Leave Dennis Rodman Alone
by Benjamin Studebaker
So Dennis “The Worm” Rodman is back from North Korea and he’s made a new friend out of its supreme leader, Kim Jong-un. Rodman was interviewed by George Stephanopoulos about his experience, and Stephanopoulos made no effort to hide his disdain for Rodman’s visit and for the positive things Rodman had to say about his new friend. Typically, I am not bothered by knowledgeable people who talk down or condescend to less knowledgeable people. It is not a particularly kind thing to do, but I understand the frustration of trying to make a point to someone who does not have the requisite intellectual background to receive it in the way one intends. I am however perturbed when an individual is wrongly condescended to by someone with no significant superiority of thought or knowledge. This prompts me to write this post, a defence of Dennis Rodman’s conduct in North Korea.
Here is Rodman’s interview with Stephanopoulos:
To summarise Stephanopoulos’s argument:
One cannot be friends with someone who sometimes acts immorally, therefore Dennis Rodman was morally obliged to be rude to Kim Jong-un and to denounce him.
While not everyone agrees with Stephanopoulos, he is certainly not alone if the YouTube comments are any guide. Here are a couple YouTube comments on the video expressing these sentiments less dispassionately:
After watching this Ive come to the conclusion that Rodmans a retard. Who would call this guy a friend. North Korea is the same as nazi germany. I hope after they meet rodman they assume all Americans are retards that like basketball and they dont shoot a nuke over here.
Rodman is stupid, He’s great Guy?… what did you and him fuck eachother ova there or something?…..really judging about everything you said did you even go to north Korea? Smh….you suck you funny looking man.
My principle objection to this is what, precisely, does anyone have to gain from Dennis Rodman either not going to North Korea or going to North Korea and being aggressively rude to his host? How does it benefit anyone for Rodman to refuse Kim’s friendship?
Some argue that Rodman’s visit lends legitimacy to the regime or helps it survive, but I fail to see any mechanism by which Dennis Rodman’s visit could hasten or delay any potential collapse of the North Korean state. If Rodman presented Stephanopoulos’ human rights letter to Kim, does anyone expect in seriousness that Kim’s heart would melt and he’d throw open the doors of his prison camps? Would Kim be so heartbroken at the rebuke of one of his favourite 90’s NBA players that he’d change over the North Korean state to please him? I do not think even Stephanopoulos is so daft as to believe such. How can being friends with a person who does awful things be wrong if it does not contribute to the furthering of those awful behaviours? The man who rejects friendship on some foolish principle gains nothing and loses only the opportunity for friendship.
But you know what would have happened if Rodman were rude to Kim? He wouldn’t have gotten the opportunity to spend nearly so much time with the supreme leader, to learn about him and to get inside his head. He wouldn’t be the one American in the world right now with the most intimate knowledge of the personality and workings of North Korea’s head of state. Dennis Rodman has had the experience of a lifetime. If history is any guide, no state lasts forever. One day the DPRK won’t be around anymore, and Dennis Rodman will have been the only westerner who got to know personally one of its heads of state. And in the meantime, if there’s one thing Rodman has illustrated, it is that Kim Jong-un is not simply an insane person, he is someone who is at the very minimum capable of holding an amicable conversation with a westerner.
Some laugh and say that Kim Jong-un was lying or manipulating Rodman when he said that he does not desire war, but why should he be? What does the DPRK have to gain from war with the United States? Any damage North Korean nuclear weapons could inflict on the United States or its allies would rebound a hundred-fold on the regime. It’s far more likely that North Korea seeks nuclear weapons to deter the United States from removing its regime from power than that it genuinely seeks to be the aggressor in a future war. Kim Jong-un enjoys being Kim Jong-un far too much to throw all that away with a reckless attack on a country whose power vastly exceeds his own.
The naive and ignorant position is the one espoused by Stephanopoulos, that Kim Jong-un is some chaotic evil stereotype, seeking only death and destruction with no capacity for communication or reasonable negotiation. All people are the result of their genetics interacting with their surrounding environment. Being born the heir to the DPRK gives one a rather unique perspective, a rather skewed sense of what is good and what is bad, but it does not make one a lunatic or a mindless purveyor of evil and violence. Kim Jong-un probably sees himself as the embattled defender of a poor and mostly defenceless nation against a global hegemon, an aggressive superpower. His understanding is coloured by that perspective. His perspective isn’t right–he misunderstands us just as we misunderstand him–but this does not mean that he is himself a fundamentally bad or blameworthy person. If you were born in Kim Jong-un’s shoes, how could you turn out differently? People do not choose to do bad things deliberately, they stumble into them by accident and as a result of benign but ultimately misguided intentions. Every person is just as capable of doing terrible things given the wrong environment. Even you, even me, even George Stephanopoulos. Let he who is not dominated by his nature and his nurture cast blame and lecture on “responsibility”.
So let’s cut Dennis Rodman a break. He had the adventure of a lifetime and he made a friend, however sketch. In the meantime, the rest of us got to learn a little bit more about Kim Jong-un and North Korea, so we’re all winners here. Dennis Rodman got to play 14 seasons of NBA basketball, grab nearly 12,000 rebounds, and, in retirement, leverage that into an opportunity that has, to this point, been denied to more or less every single American and European. Kudos to him. Now let’s let Dennis get on with being Dennis.
Benjamin Studebaker 
[…] Leave Dennis Rodman Alone (benjaminstudebaker.com) […]
Thanks for sharing the blog!
How can being friends with a person who does awful things be wrong if it does not contribute to the furthering of those awful behaviours? The man who rejects friendship on some foolish principle gains nothing and loses only the opportunity for friendship.
