I'd like to write a little essay on how culture distorts objectivity towards its own ends, and what those ends actually are about.

But until I get my writing mitts on, here's the piece that reminds me again of idiosyncratic blindness to bias:

Quote:

"Basically, if something is offensive or it makes the viewer feel uncomfortable when they look at it, it shouldn't be done", explained Sol Olving, head of Norway's Kreativt Forum, an association of the country's top advertising agencies. Naked people are wonderful, of course, but they have to be relevant to the product. You could have a naked person advertising shower gel or a cream, but not a woman in a bikini draped across a car." (my bold)

The general idea being that a person can have the above come out of their mouth one second, and the next second be sure to claim:

Quote:

"Both Norway and Denmark are keen to emphasise that their advertising limits do not prevent freedom of speech, stifle creativity or mean that there is never a beautiful naked human form on display."

Clearly, there is a little something sneaking in that is more important than freedom of speech. And yet, it would seem that F.o.S. is being held up as the higher ideal. So what is going on, and more importantly, why?

I think I have some ideas. You?

hey Alex, I'm having trouble understanding the relation between the quoted article and the general problem of culture distorting objectivity to its own ends. Re the latter, do you mean re-interpreting ideas/words such as freedom of speech, slavery, war = peace, and so on? and if so, then is this article an illustration of it? if not, then what the fuck do you mean?! (added 'the fuck', italics, and '?!' for dramatic effect )

Conrad,

I'm playing with the idea of treating culture as a hive-mind of sorts. Realizing that this goes against the idea that groups don't exist, only individuals, I have to make a bold case. Yet I think that for most thinkers in biology, cultural ecology, sociology, etc.., the distinction and demarcation of metaphysics is not held quite as highly as we might do here.

So, what I'm saying is that while the concepts of Freedom of Speech (FoS) and disgust or aesthetic sensibility are clearly understood and ranked in a sort of hierarchy of virtues for the layman; in practice, there is a great deal of flexibility, double-standards, and hypocrisy.

This point has been made before. I want to go one step further and explore the 'why' of it all. Why do we maintain this fluidity of virtue which enables all sorts of blind rationalization?

I think the answer lies in culture. Culture as a stand-in for group strategy in the game of life.

Culture is the force that keeps certain virtues in liquid state, enabling their bastardization and subordination to other ends. Culture is the thread that weaves groups together to accept those plentiful situations where there is a vast gulf between the virtues one claims, and the virtues one pursues.

In the quest for human greatness, this beast must be confronted for what it is, and that means attributing to it the power that it truly has to mold minds.

Yes, the article is an example of war=peace, albeit on a much less important topic. But I think that the corners of the layer of blindness that shadows human wisdom can sometimes be best lifted at the soft edges. Its hard to understand the 'why' of equating war and peace, but I think its a little easier to get a grip on the reasons for subsuming freedom underneath cultural hegemony when we look intensely at an issue that we can face without so much at stake.

Its what the fuck I mean. Capiche?

When you talk about virtues in a liquid state I can't help but think about the viscosity. The resistance to stress of a liquid.
Then I begin to think how solids at one temperature become liquid at a higher temperature. In the case of virtues it might be friction from social pressures causes superheating and melting.
Definitely an interesting study you thought of.

If I understand you, Alex, you are wondering about the relationship between (1) things we believe as evidenced by our actions and (2) the things we merely espouse. In other words, the hypocrisy of our culture (e.g., freedom of speech as an ideal vs. the reality). The West claims to revere freedom, tolerance, peace--but we don't seem to actually believe them. By his words, Pres. Bush almost sounds like a libertarian.

Well yeah SteveL, that just about sums it up. Or rather, is clarifying way of looking at it.

So yes, "the relationship between" what we claim and what we actually can be seen to value through our actions is important. And perhaps these two things exist within a larger set of forces, the understanding of which could shine some light on the disjunction.

I do think its reasonable to claim that "a matching of word and deed is a virtue" and "hypocrisy is not", and leave it at that. But why does it happen so much?

There seems a disproportionate amount of hypocrisy to the amount of intelligence and knowledge available to any given individual or set of individuals, so why would we choose ignorance?

