Group Tendency

komaba

All guesswork
I've just been reading through the "chav--explain to a confused expatriate please" thread over on Politics. As an ex-pat I was similarly bemused when I first heard the term but after reading through the ‘chav’ thread I am mostly reminded that I remain mystified by people’s desire to want to be like others and be part of a group at all.

Born in 1955 I was 13 or so when Hippies became the group to join. Before that I was aware of Mods, Rockers/Greasers and before that, just dimly, Teddy Boys. After Hippies came Skinheads, Disco and then Punk… at least, that’s as far as I noticed. These groups, of course, all had a musical aspect to them but at school, too, most people would hang around in groups, or gangs. Then later, in my late teens, I noticed people gravitated to political groups, too, and religious groups. It wasn’t long before it struck me that national groups were in fact nothing more than a larger version of Teddy Boys or Hippies or Punks or the gangs at school.

I seem to be missing a gene. At school the biggest group I was ever a member of numbered 3. I was aware of Hippies from 1967 and knew a few… I liked their drugs and their friendliness. I wore bell-bottoms and embroidered my Levi’s jacket but I never thought of myself as one of them. When I was 16 I found myself alone in Morocco without any money (long story) and spent 3 days traveling there entirely dependent on the kindness of the locals. That was a real eye-opener! I’d gone there suspicious of every offer of kindness… I mean, hey, Arabs would sell their own grandmothers, introduced syphilis to mankind by fucking camels and bought and sold white women and all that racist shit that I’d sublimated while growing up in the UK. What I actually found was that everyone I met was far kinder to me, a complete stranger, than a whole bunch of people in the Devon village I’d grown up in. My village was 7 miles from the nearest town with an infrequent bus service so hitchhiking was often the only option. I was amazed one day when someone who’d known me since I was a toddler passed me by. When I saw him a couple of days later and asked him why he hadn’t given me a lift he said, “Get your own furkin’ car!” Or the people who wouldn’t let you have the ball you’d accidentally kicked into their garden back ‘… until they’d spoken to your parents’. My experiences in Morocco made me think and have led me to conclude that racism and nationalism are deeply stupid.

What I noticed most about Hippies and Punks was the creeping exclusivity of their groups. They started out rejecting social pressures to conform but in no time at all replaced those with their own. Hippies grew their hair as a rejection of the norm that required men to have short hair but it wasn’t long before having short hair made you uncool. I see this tendency in the British class system and in all nationalist rhetoric. I see it in Bush’s claim that in the ‘war on terrorism’ ‘You’re either with us or against us’ and in Blair’s acceptance of the deaths of thousands of civilians in Iraq as if their lives are somehow less valuable than those of British people. For what makes all that possible is the idea that there’s your group and those not in your group.

It seems to me that at root is a lack of creativity with a major function of a group being to stamp out creativity unless it is channeled into an acceptable direction. Looking back at my formal education I see clearly that while we were told that we were being taught to think for ourselves we were in fact being taught to think like everyone else – for if thinking for yourself led you to question the system then you were in for a hard time.

Each one of us is a unique mixture of genes with no 2 people being exactly the same, not even identical twins. This is our starting point in life and it seems to me that the most creative thing anyone can do is to be themselves rather than be a good English person, or Hippy, or Christian, or Muslim, or socialist or heterosexual or whatever. But people still desire to be a member of a group… why is that? Safety in numbers? ‘I must be right if a million others agree’?

I shall end this with a story from my childhood – my mother was a painter, well trained at the Slade and Royal College in the 1930s and impoverished for most of her life. Certainly from when I was 18 months old and my father died leaving my mother with debts and 6 school-age children to raise. Birthday and Xmas presents were mostly clothes she’d made for us, or socks and stuff. When I was 5 she made me a winter coat. The first time I wore it I came home from the village school that day declaring that I hated it and wouldn’t wear it again. My mother asked me why not. When I told her that it was because all the other children were wearing ‘bought’ coats she flew into a rage, the likes of which I’d never before seen. She said, ‘I can’t believe you are my son! How dare you compare yourself to other people!?’ I might conclude that this start in life, and my mother’s constant advice to do whatever I wanted to do, had the effect of making me non-group material except that my 3 closest friends are similarly non-aligned and but had very different upbringings. I’m mystified.
 

