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The Righteousness Fix

orionmagazine.org

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Re: The Righteousness Fix

#101

Post by titanomachy »

JackFr wrote: post #80
ultramegachurch wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had the same reaction. I’m an endlessly skeptical and often cynical person. Whenever I see someone confidently believe they are “right”, I instinctively trust them less. This article made me realize this is just my own flavor of righteousness. That’s not to say righteousness is inherently bad. The only reason people make decisions is because they believe they’re right. I enjoyed this article but perhaps it’s overly…

My take away is that all we can hope to do is our best, and recognize that we’re all trying to do our best. No one is the villain of their own narrative.

I think severely depressed people can sometimes be the villain of their own narrative.

Re: The Righteousness Fix

#102

Post by burrows »

thinkingemote wrote: post #61
zzzeek wrote: post #32

I would question the author's casual belief that a so-called "righteous" attitude , where one has decided that they have more wisdom on a particular topic than some other particular group of people, necessarily means they therefore lose all their empathy for that group. This is a huge leap and I personally don't believe there is any such necessity: > Viewing ourselves as “good,” in fact we become grievously toxic, li…

Thats sympathy. Empathy is different from sympathy. I can be sympathetic without really empathising with someone, and I can have empathy with someone without being sympathetic. Empathy uses more energy. Ingroups tend to avoid empathy with outgroups because that weakens the separateness between people, and ingroups try to strengthen ingroup sympathy. Pity is a form of sympathy. Sympathy: "I feel bad for you" Empathy:…

What does ”I understand you.” mean? That I am able to correctly predict your future behavior?

Re: The Righteousness Fix

#103

Post by memling »

WJW wrote: post #23
cousin_it wrote: post #11

Quoted post unavailable.

> I can't think of a time before that when people killed each other over political ideals. This has been a thing since at least the Roman empire? Pretty sure that the Athens-Sparta wars were also at least in part over ideological differences. Probably much earlier too, but I'm not a historian and can't recall any from the top of my head. Btw, to say that the French revolution was primarily over political ideals and n…

> This has been a thing since at least the Roman empire?

My read on the comment was that people killed each other for political reasons prior to the time of Christ, and maybe even religious reasons, but that conversion wasn't a stated goal. This aligns in general with the assumption that while the religious was universal, Christianity is a peculiar mixture of inclusive and exclusive claims that redraw the boundaries between people primarily on a faith test rather than political or racial tests.

Re: The Righteousness Fix

#104

Post by FooBarBizBazz »

riskable wrote: post #91
jiggyjace wrote: post #63

I wonder what the author's thoughts are on "The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion" by Jonathan Haidt. It mentions many clear refutes backed up by history to the idea of how bad it is for humans to be "addicted to righteousness". For example, individuals have not and do not live by themselves in a vacuum as only selfish. We are also very group-ish, and it is the righteousness or norm…

The big assumption here is that increasing birthrates (above replacement level) is somehow the ideal outcome of a society. What if the ideal outcome is that humans populations shrink to 1/100th their current size and most "work" gets done by machines? Wouldn't that be vastly more efficient?

If there were zero people, no work would be required, and thus no machines either. The environment would just do whatever it wanted. This would be more efficient still.

Re: The Righteousness Fix

#105

Post by nostromo »

zzzeek wrote: post #32

I would question the author's casual belief that a so-called "righteous" attitude , where one has decided that they have more wisdom on a particular topic than some other particular group of people, necessarily means they therefore lose all their empathy for that group. This is a huge leap and I personally don't believe there is any such necessity: > Viewing ourselves as “good,” in fact we become grievously toxic, li…

It’s funny how even in response to this article, people feel like they need to list their righteous bona fides.

Re: The Righteousness Fix

#106

Post by phkahler »

ultramegachurch wrote: post #19
automatic6131 wrote: post #5

>But in the case of righteousness, such a belief is almost always mistaken. Most of us, whether we be timid or bold, liberal, conservative, or (especially) some version of radical, are prone to imbibing heady infusions of the stuff. Viewing ourselves as “good,” in fact we become grievously toxic, literally intoxicated. In this poisonous state of mind we are able to write off others — often literally billions of other…

I had the same reaction. I’m an endlessly skeptical and often cynical person. Whenever I see someone confidently believe they are “right”, I instinctively trust them less. This article made me realize this is just my own flavor of righteousness. That’s not to say righteousness is inherently bad. The only reason people make decisions is because they believe they’re right. I enjoyed this article but perhaps it’s overly…

It's fine for people to want to do good. It's not fine when its driven by subconscious emotional motives.

Re: The Righteousness Fix

#107

Post by [deleted] »

automatic6131 wrote: post #5

>But in the case of righteousness, such a belief is almost always mistaken. Most of us, whether we be timid or bold, liberal, conservative, or (especially) some version of radical, are prone to imbibing heady infusions of the stuff. Viewing ourselves as “good,” in fact we become grievously toxic, literally intoxicated. In this poisonous state of mind we are able to write off others — often literally billions of other…

[deleted]

Re: The Righteousness Fix

#108

Post by burrows »

octopoc wrote: post #49
zzzeek wrote: post #32

I would question the author's casual belief that a so-called "righteous" attitude , where one has decided that they have more wisdom on a particular topic than some other particular group of people, necessarily means they therefore lose all their empathy for that group. This is a huge leap and I personally don't believe there is any such necessity: > Viewing ourselves as “good,” in fact we become grievously toxic, li…

It's easy to know what's best for yourself. It's not so easy to know what's best for your children. It's much harder to know what's best for another adult in your tribe. It's practically impossible to know what's best for someone outside your tribe. So, I would say it is very unwise to claim to know what's best for someone outside your tribe. When you're worrying about them like that, you're assuming you know what's…

> It's easy to know what's best for yourself. It's not so easy to know what's best for your children. It's much harder to know what's best for another adult in your tribe. It's practically impossible to know what's best for someone outside your tribe.

I think this point is better stated without claims about value, ie “I know what is best”.

The predictions I make about the consequences of me doing something are more accurate than the predictions I make about the consequences of someone else doing something. Furthermore, my accuracy quickly degrades as the social distance increases.

Re: The Righteousness Fix

#109

Post by apatters »

automatic6131 wrote: post #5

>But in the case of righteousness, such a belief is almost always mistaken. Most of us, whether we be timid or bold, liberal, conservative, or (especially) some version of radical, are prone to imbibing heady infusions of the stuff. Viewing ourselves as “good,” in fact we become grievously toxic, literally intoxicated. In this poisonous state of mind we are able to write off others — often literally billions of other…

The author is on to something noteworthy for sure. It's a shame he only devotes one paragraph to his "recipe." Boy is that a topic I'd like to read more on.

Re: The Righteousness Fix

#110

Post by ericmcer »

Does the author want us to just be spineless bags of jelly, waiting for death? He cuts down the idea of "fixing ourselves" and says righteousness is a dangerous addiction. Of course you can't "fix yourself", there is no point to any of this, but you have to believe something while you are here, you have to have some righteousness or you will be run over.
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