Ummmm…because it shows Rodman’s lack of moral judgement. again motivation….not consequences…you are obsessed with consequences and it leaks into everything your write
and you actually think that Rodman got to know this guy personally and supposedly “got inside his head” after one visit? Give me a break…
his whole inner circle is based on a cult of personality which Rodman let himself be sucked into just because he’s so self-absorbed and knew that the notorious leader of North Korea wanted to meet one of the key players on 1980’s chicago bulls. On what logic do you come up with the idea that now the two are friends? In my view, the weakness of Dennis Rodman’s character allowed him to fall prey to Kim Jong Un, who took advantage of him to make Rodman think that he’s a great guy….that’s why everyone is calling Rodman stupid. its just so obvious.
the meantime, the rest of us got to learn a little bit more about Kim Jong-un and North Korea, so we’re all winners here.
Um, what did we learn that was new? besides more confirmation of our opinions of both dennis rodman and Kim Jong Un.
Plus if Kim Jong Un really wanted to open up and escape the insanity that his father and grandfather had sown, he would have invited Barrack Obama or some representative from the U.S. government…..not Dennis Rodman…for god’s sake!!!!
Its so obvious that Kim Jong Un did this to boost his own ego by taking advantage of Dennis Rodman’s ego. How could you see this any other way?
“Being born the heir to the DPRK gives one a rather unique perspective, a rather skewed sense of what is good and what is bad, but it does not make one a lunatic or a mindless purveyor of evil and violence. Kim Jong-un probably sees himself as the embattled defender of a poor and mostly defenceless nation against a global hegemon, an aggressive superpower.”
No one said he was a lunatic or mindless. But he is a purveyor of evil and violence upon his own people. And that should have been enough for Dennis Rodman. And you gotta be kidding me with the second sentence here. Do you know how a cult of personality state functions? By devising false enemies and making empty threats against those enemies, in order to keep control of its own people. Its all about control. He doesn’t see himself as the embattled defender of a poor and defenseless nation against a global hegemon. His regime survives by broadcasting that false perception.
I do disagree with Stephanopoulos in that Kim Jong Un is an evil stereotype seeking death and destruction….no….he’s an evil stereotype seeking perpetual and absolute control over his own people for the purposes of elevating himself and his ruling family to cult-like status……
“Some argue that Rodman’s visit lends legitimacy to the regime or helps it survive, but I fail to see any mechanism by which Dennis Rodman’s visit could hasten or delay any potential collapse of the North Korean state.”
I do agree with you here.
I openly do not care at all about people’s motivations morally. It’s not a matter of leaking into my writings, it’s a core element of my moral philosophy.
I’m sure Kim didn’t tell Rodman his life story, but at least Rodman got to meet him and talk to him for a few hours-that’s more than any other westerner can say.
If they got along and Rodman wants to call Kim his friend, who are we to judge it? It doesn’t hurt us, and it makes both of them happy. Was Kim manipulating Rodman? In some respects, possibly. But if so, Rodman doesn’t mind, and no one else is harmed.
We learned Kim can speak English. We learned Kim can hold a conversation with a westerner amicably. We learned he’s not insane, that he’s rational. This enables us to predict his behaviour in future political situations with more certainty. That’s a huge gain for us.
On the contrary, lots of people scaremonger about North Korea all the time by saying that Kim is crazy and cannot be relied upon to behave rationally. It’s really important and significant that we know that’s not true.
When you grow up in a totalitarian regime, that’s your normal. Kim probably doesn’t think there’s anything wrong with the things his regime does, that the personality cult is just part of the way states have to work. It is not as if he grew up in some small town in America and thought “I’m going to open prison camps and rule with an iron fist in defiance of my moral background”. He behaves as he was bred to behave. No one intentionally and deliberately commits evil deeds. Our perception that this is not so is a function of our ignorance of the minds of others.
“But if so, Rodman doesn’t mind, and no one else is harmed.”
So this is the reductionistic logic by which you say no one can criticize Rodman? my friend you ignore motivation to your own detriment.
This is a comment I took from the huffington post article about the economic debate between Joe scarborough and Paul Krugman. You do the same thing that Scarborough does with conservative economic philosophy except in regards to utilitarianism it and using to explain all human behavior regardless of motivational and psychological circumstances. And then you justify it by simply saying “I don’t care about motivation or psychology.”
“The problem is Joe is presenting a philosophical, political argument with total disregard to real life circumstances! He does not understand the way the economy actually functions… he simply clings to his taxes bad/spending bad/debt bad… flag pole!”
Well, people can criticise Rodman, I’m merely arguing that they are wrong to do so, because criticising someone who has not caused any harm is not logical. You have yet to present to me a compelling argument for why motivation should matter independent out consequences or outcomes.
We know Scarborough is wrong because countries that have tried the policies he suggests have experienced negative consequences. My argument is that this is precisely what we should care about–whether or not the consequences are good. Scarborough may personally be a lovely individual with very good motivations, but the policies he advocates produce bad outcomes, and therefore he is doing bad by advocating them.
if your only gonna criticize someone for causing harm and not look at their motivation for causing harm than whats the point of criticizing them….you can’t possibly hold them accountable because according to your philosophy they are beholden to their environment and genetics….so why should your philosophy care if they are causing harm if you dictate that every motivation behind that harm is shaped by environment and genetics and therefore impossible to alter? scarborough’s is a pundit…he is more obsessed with getting into big arguments with Paul Krugman because it makes him look like a polarizing and controversial and popular figure. if scarborough had truly good motivations and an admirable character he would listen to Krugman and take in what he’s saying, analyze it, and revise his position.
see, with your philosophy, you can’t even criticize the people who are criticizing Rodman..because their criticism and yours is just a consequence of theirs and your environment, genetics, and dominating social norms…even if you think its a bad consequence, without considering motivation…theres no justification for altering or criticizing it…and therefore everyone is absolved of responsiblity for all opinions and actions…so where do you go from there? we might as well all not exist because clearly theres no purpose to our lives
There is, strictly speaking, no value in criticising actors, because their actions are determined and not chosen through any free will.
