How are we Dealing with the Voices in our heads?

Freodin said:

So, what kind of answer would you like?
This is obviously a rather complicated topic, without even a clearly defined content. Yet you thought you should make a thread about it, post nothing but a music video, ask people to "consider the question"... which isn't even stated... and then get evasive when people ask for your position on it.

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My apologies if you've found anything in this thread to be offensive, but I have a difficult time seeing how the creative liberties I've taken in using the already existing insinuations within the OP video constitute some kind of trolling or hypocrisy on my part.

Like you, I think this is definitely a complicated topic, and that is why I said so very little in the OP so as to allow variety of entry points into conversing with the content. And in all of this, I don't think I've castigated you in any way, shape or form.

I am not trying to troll you... but considering a more broad interpretation of this thread's question... perhaps you might want to clean up your moral acts before people get frustrated with your words?

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Which moral acts are you referring to, precisely?

I don't know if either Durkheim or Merton have offered a solution for the problem they described. But considering that this problem seems to be one the permeated human history, I don't think they had a valid solution.

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Probably not. The one that seems to be embedded in the context of the video is "Love your neighbor." But I could be wrong. Am I wrong in thinking this?

And I don't think there can be one, at least not a general one. Regardless of how and why norms fail, there's always those who do not fit into your pattern.

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Sure. There will be those who don't ... or won't.

Can you get more people to adhere to societal norms, if these norms and the societies that apply them are of a certain kind? Will you get less "trolls" this way? Yes, probably.

But this ignores the people who aren't jerks because of some societal reasons... but simply because they are jerks. To paraphrase Jesus: "The jerks you will always have with you."

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True enough.

Yes, that could be. That would be a third (fourth?) interpretation now, and at that one that doesn't fall within the original question of your thread.

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Oh, I think it does, and I think it fits very well. But you're free to disagree if you think the video is instead advocating something else altogether. However, I personally don't think the video/song has been produced to be so open to interpretation that it says "nothing."

That still doesn't solve the distinction between internal and external... which, as much as you want to ignore it, is a question that needs to be dealt with.

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I thought I did deal with it. I'm missing your point here. Not everyone is a big fan of Hume and insists that there is only and always an "is/ought" distinction that applies to each and every single moral assertion a person can make. No, there are some moralist who will assert that if we can discern that something is harmful, then we should know not to chase that harmful course of action, and we wouldn't even have to spell it out if we can see that the action is harmful to other people.

Is this the way they internally deal with this problem - by countering it with positive messages - or is this the reaction they want to get from the outside sources? Or both? Or perhaps they just want to raise awareness that there are all kinds of people out there: nice and mean?

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Being that the further context of the video involves a Mormon (i.e. Stirling, the violin player) and a Christian rock band (i.e. Switchfoot), then it's very likely they're implying a dual message that transcends the supposed IS/OUGHT distinction. The message likely being: acerbic messages hurt people's feelings, and therefore ought not to be done.

Freodin said:

Perhaps I am wrong in interpreting your statement here, but I do see a clear IS/OUGHT distinction in this very sentence.
Something IS... and for certain reasons OUGHT NOT to be.
Well, I don't have any problem with such an interpretation of this piece. The "wouldn't it be nice if..." version of the interpretation. It's not a rare topic for a song, religious or not. Consider Lennon's "Imagine"... which very clearly spells it out.

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I think we're talking past each other to some degree, but let me add this before we go on in this discussion: the idea of 'dealing with' a certain problem is ambiguous and allows for either what you're citing as interior, psychological pain that a person being bullied may feel and the exterior applications of notions of right and wrong, even those that MIGHT, although not necessarily, pertain to legal levels of enforcement. So, the conceptual structure of my OP, such as it is, handles either or both the exterior or the interior evaluations any one of us may bring to this set of social issues.

Furthermore, as an additional strata of the overall conversation and not quite identical with the ambiguous notion I've mentioned above, the whole IS/OUGHT distinction of Hume has been modified by some other ethicists, such as Kant, and the supposed distinction is blurred so that a recognition of a moral duty to another human being automatically implies that one SHOULD follow through in order to consider one's self a moral agent.

Again, I think this misses the topic of your question of "How to deal with it."
You can, of course, deal with it by "loving your neighbor". That is indeed a way to deal with "the voices in your head" - meaning, your internal reaction to an outside problem.
But it does nothing to address this outside problem. You won't get rid of trolls by loving them.

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Sure. That is a good point. So, what do you think 'should' be done about Trolls?