Random quote
The so-called good society accepts all kinds of merits, except intellectual ones; these, in fact, are contraband.

Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860)

On responsibility

The cast receiving the applause after the Dutch premiere of Mieczysław
 Weinberg’s opera The Passenger,  17 April 2026 in Amsterdam

You admire the leader of your country, a charismatic person, and you want to support him as much as you can. You vote for him or his party in elections, but actually you want to do more. Happily, you work for the government. Even more, you hold a high position there, so your contribution counts. Moreover, you know that your leader takes the right decisions, so you are happy that you can help execute them. Then you get a task and you absolutely find you cannot do that. It will backfire on what you do or will backfire on what your leader intends, but okay, it’s your leader’s responsibility, or so you think. But what will you do if it’s against your moral values? If you see that by what you do you’ll hurt other people a lot and bring a lot of misery to them? What would I do?
I had to think of it when I went to the Dutch premiere of Mieczysław Weinberg’s opera The Passenger recently. The main theme of the opera was the question of responsibility and guilt when you are part of a system that doesn’t only oppress people, but kills, no destroys them. The opera was about a guard of the concentration camp of Auschwitz and one of her victims. Auschwitz was an extreme and exceptional case. People often think it belongs to the past. However, in view of what is happening in the world today, I am afraid that it was not so exceptional as many people tend to think. Apart from that, aren’t extreme cases often a strengthened reflection of what happens in daily life in a less extreme way? Don’t they point to perfidious characteristics of life that are less extreme and often tolerated in daily life? They make us aware of what often remains unnoticed. Let me clarify, guided by the article by Alette Smeulders in the programme booklet of the opera.
People want to belong and to become part of a group. Sometimes they join a group without really knowing the direction it is taking, though. A charismatic leader, large and enthusiastic crowds, joining an elite corps: It can feel right and often there seems to be no reason to stay aside. You think that this group will bring you where you want to go. And aren’t you part of the future by joining? Some don’t care if such a group uses violent means, or that it sometimes does. Others would not choose them, and certainly not extreme violence, oppression, and genocide but accept it when the leader does, for they want to support him and his movement that gives them hope, and they are prepared to fight for it, even if it is at the expense of others. Being a member of an elite corps means adhering to certain rules, standards and values. In extreme cases it involves strict obedience, conformity and loyalty, if not an oath to the leader. And why not? You have chosen the group voluntarily and you are prepared to dedicate your whole person to it, and not shirk from the ‘dirty work’. Maybe, you can refuse tasks you don’t like and finally leave the group, but the pressure to stay is immense and you don’t want to let the others down. And what if you would leave the group? You are afraid of the void you would feel. Of course, you’ll feel uncomfortable when you do something you don’t like for the first time, but gradually you’ll get used to it; acting against your gut will become routine, and soon it doesn’t feel any longer like that.
This description is based on Auschwitz, but as Smeulders says, such things happen everywhere: “Perpetrators subordinate themselves to a leader, a group or an ideology. They are aiming to create a better world and think that the end justifies the means. They try to repress anything that raises doubts: they do their utmost to assuage their consciences and maintain the notion that they are the good ones and the others embody evil. That lets them create their own reality and cast themselves as the heroes in their own narrative. The moment any empathy arises, it is suppressed and superseded by tunnel vision. They have a mission, a task that must be accomplished.”
However, and that’s important, although what perpetrators of extremist acts do is extremist, indeed, the perpetrators are seldom extremists as such. As such they are people like you and I; they are normal people who have become extremist; or in the words of Smeulders: “Time and time again, it becomes clear that the perpetrators who did terrible things were not born as perpetrators. Other than the occasional sadist or psychopath, it is frightening just how normal they were. They were ordinary people who got swept along and suddenly found themselves in extreme situations that they felt they could no longer escape from. It is possible to break loose, but it comes at a price: you have to disengage from the group, perhaps at the risk of your own life, and face up to where you went wrong.”
This brings me where I want to go in this blog. Extremist situations are extremist, indeed, but in a sense they are a continuation of daily practice. They are daily practice pushed to the extreme by all kinds of factors that I cannot discuss here now. Extreme behaviour is the end point of normal behaviour on a sliding scale. It’s not that there is good behaviour and there is bad behaviour and that’s it. There is a lot in between. This makes it so difficult. In daily life there is pressure from others and there are practical restrictions of what is possible (socially and physically). So we must choose, and choices can be disadvantageous to others. Sometimes we cannot help, but often we can but still see no reason to adapt our choices. It can be (but need not be) a first step to the extreme. We must realize that, but we seldom do and seldom take the time to consider. But as an agent, and so as a perpetrator, you have a choice. Choices are not always easy, but choices they are. And aren’t you responsible for your own choices?

