Lurker > The_Apologist

PBusted posted...

Why wouldn't it be right?

Because in general, people are the way they are as a result of their upbringing, cultural setting, life experiences, etc. And people have no control over those things. And it's wrong to blame people for things they have no control over.

GranAures posted...

Or they can rightly lay blame on the people spreading bullshit while combating it.

Sometimes that's right, and sometimes not. It depends on whether the person had a genuine opportunity to do otherwise--and sometimes people don't.

GranAures posted...

It don't spread itself, homeslice.

It does, yes. Culture is a virus that uses human hosts to perpetuate itself. It's naive not to notice this.

PBusted posted...

If you rape a child you're going to be both judged socially and legally as culpable, regardless if you were abused as a child yourself, and rightfully so.

Tell me why that's right.

DarkChozoGhost posted...

He's trying to get people to feel that it is an excuse, so that they'll have an easier time spreading their rhetoric.

It is an excuse, yes. And the point of saying this is that it'll be more productive to focus our efforts on combating the ideas instead of blaming the people.

A lot of people don't like this because they'd rather view the world as a simplistic morality play with good guys and bad guys.

PBusted posted...

And you can absolutely still blame people who are a product of their environment.

How so? Do you think it makes sense to blame people for things that are beyond their control?

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As I already pointed out in #101, some groups do have more societal influence in some contexts. But generally speaking, those groups are still being used by the culture as a means of perpetuating itself; they don't have control over the culture.

PBusted posted...

You're still missing that the blame isn't on all men, it's on the men in power that perpetuate the values that benefit them

They perpetuate the values they were raised to perpetuate. In many cases, people aren't culpable for doing that.

PBusted posted...

In any case, if you really want to deflect away blame from any groups so much then by your logic there is nobody to blame for the increase in men killing themselves and male depression.

Yeah, that's an agreeable implication. Why wouldn't I want to accept that?

PBusted posted...

It's simply rising because of evolution. It's on them for killing themselves.

You don't see the contradiction here? You just observed--correctly--that no one is to blame.

DarkChozoGhost posted...

calling misogynists, white supremacists, and child predators products of their environment.

If you were a serious person, I'd ask why they wouldn't be products of their environment, just as everyone else is.

DarkChozoGhost posted...

Don't try to reach some worthless common ground you can agree on.

Already done in #118 and #122. You can wallow in your impotent rage if you want, but some of us are forward thinking and see a potential solution that respects the dignity of all human beings.

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Yep. The equal and opposite error.

PBusted posted...

Culpability isn't tied into prevention so why are you so worried about culpability anyway?

In this case, I think culpability is tied into prevention. In order to prevent the problem, we need to correctly identify its cause. If we're blaming people for the problem, then we're attributing the problem to people's agency. But the actual cause is a combination of social (and presumably some biological) forces that are beyond anyone's agency. Thus, if we're blaming people, then we're misdiagnosing the problem and missing our chance to prevent it.

That all goes for social problems in general. To speak more specifically about the present topic: scapegoating men for social ills isn't just wrong in itself; it also actively obstructs the cause of gender equality by stoking division and animosity.

PBusted posted...

The root cause are the people that push the rhetoric, which is the point of this topic.

That's not the root cause, because there's a further explanation for why those people push that rhetoric. We can trace the causes back through history.

PBusted posted...

Even if that was the case that doesn't change that they're still the ones perpetuating that cycle in the current day.

Agreed. But it does change their culpability, and that's an important aspect of the issue.

flussence posted...

You communicate more like someone who traditionally appears below two clickthroughs of "show more replies" on twitter.

Well I've never used twitter, and I came up on GameFAQs and other message boards, so.

PBusted posted...

In any case, if that's your definition of evolution then it's pointless since you're basically just using it as a synonym for "fate".

Describing something as part of the evolution of society is saying that it does/did happen, not that it must happen. The way society develops is open-ended, as far as I know.

PBusted posted...

And addressing the root causes of the issue are part of learning how to prevent them

Yes, exactly. And if we misdiagnose the root causes (for example, by thinking that people intentionally create and control culture), then we're unlikely to learn how to solve the issue.

flussence posted...

This is a video game website for 13-year-olds

By 'this medium', I meant 'online message boards'.

