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pietillidie
Joined: 07 Jan 2005
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| David wrote: | My understanding of motive is similar to the way I understand of the science of dreams: you can't simply read dream images on a purely literal level and make simplistic conclusions, but at the same time I don't believe that we need convoluted psychoanalytic explanations to explain such mundane and sometimes obvious content.
On this incident, I agree that it's not "black and white" like another poster claimed in the other thread. We can't talk about single motivations here or anywhere else. What we can talk about though is significant motivations, and coming from a heavily religious upbringing I understand the effect fundamentalist religious adherence has on the human psyche; how it can dominate your life. We do not need much information to recognise that that, at least on the balance of probabilities, was a significant factor here.
Of course it wasn't the only one, and of course there may well be motivations in common with Mexican drug lords. But to place this crime in the same category as that of the ice addict who breaks into your car or the armed gang who hold up a petrol station seems to be denying an important fact—that some crimes do belong in different (at least, rough) categories. To ignore this is to err dangerously close to the libertarian maxim that "everyone is responsible for their own actions", and give damaging social/cultural phenomena a free pass. |
The reality is, David, you can't separate religion, ideology and culture, either in the brain or in the world.
You have even had to introduce minor suburban crime and deviance to whitewash the difficulty. But even then, if you think about it, you wouldn't know without very close analysis how similar or different the motive of a local gang of thugs and an international gang of thugs. The key point being that to make such an assessment requires very careful reasoning and extensive field knowledge. You could certainly do it, but like most others you haven't done it.
The takeaway point is this: Casual opinion falters again and again when it comes to grappling with mass, abstract phenomena such as "religion", "culture", "terrorism", "the economy", "the Chinese", "Muslims", Christians", "violence", and so on. Usually, people just blab away negligently and without discipline. But the democratic platform has never been about Mrs. Jones opening a healing crystal brain surgery clinic or George W. Bush starting wars in countries he can't identify on a map; there are consequences for false analysis and ill-disciplined decisions.
I have been arguing for a long time now that racism is the primary confounding menace here because it "irrationalises" analysis and generates such hysteria that the solutions offered by governments in the end are merely dealing with the secondary hysteria, not to the root problem.
For example, WPT has been reporting the rise in anti-semitism across Europe for a long time now; but how can that be dealt with when it is drowned out, nay justified, by concern with Islamic dress and architecture? Strong vilification laws, universally applied, would quickly put pay to the extremist ends of most of the dangerous organisations in any country, but that requires giving up the right to vilify Muslims, apparently too great a pleasure to abandon.
Or, how in the heck was a flagged, known target such as Charlie Hebdo not the focus of terrorism-related security? Did the management have a martyrdom policy? Was this not a great chance to catch the bastards? Was there insufficient funding due to waste and cronyism elsewhere? You won't hear those questions asked over the din of the hysteria, when they are very reasonable questions.
Instead, you will get millions of dollars flowing into special PR forces in preparation for elections, manipulating people's undisciplined, emotive anger against the wrong targets. Or perhaps more Muslim clothing and architecture debates or other irrelevant discriminatory measures. Or perhaps another resource grab dressed up as a geopolitical security necessity or crusade.
No, it's time to be disciplined and diligent, and get the analysis right; we've only had a decade plus of monumentally costly and destructive failed policy to learn how to do so. This is a criminal, security and deviant group psychiatry matter first and foremost. Stop allowing the very powerful drive of mob racism to fix people's gaze on beards and clothing, and kowtowing to its mal-analysis.
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Mugwump
Joined: 28 Jul 2007
Location: Between London and Melbourne
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[quote="pietillidie]The reality is, David, you can't separate religion, ideology and culture, either in the brain or in the world.
No, it's time to be disciplined and diligent, and get the analysis right; [quote]
Funny, I can see a lot of Frenchness in most pairs of Frenchmen who may hold utterly divergent opinions about the nature of God and the intangible world. That might be culture.
