Difficult Choices!

[B_M_W]

Fine, whatever. You're right, I'm shit, whatever.


This thread can die for all I care.

[Triple Zero]

hey hey hey chill out

ok i will try as well, cause i started the thread, and i think i have an idea where BMW is trying to go with this.

Net said:
> Because a psychological trauma preceded discriminatory beliefs does not establish a
> connection—this is the post hoc fallacy.

yes this is true. not always does trauma cause bigotry.

IMO there is a connection, however. some correlation, at least, i assume this to be, because it seems to me more plausible than not.
and if you want to argue about whether this is actually the case or not, that's fine but it's also kinda threadjacking because that way we'll never get to the thing we set out to discuss.

i would call it myself not bigotry (also because i'm not really familiar with the term) but more a certain amount of anti-social fucked-up-ness, kind of thing.
basically, i would call it "psychological trauma", because that's what it is.

but the healing process can roughly go in two ways, you can heal and have a few dents but be a reasonable person, or you can heal and end up with still some sort of twist in your head, something that causes an irrational hate towards certain people, situations or behaviour.
let's compare it to having a bunch of tangled up rope, you pull both ends and you can end up with a straight piece of rope, or it will have one or more knots in it.

ok then comes the question of what is a reasonable person cause that's a very vague term, and what is good and what is bad.

well, to be honest i'm not really interested in discussing that, so let's leave the "what is reasonable" question apart for a while, because in my opinion, it shouldn't be too much of a stretch to simply assume that "having a twist in your head causing irrational hate" is an undesirable thing? i'll stress the word "irrational" just to be sure that nobody tries to have a go at it from the "but hate is a good thing" angle (which is bullshit IMO but that's for another thread).

ok so far yes?

cause that leaves us with this:
person gets psychological trauma, which changes their personality somehow, and this change has a fair chance of ending up with a certain type of undesirable quality.

and now we come to the real question

(hey BMW, btw i'm kinda starting to understand this is pretty much of a long stretch of assumptions and premises we're asking people on a discordian board to simply agree with, before getting to the question)

the question: what aspects of the healing process can we identify that cause or prevent (within certain margins of error) these undesirable changes in personality?

and if the answer to that is "environment", then the follow-up question is: what aspects and qualities does an environment need in order to promote healthy healing in this context?

well i hope i wrote it down clearly this time.

otherwise i give up as well.

[B_M_W]

Yeah, you said it right, you got it right. But theres no use in trying to talk about it here.

[Triple Zero]

stop with the negativity!

go to the happy environment

OR ELSE

you might turn into a bigot.

and that, yeah, that would really complicate things. (think of the children!)

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

Yeah, you said it right, you got it right. But theres no use in trying to talk about it here.

This thread seemed pretty interesting to me... not because of solving bigotry, but because I love to watch Discordians struggle between seriousness, silliness, Isness and maybes.

As to your original theme, I am not yet convinced that trauma causes bigotry. I would love to see more discussion of this concept. As far as I've been able to tell, Trauma can break existing programs and leave the person vulnerable to new programs. For example, a number of completely sane individuals (pre 9/11) voted Bush into office (post 9/11) because they had imprinted Muslim = Bad. Maybe this example fits your OP.

The down side (if it does fit), is that I'm not sure how we would work against this or stop it. Obviously it would be nice if our brains accepted e' and we imprinted "Some Muslims fly planes into buildings", but as you and so many other point out... e' is not a natural form of communication.

However, I don't think that this method is the source of most of our Bigoted brethren. The town I grew up in was full of bigots, because they were born and raised around bigots, not because of any sort of trauma. On the other hand, lots of people go through trauma (even if we use the 9/11 example) and never have issue with bigotry. This may indicate that the individuals past programming may have a heavy influence on their post-trauma imprint. Any concept of bigotry was beaten out of my head at an early age... that probably explains why 9/11 didn't affect me in the same way that it affected a close friend of mine (ick).

So, perhaps bigotry is a possible imprint based on multiple forms of causal feedback. Feedback from existing programs/memes, feedback from our social/tribal group, feedback from our environment and maybe more.

ok, so there's my start of contribution to the thread... let's discuss

[Triple Zero]

yeah that's basically the thing.

psychological trauma creates a new opening/void (perhaps kind of childlike?) at least an opportunity for new imprints.

and even if these imprints would be random, one of the possibilities would be bigotry.