dominic

Beast of Burden
people join groups b/c the members agree about issues -- or share the same orientation on issues -- that are larger than their isolated selves
 

komaba

All guesswork
dominic said:
people join groups b/c the members agree about issues -- or share the same orientation on issues -- that are larger than their isolated selves

The first 2 parts are pretty obvious when it comes to unions, for example, (in order to fight against another group with a history of screwing the group from which members are drawn) or when people join a club that facilitates enjoying a particular interest. The 'larger than their isolated selves' part is strange to me and I wonder how people get isolated in the first place. What is the need to dress like others and to assume the thoughts of others.

I didn't see it myself but an English friend told me today that he'd watched a TV programme with Labour spokespeople flatly rejecting any connection between UK involvement in Iraq and the recent bombings in London.At the same time Muslim youth are being quoted as saying that they are outraged by what's happening in Iraq, the Royal Institute of International Affairs has chipped in with their assertion that UK involvement in Iraq has given a boost for al-Qaeda recruiting and even the UK security services reckons that Iraq has given a boost to terrorist activity in the UK. One can only conclude that Blair and the Labour politicians are following a party line rather than say what they know to be true. Blair is probably trying to save his skin but why would others hold the line, except that they see the party outranking their own thoughts? I know people do it all the time but I don't understand how they do it. I couldn't.
 

martin

----
komaba said:
What is the need to dress like others and to assume the thoughts of others.

But you're grouping the two together - why? At the end of the day, as a bloke, I only have a certain limited range of clothes to choose to buy. I might look like Joe Normal, but why does that imply I have a specified way of thinking? I've met some people who look way out there man, but are really conservative in their views and beliefs. I'm just into T-shirt, jeans and trainers (or boots if I'm feeling a bit Oi!) - millions others dress the same way - how does this logically translate into some herd mentality?




komaba said:
At the same time Muslim youth are being quoted as saying that they are outraged by what's happening in Iraq, the Royal Institute of International Affairs has chipped in with their assertion that UK involvement in Iraq has given a boost for al-Qaeda recruiting and even the UK security services reckons that Iraq has given a boost to terrorist activity in the UK.

In a way though, (and no personal offence meant), you're making another massive sweeping assumption here - for instance, my ex was a Muslim and she wholeheartedly supported the war in Iraq (much to my confusion), and so have other Muslims I've met. I don't think Iraq's the only factor in the recent London bombings, but I do acknowledge its importance, and so do millions of others.
 

dominic

Beast of Burden
it's the political and religious instinct

perhaps you don't have the instinct -- but most people do

you believe in something, and so you rally behind the banner of that belief -- and those with whom you rally help reinforce your passion and conviction

(and that in turn gives a charge to what would o/w be a tedious life)

and then based upon the group's shared commitment (to music, to politics, to religion, to some position), the group develops ways of dressing and speaking, etc, to mark themselves off from others

you fly the flag, so to speak

young people -- let's say under the age of 21 -- tend to dress in more conspicuous uniforms -- clearly tied to their taste and commitments in music -- or if they're into poetry, they sport the "literary look," and so forth

but even the non-musical types have uniforms -- i.e., the all-american frat boys who wear baseball caps

and among the fully adult population, businessmen and professionals and the like wear expensive suits

and the non-corporate/non-professionals dress in other ways

(obviously some groups are cohesive, others are very loose and share but the most abstractly held of commitments -- but we all belong to various kinds of groups b/c we're political animals)

and you could say that most of these people think if not in the same way, then at least along the same general lines -- they share a similar orientation on the issues that define the group -- and then they devise ways to make this known to others, primarily through fashion and dress

AND CONTRARY TO KOMABA'S POSITION, i see this as being all for the good

(really -- only an englishman could have written what komaba wrote above!!! -- it's almost a caricature of the english liberal tradition)
 
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komaba

All guesswork
martin said:
But you're grouping the two together - why? At the end of the day, as a bloke, I only have a certain limited range of clothes to choose to buy. I might look like Joe Normal, but why does that imply I have a specified way of thinking? I've met some people who look way out there man, but are really conservative in their views and beliefs. I'm just into T-shirt, jeans and trainers (or boots if I'm feeling a bit Oi!) - millions others dress the same way - how does this logically translate into some herd mentality?

