Oppression

Great Debates
21

No it isn’t.

There’s a bum on skid row who enjoys his bottle of booze. He’s not enjoying it because out of all the possible pleasures available to anyone in any station in life, this is the most pleasant, the most fulfilling. He’s enjoying it because out of the experiences that are actually available to him in his current situation, it’s one of the few that do provide him with pleasure.

Having said that, I direct your attention to the earlier statement:

I am comparing the situation of the oppressor who takes some pleasure from having power over other people to the situation that same person would be in in the absence of oppression. It’s akin to comparing the life of a bully who gets some fragmentary illusion of self-worth from beating up other kids to the life that same person might have in a world that didn’t have bullying.

22

Oh fuck no, of course not.

The oppressors aren’t “also oppressed”. Dehumanized, yeah. Worse off than they’d be in a world without oppression, yeah. (Which is the point I’m making here).

The oppressor certainly receives the benefit of the labor done by those he enslaves. But pays a severe cost, one that I would not be willing to pay, hence the situation in its entirely does not benefit the oppressor.

23

So you’re saying that they’d be better off in Heaven than on Earth? That if there were no oppression, then everyone, including those who are currently oppressors, would be better off than they are in the world as it is now?

That’s a different claim than “Oppression doesn’t benefit oppressors.”

24

I wouldn’t want to be a slave master, but again, you’re projecting. You may think “I wouldn’t want to live with that guilt staining my soul” but plenty of Southern slave masters probably felt absolutely zero guilt.

I wouldn’t want to have that guilt, but I am not so naive as to think that there aren’t people out there who would feel no qualms whatsoever about owning and oppressing slaves.

You need to stop assuming that other people think the same way you do. That sort of belief leads to all sorts of miscalculations.

25

But that’s you. Not everyone is like you. In fact, I would say very few people are like you.

Do you not believe there are people who prioritize things a lot differently than you do? The person who scams the elderly out of their homes rather than make money working a forklift or cash register…do you think they are just a bunch of masochists or something? If all this pain and sadness and angst come from doing wrong to others, what motivates those who do wrong?

26

You say that, and yet you go on to say (I believe with total sincerity, but perhaps lacking in consistency), while still talking about a hypothetical “slave master’s” experience:

So which is it? I don’t believe you’re engaging in intentional sophistry, but it’s hard to reconcile your brushing aside Velocity et al’s point that a slave master might not feel guilt or some kind of painful burden in being a master on the grounds you can’t put yourself inside the slave master’s head, and yet you then go on to conclude that because—if you were cast in the role of a slave master—you’d feel bad enslaving others, we should therefore use this to conclude that the slave master does indeed come out at a net loss in oppressing others, irrespective of their material gain.
As an aside, Frederick Douglass made use of a “think of the master” line of argument in part of his Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, in which he highlighted how being placed in the position “owning” Douglass, his master’s wife and children went from being kind and decent to cruel through learned behavior from being forced to assume their roles within the same system that enslaved Douglass, but I would take that with a grain of salt. The man was writing to a bunch of still largely racist northerners who may well have believed that blacks were their inferior and that being enslaved to a kind master might be the best thing for them. I consider his “think of the master” argument to be couched in those terms: not because we really should be overly worried about the corrupting influence of slaver on slaveholders (as opposed the extent to which the most corruptible men might be disposed to own other people), but rather because it might reach that all-too broad portion of the population that doesn’t give two shits about the well-being of a bunch of black people, but might just be swayed if they could be convinced that “it’s harmful to the master, too” and so act on behalf of their “misguided, white, slaveholding brethren” to free them of the burden of being the oppressor.

All that to say, I think the argument is disingenuous, and only really makes sense as a rhetorical device when the people you’re trying to convince won’t be swayed by the more direct evidence of harm (that is, the harm done to the oppressed) and so must be swayed by other means.

27

I think he, and others who say similar things, are correct that oppression has a corrupting influence on the oppressor.

Oppression benefits the oppressors materially, but it harms them at the level of their soul. And “For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?” (Matthew 16:26).

I think that, in that kind of sense, oppression does harm the oppressors. But I don’t think I could defend that view to someone who didn’t believe in something like a soul, that could be harmed or benefitted.

But really, I think that when you seriously delve into what it means to “benefit” someone in anything other than a purely material sense, you can easily get into some deep philosophical and/or religious waters.

28

No it isn’t. To “benefit” from something you need to be better off with it than you would be without it. That’s not an unorthodox definition of the word, is it?

29

It’s imperfect but it’s probably a better tool than assuming that they don’t. That they’re motivated by things that sure as fuck wouldn’t motivate us. The latter means regarding them as fundamentally not like us. And it meshes oh so nicely with the noton of assigning blame. That there is a THEM and the mess is ALL THEIR FAULT and we can be encouraged to HATE them.

And that is a bad analysis that causes political attempts to actually change things to fall flat over and over. Culprit-blaming may not be as fundamentally awful as victim-blaming but it’s still factually incorrect. According to my analysis at any rate.

30

The meaning of the word “benefit” was irrelevant to the point I was trying to make in the particular post you quoted. If it hinged on the meaning of anything, it was what you meant by “oppression.”

Suppose you had claimed “Cheating doesn’t benefit cheaters.” A claim that cheaters would be better off if they didn’t cheat is quite different from a claim that cheaters would be better off if everyone couldn’t or wouldn’t cheat.

