Philosophy Now Forum

You are giving (emotional) psychological advice, AS.
Which is also good and interesting.

I would try something like this:

"Is marrying you the only way to prove that I am not racist or are there other ways to prove it ?"

The answer: "this is the only way to prove it" sounds ridiculous and will not be offered, for sure.

What lies behind this argumentative strategy ?

The question (my rebuttal) implies elegantly that the proof by marrying is not the only one available (which is true).
And the manipulator is asked to admit it and to offer some other proofs to chose from.

I would work on this a little bit more. Can you find some examples which are not as dumb as mine ?

duszek wrote:You are giving (emotional) psychological advice, AS.
Which is also good and interesting.

I would try something like this:

"Is marrying you the only way to prove that I am not racist or are there other ways to prove it ?"

The answer: "this is the only way to prove it" sounds ridiculous and will not be offered, for sure.

What lies behind this argumentative strategy ?

The question (my rebuttal) implies elegantly that the proof by marrying is not the only one available (which is true).
And the manipulator is asked to admit it and to offer some other proofs to chose from.

I would work on this a little bit more. Can you find some examples which are not as dumb as mine ?

I don't think your answers are dumb. I think they are kind. But I also think engaging in conversations with people who mean to belittle and insult are futile. Unless of course, one has the strength to overcome or the desire to play the game.

Thoughtless people feel entrapped whenever they are lead down the slippery slope of their own adopted opinions towards a direction they had not forethought or ever considered since their opinions are not their own but are given to them as part of the social and cultural environment.

Satyr wrote:Thoughtless people feel entrapped whenever they are lead down the slippery slope of their own adopted opinions towards a direction they had not forethought or ever considered since their opinions are not their own but are given to them as part of the social and cultural environment.

Thanks for this, Satyr.

Even thoughtful people can feel entrapped, and not only by having their 'trapped' thought processes turned outside in.
If, as a result of philo -or a charming/disarming encounter (socio/cultural environment) - people see things differently - how difficult is the shift from thought to behaviour ?

marjoramblues wrote:
Thanks for this, Satyr.

Even thoughtful people can feel entrapped, and not only by having their 'trapped' thought processes turned outside in.
If, as a result of philo -or a charming/disarming encounter (socio/cultural environment) - people see things differently - how difficult is the shift from thought to behaviour ?

As difficult as overcoming decades of training/nurturing and centuries of naturally selected automatic responses to stimuli.

Controlling libidinal energies and automated responses may take years of self-discipline.
Asceticism/Athleticism are ways of training and strengthening your will-power.

On a side note:
This control over self is a control over your own nature.
It can be understood as the control of the masculine side over the feminine side within you.

Satyr wrote:

marjoramblues wrote:
Thanks for this, Satyr.

Even thoughtful people can feel entrapped, and not only by having their 'trapped' thought processes turned outside in.
If, as a result of philo -or a charming/disarming encounter (socio/cultural environment) - people see things differently - how difficult is the shift from thought to behaviour ?

As difficult as overcoming decades of training/nurturing and centuries of naturally selected automatic responses to stimuli.

Controlling libidinal energies and automated responses may take years of self-discipline.
Asceticism/Athleticism are ways of training and strengthening your will-power.

On a side note:
This control over self is a control over your own nature.
It can be understood as the control of the masculine side over the feminine side within you.

The training and strengthening of will power and self-discipline, is a special topic worth pursuing ( cue new thread I think ? )...there must be many different philo perspectives to this.
How to be master/mistress of your own mind

marjoramblues wrote:The training and strengthening of will power and self-discipline, is a special topic worth pursuing ( cue new thread I think ? )...there must be many different philo perspectives to this.
How to be master/mistress of your own mind

To be brief:

Will is strengthened just as body is strengthened: with stress.
This stress might be controlled and willed purposefully or brought about and forced upon the individual due to circumstances beyond his control.
I wrote a short essay on it titled Asceticism. It can be found on my Blog.

