But seriously, don’t. Don’t be a dick. All being a dick does is score cheap points. It does not win the hearts and minds of people everywhere.
Having made a small detour into the skeptic/atheist community on the web, I am happy to report that their blogosphere erupted with a controversial yet very well received presentation made at a recent convention organized by the Amazing Randi which has become known as the “Don’t be a Dick” speech. The speechmeister of note was Phil Plait who runs an astronomy blog. He began with noting:
Instead of relying on the merits of the arguments, which is what critical thinking and evidence-based reasoning is about, it seems that vitriol and venom are on the rise. … What I see is that hubris is running rampant. And that egos are just out of check, and sometimes logic in those situations falls by the wayside.
And closed with the quote above. For people who would like to follow the gist of the speech, I refer you to a summation and a rebuttal at the Ooblick blog. The comments I want to make here really have to do with dickery itself. People seem to have a hard time recognizing it. Which is a problem in a world infested by dicks all the way up to the highest places, wouldn’t you agree?
While many people welcomed Phil’s chastisement, others objected to it on the grounds that asking to eschew dickishness amounts to turning feisty discussants into fluffy bunnies and kissy-face accommodationists. I got into a discussion with a blogger who posted this frustrated reaction:
Pissed me off something hardcore having to sit through him lecturing me about being too mean to people. I felt the same way in a thread over on Pharyngula [part of Science Blogs] where people were saying women didn’t like how abrasive the skeptics/atheists are. It’s not true, I love it, it’s entertaining, it’s informative, it’s fun. I’m not a weak little girl, daddy doesn’t get to tell me to play nice with others. … And probably he didn’t mean it was never OK to raise your voice in a crowded room, but that’s sure what it sounded like to me.
After engaging and doing a bit of exploratory tapdancing, she said to me:
I don’t know that I think dicks are necessarily bad for the world. I find them entertaining and fun. I think the world would have been a much poorer place without people like George Carlin, HL Mencken, and Christopher Hitchens. I don’t have a problem with people arguing, I don’t think that behavior is bad, even when it’s vehement…
At this point, I opined that vehement arguing is not dickery in my world. Verbal abuse and underhanded argumentation is.
She also clarified: What I heard Phil Plait say was “Don’t be confrontational, don’t call people on being really stupid, and don’t be honest if it’s rude. We all have to watch our tone and be super nice and polite all the time or else other people might think we’re angry and negative people, and I want everyone to like skeptics and think we’re fluffy bunnies.” And I’m not a fluffy bunny. I don’t want to be a fluffy bunny. I don’t like fluffy bunnies. Plus, if you only eat rabbit, you die of malnutrition.
I challenged her to admit that she really *liked* abusing the opposition. And she freely did(!), speaking from the heart: I’ve been completely upfront about saying that I like vitriol and venom. I like it, I enjoy it, I think it’s fun and I enjoy reading it and listening to it. A witty verbal riposte is like sex to me. Someone tearing someone apart using big words and an arched eyebrow without raising their voice — if that’s not an artform, nothing is…I have memorized the review of North by Roger Ebert and think it may be the greatest piece of literature written in the 1990s. I like hate, I think it’s fucking sweet, particularly when applied by someone with great acumen and a large vocabulary.
It had begun to look like we were talking past one another, but when she used an example I could check out, new understanding dawned on me. I said: Thanks for the review tip. Fabulous! But notice… Ebert is not being a dick. He nowhere abuses either the actor/hero or the filmmaker. He abuses the movie.
Look, have all the vitriol you want, just don’t put it in people’s coffee, ok? There is a difference between attacking the idea, belief, behavior, presentation, product, etc., and attacking the person.
Clever flames are a pleasure. Ripping some hapless person to shreds is a pathetic ego trip.
She acknowledged that. And suggested that Phil should have made this clearer. So I thought… maybe we all need to be clearer. What exactly *is* a dick? Where else would I turn for enlightenment regarding this vexing question but… wikipedia, right? There I have learned the following:
“Don’t be a dick” is the fundamental rule of all … social spaces. Although nobody is empowered to ban or block somebody for dickery (as this itself would be an instance of such), it is still a bad idea to be a dick. So don’t be one.
Being right about an issue does not mean you’re not being a dick! Dicks can be right — but they’re still dicks; if there’s something in what they say that is worth hearing, it goes unheard, because no one likes listening to dicks. It doesn’t matter how right they are.
Being a dick isn’t equivalent to being uncivil or impolite (though incivility and rudeness often accompany dickery). One can be perfectly civil and follow every rule of etiquette and still be a dick. Avoiding dickery is not simply a matter of observing the more obvious rules of etiquette, but is a broader and more important concern, generally involving the practice of maintaining a position of respect for the intrinsic qualities of another person during the course of interaction.
Telling someone “Don’t be a dick” is usually a dick-move — especially if it’s true. It upsets the other person and it reduces the chance that they’ll listen to what you say. Focus on behaviour, not on the individual. (The term “dick” in this essay is generally defined as “an abrasive and inconsiderate person” of either sex.)
