Conspiracies to sap and impurify all our precious values

I am beginning to see some sort of pattern here.

A set of beliefs, practices, and rules, exists. These rules create (or rather, codify) tensions between what is desired and what is obtained.

Maybe the rules are in the process of outliving their usefulness. Maybe they were imposed by a minority over the rest, and there is rebellion in the margins. There may be other causes. Whatever the case may be, it is a fact that there is disobedience of the rules (hidden though it may be) or open campaigning to change them.

This is a threat to the order of things.

A popular way to deal with it, a rather effective anti-meme, is that the weakening of the rules is the result of a concerted effort, by a selfish or even outright hostile group, with the aim of "destroying all traditional values" and leaving the populace in a state of nihilistic confusion where any seemingly coherent new set of beliefs that they are suitably presented with will be embraced like a lifeline.

It's a very convenient defense. "Stick to what you know" it tells us, "or will you allow yourselves to be fooled by every demagogue with an agenda?" And there's a rather case to be made for this sort of learned epistemic helplessness, if you aren't confident on your skills as an independent thinker.

It has been said about Jews (Henry Ford wrote a particlarly compelling series of pamphlets), it has been said about the Communists, it has been said about the Capitalists, it has been said by both against artists, it has been seen about Muslims (a campaign poster in Europe showed a park where every woman of every age was clad in a Burqa and asked "Is this the future you want for your children?" and about Freemasons, and Illuminati.

And, of course, there will always be people to dismiss those theses out of hand and laugh one off for even bringing them up, with a smugness that is not entirely unlike that of those who eagerly seek those theories, only to flaunt their "knowledge" of the awful inconvenient truth that all deny.

The truth seems to lie somewhere in the middle, rather than "out there": there always seems to be a "reality" of which the "myth" is a distorted reflection, and it's hard to say, whether the "myth" is a deliberate effort to overstate reality in order to win followers, whether it's the accidental result of a game of telephone, or whether it's a deliberate effort to further a cause by spreading obviously faulty arguments against it.

Appeal to Ridicule is a Logic Failure when dealing with this: just sneeringly and sarcastically re-stating someone's worries at them will do little to allay their suspicions: at best, it will drive them underground, to talk about them only with other believers, and that's not good for anyone.

So, what do you guys think? Should "good memes" be able to stand up for themselves? Should "decadent" cultures be allowed to crumble/renew themselves, even when the change is the result of a foreign effort? Is the change worth the effort and the risk of traversing the dark valley of confusion and novelty? Is it actually possible to "poison"/"cure" another culture with deliberately engineered memes? Is it desirable?

As an ex-member of a certain ideology who happily succumbed to the foreign intoxications of Democratism, Secular Humanism, and Sexual Libertinage like a Cinnamon Bun succumbs to a Hug Wolf, and who knows for a fact that there is a concerted effort from Western governmental and non-governmental organizations to spread those ideas where he comes from, I can't help but ask myself, when I look at those US citizens panicking at the Soviet Propaganda, and at those Russians recoiling at the Capitalist Propaganda, and at the Fascists recoiling in the face of Masonic Pro-Democratic propaganda, "How about, instead of rejecting everything they say because they're out to get you, which, in a very real sense, they are, instead you listen to what they have to say, and, in the free flow of information, pick and choose what good ideas you may find, and reject the rest? Maybe you'll be happier if you give the others' beliefs a shot, even though their motivations to share them with you are not entirely benevolent."

The New Russia seems like a rather terrifying example of what can happen when you indiscriminately open the door to foreign beliefs you've been bubbling yourself from for many decades. Scandinavian Europe, however, seems like the result of listening to all sides and then carefully choosing and picking what fits one best, on one's own terms.

My case is: "Even if an idea comes from a Think-Tank/Propaganda-Bureau/Organization-With-Ulterior-Motives, it's not a good reason to dismiss the idea outright, and doing so is a sign of either lack of confidence in one's ability to discern the truth, or lack of confidence in one's current world-view's ability to handle and integrate criticism, perhaps even in its actual merit as such. Take the ideas as they come, even if they are obvious trolling, and spend the necessary effort to deconstruct and fairly judge them before deciding what to do with them. Also, talk about them openly, and don't punish people just for bringing them up." Am I making sense, or is there some sort of blind spot I'm missing?

"Reality is so complex, we must move away from dogma, whether it's conspiracy theories or free-market," says James Glattfelder. "Our analysis is reality-based."

edited 28th Feb '13 11:27:25 AM by TheHandle

That sounds gay.

