Eccentric Flower talk:200909/Realism
From Eccentric Flower
Comments on Eccentric Flower:200909/Realism
I take your point, and, if this makes sense, I sympathize with it without being entirely sure I agree with it.
I think the test case is the "little white lie" - the small untruth out of social politeness/diplomacy. Your stance, it seems to me, would endorse the white lie if it were useful. (Correct me if I'm wrong.) Me, I'm on the fence. While I agree that it has virtues as a social lubricant, and that sometimes it is easier and better to tell the white lie, I often wonder if it wouldn't be for the best in the long run to say, "Look, I bear no particular malice toward you, but I think it would really help all aspects of your life if you started bathing more often." I mean, yes, the recipient might stop speaking to you for a while, and you might get a reputation for poorly-socialized bluntness ... but on the other hand, he might indeed start bathing more often. Dunno.
-- 18:54, 2 September 2009 (BST)
Iain:
When we want something badly enough and we think torture is the only way to get it, we will torture. Bet on it. No matter what laws have been passed. No matter what strictures are in place. No matter what the president says in public. It is not nice. It is not humane. It should not happen. But it will. And you shouldn't be surprised by it. If you are surprised by it, you are disingenuous or naive.
I really don't think that most people are surprised that there was torture; they aren't stupid. And honestly, I don't think there's much surprise about the whole thing at all, at this long-distant point. There's disgust and distaste because torture became official government policy, with guidelines about how to do what should only ever be aberrant, and the extent -- and periodic idiocy -- of that policy. (Really, you can smash someone's head against a wall, but you're supposed to make sure that they don't get whiplash? Because concussions are so much better?)
It startles me that anyone, especially someone who was interested in history to begin with, could ever have thought that the situation with recorded history is anything other than depicted in the chart in that comic. I'm sorry it came as a rude surprise to Dava Butler (and I'm glad it didn't put her off history - history is important). But I admit I am genuinely surprised that it could possibly be a surprise. To anyone.
REALLY, Col. Of course it's a surprise, especially to someone young; people are always taught that history is this definitive ... thing. Coming to the realization that history is made by the victors, and the interpreted records and artifacts that we find, is something that you really do have to realize. I'd wager, meself, that it's a realization that you had so long ago that you no longer remember how surprising it was to understand that.
If I can't remain naive about this, then I will be forced to be disingenuous.
...No comment. Absolutely none. Whatsoever.
-- 18:59, 2 September 2009 (BST)
"I often wonder if it wouldn't be for the best in the long run to say, 'Look, I bear no particular malice toward you, but I think it would really help all aspects of your life if you started bathing more often.'"
I can't agree. I've watched my mom all my life, saying exactly what she thinks, to whomever she thinks "needs" to hear it. Now she's almost 90, all alone, and when she dances off this mortal coil, there will be no service, no gathering, no nothing, because nobody will be sorry she's gone, except that maybe they'll have to find another bridge partner or something.
The thing is, she's entitled to her opinion, sure, but I don't think she should say things that hold the potential for hurt or embarrassment. It's not her place. After all, it's mostly just her own opinion, and who died and made her the goddess?
I don't consider staying quiet to be hypocritical, but more a matter of self-preservation. You can remain true to yourself without alienating somebody else with an unnecessary comment. True, in the case of bathing, for instance, you might be helping the individual. You're generally not the only one who has noticed the problem, and yeah, somebody ought to speak up, only nobody else does. But hair color, weight, choice of clothing? None of my beezwax and I keep my own counsel.
This can be taken further, into the realm of "silent majority." Avoiding confrontation by keeping quiet about your point of view. In cases like that, I try to limit my comments to venues where thoughtful discussion is practiced and appreciated. I'm no zealot, so I avoid the soapbox and keep a low profile.
As for being naive, I admit to being a complete and utter optimist. I hold out hope that Things Will Be Okay, despite much evidence to the contrary. It's not naive or disingenuous. It's hopeful. Nothing particularly spiritual about it, except I do pretty much believe in karma. If I had to be "realistic" as you suggest, I'd be miserable all the time. I'd have to throw up my hands in utter despair and wonder why bother. So far, I've avoided that outlook. It's the only way I can survive. Wish me luck.
-- 19:55, 2 September 2009 (BST)
Iain: See, this is where we get into whether I am being cynical or realistic. I say that torture has always been policy, under the surface, whenever circumstances were deemed to justify it. Sometimes the "justification" has been thin indeed. My wife would claim there is NO acceptable justification for torture, and she has a point.
My personal belief is, however unacceptable, it has always gone on below the surface - what happened in Junior's regime was that it got so close to the surface that the majority of the public suddenly couldn't ignore or remain ignorant of the fact it was happening. Soon it will wash back deeply enough again that they can safely kid themselves, and life will go on as usual.
Somewhere, in nearly any prison or detention facility you could pick at random, at this moment, someone is being treated in an inhumane way for a trumped-up reason. I do not claim this is excusable. In fact I say it is horrendous. But that wasn't what I was discussing - I was discussing the tendency of people to want to close their eyes and ignore it and claim to be surprised by it.
Coming to the realization that history is made by the victors, and the interpreted records and artifacts that we find, is something that you really do have to realize. I'd wager, meself, that it's a realization that you had so long ago that you no longer remember how surprising it was to understand that.
You could be right. In which case it would be about the first time I had reached the stage in Piaget's scale where I was capable of realizing that words could talk about something that had already happened. That must have been pretty damned early indeed. If Mom was talking about something that happened last week, of course it was told through Mom's lens. History in books could not possibly be any different.
I refuse to admit the possibility that I was unusually insightful about this.
-- 22:44, 2 September 2009 (BST)
How about this position (I'm not advocating it, just articulating it): Yes, there is going to be torture. But I want the torturers to have to do the calculus of "I'm going to go to prison for the rest of my life for what I'm about to do. Is it worth it? Is the result I expect to get worth losing my freedom forever?" If you really thought you could save 8 million lives from a nuclear device in New York City by hooking up KSM's gonads to some high-voltage wires, and you were willing to spend the rest of your life in prison, they sure, throw the switch. But if the results are not worth your life to you, then don't go torturing someone else to get them.
-- 02:53, 3 September 2009 (BST)
No, Col, I think the white lie thing is orthogonal to trying to live up to standards that are higher than you can actually manage to achieve. Whatever you decide your standards on honesty are, I don't think "I know I'm *going* to white-lie in the following ways," should necessarily mean, "And therefore I believe it's okay to do so."
-- 17:02, 3 September 2009 (BST)
Oh, well, I agree. That's not the sort of hypocrisy I thought you were initially talking about.
I guess my question would be whether it is hypocritical to have high standards if you knew those standards were never, ever going to be met. I can't decide. I mean, I think there's an issue with setting your standards too high, but I'm not sure if it fits my definition of the term "hypocrisy," which to me is more closely linked with "one standard for me, another for everybody else."
-- 17:30, 3 September 2009 (BST)
Mrissa:
I think hypocrisy is underrated. I think having a set of standards we would like to be able to live up to is a good idea even when we can't quite get there. Obviously this doesn't mean we should go around being crassly hypocritical all the time, and there's a big difference between "this is what I should do and I'm having trouble getting there" and "this is what other people should do but it doesn't apply to me." But hypocrisy is so thoroughly bashed that it's not at all hard for it to be underrated.
I did an author interview for a magazine today, and one of the questions they asked me was whether a book or character had ever disillusioned me. With regards to character, I thought, "Huh? Who thinks of book characters that way? They are *fictional*." But with books, not for a very long time. Sad but true.
-- 18:47, 2 September 2009 (BST)