But I guess I agree that none of us should be here.

PBusted posted...

I mean, with the way you're going, you could excuse anything by saying it's just a product of their environment and nurture and nobody is morally accountable.

Potentially, yes. But even in the extreme case where nobody is at fault for anything, we could still make all the usual distinctions between which things are bad and which are good, and we could still take measures to prevent the bad things from happening.

Would this be an unacceptable scenario?

PBusted posted...

With your logic, men killing themselves due to failing to meet the expectations that his male peers or "superiors" set for him is also just "evolution".

Yes. Everything that happens in human society is part of the evolutionary development of society, just as everything that happens in the world is part of the history of the world. This is entirely mundane, but you seem to be imbuing the term 'evolution' with some sort of special meaning.

PBusted posted...

Also this gish galloping structure

I'm responding to each of your points individually--a standard practice in this medium. If you want to focus on just one point, I guess we can do that. What's the single thread you want to pursue?

PBusted posted...

Do you also think child rapists are absolved if they were abused themselves?

Same answer: The question comes down to how much genuine opportunity a person has to think for themselves and become something more than a product of their circumstances.

PBusted posted...

Your mindset is a terrible enabler one

There's middle ground between enabling misbehavior and blaming people for being dealt a bad hand. Namely, we can take steps to prevent the misbehavior without necessarily holding the person morally accountable for it.

PBusted posted...

your definition of evolution is similarly awful and is detached from reality

You got me on this one. I forgot to attach my perspective to reality.

PBusted posted...

I'd take being a "victim blamer" with your shitty logic and definitions.

The deeper problem is that at the end of the day, your position isn't conducive to developing a solution, because it so badly misunderstands the nature of the problem.

PBusted posted...

And cultures are mostly pushed by the people in power.

Rather, culture uses people in power to perpetuate itself. (I mean, it uses all people to perpetuate itself, but the people in power are--only sometimes, depending on the case--the more efficacious instruments by comparison.)

PBusted posted...

Your logic is like trying to absolve abusive parents for being abusive even if they were raised that way themselves.

In a lot of cases, that does mitigate culpability, yes. The question comes down to how much genuine opportunity a person has to think for themselves and become something more than a product of their circumstances.

PBusted posted...

So white supremacism is just evolution to you?

Yes. And so is the antiracist response. No one even denies this, unless they misunderstand the concept of cultural evolution or something.

PBusted posted...

It literally are primarily male influencers, speakers, and their communities that spread those rhetoric, not female communities.

Because they've been culturally conditioned to do so. In general, people are the products of culture, not the other way around.

PBusted posted...

You think black people, LGBT, and other minorities facing discrimination is a product of evolution and not created by the majority in power?

Yes. The evolution of society created the majority in power as well.

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No one 'created' things as they are now. Evolution happens on its own.

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Yes. Virtually everyone is guilty of this, regardless of gender.

PBusted posted...

Misandry is indeed a bad thing and generally visible in various legal policies but depression and suicide among young men are usually due to being unable to live up to the alpha male standards that men created, the idea that men are losers for being unable to get laid.

Victim blaming is counterproductive. No one intentionally creates and controls the culture--not even men.

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There might not be anything intrinsically unhealthy about wanting and pursuing a relationship. But there's clearly something unhealthy about staking one's sense of self-worth on relationship success. My point is that a lot of people invest sex, romance, relationships, etc with too much importance--more importance than those things deserve.

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Obviously they can. But this doesn't mean they should, or that it'll be good for them.

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Maybe. I suspect that we have more agency than you're implying with regard to what our 'voids' are and whether they need 'filling', but it's a difficult question.

People need to care a lot less about sex, romance, relationships, and all of that. They're far from the most important things in life, and they have no bearing on someone's worth as a person.

Companionship has real value, but it can be found platonically.

In the grand scheme, most of the basic metrics of flourishing have been improving dramatically over the past several centuries and seem to be continuing to improve now. Health, education, and human rights are doing better than ever before, violence and poverty are lower than at any other time in history, etc.

The main thing that isn't improving is the state of the environment. Let's hope that we achieve sustainable development and/or we make it to space before the earth stops supporting human civilization.

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It's probably better to start somewhere more recent and relevant, like Crispin Wright.

Don't forget about the graysexuals.