I'd say my animal instincts make me care and my imaginative mind makes me look for meaning in all of this. Still, trying to be more and more carefree every day.
What does " impactful " mean? I have been speaking English for 70 years, and it's meaningless to me. What is being impacted? wisdom tooth? A collision?
I find it conceptually very *caring* that an academic philosopher - who is focused on profilicity research - engages in direct development of a profile (and openly points out to it).
I'm reminded of R.D. Laing's definition of love, that it "let's the other be, but with concern." (that's probably not verbatim, but it's close) He wrote this in contradistinction to what he perceived as very violent methods of parenting, which are nonetheless totally normal, which attempt to mold their object, the child, into what it's "supposed" to be, rarely with the desired results.
It’s not either caring or not caring, but a constant “negotiating” with ourselves and the environment. We might go to the extremes of the spectrum as we learn, as we try different masks on while looking for acceptance. Even self care is learned through interacting with the world. It’s a delicate balance that requires daily work (like housework that must be done each day). Our minds tend to simplify/clarify the ambiguity of existence and expect to find “the truth” which would act as pacifier of our anxiety. A truth as such is what I’d be suspicious of because it would ignore nuance, ambiguity and the important role of exceptions to the abstract truth. Humility goes a long way. We are not gods so accepting that caring (or any virtue) requires constant assessment because we tend to believe if it’s “good”, we can’t go wrong. Wrong. Caring for self or others limit each other in a never ending dance.
That point about care no longer being focused on first degree family members and close friends but shifting to being about the general peer and a performance of that care really helps me put into words something that I've been noticing. Also this of course reminds me of the book The Fall by Camus. And your points about daoism vs Heidegger or Foucault about deep care as a kind of disengagement is something we are taught to cultivate as Buddhist monks (in the Japanese Shingon tradition at least) a kind of Bodhisattva mentality where you simultaneously care about the experience of all living beings but without allowing yourself to be dragged into the sort of mundane drama of the everyday life of everyone. It's also quite hard to explain and more of a certain quality of a way of doing things rather than something purely intellectual so it would take time to explain. Thank you for making these videos.
It seems dubious to collapse "self care" - especially of those who may not have received proper care as children, or other survivors (for instance those with PTSD) - with Peterson's "sovereign individual." In my experience self care is not the expression of the Will to Power but the recognition that you need things like rest, time for reflection, exercise, human companionship, and so forth.
hits hard for me. Child neglect and ptsd caused me to fear experimenting, finding out what I'm good at and what I'm not, how to use those to navigate a society, and friends I can rely on. How can I have sovereignty when I can't even be sure who I am? maintaining health and cleaning my room make sure I survive at the bottomline but doesn't bring me peace.
I think, however, a downside of a strong paradigm of self-care in these cases is that perceived failure to self-care "enough" comes with notions of having a victim mentality/playing the victim. There's also the new dichotomy of victim-survivor, in a sense implying that there are "bad" victims and "good" victims. Saying "I'm a survivor of PTSD (or whatever)" is often applauded because it implies you've beaten it. But "I'm a victim of PTSD (or whatever)" would probably make people bemoan your self-pity. There may be arguments that this helps people out of learned helplessness. But it also creates added anxiety around being the "good" victim (the-survivor-not-the-victim). Similarly it pushes people towards needing to be self-reliant (despite trauma or mental illness) through self-care, lest they are rejected by their peers for failing to self-care and thus be the (bad) victim and not the survivor. I think it also isolates people-which people deal with mental illness often are already especially susceptible to-as rejecting those who do not self-care is in itself a form of self-care by those doing the rejection. At the extremes, this makes social ostracism morally good, since it's intended to teach people to better self-care; and neglects the fact that a social support network is a major factor in successful trauma recovery. So, you could make a case that this resembles a "self-made individual" approach to dealing with trauma, which is not entirely helpful.
Self love is something further: that you can see yourself as a vulnerable, needing human being worthy of compassion just like any other; that you treat yourself with the same kindness, patience, and empathy you extend to others.
17:36 to 18:09 - Is this a critique of therapy? It just sounded kind of negatively framed, espescially: "People are caring so much about themselves that they think they need a therapist in order to care better for themselvs (...) individual psychotherapy, is very much focused on the idea that you have to take care of yourself and it's even so important that you can't do it on your own (...). So it's an overly concerned with oneself that developes a whole profession of self concern." And the later discussion of therapy in regards to "the common pathology of self care" and Jordan Peterson, it sounded like you think the rise of the need for therapy is a bad thing. Could you clear this up?
Hello, Dr. Moeller. Will there be a video about the relations between modern capitalism and prolificity? Or in more general sense, the link between the modes of production and the identity-building (I would suspect the identity-building differs between the classes under each mode). Kind of like a dialectical-materialist view on identity-building within the historical movement process. Thanks.
This also ties in the modes of caring under different identity-building strategies. Since if those depended on the mode of production, the later will too, however, f.e. the classes will perform a single mode of caring while the average direction of caring can be different for the classes. Or something like that.
Actually, I think that capitalism started Authenticity identity-building around the 1920 decade. There's a man called Edward Bernays, the father of Public Relations, he was the nephew of Sigmund Freud. He basically used Freud's theories to add ''the self'' into advertising. It was a call to transform consumption from necesity to personal desires, consumerism meant to express ''THE TRUE SELF'' through buying. This video might help: th-cam.com/video/sRJAzvi9aEU/w-d-xo.html Then of course with the advent of social media, Capitalism started Profilicity.
@@selenehernandez8279 I am aware of Bernays work and how it influenced the commodity relations. However, the question on how his work relates to the material basis is not quite clear. I would pose a question: Would the world still get to the same point in the 50s without Bernays? And moreover, who is the Bernays of the later decades?
I am not my caring, but “i” allow for my caring regardless. This is because it tends to bring good fortune to all involved, and sets us on the path towards understanding and freedom (so long as one holds with an open hand).
The death of Norm Macdonald, and the following revelation of his cancer diagnosis that he kept secret for almost a decade, has cracked the worldview horizon and my potential ideal for a disinterested approach to life -- something neutral, real and true for its own sake. Only when faced with the reality of death like this, can a person truly become carefree/careless of the likes of Norm Macdonald. This is one of the paradoxes of being suicidal, because the will to let yourself die is a superpower -- that of not caring, and so gives you power in life.
Perhaps conditionality isn’t too radical of a thing to be considered in this topic? What factors would lead a person (or a population) to have to honestly care about others? What roles do sympathy and empathy play in caring? Can conditionality play a part in these two?
I think something similar is going on with judging -not necessarily passing bad or sever judgement, just judging in general, making distinctions and coming to conclusions. I tend to think about it in far simpler and frankly perhaps a bit naive terms, but still, it goes something like this: When we judge other people we in fact judge ourselves -insofar as we distinguish between bad qualities we abhor and good qualities we cherish in people, and thus in ourselves too. When we judge ourselves, we do so as if we were somebody else -let's say through the lens of the other, if that even makes sense to you. (actually, I am only on the 5th minute of the almost 30 of this video, but just as you were describing how we are forming our subjectivity by caring, this thought sprang to mind and so I wanted to share it. I have no idea whether you are also talking about it at a later time, but I'm sharing it anyway)
Of course, Hegel dealt with a similar point regarding nepotism. The dialectical point was to treat the nation as your family (a form of Prussian nationalism)
The care for self and other are intertwined. To recognize care for oneself eventuates our understanding that others struggle or suffer similar things. If we should care for ourselves the other follows. Egoism occurs only when one does not even care for themselves. It’s a hyper-focused perspective on the outside and objectivity, where the individual is not concerned with what is good or bad for them or others, but what they want, what is immediately “good”, and these desires are unreasoned and not emotionally pondered. It’s a non self reflected position to be egotistical, which sums up why egotistical people are so hard headed and impossible to reason with or appeal to.
Caring is the reason humans have survived as long as we have. Caring for our tribe, our people, ourselves, our survival. Without caring, there would be nothing to do or strive for. Still though, it's important to realize that caring about everything, especially for those things that are outside of our control is detrimental to our health and puts a lot of pressure on us. It's all about finding a balance...
I've just finished an MA in ethics and philosophy of religion. I have been considering whether to progress to a PhD level, but I do feel that academic institutions are becoming overtaken with 'profilicity' and this presentation of an image of care and understanding, which I feel is very inauthentic. But whenever I try to express this I have to beat my way through a barrage of 'isms'. I'm not sure it's worth the struggle.
This is truly a perilous age for the apathetic. Those who show a lack of concern are pariahs, which only continues to push those individuals away from care.
