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Want people to do the right thing? Save them the guilt trip

psyche.co

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Re: Want people to do the right thing? Save them the guilt trip

#161

Post by guerrilla »

mlang23 wrote: post #99
guerrilla wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you have no control over Faulty assumption here. You do have control over maintaining the system of privilege that you were born into. That's how it continues from generation to generation, by white people holding on to their money and power instead of working on ways to distribute it.

I am white, granted. However, I have no extraordinary power nor am I really wealthy. Pushing these buttons, implying that I should be guilty for what I am, is only increasing the divide between the races. Accusing me of playing an acitve part in supressing others is simply a false allegation. This is racist. And you dont even realize! Both sides will have to work on how they communicate with each other to improve thi…

> implying that I should be guilty for what I am

No, on two levels. First, nobody cares about how you feel, guilty or otherwise. Second, it's not about what you are either. It's about what you have, i.e. wealth and relative power, and what you do. Those are things within your control, unlike anyone's race.

> Accusing me of playing an acitve part in supressing others is simply a false allegation.

You do play that active part by asserting your property rights on wealth and other rights that were taken from others and given to you rather than working distributing them. Nothing false about that.

> Both sides will have to work on how they communicate with each other to improve things.

No, one side needs to give up its power over the other.

Re: Want people to do the right thing? Save them the guilt trip

#162

Post by nicoburns »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #158
nicoburns wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They gained a lot of that wealth by fucking over the rest of the world with superior military power. I'm British, and the British empire was literally 1/3rd of the world at one point. A lot of the infrastructure in Britain which enables to compete favourably against other countries in competitive markets was built off the back of trade in goods that we forced the populations of other countries to produce then took th…

Capitalism? That's what you're describing. Is the 'forced' a stretch? Or was it based on slavery. I don't know.

I'm not describing capitalism, I'm describing straight up military occupancy and subjugation of the local population. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Raj for example.

If you want a US perspective, then consider Cuba. Would you describe the US embargo against Cuba as capitalism? It's disingenuous for someone to say that countries have struggled because they failed to embrace markets when the US has actively interfered against governments that didn't embrace markets with sanctions and support for coups.

Re: Want people to do the right thing? Save them the guilt trip

#163

Post by RandoHolmes »

aeturnum wrote: post #20

I agree that framing issues in a way that allows people to avoid feeling like they have done something wrong is more effective. I also think most activists are aware of this. I also think that crafting positive, uplifting messages requires a certain level of societal support. Hard to know what one could buy to stop police brutality right now, for instance. I suspect people will come up with things. When I see a prote…

> I see the Social Justice left as being in a phase like "young atheists"[2] or young gay people go through when they first embrace their identity: loud and proud and insistent that others recognize their validity.

Back when I was in college (late 90's) I remember coming across a forum post where someone else was talking about this.

The gist of it was that they knew a gay women who came out when she was in college, and after she did everything became about sexuality. According to the poster, this woman was pretty annoying to a lot of people. "How do you know person X is gay? Don't worry, they'll tell you about it".

But then he talked about how he was friends with this woman over a lifetime and eventually you could know her for years and never realize she was gay. It stopped being the most important part of her identity and just became 1 thing in a 100. She would talk about it with her closest friends but it just wasn't something she needed everyone to know.

The explanation this person gave is that when you're new to something like that, you sort of wrap yourself up in it as an identity. But then over time, as it becomes familiar, you find that there are other aspects of your identity as well, and maybe your sexuality/religion/whathaveyou isn't the most important thing to communicate to other people.

Since then, I've seen this borne out twice in my life.

The first:

While in college I befriended a guy online who eventually told me he was gay. I never personally cared so for me it was whatever. But fast forward a few months and at one point I eventually blew up on him (over chat, we were strictly online friends) because I just got so tired of him equating everything to being gay. It would be completely innocuous things that somehow indicated someone was gay or disliked gays. He went offline after that and never came back and I sometimes wonder if he liked me. For me it was just an online friend, but I do sometimes think about it. I can't remember how we met, but I think it was while I was running a kingdom in the online game of Utopia (I'm pretty sure it's still around in some form).

The second:

I have a very good friend whom I've known for over 25 years. I'm closer to this guy than my own brothers. He grew up christian and at some point in college decided he was an atheist. And he turned into the stereotypical 'angry atheist'. I used to talk to him about it and ask him why he felt the need to be an asshole to someone just because they were a theist. Over the years he's calmed down a LOT and treats theists with a lot more respect than he used to. You'd probably never know he was atheist unless you asked him specifically.

---

Anyway, I was just surprised to see this sentiment. It's one that I've kept with me for years and I very rarely ever see anyone else acknowledge it.

Re: Want people to do the right thing? Save them the guilt trip

#164

Post by throwaway0a5e »

throwanem wrote: post #154
nicoburns wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You do have control over maintaining the system of privilege that you were born into. Do I? I'd be (genuinely) interested to know what kind of power you think I have to change the system. Because from my perspective as a middle class white person I feel just as powerless to change the system as everyone else.

