# Virtue Ethics and the Modern Left - a highly autistic essay



## Spunt (Aug 4, 2019)

I'm posting this here because I can't think of anywhere more suitable to post it. Also I'm at work and I don't have anything to do, so if I keep typing away it will look like I'm busy and nobody will give me anything more to do before I get to go home.

The following is an attempt to understand why the modern Social Justice movement, and the "Internet Left" in general, has some of the more perplexing characteristics that it does. Such as:

- Extreme authoritarianism
- Intellectual elitism and a refusal to consider anyone else's perspective
- An assumption that anyone they disagree with is not only wrong, but evil
- "Rules for thee, not for me" style hypocrisy
- A fixation on identity politics rather than economic redistribution, jobs, welfare, healthcare, trade unions and ideas associated with the "Old Left"
- A drive to "unperson" people they do not approve of, with no forgiveness, regardless of the target's apologies or attempts to put things right
- An ability to justify anything they say or do, no matter how awful, because they are on the "right side of history".
- A tendency not to take any actual action to make the world the way they want, just to express their opinion on it
- An inexplicable love of Harry fucking Potter

I will do this using the history of moral philosophy. I will write this assuming you know nothing about it. If you do have a background in philosophy or ethical theory, this may all come across as a bit basic and drastically simplified, I'm sorry. Bitch at me in the thread about it if you like. But I want as many people as possible to be able to follow what I'm talking about (assuming you just haven't rated this post autistic and moved on, I wouldn't blame you if you did). I do believe, however, that I can help you towards a better understanding of the aspects of the SJW mindset outlined above using this train of thought if you choose to follow along. Yes, even why they like Harry Potter.



Spoiler: Massive wall of autism



First, *A crash-course in moral philosophy*.

Moral Philosophy is the study of what is right and wrong, and what those words really mean. There are two main (and quite broad) categories into which most post-medieval moral philosophy falls: deontology and consequentialism.

*Deontology* is the belief that actions carry moral weight. Deontologists believe that some actions are right, and some are wrong - importantly this is without context or considering the consequences of those actions. If X is wrong, X is always wrong.

The classic deontological moral text is The Ten Commandments. It says "Thou Shalt Not Steal". Not "Though shalt not steal, unless you're stealing bread for starving children", or "Though shalt not steal unless nobody notices" - the act of theft is morally wrong, and should not be done, ever. There are other, more nuanced versions - the New Testament's "Golden Rule" ("do unto others as you would have others do unto you") is one, as is Kant's "Categorical Imperative" ("do unto others as you would have everyone do unto everyone all the time").

*Consequentialism* is the belief that actions themselves are not moral or immoral, it is the _consequences_ of those actions that carry moral weight. The best-known consequentialist movement is Utilitarianism, which posits that actions that promote "pleasure" are good, and actions that promote "pain" are bad. So stealing bread to feed starving children is the right thing to do, as would be killing a baby if you knew it would grow up to be a genocidal dictator.

The "Trolley Problem" is a classic thought experiment that separates which of these categories your beliefs fall into. Essentially it sets up a scenario in which a follower of each school would take an opposite decision - a deontologist would refuse to pull the lever because it would constitute an act of murder, a consequentialist would pull the lever to save the greatest possible number of lives.

Most moral philosophy since The Enlightenment has consisted of philosophers sperging back and forth as members of one or other of these groups. There is, however, a third category of moral philosophical thought - one that has been dormant, but not dead, for the last three centuries, and is undergoing a resurgence with the SJW movement -

*Virtue Ethics*

Virtue Ethics was the dominant school of ethical thought in Ancient Greece, particularly through Plato and Socrates, and has sporadically emerged from time to time since, notably through Nietzsche. Virtue Ethics differs from the other two schools in that it does not consider actions _in any way_ when forming theories of right and wrong. Instead, it considers the root of right and wrong to lie in the motivations, character and thought-patterns of individual moral actors. For the Virtue Ethicist, actions and their consequences are not good or bad - _people_ are good or bad. If their actions have any moral weight at all, it is only to the extent that those actions are in line with their beliefs and character. A good person will, by definition, do good things. But those good things that are done by good people are not good because of their nature or their consequences, they are good _because a good person did them_. Virtue Ethics is about good character being developed by self-reflection, mental discipline, self-improvement and purity of thought - internal processes, not external actions. As well as Ancient Greece, variations on these ideas were and are very popular in Eastern religions and philosophical schools as well, especially Buddhism, which teaches that the moral good comes from as much disconnection as possible from the physical world and developing inner purity instead.

Before we look at criticisms of Virtue Ethics, let's look at how it has taken over from the other schools as the core moral philosophy of the Left. To do that we need to look at Marx and the death of Free Will in Leftist philosophy.

Marxism, at least as written by Marx himself, is a very unusual political philosophy, because unlike almost all others it does not descend from a moral philosophy. Instead it descends from Economics, and claims to be scientific. That the proletariat will overthrow the bourgeoisie is not going to happen because it is a morally good thing (though most Marxists of course believe it is), but because unavoidable, inevitable economic forces will make it happen. Mass forces (economics, class and social structure changes) are greater than the wills and acts of individuals. We live in a society, after all. In fact the thoughts and beliefs of individuals are put down to their class environment - the rich believe right-wing ideas because those ideas say they deserve to be rich, the poor adopt left-wing ideas because those ideas say they do not deserve to be poor. Feminism has similar ideas about stereotypically "male" ideas becoming dominant because men are socially dominant, not because of those ideas necessarily being the best.

Combine this loss of free will with post-modernism, which came to ascribe almost all beliefs and ideas as "social constructs", not results of an individual's free will, and the idea of a link between someone's actions and their responsibility for those actions was all but severed. "Society made me do it" was the call of the progressive from the 1960's onwards, and feminists adopted the ideas of "patriarchy" and "internalised misogyny" - the idea was that people's actions were the results of social forces over which they had no control, or even awareness.

So if people have no control over their actions, then surely they cannot be held responsible for them? In that case, how can we tell who is right or wrong if people's actions (or their consequences) are no longer a guide?

The solution was to adopt Virtue Ethics instead.

From the 1960s onwards Virtue Ethics became a growing influence in left-wing academic circles in a movement known as the "aretaic turn". Once again, the idea that people are right or wrong, not actions, was gaining traction (and besides, the other ideas were clearly the inventions of white bourgeois men and were thus problematic). In a world where your actions were driven by mass social and economic forces, it was _what you believed and how fervently you believed it_ that sorted the moral from the immoral. Identity, not actions. Feels, not reals.

Virtue Ethics is at the core of the SJW movement (whether or not individual activists are fully aware of it). The phrase "the right side of history" is telling, as it reveals the deterministic nature of the SJW outlook. The Leftist belief system will inevitably win out, so you either get with the program (good) or oppose it (evil), in your heart. Actions don't matter (dindu nuffin, after all), whether you are good or bad is determined by what you _are_, not what you _do_. Swallowing the Kool-Aid is a one-way ticket to moral virtue, and you don't even need to leave your basement.

*Criticisms of Virtue Ethics*

In my view, Virtue Ethics went out of fashion for damn good reasons. Criticisms of it include:

- Everyone is the hero of their own story. We tend to believe that we are good people regardless of the evidence. Virtue Ethics allows people to entirely disregard their own actions and their consequences in their assessment of their moral character. Most Virtue Ethics relies on people making honest self-assessments, and people are really fucking bad at that.
- Whilst it may be possible (if you do manage to overcome your ego) to make an assessment as to whether your own character is virtuous, it is much harder to do that to other people, because all you have to go on are their words and actions, which are not theoretically relevant. Is a system of ethics where you cannot reliably judge if someone else is good or bad a useful or coherent one?
- What is the point of an ethical system that does not give guidance as to action, especially if you also have a deterministic worldview that minimises or negates the role of the individual, as Marxists and many Postmodernists do? Nietzsche believed in Virtue Ethics, but he also believed that the will of the individual was the most powerful force in the world. The Left believe in the collective, not the individual.
- Can an ethical system that ignores pain and suffering, and does not judge people's actions, really be either useful or coherent?
- Virtue Ethics is a narcissist's charter - once convinced of your own greatness, everything you do is by definition morally good, even if you are a rapist, a serial killer, or Onision.

