Shamelessness as a Strategy (2019)
nadiaeghbal.com
nadiaeghbal.com
My personal moral code is that lying is bad; this is an article of faith for me, a central tenet of my religion. I find it incredibly disturbing that shameless lying is increasingly a successful political strategy. Lying has always been associated with politicians, but the shameless aspect seems newer to me.
If you were to talk about shame a few decades ago, one of the first things that would come to mind is sexual morality. Yet, some of the people I admire the most from that time are shameless homosexuals like Larry Kramer, who were incredibly effective advocates not only for AIDS health issues, but also for gay rights in general. And attitudes have indeed shifted, remarkably quickly.
The fact that a strategy is successful tells you more about the incentive structure around the strategy than it does about the person executing the strategy. And the incentive structure around lying in particular is just broken - the most effective liars are celebrated for their skill, the "owning" of their more reality-based opponents. In this incentive environment, it is inevitable that people and institutions will adapt.
I don't have a solution, but I do know that digital media in its current form is not it. When I was younger, I was idealistic about the idea that free and convenient access to the truth would make lie-based narratives harder to sustain, but now we're seeing the opposite. I personally would focus on that rather than the particular mechanism of shame and shamelessness.
I saw a lecture video the other day where the speaker told an anecdote about how he got to work at a fancy place with a person he looked up to. To get a chance at talking to him, he said he'll be in town next week for a conference and they could grab lunch together one day. The conference was a lie, he just didn't want to look so desperate that he'd fly in just for this chance at a lunch discussion. Had he laid his cards bare, maybe the important person would have felt more pressure that if he accepts the lunch invitation then he already owes him something because the guy went through all the trouble to fly in. So by lying, our guy took pressure off the situation and got a relaxed discussion and eventually the gig.
This is just one example. How about negotiation strategies? How about lying implicitly by misrepresenting yourself through clothing or otherwise? How about downplaying your romantic interest a bit, to avoid scaring away or overwhelming your desired partner? How about lying by omission?
It just isn't socially feasible to be always reporting true statements of fact without some hint of "manipulation". I mean even just putting up a poker face while you're very nervous is a form of misrepresenting your inner state of mind. Selling anything, including yourself in a job interview or at a date requires downplaying weaknesses and emphasizing strengths in a very partisan and totally not neutral and balanced factual way.
Outright lying is for losers. You can achieve the same goals and more by just being good at technically not lying or lying in socially acceptable ways. (similar to how crime is for losers and the big players get laws written according to their interests).
People protect their self image with so many patterns like: "I would never X (lie, cheat on a partner,...)" "How about that time when" "well, that doesn't count, it's complicated, I had reasons" etc.
There aren't any hard and fast rules.
What this doesn’t address and what I think parent comment is about it becoming more socially acceptable, even celebrated by some, to lie at a level that previously would trigger a shaming.
Of lying.
We even have a name for that category of lie-- the white lie, or fib-- where the cost of the lie is sufficiently small and self-contained.
> My personal moral code is that lying is bad; this is an article of faith for me, a central tenet of my religion
To which I say it's a big simplification. Rules like this have all sorts of exceptions. If you say you never lie, it's highly likely you're lying or just have weak introspective skills.
In fact, I'd say it's instructive to go back through your examples and apply the parent's dogma. For example, if the dogma is heartfelt, then parent is going around signalling this trait to any potential love interest. That narrows the field, but it's narrowing it to those who find that trait desirable.
I'm not endorsing the dogma-- e.g., it filters out those who would find it desirable if only OP could break the ice first. But that's no reason to find it social unfeasible.
The classic test case is: what if the Nazis are at the door, asking whether you're harboring a Jewish refugee in your attic. I personally would lie in this case, and I believe most Quakers would as well.
A more subtle example: exaggerating the effects of climate change to motivate people to take action, for example claiming that Miami will be underwater in our lifetimes if we don't act. A lot of people I know do fudge the truth in this way, even if it isn't a conscious act of lying. I personally am not in favor, partly as a matter of faith, partly because I don't think it's an effective longer term strategy, but at the same time I think the argument for it is defensible.
BTW, a very good inquiry using that particular example is Dan Ariely's interview on Amanpour: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aLheBtBpZQw ; this example comes up at about 14:10. I can really recommend watching it, as Ariely is really trying to understand human behavior, not just retconning principles to justify his personal positions.
Both lies are used to gain political power by Politicians.
Both lies cause real harm. Saying the lie about Miami while simultaneously saying you can lie about it due to your faith is as wrong as the right saying there is no chance global warming is real.
Insinuating that Obama was born in Kenya was a lie. It's nowhere as hard as you are making it out to be.
That a politician can launch a national campaign on such a lie is proof of the disfunction of our system.
Yes, the Obama example is a lie. But it doesn't tell us what the moral rule is. What are the white lies that can be allowed to keep society peaceful, to avoid panic or public discontent?
Everything is complicated if you wax philosophical. That's not useful right now.
The lies being perpetrated today: Hydroxychloroquine, COVID hoax, the election was stolen, Obama is from Kenya.
These are lies. These are not little white lies to make society work. These are blatant shameless power grabs.
These lies are destabilizing our country, and numerous leaders are shameless about it.
Especially on HN where its basically a either tedious restating of opinions or a way for the idle to trade barbs instead of do anything.
My point was that people don't have a clear view of what lying precisely is when they say they would never lie due to their morals. Your answer was to bring in Trump stuff. I don't care about Trump stuff.
Sure there are overt lies.
My point is everyone lies, but defines socially acceptable lines differently. People who are pathological truth tellers don't get far in life.
If they were easy targets, then my sister, my mother, my sister's husband, my sister's father in law, my uncles, and well over half my family wouldn't believe in those lies.
Half my coworkers and over half of my family believes in these lies. I'm not interested in the philosophical, because I'm literally living in the pit of lies with no way to convince my family or coworkers that they've been mislead.
I'm having to explain to my own mother, why having 20+ people (including people who were on flights from across the country) over for Thanksgiving is a bad idea. I'm having to explain to my sister why we shouldn't go out and eat at restaurants right now. I'm having to explain to my mom why its important to tell everyone at the Thanksgiving party about a certain partygoer's postive Test Result, and that my mom should help contact trace out of duty to this country alone.
And I'm making the calculus of whether or not to expose myself to my own family, who fails to take precautions in this COVID19 era, because they believe in the misinformation. This is my life, and it has been for months.
And now I learn my Sister is leaning anti-vax in addition to this whole shebang, because she doesn't seem to take the COVID19 threat on her own health seriously.
Maybe your situation is different. Maybe you have time to wax philosophical. But I don't. I'm dealing with the surface level, because that's where the problem is.
Your counter argument would probably be that the sources of information you trust are obviously more reliable than the sources of information your family trusts. But my response would be that, if we actually look at track records, no source of information available to any of us is all that trustworthy; all of them will purvey lies and misinformation if it serves their interests. While I suppose one could describe that problem as "lies", it's actually much worse than that simple term suggests: as I have just shown above, not only are we being told lies, but we can't even agree on which things we are being told are lies and which are not, because there are no sources of information that have maintained a good enough track record of trustworthiness to serve as arbiters to such disputes.