There, in a nutshell. I recommend reading the whole of it. But while a dick does come across as abrasive and inconsiderate, that’s not quite the gist of dickery, the icky heart of dickery. I say dickery consists of the endless variations on slugging the person rather than the artifact. It had already been recognized by the ancients as the ad hominem: attacking the person rather than their argument. It can be pretty safely said that most of the argumentation fallacies are dick sieves. You’d think we were to study them in order to avoid them. But nooo! Dicks love to use them and use them liberally. They are oblivious to the damage they leave in their wake; they want to be right. They want to showcase their memes. They want to win. Trampling the actual human underfoot is par for the course.
A quick round of “Spot the Dick” game:
Christian: I will pray for you.
Very ill person: Look, there is no God and no heaven and you are wasting your time and mine with your superstition. [⇐ Dick]
Colleague of a Christian who has been hit upon for conversionary purposes and has enough: No. I am not interested. And I mean that!
Christian: I will pray for you. (Previous remarks and current tone implying that the person is about to become Satan’s roast beast.) [⇐ Dick]
I still cringe remembering a car scene with a dear friend who has since died. She told me she thought God helped us find each other, and we were blessed. And instead of responding to the message underneath, which really said, “I feel so lucky to have found you,” I turned to her and expounded on the bad theology… because, hey, there are plenty of women like us out there who are as in need of a friend who are not sent one, blah blah blather blah! Ouch. The inner dick, in fine fettle, putting ideas above the relationship.
So. Ain’t it sweet to know that dickery is avoidable for those itching to smack idiocy with passion and snark? When the rumpus begins, just remember…
Leaving Babylon 
August 18, 2010 at 4:32 pm
Well this is just such a stupid post by a …
Nah, just playin’ with ya. Thanks as always for finely wrought thoughts. I will go and look at the Ebert review, and the speech. Four points – I think we have to be careful of how much we enjoy the cut and thrust, the smartness for its own sake. I remember an old black and white movie (with David Niven?) in which a theatre critic who explains to a new reporter that falling in love with your ‘bons mots’ will eventually lead to being unduly harsh about an actor’s performance, in order to impress your readership.
And the whole “getting down and dirty” thing reminds me of a comment by Phil Agre (admittedly NOT about vitriol and venom but rather about underhand argumentation: the distinction is well made, Leavergirl) “The temptation will always be to sink to their level, to ingest the insanity because of the false promises of power that it holds out. That is precisely what the insanity wants, and that is precisely the way in which the crazy people got crazy in the first place. The road to sanity is not through insanity, much less through violence. The cause of sanity may call on us to be foreceful in a moral sense, saying NO when we are assaulted with the corruption of our language. But fundamentally it calls on us to heal ourselves, to rid the disinformation and doubletalk from our minds, to spread rational analysis and plain language to people who need it, to reconnect with the source of all sanity that lies beyond us, to rebuild the conditions of democracy, and to let go of the need to fix it all by ourselves, or else give up.”
Third, it makes me reflect and regret on accusing the wonderful Paul Kingsnorth of bad faith (saying Dark Mountain was a ‘bait and switch’), when I should have merely ascribed Dark Mountain’s failure to (even try) to do what it said it would to the human-ness of its organisers. I would like to believe that I will be more careful in future, principles of charity and all that. But I know myself well enough to know that I will stumble and fall on that again and again.
Fourth (and final, I promise) – there is a card played from the bottom of the deck occasionally, when people don’t like the criticism you make of their product (e.g. a film, or their way of dominating a meeting unproductively) where they pull out emotional blackmail and claim you are using an ad hominem, when you have been very careful not to. And that can be a very effective way to shut down discussion of the merits or otherwise of an action/product, if only by changing the topic from the critique itself to the very legitimacy of the person making it! All part of that “smugosphere” I keep banging on about.
August 18, 2010 at 4:32 pm
Nice stuff! To answer your two Q’s…would i agree that dicks are often hard for people to spot? Yes, too hard. Is it nice to know that dickery is avoidable? Yes, but just HOW avoidable? How much are we able to control the darker (Dickier) parts of ourselves, so that your example doesn’t keep playing out? Has recognizing that mistake of valuing the argument over the relationship in that cringy moment made those moments very much less likely to occur again? Myself, i really have to struggle with THAT PART of myself that i find personally unlikeable and unacceptable…helps me be a better person, but a struggle it is and one i don’t in every moment always win! Wish it were easier!
August 18, 2010 at 5:14 pm
Marc: “there is a card played from the bottom of the deck occasionally, when people don’t like the criticism you make of their product (e.g. a film, or their way of dominating a meeting unproductively) where they pull out emotional blackmail and claim you are using an ad hominem, when you have been very careful not to”
A lovely example of underhanded argumentation. I also ran into some abusive people who, when confronted with an ad hominem accusation, tried to get off because in a very technical sense, the ad hominem “fallacy” does not include simple insults. Inspired dickery, that one. That’s why there is no conclusive list of fallacies… the dicks are infinitely creative in adding more variants.
“The temptation will always be to sink to their level, to ingest the insanity because of the false promises of power that it holds out.”
That is one of the key traps we intrepid wizards practicing “trust magic” must learn to avoid. Eh?
