Unlimited "What defines a European city" urban theory debate thread

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

I am thinking of a particular older conversation with Holist that went WAAAAAY south, triggered by the statement that certain specific urban centers "aren't cities by European standards". Now, some statements are subjective and can be argued to be true from certain perspectives, but that one was just silly, and easily refuted. The only real face-saving maneuver to be made there was "Oops, I was wrong". Better yet, "That was a really dumb thing to say", which would indicate that the speaker not only recognized having said something wrong, but was also smart enough to recognize that it was so extremely false that it made him sound ignorant. Instead, he defended the statement. This led to ongoing mockery and humiliation, and speculation on the part of others as to what would motivate a person to defend such a ridiculous statement. Needless to say, none of the speculations were flattering to his character, and he became angrier and angrier, and more and more alienated. All because of an inability to simply concede that he'd said something that was factually incorrect.

[Freeky]

I am thinking of a particular older conversation with Holist that went WAAAAAY south, triggered by the statement that certain specific urban centers "aren't cities by European standards". Now, some statements are subjective and can be argued to be true from certain perspectives, but that one was just silly, and easily refuted. The only real face-saving maneuver to be made there was "Oops, I was wrong". Better yet, "That was a really dumb thing to say", which would indicate that the speaker not only recognized having said something wrong, but was also smart enough to recognize that it was so extremely false that it made him sound ignorant. Instead, he defended the statement. This led to ongoing mockery and humiliation, and speculation on the part of others as to what would motivate a person to defend such a ridiculous statement. Needless to say, none of the speculations were flattering to his character, and he became angrier and angrier, and more and more alienated. All because of an inability to simply concede that he'd said something that was factually incorrect.

I almost remember this.  In response to the "Those aren't cities" deal, someone posted pictures of Mexico City (?), Cairo, and some other place that's in China.  Starts with a B, I think.  Maybe on an island?, definitely a port.

[Dildo Argentino]

I don't wish to provide hard evidence for this (too much like hard work), and I guess some of it is pretty speculative. I will be more than happy to abandon/replace/develop any of it if a reasonable counter-argument is offered. In other words, I am offering this a a just-so-story.

As a sort of soft evidence, here's a list of the authors whose ideas have influenced my general outlook and to a great extent motivate my just-so-story below.

Here it is:

Noam Chomsky
Steven Pinker
Claude Levi-Strauss
Daniel C. Dennett
Eric Berne
Wilhelm Reich
John Bowlby
Oliver James
Michel Odent
Jean Liedloff
R. D. Laing
Sue Gerhardt
Vilmos Csányi
ALice Miller
Daniel Quinn
Norbert Bischof
Slavoj Zizek
Leonard Shlain

No particular order. I hope you all find your own particular piece of crimson cloth in that list. 


(I won't back down from bullies.)


I think the behaviour Nigel describes in the OP (and yes, I think it is a very good question) is partly a spandrel of social evolution. I also think it is partly also caused and sustained by the prevailence of neurosis among people raised and living in the multicultural (and, as someone pointed out earlier here, though I don't remember who and which thread, fractally cultural) environment of the megapopulation after being raised in more or less dysfunctional families. I believe this unfortunate story began about the time the paelolithic slowly turned into the neolithic, whenever that was. When sustained and significant interaction between cultures and hence cultural evolution got off the ground.

In greater detail: I think people do not find it hard to admit to making a mistake in general. I think they find it hard to admit a mistake they are confronted with when they feel misunderstood, and when they sense that they are being rejected. Of course, some people are maladaptive to the point that they feel they are misunderstood and rejected every single time they are confronted with a mistake (this is the sort of thing you are trying to pin on me, totally unfairly, but I'll leave that until later.) It is those element of misunderstanding and rejection that make it hard. And it makes it hard because being misunderstood and rejected is actually quite terrifying.

And this is despite the fact that, if you look at it objectively, in this day and age, being misunderstood and rejected is in most cases not such a big deal.

But it is a big deal in a monocultural tribal society. In a society where there is one language, one ethos, one set of customs, one way of understanding the world, in which people who stray from those norms are seen as fundamentally defective (mad, or evil, possessed, or whatever, but badwrong), being misunderstood is a terrible thing. A terrifying thing. It could well be the lead-up to being abandoned, or coerced (in Africa, I am told, mad people in small villages are frequently chained to trees. They get fed, but are not allowed to move about freely, because they are considered too dangerous.) And most (though not all) people spend those first three, most formative years of their lives, when their emotional self-regulation is fine-tuned for a life in a particular culture, in an environment (a family, or, unfortunately, sometimes an insitution) which is quite a lot like a monocultural tribal society. So their emotional self-regulation, when they are thrown into the sea of the megapopulation at age 3, or later (kindergarten, school, etc.), is that of a monocultural human. Very scared of being misunderstood/rejected. Try to think back to your earliest memories: your were a blessedly happy and sheltered child indeed if you don't recall some scary incidents that involved interacting with strangers who did not know how you tick and didn't much like you.

