The right wing culture of learned helplessness

[Crezth]

Sir, you have my thoughts.

(Such as they are.)

 

[aelf]

Even if we compare too more or less heavily regulated country - say, UK or Singapore I will vote for Singapore at any time as they are pragmatics and their regulations are aimed to solving actual problems, not some imaginary ones.

And also the people of such countries are becoming weak. Look at the Norway. Breivik killed about 70 people and the only ones who tried to stop him was some Chechen teens. And the stray psychopaths are not the only problem. Nations consisted of people who are able to take massive "collective actions" are prone to become victims of mass genocides by his own government. Pol Pot would not be able to do something like this in USA where a lot of people have guns and more importantly have culture to fight for their own survival.

These two parts are at odds with each other in a way that you have perhaps not considered. You said you'd choose Singapore, but the second part applies much more to Singapore than to the UK. Pragmatic technocracies don't really encourage too much rugged individualism.

So you have a point on the one hand but of course fly off the rails on the other by failing to understand that the reason we have spiraling costs in education and health care is all the Federal and other government dollars that are being pumped in absent of free market principals.

This is precisely what I'm talking about. This is a non-solution because all you're saying is "Hands off the free market!", but can offer no credible proof whatsoever that that's going to solve the problem. Mental health care in the US is one good example. Obviously the market isn't providing enough of that. Otherwise, why would you have inadequate care when the government isn't spending enough on it?

You sound totally ignorant of the market. What is the market? It is the collective effect of free people in a free economy. Yeah, I said collective. The fact is that the ideal of the collective often expressed by the left is patently unobtainable when pursued through government. I don't fully understand why liberals can't get it. It may be some of sort of genetic mental deficiency or it may simply be based on ignorance.

Holy crap, that's hilarious coming from you

I said collective action, which connotes something entirely different from the collectivity of the market. Granted government action is not quite the same, but for the sake of simplicity I'm assuming the democratic ideal holds (that government represents the will of the people, etc). And for the purposes of the thread this is enough because it is indeed possible to put enough pressure on governments to enact certain measures like stricter gun controls, for example.

 

[Winston Hughes]

Is it the Swedes that have the retroactive revocation of sexual consent?

As far as I can find, this is an entirely spurious claim which has only gained traction thanks to the efforts of people attempting to justify the actions of Julian Assange in evading Swedish justice.

Indeed, it seems that current Swedish law doesn't take account of consent at all, and requires either violence on the part of the accused or incapacity on the part of the accuser for an act to be defined as rape.

 

[GhostWriter16]

Its not that we're helpless, its that utilitarianism is evil, and even if 95% of gun owners wanted to murder people (Absurd hypothetical to make a point) taking away guns from the 5% of honest people would still be evil.

Obligatory Ben Franklin quote

 

[Farm Boy]

Ah consentless sex. I'll have to muddle on this. I was reading some more and am still probably far undereducated, but nothing I found actually said this, they were indeed coming down as I originally suspected, that implied consent was inadequate. If you are correct, that would explain this.

This whole fiasco still introduces strict liability elements into sex, which is a pretty stupid idea all around, moreso when between adults.

 

[potatokiosk]

We must be better than this, even if it's very hard. Physically torturing your enemies isn't good for you as a society or a person.

Even if this were true it wouldn't change the fact that Breivik deserves an actual punishment for his atrocities instead of Norwegian prison.

 

[ace99]

Indeed, it seems that current Swedish law doesn't take account of consent at all, and requires either violence on the part of the accused or incapacity on the part of the accuser for an act to be defined as rape.

Surely not. The failure to recognize non-physical coercion would be a glaring omission, that surely Sweden would rectify well before anything else.

 

[Snorrius]

I'm curious now, how is it different in Sweden? It's actually a place I don't know much about - that is, how it is to live in the population - I have an uncle there, but he's kind of a hermit. I know about Norway, which honestly isn't much different from Denmark, at least. Well, they drink less, IIRC, but their beer is also astronomically expensive.