Hey JayD: I see a change in me, which, as you know, does not *always* hold ;), but mostly I think it does. Still though, as you say, it’s damn easy to get carried away…
I have made it my, well, sort of spiritual practice during the last year, to enter into some brutal fray, and remain completely civil. In such very hostile environments, even a tiny bit of snark gets all the dicks and trolls piling on top of you, shrieking… so I had an incentive to be exceedingly well behaved. It worked, but at the same time, it took a toll. I basically gave up that part where I just let loose and have fun. It was, perhaps, a form of penance for my former dickery… In any case, now I see a way to combine the two and try to have my cake and eat it..
August 19, 2010 at 9:03 am
As usual, leavergirl, you put your finger on a crucial area of our problems with each other. The egos that we have constructed in the context of the culture we evolved in can be very touchy and defensive/aggressive when questioned or challenged in any way. Another sense of identity nourished in a different kind of culture would be free from a lot of the major dysfunctions we suffer from in our relationships. Not surprisingly, given world history, we are always ready for a fight. Our distant origin in a world largely (not totally) governed by a fight or flight, eat or be eaten dynamic still colors our more evolved but still imperfect present.
The answer to Rodney King’s plaintive question, “can’t we just get along?” is: No, not without a lot more work on ourselves and with each other. It’s not that we can’t cooperate at all; we have learned some skills for this, even from the very earliest times, or we wouldn’t be here today. And it is also true that some among us have embraced the dominator mind-set to such a degree that we call them sociopaths. These abusive folks are the one’s who really set Derrick Jensen’s teeth on edge, and mine too.
How do we deal with the power mad elites who are oppressing humanity and destroying the world? That is a critical question that is not easily answered or evaded. Shorter showers are not going to do it. Neither is taking down a few dams or cell towers. Even dropping a few e-bombs and destroying the electrical grid won’t do the job. And to paraphrase Falstaff, do you think because you are virtuous, the rich will cease plundering the world?
Are we trapped in an infinite regress of mutual dick-headed recriminations? You betcha. There are ways that have been developed from the very beginning of the human adventure to deal with the personal/interpersonal/cultural/global/cosmic problem matrix within which we are enmeshed. Will we engage those Ways, even though they have, for some, the unfortunate designation “Spiritual”? Are we really too deluded to find our way out of the dead ends of unlove we are enacting? Stay tuned….
August 20, 2010 at 2:37 pm
Does the pall of silence fallen over this thread mean that if we can’t be dick heads, there’s just no point in communicating? Or are we in deep contemplation on the mysteries and enigmas of our flawed attempts at real relationship to each other?
Isn’t the real essence of dickheadedness that I really don’t give a shit about you except as an occasion to showcase my superiority and contempt? Doesn’t winning take precedence over every other consideration for a dickhead?
Maybe creation of a real “we space” is more difficult than we might assume. Love one another sounded like such a simple formula, until we actually tried it….
August 20, 2010 at 6:21 pm
Tee hee. Maybe this blog is suffering from too much agreement? Should I import a troll or two? 😉
I been reflecting that dickishness extends from online forums to everyday behavior as well…
“Love one another” is inspirational but not very helpful, practically speaking.
Yeah, winning is one of the motivations. Another is to feel better by belittling the other fella. And yet another, we all work way too hard on behalf of the memes we like… it should be the other way around. My 2 cents.
August 20, 2010 at 7:09 pm
I’ve enough troll in me to make up any short-fall. Maybe I’m working too hard to keep it under wraps?
August 20, 2010 at 7:12 pm
The Christain homily drew some weak fire. Maybe I should trot out the Sermon on the Mount to get some real sparks flying….:-)
August 21, 2010 at 1:52 am
Hi Mike, Leavergirl, Jay D (and presumably other people!)
If I want trolls, I can go to any climate change forum (Real Climate has them in droves). But on this question of supporting our own memes, sure, it’s a real problem (“confirmation bias” I’m told).
And I suspect it will get worse as things fall apart. Right now, if you really want to pretend, you can still think it’s the 1980s, as far as enviromental issues goes – yes, we have real problems, but nothing human ingenuity and efficiency can’t fix (known as ‘ecological modernisation’). But what happens when the disasters (Pakistan underwater, Russia’s grain harvest baking) and the price hikes don’t stay as ‘anomalies’ but become the new reality. I think then that we will see dickheadness on a level that makes today’s lot look like Trappist Monks loved up on ecstacy pills. When the ‘truths’ you’ve built your life on start to crumble, you don’t look for new truths, you re-assert the old ones, only more vociferously. It’s like English-speaking tourists talking to “foreigners” – they just speak sllooowwweeerrrr and LOUDER, rather than trying to learn enough of a new language to get by.
So, should be fun then, eh?
August 21, 2010 at 5:09 am
Now we are grappling with a basic problem/frustration of all activism: how do we change the hearts/minds/behaviors of those not as awake as we are? And let’s not quibble over how awake we really are ourselves. Whatever the inadequacies of our awareness and our action plans, we are a hell of a lot more awake than the vast majority of folks, and it would be a vastly different world if most folks were seeing things more or less from our perspectives.
