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Jack Gladney posted:Any chance that "watchmen on the wall" phrase in particular is an attempt to get some Game of Thrones crossover fans? Isaiah 62:6 posted:I have set watchmen upon thy walls, O Jerusalem, which shall never hold their peace day nor night: ye that make mention of the LORD, keep not silence, Its a reference to a Bible passage. The message to an Inner Narrative here is "You are a special person able to see what's coming, a tiny self selected minority, a watchman" and it also sends the message "Because you are a watchman your job is to make as much noise as possible to warn the slumbering city of the impending danger."
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Mar 28, 2015 20:55
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^-- poo poo, makes sense it would be the KJB version they would follow.
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Mar 28, 2015 21:04
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Smudgie Buggler posted:No, some people are freaking out because PJ is describing a different and more unhinged subset of the human race than the word "authoritarian" usually refers to. The taxonomical issue has mostly been dealt with at this point, and anybody still harping on about it can safely be ignored. That wasn't directed at you. Anyway this has been a very engrossing thread to read.
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Mar 28, 2015 23:00
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Probably the best thread in D&D in quite awhile, thanks. Prester John, I have a question / thought for you. Once upon a time I read an excellent book called Obedience to Authority. This got me thinking about an aspect of the studies discussed in the book - that people who appear to be authority figures are treated as authority figures. However, in our (U.S.) government, we assign people to positions of authority through voting. It is my suspicion that this is a reason for high reelection rates among representatives - not necessarily that representatives actually represent their constituency. Many people seem to want to kick everyone out of government each year - excepting their own representative. That representative is doing a Good Job™, but everyone else (even ones that vote the same as theirs) needs to go and things should start fresh. After all, if a person were to vote against someone that they formerly voted for, it might reflect poorly on themselves. Do you feel this might be a 'logic' of your Authoritarians or would they not be so introspective?
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Mar 28, 2015 23:04
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So the difference between the Outer Narrative and the Inner Narrative between a "true believer" and someone posing to take advantage of authoritarian tendency is important, but very subtle. Almost too subtle, really. They are technically both lying, but the reasons and motivations for the lies are different. While that alone seems sufficient, I must admit it's too contextual to work on a theoretical level. ... at least, on its own. The Compaction Cycle, however, is different. I'd imagine only an authoritarian working towards equally authoritarian aims would have any reason for initiating a compaction cycle. To any other political entity, concerned with holding power and keeping it for as long as possible, a compaction cycle runs completely against instinct. Let's focus more on the compaction cycle for a moment. Do we have any other examples of it?
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Mar 28, 2015 23:12
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Morroque posted:Let's focus more on the compaction cycle for a moment. Do we have any other examples of it? Arguably the Tea Party seizing the reigns of the primary caucus. They purge out anyone not sufficiently pure and replace them with people of sufficient purity.In the W administration though, I can find more examples. I remember a general trend of purging there but my google-fu is kind of weak/turning up dead links since I am looking for decade old op-eds and backburner news reports.However, here is one example. quote:WASHINGTON - The White House has ordered the new CIA director, Porter Goss, to purge the agency of officers thought to have been disloyal to President Bush or of leaking damaging information to the media about the conduct of the war in Iraq and the hunt for Osama bin Laden, according to knowledgeable sources. The 2004 CIA was a hotbed of Liberalism and all those wicked Liberals had to go. The very same CIA that lied us into the Iraq War found itself on the wrong side of a Compaction Cycle for perceived disloyalty. Edit: I found another example, although this is sort of indirect. Rather than a dramatic purge that makes headlines, I would expect most of the Compaction Cycle to have happened steadily and slowly. I appear to have found Bill Kristol bragging about doing that very thing. Curiously this is from 2012 and has to do with GOP support of Israel. I think that though indirect, this is excellent evidence of what I am talking about *AND* as a bonus heavily explains the reception Netanyahu recently received during his speech. Whole article is worth reading. Patrick Buchanan posted:“Kristol was treated like royalty and came off as … a Republican Party warlord,” bragging “about how all the hostile elements to Israel inside the Republican Party were purged over the last 30 years — (and) no one (now) dared to question the power of the Israeli lobby.” Prester Jane fucked around with this message at 00:36 on Mar 29, 2015 |
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Mar 29, 2015 00:02
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Evil_Greven posted:Probably the best thread in D&D in quite awhile, thanks. You have a neat idea, but I'm not sure it really ties into what I am describing here. In general if you are asking "Is this too nuanced for Authoritarian's?" or "Does this require too much introspection for Authoritarian'? the answer is almost always "Yes." Authoritarians have no sense of Introspection or nuance. They do not need to rationalize why things are the way they are, they just follow the Narrative.
