i’m going to start referring to this as the and-girl fallacy, but i’m sure it’s just an example of a well established, more general fallacy.
the argument goes like this: extremism is worthless. x contains extremism. x is nothing but extremism. x is worthless. girl uses this argument to condemn almost everything, which shows you how moody she is.
people use the same argument against religion, which i don’t think is for everyone, but i think it makes no sense to confuse religion with extremism when extremism is the problem.
there are snobs in counterculture, but i see no reason to confuse snobs with counterculture when snobbery is the real problem. yeah, i’m pedantic. as long as my conclusions are more open-minded than girl’s, i can live with being pedantic.
The bigger trouble is the “purity = good” paradigm. Distilled water does not taste the best. Pure alcohol will kill you. A table salt fundamentalist who focuses only on the pure components will be poisoned by the chlorine gas and set ablaze when the water in the air reacts with the sodium.
If perfection were possible it would be deadly because the things that make anything good are deemed imperfections or impurities.
snob is such a weird word. its a term of social condemnation for use against those who flaunt their social status. another way to carve out the social high ground.
in a sense, using the word snob automatically makes you one.
jake, suppose you’re interested in a girl. that’s love right? not a bad thing. now suppose you’re not interested in anything but that girl. no eating, you starve. no sleeping, you go mental. you might become totally obsessed, and who cares right? because she’s all that matters. without interest in a girl we’d never be born, but with nothing else, healthy relationships would never happen.
so obviously being interested in a girl is unhealthy. except like most things, there’s a “therapeutic dose” and a lethal one. anything in pure form excludes the ingredients necessary to make it work. a little chlorine keeps water from turning into a cesspool, too much will burn your skin off. without extremism, there’s balance. copyright is another good example, jammie thomas fined 1.92 million… the “purest” (least mitigated) interpretation of the law is typically unjust.
also there’s no such thing as pure culture. the nazis and the romans are about as close to “pure culture” as possible, and they totally failed at it. no matter how uniform the institution, from the beginning no two people are exactly alike. there’s no such thing as a “true scotsman” or a “pure hipster.” you can exaggerate a culture to get stereotypes, but those are caricatures of culture, extremes, as if you could have a culture based entirely on itself.
all cultures are impure and based on things outside of the culture, early human culture was based on animals. when it becomes extreme and exclusive it loses the things and people that made it what it was, until it becomes unsustainable. dna is the same, evolution and cross breeding sustains a species and produces new ones. keeping a line “pure” results in… hapsburgs, lethal genetic caricatures. culture is the same.
Just to recast some of what was already said: many subcultures are inclusive, in the sense that you may consider yourself a member as long as you like (or dislike) X. In the comic, X may be a band, a brand of bicycle, or poverty, but as tubejay mentioned, it can also include broader ideas such as religion. Extremist branches of these subcultures aren’t so much pure forms as they are exclusive or obsessive forms, in the sense that you can’t be a member unless you explicitly value X above other things, and possibly cast non-members into an out-group. For many values of X, I think it is reasonable to hold a position where an inclusive form of X-fandom is “good” or at least value-neutral, while an exclusive form is anti-social.
So the obverse of that is, what defines a culture in any sense? If simply balance between two opposing sides is the goal, what do the sides exist for? Or, more specifically, how do they sides exist. Balance is simply another extreme, an extreme idea of maintaining an unnatural state. One thing is always better than another.
In essence, a culture loses its definition without extremes to measure itself by, and these extremes are the most pure form a culture can express itself in. I am not arguing sustainability, assuredly many cultures who strove for and maintained balance were destroyed by another culture for extant needs. A culture best remembered is one that is entirely socialist, or entirely fascist, not the cultures who desperately attempted to walk the middle path. no one argues that we should create a greater balance between democracy and authoritarianism. We argue the a most ideal form of society is the purest extreme of democracy. No one argues for a balance between feralism and civilization. We argue that civilization at it’s purest is the best method for advancement.
There is a reason the symbol of taoism, the taijitu, is a combination of white and black, and not simply gray.
“balance is just another extreme” is one of those ideas that can mean something technically, but in all practical and reasonable terms is nonsensical.
it’s kind of like those 3d drawings that take advantage of a 2d perspective but are impossible to build in 3d- they fool you into thinking they could work in a context outside the farce you’ve constructed them in.
you can take two extremes like i dunno, crusading for jesus and bigotry against women, and the “balance” between those is still extreme. really they’re not opposing extremes, they’re both forms of exclusion.
finding a working compromise is not an extreme. it is eschewing extreme. you could charge liberalism with being an “extreme” form of compromise, but this is where the farce reveals itself. when you make compromise an extreme, the compromise disappears. anything that becomes extreme loses its balance, so no i do not believe that balance is just another example. you’re talking about an extreme losing of extreme, and that’s as nonsensical as those trick-of-the-eye drawings. you can construct that with words (like “a square circle”) but not in reality. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colorless_green_ideas_sleep_furiously
I find it somewhat ironic that you used an extremist’s quote to argue for moderation.