In a way though, (and no personal offence meant), you're making another massive sweeping assumption here - for instance, my ex was a Muslim and she wholeheartedly supported the war in Iraq (much to my confusion), and so have other Muslims I've met. I don't think Iraq's the only factor in the recent London bombings, but I do acknowledge its importance, and so do millions of others.

To your first comment above, while I mentioned the two together I wasn't linking them in the way I've given you the impression I was. To support your point, in Tokyo I once asked a punk with a bright orange mohican, tartan trousers with zips and a heavily studded leather jacket the way to the station and he answered me in the politest form of Japanese possible. Here, clothes often seem to be thought of as fancy dress - the form is assumed without any of the content (but that's a whole new subject). When I visited New York in 1987 I noticed that every other black guy was wearing dungarees with one strap left undone... it seemed to be some sort of uniform. That's what I find puzzling... the deisre to do what others do.

Here in Tokyo it's de rigeur to wear a baseball cap with the peak off to one corner and baggy trousers with the crotch almost at knee level. Among OL (office ladies, i.e. female clerks) a Loius Vuitton handbag is like oxygen. Japan is extreme in its conformity and is known for it, both in people's thinking and tendancy to embrace fads. Right, who cares what people wear? OTOH, I can't help thinking that dressing yourself according to what's 'in' or what your group is wearing is a step on the ladder of the national hysteria that brought us Japan and Germany rushing into war.

You wear a t-shirt and jeans... so do I. I wear trainers a lot, too, the sort that can be pulled on and off because here in Japan you take your shoes off when you enter someone's house and even when you enter a lot of offices and restaurants. But do you wear them because they're easy or because that's what everyone else is wearing? A student of mine came to school with a pair of jeans with holes all over them - they were new and she'd paid 350 quid for them.

I see a mechanism in play. It may be that we are stuck with it as social animals, that it aids social cohesion and makes society possible. However, as Freud reckoned that neurosis was necessary for society to exist, so Reich reckoned that the neurosis was only necessary for THIS society to exist and that if the neurosis was treated we would enjoy a far more just and fulfilling society for all.

To your 2nd comment, no offence taken... I wouldn't be at all surprised that there are Muslims who support the invasion of Iraq as there are car-lovers who support pedestrian only city centres (that isn't meant to be flippant). I don't think Iraq is the ONLY factor either, just that it's likely to be an important factor among British Muslims willing to bomb and those who sympathise with them.
 

komaba

All guesswork
dominic said:
it's the political and religious instinct

perhaps you don't have the instinct -- but most people do

snipped...

AND CONTRARY TO KOMABA'S POSITION, i see this as being all for the good

(really -- only an englishman could have written what komaba wrote above!!! -- it's almost a caricature of the english liberal tradition)

Perhaps that's just it, that I don't have that instinct. I also don't seem to have any instinct of envy or jealousy, FWIW.

I agree with just about everything you wrote and regard it as an excellent description of how it all works. Maybe what you have written ends the conversation and it's just a matter of me not feeling as others do. However, I think there is more.

To use a friend's term, what is the human project? I think Bush's project is well past its sell-by date, the idea that our culture is at war with another and one of us has to win. That we can export our wonderful freedoms and democracy and everyone will live happily ever after. I doubt there's anyone in Dissensus who thinks that. Or the perpetuation of the class divisions in the UK, the great differences in wealth and the great differences in access to education.

In 1977 I lived in South London and headed towards Lewisham to confront the NF who were marching from New Cross. We were walking along Lewsham Way to head them off. My idea was to block their way but many with me were picking up bricks, bottles and bits of wood to use as clubs and obviously had other ideas. They were as rabid as the NF and were intent on violent confrontation - I have said elsewhere that I don't believe in violence as a way of solving problems or think that it leads to a durable solution. In Lewisham I couldn't go with the crowd, I couldn't tag along and forget my reservations about the impending fight so I went home, deeply shaken and spent the next few months thinking about what the crowd wanted to do and my reaction. As you may know, what happened at Lewsiham is that the police prevented the crowd of Anti-Nazis from getting at the NF and the crowd turned on the police instead. What it all showed was that the police had made a big mistake when they recommended to the Home Secretary that the NF march shouldn't be banned, that they could handle the situation.