Basically it comes down to habituation with need.
Need being the sensation of existing, of being alive.

Nietzsche wrote:What does not kill me only serves to make me stronger.

When the mind/body is stressed and survives the stress it heals thicker, stronger, denser. Now it is capable of coping with a higher degree of stress, need, suffering.

Strength must be understood as a level of weakness.
We are all weak, but the difference in weakness is what makes some stronger than others.
All value judgments are comparisons.
When I say I am stronger or strong, or I am tall or taller, I mean in relation to an other or to an average otherness.

Similarly when I say "I know" I mean I know in relation to an other.
We are all ignorant but not equally so. The difference in ignorance, being superior or inferior, establishes who is more or less knowledgeable; hierarchy.

This is why the notions of omnipotence and omniscience are nonsensical: more metaphors describing the absent absolute, nowhere in evidence and totally contrary to living experience.
They are, in fact, indications of nihilism and self-hatred.
When you say "It is omniscient, omnipotent" you are imagining an entity which is forever above you and you forever below it.
This is the quintessential nature of slavishness, meekness, femininity, herd psychology, slave morality...Judaism and its outcrops Christianity, Islam...and its secular outcrops of Communism, Liberalism, Egalitarianism, Humanism.

Where nature and natural selection functions on disparity and on fitness in comparisons and within environmental conditions, always changing, the weakling, the womanly mind, the coward, the slave dreams of absolute positivity and uniformity it can escape and disappear within.

Let us provide some more definitions.
Nature: the sum of all nurturing.
ergo when someone is anti-nature, anti-world, anti-self (ego), feeling ashamed of himself and his own nature (his own past) he is someone who denies the past and its products: sexual roles, racial disparities.

Satyr: To be brief...

MB: And what follows is so substantially meaty that... really, it must be properly chewed over and digested, doncha think?
Satyr, if you don't wish to start up a new thread, then I reckon I must...
But what to name it - 'Entrapment Part II' - or 'Beware Trapped Mind/Body talking !' ?

marjoramblues wrote:Satyr: To be brief...

MB: And what follows is so substantially meaty that... really, it must be properly chewed over and digested, doncha think?
Satyr, if you don't wish to start up a new thread, then I reckon I must...
But what to name it - 'Entrapment Part II' - or 'Beware Trapped Mind/Body talking !' ?

Why would you call it "entrapment"?
Who is trying to trick or trap?

Entrapment of 'mind' in same old patterns; entrapment of self in same old circumstances/attitudes. How to self-evalaute and change where necessary...that kinda thing...

Thought I might change it to 'Caught in a Trap' starring Elvis as prime meat

You mean trapped in a simulation of a simulacrum...trapped in the Matrix of social and cultural conventions?
You mean a cultural solipsism, exemplified by this current recycling of movies and music and art - if you can call it that - in general.

You mean institutionalization encasing the mind within fabricated walls of human ingenuity to the point where nature, reality, is lost in the distance and is made into a myth all have heard about, second-hand, but few have experienced or can appreciate?
You mean practicing philosophy as a parrot practices speech: reciting the perspectives of others as if they were our own about a world we receive as a hand-me-down?

Satyr wrote:You mean trapped in a simulation of a simulacrum...trapped in the Matrix of social and cultural conventions?
You mean a cultural solipsism, exemplified by this current recycling of movies and music and art - if you can call it that - in general.

You mean institutionalization encasing the mind within fabricated walls of human ingenuity to the point where nature, reality, is lost in the distance and is made into a myth all have heard about, second-hand, but few have experienced or can appreciate?
You mean practicing philosophy as a parrot practices speech: reciting the perspectives of others as if they were our own about a world we receive as a hand-me-down?

Yeah, all of the above
Karaoke style with an Elvis look-a-like...

You can't be trapped if you're not wrong and you know what you're talking about.