Regarding slander, it is very hard to successfully sue someone for slander or libel in the US (unlike in the UK, where these suits are very common). Normally if the person who made the malicious statement can argue that they were expressing a personal opinion, they will not be held responsible. For the suit to be successful, normally there has to be some kind of proof that the person who made the malicious statement knew that it was false. As far as I am aware, I'm not a lawyer.

For example, if I publicly say "John is ugly", John couldn't sue me for slander because I'm stating my opinion. If I said "John cheats at cards", John may have a case against me (this is something he is able to prove that he doesn't do), but if it's only my opinion that he cheats, he still might not have a case against me. If I say "John has hidden $10,000 in a Swiss bank account and he isn't paying taxes on it", and if John doesn't have this money in an account (or if he does and he pays taxes on it), then he might have a valid case against me.

At any rate, Zamenhof is hardly here to defend "Esperanza" as GB would have it. There's no law against saying stupid things on TV, and I believe that there have been legal rulings that if you say something so outrageous that it obviously isn't true, that someone can't sue you for slander/libel" (in my remarks about John, this would presumably refer to a statement like "John is a vampire bat masquerading as a human")

ceigered:
E.g. part of Australian culture is the mentality that we should all help each other and that we should bring down anyone too high up in society back down to our level. So, a "shared reality" there is that it's not too good to be superior to every one else, or something like that).

What is the correct English word for this? I assume Fellowism(?) isn't the right one. Should be Collegiality, isn't it?

ceigered:
Well, I should reexplain:
A shared reality, or a "shared perception", (replace "perception" with "belief", "truth", "ideal", "cultural factor") is essentially the "average", or the lump sum of what people believe. If we look at society, or a culture, as being an entire being in itself, then we can say that what the most common beliefs and ideals are among a group of people are what make up the beliefs of that organism we call "society".

ceigered:
So, let's say that you and me qwertz are part of a secret ancient culture called the "Slu-ites", and we both believe that "Slu" is a nice sounding word for esperanto. Now let's say Erinja is also part of our culture, and Erinja's opinion is "well, slu isn't necessary", and we don't decide to argue against that point - then, we can say that our "culture" as a whole believes that "Slu is a nice and beautiful word in Esperanto, but it is not necessary". That's the "shared realities" I'm talking about.

ceigered:
So it's not about a group enforcing that opinion (although it can happen, but that's if the group have homogenous beliefs and are against those who don't agree with them), but it's rather about the overall picture of the beliefs of society. Everyone's realities are different - I see the world much different to you as you noted.

Hey, yes. Sounds like The map is not the territory.

ceigered:
But the world itself, not the world through our viewpoints, is a mixture of all these different individual beliefs. At least, that's what we as humans interact with in society, a "constructed reality". Otherwise if we followed a "true reality" to the letter in normal life, we would not be intelligent, we'd just be drones. Similarly, if we all believe the same thing, then we're drones again, but instead this time instead of being slaves to the cold, heartless world, we'd be slaves to our own creation, society.

And so on so forth. That's what is going through my mind anyway, so now that I can think of words to explain it we can hopefully figure out what we are both talking about haha .

I do not know if you know this or not, so please bare with me if I'm wrong, but I thin...

Sometimes it's really difficult to find the right words which represent the right concept behind.

Miland:

qwertz:

Miland:

qwertz:These East-Germans are really annoying..

Let me guess what they might say in the former DDR: "These West Germans are really annoying ..

Who said what? The DDR regime's puppets?..

I am talking about people in the former DDR, i.e. today's East Germans, who might say "These West Germans are really annoying.."

In my opinion:

... it's a kind Individualism vs. Collegiality clash. I.e. members of collegiality-driven societies feel offended if somebody emphasizes the whole day it's own beliefs and views to other members of society. Just piling a pole into the ground and say: Hey, that's me, everybody has to accept that I'm very special individual. Hey, sorry. I assume less members of strong collegiality-driven societies will accept this. Even more it gives that individualism person a very silly attitude. From a collegiality view nobody is perfect, can do everything, doesn't make any mistake and is the middle of the world. Members of collegiality-driven societies feel offended because a very strong basic rule of collegiality-driven societies is: "Don't step-up above other members of society". Furthermore members of collegiality-driven societies do put a lot of efforts into not give any (or as less as possible) attitude looking like a arrogant human to other members of society. Individualists don't take care much of it. Somebody feels that someones very individual is arrogant. Not the bussiness for individualist. It's not my problem, it's their problem. That's completly contrary to collegiality-thinking.

Travis523:

qwertz:In my opinion there should be limits for free speech.

Who gets to decide what the limits are? I don't think you would want me deciding your limits anymore than I would want you deciding mine.

Thats why we have the First Amendment.

Individualism vs. Collegiality clash.

RiotNrrd:

Travis523:Thats why we have the First Amendment.

----------
* I assume they have one. Like most Americans, I'm not fully informed about the government structures of most other countries.

Needs a lot of research to get informed.

RiotNrrd:It just struck me as such an odd thing to say in a conversation with a non-american, who may or may not have a clue what the First Amendment even is.

Almost as if, during a conversation with a Latvian about immigration, they said to you "That's why we have Article III, Section IX". Um, yeah, I guess...