My point in mentioning this is that while the NF are a bunch of violent and bigotted arseholes and have to be resisted, by using their method of violent confrontation we become like them. And that the prime problem is people who identify with their own group at the expense of another group, in the NF's case, anyone not white and called John Smith. Racism grows out of disadvantage - the more unemployment there is, the more recruits the NF gets. Yer average NF member wrongly identifies the cause of their dissatisfaction as being all these 'immigrants' taking their jobs and houses. The real cause is unemployment through mismanagement of the economy and/or changing circumstances that overtake society's preparation for them and the effect of that being unequally spread throughout the population. And underlying it all is the idea of us and them... owners looking after their own and regarding their workforce as the other and expendable.

I don't see any divisions between you and me. To me it makes sense that my wellbeing depends on yours (England's on Africa's, everybody's on everybody's) and that we are all in this together. Tebbit's cricket test is to me a load of bollocks. I employed a teacher who asked me if I was supporting England when the World Cup was co-hosted by Korea and Japan. He was really pissed off when I said that I wasn't and that I would support whichever team I enjoyed watching the most. I mentioned that I'd rooted for Cameroon way back when. He told me I made him sick.

So what is the project? To me it's working towards a world where people think for themselves, where information is freely available and people are trusted to make up their own minds about... everything, from the clothes they wear and even if they want to wear them at all, their sexuality, where they aren't told that being British (insert the nationality/religious affiliation/supporters' club/musical taste of your choice) is better than being anything else. 'Flying the flag' as you so aptly put it, seems to me to be part of the problem.

I'm intrigued - what is it about what I wrote that makes it '... almost a caricature of the english liberal tradition)'?
 

D84

Well-known member
komaba said:
That's what I find puzzling... the deisre to do what others do.


I see a mechanism in play. It may be that we are stuck with it as social animals, that it aids social cohesion and makes society possible. However, as Freud reckoned that neurosis was necessary for society to exist, so Reich reckoned that the neurosis was only necessary for THIS society to exist and that if the neurosis was treated we would enjoy a far more just and fulfilling society for all.

I totally agree with the last bit. There is definitely a social neurosis in effect...

This is my attempt at explaining it:

In regards to imitation some ancient Greek (Plato or Aristotle) says that we learn first by simple imitation - and then move to more abstract knowledge through experience self-reflection etc.

I think this drive to imitate - basically a survival mechanism: imitate your parents if you want to find food, shelter etc - is a fundamental operation of the mind which has extrapolated like a fractal or virus into other parts of its operation such as social intercourse, which is inevitably tied up with power / politics.

Maybe people think that to get closer to some kind of social power or intercourse they should imitate those who hold the most influence, tribal elders if you will.

On the other hand, there is some pleasure to be derived from belonging to a group and doing things with like minded friendly people such as going to the pub with your mates or dancing etc. But the best parties for me are the ones when not everyone is dancing towards the DJ (not sure how that relates the topic though).

I'm kinda looking for a new job and I'm finding the pressure to conform to a certain set of costume and behavioural codes irritating. Say this when you're asked that, wear this etc... stuff that has absolutely no bearing on my ability to work, but on the other hand if everyone looks the same then supposedly it should emphasize their abilities more, which conjecture I'm finding utterly unconvincing as I type.

I started reading Frederik Pohl's Man Plus and I'm finding the descriptions of employee's formulaic reply to psychological surveys and poker faced expressions everywhere fairly recognizable..
 

dominic

Beast of Burden
there a simple arguments to make against your remarks

(1) you've done as your mother told you to do -- be a good individualist -- differentiate yourself from others through authentic actions

(2) you see yourself and your three closest friends as a group of individualists, set off from the herd animals that surround you -- i.e., so in your own self-understanding, you and your three friends have rallied around the values of individualism, authenticity, etc -- surely this is the basis on which you selected these friends, correct?