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Mar 29, 2015 00:08
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Prester John posted:An example of Narrative Convergence. Rand Paul is suddenly going full bigot and spouting talking points from the hardcore religious right. In this video he literally declares that we have a "moral crises" and that we need a "new revival movement in this country" with "tents and everything". He also is declaring that Washington isn't really the answer to anything and should not be relied upon, perfectly in line with what one would expect from the Narrative of all these groups converging as a result of the terrified emotional outpouring of religious Authoritrains reacting to Gay Marriage. Oh yeah, and if the Tent Revival thing doesn't make you go  , then have some background:quote:Most tent revivals in the U.S. have been held by Pentecostal or Holiness Christians who not only adhered to evangelicalism but believed in speaking in tongues (glossolalia), healing the chronically ill, and in some cases resurrecting the dead. As radio and television began to play an increasingly important part in American culture, some preachers such as Oral Roberts, a very successful tent revivalist, made the transition to these media. Such pioneers were the early televangelists.  The thing that really sticks out to me is the Authoritarians/fundies wanting a big knock-down, drag-out brawl. Gay marriage both pre and post DOMA has been slowly happening state by state rather than all at once, and this has meant that the fundies have been denied the big brawl they want. Instead it's been slowly simmering below the surface all the while, and everything is finally reaching the boiling point with the Supreme Court decision in June, since it's obvious to everyone what the result of the Gay Marriage decision is going to be. What makes me just a little bit worried is that regardless of how she arrived at her conclusions, Prester John's predictions so far have been uncannily accurate w/r/t gay marriage. I'd normally just laugh at these people, but Phil Robertson (who basically fits in with this group) recently came out with this "story": A psycho rear end in a top hat with a TV show posted:“I’ll make a bet with you,” Robertson said. “Two guys break into an atheist’s home. He has a little atheist wife and two little atheist daughters. Two guys break into his home and tie him up in a chair and gag him. And then they take his two daughters in front of him and rape both of them and then shoot them and they take his wife and then decapitate her head off in front of him. And then they can look at him and say, ‘Isn’t it great that I don’t have to worry about being judged? Isn’t it great that there’s nothing wrong with this? There’s no right or wrong, now is it dude?’” fade5 fucked around with this message at 01:09 on Mar 29, 2015 |
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Mar 29, 2015 01:02
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Here is a proposal for you guys, I'm interested in feedback on this interpretation. Considering the article above about Bill Kristol being so happy about driving all the "realists" out of the GOP. There was a 30 year Compaction Cycle that drove a Narrative Convergence around support for Israel. Originally, this was just a calculated effort by the (lets call the cynical manipulators NeoCons again because fuckit why not?) NeoCon's to support their hegemonic agenda. They made support for Israel into a Bi-Partisan issue. However, now that the NeoCon's don't have a hand on the wheel anymore the Authoritarians are driving the Narrative of support for Israel and triggered a small RNCE that resulted in the letter to Iran business. (The letter incident had leadership temporarily in the hands of Tom Cotton, a hill to die on, and no real plan behind what the letter was meant to accomplish other than to show a willingness to fight.) Bibi's speech also shows the emotional hallmarks of an RNCE, multiple factions agreeing on a defiant action, a clear Good vs Evil narrative, and a temporary re-arrangement of leadership.  And all this despite AIPAC thinking it all was a reeeeeaaaal bad idea. And they were right, because now there is political cover for the Democratic Party to call Israel to task. But to the Authoritarians none of that matters, because this isn't about winning, its about fighting the AntiChrist (Obama currently, but any President with a D next to their name from here on out will do.) Prester Jane fucked around with this message at 01:15 on Mar 29, 2015 |
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Mar 29, 2015 01:12
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Morroque posted:While I support the basic idea of this, I also wonder if it is somewhat unethical to do so as a matter of principle. All I can say is that getting out is hard. Often Authoritarians like your friend are really just good people that have been so traumatized that in certain circumstances they just obey. Its become a survival instinct. They learned to obey to survive. Now sometimes if the Authoritarian structure around them dissolves naturally getting out is a reasonably painless process, but other times you have to want it. In my experience you have to want it bad enough to override your own survival instinct, and that is a personal hell I can't ask anyone to go through.
