Yes, although it would help if you could be a bit more specific, the term is somewhat overloaded.
As for the strategy, depends. Find a better community (than the one you feel alienated from) in the sense of better matching values? We both seem to feel quite at home in this one (for me, if not for the suffocating supremacy of EA).
I meant alienated from society at large, not from LW, although the influence of society at large obviously affects discussion on LW.
One aspect of my feeling is that I increasingly suspect that the fundamental reason people believe things in the political realm is that they feel a powerful psychological need to justify hatred. The naive view of political psychology is that people form ideological beliefs out of their experience and perceptions of the world, and those beliefs suggest that a certain category of people is harming the world, and so therefore they are justified in feeling hatred against that category of people. But my new view is that causality flows in the opposite direction: people feel hatred as a primal psychological urge, and so their conscious forebrain is forced to concoct an ideology that justifies the hatred while still allowing the individual to maintain a positive pro-social self-image.
This theory is partially testable, because it posits that a basic prerequisite of an ideology is that it identifies an out-group and justifies hatred against that out-group.
There is a quote commonly mis-attributed to August Bebel and indeed to Marx: “Antisemitismus ist der Sozialismus des dummen Kerls.” (“Antisemitism is the socialism of the stupid guy”, or perhaps colloquially, “Antisemitism is a dumb-ass version of socialism”) That is to say, politically naïve people were attracted to antisemitism because it offered them someone to blame for the problems they faced under capitalism, which — to the quoted speaker’s view, anyway — would be better remedied by changing the political-economic structure.
Jay Smooth recently put out a video, “Moving the Race Conversation Forward”, discussing recent research to the effect that mainstream-media discussions of racial issues tend to get bogged down in talking about whether an individual did or said something racist, as opposed to whether institutions and social structures produce racially biased outcomes.
There are probably other sources for similar ideas from around the political spectra. (I’ll cheerfully admit that the above two sources are rather lefter than I am, and I just couldn’t be arsed to find two rightish ones to fit the politesse of balance.) People do often look for individuals or out-groups to blame for problems caused by economic conditions, social structures, institutions, and so on. The individuals blamed may have precious little to do with the actual problems.
That said, if someone’s looking to place blame for a problem, that does suggest the problem is real. It’s not that they’re inventing the problem in order to have something to pin on an out-group. (It also doesn’t mean that a particular structural claim, Marxist or whatever, is correct on what that problem really is — just that the problem is not itself confabulated.)
There is a quote commonly mis-attributed to August Bebel and indeed to Marx: “Antisemitismus ist der Sozialismus des dummen Kerls.” (“Antisemitism is the socialism of the stupid guy”, or perhaps colloquially, “Antisemitism is a dumb-ass version of socialism”) That is to say, politically naïve people were attracted to antisemitism because it offered them someone to blame for the problems they faced under capitalism, which — to the quoted speaker’s view, anyway — would be better remedied by changing the political-economic structure.
Does that make socialism the anti-semitism of the smart? Or perhaps of the ambitious—they’re attracted to it because it gives them an enemy big enough to justify taking over everything?
Sure, obviously there are real problems in the world. Your examples seem to support my thesis that people believe in ideologies not because those ideologies are capable of solving the problems, but because the ideologies justify their feelings of hatred.
I suppose I see it as more a case of biased search: people have actual problems, and look for explanations and solutions to those problems, but have a bias towards explanations that have to do with blaming someone. The closer someone studies the actual problems, though, the less credibility blame-based explanations have.
The part where the emotional needs come first, and the ideological belief comes later as a way of expressing and justifying them, that feels credible. I just don’t think that everyone starts from the position of hatred (or, in the naive view, not everyone ends with hatred). There are other emotions, too.
But maybe the people motivated by hatred make a large part of the most mindkilled crowd. Because other emotions can be expressed legitimately also outside of the politics.
Tentatively: Look for what “and therefore” you’ve got associated with the feeling. Possibilities that come to my mind—and therefore people are frightening, or and therefore I should be angry at them all the time, or and therefore I should just hide, or and therefore I shouldn’t be seeing this.