(some sort of) enlightenment could also happen. (in fact there are also numerous stories supporting that)

the question is, what kind of factors steer someone into one direction or the other?

[B_M_W]

yeah that's basically the thing.

psychological trauma creates a new opening/void (perhaps kind of childlike?) at least an opportunity for new imprints.

and even if these imprints would be random, one of the possibilities would be bigotry.

(some sort of) enlightenment could also happen. (in fact there are also numerous stories supporting that)

the question is, what kind of factors steer someone into one direction or the other?

Thank you. Thats the real question. Thank you for putting it in a way I couldn't articulate.

As I said before, this whole thing reminded me of brainwashing, because the process is very similar. When trauma occurs it opens a void which can be filled. How this space fills up and what memes it grabs onto seems to be a nature of the persons environment. Thus, what environments will steer a person in one direction or another, as Zero said, and what sorts of things can we do to aid this happening.

and yes, Rastock, that 9/11 example is perfect. And one that I have witnessed.

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

yeah that's basically the thing.

psychological trauma creates a new opening/void (perhaps kind of childlike?) at least an opportunity for new imprints.

and even if these imprints would be random, one of the possibilities would be bigotry.

(some sort of) enlightenment could also happen. (in fact there are also numerous stories supporting that)

the question is, what kind of factors steer someone into one direction or the other?

Thank you. Thats the real question. Thank you for putting it in a way I couldn't articulate.

As I said before, this whole thing reminded me of brainwashing, because the process is very similar. When trauma occurs it opens a void which can be filled. How this space fills up and what memes it grabs onto seems to be a nature of the persons environment. Thus, what environments will steer a person in one direction or another, as Zero said, and what sorts of things can we do to aid this happening.

and yes, Rastock, that 9/11 example is perfect. And one that I have witnessed.

Have you read Prometheus Rising? Bob goes into some serious detail on this topic. While it does seem that many of these concepts work in brainwashing (and hell, we brainwash every child to fit our society) with some degree of control and success... Trauma seems a much less controllable event. One example Bob used in PR was that of a construction worker that was almost hit by a falling steel girder. It hit the ground just inches from him and immediately after, he walked away forgetting his job, his family... all of it gone. Not because he grabbed on to a new meme, just that his programming was FUBAR. In other instances, one I think was goose pate which caused several people to go to the hospital, the resulting program directly correlated with the event (those people could no longer eat goose pate without getting ill).

In the 9/11 example, for some it may have been a single news report, or a single sound byte, or their friends at the bar, or their coworkers comments (any of whom could have been bigots through old fashioned tribal programming).

Maybe there is something that could be done to stop bigotry from being an option, but right now, from my perspective, that seems rather difficult to even consider without monumental social changes (and even then there would be no guarantee).

Do you have any ideas that you think would help?

[B_M_W]

You have to remember, I'm thinking about this on a very localized level. As in one person, or a small group of people. I don't think there is any far reaching answer. The only area I think such things are possible are the people close to you.

[Triple Zero]

well, i think you can effect "monumental social changes" on a very localized level with a littlebit of effort

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

You have to remember, I'm thinking about this on a very localized level. As in one person, or a small group of people. I don't think there is any far reaching answer. The only area I think such things are possible are the people close to you.

Ah, I follow.

Not sure what ideas may poke out at me, but let me grind it a bit

[Discord]

If you fill the void of the same people with the same meme, they still would act differently, based on their personality, experiences and so on.
If the guys you want to "help" are close friends of yours you might have a good chance, because you know them, personality, past etc
If not i think its absolutly necesseray to get to know that. If you know WHY they became the way they are now (fex why they started to hate blacks) then you're half way.

But keep in mind "helping" them is nohting other than mindfucking and brainwashing them back to be a "good member of society".

[B_M_W]

Meh. I got an answer from Cain last night. Turns out any answers to these questions are banal and obvious, which is why no one asks.

[Cain]

Actually, I said all the ones we could figure out would be banal and onvious.  For example "a loving and supportive family".  However, in what sense is a loving and supprotive family a help?  What is the "essence" of that support which can help the trauma be a neutral or better life changing experience?

I don't know.  Does anyone else know

[B_M_W]

Perhaps the nature of the support being led by an intrinsic value for the member rather than an extrinsic one (intrinsic being support for who you are and want to be, rather that extrinsic, support for who they think you are and who they want you to be)?