Why is it wrong to oppress people?

[Journey]

Why do you say it's a moral absolute? What makes it appear that the deconstructionists maintain freedom as a moral absolute instead of something they personally strive for?

A movement of deconstructionists don't personally strive for anything. A movement of people may, however, have a moral imperative.

 

[ThatsWhatHeSaid]

Come on, Edahn, I could get very sarcastic with you, but we are just arguing semantics, not ideas here. A movement of deconstructionists don't personally strive for anything. A movement of people have a moral imperative.

A movement of people is not its own entity, but a collection of individuals, so we should be focusing on the individual.

I can see how people can strive for freedom and wish freedom for others, without actually saying that others are REQUIRED to want, or have, that freedom. It's the same reason Buddhists can deny absolute moral values but still seek to help others. My helping you see the world correctly does not mean that seeing the world correctly has it's own, inherent moral quality. It's just something that I like, that I think you'd like too.

 

[CzeCze]

So how can it be "wrong" to oppress people in a Postmodernist view?

'Cause I say so, punk.

BTW, I'm so advanced I'm freaking post-human

 

[Hexis]

Its wrong to oppress people?!

But what else are the mindless masses good for?! No seriously alot of people are perfectly fine with being oppressed and or dont even know they are, as long as they dont have to pay ridiculous taxes for pore benifits. So im not seeing the problem, what kind of oppression are we talking about?

Slavery? Absolute anarchy? Where in between those are we talking about. Cause im being oppressed now....Did you know its ilegal for me to break into an 80 year old womans house and while im stealing her T.V., rape her...WHAT THE HELL!!! IM BEING OPPRESSED!....

 

[suzyk]

Oppress people from killing others? Yes. It may be for a totally stupid reason, and there is some kind of social balance in this world. John Connor told the Terminator he can't go around killing people due to many reasons--they may have a family, they don't want to die, it's quite odd and unfair when you go around killing people just because they are against you. Human morals and ethics teach you not to treat people unkindly, and an unspoken rule is to never kill people just because. As I said above, because can mean because the people wouldn't want to be murdered by someone, right then and there, when they are probably leading a perfectly good life. Are we just part of the animal kingdom? Yes. Are we on the top of the food chain? Yes. Do we have the most developed brains out of all the animals in the world? Yes. So creating social hierarchies and 'unspoken' rules is natural, like not killing each other, or not saying something extremely rude like (I hope you die, you bastard) right to someone's face, and stuff like that. If you do it randomly, like the Terminator does, then you'll always need a reason. A reason to kill. A reason to be rude. Otherwise, people would put you in a mental hospital.
I would say the context of the word 'oppression' varies. I could be oppressed emotionally, or because I want to go on a killing spree and can't, I could be oppressed that way too.

 

[Journey]

A movement of people is not its own entity, but a collection of individuals, so we should be focusing on the individual.

I can see how people can strive for freedom and wish freedom for others, without actually saying that others are REQUIRED to want, or have, that freedom. It's the same reason Buddhists can deny absolute moral values but still seek to help others. My helping you see the world correctly does not mean that seeing the world correctly has it's own, inherent moral quality. It's just something that I like, that I think you'd like too.

You caught me with my pants down, before I edited that first sentence out, so I have to apologize, yet again. Sorry.

A collection of individuals must come to a consensus which is not an individual striving for freedom. I'll grant an individual striving for freedom. When it becomes the consensus of a movement it is a moral imperative. My helping you see the world correctly means that seeing the world correctly has its own inherent moral absolutes. I won't go any farther, lol.

 

[ThatsWhatHeSaid]

You caught me with my pants down, before I edited that first sentence out, so I have to apologize, yet again. Sorry.

It's cool, really.

A collection of individuals must come to a consensus which is not an individual striving for freedom. I'll grant an individual striving for freedom. When it becomes the consensus of a movement it is a moral imperative.

Can you explain the connection between a movement and moral imperative? I don't see it.

My helping you see the world correctly means that seeing the world correctly has its own inherent moral absolutes. I won't go any farther, lol.

? <~~my initial reply

How so? <~~secondary reply

 

[Journey]

Can you explain the connection between a movement and moral imperative? I don't see it.

From Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary:

movement- an organized effort to promote or attain an end

consensus- group solidarity in sentiment and belief

imperative (noun)- an imperative judgement or proposition

imperative (adj)- of, relating to, or constituting the grammatical mood that expresses the will to influence the behavior of another

The deconstructionist movement is organized in academia basically to end the oppression it perceives from the Modernist and Humanist era. Its consensus (moral belief) is the moral imperative (moral judgement or proposition that expresses the will to influence the behavior of others) that it is wrong to oppress people (the "end" of the deconstructionist movement is basically to end oppression).

