re: Anarchism As Skepticism

Nitroadict — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 05:03:38 GMT

I think its because of the focus on emotions in arguments for the state, and in the society of the state in general.

I only just notice this recently, but in many cases where one does utilize such skepticism, addressing emotionally made up arguments & views with rationality & logic & evidence, the person being argued to is still acting within the emotions that were abused & manipulated for that person to believe such an argument, whether it was founded or not.

Process & substance have been intentionally confused (er, plagiarized carson a bit, sorry lol...); pandering to emotions is the easiest way to manipulate, since a human can reason that since they know emotions, they know the argument.

If something feels "good", it's good. If it feels "bad", it's bad. I remember reading a comment on reddit by a rather astute reader, who explained the reason why The Blue Team (er Democrats) have not won an election, aside from fraud: it's because The Red Team is absolutely perfect in framing a storyline, manipulating the emotions, using the same facts & not nessesarily changing them, but distorting them by proxy of the storyline & frame they give them.

This works over the Liberal assumption that the truth will set you free, or that the truth will win out (or in some cases, nice guys finish first type arguments).

Maybe it's the Rand I've been reading latley, but I'm rather disgusted I didn't clearly see such emotional argumentation (and emotional reasoning) as one of the primary roadblocks to anything that seems "bad" (in this case, to many, what would be bad would be anti-state, anti- staus quo, etc. etc.).

re: Anarchism As Skepticism

Mike — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 19:00:13 GMT

Nice post. Why is it that so many people refuse to "get" things that are so obvious?