If close family did that, so much the worse, which brings me to the second part of my explanation:

Most of the people on this board, just like most of the people who grew up in this civilization we share and are alive today, actually were raised in a manner that was far from optimal (in the evolutionary sense), and hence their emotional self-regulation is (to a greater or lessed degree) off-kilter. They feel threatened when they are faced with their mistakes, because they think they can only be loved if they are perfect: their lack of security in their relationship with their primary caregiver scars them for life. Some overcome it. Many never do. Those who don't often find it very hard to admit being wrong because they are afraid that if they do, they will be left alone to die. Those two effects interplay and reinforce each other in a number of interesting ways.

So that's my take on it.

As for this:

I am thinking of a particular older conversation with Holist that went WAAAAAY south, triggered by the statement that certain specific urban centers "aren't cities by European standards". Now, some statements are subjective and can be argued to be true from certain perspectives, but that one was just silly, and easily refuted. The only real face-saving maneuver to be made there was "Oops, I was wrong". Better yet, "That was a really dumb thing to say", which would indicate that the speaker not only recognized having said something wrong, but was also smart enough to recognize that it was so extremely false that it made him sound ignorant. Instead, he defended the statement. This led to ongoing mockery and humiliation, and speculation on the part of others as to what would motivate a person to defend such a ridiculous statement. Needless to say, none of the speculations were flattering to his character, and he became angrier and angrier, and more and more alienated. All because of an inability to simply concede that he'd said something that was factually incorrect.

Initially I was going to write that it's just a pack of lies, pure and simple, and the evidence is here in this board for all to see.

But then I remembered that people are positively kinky in the way they can arrive at totally different conclusions from the same premises.

So the fact that I see the initially jokey, then increasingly serious scorn poured on me by the most vocal members of the regular crew that hangs out in this board as a result of a trivial misunderstanding (and, let me hasten to add, a misunderstanding aggravated by my [/]very stupid idea of starting off with the most contentious topic I could think of[/b], homeopathy, I don't know what possessed me there, I think I thought it would be best to get into the thick of things straight away, but actually, it was not), and the fact that I see the series of heated exchanges that have taken place as blatant and obvious proof that I was toyed with, attacked and pestered through lazy, superficial and I think often unintentionally malicious interpretation of the notions I was offering, and generally rejected for the largely accidental way my tone resonates with a bunch of apes who don't tend to meet many rather foreign apes with such a tone, is not going to prevent the other participants from viewing the very same series of heated exchanges as demonstration, pure and simple, of my utter and total despicability, stupidity, naivety, lazyness, trollity or whatever (I forget).

So I am not saying it is a pack of lies.

Instead, I am going to say that when I made the reference to some thirld-world cities not being cities in the European sense, I should have said "first-world sense", and acknowledged that the first, second and third worlds, so nicely separated not so long ago, have been going through a bizarre process of fractal nesting for some time now which has resulted in the first and the third world being available within a few hundred miles in practically all locations on Earth. I corrected that statement, when Nigel called me on it, but that was not enough for her, because she enjoys bullying. Only on the internet, I imagine (I hope), where it is nice and depersonalised, and the person you are so enjoyably wiping the floor with is unlikely to come and visit all the way from fucking Hungary or whereever he is from.

(((Oh yes, asshurt. That did hurt, but actually, and I don't know how alone I am with this, but I suspect not very, the kind of discomfort that sort of unreserved hostility and ridicule you seem to enjoy doesn't actually hurt my ass. It stings my face, it is shameful. And I don't think I want to get desensitised to it.)))

And then my friend explained very carefully and didactically (he is, after all a 54-year-old secondary school-teacher, religious studies, spreading critical thinking skills instead of indoctrination is his passion and job), and, of course, pedantically and in a somewhat patronizing manner (he is, after all a 54-year-old secondary school-teacher... etc.)  what I meant: I meant something about the disenfranchised huddled masses of poor, homeless, hopeless people in the world's third world cities and third-world parts of cities, whom, incidentally, you also seem to care about. But you didn't give a fuck and pestered him atrociously until he left. Tough shit, of course, because PD and being liked is like Zen and Satori: trying is counterproductive. If you can't handle being pestered atrociously, and you don't wish to just conform to the tribethink here (oh, and there very much is one, though I'll get my head kicked in for this, I know), then you have no business coming here.