If you’ve heard the expression “don’t hate the player; hate the game”, that more or less expresses my view. I should despise the environmental conditions that produce people who act immorally and I should despise immoral actions, but I should not despise the individuals themselves.
I think it’s rather bold to claim to know Scarborough’s motivations in any case. Why not presume good motivations, or neutral ones? Regardless of the motivation, the effect is the same, so I don’t see the point in splitting hairs over it. I don’t despise Scarborough, I despise the things that influenced him to think and act as he does and the actions he takes. The man himself is just as much a victim as the rest of us.
it’s so amazing that you ignore the fact that the “game” as you call it is constructed by other human beings whom your philosophy would say are determined and don’t have any free will.therefore the game is an actor as well, and therefore under your philosophy, you can’t criticize it as well….and eventually, under your philosophy you get to a point where you can’t criticize anything….see the problem there my friend?
we are all actors….even while we are making criticisms…therefore, under your philosophy, you have no reason to write this post or even to keep engaging in this discussion…
The reason is that I desire to, though the desire is not my choice, it is imposed upon me through nature and experience. Just because I do not choose to be a certain way does not mean that I am no longer that way simply by knowing it was not my choice.
I just said that you can’t in any real sense criticise individuals for the things they do or the way they behave, you can only hope to gain knowledge through your experiences of what influences individuals to act in ways that are not helpful and seek to eliminate whatever causes you might find.
your trying to criticize criticism for the fact that it is criticism while saying that all criticism, which is an action, is determined by forces beyond our control…where’s your end game? where’s your assumption based in logic?
Just because my criticism is generated naturally outside of my control does not mean that it does not make true claims about the world. Claims which, when heard by other people, might influence them, through mechanisms outside of their control, to think or behave differently.
but why would you even try to gain knowledge if you are already determined?
Because it is determined that I try to gain knowledge. I do not control what I am compelled to do. A true determinist knows that the mere knowledge of being determined will not change one’s nature in such fundamental ways. It can alter our perspective on ourselves and others to a degree, but it cannot reverse our fundamental traits, inclinations, and interests.
so then why do we exist…just to be determined?
Why should there be a reason? Whatever our determinations lead us to tell ourselves, that’s the closest to any reason we shall ever come.
To argue otherwise would be to say that discovering that one is determined suddenly means one is no longer determined, or that the knowledge of whether or not one is determined has a very large impact on how we behave. I see no reason for either to be true.
“Just because my criticism is generated naturally outside of my control does not mean that it does not make true claims about the world. Claims which, when heard by other people, might influence them, through mechanisms outside of their control, to think or behave differently.”
In a deterministic universe the only truth that could possibly exist is that the universe is deterministic. every other truth or knowledge would be conditional upon that truth and therefore pointless to analyze or explore…..if you can’t have analysis then you can’t possibly have change or have any basis from which to make new or improved knowledge claims about the universe which you would then use to try to influence people’s behavior ….consequently your or anyone elses claim to truth is impossible in a deterministic universe….
It is by no means clear that it is pointless to study the universe merely because it is determinist. Its being determinist does not tell us how and in what ways the determinist forces work, and our knowledge of how our behaviour is determined can be used to get better behaviour out of people.
“It is by no means clear that it is pointless to study the universe merely because it is determinist. Its being determinist does not tell us how and in what ways the determinist forces work, and our knowledge of how our behaviour is determined can be used to get better behaviour out of people.”
but then your knowledge of how your behavior is determined must also be determined if the entire universe is determined. and therefore analysis is pointless.
Can’t you understand how you just get into a circular logic which is impossible to escape?
all analysis that you could possibly perform of why the universe is determined would be determined because the whole universe is determined and as a member of the deterministic universe all aspects of you are included in that determination
this you can not argue….i am certain of it.
Of course all my knowledge is determined. That doesn’t mean it cannot be true or false. We can still test our knowledge claims’ veracity through experimentation and analysis of the consistency of our logic. Free will is not essential to any of those things.
Of course all my knowledge is determined. That doesn’t mean it cannot be true or false. We can still test our knowledge claims’ veracity through experimentation and analysis of the consistency of our logic. Free will is not essential to any of those things.
omg man…no you can’t…because the universe would have already determined everything about how you would test your knowledge claims and what result you would gotten..EVERYTH
ING..EVERY SINGLE THING is deterimined in a deterministic universe. you do need free will in order to claim that your own tests are not deterministic….how can you argue with this?
Now you’re resorting to unearned scepticism. We can see that there are natural and physical laws because we see consistent relationships among effects and causes. We only see those consistent relationships because it is determined that we think in this way, but to presume it fallacious on that basis is scepticism without warrant. The fact of the matter is that this computer I’m typing on works because the people designing it used our knowledge of effects and causes to put it together. If our determined way of thinking were wrong, that would be not be possible.
unless you think thats your knowledge is determined but whether it is true or false is not…which doesn’t make any sense
Now you’re resorting to unearned scepticism. We can see that there are natural and physical laws because we see consistent relationships among effects and causes. We only see those consistent relationships because it is determined that we think in this way, but to presume it fallacious on that basis is scepticism without warrant. The fact of the matter is that this computer I’m typing on works because the people designing it used our knowledge of effects and causes to put it together. If our determined way of thinking were wrong, that would be not be possible.