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Mar 29, 2015 02:15
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Prester John posted:There was a 30 year Compaction Cycle that drove a Narrative Convergence around support for Israel. Originally, this was just a calculated effort by the (lets call the cynical manipulators NeoCons again because fuckit why not?) NeoCon's to support their hegemonic agenda. They made support for Israel into a Bi-Partisan issue. However, now that the NeoCon's don't have a hand on the wheel anymore the Authoritarians are driving the Narrative of support for Israel and triggered a small RNCE that resulted in the letter to Iran business. (The letter incident had leadership temporarily in the hands of Tom Cotton, a hill to die on, and no real plan behind what the letter was meant to accomplish other than to show a willingness to fight.) While I will not deny the compaction cycle, I don't think it was entirely an issue of pure authoritarian ideology. An example... quote:According to the website LobeLog, the senator who spearheaded the letter, freshman Arkansas Republican Senator Tom Cotton, received nearly $1 million in donations to his election campaign efforts last year from the Emergency Committee for Israel, run by neoconservative pundit Bill Kristol. The Intercept reports Cotton was set to appear at a secretive meeting of weapons contractors the day after sending the letter. It might not be fully compact yet... The line between normal neocon and authoritarian is still a little blurry here. Either there's more overlap between the groups than we can measure, or the authoritarians are playing with the neocon's money and for some reason the neocons don't care. (Uncharacteristic of them, I must say...) Israel is so weird as an issue. It seems everyone everywhere has some opinion on Israel, be it the government itself or the I/P thing, but I never understood why it garnered the fascination that it did. While I won't deny it as a local issue to those actually living in the region, why I must continue hearing about it all the time over here in North America never quite connects. It's not hard to conclude that people talking about Israel are seldom actually talking about Israel; they're using it as a symbol for something else. It's definitely ammunition to load into an Outer Narrative. The question is what exactly the Inner Narrative would be. Aside from something something something Revelation of John (Grand Narrative), I must admit I don't see it beyond that. Even by Inner Narrative standards, it surely must feel like a very distant issue? Morroque fucked around with this message at 02:44 on Mar 29, 2015 |
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Mar 29, 2015 02:40
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quote:received nearly $1 million in donations to his election campaign efforts last year from the Emergency Committee for Israel, run by neoconservative pundit Bill Kristol this is the key bit here, Bill Kristol is a NeoCon and has been the one driving the Compaction Cycle re: Israel. Tom Cotton is an Authoritarian and got a little out of hand. The normal checks and balances process that would have stopped an idiotic idea like this dead in its tracks ten years ago has all been purged out. Now when someone gets an idea, it tends to just be run with uncritically, because no one remembers why this sort of a thing is a bad idea. They really believe it all. Edit: Clarification on the above paragraph. I missed the part where the article said Cotton had been coaxed into writing the letter by Kristol. In that case your critique is valid. I would argue that it is possible that the NeoCons have swam so deeply in their own media bubble for so long that they have gotten wrapped up in Authoritarian Narratives themselves, (sort of like how L. Ron Hubbard kenw he was a scam artist until he spent so many years surrounded by his fawning followers taht he believed his own horeshit) although this argument is a bit of a stretch at this point even for me. Morroque posted:It might not be fully compact yet... The line between normal neocon and authoritarian is still a little blurry here. Either there's more overlap between the groups than we can measure, or the authoritarians are playing with the neocon's money and for some reason the neocons don't care. (Uncharacteristic of them, I must say...) The NeoCon's don't perceive the difference between themselves and the Authoritarians, only the authoritarians make that distinction. Also I'm sure there is a certain cognitive bias against realizing you have lost control of the movement you spent decades building. quote:Israel is so weird as an issue. It seems everyone everywhere has some opinion on Israel, be it the government itself or the I/P thing, but I never understood why it garnered the fascination that it did. While I won't deny it as a local issue to those actually living in the region, why I must continue hearing about it all the time over here in North America never quite connects. It's not hard to conclude that people talking about Israel are seldom actually talking about Israel; they're using it as a symbol for something else. It's definitely ammunition to load into an Outer Narrative. The question is what exactly the Inner Narrative would be. Aside from something something something Revelation of John (Grand Narrative), I must admit I don't see it beyond that. Even by Inner Narrative standards, it surely must feel like a very distant issue? The inner Narrative of Fundies screams support for Israel. Firstly because they are the chosen people, and secondly because they are bait for the "Jesus Trap". The Lord can't come back unless Israel is a nation, and the Lord is coming back in our lifetimes soooooooo :iamafag: Edit: Israel connects with the Inner Narrative strongly enough that Huckabee felt compelled to give his "Call Fire Down from Heaven" speech live from Mt. Carmel. The area behind him is called "The Valley of Armageddon" where the final battle will occur and Huckabee waxes philosophical about that. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=doB6Z_XBL60 Prester Jane fucked around with this message at 03:24 on Mar 29, 2015 |
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Mar 29, 2015 02:53
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Just to toss some more fuel on the fire - Do we see any connection with the Dark Enlightenment/neoreactionaires? It seems to give a facade of intellectualism to Authoritarianism, in a similar to way to futurism's entwining to Fascism. http://www.vocativ.com/culture/uncategorized/dark-enlightenment-creepy-internet-movement-youd-better-take-seriously/ http://www.unknown.nu/futurism/manifesto.html
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Mar 29, 2015 03:32
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I wonder if a good way to blow the mind of an Authoritarian would be just to have the list of traits common to them enter mainstream discourse, then compare him or her to the list. It might generate some useful cognitive dissonance against the belief that he or she is a unique snowflake.
