Monday, January 07, 2008

Drugs and Slavery

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

This video is almost incoherent but one point is clear enough to respond to: what I'll call "the argument from embarrassment." An obvious self-contradiction coming as it does from a Steffist. Embarrasing people into accepting your position is: 1. A political, democratic action, and 2. does not actually refute the position being contested. That's hardly a reasoned, anarchist argument! Quite the opposite.

- heuristic

Nielsio said...

The 'argument from embarrassment' can also be viewed as getting people to sort out inconsistencies in their values. It's a way of working from biological morality. If understood correctly, it should then not be done through anger, but through compassion.

Anonymous said...

OK, that sounds reasonable, but that's not how it is actually used. Such embarrassment is used, as far as I've observed at least, aggessively as a weapon to intimidate people in compliance. Laughter is a primordial grimace that exposes one's fangs.

- h.

Nielsio said...

But we can try to change it that way, can't we?

cado said...

"Laughter is a primordial grimace that exposes one's fangs."
No, laughter is a primordial expression of someone else's stupidity.

Anonymous said...

"No, laughter is a primordial expression of someone else's stupidity."
Disproven by the many occasions when someone sadistically laughs at another's misfortune. For example: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2004132861_apimmigrantdeath18.html (NY Cops Joke About Dying Man). Also disproven by a priori reasoning: If the target was genuinely, mentally challenged then how could attack help the situation? Compassion would be more appropriate. The fact that attack is used contains the assumption that the target can get changed for the better, which implies that he can change, which implies that he isn't stupid after all. So your justification of laughter is a performative contradiction.

- heuristic