Unearned skepticism? What in the world is the definition of determinism to you other than the one where everything is determined? If everything is determined than questions of what is wrong or right is irrelevant because EVERYTHING is determined anyway…so again your claims to knowledge or pointless
The same natural and physical laws that determine our behaviour govern the behaviour of all phenomena in the universe, it’s an extraordinary leap of sceptical faith to presume that somehow, the same forces would create through evolution organisms completely unsuited to making any sense of the surrounding world.
Determinism and nihilism are not synonymous. One can acknowledge that one has no control over how one behaves or the universe and still acknowledge that one has been determined to care about such things anyway. Just because it is determined that I am hungry does not mean I can just stop being hungry, and it doesn’t mean I shouldn’t eat that bagel over there. I consider my life and the knowledge I have acquired very meaningful despite the fact that it is determined. The fact that the very meaning I derive is determined doesn’t bother me. I don’t care.
“The same natural and physical laws that determine our behaviour govern the behaviour of all phenomena in the universe, it’s an extraordinary leap of sceptical faith to presume that somehow, the same forces would create through evolution organisms completely unsuited to making any sense of the surrounding world.”
hey man..its your leap of faith not mine…you can’t change the definition of determinism to try to justify its logic. any sense that we make of the world in a deterministic universe must be determiened because again EVERYTHING is determined….this becoming ridicoulous that you are trying to refute this…what ever sense we make of the world is also a phenonmeon of the world and is therefore governed by the deterministic natural and physical laws in your deterministic world.
and how you care about things…would also be determined
Yes, it’s all determined, every last thing. So? How does that make me worse off? How does it make the thoughts and feelings less valid? Why do you need agency to be fulfilled?
I do not see how that is at all significant. It doesn’t matter. The knowledge remains useful regardless of how I got it. The leap of faith is to say that despite there being no evidence of an independent will, one continues to subscribe to the belief that such a will exists, and that’s your position, not mine.
what ramifications you consider and the ones you don’t and how you got about those processes and the processes themselves would also be determined.
Yes, and yet all of this knowledge continues to yield what I perceive (and again, I only perceive because it’s determined, but it’s still the case that I perceive) to be benefits. You want to say that those benefits aren’t real? You want to take them away from yourself just because you know they’re determined? It’s rather masochistic, isn’t it? At a certain point, you just accept that you’re determined and that there’s not much you can do in terms of thinking around or through it. Accept you for you, after all, you’re not your fault.
and that my friend is why the universe must have a reason for existing and is not determined
I see absolutely no connection. Our ignorance cannot prove anything but our own ignorance.
and you just gave the perfect reasoning for why we should all just lay down and die…im not masochistic…determinism is masochistic
I don’t see anything depressing about it. I enjoy the way I am and the things I do, though I do not control the way I am, nor the things I do, nor the fact that I enjoy it. I do not require control for satisfaction.
“Why do you need agency to be fulfilled?” ahhh…theres a why question that concerns motivation…so it appears you do have some interest in asking “why”
ya see even though you so vehemently asserted that you don’t care about the “why” questions because you are a determinist….you still ended up asking the “why” question..
I wonder why you did that. perhaps it was the heat of the moment. perhaps it was because you had felt like you lost a measure of control…which however you say you don’t need to be satisfied.
perhaps i am determined to be a leap of faither and you…not so.
anyway good discussion… i think its reached its logical conclusion.
Morally, motivations are not significant. But that doesn’t mean I’m not curious, as a point of enquiry. I am not going to judge you based on what answer you provide. It would be interesting to know what element of your nature or nurture causes you to have the intellectual hostility toward the idea, that’s all.
See in your analysis of what went on here you’re focused so much on utility, that you forget about the psychology of motivation.
And in regards to this quote…
“People do not choose to do bad things deliberately, they stumble into them by accident and as a result of benign but ultimately misguided intentions. Every person is just as capable of doing terrible things given the wrong environment. Even you, even me, even George Stephanopoulos. Let he who is not dominated by his nature and his nurture cast blame and lecture on “responsibility”.”
Let he who loves not to judge forget that we humans are capable of transcending our nature and nurture. That’s what being human is about. I can’t comprehend how you can continue to ignore this basic fact of human existence just to explain away your own philosophical bent.
How does one transcend one’s nature and nurture? What else can influence one’s decisions besides the traits with which one is born and the various things that happen to one in one’s life? Being human is about doing whatever one’s nature and nurture make one best suited to do for the benefit of all.
how do you explain human progress…if not by transcending the norms that surround us…your theory can’t explain that basic fact of human existence.
A given generation has a set of experiences that influence the environment created for the next generation. When the environment created for the future generation is superior to the environment that created the prior generation, you have progress.
Advancement can occur in systems without an individual within the system acting independently of the system. Look at evolution.
your deterministic view leaves no room for the first person…which would have had genetics but no environment in terms of social norms….and exactly what entity would have determined what constituted good or bad consequences for that first person or two people or however many it was? and why would that entity have designated one consequence good and one bad. in order for there to be determination, there has to be something or someone which will decree that everything is to be determined….than what about what determined that first thing…what determined that specific entity would decree or make it so that everything else is to be determined? and in that case what does determination mean? where is the referent for determination?
see this is where the “why” question comes into play
.
everything has a reason including the first things that ever started the chain of actions and reactions that eventually brought us the universe as it exists today.
sorry this was meant to be on the really long comment thread
Genetics are also determined. We do not select our genetic background and the mating behaviours of our parents are determined by nature and nurture as well.