How do we get our message out, and educate/motivate people to wake up and help us change our world? The opposition to the better world that we envision has not been sitting on their hands in this area. The right-wing/corporate forces have spent enormous amounts of money to buy congress and the media to get out their message. They have set up elaborate and effective think-tanks to refine their messages with the help of the latest opinion manipulation experts. George Lakoff and others have decried the lack of expertise evinced by groups on the left in this crucial area, to little avail so far.
We activists are in the position of a small minority being oppressed and effectively silenced by a powerful elite and its legions of sleeping supporters and victims. We have to come up with innovative tactics and strategies if we are to prevail in this current world situation. We are not the first minority groups to find ourselves in this disempowered position. We can learn from those who have gone before. Head-on confrontation with establishment forces is a guaranteed loser, with the added down-side that such mistaken approaches dishearten our own folks, while strengthening those we seek to defeat or win over to our side.
Commenters and readers of this thread already know that I am interested in the potential of small groups/cells to help turn around the current impasse. One function such groups would serve is to be a breeding ground for innovative approaches to achieve our aims. I won’t say more at this point, but of course any ideas such as small groups depend crucially on people being willing to put in the real-world efforts to make them happen.
August 21, 2010 at 5:58 am
Hi Mike,
good comment indeed. Do you blog? You should. I agree with you that the “left” has been underfunded/underconcerned about how to ‘message’ effectively. Bunch of reasons for that (Susan George, of the Transnational Institute has written on the lack of funding available for ‘left’ thinktanks). There’s other reasons too (decline in union membership, ‘failure’ of social democracy etc etc. And then we have to contend with the multiple pathologies of ‘activism’ – boring meetings, smugosphere behaviour where winning and even outreach don’t matter, we simply do things to (literally) please ourselves. (I have done a few youtube videos on this – if you search for smugosphere, there’s only one find!).
Anyway, these questions, of how small groups can do “outreach”, be laboratories for innovation, is something I’d love to hear more from you about.
August 21, 2010 at 5:06 pm
Nice post and comments. Can’t really keep up with leavergirl and, especially Dwight’s meaningful insights on this one.
I don’t agree with leavergirl’s co-respondent that Carlin, Mencken, and Hitchens descend to a category of dickheads to be reckoned with. I think they fall short in the dickiness qualities of ambush and chronic domination. They’re not floggers, in my view.
Dr. Laura, on the other hand – a big time, small personage, exhibitionist, opportunistic, bullying, dickhead according to its meanings here. In fact she’s never been ANYthing more than a thieving bully (or dickhead). I wanted to get my shot in here against this winnower of easy targets with her radio show screeners. Though, I expect she’d only thrill at this notice of her accomplishments.
A weak, superficial, paltry response amongst my betters, here, I know. Apologies.
August 22, 2010 at 8:31 am
Hello Dwight. Here is a bit on small groups I posted on Orion:
Hello Ed T — Thanks for sharing some of your thoughts. One function of small groups, as I see it, is to invite folks to share more openly, and in depth, what they really think, how they see the world, and how they feel about things. It takes time both in terms of the individual sessions of a group, and it’s extended series of meetings, for people to develop trust in each other, so that they can really open up more deeply, without having to fear being zapped or otherwise disrespected. In our ordinary social situations there is usually not an opportunity to share at this greater depth and openness.
In order to encourage and facilitate this opening up process, the groups I am currently sharing in have an initial round of sharing where each person can share without any feedback, and say whatever is on their mind and in their heart. This is loosely modeled on the Amerindian tribal circle practice of the talking stick, although we don’t use a stick or other ritual object. This round gives the speaker a chance to fully express her/himself without fear of interruption, as commonly occurs in social situations. It also trains the other participants in the lost art of listening.
There is a lot more to say about the group processes we are currently experimenting with, but I want to respond to something you wrote: “Would the purpose (stated or otherwise) be one of enlightenment or of social movement? And which of those two things (or which combination) would be more useful (or fortuitous)?”
“Not two!” as my Aikido Sensei used to admonish me, as I struggled clumsily with my practice partner on the mats. Or, as Che Guevara said, “The heart of the true revolutionary is full of love (enlightenment).” Love without wisdom, or wisdom without love, is not the true coin. We can differentiate the integrated state in order to help learn it or understand it, but to fully embrace it and effectively live it, we need the integrated reality in it’s unitary wholeness. So if a group process does not grow both individual enlightenment and social concern, it will fail to realize it’s true potential.
August 22, 2010 at 9:28 am
Hi Mike,
like it. This distinction between “personal growth” on the one hand and “activism” on the other can get out of hand. We all know people who take one too far while neglecting the other, but it seems to me that most (alright, many) of us do make some sort of stab at both. I like the sound of the ‘listen without interrupting/responding’ thing. There’s a book I found useful called “Time to Think: Listening to ignite the human mind” by Nancy Kline. V. good on what having your sentences finished for you/challenged before you have uttered them means and does.
