@pease : Based on my contacts, mental healthcare in the US military is a book of dark jokes.
Then your contacts with the military is extremely limited. As a former chaplain the the military, I have seen this change quite a bit.
Granted up to the Korean War there was very little room for mental health issues in the military. If people became too shell shocked, they would be sent home and were often institutionalized. But has more research was put into mental health issues, the military was among the first to adapt to new findings.
But I think a dam broke when some of the major flag officers admitted they had PTSD, depression on stress related issues.
Today, mental health care in the U.S. military combines clinical treatment, readiness support, and family resources to address conditions such as PTSD, depression, anxiety, and stress reactions. Service members receive care through TRICARE, military hospitals, embedded behavioral health teams, and confidential options like Military OneSource. Evidence‑based therapies are emphasized, while stigma and career concerns remain barriers. Families receive education and support, and transition to civilian life is a vulnerable period with additional resources from veteran‑focused organizations. The system aims to balance operational readiness with accessible, compassionate care, though challenges persist around stigma, deployment stress, and long‑term reintegration.
The U.S. military is also highly capable of treating psychotic disorders, but its approach is shaped by the unique demands of military service, the need for safety, and the goal of maintaining readiness. Psychosis is taken very seriously, and the system has formal clinical guidelines, specialized tools, and clear procedures for evaluation, treatment, and—when necessary—medical separation.
At the time of medical separation, the veteran can still receive excellent care through the VA and TRICARE systems.
On the other hand, personality disorders in the U.S. military are handled very differently from conditions like PTSD or depression. The military can evaluate and treat personality disorders, but they are generally viewed as long‑standing patterns of behavior that make military service difficult, and they often lead to administrative separation rather than long‑term treatment.
Well, the folks I know are varied in age from Vietnam to Afghanistan//Korea/Iraq II, including someone my own age and they didn't do well by him.
I'll acknowledge improvement (with a fear that it'll get worse again under Current Management,) and pardon me if my cynicism is born from the examples of people I know. I'm probably biased by personal experience.
Thanks for your information. It does help and I'll admit I'm more adjacent than central in that case.
Thanks Bullfrog, and Gramps49.
Thinking about a way to illustrate some of issues that ethics and morality address, it's long struck me that behaviour appropriate to the forums is couched in terms of The 10 Commandments, the conditions for participation, which is primarily a rules-based code of conduct.
Don’t be a jerk
Engage brain before posting message
Attack the issue, not the person
If you must get personal, take it to Hell
Don’t easily offend, don’t be easily offended
Respect the Ship’s crew
Don’t post illegal material
Don’t crusade
Don’t advertise or spam
Only one identity per member
One way of looking at these is by contrasting them with a less rules-based approach. For example, the Guidelines for Hell seem, at face value, to be more about the consequences of posting there. On one level, this isn't surprising, because they're guidelines. But participants in the forum are also instructed to “Please read, study and become one with these guidelines before plunging in, because ignorance of the law is no excuse and our normal rules on civility are abandoned on this forum.” What do they say about the appropriate or inappropriate way to behave in Hell? And how does this relate to what you consider to be the right or wrong way to behave there?
I think that what we have on the ship is a set of rules and a set of enforcers, and if the ship is a healthy place, the two work in sync. There are rules, and it falls to the hosts to interpret them for the good of the community. The most important thing is the general health of the community.
Far as Hell is concerned...hell is not a place for rules. The rules in hell don't exist to be followed, but exist to create space for people to be angry. It's like a boxing ring, to me. People who are angry go there to work out their fights with each other until they're not angry, and then they can step out of the ring and go back to regular conversation. The rules exist - if they do - to try to limit the harm people do to the ship as a community.
Actually, I think that's the only rule in hell. Don't hurt the ship. You can hurt each other all you want. In fact, it's good to do that because that means you can leave your anger there and keep it from infecting conversations everywhere else. It's an outlet for that. And by avoiding the Big Uglies of Slander, Racism, etc. you can also avoid hurting the ship by dragging it into ugly legal matters.
The only way to behave in hell is to be extremely honest with yourself and everyone around you. You can put on a mask and perform, but if you're going to do that, be up front about it. I think that's about what I did, to some folks' confusion.
Thinking about a way to illustrate some of issues that ethics and morality address, it's long struck me that behaviour appropriate to the forums is couched in terms of The 10 Commandments, the conditions for participation, which is primarily a rules-based code of conduct.
Don’t be a jerk
Engage brain before posting message
Attack the issue, not the person
If you must get personal, take it to Hell
Don’t easily offend, don’t be easily offended
Respect the Ship’s crew
Don’t post illegal material
Don’t crusade
Don’t advertise or spam
Only one identity per member
I note that some of those rules clearly require judgement to exercise - I'd say at the very least, one, two, five, six, and eight (re: jerk, brain, offend, respect, crusade) obviously need to be interpreted with regards to the spirit of the law rather than the letter, and three and four (person) are borderline. That is, the distinction between rules and guidelines I think breaks down a bit.
The main difference is that rules are enforceable by those with the authority to do so, whereas guidelines are not so subject to authority.
Far as Hell is concerned...hell is not a place for rules.
Just to note: ship's rules do still apply in Hell, apart from the ones about making it personal and up to a point offending. But if we think you're crusading, for instance, you'll be warned about it. The definition of 'jerk' may cover less ground in Hell, but I wouldn't push your luck on it.
Far as Hell is concerned...hell is not a place for rules.
Just to note: ship's rules do still apply in Hell, apart from the ones about making it personal and up to a point offending. But if we think you're crusading, for instance, you'll be warned about it. The definition of 'jerk' may cover less ground in Hell, but I wouldn't push your luck on it.
I think that what we have on the ship is a set of rules and a set of enforcers, and if the ship is a healthy place, the two work in sync. There are rules, and it falls to the hosts to interpret them for the good of the community. The most important thing is the general health of the community.
Interesting point. If this is the desired outcome, is having a set of rules and set of enforcers an approach that leads to the healthiest community?
From one perspective, the reason we have a set of enforcers is that conducive behaviour on the forums is seen in terms of compliance with a set of rules - a code of conduct about behaviour, together with the idea that punishment is an effective meaning of achieving compliance. Punishment at its mildest end includes admonition - a host post.
Given the prevailing ethos of members here (Christian faith), I see an overlap between understanding this in terms of good and bad behaviour (behaviour that is appropriate or inappropriate) and right and wrong behaviour (behaviour that is moral or immoral). One way I think this is apparent is in the degree of shame that users appear to experience in response to intervention from the hosts and admins. I'd say this varies significantly, from "lots" to "none at all".
More generally (than the illustration of the forums), how did we end up with an understanding of society in which the prevailing model seems to be that enforcement of a set of rules leads to healthy community?
I think it might be closer to say that I wouldn't trust someone to deal in ethics or morality if they were not emotionally concerned with the suffering of others on some level, as opposed to treating them like numbers on a spreadsheet. And I'd call that emotional concern empathy.
I could equally say that an excess of emotion can cloud someone’s ability to accurately discern right and wrong, as it turns those concepts into nothing more than a measure of emotional distress and disowns any idea that the right thing can hurt, or that the wrong thing can feel good.
I think it might be closer to say that I wouldn't trust someone to deal in ethics or morality if they were not emotionally concerned with the suffering of others on some level, as opposed to treating them like numbers on a spreadsheet. And I'd call that emotional concern empathy.
I could equally say that an excess of emotion can cloud someone’s ability to accurately discern right and wrong, as it turns those concepts into nothing more than a measure of emotional distress and disowns any idea that the right thing can hurt, or that the wrong thing can feel good.
