MacIntyre: "Ask about your own social and cultural order what it needs you and others not to know"

[Anonymous No.18764548]

The history of moral philosophy has usually been written - except for those historians influenced by Augustine, Marx, or Nietzsche - in such a way as to disguise this fact [The fact that constancy and integrity are required for us to be moral agents, and that practical thinking, which necessarily engenders tensions as a result of the conflicts between different roles and responsibilities in a social order, is necessary in order to exercise constancy and integrity]. Why does this matter? It is because it is from these tensions and conflicts, when and insofar as they are present, that morality gets an important part of its content. There are of course social and cultural orders in which tension, let alone conflict, between such rival moral systems has not yet been generated to any significant degree. But, whenever it has been so generated, it defines an area in which at least some moral agents find themselves with particular responsibilities to discharge. Consider how this might be so with regard to truthfulness, considered as one essential constituent of the human good. Both Aquinas and Kant hold that it is wrong to tell a lie in any circumstance whatsoever. But one could refrain from lying throughout one's life without having done what is required of one, if one is to achieve the good of truthfulness. For truthfulness requires of us that, when it is of peculiar importance that rational agents should understand some particular aspect of their lives, so that they are neither misled nor deceived, it is a responsibility of those who are truthful to disclose what is relevant to such understanding. What it is relevant to disclose is in key part determined by the limitations of the contemporary role structure and the ways in which it assigns responsibilities may obscure from view just that about which the virtue of truthfulness requires that we and others should be undeceived. Conflicts about whose responsibility it is to know about this or that are therefore among those that in some circumstances, especially the circumstances of distinctively modern societies, provide content for the requirements of morality. "Ask about any social and cultural order what it needs its inhabitants not to know" has become an indispensable sociological maxim. "Ask about your own social and cultural order what it needs you and others not to know" has become an indispensable moral maxim.

[Anonymous No.18764595]

>>18764548
What degrees and kinds of tension and conflict are engendered by the incompatibilities of established role requirements and the demands of the virtues varies of course from social order to social order. There are societies in which the potentiality for such conflict has not yet been realized, societies in which conflict has been effectively contained, societies in which conflict has disrupted and fragmented, sometimes creatively, sometimes destructively. So that often a key moral question is that of how best to find our way through conflict. Notice also that the dimensions of moral conflict are more than moral, at least if morality is narrowly conceived: they are moral-cum-political, moral-cum-economic, moral-cum-religious, indeed sometimes moral-cum-religious-cum-political-cum-economic; and remember too that the established norms and values with which we may be invited to enter into conflict will commonly be to some large degree our own norms and values, the norms and values by which we have hitherto been guided. So that initially at least that conflict will be within each of us. (Such conflict is not only a matter of incompatibility between two sets of practically embodied norms and values. It is also a matter of a certain resistance to critical questioning that claims about the limitations and errors of the standpoint of the established order are apt to evoke. And we may in some cases be misled about the nature and degree of such resistance, if we are naive in our identification of the norms and values of the established order. For there are types of social order, including our own, in which those norms themselves not only legitimate but encourage questioning, criticism, and protest, so that the set of approved social roles includes such roles as those of the Indignant Protester and the Angry Young Person and activities of criticism and protest are themselves governed by prescribed routines. We need then to draw a line between conflict or apparent conflict that is internal to and in no way a threat to an established order and conflict that is more radical, conflict that genuinely raises the question of whether established roles and routines can or cannot be justified in the light of the best account we have of the human good. It is conflict of this latter kind that social orders may need to contain or suppress, if they are to continue functioning as they have done.)

[Anonymous No.18764627]

>>18764548
This is from "Social Structures and Their Threats to Moral Agency" in Essays and Politics: Selected Essays, Volume 2

[Anonymous No.18765080]

>>18764548
>"Ask about your own social and cultural order what it needs you and others not to know" has become an indispensable moral maxim.
So, what facts of relevance to morality might our society not want us to know? Please no racism, sexism, homophobia, etc. If you'd like to state a fact, state it without judgement or vitriol. Try to state it using language that would not invite censure.

