The Westboro Baptist Church (responsible for godhatesfags.com) was concieved of, and is run by athiests. I mean, who else would come up with such a convincing argument to put people off church?
I’ve recently been thinking about movements. Joining (or starting) a movement can be a half decent answer to the ‘what difference can one person make in the world?’ question. If you’re part of something bigger, hopefully you can have a big effect. But I’ve seen a couple of issues with movements:
- When a group of people do things in an organised way, there’s a tendency for people’s consciences to evaporate. If you’re part of a crowd, you don’t feel as responsible anymore. It’s someone else’s job to decide whether something is right or wrong. Diffusion of Responsibility.
- Organisations can be incredibly inefficent. Sometimes they can be efficent, but the big ones often suffer a lot of inefficency due to bureaucracy, maintaining the group. Inefficency.
- In a movement or organisation there is often pressure to maintain the status quo. You do things because that’s how things are done, and whatever you do, you don’t directly go against the grain. Rebels are quickly dealt with. Group pressure.
- Despite this pressure, its inevitable that a movement will diverge from it’s original goal, and eventually turn into something else. Small changes happen, and accumulate, such that eventually the group is going in a tangent to the original direction.
Unfortunately, the small changes in direction aren’t going to follow what is good, or ethical, in fact, it isn’t going to be random. Instead, it’s going to follow the laws of evolution. The characteristics of a movement - the memes - that survive are going to be the ones that make the movement more likely to survive and spread (which explains group pressure). And this has a tendency towards the manipulitive, and the deceptive (for example, pyramid schemes and cults). Group Mutation and Evolution.
So.
This leaves me thinking. If I started a movement that was dedicated to only the most pure and noble goals, it would only be a matter of time before the group diverged from it’s original purpose, before entropy consumed it. So would there be any point in starting something?
Also.
If I were to join a movement, chances are it’s not actually fulfilling it’s original purpose (and let’s face it, the original purpose is not always good), and the movement is probably wasting a lot of the energy that’s put into it, surely I’d be better off on my own?
Your thoughts?
Further reading:
I got some of the ideas from:
M Scott Peck - People of the lie
A lecture by Philip Zimbardo - here
I forget where I first heard of the meme concept…
I don’t know if I can appreciate American Idol anymore:
… A Paula Abdul fan who was found dead in a car near the Los Angeles home of the pop star she admired is being remembered in Maine by family members who say she struggled with depression and eating disorders as she pursued her dream of stardom. Waterville native Sandra May McIntyre, who changed her name to Paula Goodspeed, had been ridiculed over her failed audition for “American Idol.” …
I’m sure Paula’s audition would have seemed funny at the time. But now? I see no humour. Just sadness at the pyramid scheme that is hollywood, and culture in general. Everyone wants to be ‘on top’, to be popular, to be famous. But there isn’t room at the top for everyone, and so the vast majority miss out. Sigh.
http://www.howmanyfiveyearoldscouldyoutakeinafight.com/
I can take 26-27 
Cursor*10 is a really clever flash puzzle game. Basically, you have ten lives (cursors), and have to get to the top. Each life has limited time, but each time you replay it, you play it alongside all your previous cursors. It’s hard to explain, but easy to learn. And it’s not too addictive, so it won’t cost you hours of your life.
Why did Jesus come to earth, run around for 30 odd years, and then suffer and die on the cross? Some say he was a controversial teacher, and his eventual death was the product of what he was doing. He severly pissed off the jewish authorities, and they tried to get rid of him and his following by sending him to be crucified. Christians generally acknowledge that point, but argue that there was something more than just that going on. Often this something more is expressed in analogies, which makes it easier to understand.
I like analogies. They’re a good way to describe things. We should never think of them as the final truth, but instead think of them as descriptions of the truth. They are like photographs, two dimensional images that capture some of the truth of a three dimensional object. You can have many different angles and lightings, and they each capture part of the truth of the object, and so we ought to look at these different angles, to get a bigger sense of the truth. So you may want to treat this post as a slightly different angle to normal, hopefully revealing some more truth.
Today I did a bit of thinking.
I like animals.
I also like to eat them.
There’s always been this uncomfortable dissonance between those two things. The problem is partially that I quite like meat, and partially because I see vegeterianism as quite a difficult choice. I find it hard to consider the posibility of living without meat, especially considering how prominent meat eating is. For example, I imagine it’d kinda suck to turn up to a pot luck, and all the good dishes are meat ones. It seems like society is built around eating meat. Maybe if everyone was vegeterian, it’d be a lot easier? I dunno. The point is it’s hard, but what am I going to do about it?
So, what I’m thinking is, maybe instead of going cold turkey (no pun intended), maybe I should start by taking small steps? The plan would be to eat less meat per meal, and to eat more vegetarian meals. I’ll still eat meat, and probably still enjoy it (probably even more), but hey, it’ll be a step in the right direction. Sigh.
Damm you matt.
I posted previous post in a bit of a rush. I didn’t realize how long it was. Um, so here’s a much shorter equivalent:
There are lots of motivations for punishment. Wikipedia lists some. [I don't quite agree with how they divide them, but anyway...]
People should aim to love everyone, and so shouldn’t punish people with a motivation to harm them.
Yes. That’s it.
What should we do when someone wrongs us? How should someone be dealt with? Wrong doing has consequences, and needs to be dealt with. There are three main ways of dealing with it; preventative punishment, restorative punishment, and retributive punishment. In reality the three are probably going to overlap, but for a minute lets consider them separately.
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