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luna_manarI think I just have a really hard time with "principled" individuals. How can you stick to your guns when it's clear your principles don't always work in practice? How can you hang onto an ideal that proves time and again to be destructive? How can you sincerely think that the very act of being principled will benefit you and everyone else in the end? Because it makes you a good person? Do you understand that reality does not give good people preferential treatment? Do you realize that personal integrity means absolutely nothing to nature?
There are very practical things we cannot do because they are unethical. But there are a great many things that have no ethical bearing on anyone--where opinion is simply a question of "do I prefer this, or that?"--and it makes no sense to not do these things because they violate a personal principle. "I'll never watch a movie with [actor I don't like] in it, no matter how awesome the movie is. I just don't want that guy getting my money."
That's a simple example, but this sort of mentality extends into our politics, our social structure, and how we treat each other in general.My Way Or The Highway I'm sorry, I just can't support ____ in good conscience no matter what the cause is one of the single most stagnant, vulnerable positions you can possibly take on any subject in life. Where it can be annoying in trivial matters, such an attitude can be extremely dangerous in not-so-trivial matters; nature does not have any pity for the stagnant, intolerant, and those who refuse to adapt as the situation requires.
If you enjoy the camaraderie and social clout that inevitably comes from being a principled pillar, you had better make sure you are right when it counts; the day you are principled and wrong about a life and death situation, you may not have the chance to regret your rigidity when adversity snaps you like a twig and the world moves on without you.
There are very practical things we cannot do because they are unethical. But there are a great many things that have no ethical bearing on anyone--where opinion is simply a question of "do I prefer this, or that?"--and it makes no sense to not do these things because they violate a personal principle. "I'll never watch a movie with [actor I don't like] in it, no matter how awesome the movie is. I just don't want that guy getting my money."
That's a simple example, but this sort of mentality extends into our politics, our social structure, and how we treat each other in general.
If you enjoy the camaraderie and social clout that inevitably comes from being a principled pillar, you had better make sure you are right when it counts; the day you are principled and wrong about a life and death situation, you may not have the chance to regret your rigidity when adversity snaps you like a twig and the world moves on without you.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-08-03 08:45 pm (UTC)And this whole thing is pretty much pointless if I misinterpreted what you said. ^^
1) I'm assuming that the type of person you're talking about is usually a vocal person -- "principled pillar" makes me think of a politician, actually. But the type of person who stands up on a soap box and preaches a certain ideology and refuses to back down regardless of whatever evidence you show them that their position does not work in real life.
Part of me is infuriated by that type of person, and another part of me pities them, especially if they are unable to see what they're doing. The ones that spout ideology without following it, though, I am pretty much entirely unsympathetic towards.
2) One of my all time favorite characters (one of Baco's originals) is very ideological and I love him for that reason. The story, although it isn't directly about him, still follows his character arc as he learns that things aren't as black and white as they seem.
But I also seem to just have a soft spot for characters who think in black and white (e.g., Zell Dincht) and are forced into close relationships (sexual or otherwise) with people who are very much in the grey area (e.g., what I love about Seifer/Zell). I'm not sure why I like that kind of character so much. I'll have to think about it more.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-08-04 04:34 am (UTC)I have more to say about this, but I am exhausted after a day at the beach, so I will have to come back to it.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-08-05 05:42 pm (UTC)The type of person I am complaining about is specifically the person who beats other people over the head with their principles and/or uses Principle as an excuse to not take action that is critical to their own or someone else's survival, or to do something they know will hurt someone else. I am aware there are principled people who do not do this. I forget about them because I don't often see them. But although I didn't specify in my statement that I wasn't talking about them, I did not intend to include them in my OP and such exceptions to the rule (if they are even exceptions...I suspect there are a lot of people out there who are pretty principled, but one of their principles is "don't push principles on others and do this for your own gratification, not for a reward") are completely apart from what I mean when I say "I have a problem with principled people."
That said! I think characters who have strict principles are really fun to write and work with, because it can cause them to really rock the boat in interesting ways. It's also interesting that you drew a distinction between principled and simple--Zell for instance--because I wouldn't have thought of that, at all. But it makes sense. Zell actually seems to get by amazingly well with his simple outlook, too, even though it causes a lot of confusion for him when dealing with "greys" like Squall and Seifer.