So much of what mainstream psychiatry teaches to overcome anxiety (for example) does not work because it requires you to constantly think about yourself, impairing conversation. You feel good about reading the self help book, like you're taking care of yourself, but the results are not borne out in practice, leading you to more self help. There's no end
For me, care or caring itselves are the sensitive word because of the authenticity and how sincerely people defining care towards other person that they know or they didn't know as a mere stranger. Some people are also has their capacities of knowledge how they care about something yet just like how the video says about paradox, in the later time they will show how they don't want to care about because the certain circumstances they though that thay can't handle anymore. I don't know i just shown my trust issues but either the low empathy or the discourse about selfish vs selflessness can become a part of the caring paradox.
You seem to keep bringing up Philosophy Tube, so it makes me wonder. What are your thoughts on ContraPoints, Their Channel is very similar in style and content! Great works as always.
He's made some legitimate, good faith critiques of them on this channel. I think it's also worth mentioning that he does this while alerting the audience that there's no cynicism or personal malice to it -- he is upfront about the fact that he wants to be able to generate traffic for his channel on topics that he has a professional stake in.
Both PhilosophyTube and Contrapoints bring an element of exaggerated theatricality to their content. Some people like that, others don't. For my part, I'm thankful this channel keeps things straightforward i.e. ditches the theatrics.
I like seeing more unfiltered, fresh musings like these! Especially since you are a professional. It seems somehow authentic, vulnerable even, since these ideas are not fully rounded yet. But herein lies an interesting paradox: (for me, anyway) In profilicity, you often emphasize, what seems to be a sincere or authentic act is in fact an act that boosts your profile. Like if Taylor Swift, who you mention in the book, comes out in support of Democrats. People might perceive this act as an authentic one where she stands up for what she believes in. She "shows her (political) colours!" But, in fact, since we have no access to Taylor Swifts inner world and we only engage with her public (carefully curated) profile, we cannot know and it does not matter what she ACTUALLY believes. When Gina Carano came out as a Trump supporter who questioned the validity of the 2020 election on social media, she was fired by Disney and will likely never get a break again. Now, as you question in the book, it makes sense to ask whether what Swift and Carano did was good/bad because it pleased/annoyed the general peer or did it please/annoy the general peer because it was good/bad. But in some sense, if this is the main question that we are asking, we are left with a depressing implication: that we cannot ever assume to know any belief of anyone through profilic means of communication. All we can conclude is that one celebrity made the "right" choice when curating their profile (Swift) and the other one made the "wrong" choice (Carano). Coming back to care: If you are an academic who cares about truth, the sort of videos like this one are an authentic attempt at showing how a new idea might be born. You seem to almost invite a discussion or constructive feedback here. But if I watch this video purely through the lens of profilicity, I cannot assume that you care about truth at all, I can only conclude that you are curating your profile in such a way that it LOOKS like you care about truth. If I think of PhilosophyTube - a channel that I very much enjoy - I often think that there is pretend-caring-about-truth at play. Abigail Thorn presents information and concept in many of her later videos as if it was just about a disinterested search for truth, but actually there is an ideological thread stringing together what is presented. It ends up often being ideology presented as philosophy or ideology presented as truth. So, having a caring-about-truth profile boosts PhilosophyTube's political messaging. (But here too, then it can be said that there is some authentic politics broadcast in an UNauthentic, profilic manner) (I want to make clear that I do not disagree with Thorn's politics, so this is not a criticism of the messages she is broadcasting, just an observation regarding how she sometimes presents them) It is possible that the criticism you received from some left-leaning to left-wing youtubers regarding the "wokeism" video is because if your profile "cares for the truth" and then that "truth" ends up being a critique of woke politics and dogmatism, it damages the profile of other self-entitled "carers for the truth" who fully embrace wokeism. (I would also like to state that much of what falls under the umbrella of "woke" I believe to be a force for good, but I also fully agree with CarefreeWandering's critique that it should not turn into an unquestionable dogma.) Conclusion: Even though some may use CARING profiles to sell cars or political ideologies, I want to believe that as a professional academic you sincerely or authentically care for the truth. Yet, your own theory of profilicity, if applied consistently, prevents me from doing so.
So, despite being conscious of the obvious ideological string in Thorn's content, you would agree with him lying to you as long as he does it for the right ideology? You would have been very happy in the URSS, surrounded by people with no care of the truth.
@@gradualdecay Yes, now that you say so, it may be so. But she got fired because it was assumed that she "authentically" meant it. My point remains the same, even if the example is off.
@@gradualdecay And of course you actually believe her being a Trump supporter played no role on Disney being lenient or not. Another of their actors (the guy playing Mando) made a remark as shocking and damning as she did *at the same time*, (comparing migrant detention center to nazi camps if I remember correctly) but nothing happened to him, because he was on the "right" side and she was not. But hey, I wonder how it feels to be fed what to think by a big corporation!?
The painting is by Rembrandt and called The Jewish Bride. Some of the other painting are called: The Sick Child by Edward Munch, Diego on my mind (Self-portrait as Tehuana) by Frida Kahlo, Madonna Litta by Leonardo da Vinci.
Talking about word meanings changing or twisting reminds me a bit of a language based version of Slavjo 's rose tinted world but you need to put special glasses on to see the truth
Care can be identity building, but it can also be thought of in a more universal way. You can care about life, your country, nature, the world, it’s not merely restricted to humans exclusively. Care doesn’t have to exist in a vacuum of focus. It can expand to a wider degree of care.
Just a tiny suggestion for future videos. I'd rather look at Professor Moeller talking than at a circling slide-show of vaguely relevant photos. It's a bit distracting in my opinion. I would tone it down.
Carefree and Careless seems different from other dialectics I've heard about. It seems like a less confrontational contradiction that doesn't really go against intuition. They don't seem to repel each other in the same way that Selfish and selfless or Being and nothing do. There is no mental aversion to the possibility that they could be the same thing, they both fit under a neat package of not caring about something, while selfishness seems more strongly contradictory to selflessness.
I think it could be interesting to have a TH-cam philosophy symposium between this channel, philosophize this, Wes Cecil, perhaps some others. All very serious high quality philosophy channels dealing with both historical notions and current affairs.
This is a thought-provoking topic, and your presentation of it was also well done. However, and I might be misunderstanding something here, I admit: Is this profilicity of care really some kind of rite of passage or cultural maladaptation/evolution of the human condition, or is it a response from Late-stage Capitalism? I'd say we live in such a hyper-marketized/hyper-commodified society these days, in America, where EVERYTHING has to become a marketized Good or Service. This means even the most deeply rooted of positive/wholesome human desires, such as wishing others to be sincere/authentic, or to have friends, or to see others being harmonious with their friends... becomes yet another thing that has production costs put behind it, marketing put behind it, and Goods and Services of it to be bought and sold. It should not be our faults that we like authentic and sincere Public Figures. However, I think what happens is... capitalism sees such a desire in many humans, and soon curates that into all sorts of public-figures now needing to be "authentic". In other words, isn't our relationship to these things, in the context of the current cultural paradigm, heavily influenced and dictated by our economic system's lust for exploiting everything?
If self-care produces pathologies, you are simply doing it wrong. If you do it right, good things come from it. So instead of philosophically overthinking the concept and getting caught up in a paralyzing/analyzing way (with the implication of throwing it overboard), the question we should ask is: How can a person take care of himsef/herself succesfully.
