Would the World be Better if Everyone Turned the other Cheek?

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Eodnhoj7
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Re: Would the World be Better if Everyone Turned the other Cheek?

Post by Eodnhoj7 »

Celebritydiscodave2 wrote: Sat Dec 23, 2017 12:31 am Why are children being singled out as a group not to be trusted though? I believe the calculating mind to be least trustworthy, at least it is less to be anticipated (which is most of the problem), and with this in mind perhaps adults require considerably greater scrutiny than children.
Because children live off a faith in adults which cannot be trusted. They cannot balance their faith with reason.
Celebritydiscodave2
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Re: Would the World be Better if Everyone Turned the other Cheek?

Post by Celebritydiscodave2 »

QUOTE "They live off a faith in adults" - So they are capable of absolutely no faith in themselves, according to you, or faith in eachother. Are you sure you are talking children, not babies. So you entirely agree with me then, and you argue that it is not children that cannot be trusted but rather the adults which the children are having to rely upon? Children are less calculating of their actions, on average, and a good lie requires of it an equally good calculation, so when in an isolated case a child should not be trusted at least it tends to being easier in this assessment.
thata23
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Re: Would the World be Better if Everyone Turned the other Cheek?

Post by thata23 »

dorothea wrote: Fri Dec 22, 2017 3:21 pm Seems to me Hobbes has the definitive answer here. He responded to those who accused him of being cynical and not trusting to the innate goodness of people by saying - fine - when you go to sleep or leave your house you lock your doors, even though you know there are law officers about. Even when in your home you lock chests against servants and children: 'Do you not thereby accuse mankind by your actions as I do by my words?' We can update Hobbes' taunt by asking those who hope for a time when we can trust one another - Do you lock your house and car? Do you write your passwords and PINs up in the kitchen where visitors and children can see them? As to the original suggestion that we might be nicer and more tolerant online - even on this cool dispassionate philosophical site there are some rowdy exchanges. Online sites seem to exaggerate the inherent nastiness in some people and the natural compassion in others (like religions do?). Pessimism is realistic, no?
Yes, for now it is, because the way the system is set up is pretty much the sucker (the one who has the most faith in others) usually gets burned. If there could be a way so that one's person's pain was felt by all (and the opposite, one person's pleasures was also felt by all), then trust would almost be mutually assured and we would have to be on the same page to advance humanity forward. People who gained pleasure at the expense of another's pain would be doing themselves no benefit.
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Re: Would the World be Better if Everyone Turned the other Cheek?

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Eodnhoj7 wrote: Thu Dec 21, 2017 1:09 am I look around and everyone, both on this forum and in real life, is accusing someone else of some wrong. The truth is that all of us, myself included, do not know what we are really doing.

What would happen in society if people just let people strike them, verbally or physically, and did not respond but kept going? Is simply turning the other cheek the only viable solution for our times?

I know I am guilty of verbally or physically lashing out at people, however even when I "win" I still notice that I still lose. Is it time people are just frank with themselves and admit noone knows what they are doing, because all the things we "know", do not appear to work?

Is mercy the only justifiable solution, considering we are all brothers and sisters stuck with eachother whether we like it or not?
There are two or three principles (or social etiquette / behavioural response principals) to keep in mind here:
1. You feel better when you are contrite, after a period of being feisty.
2. Feisty feels good when you do it, but when you stop, or even during it, you feel bad about yourself.
3. In our social arrangement prevalent in the species, across cultural and international boundaries, you have to strike a balance; too much power will corrupt you (too much bashing of others), and too little power will make you depressed (when you are everyone's stepping stone or whipping boy).

Human emotions are reactive. If I am nasty to a person, and I feel justified in being nasty to him, and I feel good being nasty to him, I can only do it at a price of empathizing with him, how difficult or hard it must be for him to endure my nastiness. Thus, my nastiness reflects back on me, I poison my own self's emotional ambiance by being nasty to others.

Being good to others feels really good, but it makes you vulnerable to other people's nast. So tread carefully, you may become a victim very easily. It is true that other people also feel better when they are good to others; but there are plenty of other considerations why one can't always be nice to everyone. Such are greed, a fight for survival, sexual desires and their fulfillment, fighting for promotions or for a better job in the job market, getting favours from your parents, teachers or superiors. And sometimes good is boring; you just want to stop it, because you are getting sick of being good.

So while good is good, it is mostly counter-productive in advancing your social standing if you dish good out indiscriminately.

Being fair to others (both turning the cheek and selectively not turning the cheek at other times) may be the answer, but you can't practice this randomly: best if you are nice to those who support you, and whose behaviour you want to reward, in a hope they shall continue, and nasty to those who oppose you or hinder you in your endeavours, in the hope that they will stop their (to you) disruptive, damaging behaviour.

However, in some cases you feel very, very strong in your desire to disrupt or diminish other people's opinions, and if they feel reciprocally but their opinion is opposing yours on the topic, then there will ensue a great deal of bashing each other without any resolution. No behaviour will be changed in these instances due to positive or negative reinforcement. These instances come up when the topic comes to fundamental world view questions. Such as a belief in a god or not, abortions, smoking, liberal gun use by the conservatives, the belief or rejection of the mechanics of evolutionary principles, and sexism, racism, politicism (when hatred is generated by the mere knowledge that there are other parties out there with different platforms / leaders from what you prescribe to), and religionism (this is a fight between sects of a religion, not between believers in gods and atheists).

An interesting experiment was observed by one of my acquaintance. He noticed at a national Monopoly tournament that the guy who won was a nice guy, a genuinely nice person. His liking everyone was immediate, not forced, not faked (unless he had learned how to do it flawlessly -- a salesman's most powerful sales tool). When he first looked at me, he gave me a hug, and said, "Hi, (my name)", without any pretense. He was taller, and I suspect he was gay, but there was no forwardness in this hug; this was a display that he was genuinely happy to see me.