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Mar 29, 2015 03:52
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Hello Sailor posted:I wonder if a good way to blow the mind of an Authoritarian would be just to have the list of traits common to them enter mainstream discourse, then compare him or her to the list. It might generate some useful cognitive dissonance against the belief that he or she is a unique snowflake. I'd imagine a giant pile of denial and they'd see it as an attack on their values, if not outright ignored. People have been calling these people out for years and it just rolls off their shoulders. They think they're better than you, why do they care what you think? Since you're the lesser person, not in on the big secret of ultimate morality, etc. you're obviously a sheep and wrong. But don't worry, the Authoritarian loves you and wants to try to save you and your soul/401K/life/etc. anyways despite your protests.
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Mar 29, 2015 04:44
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Pope Guilty posted:PJ, how do we apply your ideas to create predictions about how Authoritarians will react? Does your theory have predictive power? The marriage equality thread, where she first posted about this, was a pretty great example. March 1st Prester John posted:To the fundamentalist mind legal Gay Marriage is society embracing the most vile, hated act in the entire Bible. Nowhere in the entire fundie worldview is there a sin anywhere near so dangerous as homosexuality. God has destroyed any nation in history that has ever embraced homosexuality, because it is that grievous an insult to His perfect will. By embracing sodomy in such a public way, America is turning its back on God in the most defiant way possible. To the average fundie, this is America signing its own death warrant. Revelations is at hand and the tribulation must begin soon. When I was little I heard over and over that "tolerance of sodomites" would be the very last thing that happened before God's wrath descended down upon the world. It is the final, ultimate, collective defiance of God. Satan's grandest plan to trick us all into forcing God to destroy us. March loving 2nd Mr Ice Cream Glove posted:A Christian activist named Matt McLaughlin has filed a proposed ballot measure with the California Attorney General's office which would ask voters to approve the death penalty for homosexuality.
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Mar 29, 2015 05:38
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LowellDND posted:Just to toss some more fuel on the fire - The difference is that they're powerless tossers without intellect or refinement. They long to be shadowy powers behind the societal trends they purport to document; in reality they're scarred with acne, wearing dusters and lining up for a Magic: The Gathering tournament. You know people are truly worthless when even after the revolution, they wouldn't be worth sticking a bayonet into.
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Mar 29, 2015 14:08
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SedanChair posted:The difference is that they're powerless tossers without intellect or refinement. They long to be shadowy powers behind the societal trends they purport to document; in reality they're scarred with acne, wearing dusters and lining up for a Magic: The Gathering tournament. You know people are truly worthless when even after the revolution, they wouldn't be worth sticking a bayonet into. Hey now. Playing Magic doesn't mean you lack the intellect to pull off a coup. It just means you lack the money or time to do so.
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Mar 29, 2015 15:46
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Yeah it's overwhelmingly really busy poor people that indulge in a time-consuming hobby based around paying money for small pieces of cardboard. What the gently caress are you on about?
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Mar 29, 2015 17:05
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Smudgie Buggler posted:Yeah it's overwhelmingly really busy poor people that indulge in a time-consuming hobby based around paying money for small pieces of cardboard.
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Mar 29, 2015 17:14
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Smudgie Buggler posted:Yeah it's overwhelmingly really busy poor people that indulge in a time-consuming hobby based around paying money for small pieces of cardboard. That was of course the crux of my argument.
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Mar 29, 2015 17:18
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Edit: this re-thinking was prompted mostly by marroque's nature/nurture question and prester's response. I think I misconstrued what Prester meant by loving/abusive as it isn't reflected in the PACE thread.Prester John posted:Either they learn to hide it like I did, or they go insane, or they wind up in miserable poverty/prison. After reviewing the PACE thread I'm backing off consistency as the difference between loving/abusive and abusive/abusive. The PACE environment seems quite structured and the rules looked very clear and consistently enforced. But what struck me in the PACE thread was the adults hyperfocus on what the children thought. Both in shielding them from competing narratives and implanting their own. This was the difference between how I and my sisters were treated vs how our brother was treated. Dad was born in the late 40's to a group that may have been Amish that he left as a teen and had little contact with afterwards. While being an avowed atheist he worked his way to many conclusions about gender that fundamentalist groups generally hold through alternate lines of logic. 1- Income ( not wealth which can be merely inherited by the unworthy ) is the measure of a person's value/intelligence/work ethic/morality. 2 - He who earns the money makes the rules. 3 - Stay at home mothers and children have no income and are thus parasites/worthless. 