I didn't speak of "emotions" but of "emotional concern." You have to care about the right and wrong of the situation more than just treating it like an abstract philosophy problem. And I think - as we are human persons, you have to care about the human persons involved.
If you don't care, why are you in the conversation? What's your investment? Is it ideology? Is it wealth? Is it God? Is it the hole where God used to be? Is it justification?
There are always emotions, but I think you have to find the right one, which I think is love, general concern for humans as collected individuals.
@pease : This might be a styx thread, and note that the following opinions are my own and I do not speak on behalf of the ship. I'm starting to wonder if you're trying to go somewhere with this Socratic dialog...
If this is the desired outcome, is having a set of rules and set of enforcers an approach that leads to the healthiest community?
No. That's just what happens as communities form. I think I've heard it called "Storm, norm, conform." It's an organic process, predictable as deer rutting in the fall.
From one perspective, the reason we have a set of enforcers is that conducive behaviour on the forums is seen in terms of compliance with a set of rules - a code of conduct about behaviour, together with the idea that punishment is an effective meaning of achieving compliance. Punishment at its mildest end includes admonition - a host post.
I don't think that's punishment. The hosts cannot effectively punish. They can remind people what the expectations are and after a certain number of warnings, they can exile people who show themselves to be incapable or unwilling to follow the rules that allow for functional community.
Exile isn't punishment. Exile isn't about reforming people, it's about removing people who have shown themselves to be harmful to the community. And that's nothing personal, as I understand it.
Given the prevailing ethos of members here (Christian faith), I see an overlap between understanding this in terms of good and bad behaviour (behaviour that is appropriate or inappropriate) and right and wrong behaviour (behaviour that is moral or immoral). One way I think this is apparent is in the degree of shame that users appear to experience in response to intervention from the hosts and admins. I'd say this varies significantly, from "lots" to "none at all".
I don't think Christianity has a lot to do with the ship's culture. My sense is that the ship has evolved organically as an online forum according to its ow norms and is only aesthetically Christian. Shame is certainly subjective. I don't experience much of it because i understand the rules and I think they're reasonable. Honestly, I don't need to post here, so I'm pretty hard to shame. If someone picks on me, I'm confident enough in my own self to just figure it's their problem. That's part of what I call the "hick" attitude. I have my own way of being and if you don't like it, welp...your problem, not mine.
I hate to break it to y'all, but this is only a small forum on a big internet. If - against expectations - I got kicked off, I'd miss the conversation, but I'd get over it and find something else to do with my spare time. I might do me some good. And that makes me more confident here. I'm here by choice, at my own pleasure.
Also, I have a long history of dealing with bullies of various types. Being regarded as "strange" is nothing new to me. "Social outcast" is my natural form. You call me stranger? Welp...I've been one for my whole life. I've been called a lot of worse things.
More generally (than the illustration of the forums), how did we end up with an understanding of society in which the prevailing model seems to be that enforcement of a set of rules leads to healthy community?
My dear brother in Christ, welcome to civilization. This is how societies run everywhere. The ship is just a pretty advanced form of digital civilization. You find this strange?
If you don't care, why are you in the conversation? What's your investment?
In this specific case, I posted because I saw your post about those who lack empathy being unfit to deal with matters of ethics or morality as a fairly significant personal attack, given what I’d revealed about my psychological makeup a few hours earlier.
But it’s also the case that one can have strong opinions about right and wrong without having empathy.
If you don't care, why are you in the conversation? What's your investment?
In this specific case, I posted because I saw your post about those who lack empathy being unfit to deal with matters of ethics or morality as a fairly significant personal attack, given what I’d revealed about my psychological makeup a few hours earlier.
Separately from Bullfrog's point, I presume you are aware of your other post.
Actually, I think that's the only rule in hell. Don't hurt the ship. You can hurt each other all you want. In fact, it's good to do that because that means you can leave your anger there and keep it from infecting conversations everywhere else. It's an outlet for that.
That said...given that Hell is a place for rage and deep discomfort...why would you want to be good at that?
You answer the question in your previous post - that it's good to get rid of your anger in an appropriate outlet. It's presumably healthier (for both the self and community) to be good at this than not.
I note that some of those rules clearly require judgement to exercise - I'd say at the very least, one, two, five, six, and eight (re: jerk, brain, offend, respect, crusade) obviously need to be interpreted with regards to the spirit of the law rather than the letter, and three and four (person) are borderline. That is, the distinction between rules and guidelines I think breaks down a bit.
The main difference is that rules are enforceable by those with the authority to do so, whereas guidelines are not so subject to authority.
That sounds about right. I've been wondering how wide the borders are for 3 & 4 - and about how straightforward some judgments are (for some of us). And the definition of jerk is interesting - it looks to me to conflate two categories, in relation to a distinction between appropriate/inappropriate and right/wrong.
Far as Hell is concerned...hell is not a place for rules.
Just to note: ship's rules do still apply in Hell, apart from the ones about making it personal and up to a point offending. But if we think you're crusading, for instance, you'll be warned about it. The definition of 'jerk' may cover less ground in Hell, but I wouldn't push your luck on it.
Indeed - I'd say there are just as many rules in Hell, but a different (or broader) set of norms. In respect of 2, 3, 4, 5, you can engage the brain less, attack the person, get personal, and give and take offence.
… I wouldn't trust someone to deal in ethics or morality if they were not emotionally concerned with the suffering of others on some level, as opposed to treating them like numbers on a spreadsheet. And I'd call that emotional concern empathy.
I didn't speak of "emotions" but of "emotional concern." You have to care about the right and wrong of the situation more than just treating it like an abstract philosophy problem. And I think - as we are human persons, you have to care about the human persons involved.
I'm not convinced that continuing to express it with this kind of duality is going to make it make any more sense to people who don't share your emotional makeup. I'm not the least bit surprised about Marvin's response. Echoing Marvin's point, I would also say it's the case that one can have strong opinions about right and wrong without having empathy, as well as being able to care about other human beings.
If you don't care, why are you in the conversation? What's your investment? Is it ideology? Is it wealth? Is it God? Is it the hole where God used to be? Is it justification?
Bullfrog, I'm afraid this just sounds brutal to me. Is any of this getting through to your empathy?
There are always emotions, but I think you have to find the right one, which I think is love, general concern for humans as collected individuals.
What I have never understood about this framing is why you would want to portray this kind of love in emotional terms.
I'm starting to wonder if you're trying to go somewhere with this Socratic dialog...
I'm always trying to go somewhere…
If this is the desired outcome, is having a set of rules and set of enforcers an approach that leads to the healthiest community?
No. That's just what happens as communities form. I think I've heard it called "Storm, norm, conform." It's an organic process, predictable as deer rutting in the fall.
I think you're referring to Tuckman's stages of group development: forming–storming–norming–performing. To the extent that it's a psychological theory, it isn't organic, and it's a model of group development of teams rather than communities.
From one perspective, the reason we have a set of enforcers is that conducive behaviour on the forums is seen in terms of compliance with a set of rules - a code of conduct about behaviour, together with the idea that punishment is an effective meaning of achieving compliance. Punishment at its mildest end includes admonition - a host post.
I don't think that's punishment. The hosts cannot effectively punish. They can remind people what the expectations are and after a certain number of warnings, they can exile people who show themselves to be incapable or unwilling to follow the rules that allow for functional community.
Exile isn't punishment. Exile isn't about reforming people, it's about removing people who have shown themselves to be harmful to the community. And that's nothing personal, as I understand it.
