The recent violence on Capitol Hill

WiresDreamDisasters

Rich210 said:

WiresDreamDisasters said:

@Rich210 ;;;

I don't even know how to respond to that quite honestly. I cannot follow your logic at all, and don't even know where to begin untangling the web of words you've just posted. It just reads as a kneejerk defense of collectivism, because you think I just attacked it.

Scientifically speaking, we know what happens when a collective of humans get together for one common purpose. We know how easily manipulable they are. We know the mechanisms at play. 5% isn't a number I just plucked out of the air. It's what the literature suggests.

I don't understand how you jump from my saying they're an example of the madness of collectivism to an assertion you make that they're not collectivists, to inaccurate percentages, to comments about love....

Like - no piss take... I just don't get it.

Don't worry dude, we've just got very different ways of trying to get to grips of this. My background is in mental health and psycho-social thinking. A way of understanding psychology is through the quality of relationships and the impact that relationships have on people's expectations for me this is crucial when trying to explain the situation we are seeing, and to a lesser extent predict what will happen next.  

The research by numbers, albeit is important, doesn't talk about the mechanisms - it's just a mean average, and what it proves is that just like you said a small number of people relative to the group size can hold significant influence. I don't dispute that number, what I'll add though is that number is context dependent and in no way will there ever be 5%, and in no way will the contextual mechanisms be the same from situation to situation. But in order to understand the contextual mechanisms we need to understand the expectations of relationships for these people, but without sitting them on the couch, the only way we can do that is through their actions and discourses as they present them in the real world. 

I'm highlighting that actually this situation is very very very bad. From a psychoanalytic perspective this president will not relinquish power over his devoted followers because he has never experienced unconditional love in his life, and I would argue that unconsciously this has more power than money for Donald Trump and his family. I predict that Trump would sooner go to rack and ruin before he gives up on is devoted followers. 

Like... I more less understand that part of it. I'm no professional but I have a pretty decent understanding of psychology, and have spent a lot of time in the past reading about many of the classic experiments.

What I don't understand is your opposition to defining them as an example of collectivism - particularly the madness aspect. It would seem to be a pretty well established observation now; see the Stanford Prison Experiment, which didn't require any value judgements on whether someone had or hadn't received unconditional love in their lifetimes. It focused on the actual mechanics behind groupthink and conformity, and the tendency for heirarchies to lean towards abuses of power.

I wouldn't get too hung up on the notion of collectivism == socialism. That's a political definition, but isn't the psychological one, from my understanding.

RaymondLin

There is going to be a whole generation of domestic terrorist as a result of his Presidency and rhetoric.

DefaultM

My wife sent me a screenshot from her Facebook of this guy saying to watch your phone in the coming days and prepare. Trump will text you 7 times and this means that you need to arm yourself as the storm is coming.

Rich210

At the end of the day much of this is just semantics, I honestly didn't think I put much emphasis on that.

On the zimbardo prison experiment though, which is really useful for understanding people's ability to be brutal to others. What we learn from that is the impact of deindividuation and the role of power. A lot of those old school and ethically dubious experiments were interested in suggestion and the unconscious because they came from a preceeding eras where psychoanalysis  and hypnosis were much more mainstream. 

When we have the vantage point of history and case study you can do. Don't ever get stuck in just lab based psychology that attempts to reduce the world to close systems. The real world is unpredictable and an open system so for proper analysis we must look at the entities of a structure which illicit the phenomena, and use multiple perspectives to find better truths for different circumstances. There are many ways to cook an egg!

WiresDreamDisasters

Rich210 said:

At the end of the day much of this is just semantics, I honestly didn't think I put much emphasis on that.

On the zimbardo prison experiment though, which is really useful for understanding people's ability to be brutal to others. What we learn from that is the impact of deindividuation and the role of power. A lot of those old school and ethically dubious experiments were interested in suggestion and the unconscious because they came from a preceeding eras where psychoanalysis  and hypnosis were much more mainstream. 

When we have the vantage point of history and case study you can do. Don't ever get stuck in just lab based psychology that attempts to reduce the world to close systems. The real world is unpredictable and an open system so for proper analysis we must look at the entities of a structure which illicit the phenomena, and use multiple perspectives to find better truths for different circumstances. There are many ways to cook an egg!

Or rather, many ways for an individual to feel disenfranchised when they're actually not, and many ways for an individual to feel superior when they're not, and many ways for a group of people to find common ground resulting in a bond that is the glue and gives them the impetus to unthinkingly pursue agendas and objectives that are damaging to one's own psyche.

I do get it. What we're dealing with here on some level is cultism, and religiosity. We're also dealing with victims as you rightly say. But additionally to that, there's nothing new under the sun. We should really be wary about creating a hostile atmosphere that pushes people into the arms of the kind of security that tribalism can provide.

And it's not just a one sided thing. You'll see the same mechanisms at play across the board.

If you had 3 kids, and you let one of them get away with all sorts of bad behaviour, but you allow the other two so much latitude that they go way over the line ... well... you're a bad parent.

That's the other lens to explore this stuff through - transactional analysis.

tony99

DefaultM said:

My wife sent me a screenshot from her Facebook of this guy saying to watch your phone in the coming days and prepare. Trump will text you 7 times and this means that you need to arm yourself as the storm is coming.

Oooh that's gonna take him a while. I can see how it would have been more convenient for him to just tweet I suppose. 

NickBrown

I am not sure that  "A prime example of the madness of collectivism" is an accurate and appropriate way to describe the events we are discussing.

