Philosophy Now Forum

Gustav, I have not been reading what you write anymore unless it is part of someone else's post (or in response to mine) -- because, as I said, your posts appear (to me) too thick with yourself. You say you are here to "dismantle destructive constructs" as you see them. However, that appears to be focused on other people's constructs... not your own. You do not appear to be conducting an "exploration", as you say -- rather, it is a platform for declaring your own "rightness" and superiority.

No, the things you say do not bother me. The extent and behavior of it looks foolish (to me) -- and we can ALL act foolish -- and that is what I speak to. Anyone who repeatedly separates themselves as "above", and others as "below", is like an infection... that I feel compelled to ask about. I see us as made of all the same stuff (brilliance as well as ignorance), and perhaps, ultimately, there is no separation at all. So perhaps we create these separations -- and identify/proclaim who we think we are. I find it informative to enquire into that.

People who do not show respect to others... people who automatically and unquestionably hold others in contempt... people who wave their hand with dismissal, as if they are a fat king sitting on a throne of their own limited ideas... keep humankind bogged down. That's MY guess! You may sniff in disinterest at cooperative and respectful exploration of viewpoints more than just your own, but (from my perspective) that dismantles your own credibility. Do YOU trust and listen to people who do that?

I think the common "characteristic" of males toward "domination and warfare" is not a surprise or a secret. Yes, I do see it as destructive and foolish and limited -- but of course I recognize all kinds of destructive and foolish and limited human behaviors regardless of gender. No, I do NOT see male energy as a bad thing. Most of my best friends have been extraordinary men. As with anything, it's how one uses their energy that matters. You said: "I assert that male energy has made and continues to make this world." Yes, you assert a lot of things that don't seem to consider much beyond your concept of yourself. I think that ALL energy makes this world... and supposed divisions are superficial.

You asked me to respond to my own question/statement: "Are any of us in a position INDIVIDUALLY and UNIQUELY to do anything more than guess?" No, I think that we're all guessing... and that acknowledging validity of many perspectives provides broader understanding. I don't think we have a clue as to what is really going on, and what we affect and are affected by. And the deeper we remain in our stories... and the more we destroy each other with them... the longer and greater we remain oblivious to much more that we could probably become aware of and utilize much more efficiently.

Whatever "destructive constructs" we think we must dismantle or destroy, I think we must first recognize how much WE, our individual selves, are a part of them. We reflect them with our own thoughts and behavior. We VIBRATE with them. I think that the idea of us vs. them, or me vs. everyone "else", is an illusion that perpetuates/feeds that illusion.

The Inglorious One

My beliefs do not lead to homophobia and misogyny.

I like to think that that makes a huge difference as my religion does not promote discrimination without a just cause.

Christian and Muslim beliefs do.

As your wife which system she would like to be in if she had to choose one or the other.

Regards
DL

Greatest I am wrote:The Inglorious One

My beliefs do not lead to homophobia and misogyny.

I like to think that that makes a huge difference as my religion does not promote discrimination without a just cause.

Christian and Muslim beliefs do.

As your wife which system she would like to be in if she had to choose one or the other.

Regards
DL

Spoken like a true religious zealot.

The Inglorious One wrote:

Greatest I am wrote:The Inglorious One

My beliefs do not lead to homophobia and misogyny.

I like to think that that makes a huge difference as my religion does not promote discrimination without a just cause.

Christian and Muslim beliefs do.

As your wife which system she would like to be in if she had to choose one or the other.

Regards
DL

Spoken like a true religious zealot.

Spoken like a guy with crap for moral values.

Regards
DL

Greatest I am wrote:

The Inglorious One wrote:

Greatest I am wrote:The Inglorious One

My beliefs do not lead to homophobia and misogyny.

I like to think that that makes a huge difference as my religion does not promote discrimination without a just cause.

Christian and Muslim beliefs do.

As your wife which system she would like to be in if she had to choose one or the other.

Regards
DL

Spoken like a true religious zealot.

Spoken like a guy with crap for moral values.

Regards
DL

Religious fundamentalists say the same about you, I'm sure. So, how do I determine who's right?

I miss the olden days, when words had specific meanings and theories were tested by whether they worked or not.

The Inglorious One wrote:[
Spoken like a true religious zealot.

Spoken like a guy with crap for moral values.