Reform (rehabilitation) is just one of the possible purposes of punishment. Others include deterrence (preventing future offences), retribution (providing a sense of justice), incapacitation (removing offenders from society), and restitution. The temporary or permanent removal of offenders is a common form of punishment. And I don't see how it can be anything but personal, being enacted against a single person.
What the hosting Crew do here is apply suspension and/or banishment in furthering one or more the above aims.
…I hate to break it to y'all, but this is only a small forum on a big internet. If - against expectations - I got kicked off, I'd miss the conversation, but I'd get over it and find something else to do with my spare time. I might do me some good. And that makes me more confident here. I'm here by choice, at my own pleasure.
That's fair enough. I try to keep in mind that the role these forums play in its members' lives varies significantly.
Also, I have a long history of dealing with bullies of various types. Being regarded as "strange" is nothing new to me. "Social outcast" is my natural form. You call me stranger? Welp...I've been one for my whole life. I've been called a lot of worse things.
As have many of us. Have you had any experience of being a bully?
More generally (than the illustration of the forums), how did we end up with an understanding of society in which the prevailing model seems to be that enforcement of a set of rules leads to healthy community?
My dear brother in Christ, welcome to civilization. This is how societies run everywhere. The ship is just a pretty advanced form of digital civilization. You find this strange?
No. I'm wondering why, given all the possible options available to societies around the world, this is the model that prevails in the societies we're familiar with.
If you don't care, why are you in the conversation? What's your investment?
In this specific case, I posted because I saw your post about those who lack empathy being unfit to deal with matters of ethics or morality as a fairly significant personal attack, given what I’d revealed about my psychological makeup a few hours earlier.
But it’s also the case that one can have strong opinions about right and wrong without having empathy.
Ach, I should be more careful. That was intended to be a rhetorical question, though a serious one.
I spend a lot of time around people with disabilities. I won't divulge too much context there, but let's say that I have a lot of skin in that game. And let's say that I'm a polisci major who has spent a lot of his academic life looking at horror stories about well-intentioned people making choices for others. And...yeah. I have a sensitive conscience and a sharp tongue because I pay attention to current events and I'm tired of watching people suffer. If you don't understand that...that's not something I'll hold against you. But it might be an impediment to communication.
I earnestly believe that a lot of the human hell that has been the history of "care for the disabled" has been driven by a simple calculation by people - thinking they were doing the right thing - failing to understand that they had to have compassion for the people in their care.
It's very nice to think the folks who were running the old asylums, the nightmare-fuel orphanages, etc. were monstrous human beings. It is pleasant to demonize bad people, but my training is to take them as cautionary tales because my job isn't that far off, and I aim to learn. And what I learn is that a lot of them were smart people who tried to do this by the numbers and by the book and lost track of their compassion. They began, as Terry Pratchett put it, treating people like *things* instead of *people.*
So, I wasn't intending those questions as a personal attack, and I regret the way that came across. I'm often tired and distracted and this conversation may get me a little hot under the collar, which you may understand now. But those questions are ones I'd ask anyone who had the chutzpah to have strong opinions about morals and ethics and would deem to tell me that they knew about compassion as if they knew better than I did, when I have to throw my heart into my family and my job on a daily basis.
To me, it's a very intense and not entirely academic question, but I wasn't trying to imply that you were immoral. I am just earnestly frightened, generally, of moralizers who don't care about people. I've read too much history and studied too many monsters in the past and that's what they look like to me: Moralizers who don't care. The lack of care is damning, to me.
But that's about humanity in general, that's not about you. I'm truly sorry if that's how I came across, because it's unfair to toss a generalized complaint like that at any particular person.
If you still want to call me to hell, I might back off because I have too much skin in the game for this to be a safe thing to start a fight about.
@pease : We really need to figure out how to avoid the quoting quotes splitting up posts thing. It's a pain.
Let's see...
1) I wasn't familiar with the source but that sounds right. A team is just a tiny community, to me. Same difference. I might be interested to see if anyone has studied that phenomenon on larger scales, but it wouldn't surprise me if something similar happens even in larger groups.
2) Fair point. I usually think punishment is reform, and what the ship does is mostly mild deterrence leading to incapacitation. I don't think the hosts really want to get into any of the other stuff because that would mean having the actual powers of an actual nation-state and would get weird.
3) Yep. I think different people play differently. Heck, this place has changed a lot for me over the years. Right now I just don't have the time to be but so engaged, which changes the way I use it. That's one reason I tend to make long posts on an irregular basis. I'm a grown man with only so much time to spare. I have real responsibilities that weigh on me more than this place does, no disrespect.
4) Very rarely. I usually prefer to hurt myself before I hurt someone else. And since that's a rather personal question, how about yourself? Can you answer that honestly?
5) That's a vast question. Hm. I think on some level it's like asking why "if, then" is the basis of logic. At some point...a political system has at least two operating spheres: The collective and the individual. And the negotiation between these two spheres has to allow for freedom of individuals while also allowing for the function of the collective community. Spend enough time doing that and a commonsense set of norms will emerge, and humans are humans the world over. You can't really find a culture where murder, theft, and other high crimes are good for society - unless you create an outgroup and say "Well, it's ok to hurt the outgroup." I generally believe that's a Bad Thing To Do across the board.
There are a long list of philosophers across many places who struggle with this. Thomas Hobbes, Confucius, Aristotle, Locke, etc. Social contract theory...I spent some time in undergraduate and studied this stuff. Different thinkers sort if different ways, pick your model.
Deep down, I do think that people pick their models according to their preference or prejudice, self included. I'm cynical that way. That might be one reason I always pick on the big thinkers, because I think they've all screwed up, being fallible humans like myself. Pick your poison and try to compensate for their shortcomings. You'll invent new ones.
I'm in the compassion industry. If you call that a bias, I'll own it. I don't think unbiased people exist.
And...yeah. I have a sensitive conscience and a sharp tongue because I pay attention to current events and I'm tired of watching people suffer. If you don't understand that...that's not something I'll hold against you.
I understand it fine (now that you’ve explained it anyway - it’s not something I’d necessarily work out by myself). I just don’t feel it.
You mention it not being entirely academic, but to me everything is academic. Emotions just drown out logic, cloud the mind, and lead to mistakes.
I kind of feel a bit like Spock trying patiently to explain the logical approach to something while McCoy is shouting “dammit Spock, this isn’t about logic, it’s about doing the right thing!!!!”.
If you still want to call me to hell
Why would I want to do that? We’ve dealt with it here.
pease : We really need to figure out how to avoid the quoting quotes splitting up posts thing. It's a pain.
I'm comfortable with inline quoting (as you might have guessed), but I'm OK with numbering points, if you want to go down that route.
1) The thing that's different between teams and communities is the reason for their existence. Social groups (of any size) do not as a rule exist in order to work on a new product, or answer customer requests. (However, the fate of mining communities, when mining comes to an end, illustrates what happens when the possibility of long-established teams becoming communities is ignored.)
2) It's not about having the powers of a nation-state, it's about seeing the parallels, and understanding how behavioural standards operate in micro and well as macro environments. Retribution and restitution have an underpinning in the worldviews of many of us, which suggests to me that they are likely to form part of our thinking, even if they aren't explicitly demonstrated. But it isn't obvious how restitution plays out in different contexts, which might just reflect how we (in western societies) are still coming to terms with it.
3) I tend to think I have two levels of engagement - on and off.
But those questions are ones I'd ask anyone who had the chutzpah to have strong opinions about morals and ethics and would deem to tell me that they knew about compassion as if they knew better than I did, when I have to throw my heart into my family and my job on a daily basis.