[Anonymous No.18765158]

Wow so he read what, past book 4 of Politeia and the myth of the different ores?
radical insight there anglo.

[Anonymous No.18765186]

>>18765158
Are you okay?

[Anonymous No.18765769]

bump

[Anonymous No.18765937]

>>18764548
>>18764595
so what exactly is he saying here? i can't decipher like 90% of this trumped up garbage. some of his points seem almost like inventive descriptions of common sense ideas, like that of conflict having a prescribed moral role. i'd also just disagree with his conclusion entirely. i think more radical conflict is necessary specifically because it's destructive to the status quo... macintyre is basically saying the only kinds of moral conflict that we should not suppress are those with roles prescribed by that very same status quo... nonsensical. this guy's a hack.

[Anonymous No.18765974]

>>18765937
You can't decipher it? Perhaps you should read the whole thing: https://www.scribd.com/document/224025328/AMacIntyre-Socialstructures

[Anonymous No.18765983]

>>18765974
would pirating this essay be a sanctioned act within macintyre's moral calculus because i'm not subscribing to no scribd 30 day cock and ball torture retreat trial my retarded neoplatonist friend

[Anonymous No.18765991]

>>18765983
Go ahead and pirate it. Also, MacIntyre isn't a Neo-Platonist. He's a Neo-Peripatetic.

[Anonymous No.18765998]

>>18765991
i made your mom a neo-paraplegic when i fucked her last night

[Anonymous No.18766099]

>>18765998
You must be at least 18 to post here.

[Anonymous No.18766382]

Bump for anons who can understand MacIntyre.

[Anonymous No.18766772]

I'm sorry OP the first thought I had was anti-Capitalist lol. There are so many patterns we fall into just because it makes someone money. Don't know what the alternative is though

[Anonymous No.18766910]

>>18765937
>so what exactly is he saying here? i can't decipher like 90% of this trumped up garbage. some of his points seem almost like inventive descriptions of common sense ideas, like that of conflict having a prescribed moral role. i'd also just disagree with his conclusion entirely. i think more radical conflict is necessary specifically because it's destructive to the status quo... macintyre is basically saying the only kinds of moral conflict that we should not suppress are those with roles prescribed by that very same status quo... nonsensical. this guy's a hack.
holy shit i thought i was the only guy here who didnt read LMAO

[Anonymous No.18767111]

So Amazon warehouse workers, for example, are morally responsible for supporting the environmental damage, poor working conditions, etc. of Amazon, and neither ignorance of what Amazon does nor the fact that it's also Amazon's responsibility makes the worker blameless, like the workers on trains that transported Jews to concentration camps aren't blameless whether they're told what was in the trains or not because they have the responsibility to question these things?

[Anonymous No.18767206]

>>18764548
>people pay this guy money for him to babble about nonsense in his boomer, pseudo-intellectual way of speaking just so they can say "hmm ah yes!", clap and then completely forget about him 2 hours later

[Anonymous No.18767595]

Thank you for sharing this essay I’d never encountered, OP. I just finished it, having found the excerpts you posted a bit confusing out of context. Not sure what to say exactly, as whatever I can say MacIntyre’s said better, but it provided one of the more succinct instances of his defense and definition of the virtues — i.e., those sets of moral standards and attitudes which are not bound to a particular social role and excellence within it — that I’ d found, as well as an especially helpful account of the contemporary subject and its ethical constitution that I will be returning to. I did like that he didn’t make what I’m calling “constitution” or others have called “production” or “construction” a wholly passive or mechanical process, and foregrounded the responsibility of the subject, using its capacity for adaptation and flexibility — that most notorious of contemporary pseudo-virtues, the post-Fordist nomad chameleon — as evidence of the subject’s (at least semi-)conscious collaboration in cooperation with a guilty social and cultural set of norms.

non-Scribd link here for those interested: https://moscow.sci-hub.st/2202/44cedee1dfbe8f1eb8ddb8466d3e6506/[e-mail]#navpanes=0&view=FitH

>>18766772
That’s exactly what he’s getting at in the essay. See the example of the power company exec’s divided self, or how death is alternately dealt with by a grieving family, the lawyers encouraging the family to sue, and the executives at the car company that made the car that caused the death.

