illustrated why that is not a correct reaction. Even though a near-universal one.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
|
|
|
|
AE Occamism
The straight world is always singing the praises of William of Ockham. Specifically his advice that, all other things being equal, the simplest explanation is to be preferred. Academics call it the Principle of Parsimony. Whether any of them do it is another matter but our version is the more practical: The truth is always boring. Today I was looking at this exchange
While you do, consider this because it's an AE thing...
It's interesting ... rather than nailed [on]
In the first place my explanation is not interesting. As we know, academics (and people generally where Stonehenge etc is concerned) are only interested in bizarre and/or spectacular and/or precocious and/or mystical behaviour. |
These sorts of (non)explanations have been around so long it can be argued they are boring. And certainly our own (maybe) explanations would be considered interesting because of their novelty.
This is not to be confused with Old Hat Syndrome, when opponents on hearing of a brand new and complex idea (see above) say, "Oh that, yes, we've been through all that a dozen times. We're bored to tears with it."
Or the English dinner party convention when somebody (I can't think who) tries out some novel gambit to be greeted with 'Boring! Boring!' in a rising and falling inflexion. And they all return to their discussion about which washing up liquid is best.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
|
|
|
|
| Despite having made 405 senior appearances for club and country/countries, Declan Rice had never scored with a direct free-kick before the match between Arsenal and Real Madrid at the Emirates Stadium. The Guardian |
This raises an important AE question. What possessed Arsenal, at the moment when their season was on the line and they were going out tamely to Real Madrid, to decide a Declan Rice-taken free kick was the answer?
It was not his decision. It was some combination of manager and captain's, to which he acquiesced. It is an AE principle that results are not to be measured by success but by the prior rationality of the decision-making process, so we are obliged to judge this one a failure in AE terms.
The decision to repeat the experiment is not an issue. The facts had changed. Though it meant the chances of success had actually gone down! It's a rum one and no mistake.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
|
|
|
|
We are having an argy about illegal migrants at the moment. It seems to come down to whether migrants are 'good or bad' and whether host populations are 'good or bad' in their attitude to them. An AE-ist would say 'people' can't be good or bad, they just are. In fact
| AE does not accept moral arguments of any kind. |
The furthest it will go in terms of good or bad is the felicific calculus, i.e. 'good' adds to it, 'bad' detracts from it. AE refuses to get engaged with moral arguments because they are not capable of solution. In fact
| Moral arguments don't really exist. |
They are ordinary arguments in which the arguer has run out of rational reasons for believing something--or didn't have any to start with--and are the adult version of a child stamping their foot and saying, "Shan't!"
| It is the AE-ists job to tease out what is really going on |
and stating the position in rational terms. Hence, in an illegal migrant debate, the AE-ist cannot take sides (unless he is being asked to judge the situation from one side) but would, after computing the immediate situation, pro or anti in terms of the felicific calculus, would quickly recognise that it is irrelevant because the host population will bring it to an end if it is decidedly negative for them.
But in something like the abortion debate where (a) the felicific calculus cannot be calculated and (b) everything is couched in moral terms, eg 'when a human life begins' or 'it's a woman's right to choose', the AE-ist would (or at least I do) take refuge in the observation that women will always seek abortions one way or another so it is better it is available legally than in back streets.
| That way morality doesn't come into it. |
But try telling that to non AE-ists. For ordinary folk 'everything comes down to morality'. It's a lot easier--and makes people much happier--than having to work it out. Especially as an appeal to morality ends the argument. There's nothing more to say.
Saying 'Don't know' is always an option for an AE-ist but not for people. Leastways I've never heard anyone, asked for their view on abortion, say 'Don't know.' Either way it shows AE-ists are immoral.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
The Library Index 
FAQ 
Search
Register
Profile 
Log in to check your private messages 
Log in 