The fact is, this person is watching his close family commit a slow-motion trainwreck, and he's asking for ways to prevent it or mitigate it. If they do nothing, it's quite likely that his family or friends will suffer serious health consequences. Theoretical exercises about whether COVID this-or-that is really a lie or not, aren't of any help.
Imagine berating a someone who got lost in the woods and has been lost for days and is starving, for not having the right map or not following the trail, or debating the legitimacy of hiking for recreation at all, instead of feeding him or giving him water.
And my point is that talking about "lies" will not do that. In order to prevent or mitigate the trainwreck, he would have to convince his family to fundamentally change which sources of information they trust. That's a very, very hard thing to do, but telling people that their beliefs are "lies" doesn't help at all; in fact it makes it even harder.
> Imagine berating a someone who got lost in the woods and has been lost for days and is starving, for not having the right map or not following the trail, or debating the legitimacy of hiking for recreation at all, instead of feeding him or giving him water.
False analogy. The person who is lost for days and is starving knows he is starving and needs help; he doesn't have to be convinced to eat. So of course there's no need to change anything fundamental about his beliefs.
The family in question, however, does not know they have a problem. Imagine a person who has been lost for days and is starving, but says they are perfectly fine and refuses to accept food or water, no matter how hard you try, and won't even let you force food or water down their throat but violently attacks you when you try. Now what do you do?
Oh, I'm telling YOU GUYS that these lies are around. Because apparently, unless I bring it up, people forget what's going on in our lives.
I don't talk to my parents through the contexts of lies and misinformation. I'm not that stupid. But when I'm complaining about issues online, I think its more clear if I just point out the lies directly.
You might not say it directly, but if you're trying to convince them, for example, not to celebrate New Year's or not to go to Disney World, you're going to have to say things that amount to telling them that their beliefs are lies. If they were open to any gentler kind of persuasion, you would already have succeeded in talking them out of it. Even if they don't consciously realize that you're telling them their beliefs are lies, subconsciously they will. At least, that's been my experience in situations of this kind.
But identifying what won't work is only marginally better than doing nothing, because we're still no closer to suggesting what will/might work.
Ah, I see. Interesting that the same analogy could have two opposite interpretations!
* Is COVID19 a hoax?
* Is Obama a Muslim from Kenya?
* Will Hydroxychloroquine save you from COVID?
* Are the November 2020 election's results under question?
Quit hiding behind the "unreliable sources" excuse. We have actual issues at play here and ultimately determines the course of my family.
Lets put it this way: do I go to New Years celebration or not with my family? Do I follow them to Disney World next month? How much should I work to convince my family that flying on an airplane is a bad idea? Do I just watch them recklessly endanger their lives to see Mickey Mouse?
What I'm finding is that cutting myself off is counterproductive: they'll continue to perform recklessly and I simply lose my ability to communicate with them. A degree of balance is needed. But the lies perpetrated in the media are not helping me at all.
"Shamelessness as a strategy". The lies perpetrated by those in power have an effect on my family. Politicians are shameless about it: they don't care about the personal effects its having.
I'm responding to this separately because I want to keep this more general point separate from my responses to your more specific questions.
I agree that lies perpetrated in the media are not helping anyone; but my point is that the lies are on all sides--every media source perpetrates lies. To take just the COVID example, even the simple number of how many people have died "of COVID", which is trumpeted in the media all the time, is a lie. The fact is that nobody knows what that number is; it's impossible to find out because the relevant data is not even available for every case. And even if it were, judgment calls would be involved in individual cases as to whether COVID was really the primary cause of death.
One could argue that the number used in the media should be close to the "real" number, because the various errors involved should to some extent offset each other. But nobody makes that argument. The number is simply asserted as fact and no argument is allowed. What's more, if the argument were made, it would be a weak one: once we admit that there are sources of error in the reported "COVID death" number, the best way to allow for them is to estimate excess deaths due to COVID--the deaths that would not have occurred had the person not caught COVID. Nobody has a reliable estimate of that number; the excess death estimates that are available (e.g., the one on the CDC's website [1]) explicitly say that they can't pick out the excess deaths due to COVID from the excess deaths due to other causes, and that they also can't estimate whether some jurisdictions had fewer deaths than expected--which of course would lower the overall excess death count for the country. What information we do have indicates to me that the reported COVID death number for the US, at least, is probably a substantial overestimate. But that's a judgment call about which reasonable people can differ--which in itself is enough to make the media insistence on that number a lie.
Furthermore, even if we have established that some particular death or set of deaths had COVID as a primary cause, that still doesn't tell us why it happened. Did that person not take precautions? Did someone else close to them not take precautions and they didn't allow for that? Was it just bad luck--someone who did take reasonable precautions but got COVID anyway because no precaution is perfect? Or were they, say, in a nursing home which was forced by a state governor to accept COVID infected patients from hospitals even though the nursing home had no way to quarantine those people and keep them separate from the other residents? We have some estimates of how many deaths were due to the latter cause, and they're not small numbers--yet that same state governor got an Emmy award. And for most cases in the US, we don't have that information at all. Which means the overall numbers tell us nothing useful about what to do to prevent further deaths. Certainly lockdowns don't seem to be helping: the areas with the strictest lockdowns also seem to be having the worst spikes in case numbers (although much the same caveats that apply to the death numbers also apply to the case numbers). Yet we are told constantly by the media and public health authorities that lockdowns are necessary.
In short, while it is true that "COVID is a hoax" is a lie, so are many other claims about COVID made by politicians and in the media. And, as you say, the politicians and the media do not care about the impact their lies have on everyone. They only care about the benefit to themselves. Not a good situation.
[1] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm
The only actual issue in play for you personally is COVID, and I've already said I agree with your judgment about the "COVID is a hoax" belief being a lie. My point about "unreliable sources" was not that your particular judgment about COVID was wrong; it was to try to get at the root cause of why your belief is so dramatically different from your family's, and why I think it will be so difficult to get them to change.
However, I am perfectly willing to give specific answers to the specific questions you ask:
> do I go to New Years celebration or not with my family?
Based on what you have described, I wouldn't go if I were in your place. My wife and I have refused to participate in some gatherings with her family for much the same reasons (their belief is not as extreme as "COVID is a hoax", but we are not confident enough in them taking the proper precautions to risk it, particularly as my wife already has some chronic health issues).
> Do I follow them to Disney World next month?
Same answer as above. (Note that in this case, you also have to worry about how reliable other people at Disney World are at taking proper precautions.)
> How much should I work to convince my family that flying on an airplane is a bad idea?
Based on what you've described, unfortunately I think you have very little chance of succeeding between now and next month, so to me it's more a matter of how much risk of permanently alienating your family you are willing to take in an attempt that will almost certainly be futile.
Why do I think you have very little chance of succeeding? Well, that's what my discussion about sources of information was about. You think the problem is to convince your family that "COVID is a hoax" is a lie. But I think your problem is much harder: to convince your family that the sources of information they trust are so unreliable that they should stop trusting them and start trusting the sources of information that you trust instead. Which is going to be a very heavy lift since the sources of information you trust have also told lies.