4 - ( the trap ) There is no point in sending me to college because I will "just get married and waste it". Or educating me at all really but the law requires it. 5 - My brother will be sent to Yale to study business whether he wants to go or not ( he didn't on both counts ) because these are things a man needs to know to succeed. Thus women are judged to be subordinate and inferior not because a sky wizard decreed it to be so but rather because the market, in its cold rationality, finds our education to be a waste of funds. And without education it's very hard to succeed in the free market. So my brother arguably got loving/abusive treatment while the rest of us didn't due to Dad's sexism. Dad had definite ideas about what G should be and actively sought to inculcate them while I was ignored unless I broke a rule or was needed to help with yardwork/etc. I absorbed his rhetoric second hand by listening to him lecture G and sought to live up to it in the hopes of gaining attention/approval which never came. I didn't understand the trap till I was 16 and he found me researching colleges at the kitchen table. He had never intended to send me to college but communicated with me so little that it had never come up. I'd merely heard him lecturing G endlessly on the importance of grades to get into a good college and set myself to that goal. This is wildly different than a daughter getting loving/abusive treatment who would have had any such aspirations actively squashed before she could even form them. It's the difference between racists who thought that black people couldn't learn to read and racists who worried about what would happen if black people were permitted to learn to read. The latter supported laws making it a crime to teach a slave to read while it would never occur to the former to forbid it. Anywho, of the 5 of us my little brother is unquestionably the most hosed up. Loving/abuse is much harder to deal with than neglect/abuse for people who don't live up to the parents ideals. He was born underdeveloped, a fraternal twin so small that doctors hadn't even realized he was there until he came out. He never caught up to his peers physically. He is more artistic than academically inclined and should have been aimed at Julliard, not Yale. The rest of us couldn't impress dad no matter what we did. I was a brain. G's twin sister went the jock route and was the track star of her high school - able to outrun even the boys. But by the same token we couldn't disappoint him either. Our failures went as unremarked as our successes. G, otoh, lived in the constant shadow of parental disappointment/frustration. He wasn't good enough and was told so constantly. It lacks the drama of "you are going to hell for not being properly manly" but has the same general sentiment of the child being inherently wrong and despicable for it. It nurtures the same poisonous hatred of self. McAlister fucked around with this message at 21:36 on Mar 29, 2015 |
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Mar 29, 2015 17:34
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twodot posted:People who play Magic spend all of their time sorting and playing Magic cards and all of their money buying Magic cards. It is a joke. Yep. Most frequently told by magic players. Of which I am one. Been playing since the mid 90s.
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Mar 29, 2015 17:47
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SedanChair posted:That was of course the crux of my argument. Making jokes about nerds on the internet is always going to create defensiveness that distracts from the real point. It's generally better to avoid it just so you don't have to deal with idiot "I PLAY MAGIC AND IM NOT DUMB" arguments that have nothing to do with what you were saying.
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Mar 29, 2015 17:52
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McAlister posted:
Thank you for this, its a really good point. I have been pondering for awhile that there is a strong connection between the behaviours I am describing and a certain type of child abuse, but I wasn't able to articulate it. Your example of loving/abuse where the authority figure is constantly focused on every aspect of the child's life while making unreasonable (and probably impossible) demands for performance is bang on I think. In that vein, let me quote a couple relevant pieces I posted in "Creative Convention" awhile back. These are selections from my Autobiography that I have been working on and off for years. Most of the time, this poo poo is just too painful. I mean, really too painful for me to think about. I can barely tell most of these stories, and whenever I work on this autobiography I always find it too triggering after a couple weeks and have to stop. And I am no stranger to discussing painful things. So with that said, consider both of these pieces to have *MASSIVE* trigger warnings. If you have this sort of abuse in your past, or if you are having a good day, you might want to skip reading these. (Or do a couple hard shots first.) This is a description of the physical abuse I experienced at the school. Prester John posted:
This is a description of the abuse I experienced at home during some of the time we were home schooled under the supervision of the cult, as well as some discussion of how that interacted with my symptoms. The onset of my hallucinations was earlier in life than normal, starting at around age 3. Prester John posted:
Like I said earlier in the thread, I have been staring into the abyss my entire life.
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Mar 29, 2015 23:08
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LowellDND posted:Just to toss some more fuel on the fire - I would say the rough pattern fits here. Thankfully this seems to be just an Internet thing and lacks actual organization, so it will never gain any momentum.
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Mar 30, 2015 02:29
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PJ, are you familiar with Essence of Decision? I feel like you could use some of Allison's points to further refine your theory. Part of his framework deals with how as a whole a country can make decisions that seem insane but are actually rational on the micro level depending on the values/immediate needs/psychology of individual actors within a nation. His ideas also successfully predicted some political events in the 70s. Some of his ideas are incompatible with yours but some are complimentary. I'd love to hear your thoughts on it.
