Intersectionality - societal divides and power

KyussBishop

There's a very odd statistic here, where increased political polarization over issues such as abortion in the US, seems to be driven by those closer to the 'elite' classes:
http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2014/01/raw-data-its-elites-who-drive-polarization-not-working-class

The polarization seems to specifically be among those closer to the elite, not among the mid/working-class population - which is very interesting, I wonder what the cause of that is (it's hard to draw many/any conclusions from it though).

That's a societal divide that exists between those who have greater power in society, rather than between society overall - and that does seem to have a disproportionate effect on these issues, within politics (or maybe the other way around, or in a self-reinforcing way, with politics being particularly prone to causing that group/class of people, to polarize into ideological extremes).

KyussBishop

Really interesting article here from Yanis Varoufakis, on an empirical study which shows that people will find a way to discriminate against one another, even when what distinguishes them is as meaningless as being assigned an arbitrary colour 'red' or 'blue':
http://yanisvaroufakis.eu/2014/03/21/how-do-the-powerful-get-the-idea-that-they-deserve-more-lessons-from-a-laboratory/

So this shows that social divides, for creating an advantaged class and a disadvantaged class, can arise out of nothing - among ordinary people - and that the advantaged class will tend to claim this is deserved, using reasons fabricated after-the-fact, even though their distinction (a meaningless colour) is entirely arbitrary.
Much like you hear arguments, that the wealthy in general, have gained their riches through 'hard work' and merit - rather than, for many of them, their myriad of special advantages/privileges that handed them very unequal/favourable opportunities.

After the main article, there are a series of questions, and one of them is particularly good - it shows how people even within the disadvantaged class, will try to dissuade attempts of other disadvantaged people, away from changing the social order, and removing the advantaged classes privilege:

Advantaged members feel entitled to their winnings. What sense do the disadvantaged members feel? Is it injustice, etc?

Yes and no. The disadvantaged experience a mix of emotions. Partly a sense of injustice, partly a sense of pride for not being exploiters, partly an indignation against the advantaged but also partly moral condemnation of other disadvantaged people who are ‘uppity’, who think they deserve better and who seek to subvert the advantage of the advantaged. After all, the greatest opponents of feminists have been women (who proclaimed that women should stay in the home) and the police forces that attacked anti-Apartheid protesters in the South Africa were mostly black…

I'd say this goes a long way to explaining the kind of apathy you see among people, in the face of the economic crisis, and increasing income inequality (in among other forms of inequality) - it is ridiculous the extent people go to, to excuse the actions (even when likely fraudulent) of people like bankers, financiers and many of the wealthy, even though this is really arguing against their own interests as well.

It also helps explain why 'divide and conquer' is so successful a tactic, among almost any population.

robindch

KyussBishop wrote: »

Really interesting article here from Yanis Varoufakis, on an empirical study which shows that people will find a way to discriminate against one another, even when what distinguishes them is as meaningless as being assigned an arbitrary colour 'red' or 'blue':

Strikingly similar to the "Blue eyes, Brown eyes" school experiment that Jane Elliott has been running since, I think, the 1960's:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQAmdZvKf6M

The jury is out on whether this experiment, and others like it, actually reduce factionalism, but they do raise awareness of it and show how dreadfully easy it is to fall into an "I'm better than you" way of thinking.

Ambersky

Well that had me up for the last hour watching that and links that lead from the link you posted robindch. I had heard about those experiments but didnt realise they were on YouTube. Thanks

KyussBishop

robindch wrote: »

Strikingly similar to the "Blue eyes, Brown eyes" school experiment that Jane Elliott has been running since, I think, the 1960's:

The jury is out on whether this experiment, and others like it, actually reduce factionalism, but they do raise awareness of it and show how dreadfully easy it is to fall into an "I'm better than you" way of thinking.

Very interesting experiment - bizarre actually, when you read some of the stuff inspired from it:

At seminars given at U.S. federal agencies such as the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), white males were verbally abused by black peers and then forced to walk a gauntlet to be touched by female workers.

Kind of going beyond teaching people about discrimination (by picking an arbitrary thing to discriminate against, like eye colour), and just going straight on into full-blown reverse-racism/sexism, which is ironically implicitly racist/sexist (implying there is no racism against white people, and no sexism/sexual-harassment against men, due to how the seminar is setup).


I also like the quote in the wiki article, from a letter complaining about the ethics of the classroom experiment:
"How dare you try this cruel experiment out on white children."

oscarBravo

I remember a team-building/leadership seminar (shudder) years ago, where we were divided into two teams, and each team was asked to rank some items in order. It was a fairly arbitrary exercise, with no objectively correct answers, but the idea was to be able to justify the ranking afterwards.

Where it got interesting was the follow-up session on negotiation. Each team had to nominate two representatives to negotiate with the other team, with the goal of arriving at a consensus between the results each team had separately come up with. Bizarrely, the talks deadlocked, and no consensus could be reached. Both teams managed to get the idea that the goal was to convince the other team to agree to their own result, and neither was for budging.

At one point, when the negotiators were back reporting on "progress" to the rest of us, they insisted that they had the other team on the ropes and were determined to press the advantage. I suggested that maybe we should consider offering to change some of our results to see if they would reciprocate, but was shot down immediately - "why should we offer anything? we're winning!"

It may or may not be worthy of note that the negotiators on both teams were ardent union men.

robindch

^^^ In another one of my oft-repeated, and entirely ignored, public service initiatives, I reckon that study of the Prisoners' Dilemma, iterated and otherwise, should be mandatory in schools.

KyussBishop

Came across this very good article yesterday - very relevant to Atheism vs Religion - it describes an interesting way with which people end up getting divided into hard-set "Us vs Them" positions, even when the positions they hold are not extreme:
http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/05/12/weak-men-are-superweapons/

It describes very well, a kind of grey area in narrative/debate, where if someone criticizes a particularly extreme group on your 'side', you may still be compelled to counter the argument by saying "not all of us are like that" (which can help keep you entrenched in "Us vs Them" positions), but if you don't counter that argument, you allow your opponent to shift the overton window, so that they can get away with generalizing about your whole 'side'.

Anyway - the article describes it a lot better than my attempted summary :P (and it touches on a LOT of different topics) it's well worth a read.

KyussBishop

A good example of the above article actually, is an AH thread on feminism, and how extreme-but-unrepresentative things about feminism tend to be highlighted, which skews peoples view of feminism overall; in the AH thread, what was highlighted was a really silly/minor concern, where feminists want teachers to be labelled "Sir" instead of "Miss".

I think I explained the above article better in that thread:

KyussBishop wrote: »

I read this article yesterday, which I stuck in the A&A forum, about the 'weak man' logical fallacy (it's like straw man, but a lot more subtle).

It gives a very interesting/new perspective, of when you see minor/insignificant things like this, as being posted as representative of feminism (or minor things about any societal subgroup, presented as representative):
http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/05/12/weak-men-are-superweapons/

I think that explains a bit, why people are prone to seeing feminists as really extreme/hyperbolic:
All of these little unrepresentative things like in the OP are highlighted, yet if you want to challenge that by saying "that's not representative", you're damned if you do and damned if you don't - if you do point that out, people can paint you as defending minor/ridiculous stuff like in the OP (and it will look like you are), but if you don't point out the generalization, it will allow people to smear a whole group of people, and shift the 'overton window' so that they are all viewed as extreme (which is what has happened with feminism - is why a lot of people view it as extreme now).

https://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2057209728&page=4#post90382642