It's possible that you refusing to go, and explaining why, will move the needle some.
> Do I just watch them recklessly endanger their lives to see Mickey Mouse?
I'm very sorry that you find yourself in such a position, and I'm also very sorry that I don't have any good ideas for how you could stop them between now and next month. Unfortunately, for the reasons I have given above, I don't have any such ideas, other than refusing to go yourself and making sure to explain to them why you are refusing.
- People generally cannot be argued out of positions using facts/logic/science, if they didn't use facts/logic/science to come to that belief in the first place
- As cold/brutal as it may seem, do not set yourself on fire to keep others warm: if the rest of your extended family is beyond saving and won't listen to reason, you must prioritize yourself, your partner, your children, etc.
Now, with that being said, I think it's worth having a final "come to Jesus" type of talk, and adopting a very frank/blunt attitude. I would try something like this: "Mom, I'm not going to argue with you about whether COVID is real or not, how serious the risk is or not. What I want to do, is discuss how to handle your affairs, should you go into the ICU or die. Is your will in order? Which hospital do you want me to take you to (knowing that some are filling/full)? Do you have a burial plot picked out?". Make a last-ditch effort to shock them with the realities of how seriously you are taking things, how matter-of-factly you are preparing to deal with their likely illness or death. Don't make it a political debate, and just tell them, if you do things your way, I want to know how you want me to deal with the aftermath.
It probably won't work, but I would say do your best to make them confront the likely consequences of their choices. And you could also try to show them more articles like these [1], [2], or [3], though I'm sure you've probably already tried.
[1] https://news.yahoo.com/im-doctor-tried-plan-extremely-204117...
[2] https://www.statnews.com/2020/12/31/judging-patients-covid-1...
[3] https://www.nbcnews.com/science/science-news/how-talk-your-f...
The good news is I'm not entirely alone: only about half my family are on that thinking. I can lean with my younger-sister, who is a medical doctor, for the shock-and-awe strategy. She's seen the issues first hand and can describe them in more detail than I ever could.
But these family COVID19 talks are non-trivial to talk about, and require strategy and preparation. Maybe others don't care what happens to their family and just ignore it, but I lack that level of apathy.
Believing this particular set of lies is not, however, a reliable market for mental competence. You yourself note how widespread these ideas are among your family, most of whom are presumptively mentally competent adults.
Any chain of reasoning that leads to a conclusion like "half of the country is mentally incompetent" should be suspect.
In a way, this whole situation is where a whole suite of ideas like postmodernism, epistemological/cultural/moral relativism etc., come home to roost. After all, these are just alternative facts, and what we hear from so-called experts is just, like, their opinion, man.
What I'm saying is: my mother's wellbeing will soon be my direct responsibility.
Obviously I'd rather have my mom take care of herself... Less work for me. But her ability to handle money has appreciably degenerated, and now this COVID thing is proving to me that she is unable to fully analyze the news on her own.
Doing so is basically falling victim to confirmation bias.
I suggest you try to base your decision on other evidence (such as the ability to handle money you mentioned) only.
Hillary Clinton wasn't sick (in 2016). (Noone wants to enjoy this but it clearly wasn't the truth.)
There's no conflict of interest in Bill getting $75 million/year from speaking engagements, at least some of it from foreigners, while his wife is Secretary of State.[1]
Using a private email server for Secretary of State official business is fine.
Deleting 33,000 emails deemed private only by Clinton's staff, after subpoena, is fine.[2]
James Comey is non-partisan; editing "Grossly negligent" for "Extremely careless." The behavor of FBI agents after the 2016 election results further demonstrates their independence (FBI Agents against Trump SMS messages, "Crossfire Hurricane"?).
Bhengazi was not her responsibility. It was really about a YouTube video and not terrorism.[3]
[1] https://bernardgoldberg.com/bill-clintons-million-dollar-spe... [2] https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/trump-impeachment-inquiry/t... [3] https://news.yahoo.com/hillary-clinton-role-benghazi-know-19...
Look, the 2016 election was a lot of fun from the gallery. Neither Trump nor Clinton is a saint. You've got to get over this partisan view of the world. Neither major party will ever deliver to the people on their top issues: health care (D) and fixing immigration (R). Both will constantly agitate their base with baseless outrage: socialism! (R) and racism! (D). If you're deeply engaged on either side you're stuck.
I've got creationist family members. I've got cousins who believe that washing their hair is unhealthy and have greasy, smelly hair. Vegetarian cousins. Etc. etc. Lots of silly issues I don't agree with but frankly, have no effect on our lives aside from maybe an idle curiosity. So I really don't care that they disagree with me.
This COVID thing, it affects us all.
If your mission was to be a false flag to reinforce the notion that conservatives just lie, lie, lie to support their positions, because they are incapable of supporting them with facts and reason, then: well done sir! Very good job.
In any case, I hope you have a happy new year and stay safe.
People truly believe that though, it's why the coronavirus is particularly bad in the US.
Nor is authoritarianism or valuing conformity necessarily a strength during a situation like COVID. South Korea and China both took authoritarian approaches, but they were very different authoritarian approaches with very different human costs. South Korea wasn't welding people inside their homes.
As for valuing conformity, people who valued conformity in the US, for example, were waiting until the government told them to take precautions before they took precautions--which was too late. My wife and I started taking precautions at the end of February, at which time the government and other authorities were still saying that things weren't going to get that bad and everyone should keep traveling and not worry so much. By the time the government started telling people to take precautions, we were already weeks into exponential growth. And then, of course, things swung to the other extreme and we started slamming barn doors shut and barring them after the horses had already left.
The only thing you win with authoritarianism is that you can make the lie true in the public image.
This seems a totally pointless lie. Based on this story, I no longer trust this speaker. And, whatever advantage they thought they were hedging with this lie could have been achieved without it.
I find the choice to lie here to indicate a kind of sociopathy - by the literal definition. Or, at least a complete lack of self-confidence.
With a little thought you can almost always avoid dishonesty. "Hey, I'm thinking of visiting your town next week. Could we get lunch?".
Reputation matters.
This is a complex topic, and I think a little orthogonal to the main point I was making, and also Nadia's essay. For some reason, the story of the Mormon archaeologists such as Thomas Stuart Ferguson comes to mind - they had to struggle to reconcile these two poles (which were in strong tension), and for the most part ended up keeping their cultural ties to the church while feeling a loss of their personal religious faith.
Do you believe truth can be known by humans, or that as a human you should try to be truthful, with truth as an ideal or as an entity that could act as a god/deity but may or may not be able to interact clearly with our world?
I think of truth as an ideal and concept that also could be an entity or related to the essence of an entity, but that knowledge of it is sparse.
I guess you would agree with me that lying is not a long term winning strategy. That doesn't exclude shamelessness, tactically employed.
My grandparents' generation (English, WW2 generation) had very, very, strong social and emotional consequences for doing/not doing their "duty". This was commonly understood - "England expects every man to do his duty" - everyone knew what their duty was and how to do it. This might be as simple as a soldier fighting the enemy (and not running away), a husband supporting his family, a wife staying in an unhappy marriage to raise the children, and so on. Not all Duty was something we'd recognise as a good thing these days. In fact most of it we'd probably see as repressive now, but that's a different discussion.
