Ugh, why does Youtube keep doing this?Trixie on friendship ethics. · 3:55am Sep 8th, 2013
Dear Princess Celestia
Trixie generally hears that friendships formed for certain reasons are ethical, while others are not. I will acknowledge a difference between a healthy and unhealthy relationship, but those can happen regardless of the intention for the friendship, which is the main factor for ethical concerns.
The general consensus is that it's okay to befriend someone if you like them for who they are as an individual, but that it is unethical to befriend someone for personal gain.
Of course, what qualifies as 'friendship' differs culturally, with potentially dozens of sub-varieties within each culture--trust me, I checked--however, the base mechanics are generally agreed upon.
A friendship is a--generally informal--relationship upon where two or more people decide to interact for mutual benefit.
Wherein lies the issue, sociological analysis shows--rather obviously--that a friendship is a balance between it's quality, or more specifically, your enjoyment and the conflicts, or more specifically... well actually that one is self-explanatory.
As such, if I choose to mislead someone to get something from them, under the pretense of friendship, I'm doing it for self-gain, but for the ruse to work, they themselves would need to be tricked by subverting their expectations of friendship. Ultimately, this probably won't last forever, and I'm essentially focused on my own self-gain, however, for all intents and purposes, it does 'fit' under the raw concept of a friendship. Of course, whether it qualifies isn't the issue; The issue is judging how ethical the act is.
Now, when we consider a 'genuine' friendship where two people meet and develop a friendship for the sake of 'liking' each other. In essence, cognitively or otherwise, they would be maintaining a friendship because it makes them feel happy, or because of some sort of positive emotional reaction.
Ultimately, this means the socially acceptable reason to pursue and maintain relationships is to satisfy your emotional and social needs. However, fulling other needs, like monetary or political needs, is considered 'unethical', for the fact it involves using the other party for your own ends.
... Which is exactly what happens with a 'normal' friendship, two individuals manipulating each other for the sake of their own emotions or to reinforce personal ideals.
There is still the 'shallow' argument, as leaving other options unethical, but of course, considering that regardless of what you do, your relationship will generally overlap your general personal needs; For example a 'standard' relationship, where someone has a friend for the sake of companionship. Does that not generally involve the exchange of resources, cash loans, social assistance, and fringe benefits? Does a more manipulative relationship not similarly involve a degree of emotional satisfaction?--Albeit, these will generally be different emotions.
In which case: Friendship exists both to satisfy your various needs and to strengthen society as a whole. But depending on which personal needs you are satisfying--and the level of them--friendship magically becomes unethical.
You could say that a manipulative relationship would likely end up with an unhappy friend, so that still counts, however, one needs to consider that the same applies to every other variety, as well as the fact every variety also has a chance to last until the end--death of one or more of the individuals involved.
In the grand scheme of things, humans aren't practical enough that we can decide a matter of ethics on something like minor statistics; "Your type of relationship is 14% more liable to lead to the other guy being screwed over unless you do this foreign relationship that is 7% more likely to last another six months. Unethical!"
Since friendship is already a vague-ish concept, and since ultimately every reason to initiate one comes down to the same two things, and every different variety is just a spin on things based off of culture and is still functionally the same, I conclude that regardless of one's motivations, all friendships are equally ethical, regardless of ones intentions when initiating it.
~Trixie Starshine Cheshire M. Vangelis.
P.S.
Though, ultimately, I have no real right to an opinion as I lack the emotional capacity to really know what I'm talking about, so, derp.
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Why are you the best user on this site?
This is what happens when people think too hard about something that should be simple. Those who make things more complex than they really are... well, I pity it. Keeping life simpler is usually the best way to enjoy it.
Friendship: Two or more people. They hang out for reasons. They continue to hang out for reasons. That is their relationship. Woo.
Still, the study of friendship can be quite diverse, I don't doubt it. My only question is, why would you want it to be?
Studying why people are friends is cool because everyone wants to know the reasons (or else we get things like religion where we make up a lot, but that's a whole other can of worms I won't come close to touching), I just think it's also silly to.
Twilight Sparkle is a silly pony. Celestia is sillier.
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Ethics are silly, friendship is good, even if you are a dick about it, mmkay?
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I think it's the name and avatar...
Hmmmm.
I found this analysis very informative. I thank you. Now I'm going to make a friend and use him for money and power!
*cue evil music*
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I'll be restating the nature of friendships being a matter of culture. No, they shouldn't be simple, on merit of it being what you are used to, a number of cultures would consider such a statement incredibly ignorant or even insulting.
Herp de derp, Germans take forever to form what they consider a 'friendship'--talking months, and years here--, but have a way higher focus on loyalty. While Americans just throw that shit around like it's going out of style.
Culture.
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Welcome.
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I had a long reply here, but I'm actually just pissed you lumped me together with the generic American group. There are a lot of uses for a cube but no matter how you use it, it's always going to have six faces, twelve edges, and eight corners. Friendship is simple with a lot of uses, it's how its used that matters.