If we are to compare Denmark's and Sweden's government policies I would say Denmark has more of the "Live and let others live", while Sweden took a typical socialist approach when there are a certain set of amusing but impractical set of idealistic ideas about equality and sameness of the people which they intend to follow no matter what.

Finland and Sweden are awfully nice places to live for "socialistic hellholes"...

This is what I thought too. The rendition simply seems untrue.

I admit that "hellholes" maybe a bit emotionally overcharged word here just like when people use "racist" nowadays when they try to apply negative connotations of this word in its proper meaning to the new areas, say, to the situation when one claims that different cultures are different. Of course, when I was calling Sweden "socialistic hellhole" it was more about them implementing impractical socialistic policies in trying to equalize all the people guided by delusional idealistic ideas than about keeping people in boiling pots while dressing in imp's costumes.

These two parts are at odds with each other in a way that you have perhaps not considered. You said you'd choose Singapore, but the second part applies much more to Singapore than to the UK. Pragmatic technocracies don't really encourage too much rugged individualism.

They are not. The question of which country one would prefer is a bit more complex than two or three broad traits mentioned. One evaluate advantages and accept disadvantages, apply them to his particular situation and makes a pragmatical decision. You should also keep in mind that it was a set of certain two countries - in real situation this list would be different and I would try to avoid both of them as a place to live though they both are certainly nice places to visit once a while. But in the situation of choice of UK and Singapore the last delivers more goods for the gram of individual freedom given up.

I like the pragmatic side of Singapore. They are regulated society but it is not full of fanatics and most of the regulations are oriented to solving actual problems pursusing pragmatical policies while some European governments seem to be hell-bent on taking this or that stupid idea out of thin air which have no relevance to the real world (Sweden is a good example) and trying to follow it to the point of absurd.

Ah consentless sex. I'll have to muddle on this. I was reading some more and am still probably far undereducated, but nothing I found actually said this, they were indeed coming down as I originally suspected, that implied consent was inadequate. If you are correct, that would explain this.

Sweden will eventually end up with "rape" being every sexual activity which was not approved by specially appointed government official. You can not believe people whether they consented or not, the State knows better.

 

[Kaitzilla]

"Wait, what?” you might ask. Isn't learned helplessness the domain of the left, of welfare queens, of people so dependent on government handouts that they can't seem to help themselves even when there are opportunities to do so (or, heck, why not create those opportunities, pulling yourself by the bootstraps and all, right? Why wait for businesses to hire when everyone can start their own business?)?

I've been reading debates on things like income inequality and mass shootings and there's one pattern I've noticed, which is that right-wingers never propose a solution in these debates except to offer the standard refrain of less government or public action (how that will help is rarely if ever explained, a lot of it seemingly based on purely ideological reasons - but we'll get to that).

Let me outline the pattern so you can see what I mean.

In the debate on income inequality, right-wingers like to say that income inequality doesn't matter if the poorer sections of society are better off in absolute terms. They maintain that this is the case because the economic pie is not finite but growing. So if your 10% share of the pie is bigger than your 20% share of the previous pie, then all is well.

But that's in theory. In reality, income needs to be looked at in conjunction with costs. Your smaller share of the pie is often smaller in absolute terms as well because it didn't grow by as much as you might've thought due to increased costs. Rising costs of crucial goods and services like health care and education is a big contributor to both income inequality and reduced economic well-being of those who are not among the economic elite. This is undeniable even to the right.

So is the solution then to help people cope with these cost pressures through measures like subsidies? No, they say, because increasing government spending has (they claim) never helped due to 'corruption' and inefficiency. And, of course, unions are baaad. So what's their solution? Deregulation, cutting taxes, cutting spending. How will that help? Well, increased competition because there will be more providers and, uh... So, basically, their position is that government can't do anything (beyond the very basics, because we still need military muscle to beat our enemies into submission), that the only solution is to consciously do even less and hope for the best. This is what I mean by learned helplessness.