I can also isolate examples of pairs of French Catholics who have very different opinions about civil power and the right way to structure laws and society. That might be ideology.
Over a large sample, religion, ideology and culture will show points of correlation, no doubt, but most citizens who don't read Social Psychology HQ (per your earlier post) manage to practically differentiate these concepts. Perhaps it serves some ideologies to try to entangle them, however.
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pietillidie
Joined: 07 Jan 2005
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| pietillidie wrote: | The reality is, David, you can't separate religion, ideology and culture, either in the brain or in the world.
No, it's time to be disciplined and diligent, and get the analysis right... |
| Mugwump wrote: | Funny, I can see a lot of Frenchness in most pairs of Frenchmen who may hold utterly divergent opinions about the nature of God and the intangible world. That might be culture.
I can also isolate examples of pairs of French Catholics who have very different opinions about civil power and the right way to structure laws and society. That might be ideology.
Over a large sample, religion, ideology and culture will show points of correlation, no doubt, but most citizens who don't read Social Psychology HQ (per your earlier post) manage to practically differentiate these concepts. Perhaps it serves some ideologies to try to entangle them, however. |
I'm sorry, but over a large sample these terms are mostly useless, with the research being extremely contentious and mired in correlation without much experimental work. We think we roughly know a few things about these mass entities such as "degree of individuality" or "degree of hierarchical authority", but we don't know much more. But you're not even referring to those handful of more developed aspects.
What kind of "French", and "Catholics", and "ideologists" are they? You haven't defined any of those terms or explained how and why you identified them. Can you tell us if the between-group difference exceeds the in-group difference? Do you even know how much of "French" explains "Catholicism" or how much "French Catholicism" explains "ideology" and vice-versa?
What you're really saying is that you claim you and others manage to differentiate these categories, but you can't demonstrate or explain this either through formal logic, maths, philosophy or as an hypothesis with experimental evidence.
This is a wishful gloss on yours and David's part; these categories fall apart because they're unstable, not because I want them to fall apart. The pedophile priest and old Ms. Brown are such different people the very category "Christian" from most perspectives pertaining to each is outright useless.
You seem to know neither the likelihood of correlations between these categories, nor their probable magnitude or direction, nor any work in the area, despite this currently being a major cognitive science topic.
I'd love someone to take the responsibility to either define these things properly, or explain why they can't be defined, or take responsibility to do the disciplined thing until they understand it, not just tell me everyone can do it and move on to extrapolations based on a platform of assumptions about something they can't even describe.
As for thinking that serious analysis simply complicates things, well, you might like to look into just how accurate experimental work has found people's views on religion and culture to be. I think you'll find the great mass of evidence shows very comfortably that people make error after error on these things based on oversimplified heuristics.
Or has your research found otherwise?
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Mugwump
Joined: 28 Jul 2007
Location: Between London and Melbourne
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^ i think you're playing language games, which you then discard when it suits you. Your posts are littered with the idea that any given jihadist action is simply "psychiatric", and not systemic pr political. You charge various people in political or corporate jobs with being "psychopathic". The degree of precision attached to those things in your posts apprears to be far lower (or, being charitable, no hogher) than that you demand of words in everday heuristic use like "ideology". There is a place for research. It's not to arrogate political power away from the ordinary citizen in favour od the priestly scholar-bureaucrat.
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Two more flags before I die! |
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pietillidie
Joined: 07 Jan 2005
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| Mugwump wrote: | | ^ i think you're playing language games, which you then discard when it suits you. Your posts are littered with the idea that any given jihadist action is simply "psychiatric", and not systemic pr political. You charge various people in political or corporate jobs with being "psychopathic". The degree of precision attached to those things in your posts apprears to be far lower (or, being charitable, no hogher) than that you demand of words in everday heuristic use like "ideology". There is a place for research. It's not to arrogate political power away from the ordinary citizen in favour od the priestly scholar-bureaucrat. |
On the first, outright false. I specifically pointed to the work in social psychology and deviant group dynamics (such as gangs, cults, etc.), and the need to find answers in either the brain or the world. The scope needed to study both is traversed in social psychology all the time.
