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this is deeply true, inspecting the common knee-jerk responses/dismissals to this idea sheds light on how deeply society is willing to gaslight you if there's a chance it will make you more controllable this is part of why i want 👏more 👏 normative 👏 conflict 👏 https://t.co/FnmP8vOLYm
first, a standard preliminary: "if you need your actions to be justified, you are not fully loving yourself" notice if this triggers "aaaaaah! the cool people are telling me i'm not *fully* loving myself, THIS IS AWEFUL I NEED TO CHANGE RN" https://t.co/zMU3SXn7q4
k, so we're on "you don't need justification" hyperbolic rebuttal-> "WHAT?!?!? You're saying that people have no responsibility to each other??? That people can just not vaccine their kids??? BEGONE yee and your civilization collapsing nonsense!!!"
it's the subtle corruption of "reasons as your irl epistemic best effort" into "reasons as socially approved motivations" that feed this as with many things, this equivocation is no accident https://t.co/xjaLKwXnDF
all my homies hate reasons https://t.co/0NK01PIZWo
re: "deep societal gaslighting" the most common way that people get other people to do things is with shame. asserting (subtly or not) a frame that you are bad/unreasonable/stupid/repulsive/unwanted/unworthy if you don't comply
"reasons" are a socially programmable interface that link into your fear/threat responses a common way to get someone to do something is attack their reasons, with the implicit understanding that if they lose their reasons, they'll feel awful and compelled to obey
this is fundamental social tech and it can disguise itself quite nicely as reasons which are more of the matter-of-fact-causal-history of your behavior/beliefs/actions the gaslighting: convincing you they are the same thing
it's tempting to go "cool, so i'll just throw off the shackle of social-reasons and only use epistemic-reasons" this is hard because all of society is working its damndest to undermine your intellectual/emotional ability to tell the difference
this "socially reinforced blurring the lines" often gives rise to only being able to make a point by sounding sorta crazy https://t.co/MY6jbTFeji
normative conflict is when its normal and not a scary threatening thing for people to be in conflict with each other, and there is group support for doing the hard work of dealing with different values, instead of just "make the conflict stop" https://t.co/D4p0J6VttI
"Conflict is not abuse" compares it to situations where conflict is seen as so scary/threating/stress-inducing, that as soon as it arises people reach for whatever tool will just MAKE IT STOP https://t.co/6K6Wg0IxzA
Sarah Schulman says it better, but tldr; Both Supremacy and Trauma can elicit similar panic/rage/fear when they are poked via interpersonal conflict If conflict is intolerable, and u can make it go away by getting it deemed Abuse, there's a pressure for escalation over repair
to be clear, i TOTALLY still want to be able to effect other people. if you fuck with stuff i care about i will try to get you to stop. AND I'd like to do so without tools that gaslight you into blending social and physical reality i want more normative conflict tools
@xuenay paraphrasing @Morphenius on the flavor of self-deception/gaslighting that this flavor of shame based control demands https://t.co/zdyRTjXOuz
Deliberate conflation of social reality with reality is a strategy to stabilize the former! Just like how often diagnosing someone as “crazy” is a bid to coordinate against them for threatening the stability of social reality by breaking its norms - showing them to be just that!