Now we can start to understand those strange characteristics of SJW behaviour in a clearer light:

*- Extreme authoritarianism* - if you have goodness in your heart, you have moral authority over those who don't (i.e. those who disagree with you). They are the past anyway - oppressing them makes sure that the will of the virtuous wins over the will of the vicious.

*- Intellectual elitism and a refusal to consider anyone else's perspective* - again, anyone who has different ideas to you is of unsound character by definition, and their ideas are by definition poisonous and must be not just ignored, but preferably censored to protect the minds and good characters of others.

*- An assumption that anyone they disagree with is not only wrong, but evil* - because moral matters come from character, and your character is good, any opposing character is evil. Perfectly logical.

*- "Rules for thee, not for me" style hypocrisy* - anything a "good" person does is "good" by definition. Evil people (everyone who disagrees with you) need rules to keep them in check and guide them towards morality, but those rules are only necessary for those who have not already acheieved moral greatness like yourself. You don't need a guide to action. You are already a good person so you can do whatever you want and it won't affect your status.

*- A fixation on identity politics rather than economic redistribution, jobs, welfare, healthcare, trade unions and ideas associated with the "Old Left"* - because character, not action, is important. It's about _who you are_, not about actually doing things for people. The inevitable forces of economic and social change will sort those things out and bring about the good times, there's no need to actually do anything about them.

*- A drive to "unperson" people they do not approve of, with no forgiveness, regardless of the target's apologies or attempts to put things right* - once someone has been judged as immoral of character, their words and actions are no longer relevant, no matter how "good" they are. Evil resides in the heart, and no amount of action or apology can remove it. Evil must be purged, and those people must be utterly destroyed.

*- An ability to justify anything they say or do, no matter how awful, because they are on the "right side of history"* - this arises from a combination of the determinism of the SJW ideology and the belief that adopting that ideology is all that is necessary to be morally good. What you say or do is all therefore automatically in support of what is good, provided that your beliefs are strong enough. That is all that matters.

*- A tendency not to take any actual action to make the world the way they want, just to express their opinion on it* - the phrase "virtue signalling" is actually much more apt than most people realise. You must show the pureness of your beliefs, and therefore the goodness of your character, because that is the only way other people can realise that you are a good person. What you do isn't relevant (because it doesn't count towards your moral standing, and societal change is inevitable anyway), and so therefore it makes total sense not to actually do anything. Talking about how virtuous you are is quite literally the best possible use of your time.

*- An inexplicable love of Harry fucking Potter *- this requires further explanation:

Harry Potter does awful things. He lies, he cheats, he steals, he breaks and enters, he uses his magic to incapacitate and torment people, often out of petty vengeance. His actions have got countless people killed or made homeless, including many of his own friends, got his home trashed and the delicate social order between wizards and muggles has been smashed to bits, putting mankind in mortal danger. He wilfully ignores rules designed to keep people safe. He is petty, selfish, jealous and vindictive and often motivated by revenge, lust and rage.

But Harry Potter is the hero because he is on The Right Side of History.

Harry Potter is the Chosen One. He is predestined to defeat evil, and therefore anything he does, no matter how awful, no matter how much pain and misery it causes, is justified. Anything he does is good by definition because he is good at heart. Every crime Harry Potter commits is in service to his destiny, and his destiny is the ultimate good. Harry Potter has a pure and virtuous soul, and that is all you need to be morally good, and be the hero.

*Harry Potter is the living embodiment of Virtue Ethics and that is why SJWs are obsessed with him.*



I'll take those autistic ratings now, thanks. But I hope you found that all at least interesting. Take a look at threads like the ResetEra thread, or individuals like Clawshrimpy (who had a massive meltdown over the Trolley Problem), and see if their behaviour makes any more sense with this in mind.


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## gobbogobb (Aug 4, 2019)

Show us on the doll where Harry touched you.


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## ScamL Likely (Aug 4, 2019)

To me the most fascinating part of this is that you're apparently posting on Kiwi Farms from your workplace's PC.


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## Spunt (Aug 4, 2019)

I typed it at work. I didn't post it there.


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## ScamL Likely (Aug 4, 2019)

I see. I considered that possibility too but hoped you weren't that adroit. As unlikely as it was, it would've been more amusing that way.


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## Exigent Circumcisions (Aug 4, 2019)

TLDR if Harry Potter is your primary source of philosophical thought you're a fucking child and will act accordingly.


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## Chaos Theorist (Aug 4, 2019)




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## Rand /pol/ (Aug 4, 2019)

BigRuler said:


> social darwinism


...is for cucks who want to work themselves to death.


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## LyapunovCriterion (Aug 4, 2019)

Spunt said:


> I typed it at work. I didn't post it there.


Literally getting paid to shitpost. You're a top bloke.


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## nonvir_1984 (Aug 5, 2019)

I'll take the bait.
There's another thread where folks have made a lot of good points about deontology and consequentialism. Wikipedia, whmo you quote, notwithstanding, I do not think the characterization of the two theories is quite right.
Both are theories of what makes an action  - or a choice between actions - right or wrong.
Deontology holds that an action or choice is right in so far as they conform with a moral principle or duty (Deon = duty). So, an act will always be right, if it is just. Of course you can get situations where principles conflict  - you caan't both be just and loyal at times. So, you must decide and to do that you need to appeal to another principle. This is where Kant comes in with his categorical imperative. This is the idea that an act or choice is right in so far as you could at the same time will other similarly placed people to make the same choice. It's a bit more detailed that that but that is the outline. Rights are types of deontological concepts.
Consequentialism hold that an act or choice is right in so far as it produces outcomes that are morally desirable  more so than any other action. So, of two actions, the one that produces the most justice is preferred to the one that produces less, even if the act itself is not just. In short, the moral quality of an action is not inherent but dependent totally on the consequences it produces.
Here is a good resource: https://plato.stanford.edu/
I do not agree with your characterization of virtue ethics. To my mind (following Seneca, but the other Ancients too) virtue ethics is reflecting on your life and deciding the kind of person you want to be and the principles and attributes that rational reflection suggests are necessary to lead a life in which your "diamon" flourishes. This is why it is often called "eudiamonic ethics": the contemplation of flourishing. This means that a flourishing person - one who uses reason, compassion and properly ordered desires - will be just at times, but also loyal at other times, merciful and kind at other times, but also firm and resolute.
As for your assertion that SJW are enthralled with virtue ethics, I do not agree. It seems to me their incessant talks of rights, duties, responsibilities - and without critically thinking about them but then being happy to junk entire ways of life or groups of people to advance an agenda place them firmly in the totally fucked up and confused toxic mix of consequentialism and deontology. 
Sorry about typing. I have had to fortify myself with  a couple of stiff bloody marys as I wait to board a small plane piloted by one of our dusty cousins who speaks little English and is wearing shoes held together with duct tape. Fuck only knows why i'm getting on this plane.


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## Spunt (Aug 7, 2019)

@nonvir_1984 I think you make some fair criticisms of what I wrote. I did say that I had to massively oversimplify the concepts I was writing about because most people couldn't fit the history of Western moral philosophy into a very thick book, let alone a shitpost on a stalking forum. I don't disagree with any of the points you make re: deontology or consequentialism, though I think defining those terms super-accurately isn't really necessary to the point I was making, which is that modern progressive belief systems doesn't seem to follow either.