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Mar 30, 2015 03:02
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Xibanya posted:PJ, are you familiar with Essence of Decision? I feel like you could use some of Allison's points to further refine your theory. Part of his framework deals with how as a whole a country can make decisions that seem insane but are actually rational on the micro level depending on the values/immediate needs/psychology of individual actors within a nation. His ideas also successfully predicted some political events in the 70s. Some of his ideas are incompatible with yours but some are complimentary. I'd love to hear your thoughts on it. Never heard of this before, but I will look into this. Thanks. I am working on ways of refining my ideas (the feedback in the thread has been immensely helpful) and I think I will have a better description of an Authoritarian individual soon, or at the very least, I've got an idea I'm currently refining based on running with childhood experiences shaping the image of a both loving and capricious authority figure that you must depend upon. I am strongly considering giving a go at writing a book based around these ideas if I can refine them down enough and find a suitably coherent format to communicate them. Thanks again for all the feedback guys. I welcome more questions or comments, as answering questions really helps me refine a way to communicate my concepts better.
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Mar 30, 2015 03:09
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I also want to add that I have read many of your threads and if you should ever make your way up to Austin, send me a PM as I would love to buy you a drink/beverage of your choice. Lots of goons have met me IRL so they can attest that I am a harmless lady with noodle arms and not a scary craigslist killer. Another thing I am interested in hearing your thoughts on is how many of these types find ambiguity intolerable. Given previous posters' thoughts on the possibility of a harsh authority figure in the formative years of Authoritarians shaping their views, do you think some form of what we call borderline personality disorder may also be at work? I was involved with a borderline person for two years and much of what has been said about inner/outer narratives would apply to that individual as well. To those unfamiliar with that disorder, sufferers have a difficult time seeing in shades of gray - people they know are either evil or saintly. I suffer from ADHD and to some extent I identify with those who suffer dissociation and a need to find patters. I would prefer to be neurotypical, but I do believe that under the guidance of my psychiatrist and my counselor at times my disorder can help me see the world in unique and sometimes valuable ways. Though my disorder has not brought me as much suffering or at least inconvenience as yours, I feel encouraged by how you've turned your life around and also found ways to make your weakness into a strength.
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Mar 30, 2015 04:00
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McAllister, could you tell us more about your childhood? I remember about half a year ago in the Libertarian megathread you mentioned that your dad refused to pay for your university education because of his belief that women should not be educated, and that educating girls was an "inefficiency" forced onto the market by the government, and that you were able to go by using a bank account he had under your name.
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Mar 30, 2015 04:44
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"They just follow the narrative" If that's the case, that means authoritarianism is always an idealism/essentialism. And I think that means that having an opinion of how the world ought to be, always risks falling into an authoritarian mindset. Separately, I don't think the Kochs are doing their thing cynically. I think Charles Koch is a 100% true believer. Bunch of people here disagree with me about that. Had a thread about it a while back. http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3598750
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Mar 30, 2015 06:05
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I'm with you. The Kochs aren't puppet masters. Their father felt he was screwed over by the elitist capitalism of the US and shocked by how nasty Stalinism was so he developed a lot of crazy ideas about what "freedom" means. Also, an engineer, and we know how they tend to play out. The Koch Brothers were just raised in that environment. It worked out super well for them, who are they to question it? Sure, the free market might screw them over when their "100% authentic Thomas Jefferson, OC do not steal!" wine might be fake but, while those sorts of market failures suck, they don't really screw anyone over. It's just a bump in the road.
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Mar 30, 2015 06:11
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First off, I'm really sorry you had to go through so much as a kid, Prester. I pretty much had the opposite experience, growing up in a Wiccan household that went to the Unitarian Universalist church. I had inclusiveness, diversity, all the leftist values extolled as virtues, and I never knew that while I was living in relative harmony that there were kids my age that were still going through this, until I met my friend, let's call him Jay. Jay was my best friend in (public)middle school, we did a lot of hanging out, and he would always want to go to my house for overnight visits. I really didn't get why until my parents had a concert they wanted to go to and they asked Jay's mom if I could stay the night, she said yes. At this point I'd never been to his house before. So I go to his house for the night, and on the TV is Fox News, and she's sitting on the couch. I talk to her for like five minutes, explaining my medications (ADHD, insomnia), making small talk and she says that she and her family go to the Assembly of God, and asks me what church I go to. So I tell her and she starts asking about it because she'd never heard of it before. And as I'm describing this to her, her face scrunches into this disgusted look, and I can tell I should probably shut up. She goes on for another 20 minutes or so about how she takes pity on me for having parents that are raising me in sin and how the "church" I belong to is a front for Satan, and