In any case, if you’ve got an “and therefore” and you make it conscious, you might be able to think better about the feeling.
Feeling usually become a problem when you resist them.
My general approach with feelings:
Find someone towards which you can express the content behind the feeling. This works best in person. Online communication isn’t good for resolving feelings. Speak openly about whatever comes to mind.
Track the feeling down in your body. Be aware where it happens to be. Then release it.
I think this feeling arises from social norms feeling unnatural to you. This feeling should be expected if your interests are relevant to this site, since people are not trying to be rational by default.
The difference between a pathetic misfit and and an admirable eccentric is their level of awesomeness. If you become good enough at anything relevant to other people, you don’t have to live through their social expectations. Conform to the norms or rise above them.
Note that I think most social norms are nice to have, but this doesn’t mean there aren’t enough of the kind that make me feel alienated. It could be that the feeling of alienation is a necessary side effect of some beneficial cognitive change, in which case I’d try to cherish the feeling. I’ve found that rising to a leadership position diminishes the feeling significantly, however.
I think that feeling is more common than you might think. Especially if you deviate enough from the societal norm (which Less Wrong generally does).
My general strategy for dealing with is social interaction with people who’ll probably understand. Just talk it over with them. It’s best if you do this with people you care about. It doesn’t have to be in person, if you’ve got someone relevant on Skype, that works as well.
Hmm, this is probably good advice. Part of my problem is that my entire family is made up of people who are both 1) Passionate advocates of an American political tribe and 2) Not very sophisticated philosophically.
A common condition with geeks in general and aspiring rationalists in particular, I’d say.
I’ve recently been expanding my network of like-minded people both by going to the local meetups and also by being invited in a Skype group for tumblr rationalists.
I know that a feeling of alienation isn’t conductive to meeting new people, so I’m not sure I can offer other advice. Contact some friends who might be open to new ideas? I’d offer to help myself, but I’m not sure if I’m the right person to talk to. (In any case, I’ve PM’d my Skype name if you do need a complete stranger to talk to.)
Does anyone else experience the feeling of alienation? And does anyone have a good strategy for dealing with it?
Yes, although it would help if you could be a bit more specific, the term is somewhat overloaded.
As for the strategy, depends. Find a better community (than the one you feel alienated from) in the sense of better matching values? We both seem to feel quite at home in this one (for me, if not for the suffocating supremacy of EA).
I meant alienated from society at large, not from LW, although the influence of society at large obviously affects discussion on LW.
One aspect of my feeling is that I increasingly suspect that the fundamental reason people believe things in the political realm is that they feel a powerful psychological need to justify hatred. The naive view of political psychology is that people form ideological beliefs out of their experience and perceptions of the world, and those beliefs suggest that a certain category of people is harming the world, and so therefore they are justified in feeling hatred against that category of people. But my new view is that causality flows in the opposite direction: people feel hatred as a primal psychological urge, and so their conscious forebrain is forced to concoct an ideology that justifies the hatred while still allowing the individual to maintain a positive pro-social self-image.
This theory is partially testable, because it posits that a basic prerequisite of an ideology is that it identifies an out-group and justifies hatred against that out-group.
There is a quote commonly mis-attributed to August Bebel and indeed to Marx: “Antisemitismus ist der Sozialismus des dummen Kerls.” (“Antisemitism is the socialism of the stupid guy”, or perhaps colloquially, “Antisemitism is a dumb-ass version of socialism”) That is to say, politically naïve people were attracted to antisemitism because it offered them someone to blame for the problems they faced under capitalism, which — to the quoted speaker’s view, anyway — would be better remedied by changing the political-economic structure.
Jay Smooth recently put out a video, “Moving the Race Conversation Forward”, discussing recent research to the effect that mainstream-media discussions of racial issues tend to get bogged down in talking about whether an individual did or said something racist, as opposed to whether institutions and social structures produce racially biased outcomes.