To me, it's a very intense and not entirely academic question … I am just earnestly frightened, generally, of moralizers who don't care about people. I've read too much history and studied too many monsters in the past and that's what they look like to me: Moralizers who don't care. The lack of care is damning, to me.
And
Deep down, I do think that people pick their models according to their preference or prejudice, self included. I'm cynical that way. That might be one reason I always pick on the big thinkers, because I think they've all screwed up, being fallible humans like myself. Pick your poison and try to compensate for their shortcomings. You'll invent new ones.
I'm in the compassion industry. If you call that a bias, I'll own it. I don't think unbiased people exist.
I think you're right about compassion being absent, for a long time, from what we currently envisage as caring for people with mental illness. I think the reasons for this are complex, and I don't put it down to moralizers who don't care. I think they've ended up being more like scapegoats in your scenario.
Compassion is pretty central to my perspective on life. It might seem odd to you to say this, but caring about people is pretty deeply embedded in what I try to do. (In contrast to caring for people, which I think you do rather more of.)
For me, thought provides one of the bases of compassion. And this includes reading the writings of thinkers, including a rather haphazard collection of philosophers and others. I don't try to criticise them as I'm reading - I just try to understand what they're saying and why they're saying it. I don't think of any of them as monsters - I'm afraid I can't see that there's anything to be gained by doing so.
I'm still struggling to see your point about "philosophers … who struggle with this". I can't work out why you pick on the big thinkers if they're fallible humans like the rest of us. For some reason, there doesn't appear to be much compassion for thinkers in your worldview.
pease : We really need to figure out how to avoid the quoting quotes splitting up posts thing. It's a pain.
I'm comfortable with inline quoting (as you might have guessed), but I'm OK with numbering points, if you want to go down that route.
I’ll just say that for those trying to read and follow the conversation but not participating in it, numbered points are a major headache. They require constant scrolling back and forth to figure out what is being responded to.
Inline quoting/quotes splitting up posts are, by contrast, very easy to read and follow, at least in my opinion.
One way I think this is apparent is in the degree of shame that users appear to experience in response to intervention from the hosts and admins. I'd say this varies significantly, from "lots" to "none at all".
There are also different kinds of intervention and different kinds of poster.
If you're a person who enjoys being a little provocative, and intends to stay just the right side of the boundary, then being told that you've stepped across the line is something of an occupational hazard. Answering "fair enough, I'll ease back a bit" without any shame is not an unlikely response.
On the other hand, if you thought that you were being perfectly civil and reasonable, discovering that you have given offense might induce significant feelings of shame.
And...yeah. I have a sensitive conscience and a sharp tongue because I pay attention to current events and I'm tired of watching people suffer. If you don't understand that...that's not something I'll hold against you.
I understand it fine (now that you’ve explained it anyway - it’s not something I’d necessarily work out by myself). I just don’t feel it.
You mention it not being entirely academic, but to me everything is academic. Emotions just drown out logic, cloud the mind, and lead to mistakes.
I kind of feel a bit like Spock trying patiently to explain the logical approach to something while McCoy is shouting “dammit Spock, this isn’t about logic, it’s about doing the right thing!!!!”.
If you still want to call me to hell
Why would I want to do that? We’ve dealt with it here.
Sounds good. I think divorcing logic from emotion is dangerous. Spock is a fictional character and the kind of detachment is idealizes isn't realistic. Even in the series, he had feelings. Even Data has feelings as portrayed, if you look closely. A human with no emotions, I've read, would be a terribly disabled person because they'd be stuck trying to figure out what shirt to wear.
That said, I agree that there's a certain kind of "emotional" that can get in the way. One does have to think.
Maybe I'm thinking one has to care enough to take the victims of one's thinking seriously. And of course ethics are a more serious matter when it's in a courtroom instead of an online discussion forum. The stakes are higher.
pease : We really need to figure out how to avoid the quoting quotes splitting up posts thing. It's a pain.
I'm comfortable with inline quoting (as you might have guessed), but I'm OK with numbering points, if you want to go down that route.
I’ll just say that for those trying to read and follow the conversation but not participating in it, numbered points are a major headache. They require constant scrolling back and forth to figure out what is being responded to.
Inline quoting/quotes splitting up posts are, by contrast, very easy to read and follow, at least in my opinion.
I find inline quotes can get cumbersome when you get to responding to responses to responses.
At some point I just want to write a whole new essay, which might be a better approach.
A community without a purpose may find itself needing to find one if it wants to keep existing. Otherwise it'll die when its current members do. This is, I think, a constant anxiety for religious communities, and why some churches are basically obsessed with making converts.
Re: Retaliation and retribution, different models of justice
I don't believe in retribution, I think that's often not a good idea to pursue. It too easily devolves into retaliation, which turns cyclic as generations keep trying to take back the previous belligerent's "victory." I'm sure a lot of people do believe in that, but that's for them. Restitution is nice if you can afford it. That one gets hard when you can't. All of this is a good argument for grace, in my books.
Re: A need for control in the context of bullying or self injury
I think control is expensive. I tend to value control over myself, don't need to control other people unless they're threatening me or something I care about. I think that gets into the question of hosts versus rules...per Hobbes, I outsource my control to the hosts and I trust them to enforce the rules. If I thought this place were so crooked that I couldn't trust them, and I had a serious grievance, I'd probably leave. Re: The nature of compassion
The caring about versus caring for thing is fascinating, and I do see something there. It's a neat contrast and does lead to some really weird tension points. I do think that caring for people has drastically changed the way I care about people. And this might help your confusion from my end...it gives me a certain familiar approach suffering.
I usually identify suffering personally. I care about a million things, but I have to think about how I care for them. I have this caricature in my head, which I try to not-be, of someone who has really big ideas about what it must be like to be that suffering person, without understanding what that suffering person really needs. This might be called "idiot compassion." As a considerate person, it's something I try to avoid. And one way to avoid that is to know where you are in the situation.
One way I save myself from abstracting the problems of other people is to keep myself grounded in reality and know how I relate to them. Suppose there's a war in Iran. Should I express strong opinions about how Iranians run their country based on my ideals as an expression of my compassion for them? I'm not sure about that. I check my white American ass and try to think first of the people I'm trying to show consideration for, living, breathing people who are probably in a much worse situation than I am at the moment. They deserve the dignity to speak for themselves without me going on about how important my caring for them is.
My job isn't to care about them. That's pointless, to me. I'm sure they don't care if one more white American is earnestly posting memes on bsky about their plight. But I can try to care for them as an orientation. That might be more useful. That's my feeling. And if you do differently, that's your call. We can argue. We're all adults here. I'm not God, thank God. I don't even pretend to be a divine messenger. I just type what I think. If it bugs you...at some point that's your problem. I got kids of my own, don't need grown ups treating me like an authority figure.
Far as dead philosophers, they're dead. They don't care if I yell at their memory. At this point they're like punching bags to me. And yes, I do think their ideas have generated harm. Ever read Aristotle's attitudes about women? Do you want to condone that? He was deeply problematic and there's no shame to me in acknowledging that. And why should I have compassion for a corpse? I've got living people to attend to!
Also, to my eyes, compassion doesn't preclude a certain degree of honest argument, friendly mockery, even anger. I can care about someone and throw my temper at them. In fact, it usually means that I care at least a little about someone if they're worth getting mad at.
That's probably a lot more than 2c, and it's late for me to be doing heavy redacting.
I have this caricature in my head, which I try to not-be, of someone who has really big ideas about what it must be like to be that suffering person, without understanding what that suffering person really needs.