Regards
DL[/quote]

Religious fundamentalists say the same about you, I'm sure. So, how do I determine who's right?[/quote]

Can you not judge a religion by it's moral values?

Are the fundamentals you speak of supporters of homophobia and misogyny?

Yes they are.

Gnostic Christians do not support homophobia and misogyny.

Assume that all other things were equal.

Which sound like it has the best moral values?

Regards
DL

Skip wrote:I miss the olden days, when words had specific meanings and theories were tested by whether they worked or not.

Ironically, it was by testing theories that the indefiniteness of Reality was discovered.

Greatest I am wrote:
Can you not judge a religion by it's moral values?

Are the fundamentals you speak of supporters of homophobia and misogyny?

Yes they are.

Gnostic Christians do not support homophobia and misogyny.

Assume that all other things were equal.

Which sound like it has the best moral values?

Regards
DL

Are you David Duke's writer, by any chance? You'd make a good propagandist for the KKK. Or Nazis.

Tools of propagandists:

Demonization: This tool involves portraying the enemy as purely evil, menacing, murderous, and aggressive. The propagandist attempts to remove all confusion and ambiguity about whom the public should hate. The enemy may be portrayed as a hairy beast or the devil himself. This tool becomes more powerful when the enemy can be blamed for committing atrocities against women, children, or other noncombatants.

Emotional Appeals: This tool involves playing on people’s emotions to promote the war effort. Since the strongest emotion is often fear, propagandists create their work based on the premise that the more frightened a person is by a communication, the more likely he or she is to take action. Thus, propagandists are careful to explain in detail the action that they want the consumer of the propaganda to carry out.

Name Calling: This tool involves using loaded labels to encourage hatred of the enemy. Labels like “Commies, Japs, and Huns” reinforce negative stereotypes and assist propagandists in demonizing the enemy.

Patriotic Appeals: This tool involves using patriotic language or symbols to appeal to people’s national pride.

Half-Truths or Lies: This tool involves deception or twisting the truth. The propagandist may attempt to include some element of truth in the propaganda to make an argument more persuasive. For example, blaming the enemy for complete responsibility for the war and portraying one’s own country, as a victim of aggression is a common propaganda tool.

Catchy Slogans: This tool involves using memorable phrases to foster support for the war effort. For example, short phrases like “ Remember the Maine!” and “ Remember the Alamo!” have been very successful in motivating Americans to strongly support the use of arms against Spain and Mexico.

Evocative Visual Symbols: This tool involves using symbols that appeal to people’s emotions – like flags, statues, mothers and children, and enemy uniforms – to promote the war effort.

Humor or Caricatures: This tool involves capturing the viewer’s attention through the use of humor to promote the war effort. The enemy is almost always the butt of the jokes used by propagandists.

Note what's first on the list.

Lacewing I am glad that you won't read this ... but if it's not for you, who is it for then?

Your response was determined from the start and immediately upon the first post I made. Therefor, what you have just written is simply the sentiment you had, expanded. It is sentiment more than it is idea (IMO).

However, that appears to be focused on other people's constructs... not your own. You do not appear to be conducting an "exploration", as you say -- rather, it is a platform for declaring your own "rightness" and superiority.

I focus on large constructs that are determining View in our present. It is an ambitious undertaking. I speak in somewhat general terms to these constructs, and each post of mine has taken up a specific element of that. True, people embody these 'constructs' and this viewstructure and true too that I make some fairly bold statements. But your mistake is that you take it personally. You could just as easily have taken it more abstractly. I have the sense, though, that because you do not like the ideas I bring forward, you have worked and do work to shut them down to the degree that you are able. Again, this fits into a common pattern - a reflex - that is clearly seen to operate in our present. Social politics, politically correct attitude and thinking, I am not sure what to call it. Except that it destroys the possibility of examining touchy areas.

The idea of superiority is not one that I shut out of my lexicon or my concept-set. For you it is something like a swear word, in fact (referring to another post here) it is a 'demon-word', for after all we know who thought of themselves as superior, now don't we? In radical liberalism the concept of high and low, above and below, superior and inferior, has no right to exist! And so you excommunicate it from your lexicon. This connects, obviously, to politically correct and determined social conventions (and legal conventions) that attempt to level differences, to equalise all players, to turn superiority and excellence into an affliction. A curious transvaluation, no?