But I did make one mistake that probably does need correction, and that was that I incorrectly seemed to attribute a very narcissistic and isolated version of Virtue Ethics to its ancient Greek progenitors, and in fact I characterised all of Virtue Ethics as being like that. As you pointed out, neither Seneca or the Stoics thought that way, neither do many more modern Virtue Ethic thinkers from Nietzsche onwards.

Virtue Ethics covers a very wide range of beliefs, as do the other two categories I mentioned and many more that I left out entirely. What is core to all of them, however, is the belief that the moral good comes from the character of the individual as its originating point. How that individual _becomes_ good, and how you define that good, of course varies greatly. But the big trap that Virtue Ethics lays for its adherents (and of course other schools lay traps for their own) is that it can allow you to self-define as good, especially if you don't know what you're doing.

In my view, Virtue Ethics is fine if you're a galaxy-brained professional philosopher with the intelligence and self-discipline to take a good hard look at yourself and make critical moral judgements about your own character. The problem is, so far as I'm concerned, that most people are completely incapable of that, and even those that can are unable to do it 24/7. Plus it requires a great deal of study and theoretical knowledge to understand what is involved. Buddhism is an entire religion dedicated to these ideas, and it considers this process of mental and spiritual self-development to be so difficult that it literally takes _several lifetimes_ of study to master. You have to dedicate your life to it, die, reincarnate, and do it again, possibly several times (Hinduism has some similar concepts though it has more of a balance between internal virtue and external action). And even though that requirement is very clear in the literature, that doesn't prevent tribal-tattooed Western shithead hipsters deciding that they're Buddhists now and gloat about how they have achieved enlightenment over the course of a weekend.

What is clear to me in watching the SJW phenomenon is that not only do they follow a very narcissistic brand of Virtue Ethics, in most cases they don't know that they're doing it. If you watch the twitter feeds of the lefty lolcows we follow, their understanding of ethics, and what terms like "right and wrong", "ethical" etc. even mean are hopelessly confused and contradictory. They flail about between statements that imply deontology ("NEVER tolerate X, X is evil") and consequentialism ("X is a necessary sacrifice to achieve Y") and other ideas without any consistency. That's why it's important to watch what they do more than what they say, because it shows the actual thinking that is going on in the background.


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## UQ 770 (Aug 7, 2019)

I think the majority of this debate can be bypassed by just presuming that authoritarianism can manifest in any ideology. Someone who claims to be the ideological expert or morally superior establishes themselves as the authority in that situation. Once established, the attached ideology really does not matter as power dynamics come into play and the leaders will begin to act as they see fit. This can be done out of a conscious desire for power and control, or it can be the unconscious presumption that you are the authority, therefore you know best, and you know best because you are the authority, etc.


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## Spunt (Aug 7, 2019)

That is true, but it's way easier to decide you're the moral authority if you only have to consider your own character rather than the things you've done. You don't have to deny any facts. If you're a deontologist and you break all the rules and neglect all your duties, people can call you out on that with evidence. If you're a consequentialist, people can point out that you've spread misery, pain and despair everywhere you went. In those circumstances, you'd have to deny those facts somehow. As a Virtue Ethicist and a Narcissist, you can just plain ignore the facts. You're on the right side of history. You're the hero. You are good in your heart. The murder spree/sexual assault/genocide doesn't change that.


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## UQ 770 (Aug 7, 2019)

Yeah but you can do that with any ideology. I'm pretty confident in the presumption that very few popular ideological positions preach introspection and self-doubt.


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## Spunt (Aug 7, 2019)

What family of moral code you follow is different from your ideology. For example, you could be a libertarian because:

- You believe that freedom of choice/action is a natural right which it is always immoral to violate (deontology)
- You believe that, on the whole, people are happiest when they are free (consequentialism)
- You believe that adopting a stance of non-interference in the lives of others is the right sort of person to be (virtue ethics)

Can you sense a possible fedora-waving smugness in the last one of those? A "Not my problem that children are starving, I have the right beliefs, fuck you, got mine" sort of smugness? That's the right-wing version of what we are dealing with here.

The Left has had thinkers of all three schools, as well as Marx who claimed that the inevitability of Communism had nothing to do with right or wrong, at all, it was just scientific fact. What I'm arguing is that the Left have shifted from the first two schools to the third, without even noticing themselves for the most part.

Remember Socialism? Most old-school Socialists believe that either equality is inherently good and just (deontology) or that equal outcomes are the best in terms of human happiness (consequentialism). Both those moral structures lead to the impulse of action, i.e. we must take action to make society more equal. But change the moral locus to an internal one, then it's just about believing in equality and being as un-bigoted in your heart as you can, not about going out there and achieving the sort of society you want - a change from judging society, to judging people. I think that shift in moral outlook is what has caused the Left to degenerate into the mess that is the modern Twitter progressive movement.


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## UQ 770 (Aug 7, 2019)

Spunt said:


> - a change from judging society, to judging people.



I'm genuinely curious as to where you draw the distinction between one or the other, since from my perspective I simply do both.



Spunt said:


> I think that shift in moral outlook is what has caused the Left to degenerate into the mess that is the modern Twitter progressive movement.



I think the current state of left-wing politics has more to do with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the general presumption that Marxism and Socialism are now harmless, allowing much more free discussion of the topics. It also probably drew in people who prefer to think of themselves as underdogs, on top of the fact that openly supporting Communism has been a common act of rebelliousness and counterculture dating back to at least the 1930s. The real shift is demographic, not moral. Communism, Socialism, et all were originally championed by middle-to-working class people, with only a few core academics at the top to drive rhetoric. Now, overwhelmingly the people who are likely to identify as Socialists, Communists or Marxists are overwhelmingly middle to upperclass, and a large number of them are on the younger side.

There's a potential arguement to be made that the rhetoric of the modern left wing is some kind of coping mechanism to deal with white guilt, survivor's guilt, and anything generally designated as "priviledged". I'm more inclined to think of it as another outgrowth of this strange wave of emotional behavior we're seeing across the masses, which involves not only politics but has affected other things such as art, aesthetics, humor and entertainment.

The Twitter Progressives owe a lot more to the mechanics of Twitter and the culture surrounding it than they do to any sort of moral thought on the part of the people actively posting there. This has been true of the internet at large for quite some time but Twitter just happened to distill that set of mechanics down the most efficiently. Posting regularly online is habit-forming, and it feeds into a sense of community that generally most people are lacking in their lives. Its not that surprising that people already leaning on one ideology would fall to dogmatism on a site where your thoughts and words at limited to singular 240 character posts.


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## Syaoran Li (Aug 7, 2019)

Locomotive Derangement said:


> I'm genuinely curious as to where you draw the distinction between one or the other, since from my perspective I simply do both.
> 
> 
> 
> ...



There is a lot of merit to this argument, and I think the SJW zeitgeist of the 2010's arose from three major events in our recent history.

Those three things are the collapse of the Soviet Union, the demise of the Religious Right, and the rise of social media in general, with Twitter and Facebook being the worst examples.

The Soviet Union's demise meant that communism and socialism were no longer seen as "evil" or "dangerous" but it was still seen as edgy and rebellious. Consequently, a lot of Millennials who don't really remember the Cold War and have no real idea of just how bad communist regimes actually are starting to flock to leftist ideology. The rise of corporatism and the 2008 Recession and its messy aftermath did not help matters, and now we have a whole generation convinced that capitalism is synonymous with corporatism and oligarchy and that socialism is synonymous with free shit.

The Religious Right was a major force in American politics and culture for most of the 1980's, 1990's, and 2000's, and most Millennials knew of them and their insane virtue ethics all throughout their childhood and adolescent years, and if you lived in a "Bible Belt" area such as the Deep South, the rural Midwest, or Appalachia, it was even worse and more of a looming specter in your culture. The Religious Right was a lot like the SJW's of today with their hatred of fun and their overall moral authoritarian approach. They campaigned against vidya, heavy metal, anime, D&D, Halloween costumes, and Harry Potter books because they were convinced that those things were all gateways to Satanism and the occult.

