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Topic: UTism (Read 1509 times) |
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MoEnzyme
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UTism
« on: 2003-02-06 09:19:20 » |
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If any of you get the opportunity listen to a song called "Your Racist Friend" by They Might Be Giants, off of their 1990 album "Flood", don't pass up the opportunity. I think it does a marvelous job of dramatizing UTism and how people try to come to grips with it . . . or not. Many of the times I think of UTism, I will hear little snippets of that song in my head.
. . . this is where the party ends . . .
Love,
-Jake
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I will fight your gods for food,
Mo Enzyme
(consolidation of handles: Jake Sapiens; memelab; logicnazi; Loki; Every1Hz; and Shadow)
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Kalkor
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Kneading the swollen donkey...
 
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Re:UTism
« Reply #1 on: 2003-02-06 21:09:59 » |
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... you can't shake the devil's hand and say you're only kidding...
However, you can say you were wrong and try to correct the situation!
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MoEnzyme
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Re:UTism
« Reply #2 on: 2003-02-28 13:55:29 » |
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I wrote to wiki the following about UTism:
A way of thinking that we can also describe as "pseudo-speciation". This culminates in the exaggeration of some difference(s) between people (e.g. race, language, religion, etc.) by which adherents divide the social world into an "US" designated to recieve the empathy and comforts of human society, and a "THEM" who frequently may get demoted to subhuman status and against whom "we" may deem violence appropriate. This often occurs implicitly, but may even manifest explicitly. Frequently this thinking gets memetically reciprocated and replicated, whereby the "THEM" may respond accordingly by vewing themselves as an "US", and the other group conversely as a "THEM". This thinking entails different rules and unreasonable expectations of behavior depending on whether one deals with a member of "US" or a member of "THEM", and hence generally leads to hypocrisies in behavior and thinking, not to mention the dangers for violence.
[Jake] While I like this definition, I have noticed some people using it expansively to include all groupthinking. While I agree that we should have a healthy amount of skepticism about excessive groupthinking, I don't think that all instances of groupthinking fall into the irrational UTism I describe here. I assert that some types of groupthinking actually have more of a rational basis. For example, people in a business partnership or corporation working on a common plan for profit and wealth. Here the ability to rely on "teamwork" generally proves more reasonable than any compulsive tendencies to avoid groupthinking. Another example; people united in a common political interest such as a political party, or in political action based on a common political issue. Furthermore I would include groups held together by actual acquaintence and friendships. I think irrational UTism manifests itself primarily as a default, where people have little or no reasonable basis to engage in groupthinking, but tend to arbitrarily choose some superficial indicators on which to do so anyway. Perhaps in more extreme examples, they may even choose such superficial reasons to outgroup a person even when more reasonable basis exist to ingroup them.
I have also run across lately a tendency of some people to call simple attempts to categorize people based on political or religious belief, personality, or otherwise as UTism. I disagree and think that UTism must represent something more than our natural capacity to categorize people and things. Perhaps UTism illegitimately builds on this otherwise rational capacity, but not all categorizations lead to such irrationalities, and indeed the refusal to categorize can in some circumstances lead to other kinds of irrationalities.
Finally, it may follow implicitly from the above, but to make it more explicit, I don't think that the recognition of UTism as an irrational phenomenon, necessarily leads us to transcend all boundaries between people in search of spiritual union. Basic empathy should allow us to cross such divisions in a limited fashion, but still does not compel us to erase such divisions which may have an entirely reasonable basis. I certainly do not wish to become one with neo-nazi's, indeed I don't know that I really could if I wanted to. But regardless, I can still recognize them as humans possessing a similar range of emotion as myself. This can help me in dealing with them, even if I never share their racist ideology.
Love,
-Jake
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I will fight your gods for food,
Mo Enzyme
(consolidation of handles: Jake Sapiens; memelab; logicnazi; Loki; Every1Hz; and Shadow)
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David Lucifer
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Enlighten me.
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Re:UTism
« Reply #3 on: 2003-02-28 16:39:54 » |
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I was thinking recently that Tribalism might be a better name for the concept.
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MoEnzyme
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Re:UTism
« Reply #4 on: 2003-05-01 15:45:47 » |
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Quote from: David Lucifer on 2003-02-28 16:39:54
I was thinking recently that Tribalism might be a better name for the concept.
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I think of tribalism as the evolutionary origin of UTism, but I don't think of them as equivalent, though tribalism does make a good metaphor. I think of real tribalism as more reasonable than UTism, however. Tribe members rely on each other in basic survival issues on a daily basis. They also probably share more genetic material than non-tribe members. UTism as we encounter it outside real tribalism usually does not have such a practical basis, but rather consists of cultural artifices such as religion.
-Jake
P.S. Bill Roh privately indicated to me that he first coined the term "UTism" in the CoV. I have no reason to doubt that, but thought I would mention this since it may appear to newcomers that I created it. I merely adopted the term myself and fleshed out the already existing concept. Many thanks to Bill for this memetic gift.
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I will fight your gods for food,
Mo Enzyme
(consolidation of handles: Jake Sapiens; memelab; logicnazi; Loki; Every1Hz; and Shadow)
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