(no subject)
This is a continuation of a discussion that I got into over on Lee Goldberg's blog that got severely off track. It's probably not of much interest to the majority of my flist, but click on the cut if you're interested.
Dear Ey-up,
Ok, I know in my last post I said I was going to drop the manners issue, but on rereading your comments it really ticked me off and I couldn't let it go. However, it has devolved into an argument about manners and debate style. I probably shouldn't tie up Mr. Goldberg's blog with a side argument any further, so I'm posting my reply to my journal - with apologies to my flist.
Ey-up wrote:
I think some of your arguments obscure the point rather than clarify it, but that's not because you're discourteous; I'm just disagreeing with your argumentative technique.
I build arguments and I try to make them as air tight as possible - otherwise what is the point? In the past when I've tried to simply make points without such carefully constructed arguments the results were horrifying - everything from flying insults because people didn't understand my point and took offense to epic flamewars that went so far off topic not even the participants knew what the original topic was.
A logical argument requires a certain amount of detail. Otherwise I'm just spouting my unsupported opinion and why should I expect you to give that any credence? I realize that I have a tendency to go on at length, for which I apologize. It's a flaw I'm working to overcome (obviously not terribly successfully). But complex situations require complex arguments. The fact is that I think that a good deal of the points brought up by participants in all of these threads are irrelevant - but merely saying so obviously does nothing. One needs to show people why their argument is either wrong or irrelevant. Such is the nature of debate.
Words are important, but this isn't a discussion of philosophy or semantics. The issue is whether something should or should not be done, and personally I think that whether something is ethics, manners or morals isn't germaine, especially as different people will define them differently, and my dictionary defines morals as 'ethics' and ethics as the study of morals.
Semantics is boring, I'll grant you, but if we are using fundamentally different definitions for the same words, how can we possibly communicate? If I think our disagreement results from misunderstanding rather than or in addition to actual disagreement over principles, it would be stupid of me not to explain what I mean.
I do think the difference between manners and ethics is quite germane to much of this discussion. Frankly, I doubt that many of the participants would be quite so stident in thier support if the issue didn't offend their sensibilities (if you have a way of saying that that doesn't use the word sensibilities and also isn't incredibly awkward, let me know). If we're going to say that people shouldn't do something we need some justification for denying them. Quite a few people in this and other threads have passed judgment on the activities of fan authors. But to judge a person by an essentially arbitrary set of rules that only apply to a community of which they are not a part (i.e. manners) is unfair. Ethics, on the other hand, deals with the set of rules we have for dealing fairly with other human beings, regardless of context.
Morals I have no use for - mores are very nearly as context dependant as manners. If you asked a Buddhist, a Catholic and a neopagan if I was living a moral life you'd get three fundamentally different answers. Frankly, I don't care what any of them think - I know that I do my best to deal with others according to an ethical code I find adequate to my needs. Morality doesn't interest me.
This is a debate about a particular practice, and as a result, is better kept practical rather than abstract, in my opinion. Once we start disagreeing about whether something is manners or morals, we've wandered from the subject. I think it's therefore best to give one another the benefit of the doubt and assume we mean roughly what we say, rather than getting too tied up in definitions.
We may have wandered from the subject, but the reason we did that is that I did assume that you meant exactly what you said - and that you were making a fundamentally flawed argument. If we are to judge someone's actions, their "particular practice" as you put it, we must have some set of standards by which to judge. Your stated argument led me to believe that you were using a set of standards (manners) that couldn't be fairly applied to the situation, so I pointed out that that standard was irrelevant. As it turned out, you were not saying what you meant - you were using the word manners as a synonym for ethics, which it fundamentally is not. The ethical thing to do in a situation is often not the polite thing to do.
This, it seems to me, is an object lesson on why occasionally discussions of semantics, though boring as hell to all parties, are completely necessary. It does us no good to be talking past each other.
In a later post you said:
I'm not calling fanfickers rude people as a blanket statement about them as individuals, because that would be silly. I'm talking specifically about the act of ficking without permission. Just to be clear.
So even after we agree that it was off topic, you continue to insist that the fans actions have been rude. That is an insult. Their actions are not rude, they are perfectly correct in the context of fandom. To judge their actions by someone else's standards is unfair and insulting. If I go into a Japanese person's home and refuse to remove my shoes, or turn up my nose in disgust at the dinner that is served, I am the one being rude - not my hosts. The fact that I have perfectly reasonable fears - I find wearing someone else's slippers unsanitary and am afraid of getting intestinal parasites from uncooked fish - doesn't enter into it. The fact that in a North American context forcing someone to eat something they think is harmful would be rude doesn't enter into it either.
I really wish you would stop repeating it - I gave you the benefit of the doubt in assuming that you didn't intend to insult anyone. But the fact that you keep repeating it after we agreed to stop discussing it makes me think that I was wrong and you're doing it deliberately.
