About the members of this forum

[Philosophos]

Is it just me or anyone else sees that lots of the members here are very logical and have nice arguments or at least a different prespective that can be discussed as an alternative etc, but on the emotional maturity we miserably fail and we just sound like babies who want lolipops AND WE WANT THEM NOW?

Anyone who has some psychology degree or knowledge (no pop-psychology I'M BEGGING YOU) is welcome.

PS. I'm not judging anyone, this is a safe environment for discussion and nobody will point fingers.

PS2. I'm not saying that this is true, it's just the impression I get through all of these years. I can't be sure without meeting someone in person.

Let the figh... aaaa... I mean the constructive dialogue begin

[Sharia Lawn]

What you say is true. It's the result of most of the quality posters that used to come here disappearing, turning the asylum over to the inmates. This has changed the tone of discussions so that even posters who used to be good are dragged down to a much lower level.

[Hatshepsut]

...but on the emotional maturity we miserably fail and we just sound like babies who want lolipops AND WE WANT THEM NOW? ...Anyone who has some psychology degree or knowledge (no pop-psychology I'M BEGGING YOU) is welcome.

I'm not sure psychology has a concept of "emotional maturity" in the sense that I infer you mean. Of course psychology has many schools with differing conceptual frameworks: Freudian, Gestalt, behaviorism, social learning theory, etc. All of them must account for maturational processes that cause emotions to work differently in adults than they do in small children. I don't have a degree so I can't provide more details.

But is emotional maturity to mean better ability to control, or at least to hide, emotion; or does it mean that our emotions become more "enlightened" in some way? Some cognitive scientists even think the category division between emotion and reason is artificial. These folks claim that emotion is as much a form of intelligence as any other thought process is.

What I'm gathering we mean by maturity here is posting according to accepted rules of forensics and debate: Addressing issues at hand without personal attacks and so on. Argument ad hominem is sometimes done deliberately for strategic reasons, especially in politics. It's a cheap way to discredit opponents when it works. On an Internet forum, however, I suspect it covers for lack of homework. To deliver an opposing argument based on reason takes more effort than spouting off does, yet there's a desire to get something on the board right away before the discussion moves on or ends. On the political Left I also perceive frustration: The Left quite frankly hasn't done well over the past 40 years, at least in the USA. With no prospects for a revolution, there's lots of wheel-spinning going on.

There are some useful concrete projects here too: Like donating to bring electric generators to an area where conflict has knocked regular power out. That seems pretty "mature" emotionally to me. Also, without a Left our U.S. politics would be an even worse hellhole than it is.

[PhoenixAsh]

emotional maturity is a socially defined term to enforce a construct of behavior that suits the purpose of the society that uses it. It also isn't a unified concept. What is considered emotionally mature in one culture would in another culture be considered a lack of the same.

Revolutionary politics are often called on being emotional immature because if transcends the social cooperation modus that social maturity as a term tends to enforce and puts as a central focus point.

It is also often applied wrong. Emotional maturity doesn't involve conflict unless it deals with conflict resolution and avoidance....that is supposed to be the goal while it ignored the fact that conflict is essential.

It is also used to dismiss the notion that sometimes the social resolution model is unwanted and counter productive. Or that seeking conflict escalation in and of itself is a mature goal and absolutely necessary.

The idea that all ideas are worthwhile and all should be considered and respected is of course entirely nonsensical. The same goes for the people who uphold those ideas. Ideas are inseparable from a person. Especially when these ideas are on a political or religious level. So rejection of the person who professes certain ideas is a logical and natural outcome. Either they change their opinion or they become the opposition. In some cases that opposition needs to be dealt with with violence...either verbal or fysical.

This is by the way essentially the basis of revolutionary politics and militant anti fascism. The platforms run on a conflict model and reject the social conflict resolution model that emotional maturity enforces.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

I think the lack of emotional maturity here is probably in part a function of the seemingly young ages of posters here (i'll include myself in that!), and also a function of the internet.

I'm presuming that there are comrades here who are active in left politics, and so there are probably comrades here who are active in my area. Yet it's striking that at meetings I go to the debate is conducted in a much more mature, and therefore effective, way most of the time. I guess the speed with which most good debates here descend into arguing is just a sign that this forum's culture reflects the wider bullying culture that pervades much social media.

[PhoenixAsh]

I am not sure which meetings you go to. But usually meetings have an entirely different purpose and usually held between people and groups that operate on the same basic principles and positions.

This is not the case on a forum which generally caters to irreconcilable political positions. Anarchism will never be friendly to Bolshevism and vice versa. Stalinists and Trotskyists will never get along. Individually...perhaps...politically...not a chance in hell. And those disputes are so deep and so utterly steeped in real historic ideologically justified violence and bloodshed that there can be no reconciliation.

Go to a multi tendency meeting. Those usually deteriorate rather quickly and can even end in violence.


