Ecmandu’s greatest sin (so far as his participation on ILP is concerned) is in choosing one of the most harrowing topics one can discuss, and blithely treating it as just another idea.
That’s bad, and I’ve talked to him about why he shouldn’t do that, and why this topic, and others like it, need much much more delicacy than he’s giving it. It’s bad for the site, because it makes it uncomfortable to use and uncomfortable to be associated with. It’s bad for users, because as much as philosophy takes stepping outside the world to look back and examine it, people remain people, remain a part of the world, with fears and feelings and experiences that painfully indelicate discussions can’t help but recall. It’s hard to be reminded of it for people who only know the pain through empathy, and it’s got to be hell for people who have a pain they are made to relive.
But while it isn’t just another idea, it is also an idea. It’s a painful idea, an uncomfortable idea, a traumatic idea, but it is still an idea, still subject to consideration, dissection, theorizing.
Ecmandu’s second greatest sin is just not formulating a particularly coherent theory of the topic he’s trying to theorize. I don’t mean that he’s wrong, I mean that I find his style of developing the idea makes his argument incomprehensible. I’ve talked to him about this too. That’s not usually that big a problem, we all struggle to express some of our ideas, particularly ones we’re still trying to wrap our heads around. But here, it combines and compounds with the fact that any discussion on the topic is going to suck. It’s cutting open the chest without the tools to complete the surgery or close the wound.
But being unable to philosophize well on an idea is also permitted. Often the only way to develop the theory, to get into the idea enough to make sense of it, is to make a mess of it and then try to pick up the pieces. Learning requires failing, understanding requires being able to be wrong. Or incomprehensible.
So Ecmandu is doing two things that are bad-but-permitted, and he’s doing them together in a way that makes them really especially bad. That sucks. But I also think it should be permitted.
Ecmandu, I’m not sure if you understand why it’s really especially bad, or if you even believe the people who have told you that it’s really especially bad. I think you see yourself as white knighting for people, and I do see the nobility in that intention. But if your motive is the well-being of the people you’re talking about, you have to take seriously the possibility that the discussion itself is harmful. That’s not to say it can’t or shouldn’t be discussed at all, but it shouldn’t be discussed casually, indelicately. Treat it like the fire it is: keep it small, keep it contained, try not to burn people.