Dear Ey-up,
Ok, I know in my last post I said I was going to drop the manners issue, but on rereading your comments it really ticked me off and I couldn't let it go. However, it has devolved into an argument about manners and debate style. I probably shouldn't tie up Mr. Goldberg's blog with a side argument any further, so I'm posting my reply to my journal - with apologies to my flist.
Ey-up wrote:
I think some of your arguments obscure the point rather than clarify it, but that's not because you're discourteous; I'm just disagreeing with your argumentative technique.
I build arguments and I try to make them as air tight as possible - otherwise what is the point? In the past when I've tried to simply make points without such carefully constructed arguments the results were horrifying - everything from flying insults because people didn't understand my point and took offense to epic flamewars that went so far off topic not even the participants knew what the original topic was.
A logical argument requires a certain amount of detail. Otherwise I'm just spouting my unsupported opinion and why should I expect you to give that any credence? I realize that I have a tendency to go on at length, for which I apologize. It's a flaw I'm working to overcome (obviously not terribly successfully). But complex situations require complex arguments. The fact is that I think that a good deal of the points brought up by participants in all of these threads are irrelevant - but merely saying so obviously does nothing. One needs to show people why their argument is either wrong or irrelevant. Such is the nature of debate.
Words are important, but this isn't a discussion of philosophy or semantics. The issue is whether something should or should not be done, and personally I think that whether something is ethics, manners or morals isn't germaine, especially as different people will define them differently, and my dictionary defines morals as 'ethics' and ethics as the study of morals.
Semantics is boring, I'll grant you, but if we are using fundamentally different definitions for the same words, how can we possibly communicate? If I think our disagreement results from misunderstanding rather than or in addition to actual disagreement over principles, it would be stupid of me not to explain what I mean.
I do think the difference between manners and ethics is quite germane to much of this discussion. Frankly, I doubt that many of the participants would be quite so stident in thier support if the issue didn't offend their sensibilities (if you have a way of saying that that doesn't use the word sensibilities and also isn't incredibly awkward, let me know). If we're going to say that people shouldn't do something we need some justification for denying them. Quite a few people in this and other threads have passed judgment on the activities of fan authors. But to judge a person by an essentially arbitrary set of rules that only apply to a community of which they are not a part (i.e. manners) is unfair. Ethics, on the other hand, deals with the set of rules we have for dealing fairly with other human beings, regardless of context.
Morals I have no use for - mores are very nearly as context dependant as manners. If you asked a Buddhist, a Catholic and a neopagan if I was living a moral life you'd get three fundamentally different answers. Frankly, I don't care what any of them think - I know that I do my best to deal with others according to an ethical code I find adequate to my needs. Morality doesn't interest me.
This is a debate about a particular practice, and as a result, is better kept practical rather than abstract, in my opinion. Once we start disagreeing about whether something is manners or morals, we've wandered from the subject. I think it's therefore best to give one another the benefit of the doubt and assume we mean roughly what we say, rather than getting too tied up in definitions.
We may have wandered from the subject, but the reason we did that is that I did assume that you meant exactly what you said - and that you were making a fundamentally flawed argument. If we are to judge someone's actions, their "particular practice" as you put it, we must have some set of standards by which to judge. Your stated argument led me to believe that you were using a set of standards (manners) that couldn't be fairly applied to the situation, so I pointed out that that standard was irrelevant. As it turned out, you were not saying what you meant - you were using the word manners as a synonym for ethics, which it fundamentally is not. The ethical thing to do in a situation is often not the polite thing to do.
This, it seems to me, is an object lesson on why occasionally discussions of semantics, though boring as hell to all parties, are completely necessary. It does us no good to be talking past each other.
In a later post you said:
I'm not calling fanfickers rude people as a blanket statement about them as individuals, because that would be silly. I'm talking specifically about the act of ficking without permission. Just to be clear.
So even after we agree that it was off topic, you continue to insist that the fans actions have been rude. That is an insult. Their actions are not rude, they are perfectly correct in the context of fandom. To judge their actions by someone else's standards is unfair and insulting. If I go into a Japanese person's home and refuse to remove my shoes, or turn up my nose in disgust at the dinner that is served, I am the one being rude - not my hosts. The fact that I have perfectly reasonable fears - I find wearing someone else's slippers unsanitary and am afraid of getting intestinal parasites from uncooked fish - doesn't enter into it. The fact that in a North American context forcing someone to eat something they think is harmful would be rude doesn't enter into it either.
I really wish you would stop repeating it - I gave you the benefit of the doubt in assuming that you didn't intend to insult anyone. But the fact that you keep repeating it after we agreed to stop discussing it makes me think that I was wrong and you're doing it deliberately.