Right but that’s a non-answer because norms change over time and place and that can only happen if people are allowed to change them over time and place. All you’re saying is that it’s subjective in a clouded way. At best you’re basically being left behind the cultural norm and probably should catch up.
No, it just means that norms should align with values. I have certain values and think that caring about aesthetics (personal appearance, nice architecture, clean spaces, beautiful art) results in a society that is better for me and other people.
Yes, it’s your subjective opinion you want to force on everyone else but previously didn’t want to admit is the case because it shows there is no actual argument as to why anyone else should agree. Like the clashes over wearing headscarves in Iran where people are literally being killed an imprisoned over that subjective value disagreement.
“Everyone should share my values” is essentially an extreme position.
But you’ve changed the subject. We were discussing what people were wearing.
And as obvious yes if you personally think that it’s very acutely your subjective opinion. You are literally telling us your opinion. You couldn’t get a clearer example of something that’s subjective.
There’s a worrying level of philosophical paucity here.
No, not really. The concept of beauty has a long philosophical history and many knowledgeable and intelligent people have written books on the topic. As I said above, the people who think this stuff is entirely subjective tend to be ones that haven’t engaged much (or at all) with previous thought on the topic.
> The concept of beauty has a long philosophical history and many knowledgeable and intelligent people have written books on the topic
Which is not incompatible with it being subjective. In fact, many of those “knoweldgeable and intelligent” people have written specifically on its subjectivity, and others explicitly on specific, e.g., of a specific culture and time, subjective standards.
People who wax philosophical almost entirely about what the inherent subjectivity of aesthetics means for our experience as subjects, individually and collectively.
This line of reasoning is unsound because it attempts to universalize particulars wrt aesthetics. Universalizing particulars is what Lacan would call psychotic. The antidote here is a good dose hysterics.
What should one do if they find that the aesthetic norms practiced by the people around them don't align with anyone's values?
Is there room in your clean, well architected, art-endowed society for protest? If not, what keeps the norms in-line with the (presumably drifting) values?
I think we ought to distinguish between the case where the person has thought through their decision to wear pajamas in public and is doing it as an attempt to challenge existing norms, versus the case where they didn't even give it a thought.
Because if that's what they're doing, then I'm 100% with you. Hanging onto existing norms is just opting out of the conversation about what the norms should be.
I suspect, though, that gp is objecting to a different sort of opting-out--one where you're either blind or apathetic to the consequences of your actions.
I guess what I'm saying is, it depends on the pajamas.
But norms change because it becomes normal to do it which requires people do it without thinking about it. By definition.
If people only do subversive things intentionally nothing changes. That’s in fact what the conservative view wants, safe “change” that doesn’t actually matter. Which is why for example Iran is cracking down so hard on the recent protests because they desperately need for the norm not to change.
I feel like there's more middle ground than you're acknowledging.
Yes, people eventually start doing a thing because it's the new normal--but it doesn't happen spontaneously. Some emergent leader decides to wear pajamas to the office (or whatever) and then the barrier is lowered and others follow suit because the leader had a point and then eventually being comfortable in public is the new normal. But that emergent leader is required, no?
Somebody has to do it first.
I've been witnessing this in my neighborhood. Some apartment complex put up a fence and now the route to the grocery is long and circuitous because we can no longer cut through the apartment complex's parking lot. Some hero dismantled the fence to make a hole and now the whole neighborhood is reopening the hole when the complex repairs it. I'm happy to participate in the maintaining the new normal, but I wasn't the hero that set it up in the first place. I'm in that guy's debt.