The consequence of not doing your duty was Shame. Personal, emotional shame, and public shaming by your peers. Publicly not doing your duty could lead to suicide as the only way of escaping the shame.
Somehow between WW2 and here, we completely lost the idea of Duty as a personal responsibility. No-one today knows what their duty is, and would be confused if asked. So it seems kinda fitting that we're also losing the idea of Shame.
You go to the park, you see a kid littering, you tell them to pick up their trash. They tell you to mind your own business, and make YOU feel bad about talking to a child who isn't your own.
The problem with the duty system you mentioned is it needs a lot of buy-in. It's like it's metastable, it works when there's buy-in, but generally it doesn't work. As soon as someone is willing to question it, it falls down. "Who are you to point your finger" is surprisingly effective at reflecting shame.
In the mid-20th century we were still at the height of nationalism. People thought to be English meant you had to do certain things, believe certain authorities. During that century, people started to notice the cracks and it all went.
The collapse of authority and the establishment, yes. But Duty wasn't imposed by an authority. There's a quote that I can't find at the moment with the effect of "no-one can tell you your duty, it's something you must discover for yourself".
totally agree that it's metastable. Which is why I found it fascinating with the Shame connection - shame appears to be metastable too
It seems to me that duty has more to do with collectivist feeling in general than nationalist feeling specifically (which is just one subtype of collectivist feeling). You have duty if you belong to and care about something larger than yourself. I think what's weakened people's sense of duty is the wave after wave of increasing individualism that probably accelerated some time after WWII, and has been going on for as long as I've been alive. A big part of duty is sacrificing your individual interests for another, which has always been hard but is even harder if social attitudes don't give it much support.
I can imagine that having a tangible cultural impact, particularly around our sense of collective ownership and duty.
For example, you shouldn't litter, and if you see someone else doing it, you have to overcome your shyness and point out to the kids their duty. And if you get busted littering, you should feel bad.
The thing that happens when authority breaks down is everything else is questioned too, whether or not that authority had anything to do with creating the pre-existing norms.
http://bostonreview.net/books-ideas/samuel-moyn-rights-dutie...
I'm curious to know if this is really true, or if that aspect of history was written and romanticised by the people with the power to do so, who benefited from that.
It strikes me that there was also a spirit of rebelliousness in the mid-20th century: unionisation and industrial action was also at its peak.
We stopped demanding and respecting it as a society. Started to look at those adhering to such things as stupid and old fashioned, while seeing those who gamed the system as smart and clever.
I've been trying to describe this for quite some time now. I watched the below scenario with my own two eyes happen to two "friends" in about 2001.
Just look at two defendants arrested and in court for a misdemeanor bar fight. One defendant lowers his head, apologizes, pleads guilty, gets time served, anger management, and a permanent violent assault record. The other defendant lawyers up, refuses to take any responsibility, and gets away with community service with no admission of guilt.
The first guy just had his (professional) life ended before it even really began. The second guy got a slap on the wrist. The second guy will be seen as smart and savvy, and the first guy will get made fun of for being a stupid idealist.
Society has taught me that owning up to one's mistakes - and by extension sacrificing to do one's duty - isn't even respected these days, it's actively derided.
I've generally experienced outsized rewards from being selfless. But then I have struggled with defining my ambition, so all rewards seem awesome. I have friends who are laser-focused on an outcome, and for them my "do random good stuff and the universe will give you good stuff back" approach is insane. They're all "fuck everyone else, I need this" and it seems to work for them. But that comes with zero sense of social obligation. And I can't see how society is supposed to work if everyone behaves likes this.
The lack of a (British) sense of Duty in the US is one of the most striking differences I noticed when arriving here. I suspect it’s in part a result of the frontier mentality: “I got mine you go get yours”. This went obsolete almost as soon as the West was Won, yet remains as a somewhat pathological vestige.
In addition, less cosmopolitan areas were less affected by all of the above, which allowed Duty to persist there longer. That was, ironically, the final nail in the coffin for Duty because Duty became déclassé and the mark of a rube.
Many military people do feel a sense of duty, and that's why they serve or served. In a civilian sense, duty would be things like acknowledging that a park is a shared space. If you walk past a piece of garbage and don't pick it up, you have failed in your duty to maintain the shared space even if you aren't the one that dropped it. A contemporary one would be cutting down on CO2 emissions. It's everyone's duty to cut back on that; someone who bought a Hummer would be shamed, as would people who keep their thermostats super high or low. Gossip spreads that you're a clod who's damaging the environment we all share, and you get shamed.
People used to patch potholes in public roads near their house because they felt a duty to keep the neighborhood nice.
These things don't happen anymore. I'm not sure whether that's a good or bad thing, since there were certainly downsides to duty. I don't even know if it's legal to patch potholes in public roads anymore.
Following the rules (when there is no hard penalty for breaking them) and being community-oriented (beyond your own family/church/social circle) are a necessary but not sufficient part of duty.
As another Canadian in the US, I have noticed this difference as well. I have also regrettably noticed Canada becoming more like the US in this regard as time goes on.
Most dog owners follow the rules but there is a small cadre of regulars who don’t. These people are aware of the rules (I know because I’ve sometimes reminded them of their existence) but choose to ignore them.
Now, who cares, right? What does it matter if some people choose not to follow this nanny-state rule?
Well, here’s what: once or twice a month we’re forced to end our walk early when someone has an unruly dog off leash in the direction that we’re walking. We’ve spoken to others who have had the same experience.
The park has a children’s playground and multiple sports fields. Many of the regular users are elderly and they choose this park because the path is paved and level. Not everyone appreciates being approached by an off leash dog.
So the off leash dog owners either don’t care about or don’t comprehend the effect of their actions on the rest of the community. This is a minor example of a lack of duty contributing to a “tragedy of the commons”
waits for American to suggest shooting the shopping trolley to solve the problem
You should not be ashamed to get rid of an animal that threatenes people.
Not only are you asking someone to literally kill an animal, something many people are de-facto not going to be comfortable with, you're knowingly recommending something I'm almost certain you know deep down isn't reasonable because it'd be a heinous overreaction, and it'd result in a mountain of paperwork and legal troubles for the commenter you replied to.
Ridiculous.
Some sense of duty along the lines of “I’ll follow the rules in the park even if it inconveniences me” seems to be missing.
I'd bet on some combination of the above like "nobody has even made a complaint in 20 years because 'everybody knows' such complaints are ignored, but the Good Old Boys responsible for stonewalling back then have since retired".
Filling potholes, OTOH, is a much higher cost thing to do, and so people are more likely to feel that the city should be using the money they have already paid in taxes to do it. (Another aspect is probably also legal risk--if I decide to fill a pothole and do it wrong and someone suffers damage to their car, I might get sued. The city has many ways of mitigating that risk that I, as an individual, do not.)
You have just illustrated why the concept of duty has lost a lot of power: it got misused.