SJW's are exactly the same, except they like Harry Potter and instead of condemning video games, rock music, and even Halloween costumes as gateways to Satanism and the occult, they condemn these things as gateways to fascism and the new boogeymen of white supremacists and the nebulously defined "Alt-Right"

This lunacy was the absolute worst under the presidency of George W. Bush, which gave us the War on Terror, the rise of the modern surveillance state, and the Great Recession, so there's also that.

If you put the SJW movement into the context of being a Millennial backlash against the Religious Right, particularly the form it took in the Bush years, a lot of their inane stances start to make sense, such as the rather baffling combination of militant Atheism and Islamophilia (they love Islam because those dang dirty Christians oppose Islam) and their intense fetish for anything even remotely seen as "queer" because same-sex marriage was opposed by the Religious Right and the debate got really heated in the Bush years.

Hell, their love of Harry Potter can also tie into the fact that so many Evangelical whackjobs screeched about how the Harry Potter books were a gateway to witchcraft, in addition to the Millennial left being uncultured pseudo-intellectuals.


The third factor is the rise of social media and Web 2.0, which caused a uniquely interactive echo chamber effect and is also exacerbated by the hyper-consolidated and hyper-corporate media landscape of the 2010's.

The key reason as to why the SJW's succeeded where the Religious Right failed is precisely due to the radically different media landscape. If the current media landscape and its unique idiosyncrasies existed in the Bush years, we'd likely see the Religious Right and their Neoconservative handlers in the same position as the SJW Left and the Neoliberal elites.

Instead of panicking about Nazis and the Alt-Right, the MSM would be panicking about radical Islam and the occult and instead of silencing any opposition against intersectional feminism, Critical Race Theory, or accepting the fact that there are only two genders, they would be silencing opposition against the War On Terror and anything remotely anti-Israel, and it's likely that Young Earth Creationism and climate change denial would fill the same niche of socially acceptable pseudo-scientific woo that "We Wuz Kangz" and "Gender is a social construct" are currently filling in this day and age,


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## Ягода (Aug 7, 2019)

sheeit man, I'm neither a philosophy major nor Harry Potter fan, but here are my two cents based on history and being an engineer, trying to keep shit simple:

Industrial revolution brought in many societal changes in the West and as a result contrasted those changes with how fucked Russian pre-revolution society was. Within Russia, it stimulated many thoughts on improvement. A lot of those thoughts, from communism to anarchism were purely theoretical and had little rooting in real life or nature of man. You'll find that most early revolutionaries and theorists were like Marx, mentally jerking off while income came from somewhere else. Post 1917, it was real amateur hour since none of these theories really worked IRL, but created some of the most interesting experiments to date.

I think that information revolution is having similar effect in driving the transformation of established society into something we haven't yet figured out. Plus there are more Karl Marxes who can afford jerking off without worry of going hungry.

The root of SJW are feels, not reason. I don't believe it's something that they logically arrive to, but simply do what feels good and gives them dopamine fix. If there is anything I can say about SJWs, sonabitches are the most illogical faggots on the face of this earth. This explains why they contradict themselves and do just the opposite in different time frames.

In terms of Communism and Soviet socialism, it's been an epic brainwashing, not just Soviet citizens but reaching into far corners of the world. Fucking Comintern prepared some of the early foreign leadership like Kim Il Sen and Ho Chi Ming, with money and support shaping nations. It mutated and throughout the cold war spread a lot of cash to keep soviet interests abroad alive. This means propaganda and social leaders. In short, commie propaganda machine made a lot of these Antifa faggots possible. Do not discount that foreign enemies do not plot US distruction. As political scandals has shown in the past, Russia spreads a whole shitload more cash buying Euro politicians now. I don't know what Chinese do, but I bet they don't sit idle. Soros is country of his own. Basically, a lot of these SJW "grassroot" organizations are nothing but.


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## Otterly (Aug 8, 2019)

A good chunk of the population aren’t able to embrace the idea that life is complex, messy and a million shades of grey. They want it to be simple - right and wrong and they need to be Told what’s right and wrong by their echo chamber. They see life as a simple black white right wrong cause and effect chain.
   Note this is NOT the same as believing in an absolute moral right or wrong. It’s about not thinking deeply enough, not being able to see someone else’s point of view and not being able to think ‘I might be wrong about this, maybe I’ll listen more and have a think.’

This deficit isn’t confined to ‘the uneducated’ by the way as SJWs love to sneer at the proles- our universities encourage this mode of thought and it’s prevalent in the humanities and humanity ‘intellectual’ types.

So several modern plagues have this thought mode as a root.

1. SJW ism. Goodies v baddies. Me right you wrong. Wrong must be destroyed.
2. Antivaxx- needing a simple bogeyman to blame for a complex medical outcome like autism.
3. Death cults like ISIS. Good vs bad. Baddies must be destroyed.

It’s all the result of the same type of thought. That a simple position makes a person totally right and they must destroy the enemy.
  They don’t see politics as a balance of opposing beliefs, where the opposition is human and may have a point once in a while, they see them an inherently bad and to be destroyed. When  you cross that with the authoritarian streak that however many percent of the population have you get rabid SJWs unpersoning people. Four hundred years ago they’d be burning witches, six hundred they’d be flagellating themselves in procession across Europe  rooting out heresy and if they lived in the Middle East they’d be the actual, real morality police.

The type of thought has always been with us. It seems hard wired in.

A really interesting  question would be what makes some people think like this and others not.


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## nonvir_1984 (Aug 9, 2019)

Spunt said:


> 1. In my view, Virtue Ethics is fine if you're a galaxy-brained professional philosopher with the intelligence and self-discipline to take a good hard look at yourself and make critical moral judgements about your own character.
> 
> 2. That's why it's important to watch what they do more than what they say, because it shows the actual thinking that is going on in the background.


Not sure I would agree with either. I think in terms of counter examples here. Blessed Maximillian Kolbe, or the White Rose cannot be understood morally unless we look at their character. Their moral example and goodness is not that they were great consequentialist calculators, fanatical devotees of duty, but had a character that embodied goodness. And I do not think they had galaxy sized brains. The problem is to elaborate why they are good, why they are moral exemplas. 
I agree that SJW actions belie their understanding of morality - but they couch their actions in terms of morality. They seem to me to be moral fanatics. And the fanaticism is, to my mind, not what sort of person do I want to be, but what is, in my self-centred view good for humanity or the duty here. So, I am not sure that virtue is a useful way to understand or describe SJW. They tend to be deeply unreflective. The reflection is the basis of phronesis - practical wisdom - the basis all true virtue, at least to Aristotle and seneca. Moreover, SJW are driven by passions that are uncontrolled and not ordered. And that is another hallmark of virtue. According to the ancients, at least, and many of the moderns.
The question you raise, however, is important - and can be generalised: what sort of moral actor is this or that person? Because we often fail to ask that and seek an answer we come away with hopelessly simplistic labels that do more harm than good: Incel, white supremacist, are the two getting a run at the moment. 
Anyway, thanks for raising this. It has given me necessary relief from the travails of my wanderings to reflect on things that matter a bit more!


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## Spunt (Aug 10, 2019)

Locomotive Derangement said:


> I'm genuinely curious as to where you draw the distinction between one or the other, since from my perspective I simply do both.



I'm sure you do, but these people don't. Notice that SJWs are, about hunting down incorrect thoughts and belief systems, not fixing societal problems. "White Supremacy", "Patriarchy", "Transphobia" etc. etc. are not things that people _do_, they are things that (according to them at least) people _think_, or at the even greater extreme, what they _are_. Consider also the "cancelling" and "deplatforming" of individuals guilty of such wrongthink. 