On the idea of enlightenment and social concern- I stumbled across an old post (that’d I’d completely forgotten!) yesterday. It’s called Western Buddhism and the menage-a-moi
http://dwighttowers.wordpress.com/2009/01/08/western-buddhism-and-the-menage-a-moi/
Here’s a clip (quoting a guy called John Clark)
“The problem of the uncritical acceptance of acontextual enlightenment should not be underestimated. As Slavoj Zizek often points out, what he calls “Western Buddhism” can function as the highest form of adaptation to late capitalism, allowing members of the most privileged sectors of the global system of domination to go about their work on behalf of that system while minimizing their level of guilt and stress and assuring themselves of their deeply compassionate qualities and the absolute perfection of their underlying Buddha-Natures. We may add that many of them also take comfort in the likelihood of a spectacular rebirth in their next lives: the ultimate upward mobility. What such “Western Buddhism” misses, or course, is that Buddhism is not about complacency but rather about the awakened mind.”
August 22, 2010 at 10:05 am
So… um… this coming from a chronic interrupter: during a certain stretch of my life, I gave up my interrupting, and really listened. The result: I ended up being used. As a vessel. To pour verbiage into.
Ugh. I’d rather be a bad girl and interrupt. (Still haven’t figured this one out.) (?)
August 22, 2010 at 10:46 am
leaver girl — There is definitely a place for rude girls/boys interrupting and being as dickey as they please. That happens in the second round free-for-all in our meetings, where the temperature often rises! Both modalities lend their particular flavors and values to the brew. Sort of yin/yang. Both needed. They tend to blend well when properly aged…
August 22, 2010 at 12:45 pm
Good to hear it Mike.
Leavergirl- it is tough, isn’t it. We hardly need more exhortation for people (esp women) to be endlessly nurturing doormats. I guess the thing of it is reciprocity. If you’re with endless “takers” who suffer no pain for their crap behaviour (and therefore don’t change!) it’s a bad strategy. But if you’re in a group where there is ongoing (‘iterative’) relationships, and a social norm of equality, then it might (just might) work. Of course, as a physically large, highly educated white middle-class male, I can choose to speak or listen pretty much as I see fit and no-one passes comment either way (though some use the Law of Two Feet !:)) It’s trickier for people without those levels of social power maybe?
August 22, 2010 at 1:10 pm
Alternating the rules might work in some situations, Mike. Will try.
However… here comes a pet peeve. Suppose you are in a group meeting for the whole day. A big commitment. The facilitator invites each person — say there are 30 in a circle — to do a brief uninterrupted sharing to get the day going. She says, 2 minutes each. I groan inwardly, because at 2 min each, that’s an hour gone already, and what chance is there that each person will stay within the allotted time? About zero. And what meaningful stuff can you say in two minutes, anyway? I hate this crap.
Marc, my impression is that the only way to stop the verbose is to do a counter move, and jump in, either via words or a waving arm. If everyone is polite, they will keep on going… as your vids have covered for the podium blatherers.
August 22, 2010 at 1:27 pm
I hate that too. 30 people will NOT keep to 2 minutes, and even if they do, nobody hears what anyone is saying before they speak because they’re busy rehearsing their stuff in their heads. And for two people after they’re thinking “damn, I forgot to say x.” And so nobody retains anything. Far better is for the facilitator to come up with some entertaining/revealing questions and get people to physically move on a spectrum. It mingles folks/exposes hidden allegiances etc. “Everyone gets two minutes” is a tool of the inexperienced or lazy or stupid facilitator. If you’re in a group situation and someone is being verbose, then it’s the facilitator’s role to deal with that. And too often the facilitator/chair doesn’t want to piss off Mr (and it usually is Mr) Big Speaker from the Important Organisation, so you just get blather blather blather. Which is why the Law of Two Feet matters – the audience can take matters into their own hands (well, feet). IMHO, humans are so frail and fallible that they need to agree and jointly enforce rules that constrain the stupid/shitty behaviour, especially from tedious egotistical hierarchicals (and you can be a self-proclaimed anarchist but still be a tedious hierarchical. Indeed, sometimes I think the two are more linked than we know…)
August 22, 2010 at 2:53 pm
Heh. Self-proclaimed means little. That’s why I keep dwelling on the notion of “embodying.”
The law of two feet’s gotta be used all the time, gotta become the default, to give people permission to get up and go. Also, it helps if there is a place for them to go for an alternative. I have suffered through many a gasbag pontificating on the off-chance I’d still learn something and don’t have to write the whole things as a loss…
August 22, 2010 at 3:14 pm
Hi Leavergirl,
wouldn’t it be great if we could make the Law of Two Feet the norm for adults who’d freely chosen to come somewhere (and in lots of other situations too)… YES, organisers of events need to specify other places, like chillout rooms at danceclubs (or so I’m told by the young folk).
I too have stuck around too long at meetings/speeches, thinking I’ll be getting something out of it. It’s the fallacy of sunk costs – you shouldn’t throw good time after bad, usually.
In yesterday’s Financial Times (which is excellent) there was a short piece about “drip pricing”. What is happening so often is this-
“The UK’s Office of Fair Trading (OFT) has been turning to behavioural economists for advice on such tactics, and has found that there is no pricing scheme more pernicious than “drip pricing”. Under the scheme, customers agree to pay a price only to discover that there is a charge for delivery; another charge for paying by credit card, and another for insurance. Drip pricing taps into the endowment effect, because customers feel that they have already made the decision to purchase; it creates loss aversion because customers commit time and effort to the search before being hit with extra charges; and it is a form of complex pricing which makes it hard to compare offers.”