Thus, and again, I suggest that you operate from a set of predicates, and these predicates are ubiquitous. When ideas of this sort become reflexive they are no longer thought-through. And that has been another of my points: with this style of 'thinking', thinking stops. It all reverts and reduces to, and then resolves to, sentiments. And our larger, surrounding culture has been and is being 'feminized' and in a specific sense emasculated.

So I say that superior attitude, understanding, superior value-sets, superior mind, superior intellection, superior municipal systems, superior law and jurisprudence, effectively superiority as a category is very certainly an ideal I hold to. That to you, and I have the sense to people who 'think' like you, is intolerable. And that is what intolerance rises out of. Even dialogue at the most basic level is impossible for you. You will shut down any conversation that challenges your operative system.

I see us as made of all the same stuff (brilliance as well as ignorance), and perhaps, ultimately, there is no separation at all. So perhaps we create these separations -- and identify/proclaim who we think we are. I find it informative to enquire into that.

And here it is, quite clearly expressed. This is metaphysics (as I define metaphysics). We are 'all the same stuff' and ultimately there is no separation. And yet there is separation, and separation is real, as is distinction, hierarchy, high and low, and all other dichotomies. And many have no brilliance at all, and will never have it. The brilliant are brilliant, and is not to be force-shared by some mommy who feels some unlucky ones just didn't get enough cake.

You have taken a construct, you have absorbed construct, a description, and you do not know where it originated. You do not know the origin of the ideas that move in you, that determine your metaphysics. I suggest that this is what has to be looked into. And I am fully aware that when one proposes this to the semi-educated of our modernity - who give the lectures, and do not get them - that one runs right into their insolence, the snottiness that runs through all your posts.

You said 'Fuck you!' a few posts back, right? What I say is you fuck yourself out of other, distinct, and also necessary dimensions of thinking. What your style of thinking results in is mediocrity. And worse: the cutting off from superior styles of thinking. You don't see this because you have your head up your ass. Remember this conversation. Five years on. Ten years on. Many of us have been down similar roads. This will come across as intolerably condescending to you but you reason at the level of a child, yet you are clearly not stupid. You're clever.

People who do not show respect to others... people who automatically and unquestionably hold others in contempt... people who wave their hand with dismissal, as if they are a fat king sitting on a throne of their own limited ideas... keep humankind bogged down.

Huar huar haur! And you know what keeps humanity bogged down, yes? It is more emotional game-playing, and plucking at heart strings. This is a level of sentimentalism that might be best expressed in a Coke commercial. It is trashy and vulgar!

Once again, sentiment and sentimentalism. It begins here and it ends here. 'Respect' is a code-word among the radical liberals. You can be as mercillesly direct and cutting as you need to be in defence of a 'just' cause, while you denigrate in extreme the very being and existence of others who don't see things your way. That is a main tenet, is it not? The critiques I offered to 'artisticsolution'' were direct, they did not mince words, but they were honest and constructive. 'Contempt' is your word, but I suggest it is you who has significant contempt.

I work hard to express my ideas in clear prose and to skilfully weave in irony.

Yours amounts to a strategy to keep the ideas from being discussed. It is game, as I said early on.

I could comment on the constructs that come through most of the rest of your post. But you'll have to imagine it.

The Inglorious One wrote:[

Note what's first on the list.

Note how you cannot make a moral choice.

Regards
DL

Gustav Bjornstrand wrote: It is sentiment more than it is idea (IMO).

Yes, Gustav. Lacewing is a woman and therefore hasn't got a brain in her vacant head. Are you always so charming with the ladies? I know many other gay men who have far better social skills when to comes to women.

I didn't bother reading the rest of your post because I've got a bit of a queasy guts this morning.

Maybe you're pregnant?

Greatest I am wrote:

The Inglorious One wrote:[

Note what's first on the list.

Note how you cannot make a moral choice.

Regards
DL

Uh, yeah. Sure. That's It.

Obvious Leo to Gustav wrote: I didn't bother reading the rest of your post because I've got a bit of a queasy guts this morning.

Me neither, Leo. I'm confident I'm not missing anything significant... and it's best not to wallow around in stagnant ponds too much. Nothing much new grows there.

Referring to the OP/topic title: It's likely that everything we think and do is part of a fairy tale, including the idea of "growing up". So we can encourage each other to drop one fairy tale for another, but does it even matter?