Source
Alette Smeulders, “On perpetrators and perpetration”, in the programme booklet of Mieczysław Weinberg’s opera The Passenger.

Random quote
If the enemy be rich, [the Romans] are rapacious; if he be poor, they lust for dominion; neither the east nor the west has been able to satisfy them. Alone among men they covet with equal eagerness poverty and riches. To robbery, slaughter, plunder, they give the lying name of empire; they make a solitude and call it peace.

Words spoken in AD 83 or 84 by the Caledonian chieftain Calgacus according to the Roman historian Publius Cornelius Tacitus (c. 56 – c. 117)

Moving the goalposts

Suppose, you are the president of a mighty democratic country. You see that in a country with a very repressive regime on the other side of the world, the people rise in revolt and want to topple their regime. The revolt fails and the regime kills many of the rebels. You think: “My country is mighty and I can help them. If I kill their president, the people will rise again and now they’ll succeed and the country will become democratic.” So, you tell the whole world “I’ll bring a regime change over there.” And on your orders your secret service kills the president, but the people have become afraid and don’t have the courage to rise again and the new president chosen by the repressive regime is even harder in his actions against the opposition than his predecessor.
Now, you, the president of that mighty country, have a problem: In fact, the repressive regime hasn’t changed, except that the president has been replaced. The country is still as repressive as before and the country hasn’t become democratic, which was your goal by killing its president. However, if you would admit this, you, the mighty president, will have lost your face, so you tell the world: “Because of my action, a regime change has taken place in that country over there, for it has a new president.”

The case just described is an example of the fallacy “Moving the goal posts” (or MG, for short). Originally, the goal of the president of the mighty country was to make the country with the repressive regime democratic by killing its president. However, the anticipated scenario did not work. Therefore, now he told the world that his goal had always been to have the repressive president removed. He gave his goal “regime change” a new interpretation, of course, without admitting that he did. And such a thing is what we do when we move the goal posts. Wikipedia says it this way: “Moving the goal posts (or shifting the goal posts) … means to change the rule or criterion (‘goal’) of a process or competition while it is still in progress, in such a way that the new goal offers one side an advantage or disadvantage”. The advantage for the mighty president was that he saved his face (or so he thought). MG is a trick that is often used by this mighty president, but not only by this president but by many other politicians as well, mighty or not mighty, in both democratic and repressive countries. It’s a means for saving face and concealing mistakes.

Typically the “Moving the goal posts” fallacy is committed if:
1) Person A requests Person B to meet a certain goal (evidential or otherwise)
2) Person B fulfils the goal as stipulated above in step 1
3) Instead of admitting that Person B has met the goals or has discharged the conditions of the contract, Person A stipulates even further goals.
The name of the fallacy derives from football – if the goalposts for one team are moved farther away or closer, this can provide a (dis)advantage to the opposing team.
(from Source)

The example I started with is a special instance of MG in the sense that 1) the fallacy is (intentionally) applied to yourself: The mighty president has changed his own goal (as publicly declared) and 2) he has changed it because it has not been achieved. And that’s what politicians often do, for example, to save face. But in many cases it is so that someone sets a goal for another person, and after the latter has achieved it the former says: That was not what I said what you had to do; my order/request etc was… You can also say then that the rules, criteria or expectations have changed, after they had been set and after the action (or whatever is done to achieve them) has already started. It’s like changing the rules during the game.
The main characteristics of the MG fallacy are this altering of criteria, rules and expectations and persistent shifting; and often both together. For example in debates, a case of MG is challenging someone to prove a point, and when they do, rejecting it and demanding more proof; or instead of accepting the prove, ignoring it and shifting the argument to a new, broader, or irrelevant point. And that’s where you often find this fallacy: In debates, and – what is most visible to everybody – especially in political debates. But you find MG also in politics in general (cf. the case I started with) and in addition at the workplace, for example, when a manager sets a performance task and then changes it. Also the tactics of bullying behaviour include moving the goalposts: Setting objectives which subtly change in ways that cannot be reached. In workplace bullying, MG is a much-used tactic. (Wikipedia) Of course, MG is also a common phenomenon in everyday life. MG is typically used in bad faith to avoid admitting defeat or disadvantage. One solution seems to be setting clear rules and making clear agreements in advance (see Source, p. 187). But isn’t that just begging the question, especially if people who set the rules and must apply them act in bad faith, as so often happens?

