Tyranny of the Listener

Beautiful, I had to log back in to star and flag LesMisanthrope.

Couldn't agree more, very much enjoyed reading the OP

a reply to: Bluesma

Maybe I see it that way because I see it as on off-shoot of another thread where the point wasn't words physically harming people. Not certain but I'm pretty sure it was about the protests against Trump.

I have said many times that the idea is valid and it might be good for personal development but then society and censorship are brought up and its no longer just a question of personal development.

a reply to: BuzzyWigs

Nope! What you say or write has an effect on people, whether you like it or deny it or not. Witness The Bible and Preachers.....the Koran and the Imams....the Torah or Talmud or whatever and Rabbis. All spewing rhetoric.


Tell me again how that is a benign activity that doesn't warrant the consequences it spawns. Please.

Writing down words doesn't do anything. The guilt for doing something immoral falls on the individual doing the immoral thing.

If someone writes a Bible, the people who read it are not forced to follow it, they choose to. Choice is the clear delineation when we act as consumers of information. Your choices, your actions that that directly affect the person or property of others, are YOUR responsibility--no one else's.

Being able to claim that "if person X had never read Y, they would have never committed act Z" is a nice way of negating person X's moral responsibility. Person X voluntarily chose to commit act Z, reading/hearing X doesn't force us to do anything.

Get rid of all ideas, and people would simply reinvent them anyway.

There is a consequence for expressing your thoughts, and emotions. Words have power. Words are actions.

Also, I believe that while theres a definite" tyranny of the listener," it's true... there's also the tyranny of the speaker, just as much. Even more so if the speaker understands his audience.

Good thread. I meant to reply more thoughtfully the other day but I didn't get a chance to. Just offering my support here.

originally posted by: daskakik
a reply to: Bluesma


I have said many times that the idea is valid and it might be good for personal development but then society and censorship are brought up and its no longer just a question of personal development.

I see what you mean, and it is a good point.
On the other hand, I think the only way to save a peoples is one by one, they must save themselves to be free of that sort of tyranny..?

a reply to: TechniXcality

I can only imagine what your concept of morality might be
but WAR in any form is against morality. For a detailed
definition on what's truly moral read the sermon on the
mount postulated by Jesus Christ.

Unfortunately Jesus Christ was the only man to ever
live a genuinely moral life, and history makes it plain
he did not take REVENGE or RETALIATE against his
enemies.

REVENGE is not a moral concept, it's been made so
by man's wickedness.

It's sad how twisted society has become where killing
ones fellow man can be constituted as moral, it is not.

Millions of civilians have been killed in WWW1 & 2, Vietnam,
Korea, Iraq, Afghanistan, the Balkans etc etc. The majority of
which had no say in their governments decision to war with
other nations.

Man is immoral and hence his need to overpower others due
to his rapacious ego & greed.

No war is moral.

originally posted by: LesMisanthrope

What I wanted to argue was this: Though a speaker is to blame for uttering fallacy and falsity, the listener is always to blame for believing him. As soon as words leave a person’s mouth, they are no longer in the speakers dominion, no longer under his control or power. As a corollary, whatever comes of speech after it is heard is the consequence of the agent of any subsequent action: the listener. Or you fellow reader?

-LesMis

As I understand your position - if one person says something false and another believes the falsehood and acts on it, responsibility for any (undesirable, unjust or harmful) consequences of that action is borne entirely by the one who acted on the falsehood (and not at all by the one who uttered it). The reason for this is that the one who hears the falsehood is ultimately responsible for discerning it as such; if the person fails to do so, then it is their ignorance (rather than the falsehood uttered) which produced the (undesirable, unjust or harmful) result.

Is this right?

a reply to: Bluesma

Who decided people need saving?

Can anyone prove that being objective is salvation?

originally posted by: daskakik
a reply to: Bluesma

Who decided people need saving?

Can anyone prove that being objective is salvation?

I kinda think it would have been nice if the jews had been saved the Holocaust, for example.
But yeah, no definitive way of knowing if that "should" have been done or not- just, if you asked them, the people in the camps, watching their family die and waiting their turn, do you think they would be of the opinion that they needed saving?

If more people had been able to withstand the charismatic words of Hitler, and keep their wits about them, I wonder if things would have been different? We'll never know.

I do know that in my own personal experience, with much lesser events, I have seen that being more objective has saved me trouble, suffering, and loss of various sorts.

So many times people close to me were getting pulled into someones verbal traps, and I was the one who balked and said stop, wait, are you really paying attention to this crap? You don't see some danger signs?? With girlfriends following strange men into their homes, my boyfriend and his whole family got pulled into a sort of pyramid scheme... I was the only person who suspected and objected, and they all got mad me that time. Told me to be quiet, and just go along.
-Until two days later when the guy left the offices empty, disappeared, and took all their money with him.
Overlooking the emotional buzzwords, and looking at the details of what was being said, noting subtle inconsistancies, saved me a lot of money!