I reiterate:

Postmodernism has sought to deconstruct every social institution, every meta-narrative (every narrative for that matter), every power structure basically because they believe they oppress people.

Yet Postmodernists deny the existence of any moral absolutes whatsoever.

So how can it be "wrong" to oppress people in a Postmodernist view?

 

[ThatsWhatHeSaid]

From Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary:

movement- an organized effort to promote or attain an end

consensus- group solidarity in sentiment and belief

imperative (noun)- an imperative judgement or proposition

imperative (adj)- of, relating to, or constituting the grammatical mood that expresses the will to influence the behavior of another

The deconstructionist movement is organized in academia basically to end the oppression it perceives from the Modernist and Humanist era. Its consensus (moral belief) is the moral imperative (moral judgement or proposition that expresses the will to influence the behavior of others) that it is wrong to oppress people (the "end" of the deconstructionist movement is basically to end oppression).

I reiterate:

Postmodernism has sought to deconstruct every social institution, every meta-narrative (every narrative for that matter), every power structure basically because they believe they oppress people.

Yet Postmodernists deny the existence of any moral absolutes whatsoever.

So how can it be "wrong" to oppress people in a Postmodernist view?

I still disagree about viewing the movement as an entity. Entities don't make decisions apart from their contributors. Viewing this on anything but an individual basis is just misleading and confusing because it's not an accurate portrayal of what's actually happening (individual action), but more a description of the labels, groupings, and boundaries that are imposed and projected onto what's actually happening (entities). I imagine that this is exactly what post modernists are trying to avoid and correct. With that said, criticizing a movement is useless. Criticizing the actors that make up the movement is productive. So lets analyze the actors.

Is there a contradiction at the individual level? Moral absolutism is a very particular theory. That theory says (at least, the way I've always understood it) that moral qualities are absolute and unchanging. They are properties of the objects, not of the subjects. Since they are independent of subjects, they remain absolute and look the same from any vantage point, whether yours or mine. This is, therefore, a theory about the nature of reality and things.

What does it mean to say we should strive for freedom? Does it mean that freedom is a thing that has certain qualities, good and bad? No, and it's not a problem. Moral relativity doesn't demand intellectual paralysis and a numbness to preference. There is still amusement on an individual level, which is borne out of embracing moral relativity, and it makes sense. By embracing relativity, people can come to see that there are no such divisions as good and bad, that it's all different manifestations of the same essence (call it the Universe), and that people, too, are manifestations of that essence. There's a certain cleverness and beauty to coming to fully realize this (which I have yet to reach in sobriety, heh). It (awakening) is cool. It's amazing. To the individual? To the group? All those distinctions are really useless at that point so there's no use. It's simply an event that makes you wonder. It's not good, it's not bad. No events are good or bad.

Insofar as people are DEMANDING freedom and holding it as an ideal separate from all other states of being, yeah. I'd agree with you. But making progress towards a goal does not mean you see that goal as separate from other goals. This, I think, is what Buddhists talk about when they say "right effort:" how do you shoot for a goal, when your goal is to shoot for nothing?

 

[Journey]

My question is rooted in a movement. Your breaking it down into individuals destroys the original question. We have nothing to discuss, unless you see something I don't.

 

[GZA]

If I oppress people I am opressing myself. The way I see people, I get this sense that they are not too different from me. Yes, they are impossibly different, yet they're is something that connects people... call that collective conciousness or whatever you want. I feel like there is some kind of amazing thing in every person, so killing someone or opressing a group would be difficult.

The exception is when a group is acting to oppress another group without justification. For example, criminals are a group that are justifiably oppressed, while nazis are a group that does not justifialy oppress. I would have no problem oppressing nazis (that is, if they were acting to oppress... I support teir freedom of expression, but do not support their actions or beleifs), and I only want criminals to be oppressed in a fair way that encourages change and productivity.

I don't know what all this "modernist" and "post modernist" suff is, so call it what you want.

So... oppresion is wrong to me because it is limiting the abilities of people who deserve to grow and flourish.

 

[ThatsWhatHeSaid]

My question is rooted in a movement. Your breaking it down into individuals destroys the original question. We have nothing to discuss, unless you see something I don't.

I'll tell you what I see. I see that entities don't make decisions on their own. In order to expose a contradiction, you need to expose something that advocates one thing, and then turns around and advocates the opposite. If you're going to expose a contradiction in a MOVEMENT, you need to ask whether movements can speak at all. I think it's obvious that they can't. Movements are just conglomerations of people with like minds. Any contradiction will be found at the individual level by necessity.

