A World Without Differences

Quag:Better from what I can see.

You might want to specify that "fandoms" should go in the pathological, obsessive, exclusive, antagonistic sense. There's nothing wrong with people hanging out together to discuss and create and have fun around something they like. It's when they haze noobs, establish and bully fandom rivals, impose heresies, and so on, that we have a problem.

Is it possible to have a Fan Dom without a Fan Dumb? If yes, how? If not, is having a Fan Dom worth having the Fan Dumb?

Done.

Thanks.

@Handle: I'm operating under that assumption you're not open to counter evidence because that is very much how you're phrasing things. Using your own anecdotal evidence of once or twice seeing people behave badly. Hell, I had to go to a bunch of football games for a grade in high school (I was in the marching band and color guard and this was a required activity for being in those, I don't actually give a personal fuck for football) and people pretty much never acted anything but decently in my experience.

So, somehow, competition itself does not turn us into raving assholes all the time. For some, it's a thing to go watch your kids or friends do on a Friday night. Frankly, I'm betting competition started at least in part because people got bored and decided to do something with their spare time. And mostly it serves as a bonding activity; you've all come together to enjoy this thing. Someone loses, someone wins, you still spent those hours with some folks you like watching a thing or participating in a thing you all like. And if you were playing, experiencing defeat or victory and learning how to work past the first with each other. All of these things are, in part, how relationships are formed. It's all part of us being social animals, really. We tend to like doing things together.

Hell, I think that's how curling got started; some Scots got bored on their work break and developed the nicest, most polite sport I've ever heard of. The losing team is even supposed to concede if they get too many points behind.

And we definitely had competitions for the bands, too. We spent weeks and months practicing routines and music. We got good at it, and then we went to the competitions to show off how good. And somehow not winning first place at some of them didn't make that experience meaningless. (It's long enough ago that I really can't remember, but I'm pretty sure we never actually got first place??) And that competition somehow didn't ruin our love for music. Or throwing flags, in my case. Well, both, there were other musical competitions. All of which were required by the class.

edited 16th Mar '15 1:14:28 AM by AceofSpades

Indeed, the plural of anecdote is not data. But, when forming an impression, that's all one has to start with. I come from a city where we had two teams, red and green. Every time one of them had a match, people died in the ensuing chaos. The fans broke stuff if they won, they broke stuff if they lost. Often, the fans fought each other. A schoolmate of mine proudly proclaimed that he destroyed traffic lights with some frequency. The whole thing was a sweaty, ugly spectacle. But I understand that not all football is like this, and not all competitive sports are like that.

Thing is, I find it interesting that we focused on sports and arts like this. Does that mean there's no objection to the end of nations, countries, religions...?

Well, humans can actually live without nations or countries. We did so for thousands of years. They're not as essential as art or playing are to us. Art and sports also aren't as destructive as religions or nations are.

I think we focused on sports teams because it seems more... petty? It was singled out because, aside from fandoms, it looked like it least belonged there.

Now, the dynamic you describe, that you're used to? You're right, that's a problem. And I do think the world would be better without that problem. But, other evidence shows that that problem isn't inherent to the group mentalities of sports teams, and sports fans, as you can have teams and organised fan groups who don't do such things. So the problem isn't really those things themselves— and so, the notion of getting rid of those things themselves will come off oddly to others. I think you are approaching this issue, not necessarily wrongly, but there's some degree of throwing out the baby with the bathwater on your side, and some stagnant tubs on the opposition.

I'm not sure if the problems you described are possible for us to be rid of, either, but striving to at least mitigate them, I can get behind. I just don't think dismantling the structure that enables the behavior is the way to do it, as eventually they will find other things to act that way about, and we get to structures we can't dismantle (permanently). To say nothing of whether there is any right to dismantle (some of) those structures to fix this problem, which is a much less clear issue, I think.

I'm not good enough at this to phrase what I want to say here in a sufficient manner, I'm afraid. But I do still think that humans grouping together is an intrinsic trait, we can't be rid of it.

When you say "the end of religion" I think what you mean is something to the effect of "the end of organized and codified religion, such that people are left with their individual beliefs and opinions on the topics, and aren't pressured into converting or fitting better into a mold or following the dictations of a higher religious authority", and some people are going to invariably read it as "noone has any religious beliefs any more". I think that dissonance is evidence that you're misdiagnosing what it is you want to take apart, but it isn't necessarily.

The original topic brought up that not only would there be a lack of theism, that there'd be a corresponding lack of nontheism. That is, of course, completely impossible. Any form of belief or lack thereof can be codified into something, fit into a category. The categories aren't the problem, per se; you just don't want anyone to attempt to force somebody to fit "better" into them. Right?

But, by the very nature of the categories, they will describe something. At least the very upper-level ones. I've never had anyone pressure me to better fit the mold of agnostic, but I have had someone think it was weird that I wasn't just wholly atheist, which was a little annoying. I'd imagine the pressuring is a lot stronger on the theistic side, just because there's more structure there. So, you could take apart all the structure, and the pressuring would be largely, though not wholly, there could always be individuals pressuring others on their own, gone. But, how many religions rely on that structure, exactly? I'd think quite a few. They'd rebuild the structure. It's part of human nature to follow others, it's part of it to lead, and it's part of it to form into groups. I can't figure how to satisfactorily prove that assertion, for which I apologize, but I am still confident in it. So, as you've said, you aren't intending to brute force dismantle these structures; we're to simply imagine a world bereft of them, how we might move towards it, and whether we should. I just don't think that such a world could really be populated by humans?