In discussing mass shootings in the USA, right-wingers claim that gun control is not the solution. Their first line of defense is to argue that people can use other implements to kill other people, such as bombs and knives. Regarding, the recent shooting incident in the USA that killed 27 people, they bring up a similar incident in China with a knife that injured more than 20 people. The difference in outcomes between the two doesn't seem to be apparent to them (or is deliberately ignored). And all the statistics that I've seen point to the fact that the death rate in shooting incidents in the USA is higher than the death rates in bomb or knifing incidents in other developed countries.

This is an uncomfortable fact that is occasionally acknowledged by Second Amendment fanatics. But then they blame it on the proliferation of guns in the USA and on the culture of violence. On the proliferation of guns, they argue that it's impossible to do anything about it through regulation or any concerted government action, so the only thing you can do is to allow everyone to carry guns for self-defense and hope for the best. On solutions to the culture of violence, they say even fewer things of substance, advocating maybe that people attend church more or something along those lines. This is what I mean by learned helplessness.

So, basically, the right rarely has any solution except to let nature take its course (since the invisible hand of the market is, after all, treated like a natural law). I don't know about you, but this seems rather cynical. It denies that we as human beings can take collective action to solve problems that individuals can't seem or are unwilling to solve.

Do right-wingers know that this is what their positions on many things essentially amount to? Does this represent naive idealism or cynicism on their part?

Your thoughts, please.

The 2nd amendment is entirely about affording everyone the equal right to defend themselves by force. I'm not sure how it could be considered "learned helplessness"
Massacres that last more than a brief amount of time always seem to happen in gun free zones and gun free countries.
I might support a total gun ban if the secret service, police, bodyguards, and soldiers during peacetime were also stripped of all guns, no exceptions. That way the powerful and regular people could all be in the same boat together.

The reason none of the "right wing" answers appear to be a solution is that they don't inherently force people to do things. Rather, they let people choose.

Letting people choose their own schools?
Letting people decide whether to defend themselves with deadly force?
Letting people choose what to eat or ingest?
Letting people decide whether to watch violent movies or play violent games?

Perhaps forcing solutions on people is a worse choice than letting them make their own decisions?


Collective action has clear benefits in cases that the left and right wings both agree on. Military and defense!

Collective action also has clear drawbacks.
Central planning of the economy:
Success rate for the last 5000 years?
0%
We need to try it one more time obviously! It's not like the idea if fundamentally flawed somehow...

 

[Angst]

Its not that we're helpless, its that utilitarianism is evil, and even if 95% of gun owners wanted to murder people (Absurd hypothetical to make a point) taking away guns from the 5% of honest people would still be evil.

Haha what. Is utilitarianism evil? It's a moral system, it can't be evil per definition. It only observes good or evil actions.

This is actually exactly the dangerous kind of thought I am against, as outlined somewhat on the first page. You have some abstractly formulated rationalized Good Way to do things and you attemp implementing It blindly, religiously, moralistically. This is the exact reason morals are dangerous. And you seem to argue for some sort of rational moral purity of law that is simply not possible due to the intricacies of the world. There will always be a few losers or a few dark sides to perform ills inside the system. If you abolish or diminish the institution of the state - people will still do ill things, even more so, even though the system is morally pure to whatever Platonic ideal you're holding it up to.

What do you think of this - imagine a sick man, lying poor and broken in his bed, his house is in rot, his neighbourhood filled will violence, rape and brutality. Let us say a hand was given to him ten years ago. Back then, the poor man was the only poor man in his neighbourhood. The hand given was not a government official, which you see as the moral devil, but a Zizekian derived example of a charitable tyccoon - who offered him a good job, a warm home, a hot bath and a good meal. The poor man, however, understands Zizekian critique of charity and has taken it to the next level by denying it completely, so obviously he tells the tyccoon: "No, I will not give in to your dark institution of capitalist apologism". Now, he is free to tell the tyccoon no, but you must admit it is extremely foolish. And the tyccoon leaves - and the poor man has upheld his own morals, and stayed in poverty. It does not end here, however. Due to the moral views of the poor man, he campaigns and promotes what he can, eventually convincing his government to do the only right thing, a thing which isn't evil. They banish charity in their country without fixing the institutions that create poverty, and as such, the poor man's neighbourhood becomes one of poverty, hopelessness and pain. The poor man, however, in his petty life of pains and woes, at least escaped his moral devils and can go to Zizekian heaven.