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/71796594-a9a4-11df-a6f2-00144feabdc0.html
Gotta go, am procrastinating on the latest issue of the newsletter….
August 22, 2010 at 7:02 pm
Twelve is the upper limit for a group to qualify as “small”. Beyond that a whole different dynamic takes over. Seven or eight is ideal, but even three or four can be productive. Four was the number who met in a New York apartment to kick off what became the women’s consciousness raising groups that eventually swept the nation.
Also, self selected folks who commit to regularly getting together develop a style that smooths out many problems that larger or less frequently meeting groups encounter.
Size is a crucial factor in generating the intensity and effectiveness a small group is capable of.
August 24, 2010 at 1:47 pm
Hi Leavergirl,
Tis been a while since I was around but I read this blog and liked it. I agree that people don’t need to be dicks as often as they are. At the same time I do put forth the concept that there are times when it is appropriate to be a dick. I am an over-educated relative to Mr Spock such that logic and facts have the strongest weight in most arguments that are not opinion based. On some occasions of debating with an emotionally driven, can’t be bothered with facts and logic, I will wield the verbal scalpel and proceed to di-sect the person’s poor argument then proceed to point out the flaws in the argument and what mental deficiencies would cause such flaws (if the person has acted in such a way that this treatment is warranted). Not sure if that is being a dick or just responding appropriately. On the 30 people meeting where each person gets 2 minutes….. is it being a dick when after 2.5 to 3 minutes of listening to a person drone on with babble and you chime in with….. “2 minutes is still 120 seconds.. right?” That is more polite than “Sorry we have to stop you from boring us to death”. lol On a side note, the doomstead is slowly getting whipped into shape as well as the owners (me and my better half/wife). Farming is quite a bit of work when combined with a day job.
August 24, 2010 at 2:49 pm
I have been reflecting a lot these days on the journey, the process we have all engaged in for the last several weeks in this forum, this ad hoc, come one come all free form discussion. I am amazed and gratified by how much I have learned here, how much my inner search has been quickened and deepened. Who could have guessed?
Looking back on it all, I am trying now to gather up some themes that have emerged. My first pass at that is to ask: What is the problem? We can all agree that what has brought us together here is a problem, or problems; but what exactly is it? Bruno Bettelheim was fond of saying, “The end is in the beginning.” He meant that how you start a process has a great deal to do with how it comes out.
Many are impatient with this first step, and want to “get on with it.” But my sense is that taking the time to get a clear understanding of the dimensions and depths of the problem we are hoping to solve will be very helpful in finding solutions that are deep and effective, going to the roots, and not just treating the symptoms.
Now those of us who want to grapple with this initial problem of defining what is wrong, making an inventory of symptoms, taking a history, as it were, run into a serious impediment to our investigation: the problem is immense, horrifying, difficult to pin down, agonizing, and seeming to be intractable. Bummer. Let’s not hang out here too long — frankly, let’s just get the hell out and go somewhere more comfortable. At this point some unusual souls, including Derrick Jensen, offer to help us out by dragging us deeper into up close and personal confrontation with the worst aspects of our human predicament. (With friends like these, who needs enemies, we think to ourselves.)
Nevertheless, against our better(?) judgement we are drawn into contemplating the nightmarish dimensions of our plight, and the seeming hopelessness of this unequal struggle. Otherwise why would we be here on this thread ostensibly dealing with his article? Just to protest his ruthless approach to showing us the nature of our adversaries? Or to criticize his suggestions for dealing with all of it? To reassure ourselves that looking into the true face of the Beast of Civilization is not really necessary to dismantling it? That would be like a patient in therapy for serious mental problems, demanding that the therapist avoid anything unpleasant in carrying out the treatment.
Looking at this issue of the first step from another angle, have you ever tried in an ordinary social situation with folks who would never be characterized as “activists” to bring up some disturbing fact, like say the holocaust in Iraq? Maybe you are too wise or diplomatic to do something as awkward as that, but I have a Demon (Daimon?) in me that has made me do so on occasion. The predictable result was that they did not want to hear about it, and would make that increasingly clear to me if I persisted. Interesting. Especially in light of the fact that this denial mechanism is the number one obstacle in our getting our message out to folks who are still asleep in so many ways. Their sleep is dooming our world.
Maybe you have a better way to wake these folks up, or perhaps to get them to do what needs to be done in their sleep, if you think that is possible. One thing is sure; if you are unwilling to look at the grim and dismal reality we are living in, you will be neither willing or capable of helping others to wake up.
Well that is enough for this post. I did not really mean for it to take the direction it did, but it kind of took off on its own. Maybe next time I will talk about the positive potential of the first step assessment of our position and our problem(s).
August 26, 2010 at 10:59 am
Hi Mike (etc),
there’s a book from 1980 called “Collective and Community Group Dynamics… or your meetings needn’t be appalling”. With the permission of one of the authors I have scanned it and posted it. I personally think it is very insightful, very useful. Hope it is of some use to you…
http://communitygroupdynamics.wordpress.com/
Best wishes
August 26, 2010 at 1:39 pm
The fallacy of sunk costs! Of course. Don’t throw good time after bad. Brilliant… and reflecting back, I would say that if it looks at the beginning like you are throwing good time after bad, 99% of the time it will just keep on keep on, until the bitter end.