Sorry, I couldn't help myself . Seriously, I recommend [[ http://www.amazon.com/Story-Stupidity-History-Western-Present/dp/0961772913 this book]] to you. The idea is that people in groups use belief systems as ties that bind the community together. Its as if people think that they can only trust others who share their social values. Hence, to introduce new concepts into a traditional culture is not to do it individual by individual, but to educate whole groups of people at a time. Cautious adopters of new ideas are more open if they think that they arnt the only ones adopting the change.

There's more than one way to do that. You can recruit popular opinion leaders to endorse your new idea, or you can embed the idea in the popular media, or you can engage the youth, who are generally more open and are the next generations opinion leaders.

In other words, exactly what you see Western government and corporate interests doing.

This thread gave me a headache.

edited 2nd Mar '13 3:02:01 PM by DeviantBraeburn

Handle, I honestly could not gather at all what you were trying to say in that huge wall of text. Can you give me a laconic version?

You're missing out on the concept of opportunity cost. If a person or group is known for having bad ideas and making poor arguments, or distorting their arguments to serve an agenda, it may not be worth your time to sift through everything they shit out for a hint of gold when there are more productive sources (smarter, more fair-minded people with better and better-thought-out arguments) to draw from instead.

It's a continuum, and where exactly one should draw the line is always going to be disputed, but you can't spend your life checking out the half-formed notions of every crank who comes your way.

edited 3rd Mar '13 12:23:29 AM by Iaculus

I'm beginning to think that there are behavioural pattern relapses instead. Like, hey, I had this conversation 2 and 4 years ago! and what the heck, I wore these clothes when I got dirty at the same place again!

Values of societies change over time. In those societies, there are people who want to fight those changes. One of the arguments they use is that those changes are the result of malicious and/or concerted subversive effort. Partisans of the change (who, of course, would not like to be called traitors or Unwitting Pawns, will mock them, accusing them of making up improbable theories for low motives.

Both sides may be partly right.

Some of the change memes may be traced to deliberate, motivated propaganda creation efforts; there may be actual, honest-to-goodness conspiracies, and evidence may eventually emerge to prove it. Some of the conspiracy theories may be utter hogwash by people who go too far with the mindset. The supporters of a conspiracy theory and its detractors may act as irrational as each other. The operating word being "act", as there may be some people deliberately working to sabotage a side by defending it with faulty arguments.

This makes the battles for a society's value system very difficult to monitor for those who are paid to do it, let alone those who are not. The average citizens find themselves sticking to one consistent ideological source, and trying to conform to the flow: thinking for oneself is too expensive.

Communism VS Capitalism; Protestantism VS Catholicism; Secularism VS Islam. How much of these battles is people genuinely fighting for what they think is fair, and how much of them is the underhanded and manipulative social engineering of one bunch of leaders against another, using people as ammunition?

What worries me personally is; if I resolutely join the Secularist side in the Secularism VS Islam struggle, am I playing into the hands of a corruptive effort by the West to sap and impurify our precious traditional values and leave us listless, vulnerable, and admiring, to be manipulated into doing their bidding in exchange for honorary one-of-them status?

edited 3rd Mar '13 4:34:44 AM by TheHandle

I'd say the fact that bad people use good causes and ideas for their own ends doesn't make the causes any less good.

Make a cost benefit. Universalize. Ask yourself, if you accept these values as true, what is harmed, and what is gained. Ask yourself what is harmed and what is gained if everyone accepts them. And ask yourself if it's realistic for at some people everyone to accept them. Then ask yourself if, even though it's not realistic, if the value is good enough that's it's worth it anyway.

There is no cause so pure or righteous it cannot be used for a good bad end. That doesn't mean it isn't necessarily a good value or cause, however.

On Secularist vs Islam: Does it matter if you're playing into the hands of the west? (And how are you playing into them. The west, like many "groups" doesn't have some vast agenda. It's easy to simplify. Think about all the groups you know. How many of them are unified in any cause?)

Choose what works for you (without harming anyone else) first.

edited 3rd Mar '13 7:46:17 AM by DrTentacles

I'm not sure I understand the problem. If you have an opinion that matches that of one side of a struggle, you're not bound to support other opinions espoused by said group if you disagree with them.

In particular, I'd caution you not to be too considerate of why someone wants to implement a policy as long as the methodology doesn't consist of "give me power" or similar. Policies are what get passed so you should determine whether or not you support the things that the policy would accomplish, rather than who supports it. That's this type of thing.

Now, if you were running for office yourself, you have to consider such things because democracy is primarily about appearances and whipping people into emotional frenzies instead of making good arguments.