There’s plenty of room for debate and discussion as to what consequences are good and what are bad and in what ways and how we ought to weigh them. Those are all debates within consequentialism–my impression is that you were attacking consequentialism itself, not specific strands within the moral theory.
As to what does the determining, the various natural and physical laws, it would appear. As to what brought those about? We do not know enough to say.
You say everything has a reason, but what is your basis for that? Surely it’s just an intuition, it’s just something you feel. It cannot be justified logically.
and what determines the natural and physical laws?
I do not know the answer to that question, if there is an answer. It is better surely to admit ignorance than it is to proclaim one’s intuitions or feelings to be true without evidence, isn’t it?
well if you don’t have the answer to that question that how can you be sure the universe is deterministic…my point is you have not proclaimed ignorance.
I don’t know that a specific being or entity or thing determines, I only know the existence of the various physical and natural laws, and these I only know through consistent connections between effects and causes. I can point to the consistency of effects and causes to show that a natural or physical law exists or might exist, but I cannot use those causes to infer a prior cause–that’s beyond the capacity human reasoning. One can know the laws without knowing whether or not there is a lawmaker or what the lawmaker’s nature might be.
“I don’t know that a specific being or entity or thing determines”
as you say one of the laws of the universe is that everything is wrapped up in a chain of cause and affect….
so then couldn’t I surmise that it is impossible for you or me or anyone else to ever know for certain if the universe is deterministic or not if I can not, at this point locate it within a chain of causation…unless you perhaps invoke the existence of God which would somehow stand outside the chain of causation and create the chain of determination that also uses the principles of causation and effectiveness…although you do not strike me as the type of person who believes in a God. you still have not given me a clear cut reason to believe that the universe must be deterministic..unless you don’t believe that and its just your guiding theory….sorry my mind runs like a motor…i often say i want to end a discussion when I come up with something new to say and then I have trouble letting it go….and plus I don’t get to have these kinds of discussions with anyone else.
All we need know is that there are physical and natural laws that remain constant. In so far as we know that this is true, we know that things are determined. It’s not necessary to know where the laws themselves come from to know that they exist. If say, every time a person committed murder, that person was struck by lightning the next day, we could infer that there was a cosmic law against murder, even though we would not know where that law came from.
It’s no trouble; I enjoy discussing philosophy.
well everyone except people like you who are fine with thinking that the universe is deterministic…
and also on a different note…way back when you remarked that people aren’t evil…they’re only ignorant and therefore produce bad consequences…but couldn’t there exist a deterministic universe which determines that people will have certain evil motivations to do the things they do? or perhaps it is ignorance as you say? but my point is…in a deterministic universe how could you ever know? unless you know the absolute laws that the deterministic universe is actually determining? which I can not see how you would be able to figure out.
Calling a person or a motivation “evil” assigns blame to that person, and in a deterministic universe, there can be no blame by definition in the first place. If determinism is true, we can only seek out the causes behind negative effects and hope that, armed with that knowledge, we can decrease their incidence. So when we see a socially unhelpful behaviour, we should be able to find various potential causes that statistically relate to it. So for instance, criminal activity is more common among people who grow up poor, or uneducated, or in broken homes, or what have you, and so these things, not an intrinsic evil within the criminal, can be said to be the causes. If you eliminate those causes, you decrease the incidence of the criminal behaviour.
but as we already agreed to…absolutely everything is determined in a deterministic universe…so you still have not given me a good reason for why blame can not be determined in a deterministic universe along with the nature of that blame, the processes people would go through to assign that blame, what consequences that blame actually entails and whether that blame entails good or evil, the nature of which would be determined in a deterministic universe. see everything is subsumed under determinism in a deterministic universe…so your argument against the notion of evil using a deterministic point of view is invalid…..but then really in a deterministic universe an argument against anything would be invalid even though that argument may be determined to happen….see that’s what I meant when I said the only absolute truth in a deterministic universe is that everything is deterministic….everything else that is truth is not truth because of itself…its truth just because its determined…see that’s what I mean when I say, trying to uncover some truth for the sake of gaining knowledge in a determinstic universe is pointless because the ultimate piece of knowledge is that whatever truth your trying to uncover is determined already so the question of “why” anything is basically subsumed by the ultimate truth of determinism. whatever answers you come up with to “why” would also be determined and the processes you went about and so on and so forth…,so ultimately your just left with a universe for which all the truth and meaning has been figured out…you just gotta go about your business.
you tried to make the same argument which we already agreed was invalid
what I’m trying to say is one could never master a deterministic universe….as you are trying to say you could do…because the determinism has already mastered absolutely everything else including your attempts at mastery. it appears that even you, a strict determinist, are not fully aware of exactly what a deterministic universe would entail
No individual is responsible for the existence of the physical and natural laws. If there was such an individual, that individual would be god. Blaming human beings for acts of god is nonsensical.
We do not merely ask questions of “why”. A lot of the knowledge I pursue I pursue not to know why things happen but in order to improve my quality of life or standard of living. My impression of those things is determined, but the pleasure and welfare is nonetheless experienced.
Knowing that things are determined does not mean that one knows the precise mechanisms of determination, and knowing those mechanisms is useful in so far as the mechanisms can be used to bring about good outcomes. Studying the mechanism of cause and effect is consequently very fruitful. The mere fact that it’s determined does not detract from that utility.
the utility is determined also
remember EVERYTHING is determined including whatever truth you could uncover from cause and affects
I’m well aware, but that doesn’t diminish my enjoyment or my non-enjoyment. What is utile is utile, whether we recognise it to be determined or not.
the why and the how are determined including how you would respond to them, and what the answers to those questions are, and what the meaning to those answers would be…see my point is you can never run out of things that have been determined already…so what’s the point?
but you do concede that evil can happen in a determinstic universe?