that she's going to add our whole family to her daily prayer list. "Won't you please go with Jay to his youth group on Wednesday?" I told her my athletics run late and there's no way I'd have time. I excuse myself and hang out with him. Two weeks later, Jay tells me that his mom isn't enrolling him in high school. He said he was getting homeschooled, and that we probably wouldn't be able to hang out anymore. At the beginning of 12th grade, he's back. We instantly hit it off again. Turns out she wanted him to avoid all the evolution talk and old earth stuff in bio and geology, respectively, so she made a deal with the principal to get him to graduate (colleges don't like homeschooling as much as a diploma). He also told me that she thought I would turn him from Jesus and didn't want him hanging out with me anymore. So we were only able to hang out at school that last year. Anyway, Jay showed me one of those packets of homeschooling work, and I'm almost positive it was that ACE crap, looking back. He eventually moved 500 miles away from his mom and is a staunch liberal atheist and we chat on Facebook. He still won't talk about his mom or the time he was homeschooled, and I fear a lot worse than what I personally saw was going on behind the scenes. His younger brother and sister ate the bullshit and one is a missionary in South America and the other is going to BJU. She was the closest I ever personally got to this Authoritarian mindset, though at the time I chalked it up to simply religious fundamentalism. Thanks for this thread, it has been an entertaining, if not sometimes painful to read ride that has broadened the connections between certain aspects of society I usually try to pretend don't exist. Definitely write a book, if you can. I'd be right in line to buy. Negative_Kittens fucked around with this message at 06:55 on Mar 30, 2015 |
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Mar 30, 2015 06:52
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Prester John posted:I have been pondering for awhile that there is a strong connection between the behaviours I am describing and a certain type of child abuse ... It's hard to pin down. Your description of your mother fit my first interpretation of what you meant when you said "loving/abusive" much better than the PACE school. I initially envisioned a Jeckyl/Hyde dynamic where they alternated between loving and abusive unpredictably. But at any moment only being one thing. But that didn't capture the dynamic of threading love through the abuse until the two merge which appears to be present both in the structured pace school and your home life as well as my brother's experience while absent from me and my sisters'. Prester John posted:
Thankfully, our abuse was mostly mental. While spanking was frequent, "the rod" was metaphorical rather than physical and the unassisted human hand can't deal that kind of damage. Self-harm was a bigger risk for us. But that's a very different dynamic as things like cutting make you feel better. The small amount of pain triggers endorphins that relieve stress so it's a coping tactic. Prester John posted:Like I said earlier in the thread, I have been staring into the abyss my entire life. First: /Hug Second: Would you say that the severity of the physical punishment was a key ingredient to breaking you? You seem to alternate between implying that your mental issues were caused by the physical/mental abuse and implying that they were there regardless but were worsened by the abuse. And having no personal experience with physical abuse on that scale I can't determine whether to consider it a difference of degree or a difference of kind. Does it make the emotional abuse dynamic worse or does it transform it into an entirely new dynamic?
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Mar 30, 2015 08:34
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BrandorKP posted:"They just follow the narrative" There's a level of internalization and a weird amalgam of self-worship/hatred going on with Authoritarians in comparison to idealists or essentialists. A part of the OP from PJ explains that there's some kind of dependence (on a narrative) at play which causes the leap from one to the other. There's a hypothesis and then there's religion (in the metaphorical sense as a devotional attachment to a hypothesis) and "having an opinion of how the world ought to be" exists in both but is not at risk of becoming Authoritarianism unless there's other indications such as the self-worship/hatred activity. Someone gets to be the star of their own narrative (worship) but then blames themselves for not being pure enough (hatred) while simultaneously insisting that they are pure enough (worship) deep down and just have to basically lose all of the impure blood (hatred) through a purge or privation, etc. That said, would Lee Atwater's famous quote be an example of the formation of an Outer Narrative? The one where he talks about masking racism (N-word in triplicate) behind what would now be called something like "individual liberty" like railing against busing and social programs. The O.N. being the shifted rhetoric about busing and welfare while the I.N. is their personal justifications for racism. Now the convergence of those narratives got forced by Obama being elected in 2008, and suddenly you have this leviathan monster they've been secretly nurturing for 30 years lured out into the sunlight by a no-poo poo-actual-black-man becoming president. That's the world itself attacking their Inner Narratives, and they have been freaking out ever since, like some kind of Demolition Man-style conditioned trigger. It's like they wake up every day and get slapped in the face with that attack on their own personal hero-fantasy, and every day they're feeling that unique embarrassment-rage that comes from being shaken to your soul's core by losing an emotional argument to someone who out-thought you 30 minutes prior. Part of that embarrassment-rage rears its head in this thread, with people who saw themselves in the OP's descriptions, and had to immediately post some short comment about a word's definition or how their willful misinterpretation of the OP's thesis as political rather than behavioral means the OP is a hypocrite since the truth is always in the middle. It isn't as vehement as the Trading Spouses Lady but it's a similar primal scream for the comfort of the narrative - "your discussion makes me uncomfortable in its proximity and I must charge at it headlong in defense of my narrative."