On the second, we can discard terms if you want, no problem; I'm all for it. E.g., I will now simply refer to "violent behaviour". Agreed.
On the term " ideology", if you haven't picked up the century-long confusion between religion, ideology and culture, or specific articles trying haplessly to cut through them, I can't help you. I read two last night just to revisit the matter and offer no amendments.
You seem to think I care about discarding terms; be my guest to point out more and I'll gladly get the machete out. My slow uptake doesn't justify even greater sluggishness on your part. Even worse when the terms are wasting time and resources that ought to be directed elsewhere.
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In the end the rain comes down, washes clean the streets of a blue sky town.
Help Nick's: http://www.magpies.net/nick/bb/fundraising.htm |
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Tannin 
Can't remember
Joined: 06 Aug 2006
Location: Huon Valley Tasmania
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| pietillidie wrote: | | stuff. lots of stuff |
^ This nonsense is what happens when an expert starts to think that the learnings of his own field can be applied wholesale to matters outside his field. PTID's analysis reveals gaping holes in his understanding of sociology and history. Or - and this strikes me as more likely - a willful determination to cast whatever understandings of those fields he has aside and try to view everything from a single perspective.
It's a screw, PTID. For the love of Mike, put your damn hammer down and hunt around to see if you can find a screwdriver.
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�Let's eat Grandma.� Commas save lives! |
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pietillidie
Joined: 07 Jan 2005
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| Tannin wrote: | | pietillidie wrote: | | stuff. lots of stuff |
^ This nonsense is what happens when an expert starts to think that the learnings of his own field can be applied wholesale to matters outside his field. PTID's analysis reveals gaping holes in his understanding of sociology and history. Or - and this strikes me as more likely - a willful determination to cast whatever understandings of those fields he has aside and try to view everything from a single perspective.
It's a screw, PTID. For the love of Mike, put your damn hammer down and hunt around to see if you can find a screwdriver. |
But you don't know what my field is. I'll take a serious argument in any field with a factual basis. Do you have one? Praise your soul if you do, because apparently no one else does.
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In the end the rain comes down, washes clean the streets of a blue sky town.
Help Nick's: http://www.magpies.net/nick/bb/fundraising.htm |
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Tannin
Can't remember
Joined: 06 Aug 2006
Location: Huon Valley Tasmania
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I may not know what it is, but it's Blind-Freddy-obvious what it isn't - i.e., anything seriously to do with history, sociology or politics. It is daft to try to analyse large social movements from a purely individual perspective without any apparent attempt to think with a sociological or historical perspective.
Am I going to write an analyses on this topic myself? Certainly not; it's a vast topic and not one I'm particularly interested in. I have never been to Mexico and am not interested in going there, or in spending time finding out about the place when thre are so many much more interesting things to find out about. Nevertheless, I can spot nonsense like some of that above and not let it pass without comment.
But are we even talking about Mexico? Seems to me that this thread had degenerated into yet another dumb, sensationalist conversation about one of the least dangerous and most unlikely things to kill you in modern Western life, terrorism. Again. Sigh.
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�Let's eat Grandma.� Commas save lives! |
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pietillidie
Joined: 07 Jan 2005
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^So you felt the need to comment, but you don't know what I believe, what my analysis is, what I think is a waste of time and what my recommendations are?
Now, there's a methodology!
However, because you didn't crap on about some imaginary clash of civilisations and claim that Christians are misanthropists because the church hymnal calls humans "unworthy sinners" no less than 238 times, you sir are the winner! Please collect your free copy of Swiss Muslim Architecture: A Black Market Guide, and be sure to launder your money through one of our MFZs (Minaret-Free Zones).
