David Farrar has a thread about a Kawerau man charged with covertly filming a tenant in their bedroom. Here is a typical comment on the thread:
mikeysmokes (136) Says:
May 16th, 2010 at 2:21 pmThe moral outrage is running high and presumably the authors are morally squeaky clean in their own behavior (ignoring moral relativism). Similar moral outrage was expressed on the NZ blogosphere when Tiger Woods was outed for being a serial adulterer. Two NZ politicians in particular are targets of an Ahabian quest to expose their alleged infidelities. It often appears that moral outrage is often accompanied by a prurient interest in the events being disapproved of.
Thats fucking dodgy. Is this guy suggesting that as a “red blooded male” what he did was ok? I reckon he should go for a skate for that.
Undeniably there are many serpents living the dark places of the world. We do wonder if perhaps some of those serpents lie frozen within those who are most willing to call to account the worms within others. In reality Moby Dick lies down with the White Witch and both feast upon the Tigerpig.
Psychological projection or projection bias (including Freudian Projection) is the unconscious act of denial of a person's own attributes, thoughts, and emotions, which are then ascribed to the outside world, such as to the weather, the government, a tool, or to other people. Thus, it involves imagining or projecting that others have those feelings.
Projection is considered one of the most profound and subtle of human psychological processes, and extremely difficult to work with, because by its nature it is hidden. It is the fundamental mechanism by which we keep ourselves uninformed about ourselves. Humor has great value in any attempt to work with projection, because humor presents a forgiving posture and thereby removes the threatening nature of any inquiry into the truth.
Paleo-anthropologically speaking, this faculty probably had survival value as a self-defense mechanism when homo sapiens' intellectual capacity to detect deception in others improved to the point that the only sure hope to deceive was for deceivers to be self-deceived and therefore behave as if they were being truthful.
One modern, radical view of projections is that they are prerequisites for normal social functioning. Persons incapable of ascribing their own feelings to themselves have great difficulties in understanding them. Unfortunately, human beings have done great harm laboring under the delusions of projection. This is especially true for historical cases of projection between ethnic or cultural groups, for example in Apartheid or Nazism.
In classical psychology, projection is always seen as a defense mechanism that occurs when a person's own unacceptable or threatening feelings are repressed and then attributed to someone else. Wikipedia
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3 comments:
So covertely filming women while they rent my home would be ok?
What Tiger did could be argued as "red blooded male" and perfectly legal. What this guy did was perverted and creepy. How you tie it in with Tiger I have no idea
No MikeySmokes, what Pat Norris did was not OK.
The point of my post was not to defend the behavior of Pat Norris. I am questioning bloggers passing moral judgement on others when their own behavior may or may not be beyond reproach.
But you too are passing judgement on those who pass judgement. What have you to hide from yourself? In what way do you judge yourself and find your ability to form opinion undesirable?
The theory of projection is a tool for use by the individual, for the betterment of the individual. It is not an offensive debating tool for political agendas.
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