I think aggression, like confidence, is something that it's ideally good to have some but not too much of. As someone who is not aggressive, I am pretty keenly aware of situations in which I could be a better person if I could make myself be more so. Comfort in calling attention to oneself at the risk of starting a conflict is a thing which enables people to stand up against wrongs being perpetrated; the fact that I'm not very good at this is one of my least favorite things about myself.
I'm not convinced by the idea that in either case it's correct to encourage everyone to have less of these traits, even if the excess on balance does more damage than the deficit. This sort of broad-brush approach can do a lot of damage to individuals who fall on the wrong side of the curve, and surely avoiding that is part of the whole point of the discussion.
I do think it's helpful for people to be more aware about how these traits can benefit the people who have them, and conscious about attempting to change incentives by not rewarding overconfidence and overaggressiveness or extroversion so blindly.
I also think that, like any sort of power (however unfair) it's helpful to convince people who have these privileged traits to feel that they have a sort of responsibility to use them for good. But this gets into controversial ground, I realize.
So I am not unaware of the subtleties and complexities involved here. When introducing people to a big complex concept though, I often try to keep it as simple as possible. As you know, my preferred argumentation method is to present this framework to people, and then let them go out into the world and find how much evidence fits that framework.
Regarding aggression, I more meant "It is the closest of the traits to actually harmful", and I have edited the post accordingly. Obviously it's a power that can be used for good. However aggression is clearly a positional good. An objective amount doesn’t help so much as “having more than other people in the room” (or similar social situations). In your case of “stand up for the wronged”, you just want more than the person who did the wronging after all.
I continue to analogize aggression to violence. “In ye olden days” you could stand up for the wronged with violence, and if you were better at violence than the perpetrator you could right the wrong (as effective as escalation ever is.) However making sure the “right” person is the more violent/aggressive one sounds like a mug’s game. A much better solution was to make violence less acceptable as a resolution mechanism.
As a positional good, a universal “everyone act less aggressive” wouldn’t actually change how often people like you intervene for the wronged. Both you and the person you wish you could stand up against would be less aggressive.
I don’t particularly think that we can actually just make everyone BE less aggressive. And if we could, yes it would have some costs. More, I wish we could stop _rewarding_ aggressiveness quite so much, and change the structures that encourage people to inculcate it.
I'm not convinced by the idea that in either case it's correct to encourage everyone to have less of these traits, even if the excess on balance does more damage than the deficit. This sort of broad-brush approach can do a lot of damage to individuals who fall on the wrong side of the curve, and surely avoiding that is part of the whole point of the discussion.
I do think it's helpful for people to be more aware about how these traits can benefit the people who have them, and conscious about attempting to change incentives by not rewarding overconfidence and overaggressiveness or extroversion so blindly.
I also think that, like any sort of power (however unfair) it's helpful to convince people who have these privileged traits to feel that they have a sort of responsibility to use them for good. But this gets into controversial ground, I realize.
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Regarding aggression, I more meant "It is the closest of the traits to actually harmful", and I have edited the post accordingly. Obviously it's a power that can be used for good.
However aggression is clearly a positional good. An objective amount doesn’t help so much as “having more than other people in the room” (or similar social situations). In your case of “stand up for the wronged”, you just want more than the person who did the wronging after all.
I continue to analogize aggression to violence. “In ye olden days” you could stand up for the wronged with violence, and if you were better at violence than the perpetrator you could right the wrong (as effective as escalation ever is.) However making sure the “right” person is the more violent/aggressive one sounds like a mug’s game. A much better solution was to make violence less acceptable as a resolution mechanism.
As a positional good, a universal “everyone act less aggressive” wouldn’t actually change how often people like you intervene for the wronged. Both you and the person you wish you could stand up against would be less aggressive.
I don’t particularly think that we can actually just make everyone BE less aggressive. And if we could, yes it would have some costs. More, I wish we could stop _rewarding_ aggressiveness quite so much, and change the structures that encourage people to inculcate it.
Reply
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