Philosophy Now Forum

Hobbes' Choice wrote:

Walker wrote:

Hobbes' Choice wrote: Given that the murder rate in the Uk is low: 1 person in every 100,000 population, how representative do you think your view is?

Likely not as small as the odds Ghandi faced in standing up to authority, since he was one who perceived Reality.

Ghandi was a professional.

I heard of irrelevance. I've heard of non sequiturs, but this is a new level of oddness. How about "crazy sequitur"

The odds of Ghandi's success was 1 in 1.

I was just joining in with the relevance you initiated with your long odds. I said Ghandi was working with short odds. I just wasn't as presumptuous as you to offer unsupported reasoning for 1:1 specificity.

A good first step is to leave that culture and put some distance between you and it. From afar can you see how it functions. Many have left the US and in doing so are no longer caught up in the constant stream of programming and indoctrination. This is the life of the exile and has its own problems. To see outside your own culture while living in that culture, look for 'elements of stability', such as the moon. Looking at the moon and allowing its glow into you, will speak of a place beyond culture and time, culture is programming, so in order not to become it, one needs a reference point outside that culture which is bigger than the culture and the ideas and values within it. Power has a monopoly on the narrative of the world through culture. We need to find references and markers as stepping stones leading out of one's conditioning.

For example - and this may or may not be relevant here, but I feel that it is - I made an artwork titled Bird Of Cordoba which consisted of a cardboard cut-out of a bird, which was made to stand upright. The idea was to create a reference based in reality (the cardboard bird) and position it somewhere in your living room, preferably on top or near the television. Then when you were watching television and becoming particularly engrossed and (why not) manipulated, could you glance up at the bird and be brought out of your condition(ing).

Pluto wrote:A good first step is to leave that culture and put some distance between you and it. From afar can you see how it functions. Many have left the US and in doing so are no longer caught up in the constant stream of programming and indoctrination. This is the life of the exile and has its own problems. To see outside your own culture while living in that culture, look for 'elements of stability', such as the moon. Looking at the moon and allowing its glow into you, will speak of a place beyond culture and time, culture is programming, so in order not to become it, one needs a reference point outside that culture which is bigger than the culture and the ideas and values within it. Power has a monopoly on the narrative of the world through culture. We need to find references and markers as stepping stones leading out of one's conditioning.

For example - and this may or may not be relevant here, but I feel that it is - I made an artwork titled Bird Of Cordoba which consisted of a cardboard cut-out of a bird, which was made to stand upright. The idea was to create a reference based in reality (the cardboard bird) and position it somewhere in your living room, preferably on top or near the television. Then when you were watching television and becoming particularly engrossed and (why not) manipulated, could you glance up at the bird and be brought out of your condition(ing).

See that, Hobbes? Reasoning.

Pluto has provided a reasoned voice. Pluto is an artist. Is there a correlation there?

Before you go and challenge it, in light of your past postings, keep in mind … reasoning.

More content, less judgement, because really, without supported reasoning you’re just a guy with an assertion.

Sometimes you can see them standing on street corners, preaching.

Which by the way, answers the thread question.

You see outside your own culture with experience, and reasoning.

Obvious Leo wrote:

duszek wrote:I have a vague idea of what the British way of life is like based on the Inspector Barnaby series.

It's been a while since I was last in the UK but I suspect that your romantic image of the idyllic English village with its beautiful buildings and posh people might not be reflective of the real Britain. What about the east London high-rise estates full of unemployed violent skinheads who wrap themselves in the Union Jack and go "paki-bashing" on Friday nights by way of entertainment. No doubt this is also an inaccurate cliche but to imagine the British as a homogeneous culture of tea-sipping toffs is as naive as imagining a homogeneity in any other culture, including my own. I'm quite familiar with the cultural stereotype which attaches to Australians, and I can't deny that this stereotype contains a kernel of validity, but the stereotype is more like an exaggerated caricature of our culture than a true representation of it. I've no doubt that this phenomenon is probably universal. Are all American families like the Brady Bunch?

Here's UK's version of Bobby Brady

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kjuNuqIev8M

I'm pretty sure his digestive system never saw any vitamins or minerals for the formative years of his life.

Hobbs: opps, how is it jumping? Would you point it out to me?