>>18767111
No. If you’d like to read it that way, it’s Amazon management and executives that are culpable.

[Anonymous No.18767831]

>>18767595
Good on you for figuring out what he meant. Is this quote really so confusing out of context? I've read the essay twice, and both times was awestruck at how MacIntyre manages to break the most iron-clad taboo of our society and get away with it, but I didn't think he was that cryptic.
>that most notorious of contemporary pseudo-virtues, the post-Fordist nomad chameleon — as evidence of the subject’s (at least semi-)conscious collaboration in cooperation with a guilty social and cultural set of norms.
Yes, this is what brings me back to the essay again and again. He tacitly states that, while the German did not possess the resources necessary to act as a moral agent, we not only possess those resources, but are also involved in a constant act of rejection of the use of those resources. The conclusion to be drawn is obvious. He also essentially argues that criticism and opposition in our society (Angry Young Person, Indignant Protester) are generally not genuine, but are a part of the social order as it has deliberately constituted itself.
The other amazing thing is the question to which I drew attention earlier in the thread. There are various things that our society needs us not to know in order for us to not be able to act as fully conscious moral agents. All those who have run up against these walls know what they are. They also know that it is impossible to point at their existence directly without running up against an even stronger version of the same wall. But MacIntyre has somehow found a way to point at these walls, tell us that we are asking the right questions, and that we should actively seek to understand what is beyond them.
Besides MacIntyre, I've only found material this potent in the work of Leo Strauss and his students. Do you know of anyone else this powerful?

[Anonymous No.18768841]

bump

[Anonymous No.18768971]

>>18765998
lame

[Anonymous No.18769683]

>>18767831
I didn't mean to say he's a cryptic writer—if anything, I think he's painstakingly and refreshingly clear. I meant that the quoted paragraphs were difficult to make sense of outside of their place within his argument as a whole, and without knowing what he means by "integrity" and "constancy," etc.

While I'm with you on the severity of our moment and MacIntyre's perceptiveness, I do disagree with your interpretation of the essay, and would invite you to read the last three pages again. As I understood it, he's actually saying that we are in a worse situation than the "jemand" in terms of "possess[ing] the resources necessary to act as a moral agent," as you put it. J was at least able to phrase his moral judgment—as Kantian parody—from a first person standpoint. In our contemporary situation, as MacIntyre writes, "[j]udgments about compartmentalization and its effects upon the lives of those subject to it are necessarily third-person judgments delivered from some standpoint that has escaped those effects. J was able to deliver judgment on the organization of his social life in the first person."

This paragraph makes the point more forcefully:
"I take the social structures of compartmentalization, although peculiar to the late twentieth century, to be more generally instructive, just because they provide us with a case at the extremes, a case in which, after compartmentalization has progressed beyond a certain point, many agents exhibit no awareness of responsibilities beyond those assigned to them by their roles in each particular sphere of activity, while in their practical reasoning they admit as premises only those considerations sanctioned in each context by the norms defining and governing those roles. Their lives express the social and cultural order that they inhabit in such a way that they have become unable to recognize, let alone to transcend its limitations. They do not have the resources that would enable them to move to an independent standpoint."

As for other thinkers who are as incisive on these matters, I'd recommend Richard Sennett and some of Stiegler's works, but none really come close to MacIntyre. He's in a class of his own. As for the Straussians, I think they can be the best of exegetes—Benardete and Rosen especially—but the neo-cons in the Mansfield/Kristol orbit I find at best embarrassing, and criminal at worst. Matthew 6:24, etc., etc.

[Anonymous No.18770483]

bump

[Anonymous No.18771423]

>>18769683
I'll get back to you soon.

[Anonymous No.18771925]

Great thread, gonna read the MacIntyre essay, bumping.