It's not about what actions their targets take. That's why apologising to them doesn't work, they have judged your character and you have been found wanting. No matter how much money PewDiePie raises for charity or whatever other good things he does, he is and forever will be a Nazi according to ResetEra and similar groups. Nazism has been judged to be part of the essence of Pewdiepie's being, in a sort of Platonic/Aristotelian sense. His actions no longer matter.

This Platonic essentialism explains the weird "original sin" aspects of modern Leftist ideology. If you are white, you are guilty of "whiteness" and oppressing minorities, even if you have never done anything remotely close to oppressing anyone. What you did doesn't matter. If you are white, the oppression isn't in your actions, it is in your nature. You shitlord.

Compare this to the "Old Left". They didn't care what was in your heart, they cared about action, about policy. Equality to them wasn't about purging impure thought, it was about redistributing wealth, trade unions, nationalisation, wage controls. Things you actually left your basement and did. You proved you were a Leftist by doing Leftist things, not by telling everyone just how very Leftist you are but it's ableist to actually ask you to do anything (cf Clawshrimpy).




Locomotive Derangement said:


> I think the current state of left-wing politics has more to do with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the general presumption that Marxism and Socialism are now harmless, allowing much more free discussion of the topics. It also probably drew in people who prefer to think of themselves as underdogs, on top of the fact that openly supporting Communism has been a common act of rebelliousness and counterculture dating back to at least the 1930s. The real shift is demographic, not moral. Communism, Socialism, et all were originally championed by middle-to-working class people, with only a few core academics at the top to drive rhetoric. Now, overwhelmingly the people who are likely to identify as Socialists, Communists or Marxists are overwhelmingly middle to upperclass, and a large number of them are on the younger side.
> 
> There's a potential arguement to be made that the rhetoric of the modern left wing is some kind of coping mechanism to deal with white guilt, survivor's guilt, and anything generally designated as "priviledged". I'm more inclined to think of it as another outgrowth of this strange wave of emotional behavior we're seeing across the masses, which involves not only politics but has affected other things such as art, aesthetics, humor and entertainment.
> 
> The Twitter Progressives owe a lot more to the mechanics of Twitter and the culture surrounding it than they do to any sort of moral thought on the part of the people actively posting there. This has been true of the internet at large for quite some time but Twitter just happened to distill that set of mechanics down the most efficiently. Posting regularly online is habit-forming, and it feeds into a sense of community that generally most people are lacking in their lives. Its not that surprising that people already leaning on one ideology would fall to dogmatism on a site where your thoughts and words at limited to singular 240 character posts.



The mechanics of Social Media, Twitter in particular, I think have played a major role in the shift of thinking. My sperg-out in the OP talked about what I think has changed in the way that leftists think, but not really why. I think everything you've pointed to here is probably correct. Twitter, though, is a particularly interesting case of how altering the structure of how people engage with each other can alter their thinking and behaviour.

The two features of Twitter that define how it is used are the forced brevity of its messages and the ease with which you can block people. 

The former prevents ideas being exchanged in any depth. There was a reason Socialists and Communists used to have a reputation for droning on and on for hours, and that's because those ideas are complex and long-winded. So Twitter discourages that kind of idea, and encourages sound-bite ideas without any explanation. "Pewdiepie is Alt-Right" is a brief, authoritative-sounding statement. It is also complete nonsense, but it takes more than 140/280 characters to explain why it's nonsense. So the simple, broad statement about the "nature" or "character" of an individual or group becomes the easiest form of political discourse, rather than long screeds about how the proletariat can seize the means of production in the era of State Corporatism.

The latter (the ease of blocking people) makes it simple to eliminate all dissenting voices, surrounding yourself with an echo-chamber of people who share your ideas. Of course, with no dissent comes no debate and nothing to talk about, so the only way of creating debate is to turn on your friends and accuse them of not being as ideologically pure as you, leading to purges and purity spirals. And because Twitter makes it impossible to have a proper debate, you just get hot takes and "x is a Nazi" statements.


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## The Final Troondown (Aug 10, 2019)

Honestly I'd see SJWism in terms of heroic modelling
For example since the great liberation movements of early feminism, civil rights etc, these movements and the people involved have been taught as great inspirational stories, much as myths always have within societies 

The problem is you now don't have a society that lynches blacks, or forces gay heroes to be chemically castrated etc
This is a problem because you can't be the next Martin Luther King with nobody to resist against
So they build up everything into literally Hitler because that fits their heroic narrative


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## UQ 770 (Aug 10, 2019)

The Final Troondown said:


> Honestly I'd see SJWism in terms of heroic modelling
> For example since the great liberation movements of early feminism, civil rights etc, these movements and the people involved have been taught as great inspirational stories, much as myths always have within societies
> 
> The problem is you now don't have a society that lynches blacks, or forces gay heroes to be chemically castrated etc
> ...



To my great disappointment, the mundane explanations are often correct. Though I do think there's a feedback loop going on here where what started out as activism has whipped up a bunch of vulnerable people into a frenzy of paranoia. There's also something weird going on where they keep adopting stuff that was initially a joke as part of their movement. Literally Hitler, calling everybody a Nazi, Islamophillia, etc. Its not even that they can't take a joke anymore, it seems like they're incapable of distinguishing mockery from their own movement. 

This might be hard to relate since I'm unsure of how common it is, but have you ever seen a confident person interact with a very impressionable one, and within minutes the impressionable person starts mirroring the confident person without realizing it? This feels to me like some kind of masochistic version of that, where SJW types seems to always be trying to fulfill their own stereotypes. SJ non-combatants tend to be a little more independently minded, or at least more introverted and cooperative. They're also quicker to admit that they don't fully understand their own political beliefs, which while annoying is at least something I can appreciate. It seems to me there's more going on here than just politics, but I'm probably overthinking it.


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## Spunt (Aug 10, 2019)

The Final Troondown said:


> Honestly I'd see SJWism in terms of heroic modelling
> For example since the great liberation movements of early feminism, civil rights etc, these movements and the people involved have been taught as great inspirational stories, much as myths always have within societies
> 
> The problem is you now don't have a society that lynches blacks, or forces gay heroes to be chemically castrated etc
> ...



There's a lot of truth in this. On the Something Awful forums there is a poster called Prester John/Jane, who is a batshit schizophrenic troon, but also the author of a very interesting theory about authoritarians and the way they think, which is basically the "hero narrative" that you describe. Authoritarians want to impose their will on the world, so they adopt a very egotistical self-image of being a warrior for what is "right" and against the system (even if they are really the dominant group in the system). They believe that they will heroically win the battle against evil - and be rewarded with power over others for being the hero.

Now John/Jane meant this to apply just to right-wing authoritarians (they grew up in some kind of apocalyptic fundie cult so it's understandable) but this narrative applies perfectly to much of the Left as well (every so often someone points this out and the entire thread has a 5-page spastic seizure of denial, it's hilarious to watch). Importantly, it provides a meaningful explanation for what is otherwise the bizarre and inexplicable tendency for hardcore leftists to team up with radical Islamists. On the surface they don't have very much in common in terms of their vision of society - just think how far apart they are on topics like women's rights and homosexuality. But once you stop looking at policy and start looking at the inner narratives of the power-hungry authoritarians behind both groups, there is a common narrative, and that is:

"Western society is decadent and corrupt, and must be destroyed. I will be the hero of the battle, and then I will rule the world in the way I think it should be done."

This explains the existence of otherwise dissonant belief systems, such as that of George Galloway, an Islamo-Fascist-Communist fuelled solely by his desire to have power over others. It's also the motivation behind a number of left-wing lolcows, the epitome of which is Phil/ADF, whose pathetic Antifa LARPing and "Australatina" fantasies expose his real motivation - to have power and dominion over his own feifdom and all the luckless peasants therein.