Balance in the sense we’re discussing is essentially a form of compromise. Compromise is most certainly an extreme. It has an opposite, does it not? The opposite of compromise is character. To follow a path of sheer compromise is to destroy a source of identity for one’s self. for a culture to compromise to avoid extremes is again to destroy a culture’s character.
let’s work with examples: what is America known globally for? Its opulence and irrationality, yes? Perhaps other things, but religious nuts and rich folks tend to come up the most. Both of those are extremes. America would be much harder to describe if
nearly everyone was of fairly average income and was neither too pious nor particularly impious, right? It is in this way that extremism is important to define a culture. Compromise, or balance, does nothing but obscures the identity of a culture.
you have to help me find this “extremist” i quoted. either you’re right and i forgot, or… i thought i quoted you, but obviously not. i don’t remember quoting anyone famous, but maybe if i scrolled up i’d see where i did? i still think i did a perfectly reasonable job of explaning why compromise and balance are not extremes. you don’t think so, either because i’m wrong, or because you didn’t get my argument, or you simply don’t agree. it’s probably one of those.
Compromise and balance are both ends of a spectrum. As such, they are extremes. I think we’re just having a conflict of definition. I’m arguing that either a positive or a negative on an issue is extremism.
“I’m arguing that either a positive or a negative on an issue is extremism.”
and i think that’s silly, because insisting that a spectrum has no “neutral” is extreme (in my opinion.) you can have “zero” mean “nothing,” but depending on what’s on both “extreme” ends of the spectrum, “zero” can mean quite a lot.
i put “compromise” in the middle of the spectrum, rather than on the end as you do, because i think it’s meaningless to have “compromise” one one of the spectrum, and “balance” on the other. you’re right that i don’t define it that way. but perhaps i just don’t see it the way you do.
vocabulary and labeling aside, i put extremes on the outer ends and balance in the middle. i define the outer ends as the extremes and the middle as not extreme. but i already agreed that what’s in the middle changes depending on what you put on each end. the main difference is i wouldn’t label the ends of the spectrum as you would- and i wouldn’t put an extreme in the middle.
also, i don’t think anarchism is necessarily an extreme concept- any more than atheism. atheism is more “extreme” than agnosticism, but atheism is not on the end of the spectrum, it covers a range from near the middle to the end. you have extreme atheism (kill the churchies!) and the non-extreme “i’ just don’t believe there’s a god.” you can have the same attitude about government. i don’t think governments should be like gods, does that make me an anarchist or just a skeptic?
I think that judging people by musical taste is obsolete now that music is so easily obtained. Your supply of music was limited to what records/tapes/cds you could afford to buy, so you’d better have a strong enough opinion about each purpose to make it worthwhile. Now I can download anything off limewire, I have less of an emotional attachment to my music, and project less of that onto other people.
Tyler, a snob is not someone who flaunts his social status. A snob is anyone who feels they are inherrently superior to others due to intellect, money, ancestry, physical beauty, et cetera. William Makepeace Thackeray–aside from having an awesome name–gave us the modern use of the word with his Book of Snobs. Then, a snob was defined as “he who meanly admires mean things.” Some might read this as snobbery, but I simply hate it when people misunderstand words.
@ Jake and tubejay — I would simply love to watch you two discuss Sherri Tepper’s sci fi novels; The Arbai trilogy – “Grass,” “Raising the Stones” and “Sideshow” is particularly full of explorations of the debate you two are working on, but as an Ex-Catholic liberal who nonetheless finds herself feeling that certain types need to be opressed for their own good, Tepper covers this ground a lot, reaching varying conclusions in different novels.
July 2, 2009
sure, come on in!
July 2, 2009
i’m going to start referring to this as the and-girl fallacy, but i’m sure it’s just an example of a well established, more general fallacy.
the argument goes like this: extremism is worthless. x contains extremism. x is nothing but extremism. x is worthless. girl uses this argument to condemn almost everything, which shows you how moody she is.
people use the same argument against religion, which i don’t think is for everyone, but i think it makes no sense to confuse religion with extremism when extremism is the problem.
there are snobs in counterculture, but i see no reason to confuse snobs with counterculture when snobbery is the real problem. yeah, i’m pedantic. as long as my conclusions are more open-minded than girl’s, i can live with being pedantic.
July 2, 2009
extremism is simply the purest form of a culture. If the purest form is reprehensible, then how is the culture not reprehensible?
July 2, 2009
In other words, If the only way a culture can properly be accepted is through dilution of its original meaning, what purpose does that culture serve?
July 2, 2009
I was uncool before it was cool.