I don't agree with you that it is my duty to cut back on CO2 emissions, because I don't agree with the underlying factual belief that leads you to make that claim. Every claim of duty rests on some underlying factual belief like that: but if we're talking about, say, the duty to pick up litter in a public park because it's a shared space, the underlying factual belief--that the public park is a shared space with shared responsibility for maintenance, and that littering decreases the value of that space--is much easier for everyone, or at least a majority, to agree on.
Of course, that still doesn't guarantee that everyone will agree; someone else upthread described kids in a public park telling him to mind his own business when he pointed out that they were littering. They obviously didn't share his factual belief about what kind of shared space the public park was or the impact of littering on it. But it took quite some time for society to reach the point where that concept of duty was no longer felt. And a major reason why that happened was that people with certain policy agendas tried to manipulate other people's sense of duty based on factual beliefs that weren't as widely accepted or easily supported as the belief about public parks and littering.
Even perfectly dutiful people usually know someone who clearly resents paying taxes (which at the very least encourages others not to fulfil their duties), or has no particular regard for the law beyond not getting caught. Most people know folks who vocally disrespect entire categories of people. Most people know folks who deny climate change, which clearly brings with it duties that would not otherwise exist.
If you don’t really know anyone like that, you’ve got yourself a nice living environment. That’s great - but there’s a genuine concern out there for people who know a range of folks. Even you yourself will be affected by significant externalities whether you recognise them or not.
There are other quotes from US authors that show they understood this concept as well. Though how ingrained it was in general American society, I don't know.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_S._Patton%27s_speech_to...
Thatcherite neoliberalism found an acolyte in Reagan, and ever since in this country, "government is the problem, not the solution". Under such a regime where the state seems to have no real obligations to its citizens, talk of duty seems rather precious.
This is necessitated by the very diversity of individual human proclivities and interests. To refer to the compromise, sacrifice, or diminishment of some of those interests as "oppression" strikes me as selfish and melodramatic, even if it is often regrettable from certain perspectives. Certainly sometimes it is oppression, and it is frequently unfair, but extreme individualism doesn't fix or even address this fundamental tension.
IMHO progressive sophistication of human society goes hand in hand with replacing informal relations and processes (like duty, honor, shame, charity) by formal laws and institutions (rule of law, public welfare).
There are always some necessary compromises of individual liberties, but that can be handled by formal institutios, which generally have limited scope all control mechanisms compared to informal but unchecked power of society.
At the risk of being guilty of the same hyperbole I'm criticizing: While it's true that a society saying you shouldn't murder your neighbor is ostensibly "less free" than one that allows you to determine for yourself whether or not that's a commitment you want to endorse, the resulting society is in many ways much more free in a pragmatic sense.
If we choose to live in a society, then in order for that society to function well, we have to all behave in a manner that allows that society to function well.
If enough people choose not to behave in a manner that allows society to function well, then it stops functioning well.
This is not oppression. Anyone can always choose to leave society and live away from others. But in order for society to function, we need to live with some constraints on our behaviour.
If that's not your definition of "freedom", what is?
No, it isn't. Many duties are defined simply by being necessary in order to have a society where people can gain wealth by specialization and trade and exercise their individual freedom in any meaningful sense. The very medium in which we are having this conversation, which enables people to exercise their individual freedom to say what they think in a way that has never existed before, wouldn't exist without such a society. Neither would a multitude of other benefits that we all take for granted but which most of the humans that have ever lived did not have and could not even conceive of.
What is the mark of a non-free society is particular individuals telling other individuals what their "duty" is and claiming that they are doing so in the name of "society", when in fact they're just doing it for their own individual benefit.
Canada and Nordic countries rank highly in every major freedom index, yet these countries are all known for relatively high tax obligations and comprehensive environmental and climate regulation. No one serious believes all externally-imposed commitments are avoidable or oppressive.
I (and OP) wrote about (informal) duties defined by society as a whole, not (explicit) laws approved and enforced by government. Laws are necessary minimum to have functioning society and can handle these kinds of problems.
I think our sense of Duty started to dissolve sometime in the 80s with the idea that "Greed is good" and then continued in the 90s with a rise in apathy. Both of which are selfish ideas, selfishness is the opposite of Duty.
Along with "Trustworthy, Loyal, Helpful, Friendly, Courteous, Kind, Obedient, Cheerful, Thrifty, Brave, Clean, and Reverent".
As far as cult-ish secular institutions go, Scouts was/is a pretty good one.
---
I totally agree that the normalization/expectation of over-the-top greed is our biggest moral failing since the 80s, as a culture.
CEOs of national enterprise used to make 10x the lowest-paid employee, and were shamed by their network if they tried to cross that threshold.
There are many factors contributing to the new norms, it will take a lot of struggle to move them in the right direction.
I'm inclined to agree - Duty is about serving others, or one's country, not oneself.
I think it's the same discussion. We've lost our sense of community because community is somewhat repressive and we prefer individualism.
The tradeoff between social obligation and individual freedom might not be possible to balance and we might just have to choose one way or the other.
But you might be right, the evolution of morals that we've seen in the last 75 years might have killed the concept of Duty as a byproduct - because we no longer accept the same things as our Duty, nothing replaced them and the whole concept died.
Duty is for soldiers, servants, employees, and in a smaller way citizens (to pay taxes) in a free society. Now, if you ask people hey would you like to support the less economically well off in society, in theory people can vote on that as being a “duty” of government or a civil service, like a conservation corps.
I think you’d be more likely to get an answer from those in the military, police, firefighters, paramedics, ER docs/nurses, etc.
Much like the literal "loudness war", the race to be "outraged", turn every conflict to 11, and the refusal to accept people's shame as a sufficient response, has all but eliminated shame as a useful weapon against public transgressions.
When shame is no longer a meaningful self-regulating mechanism in daily life, you are left with a nihilist Manichean arms race of immediately having both sides of an argument declare the other as an absolute evil - with no middle ground to stand on.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rise_of_Victimhood_Culture...
We need to acknowledge this conflict is inherent in latest modern trends: autonomy vs social control. It's a change of governance happening, hence the change of strategies actually become forced.
Shamelessness is nothing new, but was previously found only in rulers and jesters.
Autonomy vs social control is a modern trend? That's not what totalitarianism was?
What change of governance? From who to who? (Or what to what?)
Shamelessness was previously only found in rulers and jesters? There weren't ordinary people who were assholes, and shameless about it?
But I must say, I cannot take seriously the idea that there is a "victimhood culture". It just screams propaganda/dog-whistling to me.
And "culture war" is such dangerous and empty language that is primarily used by the right to talk about the fact that historically marginalized people today want to be respected and treated as equals under the law.
Historically marginalized people who have been portrayed in the media using stereotypes for decades which has, in my opinion, lead to many well-meaning folks having socially harmful unconscious biases. Historically marginalized people who have been denied wealth.
This rhetoric is holding everyone back. Sure, culture will change as more people are empowered. Please stop calling it a "culture war". I guarantee you, people who believe others are acting as "unreasonable victims" are not good students of history. That loudmouthed girl talking a whole lot of shit on Twitter is angry for a reason, even if you don't think they are "articulating" it right. So is the Trump voter.
Reality is nuanced.
It also resonates with our modern conception of how the state and power centers "repurpose" legitimate mechanisms of dissent and discourse for their own ends.