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In the end the rain comes down, washes clean the streets of a blue sky town.
Help Nick's: http://www.magpies.net/nick/bb/fundraising.htm |
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David 
I dare you to try
Joined: 27 Jul 2003
Location: Andromeda
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| Tannin wrote: | I may not know what it is, but it's Blind-Freddy-obvious what it isn't - i.e., anything seriously to do with history, sociology or politics. It is daft to try to analyse large social movements from a purely individual perspective without any apparent attempt to think with a sociological or historical perspective.
Am I going to write an analyses on this topic myself? Certainly not; it's a vast topic and not one I'm particularly interested in. I have never been to Mexico and am not interested in going there, or in spending time finding out about the place when thre are so many much more interesting things to find out about. Nevertheless, I can spot nonsense like some of that above and not let it pass without comment.
But are we even talking about Mexico? Seems to me that this thread had degenerated into yet another dumb, sensationalist conversation about one of the least dangerous and most unlikely things to kill you in modern Western life, terrorism. Again. Sigh. |
This thread was never about Mexico. The statistics in its title were used as an attempt to show up supposed bias in the way many of us view "Muslim crime" as opposed to "Christian crime". I think it's a strained comparison, but, hey, that's pretty much the entire thread discussion right there.
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All watched over by machines of loving grace |
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think positive
Side By Side
Joined: 30 Jun 2005
Location: somewhere
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| Tannin wrote: | | pietillidie wrote: | | stuff. lots of stuff |
^ This nonsense is what happens when an expert starts to think that the learnings of his own field can be applied wholesale to matters outside his field. PTID's analysis reveals gaping holes in his understanding of sociology and history. Or - and this strikes me as more likely - a willful determination to cast whatever understandings of those fields he has aside and try to view everything from a single perspective.
It's a screw, PTID. For the love of Mike, put your damn hammer down and hunt around to see if you can find a screwdriver. |
Some guys here would make a fortune on the tools. 4 pages, and some of them only have 3 posts!
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You cant fix stupid, turns out you cant quarantine it either! |
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1061
Joined: 06 Sep 2013
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| They certainly seem to enjoy playing with their tools. |
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think positive
Side By Side
Joined: 30 Jun 2005
Location: somewhere
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| 1061 wrote: | | They certainly seem to enjoy playing with their tools. |
They sure do! 
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You cant fix stupid, turns out you cant quarantine it either! |
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pietillidie
Joined: 07 Jan 2005
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Actually, the main point was to complicate the role of religion, while my other interests were the sheer lack of interest in the story generally, and the deviant narcogang parallel.
People continue to take expressions of religion at face value when religion is mostly post hoc rationalisation through a particular sectarian idiom that obscures many individual idiosyncrasies. Or, they take some expressions of religion at face value when it suits (x terrorists are Muslim), and ignore the religion of other terrorists (y terrorists are never identified as Christian, even if they never miss mass, do confession, give to the church coffers, cross themselves and praises god on their death bed).
Many people also don't realise that in some cultures, there is no non-religious idiom on offer, so what other idiom would a person from that culture use to express their world view? Esperanto? This would then also exaggerate the role of religion in their expression and self rationalisation, while those from pluralist societies have other modes of expression available regardless of how devout they are.
In other words, surface religiosity is a fraught measure.
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In the end the rain comes down, washes clean the streets of a blue sky town.
Help Nick's: http://www.magpies.net/nick/bb/fundraising.htm |
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pietillidie
Joined: 07 Jan 2005
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| think positive wrote: | | 1061 wrote: | | They certainly seem to enjoy playing with their tools. |
They sure do! |
Hey, as long as you put them back into the box of an evening no one seems to complain  
_________________
In the end the rain comes down, washes clean the streets of a blue sky town.
Help Nick's: http://www.magpies.net/nick/bb/fundraising.htm |
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