CDR: Re: Shunning, lesbians and liberty (was: Re: <nettime> Rebirth of Guilds)
Sampo Syreeni writes:
On Mon, 25 Sep 2000, David Honig wrote:
Exclusion harms you only if it bugs you ---you have to want to be a homosexual atheist boyscout for their exclusion to matter. Non-consensual violence always harms.
I do not agree. I think shunning harms you regardless, if it is organized well enough. Say, you do something which causes your whole town to shun you. Where do you suppose you get food, shelter, whatever from there on? You'd say 'just leave', here, right? What if you do not have the means? You just die?
This certainly gives one good reason not to piss off one's neighbors, eh? This is of course the whole point of shunning. It is a way of getting people to behave in ways that are approved of by their community. If they do not, they risk being left to their own devices for survival. No doubt you will argue that people must be forced to provide for those who offend them, at gunpoint if necessary.
I also think I'm not totally wrong if I claim that even when the physical necessities of life have been taken care of, social contact *can* be essential to the survival of people raised up to be/genetically predisposed to being social or dependent, as modern people tend to be, on the surrounding society for survival. If this holds, shunning someone then becomes precisely as 'violent' as physical violence. Even if psychology isn't the hardest of sciences, it does suggest that isolation does significantly more than simply 'bug' people.
Complete bullshit. In other words, "Violence is whatever I say it is."
No, liberty is absolute, and probably not being exercised if *someone* isn't offended.
I doubt that. Besides, that someone can be offended all s/he wants, s/he just shouldn't be allowed to do anything about it. (Except, of course, what the freedoms of expression/thought/association/whatever guarantee.)
So, people should be allowed the freedom of expression, thought and association, yet they are prohibited from shunning? You simply can't have it both ways. Either one is free to not associate with someone or they are not (in which case, their "freedom of expression and association" are nothing but lip service).
Your suggestion to "play nice" is quaint but irrelevent when talking about sovereign adults.
I don't see it quite like that. In order to have meaningful freedoms one needs to have the possibility of enjoying them.
Even if it requires *forcing other people* to do things they don't want to do.
When someone claiming their rights in so doing limits the rights of others, I tend to resolve the conflict by limiting the rights themselves. In this case, demanding that people indeed 'play nice'.
People must behave exactly as you define "playing nice". Otherwise, you think they must be forced to "play nice". Clearly, you're right and everyone else is wrong and everyone else must be forced to do things your way. "Oh, but if they'll just 'play nice' then everyone is free to do as they please!"
This is precisely why freedom of thought and expression are so important and why they are usually thought of as inalienable - thoughts do not usually just jump out and start killing people. They are easy to protect since conflicts between other people's similar rights rarely arise. This is not the case with liberties involving physical violence, property et cetera.
Except somehow merely refusing to associate with someone is categorized by you as physical violence. And apparently as a shop-owner I cannot exercise rights over *my own property* if what I choose to do is inconvenient for someone else.
Tolerance means tolerating intolerant groups. The latter-day euros (germans and french esp.) don't get it. When you burn nazi literature you have become them.
I agree. But the way I see it, tolerance applies to the intangible side of things, not the physical. I.e. you can hate and insult the somali or the Finnish all you want and webcast as much hate speech as you want but once you start beating people, you're off. Similarly, you have to tolerate the speech but not the actions. In the case of our proverbial lesbians, you have to tolerate their 'deviant ways' and even the occasional kiss, while they have to tolerate you speaking behind their back, insulting them and whatever else nasty you can do with ideas alone. What you do not have to tolerate is a lesbian kissing you (a bit of a bad analogy since you're male), or a shop owner throwing you out for a public display of love.
The shop owner must be *forced* to tolerate behavior he doesn't approve of? What happened to his right to his own property? Must he also allow people to have sex in his shop? Or masturbate? Or curse? Or insult his customers? Or slander the shopkeeper? Or sing loudly? Which set of things must he be forced to accept? And if he throws someone out for engaging in one of these behaviors, which things will cause the Men With Guns to come and arrest *him* for "violating their right of expression"? Since food and the like are necessities of life, isn't anyone free to come in and just take whatever they like from the shop? After all, "What if you do not have the means? You just die?" No, clearly the shopkeeper would be "doing violence" to me if he tried to prevent me from taking what I need to live.
The argument of private vs. public services, I think, is a bad one - in a society in which practically everything can be privately owned it puts the rights of everybody in the hands of those with the dough. Against this background your view of rights being absolute sort of dries up.
Life is unfair. Get over it. Those that depend on others for their well-being or continued survival would do well to be more polite to them. If you live at home with Mommy and Daddy, then you'd better behave as they specify. Likewise, if you must rely on commerce with others for your survival, you'd better think twice about offending them.
Of course one valid attempt at resolving the problem would be to limit private ownership of things somehow essential to the preservation of people's liberties. I think I better not go there, right?
Why not? You're already there. Whatever Sampo thinks is "fair". In Sampo's world, it's okay to force someone to provide service to those who insult them or offend them. I wonder whatever happened to *their* liberties. - GH _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com. Share information about yourself, create your own public profile at http://profiles.msn.com.
