Reification - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Reification (Marxism) (German: Verdinglichung), the consideration of an abstraction or an object as if it had living existence and abilities; at the same time it implies the thingification of social relations

I.e. where people become mere carriers of the ideas they espouse and are hated/loved/despised because of their ideas.  Thus conservatives, eurosceptics etc. are nasty, bad, selfish, delusionary people because their ideas are perceived to be wrong.  You don't really need to know the people at all.  Merely knowing that they are e.g. "socialists" is enough to condemn them.  People are no more than the ideas they espouse and can be reduced to a one dimensional ideological position.

notes from no w here

The insight in your post reconfirms my view that turbulence is what happens in a transition, and that ET more than makes up in Quality what it may lack in Quantity.

"Any economic unit can emit money. The serious problem is to get it accepted" Hyman Minsky

Martin Buber on empathy

In I and Thou, Buber introduced his thesis on human existence. Inspired partly by Feuerbach's concept of ego in The Essence of Christianity and Kierkegaard's "Single One", Buber worked upon the premise of existence as encounter. He explained this philosophy using the word pairs of Ich-Du and Ich-Es to categorize the modes of consciousness, interaction, and being through which an individual engages with other individuals, inanimate objects, and all reality in general. Philosophically, these word pairs express complex ideas about modes of being - particularly how a person exists and actualizes that existence (see existentialism). As Buber argues in I and Thou, a person is at all times engaged with the world in one of these modes.

The generic motif Buber employs to describe the dual modes of being is one of dialogue (Ich-Du) and monologue (Ich-Es). The concept of communication, particularly language-oriented communication, is used both in describing dialogue/monologue through metaphors and expressing the interpersonal nature of human existence.

Ich-Du

Ich-Du ("I-Thou" or "I-You") is a relationship that stresses the mutual, holistic existence of two beings. It is a concrete encounter, because these beings meet one another in their authentic existence, without any qualification or objectification of one another. Even imagination and ideas do not play a role in this relation. In an I-Thou encounter, infinity and universality are made actual (rather than being merely concepts).

Buber stressed that an Ich-Du relationship lacks any composition (e.g. structure) and communicates no content (e.g. information). Despite the fact that Ich-Du cannot be proven to happen as an event (e.g. it cannot be measured), Buber stressed that it is real and perceivable. A variety of examples are used to illustrate Ich-Du relationships in daily life - two lovers, an observer and a cat, the author and a tree, and two strangers on a train. Common English words used to describe the Ich-Du relationship include encounter, meeting, dialogue, mutuality, and exchange.

[...]

Ich-Es

The Ich-Es ("I-It") relationship is nearly the opposite of Ich-Du. Whereas in Ich-Du the two beings encounter one another, in an Ich-Es relationship the beings do not actually meet. Instead, the "I" confronts and qualifies an idea, or conceptualization, of the being in its presence and treats that being as an object. All such objects are considered merely mental representations, created and sustained by the individual mind. This is based partly on Kant's theory of phenomenon, in that these objects reside in the cognitive agent's mind, existing only as thoughts. Therefore, the Ich-Es relationship is in fact a relationship with oneself; it is not a dialogue, but a monologue.

In the Ich-Es relationship, an individual treats other things, people, etc., as objects to be used and experienced. Essentially, this form of objectivity relates to the world in terms of the self - how an object can serve the individual's interest.

Buber argued that human life consists of an oscillation between Ich-Du and Ich-Es, and that in fact Ich-Du experiences are rather few and far between. In diagnosing the various perceived ills of modernity (e.g. isolation, dehumanization, etc.), Buber believed that the expansion of a purely analytic, material view of existence was at heart an advocation of Ich-Es relations - even between human beings. Buber argued that this paradigm devalued not only existents, but the meaning of all existence.

Empathy- or feeling that the other is not to be categorized into a rigid inductive schema but is simply expressing herself in a certain way at a given moment- is difficult in the real world, all the more so in the surrogate world of internet.

I think people stopped - for a while, temporarily, and in specific instances - seeing the other posters here as people and started treating them as personifications of arguments and beliefs. Usually ones they really really really didn't like much.

All of the mad threads seemed to have this in common. Instead of specific posters we suddenly 'That person who represents this evil thing, and therefore...'

This is spot on, from what I can glean.  

Moreover, people have not just been treated as personifications of arguments and beliefs, but somewhat confined to roles.  X is the new age person, X is the anarchist, X is the intolerant atheist, X is the nationalist, X is the Atlanticist, X is the troublemaker, X is the clown, X is the curmudgeon, X is the diva...   It's probably quite natural and not meant to be malicious.  But this is real life, not a novel or play, and no one consistently represents one idea or fills one role.   Especially here at ET where people are constantly having their horizons expanded and being asked to prove the credibility of their assertions and to step out of their comfort zones.