“what I’m trying to say is one could never master a deterministic universe….as you are trying to say you could do…because the determinism has already mastered absolutely everything else including your attempts at mastery.”
with this statement I’m trying to say is you can’t own any utility…you can’t own any pleasure…you as an an individual or even as a society can not own anything…..its aaaaallllllll owned by the deterministic universe. so if you try to make the statement “I get pleasure or I get utility” its automatically rendered an impossible statement because it is not “you” who is getting pleasure or utility….rather it’s the universe..
I know that everything, absolutely everything, without exception, is determined. Your point is understood. It’s just that I don’t see how that makes any difference in how I should feel about it.
For instance, human beings enjoy sex. But we didn’t decide we liked sex–some hormones switched on when we were adolescents, and suddenly sex was fun. Knowing that you don’t choose to enjoy sex, that the fact that you enjoy it is determined by your nature, does not diminish that enjoyment in the slightest.
Bad consequences can happen, but that doesn’t imply that any given person is to blame for them. Yes, those bad consequences are determined and therefore inevitable, but determinism works through us–I am determined to pursue given political ends, and my efforts in this direction will have effects that might produce better consequences or influence the behaviour of others. So by simply carrying out our own determined behaviour, we can bring about the lessening of bad consequences.
I am part of the determinist universe. When I eat, my skin cells gain nourishment, even though they did not choose to eat or choose to have the nourishment pumped through the blood to them. It does not diminish the fact that they are nourished. We are like the skin cells, we do not choose, but yet we enjoy.
“It’s just that I don’t see how that makes any difference in how I should feel about it.”
because your feel is determined…don’t you get it? of course it matters. your feeling is not your own by virtue of it being determined…its so simple
Consider this scenario….your mom gives you lunch money everyday. but everyday you go to school a bully takes it. he gets all the pleasure and utility out of taking your lunch money and you don’t. another way to put it is, in a deterministic universe, you have absolutely no free will, so that means you don’t have the free will to have utility pleasure or an other feeling that is strictly your own…therefore the statement “I feel pleasure” is rendered impossible. So now the deterministic universe is the bully. The lunch money is the truth and knowledge. the only difference is you never had it in the first place. The deterministic universe had it all along. Your not getting any pleasure or utility from your stolen lunch money unless you can somehow live vicariously through the bully. Just the same, your not getting any pleasure or utility from truth or knowledge or the process of uncovering it, because all that stuff is up to the whims of the deterministic universe. The deterministic universe is your bully. The main difference is the bully can’t control your reaction after he takes your lunch money while the deterministic universe controls everything about how you react. The deterministic universe is the ultimate bully because it not only controls every piece of truth or knowledge but also any feeling, happiness or sadness or whatever else, that is involved. That’s what having no free will means. Nothing is your own. that’s why i’m saying if nothing can be freely determined by you or anyone else including the opinions that you are arguing about or the manner in which your arguing, or the knowledge that you could discover from that argument…..that what the heck is the point of arguing…again what is the point of doing anything??? there is no truth, knowledge, or process that hasn’t already been dictated. your “discovery” and all the circumstances surrounding it have also been dictated so what’s the point of doing it…you can’t possibly give me an adequate answer to that question…if everything in the past, present, and future is determined than it just is…there’s nothing else to it and there’s no point to anything.
on a slightly separate note, that is exactly why it’s so masochistic and cruel for a deterministic universe to create a species, in which the overwhelming majority of its members, believe they are autonomous and have free will.
consider this scenario….when someone is trying to prolong their life, they think they’re being autonomous, they think they’re using free will to try to control how long they live, what kind of quality of life they will have, and every other circumstance surrounding them trying to prolong their life. If this person suddenly learned that all this is determined, then it logically follows that everything about their death is also determined making every feeling, every action. every piece of knowledge and truth about the nature of their life and death already determined. For a species in which most members have been determined to think they have free will, can’t you see how that would be incredibly depressing? I certainly can. and there’s your perfectly logical reason for why I and other people don’t wanna believe that the universe is deterministic. If you subsume our feelings under determinism than you can not invalidate them by any argument. because our feelings are just determined and that’s it…no other questions need to be asked. although of course they will be…if the universe has determined that those questions be asked….so “why” is pointless…nonentheless it can still be asked and it is.
determinism is masochistic…it is not my view of determinism that is masochistic….as a person who believes or wants to believes he is autonomous….and that has been determined…all the blame for masochism is automatically laid upon the determinism because it is automatically implied that if I believe that I am autonomous but regardless that belief is determined than I will believe the determinism a very cruel thing indeed simply by virtue that I have been determined to be autonomous….the affects of feeling autonomous in a deterministic world would drive everyone to suicide….that is if the world actually is deterministic.
I am distinct in so far as I can feel and think certain things that are not experienced by other beings and they can feel and think certain things that are not experienced by me. The origins of those thoughts and feelings, in so far as they are not, in any meaningful sense, my own, is not important.
Determinism isn’t coercive. It is impossible not to be determined, so there’s nothing to contrast it against. Free will isn’t a possible alternative we can resent not having, it’s a logical impossibility completely incompatible with the universe. My entire life has been determined, even when I didn’t know it. I had fun then, why not have fun now?