Expanding on the FFVIII cast, I think a lot of people seem to view Rinoa as being very principled, because she definitely has her opinionated moments and fusses at people for not acting the way she wants them to, at least in the beginning. This is just my interpretation, but she seems to let go of some of that after Edia!Ultimecia starts fucking with her head. I always got the impression that she got some kind of knowledge about the world/time/sorcery/everything that changed her attitude a bit after that, because it made the world a little greyer, and other people's personal issues a little more understandable: turned Squall into someone other than a cute, stubborn boy, Seifer into someone other than the charismatic pillar who made her feel she could take on the world, made her resistance attempt seem petty and insignificant. Nothing was every said specifically about those things and what she thought of them, but that's how I saw her behavior change, so she went from this really strictly principled (in a kind of bad way) person to a grey person, kind of quietly.
(The two I was really never able to figure out were Irvine and Selphie. They're the sort of "performance" anime characters that always throw me for a loop, because I can't tell if they're putting on a show for everyone or if that's their actual personality.)
(no subject)
Date: 2011-08-05 05:45 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-08-04 10:35 am (UTC)But I'm always afraid to talk about any of my principles, ever, because no one likes them. No one. Unprincipled people become frightened of me, afraid i'll judge them on my principles just because I have them for myself. And principled people can't accept my thoroughly unconventional ideas, nor the fact that I refuse to apply them to anyone else. For people who don't apply principles "conventionally", who don't do it in the socially expected way... it's worse than keeping your mouth shut, worse than not having any and just keeping quiet about that sort of thing, or acting like it's a hard question you're not interested in or focused on. It's a lot worse. Standing up for my own principles inevitably means losing conventionally principled friends. And it's not that I would leave them for being judgmental. It's that they can't ever recognise my principles as being "no, this is honestly what i think is better", rather than "you're just saying that because [insert strawman excuses and motives they made up for me here], and you're no good and I can't support that." I wasn't asking them to support that. I was only asking them to believe that I genuinely felt that way about stuff, rather than grabbing at strawman influences on my life to blame. Couldn't they just disagree with me, or tell me I'd gone wrong, instead of saying that the horrible influence of xyz had clearly undermined what would otherwise be a view of the world in total agreement with theirs?
In summary, I can barely see what I'm typing in these colours. =D
(no subject)
Date: 2011-08-04 10:36 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-08-04 10:43 am (UTC)As I said, I wouldn't leave them for being judgmental, but part of why the break occurs is that I end up feeling insulted. Not only misperceived in a persistent way that they refuse to let me correct, but also insulted in that they believe me incapable of coming to my own conclusions, that they have to blame other people. I'd rather be told I'm wrong than told i can't figure out that I'm being led astray. They aren't believing my own statements about myself no matter what I do. They think they're a better judge of what's going on inside me than I am. And when they're wrong, and they insist on continuing to be wrong no matter how much I try to set it straight, it gets kind of hard to deal with. You can't really be close to a person or talk meaningfully with them when they do that. I might not leave a person for being judgmental, but I find friendship with a person under those constraints to be already operating in a totally broken and ineffective way, and if there's no way to repair that, there's no longer any point in hanging with them unless that can be corrected.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-08-04 04:54 pm (UTC)I'm pretty sure I'm talking about something completely different that what you are talking about.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-08-04 09:34 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-08-04 05:08 pm (UTC)Of course, I have no idea what sort of conversations you've had with people or how they're responded to you in the past so I can't really make assumptions about them, either.
In any case, I might just be misunderstanding you just as well as anyone else, but the tone of your comments indicate you wanted me to address your issue directly, instead of talking about what I was originally talking about. If that wasn't what you meant for me to do, you can just ignore this response.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-08-04 09:35 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-08-04 09:53 pm (UTC)I think if i'm coming across like I want you to address my issue separately, you're getting that from the fact that I really want to paint a picture for you of what it's like to be on my side of things. I want to actually show you what it can be like to be principled and not expecting some great social/cosmic reward for it. Because your OP seems to totally discount the idea of being principled as worthless, and everyone who's principled a mere tool of backstabbing social mores. Which, yes, as you noted, is a cause of misunderstandings in a meta sense as well as a direct one. Trying to paint a picture of what it's like for me is my way of trying to bridge those misunderstandings.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-08-05 05:52 am (UTC)That's great! Please, carry on. If you are not expecting a cosmic reward for it, then I am not and was not talking about you in my original post.
This is why I said we weren't talking about the same thing. It had nothing to do with you or people with a similar way of thinking--and you could have cleared this up by asking me if that were true, instead of assuming that it was.
I am talking about people who push their principles on other people, not people who simply act according to their principles. They are two different things.
your OP seems to totally discount the idea of being principled as worthless, and everyone who's principled a mere tool of backstabbing social mores.
Does it? Did it? Wow. Where do you think I said that?
I'm saying that it can get you and other people killed or otherwise in a bad place if you insist on being rigid in the face of adversity.