Mike, yup, size is crucial. One you get to 12… the Judas Number… the dynamic goes sour.
It is becoming clearer and clearer to me that it is not our job to change other people. It is their job. Being of use to them IF they choose to wake up, that I second. Why the constant preoccupation with those who don’t get it? Isn’t there plenty of us who do, and who need to figure out how to be effective?
August 27, 2010 at 10:01 am
Your visit is always welcome, engineer. Good to hear the doomstead continues to prosper!
In my experience, we smart folks fall in it way too often… we forget that being right and doing right for the relationship are two different things. Do you figure your dissecting convinced many people? Myself, looking back, I doubt it. As for the 2 minutes, well, the facilitators are supposed to handle it so that the rest of the people don’t have to establish themselves as the snarky wise guys from the start. Often, though, they fail, because some humans are compulsive babblers and the facilitators are unwilling to do what it takes. Myself, I prefer to just “say you name and 1-2 sentences of why you are here,” and that’s it.
Or, maybe we should just dispense even with that. Open the space. Let people get acquainted by interacting and doing what they came there to do. Ey?
August 29, 2010 at 1:12 am
Inspired by the comments above about two minute intros with people gassing on to make “a three minute rant about two minute intros” and post it on youtube. Hope you like…
Cheers
“Dwight Towers”
August 30, 2010 at 1:28 pm
When you try to convince someone of the value of something you think they might profit from trying, there is a tendency to only focus on how easy it is, and how wonderful its benefits are, at the same time glossing over or avoiding any difficulties or downsides involved in it. I may have been guilty of this one-sided approach in singing the praises of small group processes. Let me attempt to balance this sunny view of sharing in a small group.
Does anyone get angry and vent anger on another group member, or indeed on the group as a whole? Yes, that does happen. Does anyone ever feel deeply hurt, break down in tears, and leave the group permanently, perhaps breaking off relations with members for good. Yep. Seen it happen more than once. Do folks sometimes continue in the group, but retreat into a closed stance that they know what is what, and are only present to lecture others who are not in strict compliance with their understandings? Anyone having experience in groups could add other less than ideal results to my short list.
Then why would anyone choose to take part and continue in such a flawed endeavor? Because if you stick it out in spite of the difficulties, something wonderful can happen. You may have found a unique situation for uncovering your own hang-ups, and working to transform them. You may learn to hang in there and get to know how you can relate constructively with diverse people who may think quite differently from yourself. You might begin to discover some of the secrets needed to make a better world. You could begin to answer Rodney King’s fateful question: “Can we just get along?”
When you try to convince someone of the value of something you think they might profit from trying, there is a tendency to only focus on how easy it is, and how wonderful its benefits are, at the same time glossing over or avoiding any difficulties or downsides involved in it. I may have been guilty of this one-sided approach in singing the praises of small group processes. Let me attempt to balance this sunny view of sharing in a small group.
Does anyone get angry and vent anger on another group member, or indeed on the group as a whole? Yes, that does happen. Does anyone ever feel deeply hurt, break down in tears, and leave the group permanently, perhaps breaking off relations with members for good. Yep. Seen it happen more than once. Do folks sometimes continue in the group, but retreat into a closed stance that they know what is what, and are only present to lecture others who are not in strict compliance with their understandings? Anyone having experience in groups could add other less than ideal results to my short list.
Then why would anyone choose to take part and continue in such a flawed endeavor? Because if you stick it out in spite of the difficulties, something wonderful can happen. You may have found a unique situation for uncovering your own hang-ups, and working to transform them. You may learn to hang in there and get to know how you can relate constructively with diverse people who may think quite differently from yourself. You might begin to discover some of the secrets needed to make a better world. You could begin to answer Rodney King’s fateful question: “Can we just get along?”
August 31, 2010 at 10:49 am
Well, this continues to be one of the more interesting and relevant “threads” going on on the dub-dub-dub, no doubt…if one is truly open-minded, as of course we are
;-)… Too bad there aren’t a thousand of us here, eh? My excuse is i just got back from a wilderness immersion experience, with no death and no near-death events this time, and once again i have a lot to catch up on and reflect on. This was my first stop, aside from 100+ non-spams… Just wanted to say for now that it’s good to be a welcome part of some small space that’s about ‘being SOMEthing’ that’s actually going in an evolutionary direction, as opposed to the level of denial required to stand around the collective toilet bowl of earthly civilization, part of the Big Flush disguised as you-name-it…mass-mesmerized by the Coreolis (sp?) Effect…
August 31, 2010 at 4:45 pm
Hey Mike,
the “small group reaching the goal” thing sounds important and inspiring (and is the basis of most disaster movies of course!). Again, you write well on these topics, and wordpress IS free… (hint hint).
Hey Jay D – wondered where you were, glad you were off having fun (There’s a new Danny Boyle film called 127 hours, about that guy who had to amputate his arm to get out from under a boulder. One to watch before you next go wildernessing?) I think you’ve nailed one of the attractions of leavingbabylon- thoughtful and unflinching looking into the abyss. Long may it continue!!