For example, the "respectability politics" of the civil rights era gave way to the toxic myths of the "welfare queen" and "Ebonics" - if we can demonstrate you're not respectable, we can deny your rights.
If you've heard about "the War on Christmas" or "the most discriminated against people in America are straight white men", then you know there absolutely is power in declaring yourself a victim in 21st century America.
Was that because outraged moralist scolds just pushed marriage too hard, ending the use of shame generally? Not at all. The rising legal freedom and economic prosperity of women, a change that had been ongoing since the suffragettes, finally allowed women to survive on their own. A measure of independence from the shamers was what made the difference. But at the same time, the Moral Majority increased their social power. The use of shame certainly continued.
For example, a lot of the post-Nixon reforms were built on shared moral standards and shame. An obvious example is presidential candidates publishing their tax returns. It was never a law, but it would have been shameful for a person wanting to run the government to conceal their financial interests.
Even now you still see shame being effective. Trump uses it extensively on the right, for example. Today he's trying to shame a governor into quitting. And as Campbell and Manning would surely agree, it's still effective on the left, even if it takes very different targets than it would have in 1950.
I think what's changed is not the amount or effectiveness of the shame, but changes in who people feel accountable to. Political polarization is one part of that. Rising inequality [1] is another; the 2008 financial crisis made it clear that the ultra-rich were basically unaccountable no matter the damage they caused.
And a big one comes from technology. At least from the age of Hearst through the 1990s, getting heard on a national scale required a fair bit of capital. Newspapers, magazines, radio, TV: all of them required significant, long-lived organizations. And the bigger the audience, the more capital was at stake. That drove a sort of natural centrism. But between cable and dropping production costs, that changed. The 1990s saw the introduction of reality TV, which eventually gave us both Trump and Paris Hilton. The Internet drove that further.
Now that the capital required to be heard on a national scale is approximately $0, it's very easy for people to build niche audiences. And with a sufficiently large niche audience, there's little material incentive to care what other people think. Now anybody can be a reality TV star all on their own, just as long as they keep getting people to smash that like button. In that light, we can look at Trump as the first influencer president.
[1] https://datatrekresearch.com/us-income-inequality-latest-dat...
This can be a good thing when it allows a good talent to be expressed, orit can be terrible if it allows a broken person to spread destruction upon others. In lesser bad examples, it can mean glorifying excessive selfish activities which take away from society in general.
But what particularly bothers me as an outcome of the last 5 years of US political shamelessness is how it has lowered the standard of discourse to literal schoolground name calling and blatant, even absurd fabrication of lies. I honestly don't know if that can ever be undone.
The framers believed without individual virtue it didn't matter what kind of system(s) you put in place as they would be by-passed. James Madison:
> I have observed, that gentlemen suppose, that the general legislature will do every mischief they possibly can, and that they will omit to do every thing good which they are authorised to do. If this were a reasonable supposition, their objections would be good. I consider it reasonable to conclude, that they will as readily do their duty, as deviate from it: Nor do I go on the grounds mentioned by gentlemen on the other side--that we are to place unlimited confidence in them, and expect nothing but the most exalted integrity and sublime virtue. But I go on this great republican principle, that the people will have virtue and intelligence to select men of virtue and wisdom. Is there no virtue among us? If there be not, we are in a wretched situation. No theoretical checks--no form of government can render us secure. To suppose that any form of government will secure liberty or happiness without any virtue in the people, is a chimerical idea. If there be sufficient virtue and intelligence in the community, it will be exercised in the selection of these men. So that we do not depend on their virtue, or put confidence in our rulers, but in the people who are to choose them.
* 20 June 1788; Papers 11:163. https://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/v1ch13s36...
Key line:
> Is there no virtue among us? If there be not, we are in a wretched situation. No theoretical checks--no form of government can render us secure.
The way the electoral college, Senate and impeachment work mean a minority elects a king every four years. It’s not a good system.
Its original intent was to give disproportionate weight to lower-population states, which is still an intent that is very much alive, at least among those lower-population states. It hasn't outlived that intent, but that intent always was, and remains, an anti-democratic thing.
But the EC system seems specifically set up to allow for slow communications distances and no way to "check back" quickly with the sending jurisdiction. That specific need is long gone.
The math part (how votes are summarized based on state population) is, IMO, a separate issue and definitely a topic for debate as well.
I'd love to see us get past the idea that the founders were infallible, and be somewhat more willing to adapt the constitution as the country grows.
Maybe the connotation of “king” is a bit off, but the president has a huge amount of power and apparently the only check on him (impeachment) has the exact same vulnerabilities that his election has (concentration of power in low population states).
I just can’t imagine a group of intelligent people today starting from scratch and deciding this is what we should end up with.
Q: Is it actually uncommon for a (motivated and/or vocal) minority to end up with [de facto] control over something?
To me, it feels like this kind of thing happens all the time :(
Read Nassim Nicholas Taleb's “The Most Intolerant Wins: The Dictatorship of the Small Minority”[0], it's well-argued.
[0] https://medium.com/incerto/the-most-intolerant-wins-the-dict...
Of course one answer about that is that it was by design. But that design was, famously, a compromise, one that may not be necessary anymore.
Significantly less than 50% of the population that, thanks to gerrymandering, controls significantly more than 50% of the representation.
It seems to me that about half of the general population is constrained by the "sanctions" of shame exclusively, but given the green light by a high profile example of, oh say, the President, will gladly act like horrible human beings, which is their original nature. Not only will they not feel shame, they may even be proud of being horrible.
If anything, the last four years have taught me a lot about humanity, and how fragile our contract with society is.
Experiencing shame for some aspect of your existence or something beyond your control (appearance, etc) seems a bit odd, but obviously has an impact on people.
Experiencing shame for your actions - these are generally under your control, and seems more reasonable.
I don't think that's accurate at all! You can easily realize there are other filters and motivators while also recognizing the usefulness of shame. They are variables, and you can apply them in different measures depending on the needs of a scenario. As you said "all these emotions shape our participation in society."
I also don't believe the parent comment said "some single emotion is human's only motivator." What they said was that it was working as the last or final limitation of behaviors for a large portion of (implied: American) people and that it was removed by high profile person acting without shame. Without it, obviously they are motivated by fear (of The Other), desire (to feel superior and unfettered), pride (of being in the superior group, whether it be political party, race, gender, religion, etc.), caring (in this case, only for their own but not other humans) and so forth. These emotions can be applied in small and large amounts, and for good or evil, depending on your perspective. Are you a patriot because you believe your country is a force for good, or because you believe being a part of it entitles you to the highest standard of living in the world?
And social standing is something that is useful to some degree even to people not preoccupied with that. Like money is useful even to people not preoccupied with wealth. Fortunately, in modern society with formalized relations other measures of social standing (like wealth) can substitute the one that is attacked by shaming.
Online, verbally shaming people happens a lot more often as it's safer for the shamer, but you need to have essentially the same amount of shamelessness as in the "real world" to not care.
In fact, shaming online can be more powerful because those people KNOW who you are. Do you think Jeffrey Toobin would feel more shame if he was caught rubbing one out with his windows open as just some guy in his apartment and his neighbors seeing him, or on Zoom with his colleagues?