For some reason you seem to have taken this really personally, and it baffles me because... like... what, no.
Nope! Wrong again. I was startled and did not expect a stranger to be reading this, especially because there is further context that you wouldn't know if you didn't know me and read my other journal posts. If someone came into your journal and disagreed with you on a single post which really required context from other posts which they did not read, wouldn't you feel a little weirded out?
In your own tradition of bridging misunderstandings, let me try and clarify to you by painting a picture of where I am coming from. I don't know what country you live in, but in the U.S., as you may already know, there is a lot of political and religious back and forth on the rights of minorities, poor people, and women. It's a lot of really stupid shit and I hate reading about it or listening to it. The more I hear, the more I want to move to Sweden. Or something. My rights are being torn down, because "it's just the right thing to do" and because I "just don't know what God has in store for me," and other stupid political and religious principles. I fucking hate it, and I bitch about it a lot. This is just another case of me bitching about it. I will continue to bitch about it in the future, because it angers me and making bitter remarks on the Internet about it in front of people who mostly agree with me is my catharsis.
Now, if you are defending these people, you can get right the fuck out. If you're not, and you don't use your principles to control the weaker people around you, then don't worry about it because I'm totally not talking about that.
That said...Is there a reason you didn't just ask me if I was including people who don't expect cosmic rewards? The main thing that made me uncomfortable about your post was that you made some pretty bold assumptions (that I was invalidating the practice of being principled), then told me a lot of rather personal information about how you think and how other people treat you, without identifying yourself. That appeared to be an appeal for me to approve of you (I understand now that it wasn't, but that's how it felt at the time). I didn't really know what to do with all that. Do you understand how that could be disconcerting? Probably would've been easier to just ask.
Additionally, I would have appreciated it very much if you'd have at least asked me before adding me to your reading list. That's pretty common courtesy, I think, but if it's not something you normally do, it's not a big deal that you didn't, either. Just be aware that this is a personal journal and not one I would like to be linked to. It's really for me, about me and things I think are interesting, so I don't want to deviate from the topics too much. This type of derailment is something I hope won't become a common occurrence here.
That said, I have no problem with you reading whatever I write here. But if you think I'm reacting badly to you now, or if you generally don't like what I have to say here, please go somewhere else. This is not a debate journal.
I am sorry for the misunderstanding. Unfortunately, your attempt to bridge a perceived misunderstanding has resulted in worse misunderstanding. I don't actually have a problem with people with principles until someone starts insisting other people change their behavior in order to suit those principles. So far you have not done that, so, good on you, as far as I'm concerned.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-08-05 06:41 am (UTC)> If you are not expecting a cosmic reward
for it, then I am not and was not talking about you in my original post.
Yeah, but you did make it sound like you were talking about everyone who was principled. When you make sweeping statements about "principled people", it sure sounds like you are talking about everyone like that. Sweeping statements hurt the exceptions. They especially hurt when they're true for most people, because those people are feeling constantly swept under the rug and stepped on by both sides. They hurt me every time I read them. Like I said in my explanation, this is a big deal for me because I've lost friends over it, so it's a bit upsetting, so I actually care whether people are going around making sweeping statements and assumptions about it, so that's why I'm making a point of it in the first place. Because I'd like to speak up about it, because it always hurts, and I was hoping that by showing you my view, you would not generalise universally next time.
And... well, as I said in my explanation itself (this is getting to be really circular and meta now), people in my boat are getting really sick of being rejected by absolutely everything. Damned for having principles and damned for having the wrong ones. After a while, it starts to really chafe when the only people who don't reject you for subscribing to the "wrong" things complain broadly about the idea that you subscribe to anything at all. It gets really... frustrating? Saddening? Lonely? When you hear complaints like this, that sound like they broadly include you, from the only people who tolerate you at all.
I'm not trying to derail you, you know? I'm just trying to say... some of us aren't like that... could you please not make all-inclusive universal statements? It's like saying, idk, "all religious people are bigoted"-- someone who happens to not be might have their feelings hurt, and feel like they really want to say "we're not all like that". That's not derailing, it's feeling hurt by something you've said, and wanting to call you out on it. Is that fair?
> Does it? Did it? Wow. Where do you think I said that?
The way that you said what you feel about "principled people" and then set up a theory of what principled people are all like and attacked it based on those assumptions. You never once said "most", or "usually". You just said, "This is how it is."