Also: traditions are not precious, they're trash. Burn them.

"Communism VS Capitalism; Protestantism VS Catholicism; Secularism VS Islam. How much of these battles is people genuinely fighting for what they think is fair, and how much of them is the underhanded and manipulative social engineering of one bunch of leaders against another, using people as ammunition?"

Yes.

"If I resolutely join the Secularist side in the Secularism VS Islam struggle, am I playing into the hands of a corruptive effort by the West to sap and impurify our precious traditional values and leave us listless, vulnerable, and admiring, to be manipulated into doing their bidding in exchange for honorary one-of-them status?"

No.

Come on, you don't really believe this? Of course there are people in the West who would like to accomplish this, but they aren't the majority, and its simply a matter of taking steps to ensure that doesn't happen. Democracy means that a people rule, not that foreigners who also support democracy rule instead. Find one key goal which is in the interest of the local population, but not the West (I can think of at least one obvious one- opposition to Israel). As long as you support both, secular values and national self determination, you know that you aren't anyones pawn or lapdog.

To add to : The entire point of secularism is religious neutrality, so that theocratic groups cannot oppress and marginalise those who don't believe 'as they should', whether they be followers of a less prominent religion or not religious at all. That's not the same thing as eroding or beating down on religious values.

edited 3rd Mar '13 5:39:37 PM by Snipehamster

French-style secularism is a lot more aggressive, especially against Islam. In general, in Western Europe, "secularism" as a press buzzword means "Don't be a Muslim at us". Muslims watch a lot of Western-European media. When everyone keeps making faulty and clearly motivated statements to the effect that we suck, we become uninclined to consider even genuine, well-intentioned criticism.

Examples, please? I'm not familiar with the specifics of european secularism, at least not in the sense of sapping traditional values.

edited 4th Mar '13 12:53:32 AM by Snipehamster

I'd guess the most prominent example is the prohibition of "ostentatious religious symbols" (which conveniently includes Hijab, but not medals like crosses) in French state-run areas (like public schools).

edited 4th Mar '13 12:58:56 AM by Medinoc

Hijab in the sense of a full-face veil or form-disguising garments in general? I can understand in the case of the former - religion shouldn't be an excuse to mask one's identity in a public institution. For the same reason that it would be problematic for a student or teacher (say) to go around in a motorcycle helmet or hockey mask. If the restriction applies to religious garments in general or islamic garments in particular... yeah. That's not good.

Jewellery, unless it's absurdly OTT, isn't actively antisocial whereas hiding one's face is.

edited 4th Mar '13 1:41:44 AM by Snipehamster

No, Hijab is just hiding hair, not including a veil.

Update : Oops, link removed, couldn't make it work, look at greenmantle link below

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shabina_Begum

Update :

Just another wiki article with picture of hijab.

edited 4th Mar '13 6:50:48 PM by PhilippeO

Another article on the whole debate in general: Islamic scarf controversy in France, and related to it British debate over veils.

Additionally, it doesn't help their case that niqab and the burqa have been used to avoid arrest by male criminals.

edited 4th Mar '13 1:51:55 AM by Greenmantle

Hm. I was under the impression that some variants of the hijab could be full-face.

Your second link details a UK court case where a student - who already had free access to islamic dress in school - attempted to impose sharia law to overturn her school's dress code in favor of a stricter variant of Islam. I think she was right to lose the case. The verdict also made it clear that the outcome of the case applied only to this isolated incident and did not set a precedent either way.

I'm not sure what your point is.

Your first link is broken, unfortunately.

edited 4th Mar '13 1:56:30 AM by Snipehamster

That's the Burqa.

And here is the fixed link: French law on secularity and conspicuous religious symbols in schools.

edited 4th Mar '13 1:58:41 AM by Greenmantle

Yeah, the French were largely being smug asses throughout that one. You had to be there, seeing the likes of Sarkozy show up every day on TV, huffing and puffing about how righteous it was to save the poor Muslim girls from religious opression. The "Muhammad" caricatures were also a rather shocking event: a double standard applied while complaining about a double standard (contary to what they claimed, jesus is seldom made fun of if at all, and the Beatles and the Mony Python have been rather prominent examples of the sort of backlash you can get for even looking like you mocked him).

But it wasn't just that. Look, have any of you guys seen Django Unchained? Well, it's not nearly as bad, but, in our countries, you grow up with a very definite sense of "we suck, we hate each other and ourselves, and we want to be like the Cool White People over there" (to the point that blue eyes, fair hair and skin, and so on, are considered hot, and also to the point that Western (and Japanese) media are watched much, much more than what is produced by people of the same culture.