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Mar 30, 2015 09:04
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I think personality cults and groups that exist on the relative political margins are actually quite different even if there is an overlap. One distinct difference is the political alliances formed by those groups that exist outside the worship of that leader. Most cults only exist to support their own structure, but usually don't have higher aspirations and that is a pretty key difference. I can see a "inner and outer narrative" being formed by both but for different purposes. That said, I think the psychology of it is actually rather rational in the sense marginalized political groups that their internal narrative simply will not work in public (for now) and they need a more public friendly narrative. However, are they necessarily insane for holding an opinion on the margins? It may be cynical and if intellectually dishonest but not necessarily pathological. One thing is also that an public narrative that crushes all resistance, a society that is effectively completely totalitarian in discourse is probably not such a good thing either even if you believe all marginal political philosophies should be crushed because the answer has been found. I mean if you look at the examples in this thread: all forms of far-leftism/ISIS/Tea Party/Evangelicals/Russian Separatists etc etc, there is the question of what isn't authoritarian and you end up with socially liberal/liberal democratic/economically free market discourse as the "safe" non-authoritarian form of discourse. In a sense, I think there is a profound confirmation bias.
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Mar 30, 2015 10:02
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Ardennes posted:
This is what the bridge/shield post was about. Everyone tries to put in their best public face. But there is a difference between using it as a bridge and using it as a shield. Bridge people feel cognitive dissonance if you destabilize the side of their bridge that is anchored in public discourse. Shield people don't. This allows shield people to not update their inner beliefs if their outer is soundly disproven and also to continue to express the debunked shield ( your facts are interpreted as lies by my brain ) shamelessly after debunking because the shield is just a shield, not an actual interface to the thought processes of another person. This hugely harms the ability to have productive discourse with a shield person and that is pathological.
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Mar 30, 2015 15:00
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McAlister posted:This is what the bridge/shield post was about. Everyone tries to put in their best public face. But there is a difference between using it as a bridge and using it as a shield. It isn't though, it is just an utter rejection with engagement but that isn't truly pathological, as there is a rational defense to their action. Their "shield" is about an utter rejection of normative discourse, this is an extreme position but nevertheless in that sense they have no desire for a bridge into discourse most likely because that narrative is so much larger and powerful than they are and they know the stakes of actual engagement may mean total defeat if they lose. The more marginalized they are, the higher their stakes for true engagement. That said though in essence when you start talking about movements/countries/populations as pathological then something has gone wrong in your analysis. If you want to disconnect it from politics completely and say there is just an "authoritarian" personality type that exists in all cultures, that is one thing but once you try to make it a political analysis it makes it more tricky.
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Mar 30, 2015 15:25
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Xibanya posted:I also want to add that I have read many of your threads and if you should ever make your way up to Austin, send me a PM as I would love to buy you a drink/beverage of your choice. Lots of goons have met me IRL so they can attest that I am a harmless lady with noodle arms and not a scary craigslist killer. Thanks, next time I come through Austin I will look you up. You needn't worry about scaring me though, I was born in an Amish community and I look the part (About 6 foot tall, broad shouldered, etc). I'll never pass if I transition but I am okay with being a mannish Lesbian, so its all good. I would say first off that Authoritarians have no tolerance for ambiguity where the Narrative is concerned. Zero, zilch, nada. In general they don't have much overall tolerance for ambiguity, but in areas where the Narrative is not perceived to be involved, then ambiguity is to some degree accepted. Often, a discussion about something as meaningless as "Coke vs Pepsi" is held up internally in the group as proof that they have free and open discussions."If we are willing to shout at each other over Coke and then be friends afterwards, it just proves how open minded we are. And all us open minded people have independently come to the exact same conclusion about *aspect of Narrative*" See for example how often Libertarian related outfits try to promote themselves as free and independent thinkers. (Or the ironically named "Liberty" University when it is little more than a hellish 1984 simulator for college kids.) Switching gears, several of the small cults i was involved with when I was in my late teens/early 20's had people involved who have since gone on to be diagnosed as Borderline. Often Borderline individuals in these groups were among the fastest to radicalize and frequently achieved leadership roles of one form or another. I have seen at least one person who has been formally diagnosed Borderline (although fairly mild on the spectrum) remove themselves from the Authoritarian environment and successfully leave it all behind. Having thought about it at some length, the cases I am personally familiar with where people have left Authoritarianism behind have done so through a combination of losing access (sometimes purposefully) to the constant rage fuel required to sustain the mindset (Alex Jones Documentaries and the like in my case) and going through a period of developing introspection while in a non-Authoritarian environment. Prester Jane fucked around with this message at 21:43 on Mar 30, 2015 |
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Mar 30, 2015 21:37
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BrandorKP posted:"They just follow the narrative" I am not familiar enough with the Koch's to really comment, but if they are true believers (Authoritarains), that is quite a bad thing. That means the 1 Billion dollars they have already (publicly) pledged for this election is going to disproportionately wind up in the hands of Authoritarians. Specifically, Authoritarians that are at this moment extremely pissed off that Gay People exist. Prester Jane fucked around with this message at 21:52 on Mar 30, 2015 |
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Mar 30, 2015 21:40
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