For example, in the article I quoted in the first post, one of the following is likely true:

1. The person speaking doesn't recognize the hypocrisy in what they are saying, and it makes some kind of twisted sense to them because they lack the requisite tools to examine their logic.

2. Nobody has been able to describe the balancing of rights and virtues with respect to Freedom of Speech vs. Cultural Norms in such a way as to be intelligible and digestible, and so misunderstanding is always likely.

3. The person speaking on behalf of the government doesn't mean what they are saying, on some level. They have another agenda which is malign or merely taboo to speak about, and are subtly appealing to that agenda in their audience. IE, the real statement is quite between the lines.

.....

To be candid, the real statement might be this:

"Hatred is necessary".

But also: "You cannot know how much you hate and fear, because that is too painful to live with, considering that part of you wants to be, and is, purely good, so pretend that you do not hate and fear and instead: institute laws and customs to insulate you from this knowledge. Now, forget we ever talked. Signed - The devil inside".

I realize that is quite a leap there, but I'm trying to get at something nebulous far beyond: "Hypocrites are just dumb or corrupt". There's a way that hypocrisy arises that is curious, especially where it arises across whole cultures..........

By coincidence, I have been pondering a similar riddle recently.

Our political culture allegedly treasures freedom, yet I don't believe people actually want or care about freedom. This may partly be because libertarians flog what seems to be an abstract or intellectual ideal that is prima facie irrelevant to the masses. Also, gov't schools tend to eradicate interest in history and ideas after they inculcate statist propaganda into their charges.

And yet--the benefits of freedom are real: greater wealth, more and better and cheaper consumer goods, and peace. People do care about these things, but they don't seem to associate them with freedom. Life without freedom isn't worth living--for real human beings, anyway: craven beetlelike men will subsist under tyranny.

Why aren't Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia, and Maoist China clear illustrations of the dangers of liberty's loss? Possibly because people associate political horror with the trappings of those regimes, and not with what they were actually about.

So, do people want freedom or not?

I think Dostoevsky's Grand Inquisitor was onto something: the masses want security and illusions, not freedom. This doesn't explain the lip service paid to freedom--as you noted.

Why, then, do people pretend to lionize freedom if they don't care about it? One answer: because they are expected to mouth those platitudes even in the absence of sincerity; the culture still values freedom, even if the words have no meaning. I read recently that nobody could define freedom when placed on the spot. Yet, can freedom of speech be difficult to understand? I say yes--consider the confusion that arises in almost any discussion of freedom of speech: many people think speech ought to have limits, and this establishes in their minds (dare I presume) that freedom has a limit that is not based on libertarian principles, and therefore, that even speech is subject to coercive control, and hence is not really free at all. Add political correctness (the danger of hurt feelings, the loss of self-esteem, skepticism about objective truth and ethics) and the foundations of coherent thought and the ideals issuing therefrom are all but swept away. This leaves a person with his desires and little to guide or circumspect them: freedom requires that one respect the rights of others, which isn't appealing to someone with selfish motivations unrestrained by firm principle.

An even greater mystery, perhaps, is why so many Christians act so blatantly against the teachings of their church, when the tenets of their faith confront them continually throughout their lives.

I was confronted by a freedom loving american last night who was pretty much telling me if I find things in america appalling I should leave the country and not whine. Apparently he only likes his freedom and thinks I should not be free to have mine.

I never finished reading the Brothers K. Thats interesting though: miracle, mystery, and authority.

It doesn't take a genius to answer the question: "At what stage of a human's life does the world seem to be filled with miracle, mystery, and authority, and also be good and pleasant and safe?"

In the bosom of God's love, which is to say, at the bosom of one's mother, in the cradle of childhood. A circumstance which informs our thinking for the rest of our lives I would suggest.

Off Topic

I was just talking with a friend on friday about not being able to finish any Dostoevsky. She agreed and proceeded to say how she only finished a book because she had been accidentally commited for four days when she had the book. She was supposed to be treated for acute ulcers.
Of course her Kafka was run over like a bug. The front cover is missing and it has tire tracks on it.

I found "The Brothers K." fantastic for the first 200 pages, then for like 500 pages it gets tedious and difficult to get through, and seemingly pointless and then the last 75 pages or so are brilliant again. it's a very odd book that way and I still wonder whether I just didn't 'get' the middle part.