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## UQ 770 (Aug 10, 2019)

Spunt said:


> There's a lot of truth in this. On the Something Awful forums there is a poster called Prester John/Jane, who is a batshit schizophrenic troon, but also the author of a very interesting theory about authoritarians and the way they think, which is basically the "hero narrative" that you describe. Authoritarians want to impose their will on the world, so they adopt a very egotistical self-image of being a warrior for what is "right" and against the system (even if they are really the dominant group in the system). They believe that they will heroically win the battle against evil - and be rewarded with power over others for being the hero.



This occurs sometimes in the case of authoritarians but its not always accurate. Often times authoritarianism can arise from non-ego routes, such as a long time leader becoming jaded, opportunists using the system to cover up corruption and embezzlement, and sometimes its just bureaucratic inertia. There's also authoritarians out there like me who are dead-on-the-inside misanthropes who have just lost the ability to tolerate other people's bullshit.


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## Leonard Helplessness (Apr 7, 2020)

Necroing this because you linked it elsewhere.  You've got it all wrong.  Why should I give a fuck about virtue ethics when I can instantly measure my righteousness by checking my reaction score?

Crowdsourced morality is the future, man.  As long as I'm farming up those sweet likes, retweets, follows, upvotes, and Semper Fidelis ratings I know I'm doing the right thing.  Just don't click the puzzle piece or say anything about consciences getting short-circuited by the dopamine rush of twitter clout or else I'll fucking block you, asshole.


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## Sayon (Apr 8, 2020)

All "Leftism" (an outdated word really, considering  the "Left" that matters is well on the same team as Republicans when it comes to rallying around big business) roots in Abrahamic theology or societies deeply impacted by it. This is the case even if the likes of Richard Dawkins refuses to acknowledge such.


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## Syaoran Li (Apr 8, 2020)

Sayon said:


> All "Leftism" (an outdated word really, considering  the "Left" that matters is well on the same team as Republicans when it comes to rallying around big business) roots in Abrahamic theology or societies deeply impacted by it. This is the case even if the likes of Richard Dawkins refuses to acknowledge such.



True, and oddly enough, the tenets of social conservatism are rooted in Abrahamic theology as well.

The traditionalist concept of "degeneracy" and the social conservative brand of morality are both rooted in the Judaic laws written in Leviticus and Deuteronomy and carried on via Christianity, which makes the antisemitism among guys like Vox Day or Nick Fuentes even more ironic.

The rise of the Abrahamic traditions was a massive game-changer on the grand scheme of things, and who knows how our world would have formed if Christianity and Islam never came to power?

I highly doubt it would be the hyper-scientific utopia that the fedoras tend to believe would happen, but it would definitely be a much different world, especially with politics and culture. It'd probably be completely alien to any of us, really.


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## Sayon (Apr 8, 2020)

For more, read the following:

http://gen.lib.rus.ec/book/index.php?md5=2B0615993DD1BC4EBB1E36CD6534AAF9 (The Theological Origins of Modernity)

http://gen.lib.rus.ec/book/index.php?md5=EE76E41275E64BECB3B7421A7B0D9204 (Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World)


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## Terrorist (Apr 9, 2020)

Good points about ethics. But (no offense) you undermine it with outdated Sargon-era obsession about SJWs. Bluehairs on social media who love Harry Potter don't matter as much as you think, they're just one small symptom of a much larger decline. They have no power except the tiny amount that trickles down from cultural elites who make Harry Potter and similar fiction. Look at the important people instead, it'll tell you a lot more.


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## Webby's Boyfriend (Apr 9, 2020)

In a nutshell, what OP said was just: *SJWs bad.*
Yeah, I can totally agree on this.


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## Syaoran Li (Apr 9, 2020)

Terrorist said:


> Good points about ethics. But (no offense) you undermine it with outdated Sargon-era obsession about SJWs. Bluehairs on social media who love Harry Potter don't matter as much as you think, they're just one small symptom of a much larger decline. They have no power except the tiny amount that trickles down from cultural elites who make Harry Potter and similar fiction. Look at the important people instead, it'll tell you a lot more.



I never got the impression the OP was going with a full anti-SJW stance. At least not in the "SJW's are destroying the West and we must shitpost to stop them" way that Sargon is infamous for.

The OP mainly explained why SJW's think the way they do (and why they often like Harry Potter a lot), and honestly I think SJW's are just an extremely vocal and visible symptom of a larger problem in the Western world deep down.

SJW's are annoying as fuck and I don't like them either, but you are correct that they're not the real problem with why the world sucks these days.

I know you're going to hate reading this, but really SJW's are just shrieking moralizers who are not much different from the fundies of the 80's and 90's, Tipper Gore, or the Temperance Movement in the 19th Century.

You're always going to have moral guardians in the culture every now and then. Socrates was blamed for corrupting the youth of Athens. SJW's are just the newest iteration of them, as infuriating and extremely vocal as they can be sometimes, they're not that different from any other moral guardian save for their access to social media.

Moral guardians are not a new thing and they will always be around in some form or another. All that would happen if the SJW's went away is that pop culture would get slightly better for a while and there would be a lot less dumb hot takes on Twitter until the next moral panic and outrage comes along.

The current flavor of moral guardians right now are just a very visible symptom of a bigger problem in Western society with a deeper root cause and more serious issues underpinning it.

And before you start, the cause of this problem is not a certain ethnic group that includes George Soros, Leon Trotsky, Bernie Sanders, Jesus of Nazareth, King David, Simon Peter, Moses, Ben Shapiro, Albert Einstein, Anne Frank, Barbara Streisand, and Jeff Goldblum among its ranks.

The problem is a very complex one, with a lot of symptoms both major (corporatism) and minor (SJW's)

It's a problem that cannot be solved by any of the proposed solutions most commonly touted by the right, the left, or even the centrists.

I know you're a Christian traditionalist (a Catholic, IIRC), but the genie has been out of the bottle for quite some time. In this digital age, you can't put it back in either. 

Even if you think it's a good idea to implement a traditionalist theocracy, too much time has passed since the death of Christian traditionalism in the mainstream and too much information running counter to it has spread to too many people. We can't rewind, we've gone too far.

Christianity and traditionalism will always have its adherents and will never fully go away, since humans have an intrinsic need for religion of some sort. But I really don't see it gaining major political or cultural power in the developed West in our lifetimes ever again. 

Honestly, the Religious Right was merely the final stand of a movement that had been slowly dying out in the mainstream since before World War II.

Really, the current malaise of the Western world is a multi-faceted problem. The problems are economic over-extension, unchecked corporatism, the failures of neoliberalism and neoconservatism, the corruption of higher academia over the past sixty years, and a fundamentally broken generation of non-starters that emerged as a result of these failures.

Personally, I think the root cause of these problems is ultimately the hubris of the post-WWII West and how so many of them believed in the myth of Whig History to one degree or another. The idea that history and societal progress is a linear timeline forever progressing forward into some utopia on Earth is a crock of  bullshit that briefly gained a second wind after the Cold War ended on a peaceful note, and was decisively proven wrong by 9/11. The Great Recession of the late 2000's was the final nail in the coffin.

Whig History is probably the closest thing to a single ideological root cause for all this. Other ideas like Marxism follow a similar utopian logic, and then the rise of postmodernism in academia and later on, mainstream culture just threw a tanker of gasoline onto the already burning trash fire of utopian idealism.

*TL;DR: *Utopianism was a mistake.