I wonder what the debate of nature vs nurture is with respect to shame? I cannot think up any example for inborn shame. Maybe murder? When a human intentionally kills another one there is usually a mental switch to not consider the other as a human anymore.
> Trump admitted he was wrong to tweet about Cruz’ wife. This is the first time we have seen him admit wrong. Trump’s opponents are afraid (in the third dimension) that he can’t be shamed into acting appropriately. He just showed that he can. –Scott Adams https://www.scottadamssays.com/2016/04/04/derailing-the-trum...
Not seeing this is being blindsided of how corrupt the wrong person can be.
Gotta shamelessly disagree with you on this one.
Shame serves only to erode morale and damages society more as a whole. It turns the world into nothing more than a petty blame-game whereby everything comes to a halt because everyone's too busy living in "aww" of other peoples' behavior to keep society chugging along - hello 2020...?
Shaming is the opposite of productive or effective energy. It's just a petty way to try and control others.
Agree with someone, disagree, don't have an opinion, who cares. But shaming them....egh. Feels like a waste of energy to me.
Only the Sith deal in absolutes.
> I feel obstructive amounts of shame, but I fought that and asked for a lower rent on my lease, and I got it.
Genuinely: congrats. Self-advocation is extremely rewarding, and something that I personally love to see in others.
> But I am not going to cut in line at the grocery store even though, according to you, my feeling shame in that case is just stopping me from doing what I want.
If someone has a genuine need to cut in line and demonstrates that to the people they are cutting in line, I don't see any issue here. I would take no issue being cut in line, in this situation and just think, "They've got somewhere important to be". But still, if they did it dickishly, I wouldn't shame them. I might confront them, or just...cut back. But for me to shame them, is such a drain of my energy... And whether they feel shame for an action on their own, is beyond what I care to spend my time thinking about. I'm not their mom.
"We" call this cognitive dissonance. Arguing that shame is good, while demonstrating the opposite.
Why would a person feel shame if they are not otherwise being shamed by people? Your first comment was directly discussing the president's lack of feeling ashamed for behavior which you implicitly decided he should feel ashamed for...
You literally shamed him in your comment, so yes...this conversation is very much about shaming people.
P.S - I had nothing against the guy personally. He rarely made jokes at my expense - he didn't have enough jokeworthy material on me.
I think the key thing is to live and breathe the rhythm of social situations. When are high tides and when the lows. You mentioned humor. That's also very much connected to this. It matter when and how you say your upfront things. We all know the stereotype of the matter of fact but socially out of touch blunt weirdo who blurts out his opinions at wrong times with the wrong tone. You have to keep your finger on the pulse of the community.
In a sense it requires great knowledge of the general sentiment to be able to ignore that sentiment.
If you want high status you want people to say of you: "He's not afraid to show who he is, he stands up for what he believes, he is no-nonsense. Maybe he says controversial things but his heart is in the right place."
I think what you may have seen is a man that wasn't a jerk, but also communicated a (reasonable) lack of concern for how he was viewed by others.
"Mr. Nice Guys" are deeply concerned about how they will be seen by others, so there's a lot of self-censoring and manipulation that goes on for them. They also sort-of look to others to figure out what values they should hold and espouse ("Who they should be") rather than trying to determine their values based on what they most deeply believe to be right.
Dr. Robert Glover (psychologist) is the go-to guy for anyone interested in more on this.
- reality TV's general assault on dignity: doing ""shameful"" or ""disgusting"" things makes you popular and earns money
- view-based monetisation: you can make money from people hatewatching you
- internet shaming (sometimes called "cancel culture"): like any adverse experience of a population, it provides an evolutionary pressure. We're selecting for shamelessness, because if you respond to shame you get destroyed.
There's a certain amoral one-upmanship in corporate culture that's seemingly immune from any sort of shame defense.
For example, someone inside Wells Fargo suggested that they could simply open new bank accounts for existing customers without telling them. If this were an individual moneychanger, they would be shamed by society for being dishonest.
Even if individual employees can be shamed (and the best executives have long disabled that emotional response), the corporation can just replace those employees.
The same is true in the soccer world. AC Milan forward Zlatan Ibrahimovic is notorious for this [0]. Most top players in the sport have very reserved public personas, so Ibra's constant braggadocio is exceedingly rare.
But it would sound pathetic and delusional if he wasn't one of the top 10 strikers of the past 20 years. Most soccer players are retired by 35 or playing in less strenuous leagues little money. Ibra is 39 now and playing for a team at the top of the Italian Serie A.
[0] Some choice quotes: "There was the thought that this would send me into retirement. I sent their entire country into retirement." - After scoring twice to qualify Sweden for Euro 2016 over Denmark.
"It's true I don't know much about the players here, but they definitely know who I am." - On his move to Ligue 1 in 2012.
Paris Hilton, for example, was certainly already in a privileged tier of humans—as were/are many others who are born into similar circumstances. It seems, however, that the reward she was optimizing for (building a platform around her persona, effectively turning her life into a consumer brand) was not the same as everyone else in that circle. Her shamelessness seems like a very effective policy, in that context.
Ibra (one of my all-time favorite players) is also a perfect example of this. Despite being a high-level competitor and objectively world-class player, he is also interested in using his personal brand as a monetizable tool in a way that many other top players do not (though, it's fair to mention that players like Maradona have done this historically as well). For example, Ibra's move to the MLS—and the fact that he was paid a record breaking 7.5 million per year—certainly required him to be a great player, but it's also fair to say that the platform he brought with him made him especially attractive to a team looking to sell jerseys and season tickets.
So yes, I think you're right that the table stakes to shamelessness being effective are the essential building blocks of success in one's field—Paris Hilton/Donald Trump have to have wealth and access, Zlatan has to be world-class, etc.—but I think that what that shamelessness buys them is a different kind of success, one they might not achieve without shamelessness (or without some parallel promotional strategy).
That said, shamelessness has been a strategy for far longer than he gives it credit for. Julius Caesar did some astonishing things after cowing the senate during his first Consulate, like granting himself a bunch of provinces and armies, getting a huge amount of legislation passed.. and of course, he gave himself three Triumphs after the Civil War, the 3rd one being for victory against other Romans!
People who seem uncaring about others' social concerns, combined with great luck and skill, have always been able to ascend to meaningful leadership/cultish positions.
I'd also question if this is actually that new. In medieval times, the court jester used a similar strategy to influence.
Im leaving this hear as it will probably be missed in the active chat, but perhaps someone in the future will find it via a search, if you do, I'd be interested in this theory as I've never heard anything more about it since.
Charisma is kind of like the anti-fragility concept of Taleb. It's when things that would normally harm people will paradoxically strengthen you.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guilt%E2%80%93shame%E2%80%93fe...
As to the real life analogies my opinion is this: Being shameless is a political strategy. Sometimes it's real and sometimes it's an act. Genuine shamelessness seems to do better because people who are not thinking too hard like those Avalon players who fall for shameless Merlin still often recognize a fake personality.
This--and most of the post--reads like a lazy high school paper. It's just cobbled together nonsense.
Maybe there is, to quote Lincoln, a "You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time." quality to shamelessness?