(3) you use the word "we" in describing people who adhere to your view that disputes should be resolved non-violently, as against the neo-nazi types -- and so you belong to yet another group, the group of people who endorse non-violent solutions

[and really, you of course realize that your argument for the superiority of non-violent means is purely hypothetical -- i.e., b/c all serious political solutions in the history of mankind have been reached only after violent conflict, there's no ground to say that non-violent means lead to peace -- and if all political solutions have proven temporary and unstable, this may simply be b/c all solutions are inherently unstable b/c real power relations change, and once the relationships change, war of one kind or another follows]

(4) if you select your footware based solely upon an index of practical and culturally-required use, but not on the ground of hipness or prevailing fashion, this means only that you don't take fashion seriously -- and so you'll have a tendency to identify with others who take the same view, at least on this issue and insofar as it goes
 

komaba

All guesswork
Well, Dominic, that’s me nicely categorized. I’m of the Individualist group. Bit of an oxymoron, that.

Overall, it seems to me that I am asking questions here while you are laying down the law and telling me the way it is. Underlying everything I’ve written is doubt whereas you seem, to me at least, to be expressing certainty. Certainty is an attribute common to groups – it’s as if groups help to assuage uncertainty.

I don’t see my mother as having told me ‘to be an individualist’. She told me to think for myself, yes, but not to conform to any particular individualism, if that’s even possible. The extent of my external conditioning was consideration of others, giving up my seat for the elderly or infirm on buses, offering to help them carry their shopping, opening doors for them and stuff like that. We never talked about it but I think she thought that I should find out what I wanted to do with my life rather than be told. Does that mean I’m of a group whose members believe in common civility and kindness? I also rejected some of what she tried to imbue me with, her snobbery about accent, for one thing.

You are incorrect about how I selected my friends. My appreciation of their independence of thought came after the fact of our friendship. I was attracted to them for their differences from me regarding the things they thought about, mainly. Knowing them was educational. You might counter that I am of a group of people who value people for their educational value.

The first who became my friend did so after he made me feel bad about what I took to be a lack of social conscience on my part. We were looking at a newly built council estate in my village and I remarked that when I’d been a child there had been a green field with horses in it and that it was a pity they’d covered it with houses. He said, “But the people living there have to live somewhere.” That made me feel bad and I was grateful to him for it. It made me look a bit beyond myself. I was 21.

I certainly don’t see those around me as a ‘herd of animals’. I think you are attributing a sense of superiority to me that I don’t feel. I will confess that I regard the way I see the world as unlikely to initiate a war. Although I may be wrong as I have on occasion found that when I tell people what I think some do react violently. I’m not sure if it’s because of what I say or how I say it.

I once worked for the Department of Employment in Deptford, S.E. London – I was signing on and had lied about my qualifications… I can’t remember why. I actually have 1 O-level but told them I had 5. One day I went to sign on and they offered me a job as a ‘Clerical Officer’, or CO. They fired me when they found out but it took them 6 months to do so and in the meantime they’d given me the job of going to visit people who claimed not to have received their Giro cheques (unemployment payment) when they’d subsequently come back from the post office cashed and with their signatures on them. I was told, confidentially, that D of E policy was to prosecute only those who insisted the signatures were not theirs when it was obvious they were. My job was to give the claimants the opportunity to avoid prosecution by admitting they were mistaken, that they’d signed the Giro and forgotten about it. I’m pretty sure I wasn’t supposed to tell them about that but I did. I used to tell them what I’d been told and advise them to save themselves the bother of being prosecuted, just say they were mistaken and offer to pay the sum back at a few pence a week. It was a really depressing job. Fresh up from rural Devon I was shocked by the amount of poverty in S.E. London, the lack of care for those who were unable to cope… the elderly, single mothers or just the not-too-bright. (You might say that I am in the group of people who in 1976 thought there was insufficient care for the vulnerable…)

Anyway, I was in a pub in Deptford one night and there was criticism of some aspect of the government’s policy towards poverty. I’d left the D of E by then but thinking of a street I’d visited in Greenwich a few months before, one so run down I wasn’t even sure anyone lived behind the door I was at, I made a comment. There was a woman in a daze with 2 kids without shoes in t-shirts in February in the stone floored kitchen, broken windows, no table and a sofa with a leg missing. Remembering that, I said I was sure the government was more interested in looking good than doing anything meaningful about poverty. At this, one of the people I was drinking with exclaimed, ‘What the fuck would you know about poverty!?’ I was not considered part of the group of people who knew about these things and therefore I had no right to express an opinion.

