Quotes from http://forums.bf2s.com/viewtopic.php?pi … 3#p3037913
Why you think action x is the best choice is irrelevant. You are not the one making the decision. You have to state the case the person making the decision would be making if you were the one with the decision to make. Arguments of morality are meaningless - unless stated in terms of their morality.
It makes sense that for most people, appealing to a general social definition of superego works. In a broad sense yes, most of us share definitions of what is right and wrong, but only because that is how most people have learned to function best. Most people are mediocre, and so those people are most effective at wielding their mediocrity by adhering to social standards. The safety in numbers develops a sufficiently common standard that, if accepted, grants protection so long as it is followed. The ego yields to the superego entirely.
The problem is the exceptions. The people that break the mold for whatever reason are the ones in positions of power. Maybe it's because of bloodline and not from natural or trained ability as we might like, but the fact is they are where they are because they have no need to conform to the overarching superego. They have the luxury of being completely practical, being immune to the need for personal salvation. That means they don't need to morally satisfy themselves - that also means they don't need to satisfy others in order to satisfy themselves. They are a force acting outside of social norms that can only be reasoned with in terms of their own unique morality.
We ridiculously expect the elite to conform to our idea of right and wrong because we believe it to be absolute, despite its birth as a collective power-grab by the masses. We talk to them in our language and act shocked when they don't understand what we're saying.
To be looking for common ground by definition is to look for failure. It doesn't make any sense to ask the opposition to see it your way - they obviously have their reasons for picking their ideology of choice, and that decision is rarely made in an environment absent of your ideology. You cannot speak your native tongue, you have to appeal to them in the universal language of self-interest.p.60 wrote:
Definition is to a major degree dependent upon your partisan position. Your leader is always flexible, he has pride in the dignity of his cause, he is unflinching, sincere, an ingenious tactician fighting the good fight. To the opposition he is unprincipled and will go whichever way the wind blows, his arrogance is masked by a fake humility, he is dogmatically stubborn, a hypocrite, unscrupulous and unethical, and he will do anything to win; he is leading the forces of evil. To one side he is a demigod, to the other a demagogue.
Why you think action x is the best choice is irrelevant. You are not the one making the decision. You have to state the case the person making the decision would be making if you were the one with the decision to make. Arguments of morality are meaningless - unless stated in terms of their morality.
This is why making statements about what is good or what is right doesn't make practical sense. Everyone has been corrupted to the means that works best for achieving their ends, and their morality forms around that.p.24 wrote:
Life and how you live it is the story of means and ends. The end is what you want, and the means is how you get it. Whenever we think about social change, the question of means and ends arises. The man of action views the issue of means and ends in pragmatic and strategic terms. He has no other problem ;he thinks of his actual resources and the possibilities of carious choices of action. He has of ends only whether they will work. To say that corrupt means corrupt the ends is to believe in the immaculate conception of ends and principles. The real arena is corrupt and bloody. Life is a corrupting process from the time a child learns to play his mother off against his father in the politics of when to go to bed; he who fears corruptions fears life.
The practical revolutionary will understand Goethe's "conscience is the virtue of observers and not agents of action"; in action, one does not always enjoy the luxury of of a decision that is consistent both with one's individual conscience and the good of mankind. The choice must always be for the latter. Action is for mass salvation and not for the individual's personal salvation. He who sacrifices the mass good for his personal conscience has a peculiar conception of "personal salvation"; he doesn't care enough for people to be "corrupted" for them.
It makes sense that for most people, appealing to a general social definition of superego works. In a broad sense yes, most of us share definitions of what is right and wrong, but only because that is how most people have learned to function best. Most people are mediocre, and so those people are most effective at wielding their mediocrity by adhering to social standards. The safety in numbers develops a sufficiently common standard that, if accepted, grants protection so long as it is followed. The ego yields to the superego entirely.
The problem is the exceptions. The people that break the mold for whatever reason are the ones in positions of power. Maybe it's because of bloodline and not from natural or trained ability as we might like, but the fact is they are where they are because they have no need to conform to the overarching superego. They have the luxury of being completely practical, being immune to the need for personal salvation. That means they don't need to morally satisfy themselves - that also means they don't need to satisfy others in order to satisfy themselves. They are a force acting outside of social norms that can only be reasoned with in terms of their own unique morality.
We ridiculously expect the elite to conform to our idea of right and wrong because we believe it to be absolute, despite its birth as a collective power-grab by the masses. We talk to them in our language and act shocked when they don't understand what we're saying.