[Anonymous No.18772461]

>>18769683
>I didn't mean to say he's a cryptic writer—if anything, I think he's painstakingly and refreshingly clear. I meant that the quoted paragraphs were difficult to make sense of outside of their place within his argument as a whole, and without knowing what he means by "integrity" and "constancy," etc.
I see, that is my fault.
Concerning compartmentalization, see this comment of his:
"I conclude that what I earlier characterized as lacks or absences of the divided selves of a compartmentalized social order are better described as active refusals and denials. The divided self is complicit with others in bringing about its own divided states and so can be justly regarded as their co-author. It and those others can justifiably be called to account for what they have jointly made of themselves. They may indeed inhabit a type of social and cultural order whose structures to some large degree inhibit the exercise of the powers of moral agency. But they share in responsibility for having made themselves into the kind of diminished agent that they are. Their responsibility is that of co-conspirators, engaged together in a conspiracy that functions so that they can lead blamelessly compliant lives, able plausibly to plead lack of knowledge of as well as lack of control over outcomes for which they might otherwise be held jointly responsible. Their lack of knowledge and their lack of control are often real enough, an inescapable outcome of the structuring of roles and responsibilities in a compartmentalized social order. But they are, so I have argued, responsible and accountable for making it the case that they do not know and that they lack certain powers. They are not passive victims."
>As for other thinkers who are as incisive on these matters, I'd recommend Richard Sennett and some of Stiegler's works, but none really come close to MacIntyre. He's in a class of his own
I hadn't heard of Sennett or Stiegler. I'll have to check them out sometime. Are there any particular texts of theirs that you recommend?
>As for the Straussians, I think they can be the best of exegetes—Benardete and Rosen especially—
Yes, I really admire that about them, though it can honestly be easy to forget that their prescriptions are not common sense if one does not look at the results of other schools of thought.
>but the neo-cons in the Mansfield/Kristol orbit I find at best embarrassing, and criminal at worst
What's the deal with Mansfield, actually? I found Arthur Melzer's complete silence on him in Philosophy Between the Lines to be a bit surprising, and perhaps indicative of a less than enthusiastic appraisal of his work. I've also heard of him making comments concerning grade inflation and other matters which are not particularly relevant to the Straussian project. Is his work not considered good? What, in particular, are your thoughts on his work on Machiavelli?

[Anonymous No.18773645]

>>18772461
That passage is great; exactly the one I was making a nod to in my first post. And again, thanks for sharing the essay. As for the figures I mentioned, Sennett’s Fall of Public Man and Stiegler’s States of Shock and the Disbelief and Discredit series (esp. the second volume) would be good places to start. As for the Straussians, again, I think one has to separate the ideologues—the Mansfield, Kristol, Bloom, Hoover Institute camp—from the scholars—like Benardete, Rosen, Lampert, Zuckert, etc.—who were shaped mainly by Strauss’ hermeneutical outlook. If one’s genuinely concerned with the moral and cultural crisis (or degradation/decline, if you’d like to put it that way) of the Global North/“West,” the former only offer pseudo-solutions, empty and cynical gestures towards “traditional values” (narrowly defined) like “manliness,” as well as appeals to the same market imperatives and barbaric militarism that helped get these societies into the mess they’re in. Don’t have too much to say about Mansfield on Machiavelli. From what I read, it seemed unenlightening and mostly a cypher for him to make other ill-advised points about the separation of powers and executive branch in the U.S. today. And no, he’s not considered good outside of craven conservative policy circles and think tanks institutes in their orbit.

[Anonymous No.18773651]

>>18773645
think tanks and institutes*

Anyway, nice that /lit/ is slow enough these days to MacIntyre post. Another great overlooked essay by him I’d recommend is one called “The Logical Status of Religious Belief” in an old collection called “Metaphysical Beliefs.”