Many of the recent tiffs make no sense to many of us; the responses seems so unnecessarily disproportionate or overly sensitive and feel distracting.  Perhaps, rather than taking comments in their immediate and logical context, we may be interpreting them according to our preconceived ideas about the person(s) making them or our expectations of their ulterior motivations.  

This is a pet peeve of mine because 1) fault is just as likely to lie with the person's preconceived ideas as with the person whose comments are being judged, 2) no one acts consistently over time: our personal mood, new information, or comfort with our situation can determine our motives just as much as any ideology or personality trait and 3) even if the preconceived ideas are correct, the comments may still have a good point, which will be missed because our focus was elsewhere, looking for the fault.

And if your are looking for something, you might think you've found it when it isn't even there.  It's called a bias.  We notice it when journalists write about France or Russia and it drives us berserk.  We notice it when fundamentalists explain events which have quite logical causes as conspiracies or divine plans and it makes us exasperated.  But ... are we willing to acknowledge that we too sometimes fall into this intellectual laziness?  I mean, we're a pretty freaking intelligent group here.  We'll admit to all kinds of vices and lurid activities and shortcomings.  But not bias.  Not intellectual shortcuts!  That's ET's version of the Holy Grail.  Which may be why we seem to be dancing around a problem while not solving it or communicating past each other.  Maybe that's the elephant in the room.  Even we are capable of bias - even against one another.  Even we are susceptible to allowing our emotions and agendas trump our critical reasoning abilities.  Even we might invent a narrative about ET to counter the annoying phenomenon of stuff not always making sense in a way that conforms to our worldview.  Can it be possible?  And can we graciously acknowledge its possibility without taking a sever hit to our pride?

Look, we might be exceptional, but we are not THAT exceptional.  Of course we do these things.  This is a blog, a medium that hardly encourages reflection and patience and with-holding of judgement!  We are not robots.  We are not omniscient.  We are humans with infinite demands on our lives.  We are not Dostoevsky characters who are good ideas or bad ideas walking about on 2 legs.  And let me remind you, that those Dostoevsky characters were like masters of the flame war.  

...

OMG maybe this IS a Dostoevsky novel!!!  Think about it.  You have the believers and the non-believers.  The hedonists and the stoics.  The progressive reformers and the commie anarchists.  The nobility and the riff-raff.  The ruined women and the unrequited love.  The hysterics and the philosophical debates.  The plots, the plans, the people who show up outta nowhere and ruffle things up.  The manifestos.  No murders so far.  But how many of us belong to that "people with names no one can spell" fb group?  And wasn't Twank just suggesting a fancy-dress ball?  Uh huh...

Well, either this 1) is a Dostoevsky novel, which means we're all not real people and someone is going to get killed and there's nothing any of us can do about it or 2) is not a Dostoevsky novel, which means we're each more than characters who personify an idea or archetype and so it would behoove us to keep that in mind was we do this blogging thing.  And also no one has to get killed.  

Which is good.

Come, my friends, 'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.

The term "true believer" is not a pejorative one for me.  It denotes people who genuinely believe in something (e.g. the EU, Democracy, peer-to-peer finance, state technocratic competence/excellence) or whatever and who argue passionately for whatever it is they believe in.  I would contrast that with cynics or pragmatists who either don't believe in anything or for whom everything has a price.  I would consider myself a true believer on some issues and would prefer to argue with people who actually believe in the case they are making - acknowledging that those arguments are almost impossible to win and are more about understanding other positions better.

I did appeal to you to retract a personalised comment you directed at another member, but as that is an emotive issue which has nearly torn this community apart I think it is better for us to discuss that matter privately by email if you wish.  If you felt that any comment I made was unfair or hurtful, I apologise.  I was trying to assist in resolving a dispute which had arisen between others, not to make matters worse.  You had previously challenged me and others not to leave all the moderation to front pagers. Obviously I didn't succeed.

Yes I have tried to get some collective enterprises on ET going - e.g. a wind turbine; LTEs to Irish papers on Lisbon by Europeans who don't want Libertas/Sinn Fein to speak/act on their behalf when it comes to any claimed democratic deficit in the EU; EU grant application for funding ET 2.0 multilingual capabilities - and have been disappointed but not surprised when they didn't get anywhere but I didn't blame anyone, least of all you, for that.  I think it is worth while exercise to float concrete action proposals sometimes to see if any of them might fly.  ET can be a useful sounding board or launching pad for initiatives without them ever necessarily become "official" ET projects.  I hope you don't object to that.

notes from no w here