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## Terrorist (Apr 9, 2020)

Syaoran Li said:


> I never got the impression the OP was going with a full anti-SJW stance. At least not in the "SJW's are destroying the West and we must shitpost to stop them" way that Sargon is infamous for.
> 
> The OP mainly explained why SJW's think the way they do (and why they often like Harry Potter a lot), and honestly I think SJW's are just an extremely vocal and visible symptom of a larger problem in the Western world deep down.
> 
> SJW's are annoying as fuck and I don't like them either, but you are correct that they're not the real problem with why the world sucks these days.



I agree with this part but then you went off the rails into territory that had nothing to do with my post (instead my previous posts and what you perceive as my ideology). You really aren't letting it go are you?



Syaoran Li said:


> *TL;DR: *Utopianism was a mistake.



"Christianity ("trad"/"fundie" or otherwise) does not propose a utopia in THIS world created by humans. I also believe a utopia is impossible due to sin and human imperfection. It's one of the problems with secularism, man thinking he can play God and create perfection.



Syaoran Li said:


> You're always going to have moral guardians in the culture every now and then. Socrates was blamed for corrupting the youth of Athens. SJW's are just the newest iteration of them, as infuriating and extremely vocal as they can be sometimes, they're not that different from any other moral guardian save for their access to social media.
> 
> Moral guardians are not a new thing and they will always be around in some form or another. All that would happen if the SJW's went away is that pop culture would get slightly better for a while and there would be a lot less dumb hot takes on Twitter until the next moral panic and outrage comes along.



If moral guardians are omnipresent in history, maybe it's natural and healthy to have them, but the function gets perverted in a bad culture. I don't hate modern moral guardians just for being that (or some shallow grievance with pop culture and twitter beefs), I hate them for the retarded and destructive "morality" they guard.


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## Syaoran Li (Apr 9, 2020)

Terrorist said:


> I agree with this part but then you went off the rails into territory that had nothing to do with my post (instead my previous posts and what you perceive as my ideology). You really aren't letting it go are you?
> 
> 
> 
> ...



1. Well, it's not so much a case of me "not letting it go" but more of getting that particular past disagreement out of the way and taking care of the elephant in the room before we get into some big argument. Maybe I shouldn't have been so long-winded about it. I'll admit tt does kind of detract from the rest of my point.

2. Agreed completely, and I never said Christianity ever proposed the possibility of utopia here on Earth. If anything, the impossibility of utopia in this world is something we both strongly agree on, even if we approach it from different perspectives. I just said that utopian thinking and the hubris of the elites in thinking they can achieve it is what created the mess the Western world is in right now.

3. I'm not entirely sure if it's healthy for moral guardians to exist, but I agree that it's definitely natural. As a general rule, moral guardians tend to be a very cyclical phenomenon.

You usually see these movements gain steam in a time of relative abundance and prosperity, and then they end up losing clout when mass hardship really sets in, but there are exceptions to the rule every now and then.

The Temperance Movement was at its strongest during the industrial economic boom of the early 1900's and they finally got Prohibition passed after WWI ended and America was going through a stock market bubble, the Religious Right had its peak years under Reagan and Clinton and fully died off around the time the Great Recession was starting, SJW's started appearing after the Recession had finally petered out and really gained steam as the economy improved post-2012.

Tellingly, the most successful of the recent moral guardians, the Temperance Movement, had their efforts undone in 1933 during the very height of the Great Depression. The previous moral guardians, the Religious Right, died out just as the economy was entering a major decline in 2008, although it was sort of in decline already after Bush was reelected and the War On Terror had fully gone into a quagmire.

Personally, I think COVID-19 will probably have a similar effect in killing the momentum of the SJW movement in the long run.


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## ToroidalBoat (Apr 9, 2020)

When did soyboys become a thing? 

How did they all wind up looking and acting so alike, from the glasses and beard, to the soy smile and cucked worldview?

(not to mention phrases like "yikes" and "let's unpack this")


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## Pepsi-Cola (Apr 10, 2020)

ToroidalBoat said:


> When did soyboys become a thing?
> 
> How did they all wind up looking and acting so alike, from the glasses and beard, to the soy smile and cucked worldview?
> 
> (not to mention phrases like "yikes" and "let's unpack this")


socially awkward/ugly guys realized that if they attached themselves to thirdwave feminism and left-wing political movements in general (which tends to attract more women than right-wing politics) like some kind of leech their chances of getting pussy increased by 0.1%.

Soyboys have been around since the dawn of third-wave feminism in the mid 90s, just nobody had a name for them then. It's a weasely tactic to get pussy. There's nothing more to it then that.


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## ToroidalBoat (Apr 11, 2020)

Syaoran Li said:


> Utopianism


You can see this linear progress mentality you mentioned even in vidya. In games like SimEarth and the Civilization series, history is presented in such a linear way: from microbes, to sea life, to land life, to stone age intelligent life, to early civilization, to the industrial revolution, to computers and space flight, to an ultimate cosmic achievement like "transcendence" or leaving the planet. The prologue of the book 3001 also has this mentality in describing the Firstborn.

I think before this mentality appeared, people had a more natural timeless view: growth and change still happen, but there's no ever-advancing linear "progress" -- how nature seems to work.



Pepsi-Cola said:


> Soyboys have been around since the dawn of third-wave feminism in the mid 90s, just nobody had a name for them then.


Entries for "soy boy" on Urban Dictionary seem to go back to 2017, so I guess they really became a thing with Trump Derangement Syndrome.


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## Return of the Freaker (Apr 12, 2020)

The whole idea of whig/linear history is complete bullshit. History may see new discoveries and advancements, but is ultimately cyclical. And knowledge can be lost. The movement back towards nationalism and protectionism in response to the failures of neoliberalism is not seen as people reacting to negative circumstances, but as a dangerous resurgance of something that should've been defeated on the inevitable march towards communist space colonies with transgender multiracial child sex workers.

Also, the debate over the Great Man vs. Marxian views of history are not opposed. Both are parts of the actual whole. History is mainly driven by natural and economic circumstances and people and movements reacting/forming as a result. But without the right person at the right place and time, the outcomes could be wildly different.


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## Your Weird Fetish (Apr 13, 2020)

Spunt said:


> - You believe that freedom of choice/action is a natural right which it is always immoral to violate (deontology)
> - You believe that, on the whole, people are happiest when they are free (consequentialism)
> - You believe that adopting a stance of non-interference in the lives of others is the right sort of person to be (virtue ethics)


When your ideology is so perfect every possible school of morality approves of it.


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## BeboRefugee (Apr 14, 2020)

Spunt said:


> That is true, but it's way easier to decide you're the moral authority if you only have to consider your own character rather than the things you've done. You don't have to deny any facts. If you're a deontologist and you break all the rules and neglect all your duties, people can call you out on that with evidence. If you're a consequentialist, people can point out that you've spread misery, pain and despair everywhere you went. In those circumstances, you'd have to deny those facts somehow. As a Virtue Ethicist and a Narcissist, you can just plain ignore the facts. You're on the right side of history. You're the hero. You are good in your heart. The murder spree/sexual assault/genocide doesn't change that.


Now that you mention this it goes to explain morals and actions in media.
In, say, Shakespeare or Les Miserables, characters are constantly presented with moral quanderies. They want to help somebody who is starving but they stole bread or something, and stealing is bad-- therefore which moral abrogation trumps the other?
For a deontologist, it is a genuine dilemma, but also exposes the flaw of the mindset. Is dying a moral death really worth it when a simple breach of the rules could save you? Especially if you're living in a world like the early-modern period, where you were dealt a terrible hand?
For a consequentialist, the answer in these cases is clear. Do evil to prevent greater evil. Though you aren't wholly absolved for your actions. On some level you live with yourself by recognising sometimes, no choice is 'good', but any of the alternatives all ultimately led worse outcomes. In Les Mis I believe the characters usually do the consequentialist action, but they aren't fooling themselves into thinking a society where everyone acted like this would be moral or a nice place to live.
This is why there's so much sperging on the internet about action movies and the villains. Aside from perhaps Captain America, all the protagonists deal with their opponents in a very mercenary way. We've all seen the movies / videogames where the main villain stops the good guy from killing him because "then you'll be just like me". We've just had the MC kill goons with a consequentialist mindset the whole time, don't bust out the deontologist rhetoric now!

