Oh little boy, you really should stop pouting because people tell you that your line of reasoning is in error.
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I know. But there were also people who were totally down for Nazism, Bolshevism and Fascism. There still are.
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Are you sure they were all motivated by coercion? Are you sure they didn’t want to be a part of the Nazi movement? How did Hitler get elected? He was popular. So was Stalin. So was Mussolini.
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I am not denying the individual! I am saying that individual and collective exist simultaneously. There’s clearly a numerate quality to both and a fuzzy line to be drawn between the two.
Alright, you’re the genius then. Answer the OP in a meaningful way. Since my line of reasoning is clearly so much in error. Explain to me why some people choose ‘liberty’ and others do not? How is this possible?
Well yes, since the collective is just another way to say “a group of individuals.”
No, I am an individual, as are you. We are both part of the Mises community. The Mises community consists of individuals like me and you. Where’s the fuzzy line?
I have, actually. You should go back through the thread and read.
filc,
It isn’t contrary to history. Biblical Christianity has always been a thriving presence wherever it has been. I would recommend studying this a little closer.
You, (like many), seem to be confusing what certain people have done in the name of truth, God, religion, the Church and Christianity over the course of human history and equating it with what God himself has spoke, requires and/or allows; This is why I qualified my statement with saying “shame to them”.
Re: your question as to whether this fact applies if you have a healthy fear of God, “healthy” being the qualifier here. The answer is “Yes” but not the particular passages I cited for Esuric. When the Bible uses the word ‘fear of God’ in the healthy sense, it is typically referring correctly to “awe and reverence” of Him. This is just a language barrier. Does this make sense?
It does not explain my position, but rather they show that there is something very instinctive about society, and the human need to be in society. For instance, take Asch’s conformity experiments in which college students were asked about the length of lines (which bloomj31 has already cited and yet nobody has bothered commenting upon even though strongly corroborates almost to the point of proving the thesis that both of us are making). When individuals were answered the questions alone they erred less than 1% of the time. However, when others (all confederates of the experimenter) had already answered incorrectly, one-third of the time they went along with the group answer and were, in the words of Asch, “willing to call white black.” Furthermore, have you ever heard of Stanley Milgram’s frightening experiments? If you have not, I suggest reading up on them for they are frightening examples of how man has an instinctive nature to fit-in and be part of a group. Furthermore, groupthink, which is a very real phenomenon in social psychology, shows that individuals are willing to moderate their opinions in a decision-making group in order to maintain group harmony. All of these are problems that have been brought up, but you simply ignored in your reply to bloomj36 about society.
I have never done so. If you really wanted to prove that I have, why did you not quote my denial of the existence of individuals?
I can use the word I, BAAWA, but I also have the knowledge that I am not an island. I am part of my society, and I have been influenced by the norms, mores, and language of all those around me. While I am an individual, I am not an Individual who is completely independent of those around him.
Stop using that word. You deny that it is philosophically meaningful to speak of the individual. Therefore, you cannot use the word “I”. This will be repeated to you until such time as you end your windmill-tilt against a strawman. Do you understand?
The fuzzy line is where we try to figure out how much of what you and I think is because of what the community we belongs to thinks and how much we actually believe community or not. The fuzzy line is where I try to figure out how many of my ideas are mine and how many of them are things I’ve taken from books I’ve read. The fuzzy line is where I try to figure out how much of my personal activity is a consequence of my environment, my friends, family, etc. and how much was innate. How often do I act purely as an individual?
Maybe the best way to clarify what I’ve been trying to say is that while I certainly exist as an individual I do not just act as one. I act as a part of a collective, my choices are influenced greatly by the choices of others. I don’t exist in isolation from external influences. I don’t act in isolation from external influences. I have a clear understanding of the collective as well as where it ends and I begin.
Lam brings up a good point, I’m sure you guys are familiar with Milgram’s authority experiments, what do you make of them?
Would you shock someone sitting in another room with lethal voltage if someone ordered you to?
In Milgram’s first set of experiments, 65 percent (26 of 40)[1] of experiment participants administered the experiment’s final massive 450-volt shock, though many were very uncomfortable doing so; at some point, every participant paused and questioned the experiment, some said they would refund the money they were paid for participating in the experiment. Only one participant steadfastly refused to administer shocks below the 300-volt level.[1]
Milgram summarized the experiment in his 1974 article, “The Perils of Obedience”, writing:
The legal and philosophic aspects of obedience are of enormous importance, but they say very little about how most people behave in concrete situations. I set up a simple experiment at Yale University to test how much pain an ordinary citizen would inflict on another person simply because he was ordered to by an experimental scientist. Stark authority was pitted against the subjects’ [participants’] strongest moral imperatives against hurting others, and, with the subjects’ [participants’] ears ringing with the screams of the victims, authority won more often than not. The extreme willingness of adults to go to almost any lengths on the command of an authority constitutes the chief finding of the study and the fact most urgently demanding explanation.
Ordinary people, simply doing their jobs, and without any particular hostility on their part, can become agents in a terrible destructive process. Moreover, even when the destructive effects of their work become patently clear, and they are asked to carry out actions incompatible with fundamental standards of morality, relatively few people have the resources needed to resist authority
How is this possible?
The problem is that this statement is meaningless. The first part is negated by the second part, leaving me with nothing. I was responding to the first part. As Manley Thompson would say, “you have failed to cultivate a meaningful thought.”
BAAWA, either address my points, or hold your tongue.
Please elucidate your thesis rather than arguing by assertion.
What points, dimwit? You’re the one who created a strawman in the first place. Now you get the deal with the ramifications of it. Admit your strawman or hold your tongue.
X does not exist, but X does Y. I mean, I don’t know what else to say.
Did you even look at the link?
I know all about the experiment. Why would you dare presume otherwise?
Does the experiment show that external influences can change the decision making process of individuals?
The individual is born into society, though. Society has probably existed before the individual homo sapiens and there have been social pressures upon man for over a hundred generations. Man’s nature is social, it is truly difficult to think of him as being a solitary animal, and those case studies that have provided examples of the results of never being socialized only serve to strengthen the thesis that man is a social animal.