Just because your thoughts and feelings are determined does not mean that they will necessarily be correct or good. And why should the determining force necessarily be masochistic? Maybe it just doesn’t care? There are certainly plenty of deterministic philosophies historically and many of their members seemed to be reasonably happy. The Stoics, for instance.
If you find it depressing, I would suggest that you have not had the ideal environmental exposures to nurture you into accepting or enjoying your determined state.
Are you not familiar with “fate” or “destiny”? Lots of people enjoy the notion that their lives are determined. They sometimes like to imagine that their fates are determined by a benevolent being that looks after them, whereas I would characterise the determining force as either somewhat malevolent or indifferent, but the point is that just because you are determined does not mean you must be miserable. There are a variety of ways to think about it, and while those ways are in themselves determined, this very conversation could be the environmental factor that causes you to come to terms with your determined status.
“I had fun then, why not have fun now?”
This a question that is illogical to ask in a deterministic universe. the determinism will determine when where, howand why you have fun..that is coercive…is it not?
Not at all, because it could not be otherwise. Coercion is when my will is dismissed in favour of a different course of action. I never had a will in the first place, so I could not be coerced to begin with.
“Just because your thoughts and feelings are determined does not mean that they will necessarily be correct or good. ”
the question of whether they are correct or good has also been determined..therefore this is also an illogical statement in a deterministic universe..
you need to wrap your head around the fact that past, present, and future are already decided in a deterministic universe. nothing is correct or good by virtue of its own….your still making statements in trying to describe a deterministic universe which would be completely illogical to make in describing a deterministic universe.
Surely you never imagined that whether or not a fact was true was up to your will? Facts exist outside the will, even for those with a conception of it. The laws of nature are true whether you wish them to be or not, even presuming you can wish. What difference does it make that you can’t, in any real sense, wish or will? The laws of nature would not have moved for you under either theory. There is no scenario in which having a will (unless that will is accompanied by fantasy magic) changes what is factually true or false in the external world.
All determinism implies is that there are objective correct answers. It doesn’t tell you what they are; you still have to look. Fortunately, whatever determines (if there is a determiner) has determined that some of us will be inclined to look and consequently will look, because it is determined that we gain enjoyment from it.
its masochistic because determinism determined that most of the human species should think illogically and believe they are autonomous….there’s your answer for why its masochistic….
in a deterministic universe you have no way to say that something is logical or illogical…only that it it exists and its affects can be seen. characterizing something as illogical or logical automatically implies the question of the “why” behind that characterization….i already explained why “why” is rendered invalid in a deterministic universe….simply because past, present, and future are already determined including any such “discovery” you could possibly make and the affects it would have and so on and so forth…
and since the universe has control over you…how would you ever know if the deterministic universe wanted you to find its secrets….maybe its stopping you at every turn….see my point is you can’t know anything in a determinstic universe…all you can know is that its determined…so what’s the point of going searching for it if the universe already decided it doesn’t want you to know…if you can’t know anything, then there’s no point in searching for it.
utimately you have given me some reasons for why the universe could be deterministic….you have not given me absolute proof and because of what I said in the last comment you probably would never be able to.
I don’t care that my feeling isn’t my own feeling. I don’t need a sense of independence from the universe around me. I am one with it, I am a vessel by which it operates. This contents me. In a way, there is beauty in it. And it does not bother me in the slightest that all of that is determined. Or that. Or that. And so on, reductio ad infinitum.
Something is logical if it plays by the determinist rules we have observed, if it follows from what has preceded it. The fact that this is itself determinist is not significant because it remains useful to us, and the fact that the usefulness is again determined, reductio ad infinitum, remains of no consequence. Happiness is happiness, whether one be independent or merely a vessel.
A determinist universe is the only sort of universe in which one can know anything at all, because it is the only sort of universe that plays by rules and laws that can be known and the outcomes of which can be predicted. How could I know anything if I was not in a universe dominated by natural and physical laws? All would be arbitrary, nothing would make sense.
I gave you the evidence of determinism–the only possible causes of a person’s behaviour are his nature and his nurture, there is no other possible cause. The laws of physics and chemistry flow through everything that goes on in the brain, there is no need for an independent will to explain our behaviour, so Occam’s Razar demands that we discard the idea. In order to prove me wrong, you must demonstrate that the will exists independent of nature and nurture. The determinist does not prsuppose an additional force for which there is no evidence–that’s what free will is, a baseless claim grounded in cognitive bias and individualist conceit. Determinism is the simpler explanation, and consequently must be the default in the absence of evidence.
If I may say so, and this is just my interpretation….don’t take offense and no offense intended…but in reading your last few posts it seems to me that you are no different from conservative idealogues who you rightly denounce for putting ideology before facts in your posts about economics. you allow your utilitarian and consequentialist ideology to guide all your observations and analysis of people’s actions and reactions, and in the process ignore basic facts about human motivation, psychology, and “what it means to be human and coexist in a world with other humans”. sometimes we humans don’t do what is in our best interests. That is a fact. Its not an opinion. I remember in your other post you said that the body can not be divided against itself. How do you figure that? What are the inner turmoils and contradictions I experience as a person who has had to overcome depression and anxiety? I have been struggling against myself all my life, and we all struggle against ourselves. Its part of being human. We are flawed. Life is a struggle. It is not a clearcut set of things to do and then the consequences and we weigh the good against the bad and choose the good in an objective manner. That’s not how the world works. These flaws in your favorite utilitarian ideology have been widely documented. Utilitarianism helps explain somethings…it does not help explain everything.