Source
- Tuomas W. Manninen, “Moving the Goalposts”, in Bad Arguments, pp. 185-188.

Random quote
Of what use is knowledge to him who has lost his head?

Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592)

Public and Private

When someone holds an office, it often happens that she or he doesn’t see the office only as a function they hold but as a part of their whole personal life. For them it is a function that penetrates everything they do, in public as an office holder and in private life as well. Or even, they see the function as a personal fief, like a mediaeval lord who manages his personal estate. (see also my blog “Three ways to perform an office”) In his essay “Of managing one’s will” (Essays, Book III, 10) Montaigne tells us that it was not his style. There is nothing against performing an office with full dedication. Sometimes it is necessary to do so with your whole personality, he says. However, generally it is better to keep office and private life separate, as Montaigne did himself when he was mayor of Bordeaux. It is not only better for yourself, but if you cannot distance yourself from your office, it can even be harmful to the performance of your duties: “[The] sharpness and violence of [private] desires more hinder than they advance the execution of what we undertake; they fill us with impatience against slow or contrary events, and with heat and suspicion against those with whom we have to do. We never carry on that thing well by which we are prepossessed and led: ‘Impulse manages all things ill’, [as Statius says].” Someone who approaches his office rationally is more at ease and more open to new chances and opportunities and can better take the reins than the one who lets himself be swayed by emotions and passions: “In him who is intoxicated with this violent and tyrannical intention, we discover, of necessity, much imprudence and injustice; the impetuosity of his desire carries him away; these are rash motions, and, if fortune do not very much assist, of very little fruit. … Avarice has no greater impediment than itself; the more bent and vigorous it is, the less it rakes together.” Instead, so Montaigne explains to us, it is better to take things as they are and to adopt a philosophical attitude, and not to expect miracles, but to wait till a new opportunity arises.
Moderate and controlled behaviour finally brings more. And isn’t it so that “most of our business is farce”? That the whole world is a play in which we just play our part? Indeed, so Montaigne, but “as a borrowed personage. We must not make real essence of a mask and outward appearance; nor of a strange person, our own; we don’t know how to tell the skin and the shirt apart.” So the office holder (the shirt) and you as a private person (the skin) are two different beings. But how many office holders don’t see the difference and “cannot … distinguish the salutations made to themselves from those made to their commission, their train, or their mule”, as Montaigne puts it. When you greet Montaigne, the mayor of Bordeaux, it doesn’t need to imply that you greet Montaigne, the writer of the Essays, at the same time. However, many office holders “swell and puff up their souls, and their natural way of speaking, according to the height of their [offices]”, to paraphrase Montaigne. And it is such office holders who see criticizing the holder of the office as criticizing the person who holds the office. They burst into anger when this happens. But, so Montaigne, they who “extend their anger and hatred beyond the dispute in question, as most men do, show that they spring from some other occasion and private cause. … The reason is that they are not concerned in the common cause, because it is wounding to the state and general interest; but [they] are only nettled by reason of their particular concern. This is why they are so especially animated, and to a degree so far beyond justice and public reason…” The public serves the private, and they are considered the same.
Look around what’s happening in this world. Again Montaigne holds up a mirror to us.

Note
Here and there I have adapted the translation of Montaigne’s text.

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Impulses serve all things badly.