The thing is, it's not even completely insane to believe that this "Good" abolishment of charity can lead to such a bad situation. That's why Zizek, even when analyzing the bad things in charity, ends up saying that he doesn't disapprove of charity technically, he just finds that there are other ways of solving the institution of poverty.

But your position is that of the poor man. Follow your rationalizations. Forget your own life. Forget what pain you bring to your community.

Which is precisely the moralist core of exemplar idiocy that savours some political positions. Stick with the real world, lad, don't hold your actions up to some higher good. There is nothing in this world save how you help yourself and your community, and constructing some otherworldly ideal and sticking it up to it saves no one. Yes, I say this as an Abrahamist. Really: How I act has nothing to do with any divinity. If God would hold disdain to me helping my peers, I would consider him a poor god and have the devil. Humans are important to me.

 

[Gatsby]

So, basically, the right rarely has any solution except to let nature take its course (since the invisible hand of the market is, after all, treated like a natural law). I don't know about you, but this seems rather cynical. It denies that we as human beings can take collective action to solve problems that individuals can't seem or are unwilling to solve.

Do right-wingers know that this is what their positions on many things essentially amount to? Does this represent naive idealism or cynicism on their part?

Your thoughts, please.

Your make a pretty compelling case. I would imagine that a right-winger's response would be to say that people are naturally intelligent, capable and resourceful beings and that letting nature "take its course" as you put it is the best approach because then people have more breathing space to properly utilise those qualities. Bolder right wingers might also say that although some people don't really have these qualities, they will either be forced to develop them or weeded out as a result of their ineptitude: either way, society as a whole becomes stronger and better compared to a situation where government steps in to protect people from the consequences of their own ineptitude.

Imo when right-wing conservatives look at government they primarily perceive and focus on the ways in which government stifles, restricts, and messes up as a result. To them, government has a compulsion to constantly meddle in order to make things better according to currently fashionable ideas of what 'better' means. Or as that patron saint of modern right-wing conservatism Ronald Regan put it: "Government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it." Naturally, right-wingers resent big-government lefties for seemingly trying to impose their ideological notions of how things should be on reality and on the right-wingers themselves.

There is some validity in the conservative right-wing stance, particularly their appreciation of the fact that sometimes you really can get better results by taking the foot off the gas pedal rather than pushing down harder. However it is of course a partial and distorted perception, and its imperfections are reinforced by the fact that the right-wingers stand in diametric opposition to the left-wingers who usually have corresponding opposite imperfections.

 

[Winston Hughes]

Surely not. The failure to recognize non-physical coercion would be a glaring omission, that surely Sweden would rectify well before anything else.

If non-physical coercion makes the individual incapable of dissent (which would include any situation where the coercion renders dissent a clearly irrational choice), then it's covered under the law I described. If it does not, then how would the act constitute rape?

 

[Gatsby]

The reason none of the "right wing" answers appear to be a solution is that they don't inherently force people to do things. Rather, they let people choose.

Such being the case - and I agree with your comment - the right wing approach is actually both empowering and optimistic, because it assumes that people will overwhelmingly do the 'right' thing when left to their own devices (no pun intended). Of course it is easy to make this claim when we live in a world of societies and governments, because the chance that there would ever be a real-life situation in which this assumption could be properly tested is pretty low. Imo the ironic thing is that if/when such a situation were to arise, people would eventually organise themselves into a government-run society anyway!