I don’t follow you when you say I use ‘we’ for a group that is opposed to solving problems with violence. I’ve just read my post again and couldn’t find it. I wasn’t with anyone… no, that’s not true as I was with a single friend. I’d seen on TV that a whole load of people were heading to Lewisham to protest at the NF (a UK Nazi party) being allowed to march through a part of my neighbourhood with a lot of people of Caribbean origin, people like my neighbours and friends. I had no idea who those people marching were but I walked out of my house and down to Lewsiham Way where they were reported to be passing. I walked along with them.

Your claim that my “…argument for the superiority of non-violent means is purely hypothetical” is odd for I don’t make that claim. Sometimes, violence is the only way of dealing with a problem. There is a popular idea that a dead enemy can’t cause you any problems and the idea has been attractive to many throughout history but it’s far harder to change someone’s mind and that’s where I think the battles of the future will likely be fought. Perhaps are already being fought. I think that by resorting to violence you are losing a battle. Neither you nor I know whether man’s propensity for war is all there is or all there could ever be but my experiences tell me that there are a good number of people who would eschew it.

Wars are launched by people who don’t have to fight them. Particularly so these days. Looking at the make up of US military personnel in Iraq you find that the great majority is drawn from the least privileged parts of US society. Can you imagine Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld wearing fatigues and patrolling Baghdad in a Hummer? You may think that is historically inevitable and just another step in an eternal dance of competing political powers but I’m looking for something more.

You seem to look at me through assumptions that you take to be based on a true understanding of the world. Perhaps you are correct in that understanding. I can’t be sure. You seem determined to reduce the world to groups that fit into some sort of faultless understanding. Please share your secret. I’m trying hard to explain how I come to think as I do. How have you arrived at what you think?

Your use of the term ‘authentic action’ made me curious. I’ve never heard it before and don’t really know what it means but it has a ring of being part of a philosophical lexicon so I ran a search. First hits show it's pretty much confined to the USA and used mainly in spiritual development and business leadership contexts. Star Trek also came up with a mention of ‘authentic action figures’ but I don’t suppose that is what you were thinking of. Apart from on Star Trek and Lord of the Rings sites everywhere else it’s used is by people taking themselves very seriously indeed. There’s a dissertation on a Marxist called Lukács which uses the term a lot. I know very little about Marxism and so I find it hard to follow the text – it’s as if I’ve joined a conversation halfway through.

I leave you with this, by someone active in the peace movement… it came up when I added ‘Marxism’ to ‘authentic action’ – quite a coincidence, eh? The site is at:

http://tinyurl.com/ayvwo

“I can understand what moves people in groups, and the books are full of such stuff. But more than that, I can understand what moves people as individuals, and that's what Elad Lahav and I really have in common. Elad, myself, and all other refusniks of whatever description have something in common with former KGB officer, a rising star who, with the directorship in sight, walked away from it all when he came to understand how false was the state to which he had pledged his life.)

There are all sorts of very good and inauthentic reasons for going along with this group or that group. But there are very few reasons to ostracize oneself, and I suspect most of them are authentic. And what is the price of authentic action? and the reward?

As a species we are gifted with the capacity to displace ourselves in time, to imagine the possible consequences of our actions. And we are so social, so gregarious, that we tend to go straight to hell with our familiar company rather than running the risk of standing alone. But sometimes situations arise that are so clear and stark that we are alone even when we are with others, and in those moments we become who we really are, when we act according to the best we know.

