Turning the corner on "woke"?

[Pat]

  unless you have excellent lawyers (as in elite) your chances for legal redress against what would pass for nobility now is not great either.

Granted. But they're better than what they would be if I had to rely on fists, swords or guns, and stand a much better chance of not leaving me imprisoned, maimed or dead in the attempt.

    To each his own.

That's not how it works when people live alongside one another in an interdependent society.  That's why there are governments.

That's false. Why governments exist is because one group of thugs won, and became the ruling class. They reserve the exclusive use of force to themselves, in order to protect their power. A side effect of that is they end up adjudicating disputes. But that's just a side effect, not the "why".

Which gets to the core problem in the current culture wars. The Woke are the elite ruling class, who are trying to impose their rules and standards on everyone else. It's colonialism, except because the people from Montana aren't brown and on some other continent, the powers that be pretend it's okay for strangers from thousands of miles away to come in and tell them how they have to live their lives.

[Rob Necronomicon]

  unless you have excellent lawyers (as in elite) your chances for legal redress against what would pass for nobility now is not great either.

Granted. But they're better than what they would be if I had to rely on fists, swords or guns, and stand a much better chance of not leaving me imprisoned, maimed or dead in the attempt.

    To each his own.

That's not how it works when people live alongside one another in an interdependent society.  That's why there are governments.

Indeed... We don't need anarchy.

[oggsmash]

  unless you have excellent lawyers (as in elite) your chances for legal redress against what would pass for nobility now is not great either.

Granted. But they're better than what they would be if I had to rely on fists, swords or guns, and stand a much better chance of not leaving me imprisoned, maimed or dead in the attempt.

    To each his own.

That's not how it works when people live alongside one another in an interdependent society.  That's why there are governments.

   That works.  Until it doesnt. 

[Rob Necronomicon]

  unless you have excellent lawyers (as in elite) your chances for legal redress against what would pass for nobility now is not great either.

Granted. But they're better than what they would be if I had to rely on fists, swords or guns, and stand a much better chance of not leaving me imprisoned, maimed or dead in the attempt.

    To each his own.

That's not how it works when people live alongside one another in an interdependent society.  That's why there are governments.

   That works.  Until it doesnt.

Yep, exactly... Or else it leaves you off in a far worse place.

[oggsmash]

  There were governments when honor culture rules were more prevalent as well.  There are honor cultures now that impose costs to non honor cultures they live in and they get what they want, for example publish a few pics of Mohammed and see how that goes for you.   About the only time it seems that does not go terrible for the offender is like in Texas years ago, when the honor culture warriors discovered Texas is NOT France.

[jhkim]

Yes, my friend, indeed, class structure has always been present in America, and I think you are right in that there probably was more of a social layer of "insulation" say, in the East, for our hypothetical ship magnate and a common dock worker. However, it would be far more hazardous--and thus the class barriers and social "insulation" far thinner and much more fragile out West. Essentially, everywhere west of the Mississippi River. In the West, there were incidents of wealthy ranchers and landowners getting gunned down, or strung up and lynched for their sins. Arrogance and offending anyone--even a common man--could be very hazardous, even for a wealthy person far above them in social class.

It all fed into a social climate that composed the frontier America. Of course, the elite had "Noblisse Oblige"--wealth and success were naturally applauded and hugely admired, as well as social aspects of speech, learning, reading, and breeding. Though there was also a consciousness that all men were equal, at least in God's eyes, and all men deserved dignity and respect. Provoking that basic truth was undoubtedly dangerous. I was surprised to learn that yes, that was a real social dynamic for everyone. It certainly does seem to have contributed strongly towards inspiring an American culture that was, after a fashion, generally polite, civil, and respectful. Much, much more so than we have today.

While I can believe that some rich people were justly lynched, I don't think that lynchings in general made society more just. I think rather, that people getting gunned down or lynched for their sins was the cancellation of its time - mob justice that works more on anger and hatred than impartial judgement. I don't like mob justice now, and I don't like how it was back then.

I think most Americans see lynching as a bad idea that contributed more to inequality and injustice, rather than promoting how all men deserved dignity and respect.

Manners were more formal back then, but one can be formal and still disrespectful - just as lynchings can be in the name of justice, but not actually be just.

[Ratman_tf]

  unless you have excellent lawyers (as in elite) your chances for legal redress against what would pass for nobility now is not great either.

Granted. But they're better than what they would be if I had to rely on fists, swords or guns, and stand a much better chance of not leaving me imprisoned, maimed or dead in the attempt.

    To each his own.