Thanks, RiotNrrd. I had no idea. I found out at Wikipedia.

qwertz:

ceigered:
E.g. part of Australian culture is the mentality that we should all help each other and that we should bring down anyone too high up in society back down to our level. So, a "shared reality" there is that it's not too good to be superior to every one else, or something like that).

What is the correct English word for this? I assume Fellowism(?) isn't the right one. Should be Collegiality, isn't it?

Qwertz, I think the term you're looking for is Crab Mentality.

A propos what ceigered said: I've heard of studies saying that such an attitude (of wanting to pull somebody down) is quite prevalent in Indian society (or, perhaps more accurately, societies) as well. Is it perhaps some kind of innate, universal trait? That might make sense if it conferred an evolutionary advantage, which I sure can imagine it doing.

One successful individual attracting many mates for it/him/herself might be worse for a species' genetic diversity than if all these potential mates paired up with others instead. An innate urge for retaining averageness and eliminating disproportionately superior individuals might have favoured the species as a whole. Of course, from within that mass of average individuals, tiny, almost unnoticeable advantages could still have ensured evolution.

What do you think?

DAMN! I accidentally hit backspace outside of the text-box and lost the message!

@ Rohan:
Crab mentality seems similar to the Australian cultural stereotype, but I think it's closer to a sense of socialism rather than some form of anarchistic capitalism, which sounds more like crab mentality to me . I say "socialist" lightly, since it's not like "oh he has this and we don't, therefore we don't like it", but more "he has a new car but he's acting like a dick about it" or "he's too worried about his new car over his friends" etc, and so forth. So basically, if you get nice stuff or nice achievements or nice friends, and gain status, and become a jerk over it, society will cut you down to size (well, idealy, rarely happens because like-minded people hang out with each other, therefore jerks hang out with jerks ). Politicians and their mates of course are exempt from that rule and do experience crab mentality simply because it's "cool" to be cynical of a politicians job and even their humanity and rights as a human being.

(I recall reading today about Richard Branson using a couple of jets to tell the world to stop climate change or some business and then announcing space travel (virgin galactic? I forgot it's name but it's a long going thing you can google about), and the columnist was basically calling him a hypocrite and a fraud and that they're just ruling over us less privileged classes by telling us not to use so much bad energies etc. I felt like slapping the guy over the face with a tuna, because he ignored the good points of Branson's messages, and ignored the fact that 20 million plebs with their cars exhaust running does a lot more damage than 1 freaking leer jet).

RE this syndrome and evolution, I agree with what you've said Rohan. Perhaps the evolution is not so much to benefit the individual human, who independently would benefit more if they were able to do as they wished, but to benefit society, since society as an "organism" requires redundancy, in both numbers, "roles" in a community and genetics in case of diseases to thrive. Interesting stuff!

@ Qwertz: "The map is not the territory"; Bonega ligilo! And that reminded me of that word I wanted! ABSTRACTION! Something we want Esperanto to have a factual one of, since a false or negative abstraction does nothing to help the language or its learners (unless the propagation of Esperanto is somehow benefited by people bullying Esperantists or their children based on some vague abstraction of what it is).

Also, that thing about individualism applies so much to society too I feel, at least here. "Oh my god! I don't know you/understand you/haven't heard of something you're interested in? PANIC!"

Rohan:
Qwertz, I think the term you're looking for is Crab Mentality.

Thanks Rohan. I first heard of that term. That sounds very weird: "if I can't have it, neither should you." For me, it sounds like a society where someone can get very fast poor and someone can get very fast very rich.

The kind of society I grow up someone would categorize an Collectivism one. (in German: Kollektivismus) controlled by a regime upperclass and the secrect service Staatssicherheit which fortunately was not capable to disable Monday demonstrations. Probably someone knows that this was the last trigger (there happened a lot of other ones before) of end of the Warschau pact and the fall of the Iron curtain by the end.

ceigered:DAMN! I accidentally hit backspace outside of the text-box and lost the message!

I very strong recommend you to use a text editor which has some undo feature.

qwertz:

ceigered:DAMN! I accidentally hit backspace outside of the text-box and lost the message!

I very strong recommend you to use a text editor which has some undo feature.

You mean using something like Notepad (TextEdit for me) to write the message, then copy it into the textbox here on lernu? I normally (but not this time) just copy my text after writing it as a backup, but because I was switching between tabs on the browser things went a bit awry with the text input when I switched back into this one. Silly Safari

ceigered:

qwertz:

ceigered:DAMN! I accidentally hit backspace outside of the text-box and lost the message!

I very strong recommend you to use a text editor which has some undo feature.

You mean using something like Notepad (TextEdit for me) to write the message, then copy it into the textbox here on lernu?

Yes, that what I meant. Before lernu.net server was changed recently I had lot of lernu.net database communication errors which could be capable to loose messages inside the message window (=database set form).

ceigered:
I normally (but not this time) just copy my text after writing it as a backup, but because I was switching between tabs on the browser things went a bit awry with the text input when I switched back into this one. Silly Safari

Hhm, I don't know like the clipboard works on MacOS. And what way Safari browser affects MacOS clipboard. At MSWIN I don't trust the systems clipboard and use the default systems text editor. I also feel that the lernu.net posting window size is to small in wideness. That's a second reason for me to use an external text editor.

If you use Google Chrome as your browser, you can modify the size of the text input window to be wider or longer.