It's always been better to have 10 rabidly fanatical followers than having 1000 passerby fans
I don't think you can generalize politics and startups in the same breath with an aphorism.
We are in a rather polarized political climate, so being a bit more extreme does seem to get you more attention and maybe more votes than being more centrist. But the 2020 U.S. Presidential election actually refuted this statement in the article:
> ...in the same way that any major politician sticking to a pre-2016 playbook today is almost certainly not going to win.
Biden was much more centrist/bi-partisan (in his messaging) than any of the other potential Democrat candidate, but he won the popular and electoral votes.
I would hardly qualify that as a strong rebuke of the idea so far
1. Society is becoming much easier for people with dark triad traits to navigate. This is due in part to the loss of community boundaries mentioned in the article. One aspect not yet mentioned is the information overload, in which case multiplying scandals is a perfectly rational strategy.
2. Anecdotally I've found that the "lovable rogue" type tends to be more popular than the person who follows the rules all the time. You want to project a sense of liveliness to be appreciated. Think of the kid from your school days who was often disruptive or naughty but followed the rules once in a while and still managed to win everyone's hearts. Ironically, rogues like this are rewarded for their partial rule following as it is seen as a special effort coming from them. Rule followers are taken for granted.
3. Charisma is more important than any trait you could have. It's not just charisma but a sense of being life affirming and owning your own personality and situation, like the rogue described above.
4. As soon as you apologize, the house of cards comes tumbling down. Just imagine what would happen if Trump were to apologize even once, for instance. It would be the last thing his base would tolerate. Cultivating your base is far more important than trying to appeal to lukewarm moderates. You must find the people genetically and culturally predisposed to like your style.
5. In the attention economy, attention becomes far, far more important than any other factor. Maybe 90% of your efforts should be placed on getting some if it's a factor in your success.
6. Social norms are changing at an ever faster rate, but the basic drive for relative status is still there. There will always be a competition, just that you may be left bewildered at the criteria used. It's important to adapt quickly and avoid expanding your identity to the point where you can no longer accept social changes.
7. In the end, the shameless individual is the most free. Shame is an ugly emotion, because social norms are often ugly and limiting. The sensitivity to shame is a strong character flaw that must be overcome. In the end, if you are just a host for ideas as mentioned, why not pick the path of self-affirmation? As the Greeks said, the person who does not belong in the polis is either a pariah or superhuman. By simple logic, very successful people generally have to break social expectations in some way.
I guess this idea isn't particularly new and has been thoroughly researched by many. For some reason Nietzsche comes to my mind. And Dostoyevsky. E.g. from "Crime and Punishment":
"I wanted to find out then and quickly whether I was a louse like everybody else or a man. Whether I can step over barriers or not, whether I dare stoop to pick up or not, whether I am a trembling creature or whether I have the right."
No, shame is what prevents people from being psychopaths. You don't steal lollipops from children because it would shameful to do so. You don't trip old people because it would be shameful to do so.
Shame for things that don't hurt others is bad. Shame for doing things that harms others is good.
Shame is an inferior strategy, and seeing how it drives people to truly insane actions, the best response to shaming tactics is to revolt and respond directly. However, there is an in-group version of shaming, and an out-group version. It's a really deep subject.
What this article really describes is any attempt to find a novel strategy instead of playing a common strategy optimally.
The problem is this expectation for politicians to be perfect humans and never do or say, or have done or have said anything wrong. So they're all kind of emulating this robotic version of themselves that never has any opinion people can object to.
Shamelessness cut right through that and let Trump speak from his (very dark) heart, which is part of why people like him.
Discrediting this expectation was one of the biggest silver linings of Trump's win in 2016 I think. The pressure for politicians to be flawless turned our politics into a least-common-denominator farce where the smallest gaffe matters more than the biggest policy ideas. See: 2004 Democratic nomination.
The interesing question is why ? The answer is hypocrisy. When you have too much of "how you should behave" It doesn't connect with laypeople enough and so it blows up and laypeople like it so it becomes popular..
Presumably he’s aware naming the person by name will inflame the audience and derail the conversation in a way that Paris will not.
> Without getting into tiresome politics, the “shameless” strategy also defined the 2016 U.S. presidential elections. It was shouted down by people in both established political parties, because they were used to playing by the “obvious” rules, but I suspect that in a decade’s time, we’ll look back on that election and realize that it marked the beginning of an entirely new style of politics.
There's no penalty to being wrong or being shown to be a hypocrite. The lie gets 40K retweets, the correction 300.
"The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than to produce it."
> “I believe them, and I respect them being able to tell their story and having the courage to do it.”
https://www.independent.co.uk/us-election-2020/kamala-harris...
> The Special Counsel's report, made public in April 2019, examined numerous contacts between the Trump campaign and Russian officials but concluded that, though the Trump campaign welcomed the Russian activities and expected to benefit from them, there was insufficient evidence to bring any conspiracy or coordination charges against Trump or his associates.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_interference_in_the_20...
> On October 27, 2017, Manafort and his business associate Rick Gates were indicted in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia on multiple charges arising from his consulting work for the pro-Russian government of Viktor Yanukovych in Ukraine before Yanukovych's overthrow in 2014.[18] The indictment came at the request of Robert Mueller's Special Counsel investigation.[19][20] In June 2018, additional charges were filed against Manafort for obstruction of justice and witness tampering that are alleged to have occurred while he was under house arrest,[21] and he was ordered to jail.
> bring any conspiracy or coordination charges against Trump or his associates
That is not what I said. Strictly there are no "conspiracy" charges. Manafort was charged on his own. However, he is a Trump associate, and he was charged as a result of the Muller investigation.
This isn't team sports. QAnon being fake doesn't make RussiaGate real.
As a kid the small ones get picked on. You can just own your stature.
During these covid times people try to shame you to not to travel. Instead of making explanations of why it’s “okay” or “safe” I just say I like to travel. They can’t argue against that and it is empowering.
I also think it helps keep friendship alive, because you don’t argue the facts; you state your preferences.
Your preference to travel could be understood as imposing a negative externality on those you contact while travelling (in the event you were infectious at the time). If so, I think an argument of why you are taking precautions to make your travel safer (for others) might be more persuasive or thoughtful than a mere statement of your preferences.
If your preference approach is applied to other negative externality actions (like smoking in restaurants, driving much faster than others) the argument seems weaker .... your “I just like to do it [impose costs/risks on others]” rationale has the risk of appearing selfish rather than empowering.
However, the moment you start to engage in mitigating behavior you are taking on the other persons frame. You give up your own agency.
This forces you into a defensive position and most people aren’t going to change their minds. They are still going to judge you selfish regardless of how you mitigate the situation.
So why waste the energy? It’s easier to take the small “I’m selfish” hit up front than to stretch it out.
That’s my point that if you are going to do something that others think or in fact does impose negative externalities it is better to accept the straight judgment rather than to argue.
Better in this sense to increase the likelihood of keeping your friends.
People tend to remember how they feel and the more they argue and you still do what you want the angrier they get. Because now you’ve hurt them twice once by being a bad person (which is kinda forgivable) and two by not listening to them (not forgivable).