Meanwhile, Virtue Ethics has some superficial overlaps with consequentialism, but then dig deeper and it reads like a deep perversion. Life isn't a movie script where people are coded red or blue from the get-go. A child would think anything a protagonist does is the right  move because they're the good guy, but around the time you're 9 you learn to sometimes disagree with a decision, or if the story is deep enough, sometimes the characters are flawed and work to overcome those defects. Virtue Ethics doesn't have that because if you tick the boxes a character never is accountable for their more neurotic actions.
I'm really sorry to bring Star Wars into the thread but I didn't want to see Episode IX either.
The other ideologies could weigh his past decisions and recent decisions, and there may be moral qualms from working with him, but there's at least _some _room to argue that he could be an asset going forward.
What would a Virtue Ethics acolyte do with General Hux? Suppose he wasn't conveniently killed by that other general and managed to group up with the rebels after his turncoat antics. The rebels would have to kill him because he stepped one toe out of line ideologically, and no matter what change of heart he has or actions he takes, he can never be redeemed in the eyes of Virtue Ethics, he has to be purged.
Could you imagine Episode IX ending with the rebels executing Hux for what he did? Why would anyone help these people?




Pepsi-Cola said:


> socially awkward/ugly guys realized that if they attached themselves to thirdwave feminism and left-wing political movements in general (which tends to attract more women than right-wing politics) like some kind of leech their chances of getting pussy increased by 0.1%.
> 
> Soyboys have been around since the dawn of third-wave feminism in the mid 90s, just nobody had a name for them then. It's a weasely tactic to get pussy. There's nothing more to it then that.


It also gives men with unhealthy physiques / diets a way to deflect scrutiny by reframing it all as a trendy lifestyle. Goths, skaters, even some elements of the hipster community had fans... nobody's lusting after a low-test soyboy.
It also gives men an excuse to prolong their adolescence indefinitely.
It also gives men an excuse to not confront the root cause of what makes them unfulfilled in life.

I'm not one of these people that thinks people need to grow up or out of videogames or superhero stuff if it makes them happy... but adults recognise none of those things are productive uses of your time, and a generation ago the nerds obsessed with Star Trek/Wars were (rightly) criticised for their unhealthy escapism. Now instead of tackling the tough unforgiving world head-on and achieve something, too many guys retreat into fantasy, and we're all worse off for that.


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## Spunt (Apr 14, 2020)

Your Weird Fetish said:


> When your ideology is so perfect every possible school of morality approves of it. View attachment 1228412



You missed the point by quite some way there dude.

The point is that _almost any_ ideology can be arrived at by these three means. I used Ancap just as an example, it's not my own personal belief. Let's try another one, non-Marxist Socialism:

Deontology - Inequality is in itself immoral, and therefore there is a moral imperative to correct it wherever it occurs. Redistribution of wealth is therefore always good and something we should always do.
Consequentialism - Inequality leads to suffering, especially as there is a "diminishing returns" aspect to wealth whereby $1000 means nothing to a millionaire but would transform the life of some third-world serf. Therefore redistribution leads to the greatest possible aggregate outcome for society.
Virtue Ethics - Regarding other people as equal is how a good person should think. Your actions should therefore flow from that belief and will probably lead to redistribution of wealth in the real world.

See? The point I was making was that these three ethical schools are not linked to certain ideologies, that you can arrive at almost any ideology regardless of what school of ethics you follow, because that depends on what values you consider "good".


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## Your Weird Fetish (Apr 14, 2020)

It was a joke.


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## Stoneheart (Apr 14, 2020)

i realy dont get all of this... 
these arent ethic codes, its just cunts who like to whine alot.



Spunt said:


> See? The point I was making was that these three ethical schools are not linked to certain ideologies, that you can arrive at almost any ideology regardless of what school of ethics you follow, because that depends on what values you consider "good".


those arent ethic schools, its just gibberish from leftist anglo academics. 
Its a bunch of moral ideas that dont work together.

You can test if those systems can work yourself very easyly. with the essence of modern ethics...

Handle so, daß die Maxime deines Willens jederzeit zugleich als Prinzip einer allgemeinen Gesetzgebung gelten könne. 

the trolley problem is also not a problem, you safe the 5.


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## Spunt (May 19, 2020)

Stoneheart said:


> i realy dont get all of this...
> these arent ethic codes, its just cunts who like to whine alot.
> those arent ethic schools, its just gibberish from leftist anglo academics.
> Its a bunch of moral ideas that dont work together.



It's really sad that the media have fooled people that actually thinking about ethics, morals and politics is an inherently left-wing idea when it absolutely isn't. And the greatest right-wing figure in political philosophy, Friedrich von Hayek, was in fact Austrian. Good books of his to read include "The Road to Serfdom", about how Socialism leads to totalitarianism, and "The Constitution of Liberty", about how freedom is good and can form the basis of a just society. Other good right-leaning ethicists and philosophers to study include Samuel Brittan, Robert Nozick and Francis Fukuyama.

It really bugs me when people refuse to think about what they believe. "I don't need no fancy theories to know what's right, I just know I'm right." If someone who disagreed with you said that, you'd call them a fanatic.



Stoneheart said:


> the trolley problem is also not a problem, you safe the 5.



You'd think so, wouldn't you? I certainly would save the 5, I'm a consequentialist, but you would be really surprised how many people wouldn't.

Let's take a look at Clawshrimpy again, who is an excellent lolcow to study when it comes to confused left-wing ethics. Shrimps is obsessed with an anime called GaoGaiGar, which - full disclosure - I haven't seen myself so I am going on what I have read. There is a piviotal scene where the protagonist panics and freezes in a moment of great danger and becomes suicidal. If he doesn't act the world will literally end. One of the other characters literally slaps some sense into him by smacking him in the face. This brings him to his senses, he does the thing he needs to do, and billions of lives are saved.

Shrimpy insisted, on the SA anime boards, that the character who slapped him was in the wrong, because "abuse is wrong". For Shrimpy, the consequences of this act of "abuse" (the saving of billions of lives) was irrelevant, "abuse" is wrong and you shouldn't do it under any circumstances even if it leads to a literal apocalypse. Classic extreme deontological thinking. He then got into an argument with Harry Brewis (aka reasonably successful Breadtuber Hbomberguy) who tried to convince him that, you know, one slap isn't really much of a trade for billions of lives, but Shrimpy wasn't having it. Brewis then tried to get him to answer the trolley problem, and Shrimpy had a massive meltdown. This is the incident that sparked his feud with Hbomberguy, which has been ongoing for nearly a decade.

Clawshrimpy is one of my favourite lolcows, because his psychology is so weird and fascinating.


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## Lemmingwise (May 19, 2020)

Spunt said:


> It's really sad that the media have fooled people that actually thinking about ethics, morals and politics is an inherently left-wing idea



I don't think this is broadly true. Maybe to some of the naive and the young.

Besides, we see more moralism than morals from the media anyways.


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## D.Va (May 20, 2020)

I tried reading the communist manifesto once and gave up after the twentieth "bourgeoisie". Online marxists either never read the book, or are genuine ret.ards


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## Oglooger (May 20, 2020)

D.Va said:


> I tried reading the communist manifesto once and gave up after the twentieth "bourgeoisie". Online marxists either never read the book, or are genuine ret.ards


The book doesn't even offer solutions, it just cries and cries how things are unfair and that people should be free, because _reasons_.
Even Mein Kampf offered full autistic solutions to problems.


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