That's not how it works when people live alongside one another in an interdependent society.  That's why there are governments.

That's false. Why governments exist is because one group of thugs won, and became the ruling class. They reserve the exclusive use of force to themselves, in order to protect their power. A side effect of that is they end up adjudicating disputes. But that's just a side effect, not the "why".

I can think of at least one example of the "thugs who won" attempting to create a governmental system that was decentralized and generally focused on the rights of the people. They even made an effort to not reserve force exclusively to themselves.

[oggsmash]

  unless you have excellent lawyers (as in elite) your chances for legal redress against what would pass for nobility now is not great either.

Granted. But they're better than what they would be if I had to rely on fists, swords or guns, and stand a much better chance of not leaving me imprisoned, maimed or dead in the attempt.

    To each his own.

That's not how it works when people live alongside one another in an interdependent society.  That's why there are governments.

That's false. Why governments exist is because one group of thugs won, and became the ruling class. They reserve the exclusive use of force to themselves, in order to protect their power. A side effect of that is they end up adjudicating disputes. But that's just a side effect, not the "why".

I can think of at least one example of the "thugs who won" attempting to create a governmental system that was decentralized and generally focused on the rights of the people. They even made an effort to not reserve force exclusively to themselves.

  They did, but oh is there ever quite a large group that stays quite busy attempting to undo those actions.

[Stephen Tannhauser]

I think most Americans see lynching as a bad idea that contributed more to inequality and injustice, rather than promoting how all men deserved dignity and respect.

Manners were more formal back then, but one can be formal and still disrespectful - just as lynchings can be in the name of justice, but not actually be just.

Agreed. Robert E. Howard's words about a civilized man being ruder than a savage ("because he knows he can be impolite without having his skull split, as a general thing") are appealing, but miss the point: courtesy which comes from nothing but personal fear will vanish the instant that fear is overcome or removed.

Respect is considerably likelier to be sincere if there is no consequence attached to openly displaying its lack.

[oggsmash]

  All the talk of interdependent societies...rule of law...etc are sort of just horseshit current day.   When actual lawyers can firebomb police cars and get slap on the wrist sentences, or a man can set a building on fire and murder a man who is inside as a consequence can get a lenient sentence, when cities can burn because someone is simply upset...well all that shit is just words on paper at the end of the day.  If the law is not applied evenly to everyone, there is no law, and we end up back at the REH quote.

[oggsmash]

  As for those interdependent societies where we allow the Justice system to handle problems....look how that worked out with cops sitting on their asses for 40 minutes while a psycho shot a room full of kids.  Yes, that government and interdependent society is looking great right now.

  It used to work, and works better on paper (everything does), but right now I see a lot of threads showing.

[3catcircus]

  As for those interdependent societies where we allow the Justice system to handle problems....look how that worked out with cops sitting on their asses for 40 minutes while a psycho shot a room full of kids.  Yes, that government and interdependent society is looking great right now.

  It used to work, and works better on paper (everything does), but right now I see a lot of threads showing.

It's really all tied to the moral decay of western society. All of it. Encouraging youth pregnancy through unlimited abortion. Encouraging children without fathers through welfare. Encouraging unchecked foreign wars to line the pockets of government officials and defense contractor C-suites. Emasculating and infantilizing masculine traits. Unpunished (and uninvestigated) corruption at all levels of government and industry. Unpunished and uninvestigated criminal behavior by urban yoottthhhsss. Promotion of marxists ideals in public education at the expense of literacy and arithmetic. We really are at Idiocracy.

[Wrath of God]

Respect is considerably likelier to be sincere if there is no consequence attached to openly displaying its lack.

Yes. But social role of respect is not to be sincere, but to control relations between people to follow customs and laws of given society.

[Ghostmaker]

Well, that's a good sign. Chesa Boudin got recalled as DA of San Francisco. Pretty soundly too.

[Stephen Tannhauser]

Yes. But social role of respect is not to be sincere, but to control relations between people to follow customs and laws of given society.

But how well does respect accomplish this control if it is widely perceived to be insincere, on both sides? A police force that is not mostly sincerely respected for its own sake, for example, can only maintain order through constant surveillance and threat of force, and those tactics are not sustainable, either practically or morally. And the entire failure of the Woke project is in its attempt to compel signals of respect for particular viewpoints and groups via threat of social ostracism rather than sincerely earning it.

Hence, again, my basic criticism of any duelling culture that is not rigorously self-policed for fair fights and restrained force: responding to disrespect with excessive violence (and it is the nature of violence that it tends to the excessive) doesn't earn respect, only fear or contempt.