My girlfriend who had the habit of getting pulled in by strange men, I won't go into her story, it is very sad and I don't feel okay telling about it in public.

Now, my personal experiences, of course, should mean nothing to you, you don't even know if I am telling the truth. I just use them to illustrate, in a concrete way, what I mean in that statement.
You don't have some experiences in life where this was of aid to you?

a reply to: Bluesma

If more people had been able to withstand the charismatic words of Hitler, and keep their wits about them, I wonder if things would have been different? We'll never know.

Hitler's propaganda wouldn't have had any effect if Nazi censorship hadn't taken place. The burning of books and banned materials were replaced with Nazi literature, propaganda and indoctrination, which would give hitler a cult of personality from which to achieve his dictatorship. Without that censorship, opposition might have arisen to combat it in the marketplace of ideas.

Oddly enough, pre-nazi Weimar had fairly modern hate speech laws, which was used to combat anti-semitism. Goebbels himself was prosecuted under these laws. Fleming Rose's book The Tyranny of Silence goes into this in better detail, saying that the prosecution of future Nazis gave them a platform they would have never achieved had their ideas been encountered in free and open debate. I wonder if the anti-Semites were given free speech, others might have been able to see the stupidity and refute it before it was too late.

Though propaganda had much to do with it, I think Hitler's charisma is overrated, and the real culprit was the censorship of opposing ideas.

originally posted by: LesMisanthrope
a reply to: Bluesma

If more people had been able to withstand the charismatic words of Hitler, and keep their wits about them, I wonder if things would have been different? We'll never know.

Hitler's propaganda wouldn't have had any effect if Nazi censorship hadn't taken place. The burning of books and banned materials were replaced with Nazi literature, propaganda and indoctrination, which would give hitler a cult of personality from which to achieve his dictatorship. Without that censorship, opposition might have arisen to combat it in the marketplace of ideas.

Oddly enough, pre-nazi Weimar had fairly modern hate speech laws, which was used to combat anti-semitism. Goebbels himself was prosecuted under these laws. Fleming Rose's book The Tyranny of Silence goes into this in better detail, saying that the prosecution of future Nazis gave them a platform they would have never achieved had their ideas been encountered in free and open debate. I wonder if the anti-Semites were given free speech, others might have been able to see the stupidity and refute it before it was too late.

Though propaganda had much to do with it, I think Hitler's charisma is overrated, and the real culprit was the censorship of opposing ideas.

Very interesting!
Just furthers my current stance that although I acknowledge a certain amount of power in words , I do not see censorship as the solution to this problem.

originally posted by: birdxofxpreyAs I understand your position - if one person says something false and another believes the falsehood and acts on it, responsibility for any (undesirable, unjust or harmful) consequences of that action is borne entirely by the one who acted on the falsehood (and not at all by the one who uttered it). The reason for this is that the one who hears the falsehood is ultimately responsible for discerning it as such; if the person fails to do so, then it is their ignorance (rather than the falsehood uttered) which produced the (undesirable, unjust or harmful) result.

Is this right?

I'll assume the above is correct (at least you've not pointed out any fault with it). You have, I think, said as much already in your summation: "What I wanted to argue was this: Though a speaker is to blame for uttering fallacy and falsity, the listener is always to blame for believing him."

What if a speaker is aware that a listener (or group of listeners) is unable to investigate or recognize a falsehood and decides to exploit that fact by speaking falsely? Would this not place at least some responsibility on the speaker for taking advantage of an opportunity to cause damage or harm through deception?

For example, if someone is in a theater and yells out that there is a fire (or some other potentially catastrophic event), the other people (listeners) in the theater *could* investigate to see whether there really is a fire or not. But certainly it is reasonable to think that taking the time to investigate may itself be risky. For if there is indeed a fire, such a delay could cost them their lives. So, being reasonable "listeners," they run out of the theater as fast as they can.

Your statement (above) would have us believe that the panic which ensues in such a situation, because it is the result of others acting as though the falsehood were true, is no fault of the person who speaks falsely. But this seems quite implausible, as it would with many other similar scenarios in which listeners (for many possible reasons) may not be able to draw a reliable conclusion about the truth or falsity of what has been said.

I might also point out that while your account of the distinction between Socrates and the sophists of his time is interesting, it is not the distinction Socrates himself relied on when his back was to the wall. In [I]Apologia[/I], for example, he not only denies being an "accomplished speaker" (whereas you have portrayed him as a "rhetoritician"), but he notes that he has never charged anyone money. As sophists were known to level hefty fees (and some were quite wealthy), Socrates' poverty and lack of fee is sufficient to separate him from their ilk.

originally posted by: birdxofxprey

originally posted by: birdxofxpreyAs I understand your position - if one person says something false and another believes the falsehood and acts on it, responsibility for any (undesirable, unjust or harmful) consequences of that action is borne entirely by the one who acted on the falsehood (and not at all by the one who uttered it). The reason for this is that the one who hears the falsehood is ultimately responsible for discerning it as such; if the person fails to do so, then it is their ignorance (rather than the falsehood uttered) which produced the (undesirable, unjust or harmful) result.

