FBXL Social

As a society we need to separate compassion for the weak from the promotion of weakness.
We need to get rid of the latter without sacrificing the former.
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What I mean is that we should try to solve the problem of people being weak without building a society based on "might makes right".

Too often people fall into the trap of conflating the two concepts in the OP, leading either to people rejecting the concept of strength as "fascism" (left mistake) or actually supporting fascism or something like it (right mistake).

@Hyolobrika

I resolved this question for myself as follows. "rights" are based on respect for "dissent". put another way, consent is impossible unless both parties first agree to take "no" for an answer without engaging in reprisal. that is the prerequisite for consent and thus rights, which are agreements as to acceptable conduct. however rights belong exclusively to individuals, not groups, even though many individuals may share the same basic rights. which means each individual is essentially responsible for enforcing their own rights. they cannot be delegated away to others. already this illustrates that might is incompatible with rights, unless used in their defence. however rights are not objective facts, but simply agreements to avoid the need for use of force. when rights are contravened, as is inevitable given humanity's general maturity level at present, then might becomes necessary to back up that "no" with force as needed. if you don't have the means to defend your rights, you effectively have none.

I generally distil that down to two statements as follows.

dissent is custodian of consent
might is custodian of rights

I'm not sure how to explain what I mean but what I said comes pretty close, I think.

@Hyolobrika
You did explain it well! Everyone should just be given a chance, but those who perform worse shouldn't get unfairly rewarded for it, because it disincentivises them to perform better (they get rewarded anyway) and it disincentivises those who perform well (they don't get rewarded adequately).

@Hyolobrika
And in no case it should turn into "who is more oppressed" competition that we often see now, and which is utter bullshit.

@toiletpaper I disagree that the responsibility for enforcing rights should fall solely on the individual. That seems to me to be incompatible with "compassion for the weak".
To be weak is to be incapable of using force and thus, in your view, incapable of enforcing their rights. So we're right back at a situation where weak people have no rights.

I think community enforcement of everyone's rights is perfectly legitimate.

I also don't like the egoistic reduction of rights and ethics (I see rights as just another way of framing ethics/morality) to a collection of self-interested agreements. I believe that ethics is objective. But it's good enough that people believe in the egoistic conception, I suppose.

@m0xee I see your point, but people who perform worse shouldn't be left in abject poverty. There should be a minimum acceptable line of wealth IMO.

@admitsWrongIfProven I'm not sure what you're talking about.

@Hyolobrika

If ethics are objective, then why are there unethical people making unethical decisions? In my view it's because ethics are imaginary ideals, which only have objective reality if people agree and adhere to them.

As to weak people not being able to defend their rights, that is for example why there is a 2nd amendment to the USA's constitution. Arms are a force leveller.

I'm not opposed to individuals being delegated to secure people's rights, such as a sheriff or the like. But that in no way abrogates the right of the individual to defend themselves using identical means. Moreover when force is delegated exclusively to a group (eg. police) whose rights are perceived to supersede those of the individual, then it simply sets up the conditions for society to be ruled by whichever group has the greatest capacity for violence. That's the case anyway, but it seems ridiculous to advocate for it. In reality the responsibility for personal defence should not be delegated whenever possible. Rather individuals should seek to strengthen themselves (eg. by bearing arms) to a degree that disparities in their capacity for self-defence are negligible.

@toiletpaper My ethics is objective. If you don't agree, kill yourself.

@Hyolobrika
Of course no one should be struggling with basic necessities!
But outright antisocial behaviour shouldn't be sustainable either, some people have to hit rock bottom to muster the motivation to get their shit together. This was quite common in USSR — people were becoming alcoholics, and you were of course frowned upon — but you don't really care about such things, you ARE anti-social. But society still somehow kept you afloat — people were doing their work, at times completely drunk.

@Hyolobrika
They couldn't get that something that would incentivise them to return back to their normal life — so something relatively minor that made you start drinking could ruin your life forever.

At the same time those who were exhibiting personal initiative were hated upon in their work collectives — because you doing something better than the others didn't mean that you would get rewarded, in most cases it meant that next time everyone HAD to perform better.

@Hyolobrika
People in more prosperous countries have never seen any of this with their own eyes — so they don't understand the true implications, which might be very destructive for society.

But these are extremes — I think there is more to this "supporting the underdog", which might be bad — people think they are just levelling the playing field, but coupled with their obsession with oppressor-victim dichotomy, they become vulnerable to those who are good at presenting themselves as victim.

@Hyolobrika
There are those who exploit this quite consciously and there are e.g. people with BPD — they aren't even attempting to manipulate you and yet if you've ever communicated with them in this phase — they give off the impression that everyone they have interacted with before you were absolute monsters — and it's just their mind playing tricks on them, they might not even believe that everyone is mistreating them at later moment.