 

[Cutlass]

The 2nd amendment is entirely about affording everyone the equal right to defend themselves by force. I'm not sure how it could be considered "learned helplessness"
Massacres that last more than a brief amount of time always seem to happen in gun free zones and gun free countries.
I might support a total gun ban if the secret service, police, bodyguards, and soldiers during peacetime were also stripped of all guns, no exceptions. That way the powerful and regular people could all be in the same boat together.

The reason none of the "right wing" answers appear to be a solution is that they don't inherently force people to do things. Rather, they let people choose.

Letting people choose their own schools?
Letting people decide whether to defend themselves with deadly force?
Letting people choose what to eat or ingest?
Letting people decide whether to watch violent movies or play violent games?

Perhaps forcing solutions on people is a worse choice than letting them make their own decisions?


Collective action has clear benefits in cases that the left and right wings both agree on. Military and defense!

Collective action also has clear drawbacks.
Central planning of the economy:
Success rate for the last 5000 years?
0%
We need to try it one more time obviously! It's not like the idea if fundamentally flawed somehow...

Most of their "letting people chose" on the other hand is from a list of choices which is so narrow it dictates what choice will be made. The "choices" the right wing will actually permit people to make are rarely anything which allows freedom, opportunity, or prosperity.

 

[Formaldehyde]

There is no "choice" in the current blatantly discriminatory criminal justice system in the US, which forces everybody else to live by their own outdated sense of morality and imprisons a far greater percentage of its population than any other modern country.

Is deliberately deciding to "stand your ground", instead of being required to retreat from a physical encounter before deadly force can be used, a "choice"? Or is it a way to rationalize modern-day duels and vigilante justice where the person with the concealed carry permit is going to almost always win?

"Letting people choose their own schools" is just an excuse to deliberately disband the public education system in the US in favor of returning to religious indoctrination in its place. There is nothing stopping people from sending their children to such institutions, but they should certainly still have to pay for public education with their taxes.

Calling this a matter of "choice" is just as disingenuous as the rest of the examples with the exception of the last one. And there have always been members of the far-right who are adamantly opposed to video games and most Hollywood movies. Censorship is largely a conservative movement in this country led by the Christian right, instead of the other way around.

The notion that an overly armed America, where a small segment is infatuated with firearms because they inordinately fear their own neighbors, stops even greater amounts of mass violence from occurring is beyond absurd. It is ludicrously easy for anybody to acquire essentially whatever firearm they wish with no background checks or record at all. It isn't vigilantes with concealed carry permits that typically stop these attacks before there are even more victims. It is the police who must risk their own lives. And who is largely responsible for this easy availability of firearms which defies basic common sense? Is that another "choice"?

 

[GhostWriter16]

Calling this a matter of "choice" is just as disingenuous as the rest of the examples with the exception of the last one. And there have always been members of the far-right who are adamantly opposed to video games and most Hollywood movies. Censorship is largely a conservative movement in this country led by the Christian right, instead of the other way around.

Both sides are guilty of some censorship. It may be that the conservatives support more though, I have no idea. Liberals want to censor hate speech and even the slightest questioning of their theory of evolution just as much as conservatives want to censor stuff that offends their morality.

By opposing the right of people to defend themselves when their lives are threatened, or to decide what schools to send their children too rather than having the all-powerful state decide for them, shows just how authoritarian you truly are.

And unlike greande launchers and bazookas are legalized I'd stop saying "Any firearm they wish."

 

[Yeekim]

The OP makes a good case, I am inclined to agree.

 

[Leoreth]

Liberals want to censor hate speech and even the slightest questioning of their theory of evolution

There's nothing "liberal" about the theory of evolution, and show me evidence of one case where liberals tried to censor criticism of it.

 

[JollyRoger]

There's nothing "liberal" about the theory of evolution, and show me evidence of one case where liberals tried to censor criticism of it.

Objecting to myth being taught as science.

 

[WindFish]

Liberals want to censor hate speech and even the slightest questioning of their theory of evolution

Are you literally off your rocker?

The theory of evolution gets questioned all the time, thats why its not the same as when Charlie D published his findings.