To the extent that the blame/judgment subplot has gotten itself into a weird narrative bind where only a tiny subset are subject to it, the narrative mechanism has broken, and either needs to be fixed, or other parts of the mechanism need to pick up the slack.
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I think I know why we're in this condition. The thing is, ideologies only accept accountability for loci of agency they see as legitimate, so everything that happens at other loci is the fault of people who see agency there as legitimate.
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ie if your philosophy only recognizes the legitimacy of individual agency in personal life, then collective failures are obviously the fault of collectivists.
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Usually, this wonderful leap of logic involves attributing god-like correct functioning and infallibility to an emergent mechanism at the higher levels which would work great if only humans would cede all agency to the Higher Power at that level. Markets, gods, take your pick.
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I'm blameless and doing everything right wherever I'm responsible for my actions. There exists a higher power that *would* do everything right if only we'd let it. Some evil people don't let it. They're to blame for everything wrong at other levels.
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Thinking about how to get past this condition. I have no good ideas at present, but I'm thinking a first design commitment is to take agency abdicators at their word. If they want animal levels of non-culpability, even if it sounds insulting to me, let them claim it. Move on.
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The implication is that I wouldn't attempt to argue with them anymore than I would attempt to argue with my cat. My cat does his cat-tricks to try to manipulate me, I do my human-tricks to prevail. Hard to say this in non-pejorative way... but I'm very nice to animals.
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Replying to @vgr
Alec Resnick Retweeted Venkatesh Rao
Wow I love this point about loci of agency, legitimacy and accountabilityhttps://twitter.com/vgr/status/1228117353772146688 …
Alec Resnick added,
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Do you have suggestions about where I could go to read more about it?
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(e.g. Qualitative analyses of such instances, psychosocial analyses of why it happens, sociological/political analyses of how to leverage it, etc.)
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Not sure... I just made up the point myself. Presumably there are psychologists who've researched feelings of agency and mental models of assumed scope thereof.
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Replying to @vgr
It feels very big, though sorting out the arrow of causality seems subtle. Regardless, the connection between mechanisms of agency and mechanisms of legitimacy is great.
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