Just found this:
http://www.eatliver.com/i.php?n=4507
July 2, 2009
I’m with tubejay.
July 2, 2009
you know… girl’s been wearing that shirt for a long while… getting kinda raggedy..
July 2, 2009
The bigger trouble is the “purity = good” paradigm. Distilled water does not taste the best. Pure alcohol will kill you. A table salt fundamentalist who focuses only on the pure components will be poisoned by the chlorine gas and set ablaze when the water in the air reacts with the sodium.
If perfection were possible it would be deadly because the things that make anything good are deemed imperfections or impurities.
July 2, 2009
I bet Morality’s bathroom is super clean.
July 2, 2009
The extremes of anything belong on the ends of a spectrum. You put yourself against the extremes to find your position between them. Duh.
July 2, 2009
Dan and Anthony, so you’re advocating for the Tao of Hipster?
July 2, 2009
snob is such a weird word. its a term of social condemnation for use against those who flaunt their social status. another way to carve out the social high ground.
in a sense, using the word snob automatically makes you one.
its sorta like “hipster” in that sense.
July 2, 2009
Boy, I sure am a fan of the text in the fifth panel.
July 2, 2009
ultimately one should one judge others based on whether or not they are assholes.
July 2, 2009
“only” judge. ‘scuse.
July 2, 2009
Beep Boop Boop
July 3, 2009
jake, suppose you’re interested in a girl. that’s love right? not a bad thing. now suppose you’re not interested in anything but that girl. no eating, you starve. no sleeping, you go mental. you might become totally obsessed, and who cares right? because she’s all that matters. without interest in a girl we’d never be born, but with nothing else, healthy relationships would never happen.
so obviously being interested in a girl is unhealthy. except like most things, there’s a “therapeutic dose” and a lethal one. anything in pure form excludes the ingredients necessary to make it work. a little chlorine keeps water from turning into a cesspool, too much will burn your skin off. without extremism, there’s balance. copyright is another good example, jammie thomas fined 1.92 million… the “purest” (least mitigated) interpretation of the law is typically unjust.
July 3, 2009
i ripped off dan a lot more than intended :) the thing is, i replied before i read his reply. i can certainly vouch for what he says though!
July 3, 2009
also there’s no such thing as pure culture. the nazis and the romans are about as close to “pure culture” as possible, and they totally failed at it. no matter how uniform the institution, from the beginning no two people are exactly alike. there’s no such thing as a “true scotsman” or a “pure hipster.” you can exaggerate a culture to get stereotypes, but those are caricatures of culture, extremes, as if you could have a culture based entirely on itself.
all cultures are impure and based on things outside of the culture, early human culture was based on animals. when it becomes extreme and exclusive it loses the things and people that made it what it was, until it becomes unsustainable. dna is the same, evolution and cross breeding sustains a species and produces new ones. keeping a line “pure” results in… hapsburgs, lethal genetic caricatures. culture is the same.
July 6, 2009
Just to recast some of what was already said: many subcultures are inclusive, in the sense that you may consider yourself a member as long as you like (or dislike) X. In the comic, X may be a band, a brand of bicycle, or poverty, but as tubejay mentioned, it can also include broader ideas such as religion. Extremist branches of these subcultures aren’t so much pure forms as they are exclusive or obsessive forms, in the sense that you can’t be a member unless you explicitly value X above other things, and possibly cast non-members into an out-group. For many values of X, I think it is reasonable to hold a position where an inclusive form of X-fandom is “good” or at least value-neutral, while an exclusive form is anti-social.
July 6, 2009
So the obverse of that is, what defines a culture in any sense? If simply balance between two opposing sides is the goal, what do the sides exist for? Or, more specifically, how do they sides exist. Balance is simply another extreme, an extreme idea of maintaining an unnatural state. One thing is always better than another.
In essence, a culture loses its definition without extremes to measure itself by, and these extremes are the most pure form a culture can express itself in. I am not arguing sustainability, assuredly many cultures who strove for and maintained balance were destroyed by another culture for extant needs. A culture best remembered is one that is entirely socialist, or entirely fascist, not the cultures who desperately attempted to walk the middle path. no one argues that we should create a greater balance between democracy and authoritarianism. We argue the a most ideal form of society is the purest extreme of democracy. No one argues for a balance between feralism and civilization. We argue that civilization at it’s purest is the best method for advancement.
There is a reason the symbol of taoism, the taijitu, is a combination of white and black, and not simply gray.