Is this right?

I'll assume the above is correct (at least you've not pointed out any fault with it). You have, I think, said as much already in your summation: "What I wanted to argue was this: Though a speaker is to blame for uttering fallacy and falsity, the listener is always to blame for believing him."

What if a speaker is aware that a listener (or group of listeners) is unable to investigate or recognize a falsehood and decides to exploit that fact by speaking falsely? Would this not place at least some responsibility on the speaker for taking advantage of an opportunity to cause damage or harm through deception?

For example, if someone is in a theater and yells out that there is a fire (or some other potentially catastrophic event), the other people (listeners) in the theater *could* investigate to see whether there really is a fire or not. But certainly it is reasonable to think that taking the time to investigate may itself be risky. For if there is indeed a fire, such a delay could cost them their lives. So, being reasonable "listeners," they run out of the theater as fast as they can.

Your statement (above) would have us believe that the panic which ensues in such a situation, because it is the result of others acting as though the falsehood were true, is no fault of the person who speaks falsely. But this seems quite implausible, as it would with many other similar scenarios in which listeners (for many possible reasons) may not be able to draw a reliable conclusion about the truth or falsity of what has been said.

Very good and difficult point.

I would say yes, that he is fully responsible for taking advantage of their ignorance, for lying, and deceiving, and for wanting to cause harm. But since whether to panic, to investigate, or do nothing at all is left to the choice and decision-making of the listener, their subsequent actions are their responsibility. I don't see how it could be otherwise.

Further, I do not see how investigating a falsehood in your example might be more risky or reasonable than not investigating it.

I might also point out that while your account of the distinction between Socrates and the sophists of his time is interesting, it is not the distinction Socrates himself relied on when his back was to the wall. In [I]Apologia[/I], for example, he not only denies being an "accomplished speaker" (whereas you have portrayed him as a "rhetoritician"), but he notes that he has never charged anyone money. As sophists were known to level hefty fees (and some were quite wealthy), Socrates' poverty and lack of fee is sufficient to separate him from their ilk.

I agree with that. Socrates went to great lengths to avoid the sophist distinction. The argument in Plato's Gorgias, however, was more of a philosophical rather than technical distinction. I called Socrates a rhetorician because ultimately he uses rhetoric and persuasion, but the only difference between his rhetoric and the sophist's, was that his was "noble", as the eliatic stranger puts it in The Sophist.

a reply to: Bluesma

I really appreciate your posts and have never felt that you are not telling the truth but when I read the statement "the only way to save a peoples is one by one" it didn't sound, to me, like you were talking about saving people from bad investments or even from oppresive governments.

On top of that LesMis has Socrates damn near walking on water in his other thread. I felt like a sinner that needed to repent. Then I read that he was as boy-crazy as a schoolgirl, Socrates not LesMis.

I was left wondering what was the redeeming quality to this school of thought other than trying to be a poor imitation of spock.

a reply to: LesMisanthrope


You continue to insist that words themselves have no meaning and that they themselves are not responsible for the death and mayhem that has resulted as a result of such invocations.


The extent of free will ends when it violates the rights of others.



Would you agree?

originally posted by: Kashai
a reply to: LesMisanthrope


You continue to insist that words themselves have no meaning and that they themselves are not responsible for the death and mayhem that has resulted as a result of such invocations.


The extent of free will ends when it violates the rights of others.



Would you agree?

I never said words have no meaning. I said they have they have the same amount of power, energy, or force as any other guttural sound and scribble on paper. This is a physical certainty.

As far as meaning goes, The meaning of words is yours, and though learned from the outside, is contained and controlled by you.

a reply to: LesMisanthrope


Like yelling "Fire" in a crowded theater when there is no fire?

"as any other guttural sound and scribble on paper."

Those are called words.

It depends upon the circumstance.

originally posted by: Kashai
a reply to: LesMisanthrope


Like yelling "Fire" in a crowded theater when there is no fire?

"as any other guttural sound and scribble on paper."

Those are called words.

It depends upon the circumstance.

A word isn't a circumstance, is it?

a reply to: LesMisanthrope


Implied is that humans have control over their environment?


What exactly leads you to that conclusion?

originally posted by: Kashai
a reply to: LesMisanthrope


Implied is that humans have control over their environment?


What exactly leads you to that conclusion?

I never implied that, which is merely more proof that you are giving meaning to the words, not I.