[Anonymous No.18773819]

>>18773645
>That passage is great; exactly the one I was making a nod to in my first post
He says right there that we deliberately refuse to exercise what moral agency we have, and can therefore be held responsible. The implication is that we can be held responsible to a greater degree than J. But this is not a conclusion that can be stated in public without immolating your life and career, so he has done so indirectly.
>From what I read, it seemed unenlightening and mostly a cypher for him to make other ill-advised points about the separation of powers and executive branch in the U.S. today.
If that's the case, then where can I go to get a genuinely Straussian take on Machiavelli, other than Thoughts on Machiavelli?
>>18773651
>Another great overlooked essay by him I’d recommend is one called “The Logical Status of Religious Belief” in an old collection called “Metaphysical Beliefs.”
I'll make sure to take a look at that very soon.

[Anonymous No.18774137]

>>18773819
Yes, we are more culpable and you’re right to point out the exoteric/esoteric levels of his thought in this regard. Great observation. But I was just suggesting that it’s not because we have more “resources” as you had put it, but because in actively reproducing our own conditions of passivity and excusing them, we continually deprive ourselves of those resources. I think the most important point here is his argument that we’ve even elided the place of the first person, the subject, in questions of moral judgment. The tendency towards “compartmentalization” already on display prior to and during J’s time, so corrosive for moral responsibility and agency—see Kracauer's "Salaried Masses" on this—has now reached fever pitch, no longer accompanied by even the pretense or parody of a discourse that presented ethical obligations other than those bound to social roles, i.e. responsibilities of the self/soul/"I" that demanded one speak in the first person when justifying moral judgments. In other words, in J's case, his moral duty to fulfill his specific social role was grounded by the first person statement—itself grounded within a tradition and discourse, no matter how disfigured—that the proper moral way to act as a subject as such is that “I” must do my duty, or, fulfill the requirements of my social role. We’ve jettisoned that first person grounding, or, personal responsibility as such. And we’re socially—and personally—responsible for that.

>where can I go to get a genuinely Straussian take on Machiavelli, other than Thoughts on Machiavelli?
Zuckert’s book Machiavelli’s Politics

[Anonymous No.18774232]

>>18773819
Should add that I came off a bit glib on Mansfield. To be fair, his more in-the-weeds work on Machiavelli is fairly respected in certain specialist circles, and I was mostly thinking of Taming the Prince in my comment about executive power (that’s the focus of the book), but in my experience I haven’t found that his work as a whole is considered good outside of some fringes usually connected to the kinds of groups and institutions I mentioned. And that division of Straussians I made is obviously rough and heuristic and one will find overlap, but if you’re interested in that topic at all, Lampert’s Enduring Importance of Leo Strauss is a good read.

[Anonymous No.18775069]

>>18774137
>I think the most important point here is his argument that we’ve even elided the place of the first person, the subject, in questions of moral judgment.
This is, then, a reason why he discusses the question of the competence of individuals to make such judgements in a prior section? We have elided the individual, and now no one thinks that they are competent, or "have the right to," make such ethical judgements for themselves. MacIntyre then goes on to show that people can be competent to make such judgements under certain circumstances. Is that his scheme?
>>18774232
>To be fair, his more in-the-weeds work on Machiavelli is fairly respected in certain specialist circles
You're being very vague here. Which specialists respect his work on Machiavelli?
>Lampert’s Enduring Importance of Leo Strauss is a good read.
I'll take a look at that. Thanks for all the recommendations.
By the way, since you seem to be in the know, what are Straussians like as people? What are they like to work with?

[Anonymous No.18775572]

>>18775069
Sorry for being vague. I meant that I’ve come across citations of some of his essays in different texts on Machiavelli, including the one I mentioned by Catherine Zuckert. Mark Jurdjevic, a historian working on Florentine political culture in Machiavelli’s time, and John P. McCormick, a political scientist whose research on early republicanism I consulted immediately come to mind.

[Anonymous No.18775682]

I think the biggest thing that we rely on not knowing is that this civilization is doomed to be destroyed in the next generation and if we somehow live to die of old age, it'll be under an entirely different system. It's impossible to run an actual civilization if people don't expect to 'reap what they sow' and watch their children grow up with similar values to what they established. That lack of understanding is what drove that moron yesterday to sperg out so hard when I criticized elder worship, he actually thinks he will be paid back for his thankless simping and see a social security check with his name on it one day.