This is the second video of yours the robot recommended. I strongly suggest you look at George Lakoff's _Moral Politics._ It analyzes US by reference to what he calls _Strict Father_ and _Nurturant Parent_ idealized cognitive models of families. It is not perfect and really only applies to majority WASP families, but it is better than any other models I have seen. It is extremely interesting to compare and possibly combine with Nietzsche's model of moral prejudices, which to avoid begging the question I term _Sovereign_ and _Prriestly,_ but Lakoff knows less than nothing about Nietzsche. Jordan Peterson is the poster boy for _Strict Father._ Lakoff prefers _Nurturant Parent_ but tries, not always successfully, not to bias his statements. His analysis of _Strict Father_ is better. Check it out. _Why do you care?_ is a central question for me. I used to care a lot about injustices including the events of Michael Brown and Eric Garner. I also cared and wrote about a dopamine-blocker available to the government at least since the 1990s that obviates physical torture. There is overwhelming evidence this was the reason the federal government imprisoned me wrongfully by a process that included physically torturing me. Perhaps some would see the irony in the fact that this has deprived me of pretty much everything good in life. The only real option for me is to double-down on education and activism against injustice under pain of being physically imprisoned again because of it. This is even easier now due to a lifetime of "supervised release" during which I can be re-imprisoned for any reason at all. As it stands, I cannot even use a computer with video-editing software to make more TH-cam videos. But I continue to publish as much as I can. I now have a comprehensive understanding of many huge problems in the criminally unjust system, and I want to get the word out. What I have found is that one could count the number of people who care at all on the flippers of a Thalidomide phocemelus. Perhaps being German of a certain age, you get the reference. If not, "stumps of an amputee" is almost as good Now, I figured out when every single person who knew me abandoned or betrayed me, without exception, that nobody cared about me personally or likely ever would. I have accepted that. But they do not care about themselves. Almost all of the few who do care about due process and civil rights work extremely hard to convince themselves it can't happen to them. One example is that NPR never mentions Kent State in relation to _e.g._ George Floyd. NPR's audience and source of funds is WASP, and if you spook the spooks, they turn to Classic Rock or Alternative and do not stick around for the pledge drive to get a CD of Tuvan throat-singing. *All* media and nearly all consumers do this. I do not blame them, as the political oppression of me is so horrific I cannot keep more than a tiny fraction in my mind at once. No same person would want to risk it, and denial is not merely a river in Egypt. As Martin Niemoller pointed out, being complacent while others are oppressed guarantees you will be oppressed. But even people who cheer his comments do not heed them at all. So I came in the position of advocating for utter poltroons who (1) hate me, (2) do not care about themselves, (3) expect an enormous amount of credit for their self-image as good and express extreme hostility when challenged, (4) do everything they can to shoot themselves triumphantly in the foot and (5) give no indication they deserve anything but abject contempt. Yet I do it. This does not make me happy. I cannot answer the question of why I care in any way that would make philosophical or psychological sense. I can easily explain it genetically, but the evidence people care about that is sorely lacking as well.
Would you say there's a profilitic aspect to care in the mode of sincerity? Apart from sincerely caring, I would think that in these societies one wants to be seen by others to be sincerely caring. In this sense, even without social media, perhaps one's reputation was akin to a profile to be curated/cared for.
The care of dogs and horses is instinctive, it is sincere in the sense of being entirely genuine, not performed so that some other dog or horse can look and approve (I think ;-) although dogs are certainly capable of deception). A better example of insincerity; in the sense of no conscious commitment to a consistent course of action; would have been that of people who made a big display of looking after their parents while others were watching, then stopped doing it as soon as there was no audience. No doubt ancient China had plenty of these. There have always been hypocrites, about care as much as anything else that is seen as a social good. Everyone is a hypocrite from time to time. Certainly modern social media allow this tendency wider range, but how does the "sincerity-authenticity-profilicity" triad add value? You either mean what you say or you do not. A more interesting question (to me) is why is it that "showing that you are caring" is now seen to be so much more important than "showing that you are X", where X is any other traditional social virtue, such as being brave, hard-working, competent or honest.
The pinnacle of "fake caring" must be Munchausen by Proxy syndrome, actively harming their own children to set the stage for a fake public performance of taking care and self sacrifice.
What are you talking about? The Confuscius quote? I think Confuscius' point is that there was a difference between how dogs may care for their offspring and what we translate as filial piety. The heart or some kind of "sincerity" as Moeller calls it. Confuscius even leaves a backhanded "today" implying such piety is not being met lol. Honestly, Moeller's theory is describing "technology" for constructing identity. The point is exactly what he says early in the video and in most of his videos. To outline how identity and related constructs are made under different conditions and their contradictions and problematic implementations. Its what most of this channel has been about.
I have in the past self described myself as careful. To do things with attention. Which is different to taking care of yourself. So i guess my trait fits the sincerity model.
I'm not entirely sure care applies to our passions (the things we have intentionality to, that we like/dislike). We live in a culture that prizes something called empathy, for example - a nebulous social media term for being compassionate. Someone like Paul Bloom (YT video: Against Empathy) suggests that such directionality is antithetical to politics and to real meaning; that one may be helpful objectively by putting aside our emotions and accepting a certain distance/alterity from others. It's possible to go further and argue that empathy is the negation of specific passion and therefore identity. Many profiles are built around support for a particular group, but the subtext of care begins to erode specificity, doesn't it?
I thought of this regarding moral grandstanding or virtue signalling. We’ve always had the capacity to value empathetic or compassionate people, and historically many people have earned social capital for their acts of compassion. But what would be the use of our projecting empathy to acts of kindness? Now, I can think of two possibilities: 1. there is some socio-psychological mechanism whereby we actually discern the authentic from the profilic for example, Jesus, Buddha were true while Tom Cruise and Instagram model X are false. We’ve kept the former and are presumably discarding the the latter 2. we function similar to Girards scapegoat, in such a way that we reify the inherently self interested and profilic actions of others in order to justify our own pursuit of social capital. Through this mechanism we pretend that a distinction can ever be made between the sincere and the performance.
Possible answers: 1) Because therapy is usually counterproductive; repression works better. 2) Even if it is not actually counter productive, it does little or no good so is a waste of time and money that could have been spent on some socially useful, outwardly directed activity or an absorbing hobby. 3) It is advised to each individual... by therapists. Hardly neutral or disinterested observers, having no more scientific credibility than astrologers or priests.
@@unreasonable3589 Uum no... There is a lot of proof that therapy works, especially for survivors of trauma. Where are you even getting this? I went through that myself, recovery would have taken a lot longer without it.
@@souti7436 You asked "to the extent that therapy is advised for each individual " The answers I gave are possible answers for why therapy should not be advised for each - ie every - individual. That does not mean that it should not be advised for some individuals. Most individuals are capable of coping with their own problems without spending a great deal of time and money on a questionable process. For those that cannot, it may be worth a try, but a visit to the seaside would probably work just as well. It is currently impossible to do truly impartial scientific tests on any psychological intervention, so there is no "proof that therapy works" even if you think that it worked for you. That is just an example of the narrative fallacy.
@@unreasonable3589 I was looking fo the reasoning that was part of Carefree Wonderings argument... Also, please stop appealing to objectivity as if it exists. It makes you sound a bit performative. And the comment on my own therapy was not an argument, just an example.
@@souti7436 If you do not think that objectivity is possible, then everything you say is merely performative. I am surprised that you cannot see that. I will appeal to whatever I want.
Hello, I was wondering if you had any thoughts on Alan Watts. He grabs and goes over eastern philosophy and religion frequently, and I find his lectures entertaining. I have my disagreements, but I think he presents interesting arguments. Then, as I said, even through my disagreements, I find his lectures fun to listen to. However, as someone who is not too familiar with eastern philosophies (for now!), I am not able to call him out on any potential misreadings. As someone who has a great familiarity with Daoism (and other eastern philosophies), what do you think of Alan Watts? Is his use of eastern philosophy responsible? And does he present something interesting to consider?
Dogs and horses can take care of their offspring, but their offspring don't take care of them. This is the curious thing about the human animal (when it does that). Maybe the extension of lifespan because of civilization leads to the demand for a Confucian care of elders?
I have heard that bonobos have been observed taking care of their elderly. They are 98% genetically similar to humans and you can be sure they have never heard of Confucius.
You always seem to mention existentialism in passing in almost all of your videos, but never any use of Sartre, Beauvoir, or Fanon ideas to help you explain your points. Could you do a full video on existentialism?
Prof Moeller, do you really think there is something pathological in seeking therapy? To me it seems like the responsible thing to do in the face of pathology. Whatever you think of self-care, there's no denying a great many people have indeed been helped by it.
Dropping any discussion of philosophy here and presenting the psychologies' erspective, the pathologising of mental health has been one of the larger hurdles the field of psychology and its practitioners have had to handle. Ultimately current psych models have been moving away from simple biomedical models and basic understandings of a mental illness as rooted in one's mind and thinking, and more towards a biopsychosocial and other models that have to contend with the wider societal context relating to ones mental health.
I believe this has to do with scalability, people need to curate a caring profile because modern society has nuked the role based caring society that came with smaller communities. You actually get A LOT of economies of scale by hiring a publicist. I personally have also used Confucianism as a comparison to modern society because it is an ideal on the other side of the spectrum. The reality is that any tradition that has lost its original meaning devolves into a display of care.
I think that "curation of a caring profile" (which I take to be a more elegant version of the phrase "virtue signaling") is an expression of will-to-power in the mode of slave morality. That is, it is a way to humiliate and physically punish without direct physical involvement.
Commenting before I watch too much but I think the ambiguity of the word "care" plays a large role in how disabled people interact with a capitalist medical system by interacting all of these meanings into the form of "receiving commodified care" in the form of clinical visits. It acts as a major source for where the unenunciated struggle finds a word for itself in the context of disability (diagnosis) by directing a desire for care for this struggle towards this interface between medicine and capital.