(no subject)
Date: 2011-08-05 08:51 am (UTC)To talk of "derailing", in a context where someone isn't defending the majority, is to use an easy out not to have to consider the needs of fringe groups who don't fit neatly into your sweeping criticism. It's the same technique that (a very rough analogy, here, but much more widely understood why the issue actually matters) cisprivileged feminists use to try to ignore the needs of transwomen because they want to divide society into "women" and "men", and it's inconvenient to acknowledge that there are others who feel displaced and hurt by both sides. Because they want to rant and rave about anyone who fits vaguely into poorly-specified category X and it is tiresome to have to use precise language indicating otherwise. It is tiresome, and that's probably why you made generalisations, too. But I didn't see that coming.
Generalisations may make for easier ranting, but I find it surprising if people are (rationally, not viscerally) more interested in complaining on a subject like that than in having the facts straight, because why address that sort of topic at all if you're not ultimately seeking to perceive things accurately? So, I didn't assume you were going to do that. Not because I thought this was a "debate journal" but just because it's like, bwuh, you're not interested in the truth? IDK, maybe it's an autistic-spectrum thing, where I assume people care when they don't. At any rate, it happened.
I didn't know you were actually intending to sweep away fringe groups for your convenience, so I assumed you were open for actual discussion about the matter and tried to show you that such a group exists. Now I see that you actually were more interested in complaining about your own feelings than you were in reflecting the complex reality we live in, and it annoyed you to have to approach it from any other angle, as that's not what you wanted. So, okay, I made a big mistake in saying anything in the first place. But now I've ticked you off, you played the "derailing" card to shut me up, and I feel even more marginalised and miserable. Plus, when you find out who I am, maybe you'll be mad at me instead of not knowing who to be mad at, which I don't want, so I'd be willing to drop the subject if you are just willing to not hold a grudge against me for the conversation.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-08-05 05:01 pm (UTC)I'm not going to fight with you, but I will probably advise you to stay away from this journal. Not because I hate you or think you are wrong, but I'm just not going to go to the effort you will require to be specific enough in my statements about things just so they won't hurt you. This journal is mine, I'm going to say what I want, how I want, and it's not meant for you, it's meant for me so I have a place to bitch and discuss goofy science shit when I'm upset.
I understand where you're coming from, and now I know you know me, I have a good idea who you are. I'm sorry you misunderstood, and I see where the misunderstanding took place, but the fact is you didn't have all the information, and you did react defensively, without asking me for clarification, first. If you're going to read this journal, I'm going to have to require that you do that before getting upset. Because I'm not going to be catering to anyone but myself, here. That's just the way I'm using this journal.
So, like, it's okay--I'm not mad, never was, I was just a little confused and creeped out because I thought you were a stranger who was giving me a lot of personal information I didn't really want to know. But now that's cleared up, the only concern I have left is that future posts in this journal will likely rub you the wrong way as well, and because I don't want to make you squirmy or upset you, I'm afraid this might not be a good thing for you to be reading. Mostly I use this journal to bitch, to talk about atheist stuff and science stuff, and bitch some more about people who are wantonly and deliberately using Faith and Principle to excuse their abuse of me and other people. The big asterisk in there being, "if this does not apply to you, then I'm not talking about you." Even if it sounds like I am: because I'm just complaining. I either want someone to go "yeah man that sucks I hate it too" or I want a lively discourse about the history of zealotry and how it's fucked humanity in the past. =P
In any case, this is a no-threat, journal, none implied by me towards the readers and none tolerated from readers to me, and if it isn't your cup of tea, you should probably just keep watching my other journal...it's going to be less ranty than this one, or when it does rant, it will probably be less self-centered and bitter-sounding about it.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-08-06 04:29 am (UTC)I think it's... well, it's not that I don't generally agree with your complaints, it's just what I said about how it stings when people unthinkingly lump me in with the same people who pretty much cause me to have the same complaints about them. Like if you nearly get run over by a rude driver and you're mad at them, and then someone else complains that drivers like you are a hazard, and you're like, "what, no, I hate that as much as you do!" But I think, ultimately, where the real misunderstanding comes in is that I can't tell when you're just complaining/ranting and when you really want to discuss stuff. I wouldn't have had trouble if I'd known you were just being angry and ranty-- that would have worked out fine; I wouldn't have tried to apply it to "everyone" without the likely disclaimers. But your rants are so much like the carefully constructed arguments of people who really want to make a point that I can't tell that they aren't that. Like I said, it confused me that anyone would be talking about the topic unless they were really trying to sort out what's true. And the way you talk about it is so reasonable and logical and persuasive that it really sounds like an essay of reasoning.
