Of course. But I was not criticizing you for wanting agreement…I said…
Let’s look at this paragraph again…
I have said earlier that I do not like to read longer documents online and you will notice that longer documents, written elsewhere, is the rare exception here. People use this as a discussion forum. so ‘as you could have easily learned’ since I wrote it in one of your threads, this is not something I will be doing, and this not doing on my part fits with the culture of discussion you have joined. There is nothing wrong with asking people to read your essays, but when you act as if I have shortcomings because I have not, it is not on good grounds.
Note the assumption in this. The assumption is that if I do not agree with you then I do not care. Or, I am not trying for win/win situations. You do realize that what you did in this sentence is to frame it as ‘agree with me or you do not care’ or that I am unethical or both… Whereas it is clear, I think, that my disagreements with you are based on caring for people. Perhaps you are right about how we must act and think, perhaps you are wrong, but here you are presuming that if I disagree with you and your system it shows a lack of care. You seem to think all situations allow for win/win. That does not fit my experience. I see, however, that criticism can be win win.
That is the kind of thing I was reacting to when I said ‘Of course you think it leads to good things if I agree with you.’ I was not saying it was strange that you liked having people agree.
Which of my criticisms was destructive?
I have been pointing out what I think are problematic aspects of your system. If you can show me and yourself how these aspects are not problematic, that would be constructive, yes? If your can’t, then you have learned something important, yes?
It seems like you want people to just agree. That’s human. Me too. But when people don’t agree with me, I do not criticize them for being destructive. I see it as an opportunity to see if what I am saying makes sense to me, to them, in general. It can be very frustrating. Sometimes I think the other people are being willfully stubborn, sometimes I think they are being dumb. And they, me.
But you seem to be upset that people are being critical, which is not the same as destructive.
Fine, but part of philosophy is in fact seeking counterexamples and seeing if something actually holds up. I do not think you countered the arguments Phyllo and I made about the morality of violence. It seems to me you changed your wordings, contradicted yourself, restated your opinion without argument and sometimes simply moved past objections. We all do these sorts of things and not necessarily with intention, but it will lead to continued criticism. It seems like you think I am not being a good student when I do not read your papers, which in fact is an expectation only on your part for how people should behave in an online discussion forum. I pointed out above how some of your statements come off and morally judgmental and not on good grouns.
Here, instead of seeing the value of criticism, my posts get categorized as burning and destructive.
And once I noticed that you judged criticism, per se, yes, I had some derision, and yes, I concluded that you did not want to deal with rational, not insulting criticism of your ideas, but just wanted agreement. And honestly, I don’t know how else to interpret it.
I am not sure you are aware of the ways in which you come off as morally superior and having the answers. I do see that you take great pains to ask for more information. I do see that you thank people for feedback. But there are other comments, such as the ones I mention in this post above, where there is implicit judgements and derision of others. Further in your defense of non-violence you often based your arguments on the idea that people could have, if they were smarter or more skilled, have prevented any possible need for war. To me this seems unfair. It uses the benefit of hindsight and a kind of ‘if people had agreed with me we would never get into situations with people like Hitler’ which seems to lack humility. Phyllo and I, it seems to me, do not think we have some perfect cure. We are looking at a world where most people will not listen to us and in that world there are sometimes, horrible forces.
When you respond to our perhaps correct, perhaps not arguments, it is as if you could have eliminated all threats. If people listened to you there would be no Hitlers in charge of war machines. If people listened to you they would know how to negotiate instead of make war.
Well, if people ALL listened to me and Phyllo, I am quite sure there would not be any need for war either. But this is not going to be the situation.
So it comes off as, again, superior. People failed to deal correctly, as you would have it seems, with Hitler, so passifist responses would have worked, it’s just that people made mistakes. Mistakes are coming towards us from the future and they have been made already.
If you presented your position as ‘I believe in non’violence and I realize this may or may not lead to less pain, suffering and death, but I believe it is the most moral choice.’ Well, I might disgree, but you are not claiming to know it is going to work.
But if you go over your posts in response to us, it seems like you have the deontological AND the consequentionalist postions. No, no, it could not possibly have reduced the amount of suffering and deaths that the US entered the war.
I am afraid that that kind of hubris is going to bring out pretty strong criticism. I am not sure it reduced the suffering, but I think it did.
On some level I am reacting to what seems like a holier than thou attitude. I understand that it seems like people just jump on your ideas and that certainly does happen. But from my position I experience it as reacting to a moral position that is claiming it knows things it cannot know and judges people when they, even as victims, respond in perfectly natural ways to violence. Because it does not work out in ways it would be hard for them to predict.
And if I respond to what you write here - as opposed to your essays - you tell me that in the essays you say X. But that begs the question of why here you said what you said. If you say that ethics is suspended when you are attacked violently, then here you would not see someone as acting immorally but not judge them. You would not see them as acting immorally.
The way you have responded here to counterexamples and objections has at times come off evasive.
Instead of ‘if you read my essay’ you could respond ‘I see how that sentence gives the impression you are reacting to, here is what I believe…’