I care because It makes me feel good, It makes me feel better than before. Taking care of myself means (to me) to Also learn from myself, to see my flaws and insecurities and to literally taking care of them, It could be excercising to improve my overall health and endurance to survive life. Or It could be trying to learn from my mistakes and being autocritic. It means taking care of my essential needs, spirit, mind and body, in a way that makes logical Sense to me, It makes Sense to excercise, It makes sense to eat a certain way, because It has real effects on myself. It makes Sense to fight for a dream and thats why i care, i want to do shit before i die, because that way i feel like i am living, and in order to do certains thing that i cant do right now i gotta take care of others things to makes sure at least by the Best of my abbilities that im trying to do what Is neccesary to live the life that i want to live.
A question: how much care is too much? Yes, you need to care, but care too much and it starts to become a problem. I feel like there's too much awareness, that it stops about caring about things and more about self-gratification, virtue signalling to the crowd and doing moral masturbation. It reminds me of Mark Manson's newsletter about the uneven distribution of social awareness.
What is your thoughts on care-ethics and care epistemology, the “cluster of normative ethical theories that were developed by feminists in the second half of the twentieth century.” Like carol Gillian for example. I’m also surprised that you didn’t draw a connection to Aristotle and virtue/habituation to Lao Tzu, as that central to any discussion of care
If you dont have something invested in the object of your care and i dont mean donated, i mean you invest a serious part of your life to it that can't be regained if lost, so in essence you have to have something subjective invested in the object of your care and not merely superficialities. Mere objective care is meaningless.
I have a question that maybe is related with another already answered about how peer view compares to Lacan Big other. Profilicity mixes what could be considered profession, skillfullness or the "bussines side of things" with that than in the "self values" paradigm could be tell apart as a "moral" or "personal" self... before, was possible to get a double consideration according to such specifity like "being good as a muscian, sportman, etc; but in private life being a dauche" The moral judging ussually goes around a communitary standard, for example You could say of yourself "maybe i'm an honest person but a bad catholic" that would be consistent if your main communitary referencial frame isnt catholicism, because thus you can consider being catholic just another self property among others and not a fundamental value of yourself that you care about. If profilicity builts beyond the ambit specific "peer view" and reaches a more general communitary "peer view"... that doesnt render the "self" values as just another properties that contributes to profilicity? And then would the "self consistency" considered subsidiary below that external care for profilicity which is general but also fragmented? That would sound like "ego dystonic" not having a better term to compare
What do you think about what Ayn Rand wrote about how your values(The things you care about), must be derived from facts of reality that help with your survival? What do you think about Rand's ideas in general?
Doesn't Zizek say that the best way to show you care about each other is to trade obscenities? Implied that two people who are only prepared to deal with each other on the level of the "universally good and ethical" only have the most shallow sort of uninvolved care. We can both safely say that we think Palestinians should be free, but if we talk about how your cleaner should be paid enough to live on we have a huge, obscene row.
In my view, Taoism seems to be very similar to stoicism in many regards, but perhaps in a more "extreme" way such that it resembles cynicism (not its modern sense, needless to say) somewhat.
It's not necessarily hypocritical but it easily can be.- a profile is an avatar, an inhabited host, a possessed entity. We become ghosts to our own brand - the Wizard of Oz managing affairs behind the curtain. The curation of Brand Value is only tangentially related to one's "real self", and the Brand's identity can become our idealized self. We ourselves can wither away, like the Preacher decrying homosexuality as his Brand who molests boys far away from any camera. Modern celebrities suffer from this - their "real selves" before brand curation took over their lives becomes less and less important and therefore their life outside of the brand becomes less and less important.
I suspect i care because of a bunch of circumstances leading up to me caring. But look at alex jones even, he also uses this kind of caring profile to rally support, take the pizza shop pedo situation, he uses caring for the abstract kid to drive his own crazy narratives, showing no sympathy or care for the actual individuals involved, rather his care with stimulates his outrage is based on a pure abstraction.
I enjoy your videos, but find it slightly aggressive the way you include images of Abigail Thorn in pretty much every video. I think the point has been more than made.
If you're looking for a proper definition of what Moeller calls _profilicity_ you should check some of the other videos on this channel, such as one of these th-cam.com/users/hashtagprofilicity From my limited knowledge, I don't think _pharisaism_ would be an accurate characterisation of it. For one, that has quite negative connotations. I think profilicity is about many different 'profiles' (one for each context basically), rather than just one; and the idea that it is these diverse profiles that sort of combine to define the person, rather than any of them being strictly dishonest.
@@luke-alex thank you for directing me towards it. In fact, I have watched all of professor Moeller's videos and they are greatly enlightening and, probably, at this point I should read his book to get a better grasp of what he means. The reason I suggested pharisaism is because up until now with the issues of wokeism, authenticity etc. the term profilicity has been suggested as a criticism to contemporary self-building. While he tries to suggest that it is a neutral analysis, the examples given dwell more on the negative and hypocritical/ironical side of profilicity and less on some perhaps actual positive potential of the framework suggested. Thank you again for your input. I am glad this channel has sparked a dialogue!
@@tassis.yianakos Hmm, I can see where you are coming from. Yet I do think Mueller is _sincere_ in trying to 'reduce the stigma' of having different, somewhat constructed identities (but it's quite an uphill battle). I believe this because he has spoken, I think _more_ disparagingly, about the obsession over authenticity-and it would be using the language of authenticity that one could _most_ _easily_ attack profilicity. Or, to reformulate that slightly, Mueller sees the value of profilicity in that it might help us move past our-as he sees it-problematic authenticity obsession. That's just my impression of where he stands, I could be way off.
@@luke-alex I like your take on the subject. I happen to be an architect and I quite much agree that originality and authenticity are more of a binding fetish, than an actual drive of innovation a lot of the times and, unsurprisingly, this happens also a lot in our construction of self-identity. So, the weight and the potential lies more on the curation of self(profile) through other sources, for example other selfs(ours, real other people or fictional) we admire, opinion of epxerts etc. and less on the idea of complete authenticity. This is actually interesting, but I will insist that an emphasis on some liberating perspective of the profilicity project should be more present.
A little off topic, but.... You seemingly say things as though you know them to be true, but why do you think you could even know anything? I started taking the "calling out assumptions", thing pretty seriously, and its left me thinking that we might not even be able to know anything. How have you (or anyone who reads this) defended your knowing things capability from this scrutiny? Or have i misinterpreted everything and you just say what you believe and don't claim any knowledge?
Why do you care?
I'd say my animal instincts make me care and my imaginative mind makes me look for meaning in all of this. Still, trying to be more and more carefree every day.
I dont know how to not care.
It's merely something I find myself doing, like eating
It's more fun than not caring
Because my sleep matters
This is the best philosophy content available on TH-cam in my opinion, with not only a knowledgeable creator but also an impactful and helpful message
This will look great on his profile.
I don't consider them in competition, but looking up Johnathan Vervaeke might interest you.
Apathy
This.
What does " impactful " mean?
I have been speaking English for 70 years, and it's meaningless to me. What is being impacted? wisdom tooth? A collision?
I find it conceptually very *caring* that an academic philosopher - who is focused on profilicity research - engages in direct development of a profile (and openly points out to it).
I'm reminded of R.D. Laing's definition of love, that it "let's the other be, but with concern." (that's probably not verbatim, but it's close) He wrote this in contradistinction to what he perceived as very violent methods of parenting, which are nonetheless totally normal, which attempt to mold their object, the child, into what it's "supposed" to be, rarely with the desired results.
Love seeing Stirner mentioned, underrated philosopher
It’s not either caring or not caring, but a constant “negotiating” with ourselves and the environment. We might go to the extremes of the spectrum as we learn, as we try different masks on while looking for acceptance. Even self care is learned through interacting with the world. It’s a delicate balance that requires daily work (like housework that must be done each day). Our minds tend to simplify/clarify the ambiguity of existence and expect to find “the truth” which would act as pacifier of our anxiety. A truth as such is what I’d be suspicious of because it would ignore nuance, ambiguity and the important role of exceptions to the abstract truth. Humility goes a long way. We are not gods so accepting that caring (or any virtue) requires constant assessment because we tend to believe if it’s “good”, we can’t go wrong. Wrong. Caring for self or others limit each other in a never ending dance.
