We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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Samizdata quote of the day I’ve commented this before, but I can’t help thinking there’s something wrong, some undiagnosed mental condition, afflicting people who exhibit an unnatural interest in the private lives of others. Perhaps at some point in the future this condition will be identified and a treatment devised for it, but until then the appropriate response to someone who thinks a bar of chocolate or a “fat goose at Christmas” is a sign of moral decay is to point them out in the street and utter the traditional condemnation “‘Ee’s a nuttah!”
– Commenter Roue le Jour, who is on a SQOTD roll it seems
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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If you took out ‘unnatural’ in the quote, then it would read better- because it now seems tautological.
Only to you Nuke, only to you.
In that case, could the quotee tell us what a natural interest in the private lives of others is, so we can contrast it with an unnatural interest?
Slow news week, obviously, but I’m touched. Thank you.
Nuke, how do you do?
I chose the phrase “unnatural interest” because I thought it evocative of the kinds of things social workers seem to obsess about, the nature of people’s relationships, their sleeping arrangements and the condition of their children’s bottoms. I’m sorry if it offends, but it’s the best I can do, I’m afraid.
Nuke, I’d posit that it’s natural to have some interest in certain aspects of the private lives of those nearest and dearest to us.
Natural interest: “Hey buddy, it’s been a while! How’s the wife and kids?”
Unnatural interest: “Tell me every meal you’ve served your family in the last month, so that I may criticize you for it not being nutritious/sustainable/simple enough!”
If you need to ask I suspect you make be a bit of a curtain twitcher yourself.
And yet strangely, in another thread, when I suggested that there’s something wrong with a person who has made a career out of an unnatural interest in the most private behaviours of others, all I got was a howl of fury from the collective of libertarians at samizdata. I find this paradoxical. Apparently it’s okay to be a prurient authoritarian if you say something about low taxes as well.
In the telegraph today:
“Six people have been arrested on suspicion of inciting racial hatred after videos emerged on the internet apparently showing copies of the Koran being burned.
Gateshead Council and the force issued a joint statement to stress that community relations in the area were good. ”
Remind me – what race is Islam again?
The freedom to do stupid, unpopular things is the freedom upon which all others rest.
What I would give to live in a society with truly free speech. Little did they know the seemingly sensible provisos for “incitement to violence” were the thin end of the wedge.
Oi! Careful who you lump in that ‘collective’, mush!
Ah Perry, you’re the glorious leader surely? 🙂
Any chance you could unsmite my mysteriously smitten comment in the Living Forever thread before it becomes entirely stale?
Ian, in that “other thread” no one (that I recall) was arguing that she is not “a nuttah”, only that she’s the best alternative on offer in that particular election. Big difference.
But I do like your phrase “collective of libertarians”. Has a nice oxymoronic quality, with a subtle hint of sardonic condescention. Nicely done!
What should we use as the correct collective noun for a group of libertarians anyway?
A disputation?
A menagerie of libertarians? a Zoo, since we are so diversely exotic?
Someone who peeps in your window is a passive voyeur.
Someone who peeps in your window, then critiques what you’re doing, and offers guidelines as to how it could be done better, or at least to his or her tastes is an active voyeur.
At some point I suppose, adjectives like “pathological” or “psychotic” begin to apply.
It is much less unnatural as it is atavistic and deeply rooted in the world of animals.
A predatory, carnivorous animal is stalking the herbivores, sometimes for a long time studying their behavioural patterns in order to make hunt easier and more efficient.
A PARASITIC human is instinctively studying other people’s behavioural pattern’s in order to control their lives and use such observations to build a socio-political construction that will enable the PARASITE to live an easier life at the expense of a PRODUCER (a human of an smart and honest work).
In a more benign form such a socio-political construction is called “social-democracy”, “people’s democracy”, “liberal democracy” (or whatever).
In its most barbaric, cruel form it fuctions as a totalitarian slavery under the mask of Communism (of Stainist, Maoist, Castroist, Pol Potist type), Islamo-fascism, Nazism, Latino-fascism, Afro-fascism and so on and on….
One of my former aquaintances, an alcoholic, was very much interested in the state of my personal finances.
It was not that difficult for me to realise that he was eternally functioning under the ilusion that I would somehow be willing to finance (at least parttially) his alcohol addiction…
An eternal human PARASITE even if sober has exactly the same mind as the above described alcoholic.
Or a drug addict, or a compulsive gambler…
I wish Bogdan would comment more often.
Celia Green successfully identified this behaviour as indicative of something called “sanity”; it is quite widespread, I’m afraid.
So you’re saying at some time in the future we’ll be able to get inside someone’s head and “cure” them of a condition that makes them want get inside other peoples lives and change them?
Collective Libertarian indeed.
I must respectfully disagree with Bogdan. The model is not parasitism.
It is well known that in a troupe of primates, the alpha males get first choice of mates. What is less well known is that the alphas also regulate the breeding of non alphas. That is to say, even when they have no interest in a female themselves, they will nonetheless prevent runts from breeding with her.
One can speculate that the alphas are following a two pronged approach. They are ensuring their own offspring have the best available genes, but they are ensuring that their offspring will not be the leaders of a bunch of losers.
It is this basic drive which I believe is behind the desire to examine and regulate the lives of others.
Excellent question, Billy O.
I honestly believe an excessive interest in the lives of others is a condition of some kind, and I’m surprised the language doesn’t contain a simple derogatory term for it. I doubt it’s treatable, but identification would be a step forward.
I also offered a possible explanation for the origin of the condition, but it got smited. Those are the breaks.
Roue: thanks for that, it clarifies the issue even further. Bogdan’s larger point remains, that contrary to other comments, this behavior is rather natural, just like murdering, stealing and committing adultery.
Nah, that is a sterile “semantic game” line of argument. If you prefer the word “aberrant” or “criminal” to “unnatural”, well fine, but it makes this a trivial discussion.
That a behaviour “offends against natural justice” is a perfectly acceptable notion in English and thus the usage of “unnatural” in this context works just fine. Moreover if a person is unable to see that his behaviour is “unnatural” (say, he murders people or takes an ‘unnatural’ interest in their private lives) then he is, as the man said, a “nuttah”… we are in the realm of mental disorder 🙂
Perry, not being a native speaker, when in doubt (which is my, um, natural condition), I use words in their most literal sense. So, by ‘natural’ I mean as observed in nature (as per Bogdan’s and Roue’s examples). Now, I’m not saying that the thing that separates us from animals (AKA ‘reason’) is unnatural in that sense. If that is your point, then I agree with you. But observation also leads me to believe that reason has by no means eliminated our animal instincts (at least not yet), so those remain quite natural to us as well as to our primordial ancestors, and we have to live with that fact and deal with it – that’s what reason is for, after all, or at least I’d like to think so.
Perry, unsmite the second one – the first one has a typo.
Indeed, as the term ‘nattah’ only has meaning in the context of reason.
‘nuttah’…:-)
I am personally very suspicious of defining personality traits as illnesses. This is very popular at the moment; boisterous becomes ADHD, socially awkward becomes Aspergers, and so on. Using “nutter” in a vernacular sense is not the same; once you get into jargon about “personality disorders” as if one can define being a busybody as a mental illness, then I am troubled. I doubt that any of us would be safe from the asylum.
Yep, good point, Ian. I guess it all comes down to the degree of antisocialness of a particular behavior.
Oh I undertsand Ian but our enemies just
to make a pathology of dissent and I see no reason not to use the same weapon on them.
And the reason I have no compunction doing so is that in truth I really do think that what underpins intrusive collectivism really is mental derangement.