I was talking with a friend about this, specifically the empathy question, and they had an interesting take, I think. That you seem to be wondering what drives people to exclude others, in the question of why groups exist, while he thinks the question should be what drives individuals to form cohesive groups; that we start off thinking of everyone else as the others, and learn to include others via groups.

So, groups can reinforce that lack of empathy, absolutely, and can instill it; but they don't arise from it.

Now, on the issue of nations and countries, I don't agree with the notion that we've lived without them. A question to ask here, is what is a nation, what is a state? For certain definitions, sure, humanity has certainly lived without them. But we had groups serving similar purposes before then, on much smaller scales. What is an independent tribe, or family, or pack, if not a very small nation, in the right sense? We can picture living without states, but looking to our past isn't really going to turn up examples where we're truly lacking any such groups, I don't think.

Strictly speaking, humanity can live without art, it can live without play. But if it can make art, if it can play, it will. Grouping together is kind of like that. There are a lot of things that humanity, as a whole, will do, if it can. So it's hard to imagine a world lacking those things, because either it's one in which humanity can't group together, or it's one inhabited by something that doesn't, even if it can. I don't think humanity is capable of the latter, and I'd think we'd all be loathe to even consider moving towards the former. Groups just seem to me to be the kind of things that will reassert themselves, for good and for ill.

What I mainly objected to was Handle's assumption that having attended a single Barca match qualifies him to prognosticate on how football fans behave and how they should. As someone who actually attended games regularly until I was moved abroad, it's rather irritating to see someone damn the concept of football fan-ness and competitive sport itself on the back of a very superficial understanding.

I mean, to answer the question Handle posed earlier, about whether the frequent pain of defeat is offset by the infrequent joy of victory, I feel I'm pretty qualified to answer that: only two teams have ever won the Scottish league since 1986. I don't support either of them - so I have a pretty good idea of what its like to lose. And yet, winning the Scottish Cup in 2006 and 2012 more than made up for it. Some standout games - the 2006 semi-final against Celtic, the "relegation party" in 2014, whenever we beat Rangers - are also up there. Even some defeats are worth it for the experience: I've never met a fan who regrets losing to Liverpool in 2012, because it was an experience, especially given Hearts managed to score at Anfield. Quite a lot who regret not being able to go though.

edited 16th Mar '15 4:41:50 AM by Achaemenid

While I'd be very happy with a world where everyone's beliefs were empirical, I would be satisfied if we just resolved the first part.

Pretty much. Internalized Categorism and Category Traitor are among my two main enemies here.

Yup. I think we could just call them something else, if you like. A population of Over-humans. But I think they'd still be, genetically and biologically, humans. No need for a new species, just a new way of thinking.

Then again, if everyone is attracted towards overman-dom, can it still be said that they're being coerced to fit a mold?

Again, I'm fine with humans grouping together, so long as it's about enjoying fun things together, or achieving a common goal, rather than grouping for the sake of excluding others, like in, say, social clubs.

EDIT: There's also the question of whether sports are inherently exploitative... Are athletes comparable to indentured servants?

Then again, by that standard, so are the fields of healthcare, politics, oil...

edited 16th Mar '15 5:52:07 AM by TheHandle

@Handle My bad on wording. I did not intend to refer to the practice of homosexuality as such but rather its persecution, like the "sexism" part of "persecuting women". I am not doing an Appeal to Tradition or an Appeal to Nature.

I am simply saying we have been identifying with families, clans, and other groups since before we even began to persecute things like homosexuality or femininity systematically. It is in our very nature, embedded in our very genes, to have from our very birth, the idea of a group to belong to. Getting rid of that sounds basically impossible. I would not even know how to being the mere fact that animals have, by nature no matter how cognizant they get, the need to associate with likes.

Utility is one thing, it might have its uses but "deleting" such a...primordial essence to humanity, to life...sounds pretty extreme to me.

Yes, the need to associate is very much a biological one. Humans are social animals. And that involves getting a group. From there to antagonizing another group, that is not necesarily part of a group, it is just a way to make a group. And any group that is created for the sole reason of despising and depriving other of its rights is what is called a "hate group".

You seemed to be rather pettily focused on sports, which is why I was talking about. I was responding specifically to you. And your experience is rather superficial and doesn't seem like you've dealt with any other kind of competition that wasn't sports, was attended by people who knew how not to be assholes, and thus was condemning the whole concept incredibly unfairly.

Religion is something we're going to be arguing about until we cease to exist as a species and any thought to ending it is equally unlikely but more likely to start a flamewar in the thread that I'm not interested in causing.

Things about nationalities? Change over time as countries and governmental organization changes. As well as our personal perception changes. Texas will likely still be called Texas in a hundred years. Its relation to the rest of the world? Will probably be at least a little different. I do think that very gradually we're probably going to end up with a world government. It won't be some vast dystopian thing, just a slow growth to something as our situation changes. But countries? We're still going to be from somewhere that we love because it's home. And proud of how it's something that other countries aren't, in the sense that all countries have unique cultures and languages.

So yeah, not even sure what no differences between countries, nations, or ethnicities is supposed to mean, because eliminating those differences means imposing one culture on everyone. And that's not healthy.