That point about care no longer being focused on first degree family members and close friends but shifting to being about the general peer and a performance of that care really helps me put into words something that I've been noticing. Also this of course reminds me of the book The Fall by Camus. And your points about daoism vs Heidegger or Foucault about deep care as a kind of disengagement is something we are taught to cultivate as Buddhist monks (in the Japanese Shingon tradition at least) a kind of Bodhisattva mentality where you simultaneously care about the experience of all living beings but without allowing yourself to be dragged into the sort of mundane drama of the everyday life of everyone. It's also quite hard to explain and more of a certain quality of a way of doing things rather than something purely intellectual so it would take time to explain.
Thank you for making these videos.
Thought provoking, accessible, well presented, and pleasant to listen to. This is some top notch philosophy content.
It seems dubious to collapse "self care" - especially of those who may not have received proper care as children, or other survivors (for instance those with PTSD) - with Peterson's "sovereign individual." In my experience self care is not the expression of the Will to Power but the recognition that you need things like rest, time for reflection, exercise, human companionship, and so forth.
hits hard for me. Child neglect and ptsd caused me to fear experimenting, finding out what I'm good at and what I'm not, how to use those to navigate a society, and friends I can rely on. How can I have sovereignty when I can't even be sure who I am? maintaining health and cleaning my room make sure I survive at the bottomline but doesn't bring me peace.
I think, however, a downside of a strong paradigm of self-care in these cases is that perceived failure to self-care "enough" comes with notions of having a victim mentality/playing the victim. There's also the new dichotomy of victim-survivor, in a sense implying that there are "bad" victims and "good" victims. Saying "I'm a survivor of PTSD (or whatever)" is often applauded because it implies you've beaten it. But "I'm a victim of PTSD (or whatever)" would probably make people bemoan your self-pity.
There may be arguments that this helps people out of learned helplessness. But it also creates added anxiety around being the "good" victim (the-survivor-not-the-victim). Similarly it pushes people towards needing to be self-reliant (despite trauma or mental illness) through self-care, lest they are rejected by their peers for failing to self-care and thus be the (bad) victim and not the survivor.
I think it also isolates people-which people deal with mental illness often are already especially susceptible to-as rejecting those who do not self-care is in itself a form of self-care by those doing the rejection. At the extremes, this makes social ostracism morally good, since it's intended to teach people to better self-care; and neglects the fact that a social support network is a major factor in successful trauma recovery.
So, you could make a case that this resembles a "self-made individual" approach to dealing with trauma, which is not entirely helpful.
Self love is something further: that you can see yourself as a vulnerable, needing human being worthy of compassion just like any other; that you treat yourself with the same kindness, patience, and empathy you extend to others.
17:36 to 18:09 - Is this a critique of therapy? It just sounded kind of negatively framed, espescially: "People are caring so much about themselves that they think they need a therapist in order to care better for themselvs (...) individual psychotherapy, is very much focused on the idea that you have to take care of yourself and it's even so important that you can't do it on your own (...). So it's an overly concerned with oneself that developes a whole profession of self concern." And the later discussion of therapy in regards to "the common pathology of self care" and Jordan Peterson, it sounded like you think the rise of the need for therapy is a bad thing. Could you clear this up?
see comment by Maynard Wayward below
i care for these videos
Love the nuanced content. I am reminded of TS Elliot's "teach us to care and not to care"
Hello, Dr. Moeller. Will there be a video about the relations between modern capitalism and prolificity? Or in more general sense, the link between the modes of production and the identity-building (I would suspect the identity-building differs between the classes under each mode). Kind of like a dialectical-materialist view on identity-building within the historical movement process. Thanks.
This also ties in the modes of caring under different identity-building strategies. Since if those depended on the mode of production, the later will too, however, f.e. the classes will perform a single mode of caring while the average direction of caring can be different for the classes. Or something like that.
Actually, I think that capitalism started Authenticity identity-building around the 1920 decade. There's a man called Edward Bernays, the father of Public Relations, he was the nephew of Sigmund Freud.
He basically used Freud's theories to add ''the self'' into advertising. It was a call to transform consumption from necesity to personal desires, consumerism meant to express ''THE TRUE SELF'' through buying.
This video might help: th-cam.com/video/sRJAzvi9aEU/w-d-xo.html
Then of course with the advent of social media, Capitalism started Profilicity.
@@selenehernandez8279 I am aware of Bernays work and how it influenced the commodity relations. However, the question on how his work relates to the material basis is not quite clear. I would pose a question: Would the world still get to the same point in the 50s without Bernays? And moreover, who is the Bernays of the later decades?
I am not my caring, but “i” allow for my caring regardless. This is because it tends to bring good fortune to all involved, and sets us on the path towards understanding and freedom (so long as one holds with an open hand).
@@thotslayer9914 Jedi Temple Guards from Star Wars.
The death of Norm Macdonald, and the following revelation of his cancer diagnosis that he kept secret for almost a decade, has cracked the worldview horizon and my potential ideal for a disinterested approach to life -- something neutral, real and true for its own sake. Only when faced with the reality of death like this, can a person truly become carefree/careless of the likes of Norm Macdonald. This is one of the paradoxes of being suicidal, because the will to let yourself die is a superpower -- that of not caring, and so gives you power in life.
Love the hints. Can't wait for the next video!
Perhaps conditionality isn’t too radical of a thing to be considered in this topic? What factors would lead a person (or a population) to have to honestly care about others? What roles do sympathy and empathy play in caring? Can conditionality play a part in these two?
I think something similar is going on with judging -not necessarily passing bad or sever judgement, just judging in general, making distinctions and coming to conclusions. I tend to think about it in far simpler and frankly perhaps a bit naive terms, but still, it goes something like this:
When we judge other people we in fact judge ourselves -insofar as we distinguish between bad qualities we abhor and good qualities we cherish in people, and thus in ourselves too.
When we judge ourselves, we do so as if we were somebody else -let's say through the lens of the other, if that even makes sense to you.
(actually, I am only on the 5th minute of the almost 30 of this video, but just as you were describing how we are forming our subjectivity by caring, this thought sprang to mind and so I wanted to share it. I have no idea whether you are also talking about it at a later time, but I'm sharing it anyway)
Of course, Hegel dealt with a similar point regarding nepotism. The dialectical point was to treat the nation as your family (a form of Prussian nationalism)
The care for self and other are intertwined. To recognize care for oneself eventuates our understanding that others struggle or suffer similar things. If we should care for ourselves the other follows. Egoism occurs only when one does not even care for themselves. It’s a hyper-focused perspective on the outside and objectivity, where the individual is not concerned with what is good or bad for them or others, but what they want, what is immediately “good”, and these desires are unreasoned and not emotionally pondered. It’s a non self reflected position to be egotistical, which sums up why egotistical people are so hard headed and impossible to reason with or appeal to.
Danke schön mein guter Herr!
Caring is the reason humans have survived as long as we have. Caring for our tribe, our people, ourselves, our survival.
Without caring, there would be nothing to do or strive for. Still though, it's important to realize that caring about everything, especially for those things that are outside of our control is detrimental to our health and puts a lot of pressure on us. It's all about finding a balance...
I've just finished an MA in ethics and philosophy of religion. I have been considering whether to progress to a PhD level, but I do feel that academic institutions are becoming overtaken with 'profilicity' and this presentation of an image of care and understanding, which I feel is very inauthentic. But whenever I try to express this I have to beat my way through a barrage of 'isms'. I'm not sure it's worth the struggle.
This is truly a perilous age for the apathetic. Those who show a lack of concern are pariahs, which only continues to push those individuals away from care.
So much of what mainstream psychiatry teaches to overcome anxiety (for example) does not work because it requires you to constantly think about yourself, impairing conversation. You feel good about reading the self help book, like you're taking care of yourself, but the results are not borne out in practice, leading you to more self help. There's no end
JBP phenomenon in a nutshell
For me, care or caring itselves are the sensitive word because of the authenticity and how sincerely people defining care towards other person that they know or they didn't know as a mere stranger. Some people are also has their capacities of knowledge how they care about something yet just like how the video says about paradox, in the later time they will show how they don't want to care about because the certain circumstances they though that thay can't handle anymore.
I don't know i just shown my trust issues but either the low empathy or the discourse about selfish vs selflessness can become a part of the caring paradox.
You seem to keep bringing up Philosophy Tube, so it makes me wonder. What are your thoughts on ContraPoints, Their Channel is very similar in style and content!
Great works as always.
He's made some legitimate, good faith critiques of them on this channel. I think it's also worth mentioning that he does this while alerting the audience that there's no cynicism or personal malice to it -- he is upfront about the fact that he wants to be able to generate traffic for his channel on topics that he has a professional stake in.