If you keep ignoring me, I will go away. If you don't, I'll be interested to see where this will go. Let the hurling begin. In the meantime I will go over to my main man thread on Wage Slavery and give it a similar go.

[Phox]

Holist, having reread the entire thread with you and your friend going off the other day I have precisely one reaction: 


Dude, it's all well and good to make excuse about why you and your friend behaved like complete jackasses and said a whole lot of shit that you refused to cop to when confronted on it, but it's not going to, you know, sway anybody, BECAUSE WE HAVE THE EXACT THREAD PRESERVED FOR ALL TO SEE.

Yeah, make up some more shit about what you and your friend "actually meant" almost a year ago. 

[Dildo Argentino]

Holist, having reread the entire thread with you and your friend going off the other day I have precisely one reaction: 


Dude, it's all well and good to make excuse about why you and your friend behaved like complete jackasses and said a whole lot of shit that you refused to cop to when confronted on it, but it's not going to, you know, sway anybody, BECAUSE WE HAVE THE EXACT THREAD PRESERVED FOR ALL TO SEE.

Yeah, make up some more shit about what you and your friend "actually meant" almost a year ago. 

You posted 17 minutes after me. That is time for a cursory overview accompanied by a vague recollection of the already stereotyped judgements you made back then (December-January). If it was sufficient time for you to do significantly more, then, firstly, pardon me I did not realise I was dealing with superhumans, I am indeed a retard in comparison to you, madam, and, secondly, why could you not take the time to respond to the very specific issue of third-world cities and first-world cities (or neighbourhoods) in greater detail, please? Is you Boddhidharmaic patience not infinite after all?

[The Good Reverend Roger]

(I won't back down from bullies.)

[Freeky]

(I won't back down from bullies.)

[Phox]

Holist, having reread the entire thread with you and your friend going off the other day I have precisely one reaction: 


Dude, it's all well and good to make excuse about why you and your friend behaved like complete jackasses and said a whole lot of shit that you refused to cop to when confronted on it, but it's not going to, you know, sway anybody, BECAUSE WE HAVE THE EXACT THREAD PRESERVED FOR ALL TO SEE.

Yeah, make up some more shit about what you and your friend "actually meant" almost a year ago. 

You posted 17 minutes after me. That is time for a cursory overview accompanied by a vague recollection of the already stereotyped judgements you made back then (December-January). If it was sufficient time for you to do significantly more, then, firstly, pardon me I did not realise I was dealing with superhumans, I am indeed a retard in comparison to you, madam, and, secondly, why could you not take the time to respond to the very specific issue of third-world cities and first-world cities (or neighbourhoods) in greater detail, please? Is you Boddhidharmaic patience not infinite after all?

OH NOEZ, SAYING I READ SOMETHING RECENTLY, EQUATES TO DOING THE SAME IN MINUTES! 

[Freeky]

Holist, having reread the entire thread with you and your friend going off the other day I have precisely one reaction: 


Dude, it's all well and good to make excuse about why you and your friend behaved like complete jackasses and said a whole lot of shit that you refused to cop to when confronted on it, but it's not going to, you know, sway anybody, BECAUSE WE HAVE THE EXACT THREAD PRESERVED FOR ALL TO SEE.

Yeah, make up some more shit about what you and your friend "actually meant" almost a year ago. 

You posted 17 minutes after me. That is time for a cursory overview accompanied by a vague recollection of the already stereotyped judgements you made back then (December-January). If it was sufficient time for you to do significantly more, then, firstly, pardon me I did not realise I was dealing with superhumans, I am indeed a retard in comparison to you, madam, and, secondly, why could you not take the time to respond to the very specific issue of third-world cities and first-world cities (or neighbourhoods) in greater detail, please? Is you Boddhidharmaic patience not infinite after all?

OH NOEZ, SAYING I READ SOMETHING RECENTLY, EQUATES TO DOING THE SAME IN MINUTES! 

You understood what he said?  Damn.  Must come from studying dead languages or something.

[Phox]

Holist, having reread the entire thread with you and your friend going off the other day I have precisely one reaction: 


Dude, it's all well and good to make excuse about why you and your friend behaved like complete jackasses and said a whole lot of shit that you refused to cop to when confronted on it, but it's not going to, you know, sway anybody, BECAUSE WE HAVE THE EXACT THREAD PRESERVED FOR ALL TO SEE.