July 6, 2009
“balance is just another extreme” is one of those ideas that can mean something technically, but in all practical and reasonable terms is nonsensical.
it’s kind of like those 3d drawings that take advantage of a 2d perspective but are impossible to build in 3d- they fool you into thinking they could work in a context outside the farce you’ve constructed them in.
you can take two extremes like i dunno, crusading for jesus and bigotry against women, and the “balance” between those is still extreme. really they’re not opposing extremes, they’re both forms of exclusion.
finding a working compromise is not an extreme. it is eschewing extreme. you could charge liberalism with being an “extreme” form of compromise, but this is where the farce reveals itself. when you make compromise an extreme, the compromise disappears. anything that becomes extreme loses its balance, so no i do not believe that balance is just another example. you’re talking about an extreme losing of extreme, and that’s as nonsensical as those trick-of-the-eye drawings. you can construct that with words (like “a square circle”) but not in reality. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colorless_green_ideas_sleep_furiously
July 6, 2009
I find it somewhat ironic that you used an extremist’s quote to argue for moderation.
Balance in the sense we’re discussing is essentially a form of compromise. Compromise is most certainly an extreme. It has an opposite, does it not? The opposite of compromise is character. To follow a path of sheer compromise is to destroy a source of identity for one’s self. for a culture to compromise to avoid extremes is again to destroy a culture’s character.
let’s work with examples: what is America known globally for? Its opulence and irrationality, yes? Perhaps other things, but religious nuts and rich folks tend to come up the most. Both of those are extremes. America would be much harder to describe if
nearly everyone was of fairly average income and was neither too pious nor particularly impious, right? It is in this way that extremism is important to define a culture. Compromise, or balance, does nothing but obscures the identity of a culture.
Do you follow?
July 6, 2009
Actually, I suppose you weren’t arguing for moderation. but it is an extremist’s quote anyhow.
July 8, 2009
everything in moderation… including moderation.
you have to help me find this “extremist” i quoted. either you’re right and i forgot, or… i thought i quoted you, but obviously not. i don’t remember quoting anyone famous, but maybe if i scrolled up i’d see where i did? i still think i did a perfectly reasonable job of explaning why compromise and balance are not extremes. you don’t think so, either because i’m wrong, or because you didn’t get my argument, or you simply don’t agree. it’s probably one of those.
July 8, 2009
Noam Chomsky is an anarchist.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colorless_green_ideas_sleep_furiously
was demonstrated by him.
Compromise and balance are both ends of a spectrum. As such, they are extremes. I think we’re just having a conflict of definition. I’m arguing that either a positive or a negative on an issue is extremism.
July 8, 2009
“I’m arguing that either a positive or a negative on an issue is extremism.”
and i think that’s silly, because insisting that a spectrum has no “neutral” is extreme (in my opinion.) you can have “zero” mean “nothing,” but depending on what’s on both “extreme” ends of the spectrum, “zero” can mean quite a lot.
i put “compromise” in the middle of the spectrum, rather than on the end as you do, because i think it’s meaningless to have “compromise” one one of the spectrum, and “balance” on the other. you’re right that i don’t define it that way. but perhaps i just don’t see it the way you do.
vocabulary and labeling aside, i put extremes on the outer ends and balance in the middle. i define the outer ends as the extremes and the middle as not extreme. but i already agreed that what’s in the middle changes depending on what you put on each end. the main difference is i wouldn’t label the ends of the spectrum as you would- and i wouldn’t put an extreme in the middle.
also, i don’t think anarchism is necessarily an extreme concept- any more than atheism. atheism is more “extreme” than agnosticism, but atheism is not on the end of the spectrum, it covers a range from near the middle to the end. you have extreme atheism (kill the churchies!) and the non-extreme “i’ just don’t believe there’s a god.” you can have the same attitude about government. i don’t think governments should be like gods, does that make me an anarchist or just a skeptic?
October 10, 2009
whoa, get out of my head, Dorothy.
October 16, 2009
I think that judging people by musical taste is obsolete now that music is so easily obtained. Your supply of music was limited to what records/tapes/cds you could afford to buy, so you’d better have a strong enough opinion about each purpose to make it worthwhile. Now I can download anything off limewire, I have less of an emotional attachment to my music, and project less of that onto other people.
February 23, 2010
Tyler, a snob is not someone who flaunts his social status. A snob is anyone who feels they are inherrently superior to others due to intellect, money, ancestry, physical beauty, et cetera. William Makepeace Thackeray–aside from having an awesome name–gave us the modern use of the word with his Book of Snobs. Then, a snob was defined as “he who meanly admires mean things.” Some might read this as snobbery, but I simply hate it when people misunderstand words.
February 15, 2011
@ Jake and tubejay — I would simply love to watch you two discuss Sherri Tepper’s sci fi novels; The Arbai trilogy – “Grass,” “Raising the Stones” and “Sideshow” is particularly full of explorations of the debate you two are working on, but as an Ex-Catholic liberal who nonetheless finds herself feeling that certain types need to be opressed for their own good, Tepper covers this ground a lot, reaching varying conclusions in different novels.
October 4, 2013
I am “The Underminer”, wherever you are, there I will be under you…