ContraPoints is cringe
Both PhilosophyTube and Contrapoints bring an element of exaggerated theatricality to their content. Some people like that, others don't. For my part, I'm thankful this channel keeps things straightforward i.e. ditches the theatrics.
This is such a good channel
I like seeing more unfiltered, fresh musings like these! Especially since you are a professional.
It seems somehow authentic, vulnerable even, since these ideas are not fully rounded yet.
But herein lies an interesting paradox: (for me, anyway)
In profilicity, you often emphasize, what seems to be a sincere or authentic act is in fact an act that boosts your profile. Like if Taylor Swift, who you mention in the book, comes out in support of Democrats. People might perceive this act as an authentic one where she stands up for what she believes in. She "shows her (political) colours!" But, in fact, since we have no access to Taylor Swifts inner world and we only engage with her public (carefully curated) profile, we cannot know and it does not matter what she ACTUALLY believes. When Gina Carano came out as a Trump supporter who questioned the validity of the 2020 election on social media, she was fired by Disney and will likely never get a break again. Now, as you question in the book, it makes sense to ask whether what Swift and Carano did was good/bad because it pleased/annoyed the general peer or did it please/annoy the general peer because it was good/bad. But in some sense, if this is the main question that we are asking, we are left with a depressing implication: that we cannot ever assume to know any belief of anyone through profilic means of communication. All we can conclude is that one celebrity made the "right" choice when curating their profile (Swift) and the other one made the "wrong" choice (Carano).
Coming back to care:
If you are an academic who cares about truth, the sort of videos like this one are an authentic attempt at showing how a new idea might be born. You seem to almost invite a discussion or constructive feedback here. But if I watch this video purely through the lens of profilicity, I cannot assume that you care about truth at all, I can only conclude that you are curating your profile in such a way that it LOOKS like you care about truth.
If I think of PhilosophyTube - a channel that I very much enjoy - I often think that there is pretend-caring-about-truth at play. Abigail Thorn presents information and concept in many of her later videos as if it was just about a disinterested search for truth, but actually there is an ideological thread stringing together what is presented. It ends up often being ideology presented as philosophy or ideology presented as truth. So, having a caring-about-truth profile boosts PhilosophyTube's political messaging. (But here too, then it can be said that there is some authentic politics broadcast in an UNauthentic, profilic manner)
(I want to make clear that I do not disagree with Thorn's politics, so this is not a criticism of the messages she is broadcasting, just an observation regarding how she sometimes presents them)
It is possible that the criticism you received from some left-leaning to left-wing youtubers regarding the "wokeism" video is because if your profile "cares for the truth" and then that "truth" ends up being a critique of woke politics and dogmatism, it damages the profile of other self-entitled "carers for the truth" who fully embrace wokeism.
(I would also like to state that much of what falls under the umbrella of "woke" I believe to be a force for good, but I also fully agree with CarefreeWandering's critique that it should not turn into an unquestionable dogma.)
Conclusion:
Even though some may use CARING profiles to sell cars or political ideologies, I want to believe that as a professional academic you sincerely or authentically care for the truth. Yet, your own theory of profilicity, if applied consistently, prevents me from doing so.
So, despite being conscious of the obvious ideological string in Thorn's content, you would agree with him lying to you as long as he does it for the right ideology?
You would have been very happy in the URSS, surrounded by people with no care of the truth.
Carano wasn't fired for being a Trump supporter, she was fired for comparing vaccination to the holocaust.
@@gradualdecay Yes, now that you say so, it may be so. But she got fired because it was assumed that she "authentically" meant it. My point remains the same, even if the example is off.
@@gradualdecay And of course you actually believe her being a Trump supporter played no role on Disney being lenient or not.
Another of their actors (the guy playing Mando) made a remark as shocking and damning as she did *at the same time*, (comparing migrant detention center to nazi camps if I remember correctly) but nothing happened to him, because he was on the "right" side and she was not.
But hey, I wonder how it feels to be fed what to think by a big corporation!?
@@TheControlBlue You should know, you're a conservative.
The videos are very insightful and very challenging. Create cognitive dissonance and anxiety in my authentic profile disliking individual self 😬
wow very insightful ideas and discussion! thanks for sharing
what paintings were featured in the vid? esp at 3:14
The painting is by Rembrandt and called The Jewish Bride. Some of the other painting are called: The Sick Child by Edward Munch, Diego on my mind (Self-portrait as Tehuana) by Frida Kahlo, Madonna Litta by Leonardo da Vinci.
@@magnusbrandt8772 thank you
Talking about word meanings changing or twisting reminds me a bit of a language based version of Slavjo 's rose tinted world but you need to put special glasses on to see the truth
pleeeease elaborate on the daoism in the end of the video! really interesting stuff!
Max Stirner's doodle always cracks me up Engels should've tried harder to draw him better lol
Carefully carefree
Care can be identity building, but it can also be thought of in a more universal way. You can care about life, your country, nature, the world, it’s not merely restricted to humans exclusively. Care doesn’t have to exist in a vacuum of focus. It can expand to a wider degree of care.
What's the graphic that flashes at 15:26 ?
Just a tiny suggestion for future videos. I'd rather look at Professor Moeller talking than at a circling slide-show of vaguely relevant photos. It's a bit distracting in my opinion. I would tone it down.
Carefree and Careless seems different from other dialectics I've heard about. It seems like a less confrontational contradiction that doesn't really go against intuition. They don't seem to repel each other in the same way that Selfish and selfless or Being and nothing do. There is no mental aversion to the possibility that they could be the same thing, they both fit under a neat package of not caring about something, while selfishness seems more strongly contradictory to selflessness.
I think it could be interesting to have a TH-cam philosophy symposium between this channel, philosophize this, Wes Cecil, perhaps some others. All very serious high quality philosophy channels dealing with both historical notions and current affairs.
I 💕 clarity. Thank you.
Dr. Moeller, would you ever do a video covering Zizek and maybe his debate with Jordan Peterson?
This is a thought-provoking topic, and your presentation of it was also well done.
However, and I might be misunderstanding something here, I admit: Is this profilicity of care really some kind of rite of passage or cultural maladaptation/evolution of the human condition, or is it a response from Late-stage Capitalism? I'd say we live in such a hyper-marketized/hyper-commodified society these days, in America, where EVERYTHING has to become a marketized Good or Service. This means even the most deeply rooted of positive/wholesome human desires, such as wishing others to be sincere/authentic, or to have friends, or to see others being harmonious with their friends... becomes yet another thing that has production costs put behind it, marketing put behind it, and Goods and Services of it to be bought and sold. It should not be our faults that we like authentic and sincere Public Figures. However, I think what happens is... capitalism sees such a desire in many humans, and soon curates that into all sorts of public-figures now needing to be "authentic".
In other words, isn't our relationship to these things, in the context of the current cultural paradigm, heavily influenced and dictated by our economic system's lust for exploiting everything?
If self-care produces pathologies, you are simply doing it wrong. If you do it right, good things come from it. So instead of philosophically overthinking the concept and getting caught up in a paralyzing/analyzing way (with the implication of throwing it overboard), the question we should ask is: How can a person take care of himsef/herself succesfully.
This is the second video of yours the robot recommended.
I strongly suggest you look at George Lakoff's _Moral Politics._ It analyzes US by reference to what he calls _Strict Father_ and _Nurturant Parent_ idealized cognitive models of families. It is not perfect and really only applies to majority WASP families, but it is better than any other models I have seen. It is extremely interesting to compare and possibly combine with Nietzsche's model of moral prejudices, which to avoid begging the question I term _Sovereign_ and _Prriestly,_ but Lakoff knows less than nothing about Nietzsche. Jordan Peterson is the poster boy for _Strict Father._ Lakoff prefers _Nurturant Parent_ but tries, not always successfully, not to bias his statements. His analysis of _Strict Father_ is better. Check it out.
_Why do you care?_ is a central question for me. I used to care a lot about injustices including the events of Michael Brown and Eric Garner. I also cared and wrote about a dopamine-blocker available to the government at least since the 1990s that obviates physical torture. There is overwhelming evidence this was the reason the federal government imprisoned me wrongfully by a process that included physically torturing me.
Perhaps some would see the irony in the fact that this has deprived me of pretty much everything good in life. The only real option for me is to double-down on education and activism against injustice under pain of being physically imprisoned again because of it. This is even easier now due to a lifetime of "supervised release" during which I can be re-imprisoned for any reason at all. As it stands, I cannot even use a computer with video-editing software to make more TH-cam videos. But I continue to publish as much as I can. I now have a comprehensive understanding of many huge problems in the criminally unjust system, and I want to get the word out.