Yeah, make up some more shit about what you and your friend "actually meant" almost a year ago. 

You posted 17 minutes after me. That is time for a cursory overview accompanied by a vague recollection of the already stereotyped judgements you made back then (December-January). If it was sufficient time for you to do significantly more, then, firstly, pardon me I did not realise I was dealing with superhumans, I am indeed a retard in comparison to you, madam, and, secondly, why could you not take the time to respond to the very specific issue of third-world cities and first-world cities (or neighbourhoods) in greater detail, please? Is you Boddhidharmaic patience not infinite after all?

OH NOEZ, SAYING I READ SOMETHING RECENTLY, EQUATES TO DOING THE SAME IN MINUTES! 

You understood what he said?  Damn.  Must come from studying dead languages or something.

Possibly.

[Dildo Argentino]

OH NOEZ, SAYING I READ SOMETHING RECENTLY, EQUATES TO DOING THE SAME IN MINUTES! 

Sorry, I misparsed that. ("the other day" - is that about re-reading or me and my friend going off?). That was an exercise in stereotypical reading, I am sorry. My other point (about the rather specific example of cities being different) still stands.

[Phox]

OH NOEZ, SAYING I READ SOMETHING RECENTLY, EQUATES TO DOING THE SAME IN MINUTES! 

Sorry, I misparsed that. ("the other day" - is that about re-reading or me and my friend going off?). That was an exercise in stereotypical reading, I am sorry. My other point (about the rather specific example of cities being different) still stands.

Try again. What makes Xiamen not a city in the "first-world sense"? What you cited before, sanitation, public transit, etc. DOES exist in Xiamen (Cairo and Mexico City too, in fact, but let's just talk about Xiamen)

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Holist, can you quote any of my "bullying"? Or is that just what you call it when someone points out that you said something that sounds foolish?

[Dildo Argentino]

OH NOEZ, SAYING I READ SOMETHING RECENTLY, EQUATES TO DOING THE SAME IN MINUTES! 

Sorry, I misparsed that. ("the other day" - is that about re-reading or me and my friend going off?). That was an exercise in stereotypical reading, I am sorry. My other point (about the rather specific example of cities being different) still stands.

Try again. What makes Xiamen not a city in the "first-world sense"? What you cited before, sanitation, public transit, etc. DOES exist in Xiamen (Cairo and Mexico City too, in fact, but let's just talk about Xiamen)

No-no, you try again. The first thing I did upon being challenged is to admit, straight up, that I probably picked the wrong cities and explain that it was not crucial to my point. Later on, Subsymbolic explained in painful detail what he thought my initial assertion was about, which was ignored or ridiculed. The difference between first-world cities and third-world cities (or parts of cities, because these conditions increasingly coexist in the same cities, within short distances of each other, as I attempted to explain above) is that in first-world cities, the proportion of entirely disenfranchised people in deep poverty is low, while in third-world neighbourhoods it is very high. In a first-world neighbourhood, if you show signs of above-average affluence, you may still walk around without clear and present danger of being mugged or beaten or even killed for a few of your possessions. This is partly because state-provided coercive mechanisms are in place to prevent this, but also partly because there aren't that many people who are desperate enough to do something like that. In third -world neighbourhoods, this is not the case.

First-world city story (true one, happened to me): my kid's bicycle gets stolen from my yard. I report it to the police. A couple of months later, in an unrelated case, police catch a petty thief. They find the bicycle I reported stolen in the thief's back yard. I get bicycle back.

Third-world city story (very likely to be true one, related by my Somali refugee friend Hussein, whom I've known for 15 years, and whom I helped get out of the terrible Hungarian refugee-processing meat-grinder): man arrives in Mogadishu airport (back when there were still commercial,scheduled flights going there). Leaves terminal. Man comes up, points at a car parked nearby with driver in it, and asks: "dou you like that car?" Recent arrival responds with a half-hearted 'yes'. Man proceeds to shoot driver and says: "You can buy it off me for 500 dollars".

I think the contrast there is real and actually bloody obvious. The obstinate efforts to turn it into a story about me failing to acknowledge that I was wrong are frustrating and unfair.

[Dildo Argentino]

Holist, can you quote any of my "bullying"? Or is that just what you call it when someone points out that you said something that sounds foolish?

I could, but I can't be bothered. Name-calling, ridiculing, and also affirmation and appreciation of name-calling and ridiculing by others is what I'd call it. If you can't find it or even remember it, there's no point in me digging it out, because you will then claim it was not bullying and call me sissy for suggesting it was.