[Anonymous No.18775765]

>>18775069
I wouldn't be able to adequately reconstruct the scheme of the argument now, but I do want to note that MacIntyre's not bemoaning the loss of "the individual" and prescribing its revaluation in the abstract as a remedy. That loss of personal moral responsibility—in our overwhelmingly individualistic times—is a social and collective problem, symptomatic of a culture that does not have milieus, institutions, and traditions within which to present, frame, and effectively deal with the central conflict that underpins moral agency: the conflict between our social structure and the goods of its roles and duties on the one hand, and the virtues, those universally human goods that transcend the former, on the other. Alternately: the conflict between the city of man and the city of God. It requires experimentation not only with rehabilitating the virtues in our cultural vocabulary but with collectively constructing new milieus and organizational arrangements that could effectively bring that conflict to bear upon the social structures we inhabit: new Benedicts, as he put it elsewhere.

[Anonymous No.18775972]

>>18775682
What exactly do you mean by "this civilization?" I do not think that the West is going to disappear any time soon. There is nothing left outside of it.

[Anonymous No.18776061]

>>18775682
I think about this constantly, the effects that this incessant denial has on a generation… this vague sense of (scientifically verifiable) doom you know is coming, and you see happening already, but that you can’t fully grasp. The feeling that there’s no future.

>>18775972
Not that anon but I assume he means “civilization” in general, not any particular one. It’s already begun in places like India.

[Anonymous No.18776064]

>>18775972
At the most basic level, I mean a system that cares that you paid into the social security system and gives you any kind of credit. In a grander sense I mean a civilization that is under the American flag, uses US dollars, has a bill of rights, respects property rights, has a population of hundreds of millions, etc.

[Anonymous No.18776066]

>>18776061
Oh and to continue this post, and to add to the other anon’s who mentioned Amazon workers and climate change earlier: this is what First Reformed was about.

[Anonymous No.18776072]

>>18776061
I meant the one I'm in, the United States of America. This could apply to other places but many are so used to regime change that it's just part of their worldview and they get used to chaos.

[Anonymous No.18776472]

>>18775972
>There is nothing left outside of it.
what did he mean by this

[Anonymous No.18777496]

>>18776472
I cannot state my full views on the subject, but if we look at the ideas that have seized the rest of the planet, I suspect that we will find that they are all of modern Western origin. What, for instance, are we to say of a country the leader of which mandates the reading of Marx and makes constant references to socialism and historical materialism?
>>18776061
>>18776066
>It’s already begun in places like India.
What is happening in India? Is civilization beginning to collapse there?
>>18776064
>>18776072
So you are referring to modern bourgeois civilization in its postwar incarnation?

[Anonymous No.18777499]

>>18775765
>but with collectively constructing new milieus and organizational arrangements that could effectively bring that conflict to bear upon the social structures we inhabit: new Benedicts, as he put it elsewhere.
Has he ever commented on political structures and their threats to this project, if only to point in the direction of those who have dealt with such issues?

[Anonymous No.18777575]

>>18777499
Yes. See ch. 11 of Dependent Rational Animals and chs. 16-18 of After Virtue for some good instances of that. He writes elsewhere in a small response to an essay from a symposium on his work that he relies, in addition to Marx, on Polanyi’s “Great Transformation” for the historical narrative in the background of his reflections on morality, so if you're looking for others he’s pointed at, start there.

Anyway, really enjoyed this chaotic thread and discussing the essay. I’ve been sick and in a bit of a fog, so I hope my posts weren’t too unwieldy or incoherent. Always appreciate the chance to discuss MacIntyre.

[Anonymous No.18778536]

>>18777575
Thank you for your substantive contributions. It's quite rare to see someone with your level of knowledge around here. I post threads about MacIntyre and Leo Strauss every so often, so please do join next time if you are able.

[Anonymous No.18778902]

bump

[Anonymous No.18778960]

>>18777496
Shut the fuck up you autistic redditor, you're impressing no one by trying to shoehorn in what you think are advanced concepts into basic ideas that you're clearly strugging to understand as it is.

[Anonymous No.18779023]

>>18778960
What are you talking about?