I get that, but I don’t think you can determine what someone really needs based on empathising with how they feel. Sometimes what a person really needs may be something that they don’t want, or even something that they could perceive as suffering.
Sounds good. I think divorcing logic from emotion is dangerous. Spock is a fictional character and the kind of detachment is idealizes isn't realistic. Even in the series, he had feelings. Even Data has feelings as portrayed, if you look closely. A human with no emotions, I've read, would be a terribly disabled person because they'd be stuck trying to figure out what shirt to wear.
If you take emotions out of the picture, selecting clothing on the basis of purely functional criteria is really straightforward. However, I think what you're describing is alexithymia, in which individuals have emotions, but struggle to identify and describe them, which is something very different.
That said, I agree that there's a certain kind of "emotional" that can get in the way. One does have to think.
Maybe I'm thinking one has to care enough to take the victims of one's thinking seriously.
It's more common to refer to them as subjects. "Victims" seems to be prejudging one's disposition towards them. Why not "beneficiaries"?
And of course ethics are a more serious matter when it's in a courtroom instead of an online discussion forum. The stakes are higher.
A courtroom is not generally held to be a suitable forum for ethical discussions.
A community without a purpose may find itself needing to find one if it wants to keep existing. Otherwise it'll die when its current members do. This is, I think, a constant anxiety for religious communities, and why some churches are basically obsessed with making converts.
To the extent that societies comprise many communities, the purpose of most communities is continued existence. Many social groups (including religious ones) have this as an aspiration, but unless they have the means of generating or acquiring new members, their fate is as you describe.
Re: A need for control in the context of bullying or self injury
I think control is expensive. I tend to value control over myself, don't need to control other people unless they're threatening me or something I care about. I think that gets into the question of hosts versus rules...per Hobbes, I outsource my control to the hosts and I trust them to enforce the rules. If I thought this place were so crooked that I couldn't trust them, and I had a serious grievance, I'd probably leave.
Rather surprised to see self-injury mentioned.
I'm not sure how long its been since anyone asked the hosts how they feel about participating in this form of social contract, but my guess is that many of them would be OK with not being responsible for *all* the control between individuals members.
I have this caricature in my head, which I try to not-be, of someone who has really big ideas about what it must be like to be that suffering person, without understanding what that suffering person really needs.
I get that, but I don’t think you can determine what someone really needs based on empathising with how they feel. Sometimes what a person really needs may be something that they don’t want, or even something that they could perceive as suffering.
That's true, and that takes empathy with discernment. But you have to care enough to work that out appropriately, and it is extremely careful work. As you probably understand. I don't want ethical management done by people who simply do not care, or who reduce people to economic units for "well, how much money can I wring out of these people for my benefit." In my line of work, that stuff leads to nightmare fuel.
We might be wandering into semantics concerning what the range of the word "empathy" is.
I don't think you can figure out functionality without some kind of emotional concern. Avoiding pain is an emotional concern. If you deep down do not care about anything, even pain can be seen as "meh, I'll walk around naked." This could wander into states of really deep depression, which is veering into discussion of psychology that I'm probably not qualified to get into, speaking of which...that could be alexithymia. And at that point - again - we're wandering into professional stuff and I'm going to start wondering how much specific education we have on these topics beyond google searches.
Re: Courtrooms
I disagree. Legal matters always involve ethics. The law is a matter of applied ethics and if you don't understand that, do you even polisci, bro? I'm a polisci major and this is my field of study. There are always ethical questions in legal matters even if they're implicit rather than explicit. The idea that courtrooms are ethics-free doesn't compute for me.
Re: Communities
A community that exists only for itself is, to me, something dangerous akin to a gang or a nation state. And churches that exist merely for their own survival often find that to properly survive they need something more than "join us so we don't die!" (as a professor once joked.) For a community to survive it needs to fulfill a larger role than self-feeding, kind of like any other living body. Maybe a country is big enough to feed itself if it can find some kind of inner resource (like coal) but my experience is that extractive economies make for unhealthy polities (like West by-God Virginia, which I love dearly.)
Re: Control:
Well, sir, you keep pushing me into these deeply personal conversations and you're going to walk into some personal stuff. I'm guessing you're doing this for your own reasons, since I feel like I'm on some kind of accidental psychologist's couch being bugged about my thinking on politics, personhood, and power.
And I'm really wondering what you're doing here, but it still amuses me and I think I enjoy the exercise. It also feels like the equivalent of an undergraduate "bull session" where I'm free associating for the sake of conversation. Or maybe it's just CPE all over again.
I don't think "control" is what the hosts are after, thank God. That's why we don't have hard enforcement geared toward, your words, "retribution and restitution." That's heavy stuff for nation states. Sir, this is an online forum. The hosts' job is to swoop in and catch people who step outside of the lines of socially appropriate behavior for the sake of the community. They catch us if we step outside the rules, so that we don't have to be our own enforcers. That's why "junior hosting" is a pejorative. This is, to me, common sense and I'm still kind of amazed that people don't get it sometimes.
That, to your previous question, is why societies operate according to rules that are loosely set so that people are free to act within those rules. Do you even civilization? Do you live in a community? Do you understand how law and order work? You seem confident about how courtrooms operate! Then you understand what laws are for and it's common sense. And it's the same here.
And that is the paradox of tolerance. We do not require everyone here to be Christian. We do not require that everyone here be British, American, Aussie, or any other ethnic or national group. You can be whatever culture you please, speak whatever English you please, as long as you follow certain rules. That's why this board has a zero tolerance policy yon racism, sexism, etc. because that kind of garbage behavior is abomination, it breaks the structure of the ship. This community is built on sound rules and guidelines, not identity. And as a Christian I think that's a beautiful thing. Identity-based groups, in my experience, suck. They end up being rackets for whoever holds the identity in their hands.
I get the sense some folks here think that "the tolerant" is an identity group, but I think some of those people are profoundly mistaken, perhaps willfully. I've seen too much disingenuous argumentation on the internet to be trusting, and I do care about this place.
This is the paradox of tolerance. We must tolerate each other's differences for the sake of general freedom to be ourselves. And it's not that hard if you just let people be.
So, along those lines, why do I feel like you are interrogating me?
Comments
Then your contacts with the military is extremely limited. As a former chaplain the the military, I have seen this change quite a bit.
Granted up to the Korean War there was very little room for mental health issues in the military. If people became too shell shocked, they would be sent home and were often institutionalized. But has more research was put into mental health issues, the military was among the first to adapt to new findings.
But I think a dam broke when some of the major flag officers admitted they had PTSD, depression on stress related issues.
Today, mental health care in the U.S. military combines clinical treatment, readiness support, and family resources to address conditions such as PTSD, depression, anxiety, and stress reactions. Service members receive care through TRICARE, military hospitals, embedded behavioral health teams, and confidential options like Military OneSource. Evidence‑based therapies are emphasized, while stigma and career concerns remain barriers. Families receive education and support, and transition to civilian life is a vulnerable period with additional resources from veteran‑focused organizations. The system aims to balance operational readiness with accessible, compassionate care, though challenges persist around stigma, deployment stress, and long‑term reintegration.
The U.S. military is also highly capable of treating psychotic disorders, but its approach is shaped by the unique demands of military service, the need for safety, and the goal of maintaining readiness. Psychosis is taken very seriously, and the system has formal clinical guidelines, specialized tools, and clear procedures for evaluation, treatment, and—when necessary—medical separation.
At the time of medical separation, the veteran can still receive excellent care through the VA and TRICARE systems.