Aside from that...emotional maturity does not exist. It is a construct along side a social constructed measuring point and based on choices between psychological realities. If you are looking for a fixed definition you won't actually find it. It is a term which is freely applied to subjective "traits" revolving around problem solving in which it makes a moral choice between certain models of resolution. These models of resolution will always revolve around peaceful social resolutions that highly respect the other individual, their opinion, behavior and self expression.

This is problematic for several reasons. One of those reasons is obvious. Emotional maturity reflects as a psychological principle the sensibilities of the liberal petit-bourgeoisie protecting itself from criticism and protecting itself from conflict driven political models.

Again...the term emotional maturity is within politics used against revolutionary politics and revolutionaries as the label is highly dependent on cooperation, respect and understanding regardless of the circumstances.

[Philosophos]

I'm not sure psychology has a concept of "emotional maturity" in the sense that I infer you mean. Of course psychology has many schools with differing conceptual frameworks: Freudian, Gestalt, behaviorism, social learning theory, etc. All of them must account for maturational processes that cause emotions to work differently in adults than they do in small children. I don't have a degree so I can't provide more details.

But is emotional maturity to mean better ability to control, or at least to hide, emotion; or does it mean that our emotions become more "enlightened" in some way? Some cognitive scientists even think the category division between emotion and reason is artificial. These folks claim that emotion is as much a form of intelligence as any other thought process is.

What I'm gathering we mean by maturity here is posting according to accepted rules of forensics and debate: Addressing issues at hand without personal attacks and so on. Argument ad hominem is sometimes done deliberately for strategic reasons, especially in politics. It's a cheap way to discredit opponents when it works. On an Internet forum, however, I suspect it covers for lack of homework. To deliver an opposing argument based on reason takes more effort than spouting off does, yet there's a desire to get something on the board right away before the discussion moves on or ends. On the political Left I also perceive frustration: The Left quite frankly hasn't done well over the past 40 years, at least in the USA. With no prospects for a revolution, there's lots of wheel-spinning going on.

There are some useful concrete projects here too: Like donating to bring electric generators to an area where conflict has knocked regular power out. That seems pretty "mature" emotionally to me. Also, without a Left our U.S. politics would be an even worse hellhole than it is.

By emotional maturity I mean emotional inteligence. Being able to control your feelings, let them overrun you at the proper time, LET them overun you cause you can't always keep it inside etc.
The part of emotional intelligence that I refer here is that we don't even know how to fucking have a proper conversation (I'm not being total here there are many brilliant examples that helped me a lot without even being critical/judgy to the bit).

I'm not saying that we are better than other people or smarter, but we devote more time for political, cultural and a huge variety of topics and some people here have extremely well documented opinions and very good arguments that put me into deep thoughts lots of times. Now you take this person and you expect that he/she will be very mature and will know how to have a proper conversation and won't go: "LALALALA I CLOSE MA EARZ I DONT LISTENZ TO ANYONE CUZ YOU" and then you see people not being able to control their anger and just start calling people names etc etc.

This for me is something that made me wonder countless times, no matter how many times I see it. Hope I made it clear what I mean with that.

[Art Vandelay]

As Lenin said, politics is about who cuts whose throat. It makes sense why things can get a bit charged when you consider the nature of the discussions.

[PhoenixAsh]

By emotional maturity I mean emotional inteligence. Being able to control your feelings, let them overrun you at the proper time, LET them overun you cause you can't always keep it inside etc.
The part of emotional intelligence that I refer here is that we don't even know how to fucking have a proper conversation (I'm not being total here there are many brilliant examples that helped me a lot without even being critical/judgy to the bit).

I'm not saying that we are better than other people or smarter, but we devote more time for political, cultural and a huge variety of topics and some people here have extremely well documented opinions and very good arguments that put me into deep thoughts lots of times. Now you take this person and you expect that he/she will be very mature and will know how to have a proper conversation and won't go: "LALALALA I CLOSE MA EARZ I DONT LISTENZ TO ANYONE CUZ YOU" and then you see people not being able to control their anger and just start calling people names etc etc.

This for me is something that made me wonder countless times, no matter how many times I see it. Hope I made it clear what I mean with that.

Yes what you mean is quite clear. Emotional Intelligence differs from Emotional Maturity.

But there needs to be one correction to this.

Emotional Intelligence is not about harnessing your reaction it is harnessing your reaction to reach an intended goal. That goal doesn't need to be free information exchange, nor does it need to be letting the other speak. Creating conflict or initiating conflict is not necessarily a sign of lower emotional intelligence.

In fact Emotional Intelligence is about capability to use and detect emotions...not about what the goal is of that capability and how to use it.

It is for example a sign of high emotional intelligence if you manage to recognize and reduce stress in another person in order to get them to open up. It is conversely also a sign of high emotional intelligence if you recognize emotional weak points and use them to break another person if that is your intended goal.