Yes yes, I know, "Culture." That's slowly becoming a blanket response to things these days, isn't it?
And I was unaware you believed I would throw away a friendship like it was out of style. Woo.
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This is a true fact.
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Yet another reason why Germans are cool.
As a whole, I think what you said about Americais true.
I don't go around trying to say everyone's my friend, though I like saying it.
Loyalty, and honesty are foundational to a good relationship, and I hold those in high regard.
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It's just a cultural thing, I don't think Americans look at it as negative, if they did, they probably wouldn't favor that sort of system.
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I'd like everyone to be my friend, though part of that is probably due to compensation.
I'll be getting my PC monday.
Actually Trixie I think not being able to form the emotional attachments mean you can look at this properly as you won't be swayed by emotion and stay logical. I've heard similar arguments about love and have heard people describe love as simply a chemical reaction, which it is. You can romanticise love (if you'll pardon the expression) all you want but a mixture of chemical reactions is what it is. The same is true of friendship. Every friendship is selfish in nature. It's just that it's only ethical when we're doing it for emotional gain and not some sort of material gain. If I was lonely and wanted to make a friend so I didn't feel so lonely and so I felt validated, then it wouldn't be bad. If I became friends with a girl (or guy) in the vain hope of one day fucking them then it would be seen as bad. But in both cases I wanted something for myself, just slightly different things.
That's just how I see it as far as the "ethics" of friendship goes. This was a pretty interesting read Trixie
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Actually, I'd argue that love is an abstract concept like fear or justice. Not an emotion.
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That's what my friend was getting at when she said what she did. That it's not an emotion but instead events that cause chemical reactions we enjoy. She essentially took the romance out of romance. Love means different things to different people as do justice and ethics and morals themselves. Thanks to a slightly troubled past I actually had a very very warped view of love for the longest time and still kinda do.
I'd say I'd argue that too but I don't think that two people who hold the same view can argue
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I'm referring to there not being a specific reaction that is known as 'love', rather, it's an abstract concept made from taking a number of different feelings and throwing a title on it.
Ok, take two without me just thinking I know shit. That is what happens when I forget to take a step back and actually read the underlying context of an article. Hopefully I get this straight...
I see this strongly prevalent in the childcare center I work at where kids who have never met one another will instantly become friends simply because they enjoy the same interests and look amazingly far beyond stereotypes we may hold because they haven’t been exposed to that or do not yet realize it. We talk kids out of being friend with one another if they can’t get along, which is about as close to personal gain I’ll get to with that example because the only thing they could personally gain in this instance is a friend. We have had a few instances of kids trading items and getting friends in the child center, which we strongly disapprove of.
But technically, according to this, that's a friendship. We disapprove of it because we want children to set their friendships based on higher morals than that, which is problematic when the kids were okay with it to begin with. Because for one child, it doesn't matter that he's giving away these things, he gets appreciation in return. The other gets items. it works.
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I live in the state of Texas, where we’re so large we have different accents based on region alone. People are hospitable in most rural areas and more apathetic in urban, based on my own experiences, but you can make friends surprisingly just as fast in either. Those in the rural are either extremely suspicious of strangers or welcome them wholly, and it tends to flip-flop based on how long you stay. Benjamin Franklin put it best: Fish and visitors stink in three days. It’s a matter of first respecting the land owner and what they do and offer to help wherever you can.
Conversely, those in the city are highly suspicious of new people unless you put a very strong foot forward. Breaking that barrier is key. I’ve seen people go on bar runs.
On the concept of self-gain out of a friendship, I’ll refer back to the bar runs. Two guys who had just met, a bit tipsy before- again that strong foot forward – decide to go out on a bar run. One man tells amazing stories, I followed them for a bit just to hear them, and the other paid for his drinks occasionally as a favor because he didn’t mind. I saw the two same men the next time, sober, arguing over a bill.
Mind you, I can't legally drink, so it was interesting to watch my father tell stories. Heh.
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Normal is such a jerk to understand. There are professional relations, which would make other scrupulous acts deemed okay because it benefits both in a certain manor, and relations that you admitted to everyone such as “friends with benefits” which much of society sees as wrong, but fulfills the definition of friendship which makes it right. Either two manipulators make for a graceful puppet or a flap of stupid wood.
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I think the issue is with stepping outside of that “normal” boundary for it to be considered manipulative. Unfortunately for myself and others who don’t understand friendship very well, we tend to shout the moment we think it goes too far, and slenderize it. it’s wrong, and personally I’m working on that, but only if we could get more people interested in it.
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Let me see if I understand this:
As long as both are being manipulated to reach a set amount of goals, it’s an acceptable relationship? I... don't fully understand it still I bet, but this will definitely be a reference point in future arguments of mine. Well stated.