On the other hand, personality disorders in the U.S. military are handled very differently from conditions like PTSD or depression. The military can evaluate and treat personality disorders, but they are generally viewed as long‑standing patterns of behavior that make military service difficult, and they often lead to administrative separation rather than long‑term treatment.
Well, the folks I know are varied in age from Vietnam to Afghanistan//Korea/Iraq II, including someone my own age and they didn't do well by him.
I'll acknowledge improvement (with a fear that it'll get worse again under Current Management,) and pardon me if my cynicism is born from the examples of people I know. I'm probably biased by personal experience.
Thanks for your information. It does help and I'll admit I'm more adjacent than central in that case.
Thinking about a way to illustrate some of issues that ethics and morality address, it's long struck me that behaviour appropriate to the forums is couched in terms of The 10 Commandments, the conditions for participation, which is primarily a rules-based code of conduct.
One way of looking at these is by contrasting them with a less rules-based approach. For example, the Guidelines for Hell seem, at face value, to be more about the consequences of posting there. On one level, this isn't surprising, because they're guidelines. But participants in the forum are also instructed to “Please read, study and become one with these guidelines before plunging in, because ignorance of the law is no excuse and our normal rules on civility are abandoned on this forum.” What do they say about the appropriate or inappropriate way to behave in Hell? And how does this relate to what you consider to be the right or wrong way to behave there?
Far as Hell is concerned...hell is not a place for rules. The rules in hell don't exist to be followed, but exist to create space for people to be angry. It's like a boxing ring, to me. People who are angry go there to work out their fights with each other until they're not angry, and then they can step out of the ring and go back to regular conversation. The rules exist - if they do - to try to limit the harm people do to the ship as a community.
Actually, I think that's the only rule in hell. Don't hurt the ship. You can hurt each other all you want. In fact, it's good to do that because that means you can leave your anger there and keep it from infecting conversations everywhere else. It's an outlet for that. And by avoiding the Big Uglies of Slander, Racism, etc. you can also avoid hurting the ship by dragging it into ugly legal matters.
The only way to behave in hell is to be extremely honest with yourself and everyone around you. You can put on a mask and perform, but if you're going to do that, be up front about it. I think that's about what I did, to some folks' confusion.
Does that help?
There's advice as in "How do I follow the rules?
And there's advice as in "How do I compete at the game?"
One can post all kinds of things in hell that are within the rules, but that's not the same thing as being competent at hell-posting.
That said...given that Hell is a place for rage and deep discomfort...why would you want to be good at that?
The main difference is that rules are enforceable by those with the authority to do so, whereas guidelines are not so subject to authority.
Touche.
From one perspective, the reason we have a set of enforcers is that conducive behaviour on the forums is seen in terms of compliance with a set of rules - a code of conduct about behaviour, together with the idea that punishment is an effective meaning of achieving compliance. Punishment at its mildest end includes admonition - a host post.
Given the prevailing ethos of members here (Christian faith), I see an overlap between understanding this in terms of good and bad behaviour (behaviour that is appropriate or inappropriate) and right and wrong behaviour (behaviour that is moral or immoral). One way I think this is apparent is in the degree of shame that users appear to experience in response to intervention from the hosts and admins. I'd say this varies significantly, from "lots" to "none at all".
More generally (than the illustration of the forums), how did we end up with an understanding of society in which the prevailing model seems to be that enforcement of a set of rules leads to healthy community?
I could equally say that an excess of emotion can cloud someone’s ability to accurately discern right and wrong, as it turns those concepts into nothing more than a measure of emotional distress and disowns any idea that the right thing can hurt, or that the wrong thing can feel good.
I didn't speak of "emotions" but of "emotional concern." You have to care about the right and wrong of the situation more than just treating it like an abstract philosophy problem. And I think - as we are human persons, you have to care about the human persons involved.
If you don't care, why are you in the conversation? What's your investment? Is it ideology? Is it wealth? Is it God? Is it the hole where God used to be? Is it justification?
There are always emotions, but I think you have to find the right one, which I think is love, general concern for humans as collected individuals.
No. That's just what happens as communities form. I think I've heard it called "Storm, norm, conform." It's an organic process, predictable as deer rutting in the fall. I don't think that's punishment. The hosts cannot effectively punish. They can remind people what the expectations are and after a certain number of warnings, they can exile people who show themselves to be incapable or unwilling to follow the rules that allow for functional community.
Exile isn't punishment. Exile isn't about reforming people, it's about removing people who have shown themselves to be harmful to the community. And that's nothing personal, as I understand it. I don't think Christianity has a lot to do with the ship's culture. My sense is that the ship has evolved organically as an online forum according to its ow norms and is only aesthetically Christian. Shame is certainly subjective. I don't experience much of it because i understand the rules and I think they're reasonable. Honestly, I don't need to post here, so I'm pretty hard to shame. If someone picks on me, I'm confident enough in my own self to just figure it's their problem. That's part of what I call the "hick" attitude. I have my own way of being and if you don't like it, welp...your problem, not mine.
I hate to break it to y'all, but this is only a small forum on a big internet. If - against expectations - I got kicked off, I'd miss the conversation, but I'd get over it and find something else to do with my spare time. I might do me some good. And that makes me more confident here. I'm here by choice, at my own pleasure.
Also, I have a long history of dealing with bullies of various types. Being regarded as "strange" is nothing new to me. "Social outcast" is my natural form. You call me stranger? Welp...I've been one for my whole life. I've been called a lot of worse things. My dear brother in Christ, welcome to civilization. This is how societies run everywhere. The ship is just a pretty advanced form of digital civilization. You find this strange?
In this specific case, I posted because I saw your post about those who lack empathy being unfit to deal with matters of ethics or morality as a fairly significant personal attack, given what I’d revealed about my psychological makeup a few hours earlier.
But it’s also the case that one can have strong opinions about right and wrong without having empathy.
Separately from Bullfrog's point, I presume you are aware of your other post.
That sounds about right. I've been wondering how wide the borders are for 3 & 4 - and about how straightforward some judgments are (for some of us). And the definition of jerk is interesting - it looks to me to conflate two categories, in relation to a distinction between appropriate/inappropriate and right/wrong.
Indeed - I'd say there are just as many rules in Hell, but a different (or broader) set of norms. In respect of 2, 3, 4, 5, you can engage the brain less, attack the person, get personal, and give and take offence.
I'm not convinced that continuing to express it with this kind of duality is going to make it make any more sense to people who don't share your emotional makeup. I'm not the least bit surprised about Marvin's response. Echoing Marvin's point, I would also say it's the case that one can have strong opinions about right and wrong without having empathy, as well as being able to care about other human beings.
Bullfrog, I'm afraid this just sounds brutal to me. Is any of this getting through to your empathy?
What I have never understood about this framing is why you would want to portray this kind of love in emotional terms.
I think you're referring to Tuckman's stages of group development: forming–storming–norming–performing. To the extent that it's a psychological theory, it isn't organic, and it's a model of group development of teams rather than communities.
Reform (rehabilitation) is just one of the possible purposes of punishment. Others include deterrence (preventing future offences), retribution (providing a sense of justice), incapacitation (removing offenders from society), and restitution. The temporary or permanent removal of offenders is a common form of punishment. And I don't see how it can be anything but personal, being enacted against a single person.
What the hosting Crew do here is apply suspension and/or banishment in furthering one or more the above aims.
That's fair enough. I try to keep in mind that the role these forums play in its members' lives varies significantly.
As have many of us. Have you had any experience of being a bully?
No. I'm wondering why, given all the possible options available to societies around the world, this is the model that prevails in the societies we're familiar with.