 

[Journey]

If you can't speak in terms of movements, then you can't speak in terms of history at large at all. This is how things have been discussed down through the ages. This seems like a personal preference of yours, rather than a problem of great philosophical importance, Edahn. What gives?

 

[ThatsWhatHeSaid]

If you can't speak in terms of movements, then you can't speak in terms of history at large at all.

No, that's fallacious. You just can't speak of movements contradicting themselves if you want to be accurate.

This is how things have been discussed down through the ages.

If it has, so what?

This seems like a personal preference of yours, rather than a problem of great philosophical importance, Edahn. What gives?

I think it's pretty important to be accurate. You can impute an opinion to something abstract like a movement, but it's imaginary and sloppy, imo. A movement doesn't have motivation or hold ideas because it's a fictional entity, like a corporation. Only its constituents can behave like this.

 

[Journey]

No, that's fallacious. You just can't speak of movements contradicting themselves if you want to be accurate.



If it has, so what?



I think it's pretty important to be accurate. You can impute an opinion to something abstract like a movement, but it's imaginary and sloppy, imo. A movement doesn't have motivation or hold ideas because it's a fictional entity, like a corporation. Only its constituents can behave like this.

You can speak of the consensus of a movement as contradicting itself or having an opinion as it is defined as a "group solidarity of sentiment or belief." Solidarity means "unity or the quality or state of not being multiple; oneness" which meets your criteria for dealing with individiual entities. That is not being imaginative or sloppy by anyone's opinion. A consensus can have motivation and hold ideas (just as it can have sentiment or belief). Thus, most accurately, a consensus of a movement can contradict itself. I went through this by your insistence. I'm not sure it was necessary to go through all this.

Will you now, please, answer the original posted question?

 

[return-of-uni]

No, that's fallacious. You just can't speak of movements contradicting themselves if you want to be accurate.



If it has, so what?



I think it's pretty important to be accurate. You can impute an opinion to something abstract like a movement, but it's imaginary and sloppy, imo. A movement doesn't have motivation or hold ideas because it's a fictional entity, like a corporation. Only its constituents can behave like this.

You can speak of the consensus of a movement as contradicting itself or having an opinion as it is defined as a "group solidarity of sentiment or belief." Solidarity means "unity or the quality or state of not being multiple; oneness" which meets your criteria for dealing with individiual entities. That is not being imaginative or sloppy by anyone's opinion. A consensus can have motivation and hold ideas (just as it can have sentiment or belief) and is not fictional. Thus, most accurately, a consensus of a movement can contradict itself. I went through this by your insistence. I'm not sure it was necessary to go through all this.

Big cat envy.

 

[Journey]

Big cat envy.

Psalm 11:2-3

 

[Totenkindly]

I still disagree about viewing the movement as an entity. Entities don't make decisions apart from their contributors. Viewing this on anything but an individual basis is just misleading and confusing because it's not an accurate portrayal of what's actually happening (individual action), but more a description of the labels, groupings, and boundaries that are imposed and projected onto what's actually happening (entities). I imagine that this is exactly what post modernists are trying to avoid and correct.

Yup. They are all for recognizing and challenging our assumptions (imposed by society) about how the world works.

In a way, it's rather Ni -- there are multiple ways to view life and/or a particular situation, and each is based on some set assumptions. Often people only see life from one angle and don't even realize they have made assumptions. Deconstructionists wants to tear the abstract artifices apart so we can recognize what assumptions we are making, in the hopes that it will bring freedom for us to make even more powerful decisions.

It's not a matter of having NO worldview (how could we live, if we made no assumptions?), it's a matter of clearly understanding what assumptions you have made and restrictions you have accepted in choosing your own worldview.

 

[Journey]

I've already stated that I don't think deconstruction is a bad thing at all, in moderation. The problem is that Postmodernist deconstructionists tend to want to throw the baby out with the bathwater. For instance, if they deconstruct the Declaration of Independence on the rightful grounds that women's suffrage and slave rights were ignored in the "all men are created with the right to liberty" phrase, they are right to point this out. However, it could definitely be argued that the document later inspired women's suffrage and slave rights and is thus not to be merely dismissed as a power play by wealthy, white, male, supremacists. It still is an important document today (which deconstructionists would deny). It is all part of that reaction that narratives have to be deconstructed because they oppress people (the moral absolute of the Postmodernist movement).

 

[ThatsWhatHeSaid]

Will you now, please, answer the original posted question?

I already did in post 29, and your tone is annoying.