There are probably other sources for similar ideas from around the political spectra. (I’ll cheerfully admit that the above two sources are rather lefter than I am, and I just couldn’t be arsed to find two rightish ones to fit the politesse of balance.) People do often look for individuals or out-groups to blame for problems caused by economic conditions, social structures, institutions, and so on. The individuals blamed may have precious little to do with the actual problems.
That said, if someone’s looking to place blame for a problem, that does suggest the problem is real. It’s not that they’re inventing the problem in order to have something to pin on an out-group. (It also doesn’t mean that a particular structural claim, Marxist or whatever, is correct on what that problem really is — just that the problem is not itself confabulated.)
Does that make socialism the anti-semitism of the smart? Or perhaps of the ambitious—they’re attracted to it because it gives them an enemy big enough to justify taking over everything?
I’ve seen it phrased as “Anti-semitism is the socialism of fools”.
Sure, obviously there are real problems in the world. Your examples seem to support my thesis that people believe in ideologies not because those ideologies are capable of solving the problems, but because the ideologies justify their feelings of hatred.
I suppose I see it as more a case of biased search: people have actual problems, and look for explanations and solutions to those problems, but have a bias towards explanations that have to do with blaming someone. The closer someone studies the actual problems, though, the less credibility blame-based explanations have.
The part where the emotional needs come first, and the ideological belief comes later as a way of expressing and justifying them, that feels credible. I just don’t think that everyone starts from the position of hatred (or, in the naive view, not everyone ends with hatred). There are other emotions, too.
But maybe the people motivated by hatred make a large part of the most mindkilled crowd. Because other emotions can be expressed legitimately also outside of the politics.
Do you have an in-person community that you feel close to?
What I’m trying to get at is, does it bother you specifically that you are alienated from “society at large,” or do you feel alienated in general?
Tentatively: Look for what “and therefore” you’ve got associated with the feeling. Possibilities that come to my mind—and therefore people are frightening, or and therefore I should be angry at them all the time, or and therefore I should just hide, or and therefore I shouldn’t be seeing this.
In any case, if you’ve got an “and therefore” and you make it conscious, you might be able to think better about the feeling.
But of course.
Accept that you’re not average and not even typical.
Feeling usually become a problem when you resist them.
My general approach with feelings:
Find someone towards which you can express the content behind the feeling. This works best in person. Online communication isn’t good for resolving feelings. Speak openly about whatever comes to mind.
Track the feeling down in your body. Be aware where it happens to be. Then release it.
I think this feeling arises from social norms feeling unnatural to you. This feeling should be expected if your interests are relevant to this site, since people are not trying to be rational by default.
The difference between a pathetic misfit and and an admirable eccentric is their level of awesomeness. If you become good enough at anything relevant to other people, you don’t have to live through their social expectations. Conform to the norms or rise above them.
Note that I think most social norms are nice to have, but this doesn’t mean there aren’t enough of the kind that make me feel alienated. It could be that the feeling of alienation is a necessary side effect of some beneficial cognitive change, in which case I’d try to cherish the feeling. I’ve found that rising to a leadership position diminishes the feeling significantly, however.
I think that feeling is more common than you might think. Especially if you deviate enough from the societal norm (which Less Wrong generally does).
My general strategy for dealing with is social interaction with people who’ll probably understand. Just talk it over with them. It’s best if you do this with people you care about. It doesn’t have to be in person, if you’ve got someone relevant on Skype, that works as well.
Hmm, this is probably good advice. Part of my problem is that my entire family is made up of people who are both 1) Passionate advocates of an American political tribe and 2) Not very sophisticated philosophically.
A common condition with geeks in general and aspiring rationalists in particular, I’d say.
I’ve recently been expanding my network of like-minded people both by going to the local meetups and also by being invited in a Skype group for tumblr rationalists.
I know that a feeling of alienation isn’t conductive to meeting new people, so I’m not sure I can offer other advice. Contact some friends who might be open to new ideas? I’d offer to help myself, but I’m not sure if I’m the right person to talk to. (In any case, I’ve PM’d my Skype name if you do need a complete stranger to talk to.)