I should probably stop posting on this or reading the comments, for the sake of my mental health (I mean that literally, this is a major anxiety disorder trigger for me.)
I am with you on this. I have had to disengage for mental health reasons. This stuff affects me quite seriously. I may or may not check back in on this post again. I may have to go as far as completely disengaging from the EA Forum on both this alt and my main account for an indefinite period, maybe forever.
i don’t know your specific situation, but I will speak on a general dynamic.
The psychologist Elaine Aron has a hypothesis that there is a neurological subtype called the Highly Sensitive Person that is unusually sensitive to sensory and emotional stimuli. This can include being unusually unsettled if other people appear to be in pain or discomfort or unusually disturbed by depictions of violence or suffering in TV or movies.
Some have suggested that Aron is describing autism or a form of autism. I’m not sure what’s true. Some people and some psychometric tests have told me that I’m a Highly Sensitive Person and that I’m autistic.
Aggressive environments or aggressive subcultures can shake out people who are particularly sensitive in this way. When that happens, I believe a certain kind of wisdom and temperance is lost. The soft, gentle side of people must be preserved and a community should be such that particularly soft, gentle people can be included and welcomed without losing their softness and gentleness.
Aristotle talked about practical wisdom (phronêsis). “Practical wisdom” makes me think about the contrast between my analytic philosophy courses in ethics and the social work elective I took in undergrad. First, the atmosphere of the courses was just so different. The philosophy classes usually felt kind of cold, sometimes kind of mean. Social work was a culture shock for me because the people were so palpably kind and warm. Second, my social work professor had been involved in real moral issues deeply and directly. Those included HIV/AIDS activism, dealing with violence in schools, and counselling couples navigating infidelity. I was so impressed with his practical wisdom. How do I assess that he had practical wisdom? I don’t really know. How do I decide when an ethical argument seems rational? I don’t really know, either.
The contrast between my ethics courses and that social work course is a microcosm of so much for me. It’s that same contrast you see in the EA movement where, for example, you have the absurd situation where people take the principle of impartiality or equal consideration of interests so seriously that they concern themselves with shrimp welfare but, in practical terms, their moral circle doesn’t fully include women.
Tying it all back together, a movement that can’t align itself:
with democracy, against fascism
with women, against sexism
with people of colour, against white supremacy
with core moral decency, against Nazis
is morally bankrupt, has lost the plot, jumped the shark, utterly, disastrously failed.
One part of the causal story of how that could happen is if you have an influential element of the subculture that disdains softness and gentleness and disdains soft, gentle people. I don’t think you can have future-proof ethics if you don’t, like, care about people’s feelings.
Going a step deeper, I think people’s disdain for empathy and sensitivity often involves a wounded, tragic history of other people not treating their feelings and experiences with empathy and sensitivity and an ongoing sense of grievance about that continuing to be the case. A lot more could be written on this topic, but I don’t have the time right now and this comment has already gotten quite long.
I am with you on this. I have had to disengage for mental health reasons. This stuff affects me quite seriously. I may or may not check back in on this post again. I may have to go as far as completely disengaging from the EA Forum on both this alt and my main account for an indefinite period, maybe forever.
i don’t know your specific situation, but I will speak on a general dynamic.
The psychologist Elaine Aron has a hypothesis that there is a neurological subtype called the Highly Sensitive Person that is unusually sensitive to sensory and emotional stimuli. This can include being unusually unsettled if other people appear to be in pain or discomfort or unusually disturbed by depictions of violence or suffering in TV or movies.
Some have suggested that Aron is describing autism or a form of autism. I’m not sure what’s true. Some people and some psychometric tests have told me that I’m a Highly Sensitive Person and that I’m autistic.
Aggressive environments or aggressive subcultures can shake out people who are particularly sensitive in this way. When that happens, I believe a certain kind of wisdom and temperance is lost. The soft, gentle side of people must be preserved and a community should be such that particularly soft, gentle people can be included and welcomed without losing their softness and gentleness.
Aristotle talked about practical wisdom (phronêsis). “Practical wisdom” makes me think about the contrast between my analytic philosophy courses in ethics and the social work elective I took in undergrad. First, the atmosphere of the courses was just so different. The philosophy classes usually felt kind of cold, sometimes kind of mean. Social work was a culture shock for me because the people were so palpably kind and warm. Second, my social work professor had been involved in real moral issues deeply and directly. Those included HIV/AIDS activism, dealing with violence in schools, and counselling couples navigating infidelity. I was so impressed with his practical wisdom. How do I assess that he had practical wisdom? I don’t really know. How do I decide when an ethical argument seems rational? I don’t really know, either.
The contrast between my ethics courses and that social work course is a microcosm of so much for me. It’s that same contrast you see in the EA movement where, for example, you have the absurd situation where people take the principle of impartiality or equal consideration of interests so seriously that they concern themselves with shrimp welfare but, in practical terms, their moral circle doesn’t fully include women.
Tying it all back together, a movement that can’t align itself:
with democracy, against fascism
with women, against sexism
with people of colour, against white supremacy
with core moral decency, against Nazis
is morally bankrupt, has lost the plot, jumped the shark, utterly, disastrously failed.
One part of the causal story of how that could happen is if you have an influential element of the subculture that disdains softness and gentleness and disdains soft, gentle people. I don’t think you can have future-proof ethics if you don’t, like, care about people’s feelings.
Going a step deeper, I think people’s disdain for empathy and sensitivity often involves a wounded, tragic history of other people not treating their feelings and experiences with empathy and sensitivity and an ongoing sense of grievance about that continuing to be the case. A lot more could be written on this topic, but I don’t have the time right now and this comment has already gotten quite long.