In terms of power relations, I can guarrantee you that we have an abundance of Stephens and Candies, sometimes condensed in the same person, down to the gratuitous foreign language and foreign culture fetish. Pyramids of them, admiringly taking abuse from above, and then dishing it below.

In that context, violent, reactionary Islamism is not unlike, say, Black-Panthering or, appropriately enough, Nation-Of-Islaming. Kind of like Can't Argue with Elves versus Screw You, Elves!, but, you know, darker and with more Unfortunate Implications.

Anyway, what I'm attempting to do here is, to draw parallels between these different kinds of paranoias, these sorts of fears that things not being done the way they always were might mean no-one knowng how to do things at all, losing sight of what's right, becoming vulnerable to the first demagogue, being strung along and played for a fool, and so on.

I'd like to grow a mental framework from which to approach these phenomenons coldly and level-headedly. One that I could then spread among my brethren, for the sake of everyone's peace of mind, and thie freedom to choose the cultural path they follow, rather than being bound by reaction.

Kind of like how it took two decades after the Cold War for US Citizens to start considering that, maybe now that there wasn't an ill-willed Soviet State pushing and taking credit for them anymore, some "socialist" ideas on redistribution of wealth, economical and institutional ways of keeping the powerful elites in check, and so on, might actually be worth considering on their own merit.

I think that both rejecting "foreign" cultural influences wholesale and passively accepting them is less than desirable and may cause serious damage to a culture.

Instead, if we look at the great achievements of civilizations (the Greek golden age, for example, or the Roman one, or the Islamic one, or the Western Enlightenment) we see that they were generally preceded by a period in which these cultures studied and imported some ideas from other civilizations, rejecting others and improving on the imported ones.

Thales studied under the Egyptian priests; but he did not just accept passively whatever they told him, he learned their cool geometrical techniques and set out to develop a more precise notion of formal proof. And Xenophanes and Pythagoras too spent a lot of time outside Greece, for example, learning of new ideas and improving on them.

Similarly, the Romans learned a lot from the Etruscans, the Greeks, the Egyptians, and pretty much from anyone else they met — without forsaking wholesale their culture for the ones of these populations, obviously, but taking whatever they found useful and making it even more useful.

The same can be said about the Islamic golden age or about the Enlightenment (it is no coincidence that many of the earlier Enlightenment philosophers had a deep interest in non-European civilizations).

The dichotomy between stereotypical Westernized secularism and stereotypical Islamism is as false as it gets.

A vital culture should not fear challenges to its assumptions, but should not blindly submit to them either. It should import, adapt, assimilate, and finally improve.

Cultures are not meant to be pure. They are meant to be dirty, and confused, and quarrelsome, and most of all alive.

edited 4th Mar '13 4:44:42 AM by Carciofus

Oh, Carciofus, you poet, you! Such confidence, such panache! That was a beautiful post! I mean it!

Ideas and ideals, whether they be moral, religious or cultural, should stand or fall based on their own merits rather than Appeal to Tradition or Appeal to Novelty.

edited 4th Mar '13 4:50:31 AM by Snipehamster

On that note however, I disagree. It's true that appealing to either length of time or freshness of the premise is fallible on both possibilities, however, how do you define merit? By merit I think the middle east's time to have a cultural clensing and overhaul was long long overdue because of bloodshed and constant civil war due to the inability to accept each other's concepts. But of course, we live in a civilized world, and condemn a whole ethnicity requires a very very thick stack of logics.

Same goes for values really. If people who had done demeriting deeds, who happened to have values, then are those values really invalid? If so, then how could Carc's approach begin?

By merit, I mean ideals which demonstrably lead to peace, prosperity and stability. "Help the poor" is a better ideal than "Let anyone below the poverty line die". "Accept all faiths" is better than "Torture and kill everyone that doesn't follow [Insert Deity of Choice]".

Some ways of life, assuming the common axioms that life is preferable to death, peace is preferable to strife, truth is preferable to lies and so on, are objectively better than others.

Being an ignorant layman, I haven't a clue how to address the problems in the Middle East - they'd have been solved by now if the solution was an easy one. I suspect, however, that a loosening of the grip of theocracy and a greater emphasis on equality, self-sufficiency, human rights etc would go some way to making things better. Damned if I know how to implement those things, though, or how much impact they'd have in the long term.

That depends on whether the deeds follow directly from the values.

edited 4th Mar '13 8:16:35 AM by Snipehamster