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Nedstarkism

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9 pointswebjac10 comments

It reminds me of German sociologist Max Weber's famous passage in his essay "Politics as a Vocation" (1919):

"We must be clear about the fact that all ethically oriented conduct may be guided by one of two fundamentally differing and irreconcilably opposed maxims: conduct can be oriented to an 'ethic of ultimate ends' or to an 'ethic of responsibility.' This is not to say that an ethic of ultimate ends is identical with irresponsibility, or that an ethic of responsibility is identical with unprincipled opportunism. Naturally nobody says that. However, there is an abysmal contrast between conduct that follows the maxim of an ethic of ultimate ends--that is, in religious terms, 'The Christian does rightly and leaves the results with the Lord'--and conduct that follows the maxim of an ethic of responsibility, in which case one has to give an account of the foreseeable results of one's action.

[...]

If an action of good intent leads to bad results, then, in the actor's eyes, not he but the world, or the stupidity of other men, or God's will who made them thus, is responsible for the evil. However a man who believes in an ethic of responsibility takes account of precisely the average deficiencies of people; as Fichte has correctly said, he does not even have the right to presuppose their goodness and perfection"

Source: http://anthropos-lab.net/wp/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/Weber... (public domain)

I do believe the intelligent folk around here can handle a discussion on pragmatism vs. righteousness without needing a sugar coating of b.s. pop culture labelling it nedstarkism....

You're right. Funny thing though, my wife made up the name watching Game of Thrones. Ever since then we've been calling it "nedstarkism" in the family. We've been using it for a couple of years now, it was not meant to be sugarcoating, it's just the name we've been using for it :)

Another such dilemma is lecturing vs querying. In the quest to explore the topic of Righteousness vs Pragmatism, the author becomes deceivingly director-like. It'd be more pragmatic of him to explore the topic without spewing out one-all advice

Thanks for your comment. After reading your comment I re-read it and you're right, I was to director-like. Anyway it's already done, but I'll keep in mind to have a more exploratory tone in future articles. I, by no means, was trying to give directives. The whole article itself goes against the idea of following established rules, I'm no one to tell anybody what to do or how to act

It's all good mate, it happens to the best of us. Being objective is tough to maintain when writing pieces out of passionate opinion. I thoroughly enjoyed the article and do think your advice is mostly spot on except towards the end. I can reiterate the article if you are interested in my disagreements.

I always felt that "My rights end where yours begin" was the perfect center of pragmatism vs righteousness.

Nice policy

Of course, his list of rules on when not to be pragmatic are subject to change at any time.

Hehe, don't think of it as rules, think of them as guidelines. I tried to find the things that I've found are eternal, but then again, I'm no super-wise man

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