There's not much that any one of us can do alone. Refusing to make excuses for an unjust system, and finding ways to make the shitty bargains required for survival that at least minimize the extent to which we support it, is the best sort of start I can suggest. We may be forced by circumstance, especially those of us who have given hostages to fortune, to be complicit. But we can recover some agency at least over th…

>I definitely do understand feeling powerless. But remember also that, as a middle-class white person, especially if you're male and the head of a conventional family household, that puts you pretty close to America's own idea of what America is. Believe it or not, there's a subtle kind of power in that.

And if you change white to any other color the power that comes from embodying something people consider good is still there. Arguably a race other that white makes it more powerful because in some contexts that would imply successful social/economic mobility.

The power comes from embodying ideals. They're all boxes to check and depending on what square you start on you'll have an easier time checking some boxes than others. If you're a white guy born to a stable middle class family it's gonna be easy for you to get the power that comes from check the boxes that come with a stable middle class family of your own. But you'll never be able to check any of the boxes that come from overcoming the kind of adversity you never faced and climbing the rungs of the social ladder you never had to climb. Who's more respected the plumber who can afford a Corvette or the engineer who can afford the Corvette? Having a nice family in a nice house in a nice suburb won't give you any credibility if that's the kind of life you were born into and getting it yourself was just a case of going through the motions. If you have a nice family in a nice house in a nice suburb and you were born the son of a police officer in French Indochina in 1955 then you clearly put the effort in to get what you have.

It's not about race. It's about who you are and what you've done. Sometimes race can be shorthand for that but unless you are incredibly lucky/unlucky those are not the kind of events that dominate the arc of one's life.

Re: Want people to do the right thing? Save them the guilt trip

#165

Post by throwaway98797 »

logicchains wrote: post #127
cousin_it wrote: post #116

Guilt-tripping isn't morally neutral. It's manipulation, exploitation, getting people to do what you want without giving them what they want. Doing it is evil and makes you evil. In my late teens and early twenties I constantly guilt-tripped people close to me. It was my "thing". It hurt everyone a lot. Then one day I realized how sick it was, and stopped completely. Now I never do it to anyone for any reason, and pu…

Always be wary of someone who calls you selfish while expecting you to do something for them without giving you anything back in return.

I find it best to claim that “yes, I’m selfish”. It tends to move the conversation to a more constructive place since then they have to provide reasons to induce my behavior.

Re: Want people to do the right thing? Save them the guilt trip

#166

Post by einpoklum »

cousin_it wrote: post #116

Guilt-tripping isn't morally neutral. It's manipulation, exploitation, getting people to do what you want without giving them what they want. Doing it is evil and makes you evil. In my late teens and early twenties I constantly guilt-tripped people close to me. It was my "thing". It hurt everyone a lot. Then one day I realized how sick it was, and stopped completely. Now I never do it to anyone for any reason, and pu…

So, you're arguing against guilt-tripping by guilt-tripping those who guilt-trip? Nice :-)

Re: Want people to do the right thing? Save them the guilt trip

#167

Post by hliyan »

cousin_it wrote: post #116

Guilt-tripping isn't morally neutral. It's manipulation, exploitation, getting people to do what you want without giving them what they want. Doing it is evil and makes you evil. In my late teens and early twenties I constantly guilt-tripped people close to me. It was my "thing". It hurt everyone a lot. Then one day I realized how sick it was, and stopped completely. Now I never do it to anyone for any reason, and pu…

I feel that guilt induced by a loved one (a la guilt-tripping) and societal guilt are somewhat different. We all carry at least some emotional baggage from past episodes of guilt tripping by family members, but I don't think that should be a factor in this particular topic.

Re: Want people to do the right thing? Save them the guilt trip

#168

Post by hliyan »

renewiltord wrote: post #63

Wait, this is great. It means the guilt trip is very good at entrenching a viewpoint. So if you want to fuck someone over, find something he's doing that's hurting him and guilt trip him till he doubles down. You can do this at the whole society level: for instance, no society that underemploys some large fraction of its populace will effectively compete against an equivalent one with efficient workplace participatio…

I'm disturbed by your casual suggestion that we weaponize reverse psychology at a global scale.

Re: Want people to do the right thing? Save them the guilt trip

#169

Post by maze-le »

hutzlibu wrote: post #52
kelnos wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Church and religion, I would say mostly works on positivity. Depends on the religion, I guess. I was raised Catholic, and a lot of it was about making people fell guilty about their sins and telling them if they keep doing bad things and don't repent, they'll spend an eternity in hell. Not exactly positive, IMO. Sure, there was always mention of how if you're a good, Christ-believing person, you'll get eternal rewa…

Yes, my association with the catholic church ist also mostly about guilt and fear. Scaring people to make them do the right thing. In general the church was the dark symbol of fear. Have you ever been to the vatican? The same in big. Everything there is big, with the intention of making you small and fear them. At least that was my impression. Other people I was with had different experience The catholic religion in…

I sadly can very much imagine this happening here in Germany... Almost exactly the same story happened to me too -- and it was not a "very dark area on a bad time of the day", it was one of the nicest cities around here at lunchtime. I assume it can happen everywhere, it is even more likely the more people are around: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bystander_effect
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