Yet despite using reason as your weapon in anger, when you complain, you pretty much wield your words like a club, I think. Because you're angry. You swing them everywhere, and you certainly do smash up what you're aiming at, but you hit bystanders as well. Should I just get out of the field? I guess I just have few enough people who aren't deliberately trying to beat on my ideas, so I hate not being able to work it out with the ones who aren't. Sigh.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-08-06 05:44 pm (UTC)It's not exactly the same as what you're saying, because dressing a certain way is something visible, while having strong beliefs and principles is not unless you talk about it. So at least people are being upfront and personal with their bigotry towards me; but it's hard not to take it just as personally when someone says "I hate this group because X," and you happen to be part of the group, but don't do X, you do Y instead. It's like...they didn't even know that about you, and now there's this thing you can't talk about with them because they just said they would hate you for it (whether or not it's actually true that they would hate you for it is irrelevant; the statement is enough to cause stress and fear). So there's this invisible part of you that you're suddenly afraid that person might find out about, and be angry at you for having: Cuz, most people are lumping stupidly when they say stuff like that, and don't want to hear that there are exceptions (or that the stereotype is in fact totally inaccurate).. When a group is hated for a particular behavior, whether or not a member of said group exhibits said behavior, they'll get the hate all the same.
I'll try to be a little more mindful of the grouping/othering in the future, but, like I said, this is alternately and sort of "anger rage arughadfaskdjha;dkfjs" journal and science discussion journal (because talking about science calms be down when I'm mad). I don't want to tell you to _not_ read it, it's totally up to you, but I will probably sometimes just run off at the mouth and be really unmindful of verbally side-swiping people or things I'm not actually targeting. That's part of why I don't give this journal name out much, because honestly, I don't really want anyone who isn't already aware of its purpose (and cool with that) to be reading it, lest they get upset about my blather (or offended that I talk about my atheism and dare to say I don't believe in anything, as if my lack of belief translates into having some kind of problem with people who do believe in something, which I don't: disagreeing isn't the same as disliking or disrespecting, and I still find spirituality really interesting and useful on a lot of levels, and I hate having to disclaim that every single time I say anything about there being no god or gods: I'm friendly, I swear!).
So, if you're okay with all that and can keep it in mind, read away, and if I say something that makes you think I might be stereotyping or judging unfairly, just...ask for clarification. I'll be happy to offer it, or discuss things more in detail. As a general rule, I'm not including or complaining about the people who read this journal. I am a little more careful about stuff on LiveJournal. In fact, some of my LJ posts are edited versions of stuff I have put here, with the spite removed and more carefully combed to eliminate offensive phrases. This post even showed up on my G+, with the first line extracted, exactly because I didn't want to be accused of stereotyping.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-08-07 09:02 am (UTC)Ironically, the whole reason this journal exists is for a similar reason for me. That is why I have comments turned off: because the stuff I have in here is not stuff I feel like having up for debate. If I put it in my usual journal, even with the comments turned off, people will debate it with me somewhere else, rather than taking the hint that "comments off" means "I don't feel like debating this". I found that to stop people from veering on debate tangents when I don't want them to is really hard, even people who are usually very thoughtful and well-meaning, and even when they'd been amply warned. I thought at first that it was just that it's really hard to tell whether someone wants a debate or not. But then, putting disclaimers on things didn't help, so it seems like there's a second problem in that people don't respect whether you want a debate or not. Including people who are normally good about saying "this might not be the time or place for x". I think what was going wrong was people not understanding that the disclaimer did indeed include the kind of stuff that they were going to say, even though they were going to be nice about it.
So I think there's something very strong in our internet culture that has convinced us that we always have a right to debate stuff, always. Back in the stone age when all webpages didn't have a place to leave comments and discuss what they thought of every bit of content, you could state what you thought and let it stand. Now that the web lets everyone comment on every scrap, people are always placed in the position to defend, and they're expected to not just ignore non-troll disagreements, so they can't make any statement unless they're prepared to address every possible counterargument that their audience might bring up. I actually don't like that very much. Sometimes, you just want to say what you think and not deal with every scrap of detail all over again. It's really hard to really hush up well-meaning people.
Anyway, for my part, I think I'm capable of respecting whether someone just wants to complain rather than be picked apart, but I still have the problem being able to tell whether you want to discuss or whether you just want to rant. They looked the same to me, and I didn't see any modified version of this post elsewhere; this entry wasn't in your regular journal; it was only here. (I don't have G+. No social networking for me.) I don't know, the thing is that I get mad at self-righteous Christians too, so there's probably a lot here that I do agree with. I wish I had an internet post-it that I could put on this journal every time a post comes up to remind me that that's what it's for-- then I would probably be fine. I'm not sure if I'm going to forget or not. I sort of want to give it a try, and if I forget again, remind me that I said this and then forgot, and I'll conclude that I can't do it.