31

I either don’t believe we have a “soul” or I don’t believe the biblical definition and treatments of the “soul” are particularly useful. So this is a weak line of argument to me. “Benefit” is derived from the world we live in, not some supernatural realm hypothesized (but not yet demonstrated) to exist by others. That’s my frame of reference.

Some people think differently about things than others. Some people are motivated by different things. Some people respond to stimuli differently. I never would have thought these things would be particularly controversial.

It’s fine to begin with an entering assumption that people are generally alike, not so different, etc. But when someone shows you who they are, you should believe them. Even if “who they are” is appreciably different from how you envision yourself.

It is possible, by the way, to recognize that people are different in significant ways, in how they think about things, without resorting to “culprit-blaming.” Though, again, I think attaching blame to individuals may be warranted in some cases. Someone’s being brought up in a racist system may help to explain in part how they became a racist themselves, but it does not excuse or rectify their actions if they then go on to assume a position of authority within that system and then perpetuate it. I mean, I’d love to treat the cause not just the manifestation, but at some point the manifestation loops back into and perpetuates or even amplifies the cause and the two cannot so easily be separated.

32

If your threads on SDMB are any example, I think we can safely say that many people don’t think the way you think on a broad range of issues. It’s not a slam, just a statement based on the evidence presented here.

I’ve met some objectively scumbag people, and they typically don’t feel like they’re scumbags. They have no problem using people, exploiting them for their own needs, even oppressing them for personal gain, without a single guilty thought.

Your premise doesn’t pass the smell test.

33

You are thinking that people who lived 200 years ago in a very different environment think like you do. Slave owners probably grew up in an environment with slaves. Slave owners were taught that black people were inferior morally and intellectually. Slave owners were taught that slaves were happier being slaves.
Slave owners were so convinced that slave owning was to their benefit that they started a war to preserve it.
I think we can find other cases of oppressors benefiting, but probably none so blatant as this one.

34

Oppression does have benefits sadly, thats why people do it.

Its like when people make the argument ‘torture doesn’t work’. Yes, torture does work. Thats why its so common. Maybe it doesn’t work for intelligence gathering, but it does work great as a deterrent, which is its main function.

Being a member of an in-group has benefits. Politicians listen to your problems more. Police are more respectful. Jobs are easier to get and pay better (you’re the first hired and last fired). Mating is easier in many ways.

Take Mississippi in the 1910s. White men made up 30% of the state. White women were 30%, black men 20%, black women 20%, more or less.

Virtually all positions of importance were held by white men. So you made up 30% of the state but held 95% of all important positions in the public and private sector. It was much easier to find a middle class job in Mississippi as a white man than as a white woman or black person.

Also white men could have sex with both white women and black women. Black men could only have sex with black women. 60% of men had access to 100% of the women.

Politicians didn’t care what women or black people wanted since they couldn’t vote, but they cared deeply what white men wanted.

Sadly there are benefits to oppression for the in-group in charge. Thats why it happens so much. Life is a struggle for survival, and the oppressive group tends to have better access to resources, status and mates.

Other animals break up into social hierarchies too. Chickens, other primates, wolves, etc.

Sadly social dominance hierarchies are built into our DNA. Its our job as thinking apes to develop social systems that can tamp down these urges and create a more egalitarian society.

Making sure the oppressed are represented in the political and economic systems is a huge part of overcoming this. Oppressed groups need political capital, human capital, social capital, financial capital, etc. to fight for justice.

35

Yes it is.

Many oppressors enjoy oppressing even when not oppressing is a perfectly viable option.

As am I. People choose to be oppressors when other options exist. How do we know? All the people in identical circumstances who don’t oppress.

There are people who will come into a utopia and by their own actions alone, turn it into a dystopia. You only have to read the posts of 90% of any anarchism thread here to see that.

36

I read those threads, being an anarchist myself. You know what I see? I see people saying someone else would screw it up, would come over the hill and wave their guns or sticks and rocks or whatever and take all the goodies or coerce people. But I don’t see people saying “I would do that”. I suppose that doesn’t mean that they wouldn’t.

But my general sense of it is that people think they themselves could be an adequately good citizen but other folks not so much.

37

When they say “It’s human nature”, that’s exactly what they’re saying.

38

Let’s go at this from a different angle.

Suppose you were protesting against a specific oppression and I said to you “You aren’t upset about oppression. You’re only upset that you didn’t end up on the oppressor side of the equation. You want the jackboots to be on your own feet, so why should I shed tears that instead you’re on the victim side of the arrangement? It’s all human nature, everyone wants to oppress if given the opportunity. Some folks got that opportunity and they’re doing exactly what you would be doing if you had the opportunity, so fuck off”.

Now, I am not, in fact, saying that (I believe that should be obvious from the posts I’ve made upthread, but in this hypothetical situation what would be your response? How do you anchor your claims for social justice in a way that isn’t hypocritical?

39

I’d say that your argument makes no more logical sense than the one you posted here. And it used entirely too many words to make a simple point. Some people are jerks.

40

I’d say the same thing I always say (apostrophe) to Rush Limbaugh. How interesting, in a debate, for you to tell me what my position is. That’s sock-puppetry and denies me the ability to state my own beliefs. Anyone can win a debate with an empty chair.

I hate oppression. I hate bullying. I consider it low and coarse and vulgar and nasty. Abraham Lincoln said, “As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master.” And that’s why I would not be an oppressor.

And, alas, I have to agree with the others here who have said that, at times, oppression is advantageous indeed for the oppressor. If I knock a guy down and take his money, I not only have that money, but – for some people who are seriously enough mentally ill – I also get to feel really good about it, too.