Ach, I should be more careful. That was intended to be a rhetorical question, though a serious one.
I spend a lot of time around people with disabilities. I won't divulge too much context there, but let's say that I have a lot of skin in that game. And let's say that I'm a polisci major who has spent a lot of his academic life looking at horror stories about well-intentioned people making choices for others. And...yeah. I have a sensitive conscience and a sharp tongue because I pay attention to current events and I'm tired of watching people suffer. If you don't understand that...that's not something I'll hold against you. But it might be an impediment to communication.
I earnestly believe that a lot of the human hell that has been the history of "care for the disabled" has been driven by a simple calculation by people - thinking they were doing the right thing - failing to understand that they had to have compassion for the people in their care.
It's very nice to think the folks who were running the old asylums, the nightmare-fuel orphanages, etc. were monstrous human beings. It is pleasant to demonize bad people, but my training is to take them as cautionary tales because my job isn't that far off, and I aim to learn. And what I learn is that a lot of them were smart people who tried to do this by the numbers and by the book and lost track of their compassion. They began, as Terry Pratchett put it, treating people like *things* instead of *people.*
So, I wasn't intending those questions as a personal attack, and I regret the way that came across. I'm often tired and distracted and this conversation may get me a little hot under the collar, which you may understand now. But those questions are ones I'd ask anyone who had the chutzpah to have strong opinions about morals and ethics and would deem to tell me that they knew about compassion as if they knew better than I did, when I have to throw my heart into my family and my job on a daily basis.
To me, it's a very intense and not entirely academic question, but I wasn't trying to imply that you were immoral. I am just earnestly frightened, generally, of moralizers who don't care about people. I've read too much history and studied too many monsters in the past and that's what they look like to me: Moralizers who don't care. The lack of care is damning, to me.
But that's about humanity in general, that's not about you. I'm truly sorry if that's how I came across, because it's unfair to toss a generalized complaint like that at any particular person.
If you still want to call me to hell, I might back off because I have too much skin in the game for this to be a safe thing to start a fight about.
Let's see...
1) I wasn't familiar with the source but that sounds right. A team is just a tiny community, to me. Same difference. I might be interested to see if anyone has studied that phenomenon on larger scales, but it wouldn't surprise me if something similar happens even in larger groups.
2) Fair point. I usually think punishment is reform, and what the ship does is mostly mild deterrence leading to incapacitation. I don't think the hosts really want to get into any of the other stuff because that would mean having the actual powers of an actual nation-state and would get weird.
3) Yep. I think different people play differently. Heck, this place has changed a lot for me over the years. Right now I just don't have the time to be but so engaged, which changes the way I use it. That's one reason I tend to make long posts on an irregular basis. I'm a grown man with only so much time to spare. I have real responsibilities that weigh on me more than this place does, no disrespect.
4) Very rarely. I usually prefer to hurt myself before I hurt someone else. And since that's a rather personal question, how about yourself? Can you answer that honestly?
5) That's a vast question. Hm. I think on some level it's like asking why "if, then" is the basis of logic. At some point...a political system has at least two operating spheres: The collective and the individual. And the negotiation between these two spheres has to allow for freedom of individuals while also allowing for the function of the collective community. Spend enough time doing that and a commonsense set of norms will emerge, and humans are humans the world over. You can't really find a culture where murder, theft, and other high crimes are good for society - unless you create an outgroup and say "Well, it's ok to hurt the outgroup." I generally believe that's a Bad Thing To Do across the board.
There are a long list of philosophers across many places who struggle with this. Thomas Hobbes, Confucius, Aristotle, Locke, etc. Social contract theory...I spent some time in undergraduate and studied this stuff. Different thinkers sort if different ways, pick your model.
Deep down, I do think that people pick their models according to their preference or prejudice, self included. I'm cynical that way. That might be one reason I always pick on the big thinkers, because I think they've all screwed up, being fallible humans like myself. Pick your poison and try to compensate for their shortcomings. You'll invent new ones.
I'm in the compassion industry. If you call that a bias, I'll own it. I don't think unbiased people exist.
I understand it fine (now that you’ve explained it anyway - it’s not something I’d necessarily work out by myself). I just don’t feel it.
You mention it not being entirely academic, but to me everything is academic. Emotions just drown out logic, cloud the mind, and lead to mistakes.
I kind of feel a bit like Spock trying patiently to explain the logical approach to something while McCoy is shouting “dammit Spock, this isn’t about logic, it’s about doing the right thing!!!!”.
Why would I want to do that? We’ve dealt with it here.
1) The thing that's different between teams and communities is the reason for their existence. Social groups (of any size) do not as a rule exist in order to work on a new product, or answer customer requests. (However, the fate of mining communities, when mining comes to an end, illustrates what happens when the possibility of long-established teams becoming communities is ignored.)
2) It's not about having the powers of a nation-state, it's about seeing the parallels, and understanding how behavioural standards operate in micro and well as macro environments. Retribution and restitution have an underpinning in the worldviews of many of us, which suggests to me that they are likely to form part of our thinking, even if they aren't explicitly demonstrated. But it isn't obvious how restitution plays out in different contexts, which might just reflect how we (in western societies) are still coming to terms with it.
3) I tend to think I have two levels of engagement - on and off.
4) Fair question. Yes - primarily about control.
5) I'll leave that for now.
You also wrote: And I think you're right about compassion being absent, for a long time, from what we currently envisage as caring for people with mental illness. I think the reasons for this are complex, and I don't put it down to moralizers who don't care. I think they've ended up being more like scapegoats in your scenario.
Compassion is pretty central to my perspective on life. It might seem odd to you to say this, but caring about people is pretty deeply embedded in what I try to do. (In contrast to caring for people, which I think you do rather more of.)
For me, thought provides one of the bases of compassion. And this includes reading the writings of thinkers, including a rather haphazard collection of philosophers and others. I don't try to criticise them as I'm reading - I just try to understand what they're saying and why they're saying it. I don't think of any of them as monsters - I'm afraid I can't see that there's anything to be gained by doing so.
I'm still struggling to see your point about "philosophers … who struggle with this". I can't work out why you pick on the big thinkers if they're fallible humans like the rest of us. For some reason, there doesn't appear to be much compassion for thinkers in your worldview.
Inline quoting/quotes splitting up posts are, by contrast, very easy to read and follow, at least in my opinion.
There are also different kinds of intervention and different kinds of poster.
If you're a person who enjoys being a little provocative, and intends to stay just the right side of the boundary, then being told that you've stepped across the line is something of an occupational hazard. Answering "fair enough, I'll ease back a bit" without any shame is not an unlikely response.
On the other hand, if you thought that you were being perfectly civil and reasonable, discovering that you have given offense might induce significant feelings of shame.
Sounds good. I think divorcing logic from emotion is dangerous. Spock is a fictional character and the kind of detachment is idealizes isn't realistic. Even in the series, he had feelings. Even Data has feelings as portrayed, if you look closely. A human with no emotions, I've read, would be a terribly disabled person because they'd be stuck trying to figure out what shirt to wear.
That said, I agree that there's a certain kind of "emotional" that can get in the way. One does have to think.
Maybe I'm thinking one has to care enough to take the victims of one's thinking seriously. And of course ethics are a more serious matter when it's in a courtroom instead of an online discussion forum. The stakes are higher.
Glad we can sort things here.
I find inline quotes can get cumbersome when you get to responding to responses to responses.
At some point I just want to write a whole new essay, which might be a better approach.