Best wishes
January 26, 2011 at 3:19 pm
Just starting out, and therefore the name. Been reading a lot by Derrick Jensen, hard going. Then Dark Mountain and then to Dwight Towers via his despair at that event (I wasn’t there but followed online). And then to this blog, which is like a candle in the darkness. And it is dark. As Dwight Towers puts it, the “thoughtful and unflinching looking into the abyss”. But we must. Or at least I must. No great thoughts to share. But I am thinking. Thank you to LeaverGirl and all the other people who post.
January 26, 2011 at 8:09 pm
Thinkin’s mighty good! 🙂 Welcome, SO. Hope you jump in with the conversation by and by.
January 27, 2011 at 6:04 am
SO — “There is a magic in each new beginning.” (Hesse) Jensen lit a fire in my mind that is still burning hot. Don’t let the lack of sure-fire solutions to our mega-problems deter you from journeying on. We will come up with answers, because we must. We are all up to our necks in this global crisis; the only difference between us is how deep in denial and unconsciousness we may be. Welcome to the get me/us-outta- this-nightmare express….
January 27, 2011 at 6:33 am
SO — If you have not yet, check out the Archdruid Report here:
http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/
December 31, 2012 at 7:43 pm
[…] themselves at the cost of someone else feeling worse. It is most commonly a by-product of attacking the person rather than just critiquing their argument or idea (an ad hominem). In other cases it can be identified by assuming the worst understanding of […]
July 10, 2013 at 11:49 am
[…] Dissensus throws open a new space of possibility, one whose forms and stances of engagement aren’t yet figured out. The value of biodiversity in other species is readily grasped, but for humans used to proselytising and triumphing over other humans’ ignorance, it’s a far harder proposition to live out. Understandably, there is fear and nervous faltering, a falling-back onto more habitual reflexes for coping with diverging paths and vigorous, essential disagreement: as something to shun, something to overcome, something which veers, inappropriately and unavoidably, over the border between differences of principle and personal vitriol. […]
September 27, 2015 at 5:21 pm
I really don’t think I’m a dick for having a commitment to honest and direct communication, even if that means communicating that I think someone is suffering from a mental illness for subscribing to something as palpably daft as Xtianity. Have to disagree with you on this one.
September 27, 2015 at 9:50 pm
One other thing, consentient. There is much that seems daft provided one is setting the definition. If you allow the other to set the definition (e.g. they decide what, say, “God” means to them, rather than getting [possibly] strawmanned) then you may find out that what you think they believe is not what they actually believe. And if you aren’t willing to listen, but come to the discussion with your own bias (regarding what you believe they believe), then how will you ever know?
September 28, 2015 at 12:59 am
The main thing I see in this point is about definitions, and I agree, but of all the definitions of ‘god’ I’ve ever been offered, none have made the least bit of sense.
September 28, 2015 at 1:20 am
Have you thought of making your own definition of God? One that does make sense?
September 28, 2015 at 4:36 am
I cannot make a definition of a non-referent, nor would I waste my time doing so even if it were possible. For the same reason, I don’t sit around constructing definitions of square circles or honest politicians 😀
September 28, 2015 at 7:01 am
It’s about listening. Unless you really listen, you have no business talking about non-violence and true voluntarism. There, I said it.
September 28, 2015 at 8:30 am
I hope you’re not another one of those people that tries to conflate behaviour inside of discourse with violence!
September 28, 2015 at 11:19 am
Behavior inside a discourse can be honest or dishonest (viz fallacies), it can be fair or bullying, it can be transparent or sly trickery. Is that what you were referring to?
September 28, 2015 at 9:09 pm
When does discourse become ‘bullying’? If it’s threatening then it’s not really discourse, is it? There is no violence in real, reasonable discourse. This does not mean I have to listen to absurd claims.
September 28, 2015 at 9:20 pm
“There is no violence in real, reasonable discourse.”
Ah well if it’s real and reasonable, of course not. Glad we cleared that up. 🙂
As for various claims and whether one chooses to listen depends on the relationship (or the desire for a relationship), in my experience.
September 28, 2015 at 10:34 pm
OK since we cleared it up, can we agree that choosing not to listen does not constitute violence? And if so, then a further extension of that is it’s not a dick to have a rational response to meaningless babble?
September 28, 2015 at 11:08 pm
With the assumption of real and reasonable discourse, yes, we can agree that choosing not to listen is not violence/aggression. I suspect, however, that someone coming to the table with something called “a rational response to meaningless babble” might not be actually engaging in “real and reasonable discourse” and instead be, for example, off on an ego trip. Then, on the other hand, something experienced as “meaningless babble” could be itself an act of aggression. Never underestimate the subtle art of mindfuck.
September 28, 2015 at 11:44 pm
Ok so you have a suspicion. But what is it founded on.
My rational response to meaningless babble is founded in principles. I gave you before the points about meaningless sentences.
If I’ve taking part in a discussion and my partner is ceaselessly referring to meaningless things rather than actual demonstrable concepts, then eventually I’m just going to leave the discussion, and there is nothing unreasonable about that. It’s nothing to do with ego at all. Why would anyone want to tolerate meaninglessness?
Even meaningless babble, though, is not violence. How could it be?