There is not morality in Emotional Intelligence. It merely indexes your higher or lower ability to utilize the emotions of yourself and those of others to greater effect and purpose.

So the question you do want to ask is not so much why people have a higher or lower emotional intelligence or are more or less emotionally mature....but rather why do debates escalate and why do they result in insults and dogmatism.

And more importantly how can we as a community create a workable debate environment which allows for cultural differences.

[VivalaCuarta]

This forum would be way better if everyone just realized that I am right.

[VivalaCuarta]

I retract my previous statement because PhoenixAsh liked it.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

[QUOTE=PhoenixAsh;2848691]I am not sure which meetings you go to. But usually meetings have an entirely different purpose and usually held between people and groups that operate on the same basic principles and positions.

I do agree that this is a fair point, though I think it's also fair to say that unless you are attending a meeting of the SWP, you will probably find in many groups that meet in the UK (Radical Assembly, UK Uncut, People's Assembly, Left Unity etc.) a variety of tendencies and ideological beliefs.


This is not the case on a forum which generally caters to irreconcilable political positions. Anarchism will never be friendly to Bolshevism and vice versa. Stalinists and Trotskyists will never get along. Individually...perhaps...politically...not a chance in hell. And those disputes are so deep and so utterly steeped in real historic ideologically justified violence and bloodshed that there can be no reconciliation.

Go to a multi tendency meeting. Those usually deteriorate rather quickly and can even end in violence.

I have been to a couple...most notably I was at the 'Introduction to Anarchism' meeting at the Anarchist Bookfair last year which a Leninist friend of mine nearly did turn into a shitstorm:lol:. However, even then, the level to which the language and courteousness of the meeting descended was not what you see here.

I actually think that strong debate is a function of a healthy democracy and so, even as people disagree on ideas in the strongest possible terms, I think we can happily view this is a function of a democratic process. This is qualitatively different from the bullying and shutting down of other comrades on Revleft.

[PhoenixAsh]

We have a mixed group of Stalinists, Trotskyists/4th internationalists, Anarchists (of three different subtendencies). We found common ground in certain primary principles. The rest are usually fought over bitterly....often in a manner that would make Revleft blush. Yet while it certainly happened on occasion that people refused to talk to each other for a while...we always go out for drinks, laugh, have fun and not carry a grudge... and a lot of us are very (sometimes very very) close personal friends...regardless of our bitter disagreements on issues.

But you touch a key point of why that group works. Regardless of our differences we know we are comrades. We view each other as comrades and we do so because we require that every addition to our group is both vetted and participates in DA. Everybody fights and has each others back. And we have a relatively fixed group....and while some members come and some members go...a forum is transient and we have no idea of the intentions of other members.

We also have clear established definitions. When we talk we know what is considered a crossing of the lines and what is not. It doesn't prevent it. But it sure as hell means that when we discuss it.....everybody is using the same language.

There is also the factor that meetings are time limited which means that conflicts rarely have time to escalate as if the meeting lasted 24/7...simply because when the time limit expires and the meeting ends you can't interject any more input untill the next meeting.

Plus....we....as a revleft membership collective do not moderate each other. This does happen in a meeting at least to some extent. This means that the community itself does not provide social breaks on escalation. And that is often as simple as saying: hey....don't take it personal/ don't straw man/ don't insult in a fair and objective way. When it happens it usually takes the form of ganging up on others based on personal dislikes/likes.

But even so...even parties often are disrespectful in ways some of which we don't really have on revleft. There are numerous examples of splits, (hierarchy driven) character assassinations, and (what we do have) slanderous polemics designed to discredit.

IMO the key to a safe environment is within these points.

Establishing clear, well defined, rules of conduct.

Creating an environment if collective responsibility.

Adopting a healthy dose of quid pro quo

Accepting that not all cultures are alike...fe...the Dutch are infinitly more direct than the Brits and the Dutch largely view polite impoliteness as very insulting. Another example. If I make an ok sign in Holland...this same ok sign is viewed as a severe insult in Italy. We don't all use language in the same way and not all language means the same thing.

[Os Cangaceiros]

Whoa, people acting immature on the internet of all places?! :ohmy:

[human strike]

As a general rule people appear less emotionally mature on the internet since it is a space where we are able to speak without so many of the social restrictions that exist "IRL." We are also able to do this with fewer anxieties. Basically we feel more comfortable being our true selves and consequently the fact most people deep down really are just "babies who want lollipops" is revealed - this is especially true when the interaction is between people who will most likely never meet.

[Aslan]

I think the immaturity is a good thing. It shows that we are young and that Revleft is a fertile place for revolution. It also shows that we can watch each other grow and mature with a good example. (contrary to the stagnant and old 19th century marxist community the internet is seeing a blossoming community).

[#FF0000]

didn't read the thread but I want my bottle right fucking now