I mean, what was the relevance of the point about opinions?

I think maybe what I am asking is whether we can think about it from no point of view. That sounds idiotic, I know. Not sure how to phrase what I mean.

Hobbes' Choice wrote:Here's UK's version of Bobby Brady

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kjuNuqIev8M

I'm pretty sure his digestive system never saw any vitamins or minerals for the formative years of his life.

I'm sure you Brits are ecstatic to have your culture represented by such an intellectual wunderkind, Hobbes. I think I'd rather have Sir Les Patterson, Australian cultural attache and official spokesman for the Yartz at the court of St James.

Jaded Sage wrote:Hobbs: opps, how is it jumping? Would you point it out to me?

I mean, what was the relevance of the point about opinions?

I think maybe what I am asking is whether we can think about it from no point of view. That sounds idiotic, I know. Not sure how to phrase what I mean.

I can tell you are struggling.
My general advice is; try to avoid sentences where the subject is "it". If you don't know what that 'it' is exactly then you are not forming a coherent argument.

I think maybe we can think from no point of view. Better?

Jaded Sage wrote:I think maybe we can think from no point of view. Better?

Haha. I presume you're taking the piss.

Jaded Sage wrote:I think maybe we can think from no point of view. Better?

No

Obvious Leo wrote:... I think I'd rather have Sir Les Patterson, Australian cultural attache and official spokesman for the Yartz at the court of St James.

What a star! Saw him way back when he was schlepping about with some Melbourne housewife.

But my intro to Oz culture was Bazza, the mans a leg end.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sk1cULdqjSw

Obvious Leo wrote:

duszek wrote:I have a vague idea of what the British way of life is like based on the Inspector Barnaby series.

It's been a while since I was last in the UK but I suspect that your romantic image of the idyllic English village with its beautiful buildings and posh people might not be reflective of the real Britain. What about the east London high-rise estates full of unemployed violent skinheads who wrap themselves in the Union Jack and go "paki-bashing" on Friday nights by way of entertainment. No doubt this is also an inaccurate cliche but to imagine the British as a homogeneous culture of tea-sipping toffs is as naive as imagining a homogeneity in any other culture, including my own. I'm quite familiar with the cultural stereotype which attaches to Australians, and I can't deny that this stereotype contains a kernel of validity, but the stereotype is more like an exaggerated caricature of our culture than a true representation of it. I've no doubt that this phenomenon is probably universal. Are all American families like the Brady Bunch?

They are not all posh, Leo.
They are average Brits who live in the rural areas.

I know that there is outrage going on in the UK too but why should we give them attention ?

I think we're actually agreeing with each other, duszek. Although I don't travel abroad as much as I used to I can still regard myself as a well-travelled man and if travel has taught me anything it's taught me that people are much the same wherever you go. Ordinary Joes just doing their best to get along and mostly doing the right thing by their fellow man. We tend to culturally stereotype people as if these stereotypes were actually reflective of some fundamental differences in world-view between people from different cultural backgrounds but in general my experience is that this is not the case. Naturally for every sweeping generalisation there will always be plenty of exceptions but in the main it seems to me that our cultural differences are really only skin deep.

On the other hand this might just be because I'm an unreconstructed hippy still deluding himself about the brotherhood of man.

I agree with you, Leo, there is some basic sense of decency in all cultures.

But there are different ideas in different cultures about what can be fun for example.

In Pakistan whole families with small children watch spectacles of two dogs fighting with a toothless and clawless bear.
This is their idea of entertainment.
Most people in Europe (today) would not enjoy it and consider it outrageous.

All stories of animal cruelty horrify me but we mustn't leap to the conclusion that the people who regard such events as entertaining are necessarily any different from us. As my late Mum would have said, "they don't know any better". If we want to apply a moral culpability to such things then the cultural context certainly becomes relevant. In my culture, for instance, animal cruelty is both a moral and a social crime because we do in fact know better. My father held the view that a woman's place was in the home and not in the workplace. This accorded precisely with the cultural zeitgeist of his era and so as far as I'm concerned no moral blame could reasonably be assigned to him for holding this view. However it could be to me if I shared it because I was a child of the counter-culture and I had the sisterhood to set me straight.