WiresDreamDisasters

NickBrown said:

I am not sure that  "A prime example of the madness of collectivism" is an accurate and appropriate way to describe the events we are discussing.

I'd be curious to know why it's not accurate, but actually I'm more interested in knowing why it's not appropriate. Could you expand?

NickBrown

Yes.....Plain English. Collectivism is mostly used in the context of individualism and frequently in a political sphere. I just thought that it (events) could have equally be described as individualist -but that would have been inadequate too. I am far from sure that there was any mass organisation involved. I suspect that most of those present had very disparate ideals. In retrospect, I suspect I was triggered by the phrase . Apologies.

NickBrown

Maybe I was saying: do you think Trump and his followers are accurately and appropriately described as "collectivists"

Hattigol

NickBrown said:

Maybe I was saying: do you think Trump and his followers are accurately and appropriately described as "collectivists"

I can think of a shorter description also beginning with c and ending with ts...

Heartfeltdawn

Rich210 said:

These people are certainly not 'collectivists'. They are the polar opposite, they are screaming their individual liberty to do what they want when they want to, even if that's being a fascist, racist, bigoted and hateful. But, like Seneca said, 'never trust yourself in a large group'. They maybe a collection of people, but their world view is of individual responsibility to bear arms and kill people that enter their houses. Collectivism is more aligned to socialism. 

I think victim is a good way to think about these people, they are victims of significant abuses of power by the most powerful man in the world that has utilised the most prevalent narratives and 'truths' which have been internalised by this group of people. Over time these truths become increasingly accepted, especially when powerful figure and leader adopts them in their narratives. The trust and blind belief these people show to their leader is 100% the same as a cult leader and extreme radical cleric. 

They're screaming liberty to do what they like because they feel the state has no power over them thanks to the election 'fraud'. But at their heart is a central philosophy or belief that drives them. It's how they can welcome military or law enforcement individuals into their collective whilst pounding another law enforcement officer to death. If you believe as they do in the message, that which has been disseminated by Trump and others that we have a Deep State which is running things and has cheated Trump out of another term of office, then that isn't individualism at work to my mind. The influence of social media on Al-Qaeda recruitment was significant and I don't view this as being much different. Interestingly research in the last decade suggested that those who ended up in Al Qaeda are far more collectivist in nature than Western terrorist groups in the past. Perhaps this is now true in America and that social media has done for some of the more volatile right-wingers as it did for Al Qaeda. 

 

goldtop

goldtop said:

I hadn't read the details about the cause of the policeman's death. I assumed he'd been squashed in the crush at the door. But he was actually murdered by the mob. The mob shouting "USA! USA!"

https://www.reddit.com/r/PublicFreakout/comments/kucaz0/the_moment_officer_brian_sicknick_is_dragged_into/

*

Correction: it seems this was a separate incident and the victim shown here was a different policeman (presumably alive).

Sleepyscholar

Hattigol said:

NickBrown said:

Maybe I was saying: do you think Trump and his followers are accurately and appropriately described as "collectivists"

I can think of a shorter description also beginning with c and ending with ts...

"Coconuts"?

Brio

If you uploaded images of yourself rioting last week to Parler you may come to regret it...
just about all their archive with all the metadata attached has been downloaded by left wing activists. Every picture datestamped and geotagged will still have the data there.

https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/kux121/all_parler_user_data_is_being_downloaded_as_we/

RaymondLin

What's that saying? If you can't do the time, don't do the crime?

Hurling_Fruitmig

Heartfeltdawn said:

Rich210 said:

These people are certainly not 'collectivists'. They are the polar opposite, they are screaming their individual liberty to do what they want when they want to, even if that's being a fascist, racist, bigoted and hateful. But, like Seneca said, 'never trust yourself in a large group'. They maybe a collection of people, but their world view is of individual responsibility to bear arms and kill people that enter their houses. Collectivism is more aligned to socialism. 

I think victim is a good way to think about these people, they are victims of significant abuses of power by the most powerful man in the world that has utilised the most prevalent narratives and 'truths' which have been internalised by this group of people. Over time these truths become increasingly accepted, especially when powerful figure and leader adopts them in their narratives. The trust and blind belief these people show to their leader is 100% the same as a cult leader and extreme radical cleric. 

They're screaming liberty to do what they like because they feel the state has no power over them thanks to the election 'fraud'. But at their heart is a central philosophy or belief that drives them. It's how they can welcome military or law enforcement individuals into their collective whilst pounding another law enforcement officer to death. If you believe as they do in the message, that which has been disseminated by Trump and others that we have a Deep State which is running things and has cheated Trump out of another term of office, then that isn't individualism at work to my mind. The influence of social media on Al-Qaeda recruitment was significant and I don't view this as being much different. Interestingly research in the last decade suggested that those who ended up in Al Qaeda are far more collectivist in nature than Western terrorist groups in the past. Perhaps this is now true in America and that social media has done for some of the more volatile right-wingers as it did for Al Qaeda. 

 

I would say it's no different at all. The message might be not (quite) the same, but the way social media has been used to bring people together is.

VimFuego

RaymondLin said:

What's that saying? If you can't do the time, don't do the crime?

surely if you're so committed to a cause then being arrested and jailed would be an honour.

RaymondLin

VimFuego said:

RaymondLin said:

What's that saying? If you can't do the time, don't do the crime?

surely if you're so committed to a cause then being arrested and jailed would be an honour.

I’m happy for them to embrace their honour behind bars.

Funkfingers

RaymondLin said:

I’m happy for them to embrace their honour behind bars.

Sausage fest!