On Tue, 26 Sep 2000, Gil Hamilton wrote:
I do not agree. I think shunning harms you regardless, if it is organized well enough. Say, you do something which causes your whole town to shun you. Where do you suppose you get food, shelter, whatever from there on? You'd say 'just leave', here, right? What if you do not have the means? You just die?
This certainly gives one good reason not to piss off one's neighbors, eh?
And if your neighbours are simply malignant? Since when did people need a reason to harm each other?
This is of course the whole point of shunning. It is a way of getting people to behave in ways that are approved of by their community.
Yep. That would be my point. This sounds deceptively like holding someone at a gunpoint. It has little to do with liberty.
becomes precisely as 'violent' as physical violence. Even if psychology isn't the hardest of sciences, it does suggest that isolation does significantly more than simply 'bug' people.
Complete bullshit. In other words, "Violence is whatever I say it is."
Well, just debunk it. The point was, really, that even while I do have great reservations about treating shunning and physical violence as equivalent, I do not accept the notion of specific liberties being absolute, either.
I doubt that. Besides, that someone can be offended all s/he wants, s/he just shouldn't be allowed to do anything about it. (Except, of course, what the freedoms of expression/thought/association/whatever guarantee.)
So, people should be allowed the freedom of expression, thought and association, yet they are prohibited from shunning? You simply can't have it both ways.
Nor do I intend to. The point about shunning is simply about laying out some of the well known problems of thorough libertarianism. I do not think such a wide application of basic freedoms is automatically the best alternative.
Either one is free to not associate with someone or they are not (in which case, their "freedom of expression and association" are nothing but lip service).
There is no essential reason why those freedoms couldn't be defined in some more limited form. It's not like these concepts are black and white.
I don't see it quite like that. In order to have meaningful freedoms one needs to have the possibility of enjoying them.
Even if it requires *forcing other people* to do things they don't want to do.
Perhaps. Just as we force people not to do some things, like engage in physical violence. If we give people full control over all aspects of their association and on any conduct on their property, as you would probably like, you will most likely end up with the same restrictions (or even more), only this time enforced by way of lynch mobs. Look at it this way: if for some reason the survival of each and every human being is conditioned on some part of the population doing thing x, wouldn't you say it is fair to demand that x be done even if the individuals would not want to? It's not a huge leap from this to limiting such 'inalienable' rights as the right to property.
People must behave exactly as you define "playing nice". Otherwise, you think they must be forced to "play nice". Clearly, you're right and everyone else is wrong and everyone else must be forced to do things your way.
Not really. I have no essential trouble giving certain parts of my freedoms away if that gains me the actual possibility of applying the remaining parts. And yes, this is the point where you cue in the talk about expanding governments, Big Brothers and whatnot.
"Oh, but if they'll just 'play nice' then everyone is free to do as they please!"
Free as in having certain freedoms, which in this case have been more narrowly tailored. Besides, I've not quite committed to actually advocating such a model, yet. I'm just asking questions.
Except somehow merely refusing to associate with someone is categorized by you as physical violence. And apparently as a shop-owner I cannot exercise rights over *my own property* if what I choose to do is inconvenient for someone else.
If we, for some reason, have an (in)action, some damage and a strong proof of causality, it is difficult to justify differential treatment based on whether the damage comes from action or inaction. And as for *your own property*, it simply isn't given that 1) all things can/should be privately owned (scarce resources, like the radio spectrum, are a classical example) or 2) owning certain things or using them in certain ways shouldn't perhaps come with extra obligations (like using RF communication with extra responsibilities to minimize interference).
The shop owner must be *forced* to tolerate behavior he doesn't approve of? What happened to his right to his own property? Must he also allow people to have sex in his shop? Or masturbate? Or curse? Or insult his customers? Or slander the shopkeeper? Or sing loudly?
Some of the above, perhaps. If people are indeed dependent on shopping for their survival, I do think their right to live sort of preempts the shop owner's property rights.
Which set of things must he be forced to accept? And if he throws someone out for engaging in one of these behaviors, which things will cause the Men With Guns to come and arrest *him* for "violating their right of expression"?
Those are particulars of the social contract in effect in the corresponding society. They need not be universal.
Since food and the like are necessities of life, isn't anyone free to come in and just take whatever they like from the shop? After all, "What if you do not have the means? You just die?" No, clearly the shopkeeper would be "doing violence" to me if he tried to prevent me from taking what I need to live.
That is an extremely good question. In fact a central one to liberal theory. I most certainly do not have an answer.
Life is unfair. Get over it. Those that depend on others for their well-being or continued survival would do well to be more polite to them.
So, essentially, if somebody can oppress others, why not? Especially if there's profit or fun to it? Again this has little to do with liberty as I understand the concept.
If you live at home with Mommy and Daddy, then you'd better behave as they specify. Likewise, if you must rely on commerce with others for your survival, you'd better think twice about offending them.
But even when you're *real* nice to them, they still have the incentive to exploit you. If you go this way, all the nice talk about liberties and freedom don't matter squat. Could you explain how this differs from fascism?
In Sampo's world, it's okay to force someone to provide service to those who insult them or offend them. I wonder whatever happened to *their* liberties.
They got limited. That is what happens when you live in a society. Whoever said life is fair? Sampo Syreeni <decoy@iki.fi>, aka decoy, student/math/Helsinki university
participants (2)
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Gil Hamilton -
Sampo A Syreeni