So he won the tournament, because INDEPENDENTLY OF THE GAME he was nice. People gravitated toward striving to be liked by him. His display of nuggets of liking someone was precious to the person. Maybe he would not pay money for it, but it was precious enough to pay Monopoly money for it. People paid social "money" to him, to extract nuggets from him. Social graces are not bought by money, anyway, but by return kindness. (A sole exception to this is prostitution.) This is why friendships are precious: the currency you pay for them is so totally different from what we normally value high as having worth or a price in our society today.

The lesson of the story is that if you slap someone on the face, and give him a broad and happy smile at the same time, a sort of reassurance that your slap did not come out of anger or other motives that drove you to intentionally harming him, THEN AND ONLY THEN will he turn the other cheek.

(P.S. This works in child rearing: a six-to-twelve year old child's behaviour will be easier to control, by you, if, at a time when punishment is dished out to discipline him or her, you explain that the disciplining action is not due to anger, and you still love him/her, but you are forced by the "rules" to dish out this disciplining action, in order to make him or her behave properly. Whether it's to make him or her look both ways when crossing a busy street, or to make him/her not touch strange people's genitals on the street.)
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Re: Would the World be Better if Everyone Turned the other Cheek?

Post by Celebritydiscodave2 »

I do n`t get what any of this has to do with the subject of this thread, it is generalised circumstance, surely. Philosophy has to be dealing with one small point at a time, this before it can even begin to deal with anything. To respond well to your last post, in philosophical terms, one would have to write an entire book. Any points worth raising would be entirely lost in the detail of it.
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Re: Would the World be Better if Everyone Turned the other Cheek?

Post by -1- »

Celebritydiscodave2 wrote: Sun Dec 24, 2017 11:08 am I do n`t get what any of this has to do with the subject of this thread, it is generalised circumstance, surely. Philosophy has to be dealing with one small point at a time, this before it can even begin to deal with anything. To respond well to your last post, in philosophical terms, one would have to write an entire book. Any points worth raising would be entirely lost in the detail of it.
Whom are you talking to?

Who is the "you" you keep addressing?

It may be obvious to you, but to anyone else it would only be at best an intelligent guess.

I think it would only be polite and good behaviour in your part if you left such a trivial part not up to be a guessing game, when you can so easily clarify the point (of who it is you are addressing).
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Re: Would the World be Better if Everyone Turned the other Cheek?

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Celebritydiscodave2 wrote: Sun Dec 24, 2017 11:08 am I do n`t get what any of this has to do with the subject of this thread,
What do you refer to with the demonstrative pronoun "this"? It may be obvious to you, but to anyone else it is at best a guessing work.

Please don't make us waste our brain work on things you can easily answer for us, even before the question. You could easily have, and in my opinion you ought to have, made it sure we know what you mean by "this" in the quote above.
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Re: Would the World be Better if Everyone Turned the other Cheek?

Post by Celebritydiscodave2 »

-1- wrote: Mon Dec 25, 2017 8:19 am
Celebritydiscodave2 wrote: Sun Dec 24, 2017 11:08 am I do n`t get what any of this has to do with the subject of this thread,
What do you refer to with the demonstrative pronoun "this"? It may be obvious to you, but to anyone else it is at best a guessing work.

Please don't make us waste our brain work on things you can easily answer for us, even before the question. You could easily have, and in my opinion you ought to have, made it sure we know what you mean by "this" in the quote above.
By "this", "all of this", I refer to the entire substance of the previous post. It is adequately put. I was addressing nobody, for nobody was mentioned, I was stating my opinion. Under those circumstances of no other party being named one is making one`s position known outside of conversation. You are discussing with each other, but others may not do likewise. Much of what I read here seems a little vague in terms of making actual fundamental points. Has this more to say for trying to sound like an authority? For my part, I try not to waste a single word more than I need to. The best for your progression.
thedoc
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Re: Would the World be Better if Everyone Turned the other Cheek?

Post by thedoc »

The world would be better if there were no-one to turn the other cheek to.
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Re: Would the World be Better if Everyone Turned the other Cheek?

Post by -1- »

Celebritydiscodave2 wrote: Thu Dec 28, 2017 10:08 am
-1- wrote: Mon Dec 25, 2017 8:19 am
Celebritydiscodave2 wrote: Sun Dec 24, 2017 11:08 am I do n`t get what any of this has to do with the subject of this thread,
What do you refer to with the demonstrative pronoun "this"? It may be obvious to you, but to anyone else it is at best a guessing work.

Please don't make us waste our brain work on things you can easily answer for us, even before the question. You could easily have, and in my opinion you ought to have, made it sure we know what you mean by "this" in the quote above.
By "this", "all of this", I refer to the entire substance of the previous post. It is adequately put. I was addressing nobody, for nobody was mentioned, I was stating my opinion. Under those circumstances of no other party being named one is making one`s position known outside of conversation. You are discussing with each other, but others may not do likewise. Much of what I read here seems a little vague in terms of making actual fundamental points. Has this more to say for trying to sound like an authority? For my part, I try not to waste a single word more than I need to. The best for your progression.
Okay.

But what if the post had nothing to do with the original topic (which it did, I just suspect you either did not catch it, or else never even read the entire post)? Is that a sin, a crime, or a breach of etiquette? You can throw the first stone at me if you have never committed the same breach.

This is a forum, not a Nazi concentration camp.
Celebritydiscodave2
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Re: Would the World be Better if Everyone Turned the other Cheek?

Post by Celebritydiscodave2 »

Sorry, I`ve lost you on all of that.
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