What I have found is that one could count the number of people who care at all on the flippers of a Thalidomide phocemelus. Perhaps being German of a certain age, you get the reference. If not, "stumps of an amputee" is almost as good
Now, I figured out when every single person who knew me abandoned or betrayed me, without exception, that nobody cared about me personally or likely ever would. I have accepted that. But they do not care about themselves. Almost all of the few who do care about due process and civil rights work extremely hard to convince themselves it can't happen to them. One example is that NPR never mentions Kent State in relation to _e.g._ George Floyd. NPR's audience and source of funds is WASP, and if you spook the spooks, they turn to Classic Rock or Alternative and do not stick around for the pledge drive to get a CD of Tuvan throat-singing. *All* media and nearly all consumers do this. I do not blame them, as the political oppression of me is so horrific I cannot keep more than a tiny fraction in my mind at once. No same person would want to risk it, and denial is not merely a river in Egypt.
As Martin Niemoller pointed out, being complacent while others are oppressed guarantees you will be oppressed. But even people who cheer his comments do not heed them at all.
So I came in the position of advocating for utter poltroons who (1) hate me, (2) do not care about themselves, (3) expect an enormous amount of credit for their self-image as good and express extreme hostility when challenged, (4) do everything they can to shoot themselves triumphantly in the foot and (5) give no indication they deserve anything but abject contempt. Yet I do it.
This does not make me happy. I cannot answer the question of why I care in any way that would make philosophical or psychological sense. I can easily explain it genetically, but the evidence people care about that is sorely lacking as well.
What does the picture with the hands and countries mean?
Would you say there's a profilitic aspect to care in the mode of sincerity? Apart from sincerely caring, I would think that in these societies one wants to be seen by others to be sincerely caring. In this sense, even without social media, perhaps one's reputation was akin to a profile to be curated/cared for.
15:00 I wonder what Confucius would have thought of Plato’s Euthyphro
The care of dogs and horses is instinctive, it is sincere in the sense of being entirely genuine, not performed so that some other dog or horse can look and approve (I think ;-) although dogs are certainly capable of deception). A better example of insincerity; in the sense of no conscious commitment to a consistent course of action; would have been that of people who made a big display of looking after their parents while others were watching, then stopped doing it as soon as there was no audience. No doubt ancient China had plenty of these.
There have always been hypocrites, about care as much as anything else that is seen as a social good. Everyone is a hypocrite from time to time. Certainly modern social media allow this tendency wider range, but how does the "sincerity-authenticity-profilicity" triad add value? You either mean what you say or you do not.
A more interesting question (to me) is why is it that "showing that you are caring" is now seen to be so much more important than "showing that you are X", where X is any other traditional social virtue, such as being brave, hard-working, competent or honest.
The pinnacle of "fake caring" must be Munchausen by Proxy syndrome, actively harming their own children to set the stage for a fake public performance of taking care and self sacrifice.
What are you talking about? The Confuscius quote? I think Confuscius' point is that there was a difference between how dogs may care for their offspring and what we translate as filial piety. The heart or some kind of "sincerity" as Moeller calls it. Confuscius even leaves a backhanded "today" implying such piety is not being met lol.
Honestly, Moeller's theory is describing "technology" for constructing identity. The point is exactly what he says early in the video and in most of his videos. To outline how identity and related constructs are made under different conditions and their contradictions and problematic implementations. Its what most of this channel has been about.
I have in the past self described myself as careful. To do things with attention. Which is different to taking care of yourself. So i guess my trait fits the sincerity model.
Is there an article in which you write these things so I can quote you?
Thanks!
I'm not entirely sure care applies to our passions (the things we have intentionality to, that we like/dislike). We live in a culture that prizes something called empathy, for example - a nebulous social media term for being compassionate. Someone like Paul Bloom (YT video: Against Empathy) suggests that such directionality is antithetical to politics and to real meaning; that one may be helpful objectively by putting aside our emotions and accepting a certain distance/alterity from others. It's possible to go further and argue that empathy is the negation of specific passion and therefore identity. Many profiles are built around support for a particular group, but the subtext of care begins to erode specificity, doesn't it?
I thought of this regarding moral grandstanding or virtue signalling. We’ve always had the capacity to value empathetic or compassionate people, and historically many people have earned social capital for their acts of compassion. But what would be the use of our projecting empathy to acts of kindness? Now, I can think of two possibilities:
1. there is some socio-psychological mechanism whereby we actually discern the authentic from the profilic for example, Jesus, Buddha were true while Tom Cruise and Instagram model X are false. We’ve kept the former and are presumably discarding the the latter
2. we function similar to Girards scapegoat, in such a way that we reify the inherently self interested and profilic actions of others in order to justify our own pursuit of social capital. Through this mechanism we pretend that a distinction can ever be made between the sincere and the performance.
I may have missed it, but why is self-care in the modern day to the extent that therapy is advised for each individual pathological?
Possible answers:
1) Because therapy is usually counterproductive; repression works better.
2) Even if it is not actually counter productive, it does little or no good so is a waste of time and money that could have been spent on some socially useful, outwardly directed activity or an absorbing hobby.
3) It is advised to each individual... by therapists. Hardly neutral or disinterested observers, having no more scientific credibility than astrologers or priests.
@@unreasonable3589 Uum no...
There is a lot of proof that therapy works, especially for survivors of trauma.
Where are you even getting this?
I went through that myself, recovery would have taken a lot longer without it.
@@souti7436 You asked "to the extent that therapy is advised for each individual " The answers I gave are possible answers for why therapy should not be advised for each - ie every - individual. That does not mean that it should not be advised for some individuals. Most individuals are capable of coping with their own problems without spending a great deal of time and money on a questionable process. For those that cannot, it may be worth a try, but a visit to the seaside would probably work just as well. It is currently impossible to do truly impartial scientific tests on any psychological intervention, so there is no "proof that therapy works" even if you think that it worked for you. That is just an example of the narrative fallacy.
@@unreasonable3589 I was looking fo the reasoning that was part of Carefree Wonderings argument...
Also, please stop appealing to objectivity as if it exists. It makes you sound a bit performative. And the comment on my own therapy was not an argument, just an example.
@@souti7436 If you do not think that objectivity is possible, then everything you say is merely performative. I am surprised that you cannot see that. I will appeal to whatever I want.
this is an urnist response to a student who asked "why do you care?"
Hello, I was wondering if you had any thoughts on Alan Watts. He grabs and goes over eastern philosophy and religion frequently, and I find his lectures entertaining. I have my disagreements, but I think he presents interesting arguments. Then, as I said, even through my disagreements, I find his lectures fun to listen to. However, as someone who is not too familiar with eastern philosophies (for now!), I am not able to call him out on any potential misreadings.
As someone who has a great familiarity with Daoism (and other eastern philosophies), what do you think of Alan Watts? Is his use of eastern philosophy responsible? And does he present something interesting to consider?
Dogs and horses can take care of their offspring, but their offspring don't take care of them. This is the curious thing about the human animal (when it does that). Maybe the extension of lifespan because of civilization leads to the demand for a Confucian care of elders?
I have heard that bonobos have been observed taking care of their elderly. They are 98% genetically similar to humans and you can be sure they have never heard of Confucius.
@@colingoode8794 Ah bonobos! The true human race. ;-) Thanks for your reply. I will look into this...
You always seem to mention existentialism in passing in almost all of your videos, but never any use of Sartre, Beauvoir, or Fanon ideas to help you explain your points. Could you do a full video on existentialism?
Prof Moeller, do you really think there is something pathological in seeking therapy? To me it seems like the responsible thing to do in the face of pathology. Whatever you think of self-care, there's no denying a great many people have indeed been helped by it.
Dropping any discussion of philosophy here and presenting the psychologies' erspective, the pathologising of mental health has been one of the larger hurdles the field of psychology and its practitioners have had to handle. Ultimately current psych models have been moving away from simple biomedical models and basic understandings of a mental illness as rooted in one's mind and thinking, and more towards a biopsychosocial and other models that have to contend with the wider societal context relating to ones mental health.
I believe this has to do with scalability, people need to curate a caring profile because modern society has nuked the role based caring society that came with smaller communities. You actually get A LOT of economies of scale by hiring a publicist. I personally have also used Confucianism as a comparison to modern society because it is an ideal on the other side of the spectrum. The reality is that any tradition that has lost its original meaning devolves into a display of care.