[Anonymous No.18779324]

>>18765080
>"Tell me what topics are taboo in this society, but don't you dare raise any taboo topics."

[Anonymous No.18780239]

>>18779324
No, just do so in a manner that will not get anyone in trouble.

[Anonymous No.18780250]

>>18764548
>>18764595

It would be great if posters prefaced these quotes somehow, hell, why not a TL:DR. In addition they might also introduce paragraphs. It's frustrating to try to decipher whether one ought to be interested in [text] from [philosopher].

[Anonymous No.18780309]

>>18780250
Don't be lazy. We're not going to do the work for you;

[Anonymous No.18781137]

>>18780309
It's not my job to listen to you lol

[Anonymous No.18781148]

>>18780239
You really are stupid

[Anonymous No.18781273]

>>18781137
Filtering is more common than you might think.
>>18781148
Nope! Consider the phenomenon of esoteric writing which was alluded to earlier in this thread.

[Anonymous No.18781295]

>>18781273
Consider the fact that you are a retard

[Anonymous No.18781448]

>>18781295
Thanks for bumping the thread.

[Anonymous No.18781488]

>>18779324
"What a social order needs you and others not to know" is not identical to taboos. Incest and pedophilia are taboo, but it's not clear to me that our social order needs to conceal something in order for them to remain that way. A more realistic view of what your social order needs you not to know is not controversial opinions or taboos, but rather subjects that are not even spoken of--neither to praise or condemn them.

[Anonymous No.18781668]

>>18781488
It's amazing how with all this hot air, none of you can come up with actual examples of something that is so fucking easy to come up with examples of.

[Anonymous No.18781679]

>>18781488
>but rather subjects that are not even spoken of--neither to praise or condemn them
And also, I think, subjects which, if brought up, cannot be discussed productively. There are questions which, if asked, will immediately result in censure, as if thinking about the issue were itself a problem. And there are also subjects around which there is a great deal of confusion, such that the only acceptable answers to such questions, if there are acceptable answers, bear a relationship to reality which some people may be given to question.

[Anonymous No.18781886]

>>18781668
How often have you had a good experience discussing such questions openly?

[Anonymous No.18781919]

>>18781886
All the time both IRL and online, just not with autistic midwits like you who use walls of wordsalad to cope for not being able to actually think.

[Anonymous No.18781970]

>>18781919
If you're not having trouble discussing these issues, you are either in a fringe community, or you are not saying anything unacceptable.

[Anonymous No.18782104]

>>18779324
i will tell you what is taboo in society and i WILL raise taboo topics
1. women are not meant for positions of leadership
2. niggers commit more crime than "white" americans
3. the native americans deserved worse than they got
4. men cant become women and women cant become men
5. there shouldn't be a legal age of marriage

[Anonymous No.18782214]

>>18782104
Please don't sully my thread with such statements. Also consider that you will never get anyone to accept these positions, because they are essentially floating on hot air. They are based on nothing. There are no firm first principles from which you can reason to arrive at them, and certainly none that anyone other than your friends on this and other websites would accept. So stop speaking in this way.

[Anonymous No.18782231]

>>18782104
>women are not meant for positions of leadership
Germany has been led by a woman for the past few years and it seems to be doing fine.

>2. niggers commit more crime than "white" americans
Nobody disagrees with this. It's just that /pol/tards believe committing crime is some essential aspect of being black, when it isn't.

>the native americans deserved worse than they got
Because?

>men cant become women and women cant become men
Gender is something you're recognized as, more than some essential characteristic of your being.

>there shouldn't be a legal age of marriage
So we should let a 50 year old man marry a 5 year old?

Also, none of these are really taboos. They're just dumb opinions.

[Anonymous No.18782873]

>>18782231
>Germany has been led by a woman for the past few years and it seems to be doing fine
stopped reading here, top tier bait tranny

[Anonymous No.18784050]

>>18782873
Thanks for bumping the thread.

[Anonymous No.18784693]

One last bump.

[Anonymous No.18785289]

.

[Anonymous No.18786210]

bump