Publius Papinius Statius (ca 40-96)

Queueing

Although humans are animals, some kinds of behaviour are typical of humans and we don’t find them in other animals. It’s not surprising. If every kind of human behaviour were also found in other animals, what then would make humans human? (and similarly, what would make a certain animal that animal?) Okay, it could be the combination of behavioural characteristics, but I doubt whether it’s only this that makes humans human. For example, you are walking in the street and you lose your handkerchief. Then you hear someone behind you calling: “Sir, you have lost something”. Can you imagine that an animal would do something like that? Or have you ever seen a queue of animals waiting their turn? Indeed, sometimes animals are waiting for each other; for example, the great tits and blue tits that eat from the string with peanuts in my garden do. But in the animal world the general rule is “the strongest first”, while in the human world waiting rules are more subtle. Let me have a look at them.
Queueing or lining up can take place in many ways. In my blog “Cultural misunderstanding” I explained that queueing is not necessarily physical. It can also be mental, while it still is queueing: the waiting people simply watch when it is their turn without physically standing behind each other. Another alternative for queueing is giving numbered tickets to people as soon as they enter the waiting space, so that there is no need for people to stand behind each other to know who’s next. In this blog I’ll pay attention only to physical waiting lines and take it for granted that my explanation also applies to other kinds of waiting.
I think that the phenomenon of queueing is so common that it doesn’t need further clarification. Following David Fagundes, four rules for proper queuing are essential:
1) Form a line
2) No cutting
3) First come, first served
4) Wait your turn.
The first rule says that you must stand directly behind the last person who arrived. It is the basic form of queueing. More important is the second rule. It says that it is not allowed to cut the waiting line. You must wait till it is your turn to be served. If you don’t, you are at least frowned upon, or people make remarks about it, maybe they try to stop you, and in the extreme case it can lead to a fight. In other words, everybody in the queue claims the right to be served in the order of their spot in the queue (rule three), and cutting the line is seen as violating this rule. Nonetheless, sometimes rule three is ignored, while this is not seen as a case of line cutting. It can happen that a service person picks you from the line to treat your case before you have arrived first; disabled persons and pregnant women may be allowed to go to the top of the line; people whose case can be handled “within a minute” may ask to be served first; and the like. This is not seen as cutting the line if the other waiting people (or often the next to be served only) and/or the service person consent. Rule four says that you’ll forfeit your place in the line when you leave it. Also to this rule there are exceptions, for example, if you need to go to the toilet or, in a supermarket, if you are waiting to check out and you forgot to take something. Then you ask the person behind you in the queue for permission, which is usually automatically given with an affirmative look.
This briefly about what queueing involves. I’ll ignore the sanctions for not applying the queueing norms (see Fagundes), but such sanctions illustrate that from a sociological point of view queues can be seen as a kind of mini-society or mini-system with their own rules or “laws” in which those waiting are connected by the goal of waiting for the same service or whatever it is that they are waiting for. As in a “real” system or society, violations of the rules or laws may be sanctioned. However, a queue is a very loose society or system. You don’t belong to it anymore as soon as you have left it, and probably you’ll never recall anymore that you were lining up there, or it must be for a special reason. Why should you? Moreover, you must have committed a crime to be held responsible for your behaviour in the queue once you have left it. If someone cuts the line without consent, for instance, it can be very annoying at the moment it happens, and sometimes it leads to comments, reactions and exceptionally even to a row, but in the end it’s indecent behaviour and not a crime. Laws specifying line protocol and imposing penalties for cutting in are exceptional (Wikipedia describes such a case). Anyway, usually queueing people wait orderly and basically they stick to the rules. Queueing seems to be a phenomenon that exists in all cultures, though this doesn’t mean that in all cultures always and everywhere people line up when two or more people are waiting for the same. It depends on the situation. And not in all situations and everywhere people queue physically, and other queuing systems exist as well, as said.
I think that queueing is typically human, although probably it is not an innate but a cultural achievement. Sometimes, like in the animal world, power can give you priority in a waiting line. Authorities often can pass the line and go first, although, this is also a cultural phenomenon. In the Netherlands it is not so that a burgomaster or cabinet minister simply can go first, because he or she is a burgomaster or cabinet minister. There must be a special reason for that (like security measures). In other countries power counts.
Why do people queue in the absence of formal rules or laws? Several investigators have tried to answer this question (see Fagundes pp. 1191 ff). I think there is one main background reason: Human societies are so complicated, compared to animal societies, and waiting together with others is such a common phenomenon that situations of waiting easily would escalate and lead to serious disagreements if not fighting, if no cultural norms would have developed that regulate how to wait. An obvious norm is queuing.

Random quote
Meaning and sense are not ‘things’ that you can find somewhere. They are made by people.

Pieter Hoexum (1968-)