I never said people were always rational or always correct in their assessment of their own interests–Kim Jong-un is massively wrong about a lot of things, but he’s genuinely wrong, not simply lying or being malicious. My entire political theory rests on the fallibility of people’s competence. The important difference is where you see someone acting evil, I see someone acting incompetently, because what is evil is by definition, under my moral philosophy, unproductive and correspondingly mistaken.
Feeling guilty about one’s nature is not struggling against oneself, it’s being negatively influenced by one’s environmental upbringing such that one comes to view one’s own nature negatively and has a negative self-view or self-esteem. In this case, rather than maximise the usefulness of the nature, nurture turns the individual against his own nature for no one’s gain. The depression and anxiety is socially produced, it is not a natural element of the human condition.
But my question is on what basis do you base your entire political theory? On what basis do you let it dictate every analysis you make of everything? This is why I think its dangerous to stick to one theory or another…you become beholden to that theory…and instead of analyzing something for what it is…you twist what is happening so that it can conform to your own theory of how you believe the world works. My contention is that we must always be willing to question our assumptions about how the world works. You have yet to mention why people have been able to poke holes the central tenets of utilitarianism. The way Kim Jong Un works and runs his country is perfectly productive for the end game of control and fostering a cult of personality…he is evil…he is incompetent as a ruler because he does not lead affectively and that is because he is evil and could give less than two shits about the well-being of his people….you have yet to argue against this in a convincing manner….you can not absolve people of responsiblity just because we are shaped by our environments and our genetics….you don’t think people can do any wrong….you basically think we’re all predetermined…but you can’t just depend on political philosophy to make these assertions…you have to delve into other realms of human experience in order to adequately justify your assertions….and it turns out that when you do…you will find no logical basis for them.
” It’s not a matter of leaking into my writings, it’s a core element of my moral philosophy.” this is a matter of semantics…the point is I recognize that your philosophy guides all your analyses
“I openly do not care at all about people’s motivations morally.”
I recognize this, but this is the whole problem with your philosophy, and it comes out in the fact that in response to what I say, you mostly just repeat yourself, and don’t actually respond to what I say.
“If they got along and Rodman wants to call Kim his friend, who are we to judge it? It doesn’t hurt us, and it makes both of them happy. Was Kim manipulating Rodman? In some respects, possibly. But if so, Rodman doesn’t mind, and no one else is harmed.”
People judge things all the time that don’t affect them. Are you saying we can’t do that? That’s an absurd rationale. by responding to everyone elses judgements you are judging this situations as well. so by your own logic, you shouldn’t be judging this situation either because it doesn’t affect you.
What does depression and anxiety have to do with “Feeling guilty about one’s nature.” I have never felt guilty. And I have managed to, although not completely yet, transcend my anxiety and depression. that has been an internal struggle to view myself and other differently, and I can characterize it no other way. the point is that I didn’t want to have a negative self-view of myself even though I did…that is an internal struggle…your logic falls apart
by your philosophy nothing can be a natural element of the human condition
Every philosophy begins from some number of intuitive assumptions. Intuitive assumptions are arbitrary, and we should try to limit instances of arbitrary thinking in our theory. To this end, the goal should be the minimum number of intuitive assumptions possible–one.
Once you have a foundation, the entirety of the philosophy can be constructed logically. There is no need for any other arbitrary moves. We simply use the principle we have settled on as our guide to sort out all subsequent questions or difficulties. Only empirical concerns (such as “what produces better consequences, free markets or regulation?”) remain.This produces a consistent, coherent, and cogent moral philosophy. My one intuitive principle is consequentialism, everything else I derive from there.
If you had an alternative guiding principle, I’d hear arguments for its superiority to consequentialism, but what you seem to be advocating is not an alternative guiding principle, but a pluralism of principles. The trouble with this is that any number of principles greater than one ultimately conflict and contradict each other. A contradictory or conflictual moral philosophy is a nonsense of no value. One or the other principle must triumph. In my case, I hold consequences to be the triumphant principle; no one has produced a compelling argument that any other principle is more important, and all pluralist theories I have run across have inevitably self-contradicted or come across as extremely arbitrary due to the large number of assumed intuitions.
You’re asserting that I’m ignoring these other considerations, but I’m doing so deliberately because the principle I have found most convincing indicates logically to me that they do not matter, and that the impulse to say that they matter is a case of mistaken intuitions. Unless there’s an argument to be had as to why these other principles are more important than consequences, it’s mere assertion.
Natural elements of the human condition include, hunger, thirst, sexuality, intellectual, psychological, and physical potentials and capacities (to be realised environmentally), and not much else. Most everything else is a product of social interaction and therefore has negotiable social value. A given social convention can be either useful or not useful, and should not be upheld merely on the basis that it has previously been upheld. No one feels bad about himself who is not socialised. The man who has known no other men, and no criticism, cannot be against himself except in so far as his body or mind can physically fail him on account of injury or disease.
While I do not agree with Rousseau’s negative judgement of the value of socialisation in sum, he is right to say that certain things are produced by it that previously could not have been–as he call it, “amour propre”, the desire for social position and to be viewed well by others.
[…] 2013 has spontaneously, seemingly out of nowhere, popped back up in my daily blog statistics–Leave Dennis Rodman Alone. Some formulation of the question “is Dennis Rodman retarded?” has led more internet […]
He is a complete retard. I wonder if he even has the basic senses given to us by nature to notice the human right violations all around North Korea. Maybe he’s distracted by that super dope ski slope the glorious leader is working on? Fuck em both.
I agree that the government in North Korea is pretty abominable, but does that mean that it’s wrong for Dennis Rodman to go there, get a feel for the place, and make a friend? It’s not as though Dennis Rodman’s political opinion is well-regarded or likely to influence the regime.