If we are to defeat despotism, and elitism, and sexism, and racism, then we might have to, each in our own way and in our own time, dare to take that step back that threatens to leave us starkly alone. Who knows, we might find ourselves, integrity intact, in very good company!”
 

dominic

Beast of Burden
komaba said:
seems to me that I am asking questions here while you are laying down the law and telling me the way it is

i was rather glib

sorry

however, i find it hard to take serious the opposition you've set up -- individualists versus conformists -- not that there isn't some truth to the opposition, but simply that the self-declared individualist comes off as self-deluded, and yet at same time nobody wants to be called a conformist, save for the staunchly conservative church-goer or the corporate executive or the rabid populist on the street

komada said:
I don’t see my mother as having told me ‘to be an individualist’.

my point was that "individualism" is a paradigmatic Western value -- even if few people are actually full-fledged individualists -- and even though it's a value whose worth is questionable


komada said:
The extent of my external conditioning was consideration of others, giving up my seat for the elderly or infirm on buses, offering to help them carry their shopping, opening doors for them and stuff like that.

this is a bit naive -- sorry to say so

komada said:
Does that mean I’m of a group whose members believe in common civility and kindness?

i think all groups are organized around questions of value and identity

komada said:
I certainly don’t see those around me as a ‘herd of animals’. I think you are attributing a sense of superiority to me that I don’t feel.

i think the sense of superiority is implicit in your remarks -- i.e., surely you think people foolish for conforming outwardly to various groups, in how they dress, etc

komada said:
I was not considered part of the group of people who knew about these things and therefore I had no right to express an opinion.

perhaps they might have thought otherwise had you followed your remark w/ an account of your experience at the DoE -- b/c otherwise the remark appears informed only by external observation, book knowledge, the view from above, etc

komada said:
I don’t follow you when you say I use ‘we’ for a group that is opposed to solving problems with violence. I’ve just read my post again and couldn’t find it.

here's the quote -- "My point in mentioning this is that while the NF are a bunch of violent and bigotted arseholes and have to be resisted, by using their method of violent confrontation we become like them."

komada said:
Your claim that my “…argument for the superiority of non-violent means is purely hypothetical” is odd for I don’t make that claim.

then what is your claim? seems to me you're making an argument for a post-political world of liberal consensus, where everybody's a self-determining individualist -- you should read Fukuyama's "End of History," assuming you haven't already

komada said:
but it’s far harder to change someone’s mind and that’s where I think the battles of the future will likely be fought.

and b/c it is so damn hard to change people's minds, to convince them to come over to your side of the matter, people resort to violent methods and ultimately war

komada said:
Neither you nor I know whether man’s propensity for war is all there is or all there could ever be but my experiences tell me that there are a good number of people who would eschew it.

what a good number of people want ultimately doesn't matter

so long as a crucial few are hungry for power/honor and are willing to die for it, there will be bloodshed and war

komada said:
wars are launched by people who don’t have to fight them.

yes and no

old men make the decisions, but they require young men willing to fight the wars

if troop morale breaks down beyond a certain point, then the war can't be fought effectively

komada said:
Looking at the make up of US military personnel in Iraq you find that the great majority is drawn from the least privileged parts of US society.

yes, this is a serious problem

the high command wanted a "professional" army removed from popular pressures, popular sentiments, attachments to everyday life and everyday identity -- and you could make a good argument that such an army is contrary to the US Constitution -- and essential to current administration's fast-fading dreams of empire

nor would i ever wish to defend the decision to invade iraq -- i still can't figure out why they decided to go in (other than the sheer arrogance of thinking it'd be an easy proposition, a walkover, such that they said, "why not?" and couldn't come up with any good reasons not to invade -- i.e., what for them would count as a "good reason" not to, like quagmire and declining american military prestige)

komada said:
You seem to look at me through assumptions that you take to be based on a true understanding of the world.

only in that i'm skeptical of your claims to be an individualist

and yes, i think we're political creatures -- all of us -- and we all belong to different kinds of groups -- and the groups are organized around questions of value and identity

where people differ is in their consciousness of their allegiances, the passion that informs their allegiances, etc

komada said:
You seem determined to reduce the world to groups that fit into some sort of faultless understanding. Please share your secret.

i'm not shooting for a "faultless understanding of the world"

komada said:
How have you arrived at what you think?

aristotle, plus my own observations and reflections

komada said:
Your use of the term ‘authentic action’ made me curious. I’ve never heard it before and don’t really know what it means but it has a ring of being part of a philosophical lexicon so I ran a search. First hits show it's pretty much confined to the USA

american reception of heidegger

and heidegger gives an academic gloss to nietzsche, the most radical exponent of individualism

and the lengthy quote you provide sounds to me like courage
 
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