Re: Community and purpose
A community without a purpose may find itself needing to find one if it wants to keep existing. Otherwise it'll die when its current members do. This is, I think, a constant anxiety for religious communities, and why some churches are basically obsessed with making converts.
Re: Retaliation and retribution, different models of justice
I don't believe in retribution, I think that's often not a good idea to pursue. It too easily devolves into retaliation, which turns cyclic as generations keep trying to take back the previous belligerent's "victory." I'm sure a lot of people do believe in that, but that's for them. Restitution is nice if you can afford it. That one gets hard when you can't. All of this is a good argument for grace, in my books.
Re: A need for control in the context of bullying or self injury
I think control is expensive. I tend to value control over myself, don't need to control other people unless they're threatening me or something I care about. I think that gets into the question of hosts versus rules...per Hobbes, I outsource my control to the hosts and I trust them to enforce the rules. If I thought this place were so crooked that I couldn't trust them, and I had a serious grievance, I'd probably leave.
Re: The nature of compassion
The caring about versus caring for thing is fascinating, and I do see something there. It's a neat contrast and does lead to some really weird tension points. I do think that caring for people has drastically changed the way I care about people. And this might help your confusion from my end...it gives me a certain familiar approach suffering.
I usually identify suffering personally. I care about a million things, but I have to think about how I care for them. I have this caricature in my head, which I try to not-be, of someone who has really big ideas about what it must be like to be that suffering person, without understanding what that suffering person really needs. This might be called "idiot compassion." As a considerate person, it's something I try to avoid. And one way to avoid that is to know where you are in the situation.
One way I save myself from abstracting the problems of other people is to keep myself grounded in reality and know how I relate to them. Suppose there's a war in Iran. Should I express strong opinions about how Iranians run their country based on my ideals as an expression of my compassion for them? I'm not sure about that. I check my white American ass and try to think first of the people I'm trying to show consideration for, living, breathing people who are probably in a much worse situation than I am at the moment. They deserve the dignity to speak for themselves without me going on about how important my caring for them is.
My job isn't to care about them. That's pointless, to me. I'm sure they don't care if one more white American is earnestly posting memes on bsky about their plight. But I can try to care for them as an orientation. That might be more useful. That's my feeling. And if you do differently, that's your call. We can argue. We're all adults here. I'm not God, thank God. I don't even pretend to be a divine messenger. I just type what I think. If it bugs you...at some point that's your problem. I got kids of my own, don't need grown ups treating me like an authority figure.
Far as dead philosophers, they're dead. They don't care if I yell at their memory. At this point they're like punching bags to me. And yes, I do think their ideas have generated harm. Ever read Aristotle's attitudes about women? Do you want to condone that? He was deeply problematic and there's no shame to me in acknowledging that. And why should I have compassion for a corpse? I've got living people to attend to!
Also, to my eyes, compassion doesn't preclude a certain degree of honest argument, friendly mockery, even anger. I can care about someone and throw my temper at them. In fact, it usually means that I care at least a little about someone if they're worth getting mad at.
That's probably a lot more than 2c, and it's late for me to be doing heavy redacting.
I get that, but I don’t think you can determine what someone really needs based on empathising with how they feel. Sometimes what a person really needs may be something that they don’t want, or even something that they could perceive as suffering.
It's more common to refer to them as subjects. "Victims" seems to be prejudging one's disposition towards them. Why not "beneficiaries"?
A courtroom is not generally held to be a suitable forum for ethical discussions.
To the extent that societies comprise many communities, the purpose of most communities is continued existence. Many social groups (including religious ones) have this as an aspiration, but unless they have the means of generating or acquiring new members, their fate is as you describe.
Rather surprised to see self-injury mentioned.
I'm not sure how long its been since anyone asked the hosts how they feel about participating in this form of social contract, but my guess is that many of them would be OK with not being responsible for *all* the control between individuals members.
More on compassion anon.
That's true, and that takes empathy with discernment. But you have to care enough to work that out appropriately, and it is extremely careful work. As you probably understand. I don't want ethical management done by people who simply do not care, or who reduce people to economic units for "well, how much money can I wring out of these people for my benefit." In my line of work, that stuff leads to nightmare fuel.
We might be wandering into semantics concerning what the range of the word "empathy" is.
Re: lack of emotion
I don't think you can figure out functionality without some kind of emotional concern. Avoiding pain is an emotional concern. If you deep down do not care about anything, even pain can be seen as "meh, I'll walk around naked." This could wander into states of really deep depression, which is veering into discussion of psychology that I'm probably not qualified to get into, speaking of which...that could be alexithymia. And at that point - again - we're wandering into professional stuff and I'm going to start wondering how much specific education we have on these topics beyond google searches.
Re: Courtrooms
I disagree. Legal matters always involve ethics. The law is a matter of applied ethics and if you don't understand that, do you even polisci, bro? I'm a polisci major and this is my field of study. There are always ethical questions in legal matters even if they're implicit rather than explicit. The idea that courtrooms are ethics-free doesn't compute for me.
Re: Communities
A community that exists only for itself is, to me, something dangerous akin to a gang or a nation state. And churches that exist merely for their own survival often find that to properly survive they need something more than "join us so we don't die!" (as a professor once joked.) For a community to survive it needs to fulfill a larger role than self-feeding, kind of like any other living body. Maybe a country is big enough to feed itself if it can find some kind of inner resource (like coal) but my experience is that extractive economies make for unhealthy polities (like West by-God Virginia, which I love dearly.)
Re: Control:
Well, sir, you keep pushing me into these deeply personal conversations and you're going to walk into some personal stuff. I'm guessing you're doing this for your own reasons, since I feel like I'm on some kind of accidental psychologist's couch being bugged about my thinking on politics, personhood, and power.
And I'm really wondering what you're doing here, but it still amuses me and I think I enjoy the exercise. It also feels like the equivalent of an undergraduate "bull session" where I'm free associating for the sake of conversation. Or maybe it's just CPE all over again.
I don't think "control" is what the hosts are after, thank God. That's why we don't have hard enforcement geared toward, your words, "retribution and restitution." That's heavy stuff for nation states. Sir, this is an online forum. The hosts' job is to swoop in and catch people who step outside of the lines of socially appropriate behavior for the sake of the community. They catch us if we step outside the rules, so that we don't have to be our own enforcers. That's why "junior hosting" is a pejorative. This is, to me, common sense and I'm still kind of amazed that people don't get it sometimes.
That, to your previous question, is why societies operate according to rules that are loosely set so that people are free to act within those rules. Do you even civilization? Do you live in a community? Do you understand how law and order work? You seem confident about how courtrooms operate! Then you understand what laws are for and it's common sense. And it's the same here.
And that is the paradox of tolerance. We do not require everyone here to be Christian. We do not require that everyone here be British, American, Aussie, or any other ethnic or national group. You can be whatever culture you please, speak whatever English you please, as long as you follow certain rules. That's why this board has a zero tolerance policy yon racism, sexism, etc. because that kind of garbage behavior is abomination, it breaks the structure of the ship. This community is built on sound rules and guidelines, not identity. And as a Christian I think that's a beautiful thing. Identity-based groups, in my experience, suck. They end up being rackets for whoever holds the identity in their hands.
I get the sense some folks here think that "the tolerant" is an identity group, but I think some of those people are profoundly mistaken, perhaps willfully. I've seen too much disingenuous argumentation on the internet to be trusting, and I do care about this place.
This is the paradox of tolerance. We must tolerate each other's differences for the sake of general freedom to be ourselves. And it's not that hard if you just let people be.
So, along those lines, why do I feel like you are interrogating me?