I think that "curation of a caring profile" (which I take to be a more elegant version of the phrase "virtue signaling") is an expression of will-to-power in the mode of slave morality. That is, it is a way to humiliate and physically punish without direct physical involvement.
hey if I want to contact you for video creation how do I contact you? because there is no contact that you leave here thanks before
Great vid. Thanks.
In Swedish we break care in two "Bry" is the kind of care that one has towards concepts and things. And "vård" is the care one gets in the hospital.
Commenting before I watch too much but I think the ambiguity of the word "care" plays a large role in how disabled people interact with a capitalist medical system by interacting all of these meanings into the form of "receiving commodified care" in the form of clinical visits. It acts as a major source for where the unenunciated struggle finds a word for itself in the context of disability (diagnosis) by directing a desire for care for this struggle towards this interface between medicine and capital.
I care because It makes me feel good, It makes me feel better than before. Taking care of myself means (to me) to Also learn from myself, to see my flaws and insecurities and to literally taking care of them, It could be excercising to improve my overall health and endurance to survive life. Or It could be trying to learn from my mistakes and being autocritic. It means taking care of my essential needs, spirit, mind and body, in a way that makes logical Sense to me, It makes Sense to excercise, It makes sense to eat a certain way, because It has real effects on myself. It makes Sense to fight for a dream and thats why i care, i want to do shit before i die, because that way i feel like i am living, and in order to do certains thing that i cant do right now i gotta take care of others things to makes sure at least by the Best of my abbilities that im trying to do what Is neccesary to live the life that i want to live.
A question: how much care is too much? Yes, you need to care, but care too much and it starts to become a problem. I feel like there's too much awareness, that it stops about caring about things and more about self-gratification, virtue signalling to the crowd and doing moral masturbation. It reminds me of Mark Manson's newsletter about the uneven distribution of social awareness.
What is your thoughts on care-ethics and care epistemology, the “cluster of normative ethical theories that were developed by feminists in the second half of the twentieth century.” Like carol Gillian for example. I’m also surprised that you didn’t draw a connection to Aristotle and virtue/habituation to Lao Tzu, as that central to any discussion of care
1:07 that is a great painting 🎨
If you dont have something invested in the object of your care and i dont mean donated, i mean you invest a serious part of your life to it that can't be regained if lost, so in essence you have to have something subjective invested in the object of your care and not merely superficialities. Mere objective care is meaningless.
Care-Less is the slight tweak of the term I enjoy. You can't Care unless you care less, or then you'll be careless.
I have a question that maybe is related with another already answered about how peer view compares to Lacan Big other.
Profilicity mixes what could be considered profession, skillfullness or the "bussines side of things" with that than in the "self values" paradigm could be tell apart as a "moral" or "personal" self... before, was possible to get a double consideration according to such specifity like "being good as a muscian, sportman, etc; but in private life being a dauche"
The moral judging ussually goes around a communitary standard, for example You could say of yourself "maybe i'm an honest person but a bad catholic" that would be consistent if your main communitary referencial frame isnt catholicism, because thus you can consider being catholic just another self property among others and not a fundamental value of yourself that you care about.
If profilicity builts beyond the ambit specific "peer view" and reaches a more general communitary "peer view"... that doesnt render the "self" values as just another properties that contributes to profilicity? And then would the "self consistency" considered subsidiary below that external care for profilicity which is general but also fragmented? That would sound like "ego dystonic" not having a better term to compare
I thought Max Stirner was Friedrich Engels' fursona?
You said he's "the personalization of self-help"
I think you meant to say "personification"
What do you think about what Ayn Rand wrote about how your values(The things you care about), must be derived from facts of reality that help with your survival? What do you think about Rand's ideas in general?
Doesn't Zizek say that the best way to show you care about each other is to trade obscenities? Implied that two people who are only prepared to deal with each other on the level of the "universally good and ethical" only have the most shallow sort of uninvolved care. We can both safely say that we think Palestinians should be free, but if we talk about how your cleaner should be paid enough to live on we have a huge, obscene row.
Zizek comes from very materialist presuppositions
@@Robobotic Yes Zizek is very much a theorist, and I am more suspicious about theories the more I hear about them.
Why care and not desire?
Subscribed
Why should human care be somehow "better" or "more sincere" than that of dogs and horses?
In my view, Taoism seems to be very similar to stoicism in many regards, but perhaps in a more "extreme" way such that it resembles cynicism (not its modern sense, needless to say) somewhat.
You care for others by allowing them to become increasingly independent!
I have always slightly equated a carefree person with being irresponsible, or in other words, carefree.
First, because I have to. The internet says so.
Congrats
It's not necessarily hypocritical but it easily can be.- a profile is an avatar, an inhabited host, a possessed entity. We become ghosts to our own brand - the Wizard of Oz managing affairs behind the curtain.
The curation of Brand Value is only tangentially related to one's "real self", and the Brand's identity can become our idealized self. We ourselves can wither away, like the Preacher decrying homosexuality as his Brand who molests boys far away from any camera.
Modern celebrities suffer from this - their "real selves" before brand curation took over their lives becomes less and less important and therefore their life outside of the brand becomes less and less important.
We Care A Lot - Faith No More
I suspect i care because of a bunch of circumstances leading up to me caring. But look at alex jones even, he also uses this kind of caring profile to rally support, take the pizza shop pedo situation, he uses caring for the abstract kid to drive his own crazy narratives, showing no sympathy or care for the actual individuals involved, rather his care with stimulates his outrage is based on a pure abstraction.
Care Bear stare 🐻😘
Anyone get the bank advertisement: “We won’t invest your money in tobacco companies…” during this video? 😂
I enjoy your videos, but find it slightly aggressive the way you include images of Abigail Thorn in pretty much every video. I think the point has been more than made.
The god shaped hole in each person is filled by god. It can also be described as filled by spiritual practice: 8 fold path or 8 beatitudes.
maintenance Is care
Curator = Caretaker.
Profilism is a more effective term.
Care, concern
Why do I care? I never even thought about it 😆
Evil Prof Moeller:
Welcome to Careless Meandering
Profilicity is more or less pharisaism. This is the basic argument, correct?
If you're looking for a proper definition of what Moeller calls _profilicity_ you should check some of the other videos on this channel, such as one of these th-cam.com/users/hashtagprofilicity
From my limited knowledge, I don't think _pharisaism_ would be an accurate characterisation of it. For one, that has quite negative connotations. I think profilicity is about many different 'profiles' (one for each context basically), rather than just one; and the idea that it is these diverse profiles that sort of combine to define the person, rather than any of them being strictly dishonest.
@@luke-alex thank you for directing me towards it. In fact, I have watched all of professor Moeller's videos and they are greatly enlightening and, probably, at this point I should read his book to get a better grasp of what he means.
The reason I suggested pharisaism is because up until now with the issues of wokeism, authenticity etc. the term profilicity has been suggested as a criticism to contemporary self-building. While he tries to suggest that it is a neutral analysis, the examples given dwell more on the negative and hypocritical/ironical side of profilicity and less on some perhaps actual positive potential of the framework suggested.
Thank you again for your input. I am glad this channel has sparked a dialogue!
@@tassis.yianakos Hmm, I can see where you are coming from. Yet I do think Mueller is _sincere_ in trying to 'reduce the stigma' of having different, somewhat constructed identities (but it's quite an uphill battle).
I believe this because he has spoken, I think _more_ disparagingly, about the obsession over authenticity-and it would be using the language of authenticity that one could _most_ _easily_ attack profilicity. Or, to reformulate that slightly, Mueller sees the value of profilicity in that it might help us move past our-as he sees it-problematic authenticity obsession. That's just my impression of where he stands, I could be way off.
@@luke-alex I like your take on the subject. I happen to be an architect and I quite much agree that originality and authenticity are more of a binding fetish, than an actual drive of innovation a lot of the times and, unsurprisingly, this happens also a lot in our construction of self-identity. So, the weight and the potential lies more on the curation of self(profile) through other sources, for example other selfs(ours, real other people or fictional) we admire, opinion of epxerts etc. and less on the idea of complete authenticity. This is actually interesting, but I will insist that an emphasis on some liberating perspective of the profilicity project should be more present.
Take good care of yourself. You belong to me, says the State.
Ahhhh, I see sombody is on that veritasium thumbnail game
A little off topic, but....
You seemingly say things as though you know them to be true, but why do you think you could even know anything? I started taking the "calling out assumptions", thing pretty seriously, and its left me thinking that we might not even be able to know anything. How have you (or anyone who reads this) defended your knowing things capability from this scrutiny?
Or have i misinterpreted everything and you just say what you believe and don't claim any knowledge?
We got a field for that. Its called epistemology. Have fun
...rip
why not more on ethics of care (term of art)